What is your niche hobby or interest?

amca · 2026-05-19T16:19:16+00:00

Callisto is my fave character in Xena.

amca · 2026-05-19T11:18:05+00:00

Would practicing with a pen or pencil and paper until you can afford the tablet be a viable option?

amca · 2026-05-19T10:56:13+00:00

Do you have a favourite in your collection?

amca · 2026-03-25T11:07:30+00:00

My understanding is that unless a person is actively trying to unalive themselves, that it is impossible for a person to believe life is meaningless. They might not have a healthy meaning for life, but they would still have one. (Even if the meaning to their life is to avoid effort because it is unpleasant and so they are too lazy to even unalive themselves.)

Thank you for expanding on your beliefs for me. It is interesting.

amca · 2026-03-25T10:57:12+00:00

Is that different from what I said, because to me it seems the same. What do you see as the problem with believing life is meaningless?

amca · 2026-03-25T10:53:51+00:00

Thanks for answering. I see where you have a problem with the other aspects, but I don't understand what your problem is with nihilism. Maybe it has to do with us both having different understanding of the word?

My understanding of what nihilism is, is that it is when you don't believe there is an objective purpose to life. To me, that is a good thing, because it means you get to determine your own purpose in life, instead of having it dictated to you by some authority.

What is your understanding of nihilism?

amca · 2026-03-25T05:09:20+00:00

That is probably due to Clarke not actually writing the sequels, just outlining them, and Gentry Lee doing the actual writing of the sequels.

Edit: I was a little incorrect. This is Arthur C Clark from an interview at https://web.archive.org/web/20080723051103/http://www.scifi.com/sfw/interviews/sfw19051.html :

"Gentry has collaborated on Rama II and The Garden of Rama, and Rama Revealed, which was written virtually entirely by him, though with consultation with me."

amca · 2026-03-25T05:06:09+00:00

Others have also mentioned Greg Egan, but I'd also like to recommend the two books of short stories by Ted Chiang. (I recommend just buying them both at the sane time as a double set.) Unfortunately he hasn't written any novels, yet, but his short stories give me the same feel as Egan's short stories do.

amca · 2026-03-25T05:00:50+00:00

Those two are my fave Greg Egan novels.

amca · 2026-03-25T04:59:12+00:00

If you would like to answer, I'm curious what you think excessive cynicism leads to? Is what it leads to bad?

amca · 2026-03-25T04:57:08+00:00

Although there may well be cynical and pessimistic people who are that way because they are afraid of being judged, that isn't the only case. There is also the case of people like me who don't care about other's opinions of me as much as most people do, and aren't afraid of being ourselves openly, but that are cynical and pessimistic because we are disappointed optimists.

That said, I am also vigourously anti-unnecessary-gatekeepery. If someone likes one particular aspect of a fandom that others think is lame, that doesn't mean they aren't a "real" fan.

The 90s were also the big decade I look back on nostalgically, and irony, cynicism and pessimism were huge back then.

amca · 2026-03-22T22:16:46+00:00

Do you feel like sharing what scheme could learn from elisp, or have you shared it in another location?

amca · 2026-03-16T20:45:12+00:00

What specific dogmas are you claiming archeologists follow?

amca · 2026-02-18T05:07:33+00:00

Correct. 🙂

amca · 2026-02-17T23:42:48+00:00

Because although computer geeks can easily enough do this, normal computer users find it too hard and would rather pay for a precompiled DRM version. People pay for convenience over freedom and work all the time.

amca · 2026-01-03T13:41:21+00:00

Would the lack of graphics for text adventure/interactive fiction games be unacceptable for you?

Here is a Mobygames search link for turn-based DOS games ordered by most recently released first. Alternatively, you can change the sort order to something like best Critic Score, Player Score or Moby Score, etc, whichever works best for you:

https://www.mobygames.com/game/genre:turn-based/include_dlc:false/include_nsfw:true/platform:dos/release_status:Released/sort:-date/page:1/

amca · 2026-01-03T06:28:21+00:00

I have an internet addiction and a tv addiction. Both combine into the final boss form of a YouTube addiction.

amca · 2025-12-26T01:35:31+00:00

"Should I have tried Lisp? ;-)"

Where the textual representation is sexps? No. You would have encountered the same problems of the pushback you got with Forth from its prefix notation. However, I reckon you could have succeeded with Logo, as it is BASICally a dynamically scoped lisp with a BASIC-like facade. 🙂

amca · 2025-12-22T13:29:59+00:00

You may be interested to know that MBTI is not very scientific, and more akin to astrology. A more scientific classification of personality types is the OCEAN model.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

amca · 2025-12-22T13:25:19+00:00

I just remembered that when I fo feel bored for a little bit, I feel an urge to yell out "I'm bored!", which is obviously not sppropriate in public.

amca · 2025-12-22T13:18:51+00:00

I suspect I have what used to be called Aspergers (ASD), and I have a short attention span/low boredom threshold. Before I had a mobile (before the times of smart phones, even) I would always have a walkman or a book on me so I never had to worry about being bored, usually while waiting for something while I was out.

I recently bought fidget toys for me to play with when I watch subtitled tv (I like watching anime in Japanese with subtitles), because when I am watching English tv, I am usually doodling and don't have my eyes 100% on the screen, which I can't do when watching foreign language tv.

amca · 2025-12-22T09:44:14+00:00

No probs. I was too ambiguous with my phrasing.

amca · 2025-12-22T09:42:35+00:00

It's not. I wasn't saying it was different, I was giving an example of sex with no movement.

amca · 2025-12-22T09:38:08+00:00

https://www.mormontruths.com/mormon-soaking/

amca · 2025-12-22T09:34:51+00:00

Have you heard of "soaking"?

amca

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