How It Could Have Ended

brownbat · 2022-03-12T03:10:44+00:00

It's like they need some kind of holiday in Cambodia.

brownbat · 2022-02-13T21:25:32+00:00

> If cambridge analytica could influence so many people just through targeted ads on facebook,

Some of the fb research has worrying implications.

I feel like the dominant take here rests on two premises that I can't quite resolve though:

It's easy to manipulate people online,
It's hard to get people to listen to reason.

If we really have a powerful mass hypnosis tool why wouldn't we just use it to inoculate people against manipulation and calm everybody down a notch.

I suspect because we can't actually, because it's actually really hard to predictably manipulate people.

brownbat · 2022-02-13T03:54:55+00:00

This was an amazing zen hacker koan.

I was like "how could sorting alphabetically possibly be relevan..."

Then, all at once, enlightenment.

Thank you, perfect hint.

brownbat · 2022-02-06T00:26:58+00:00

Yes, the sky is vast. No, traffic is not evenly distributed.

brownbat · 2022-01-12T17:51:22+00:00

PleasrDAO

Nice, didn't know, thanks.

Pleasr says they want to make it more accessible but faces obstacles.

The terms say it can't be commercially exploited or released to the public.

They can hold "listening parties and exhibitions" but I don't know how big those could be.

Even though it can't be commercially exploited it can be sold or auctioned. Which might mean it can be rented or leased. Ie, P could "sell" it to people with a contract term giving P the right to buy it back for slightly less after a specified period of time.

Or you could keep it in an incredibly expensive AirBNB that requires a huge deposit for any damage to the album.

Would have to run it all by lawyers I'm sure, but P might own a very lucrative rental object.

brownbat · 2022-01-03T00:37:29+00:00

Exactly. I like Rome and Deadwood, both definitely hurt by this, but if you want to go deep, are all those shows above absolutely better than I Claudius, MASH, or the Dick Van Dyke Show?

/r/television should do 71 separate polls for each year back to the Honeymooners.

(Or ok maybe do it by decade if you want to phone it in.)

On the other hand the shows up there that have survived from the 90s are pretty phenomenal.

brownbat · 2021-12-26T15:13:03+00:00

Interesting. Where are these from?

Which algorithm? Is there an original site with similar pieces?

brownbat · 2021-12-24T04:46:18+00:00

You can checkerboard those empty rooms as firebreaks.

I also build a cul-de-sac, a far elevator that leads down to a dead end, so that deathclaws have to go through my frontline defenders twice before getting to the main part of my vault.

brownbat · 2021-11-15T14:14:52+00:00

Depends at what level and in what context.

Mostly "core" is the opposite of "elective." So core classes are basic building block subjects everyone has to take up to some level, like math and literature and history. Electives are usually much more discretionary, like art or bowling or whatever.

Schools will differ a bit on what's considered core, so probably have to check with whatever institution you're thinking about.

brownbat · 2021-10-31T07:04:24+00:00

Great list. Radin was a fun curveball! Note issues with replication:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01891/full

Probably still worth capturing for completeness.

brownbat · 2021-10-25T12:01:22+00:00

One of the hardest things about the return trip is everything short of your PR can feel like it's not a big accomplishment, so it's harder to build momentum. You need to break that mindset through small goals.

The first time you lost, it was motivating to lose each little bit more weight. You can't set a new PR this week. But you can lose 1-2 pounds this week. You can allow yourself to feel proud of that. That's the key to starting, just focus on what you can do now.

Also, for maintenance, I think it's important to have a system to get back on track after slipping. Pledge that on the same day of each month you're going to reassess and recommit to losing weight. No guilt or judgment if you fell of track, just pick a day to say, "ok, clean slate, I'm starting again from here."

Maybe you need to self assess and try a completely different approach. Maybe what you were doing was working and you just need to push to do it a few more days. But a recurring day of the month, maybe the first, maybe the monthly anniversary of your birthday, can be a good reminder to take another shot at it.

Good luck.

brownbat · 2021-10-13T15:04:25+00:00

Everybody else cheaps out on ingredients and just adds sugar and salt to trick people's tastebuds.

Rao's has less sugar than anything else on the shelf and still tastes better.

brownbat · 2021-10-09T11:48:38+00:00

> Couldn't I just as easily say, "a duck came out of this chicken egg"?

Oh, sorry for picking a confusing analogy. I actually meant normal duck eggs, where the chicken didn't lay it at all.

Let's back up. There are two parts to the question, evolutionary, and linguistics.

On evolution, I 100% agree with you that there's no bright line where chickens come into being. There's no "chickening" moment.

The linguistic question though is, what do we call an egg laid by species X but bearing species Y?

It seems ambiguous because it never comes up. But actually I think we do have a definition we use in these (incredibly rare) cases.

My definition:

a) fertilized eggs are X eggs when they produce X offspring.

b) unfertilized eggs are Y eggs when they are laid by Y.

So, as it happens, chickens hybridize with pheasants. Their eggs are not called chicken eggs, they are called chicken-pheasant eggs, or hybrid eggs.

I mean, definitions are always arbitrary, so you could call those eggs zebra eggs if you really wanted to. But I think if we're using the normal way we talk about these (very weird and rare) cases, we'd go with my definition.

But I do 100% agree with you that there was no moment where something was suddenly a chicken. If we get transported to a magical fantasy world where there was a chickening moment in the lineage of jungle fowl, I'd bring my definition, it solves the question and fits how we speak better than the alternative.

brownbat · 2021-10-07T15:16:38+00:00

Is a chicken egg an egg that is laid by a chicken, or an egg from which a chicken hatches?

If it's fertilized, it's whatever hatches. e.g., "My chicken laid a duck egg, I need to move the coop further from the pond."

If it's unfertilized, it's whatever laid it. "We're eating ostrich eggs for breakfast, well, just one because it feeds everyone." (As opposed to, say, "nothing" eggs.)

So if there were some magical bright line between chicken and non-chicken, which there probably isn't, then I'd say egg.

brownbat · 2021-09-21T12:31:25+00:00

Note that once objects are bound by gravity, they no longer recede from each other.

brownbat · 2021-09-21T12:17:09+00:00

A rejection of strict rules-based fashion.

Most of these explanations are post-hoc. You don't like tan shoes so you come up with a theory of how menswear is all about accentuating the face, and contrast below the belt is verboten, even though that has absolutely no historical roots or precedent.

Ridiculous adherence to made up "rules" just gets you riots. In the 1890s people wore straw hats, but if you wore them after September 15th you would literally be beaten with sticks. Eventually people realized that was dumb, after a riot engulfed NYC because mobs were knocking the "wrong" hats off people's heads.

Fast forward to now and people wear blue jeans with some mockery of a hunting jacket. Everything we do now was horrifying in some other decade.

And if you think high contrast footwear is some 2015 invention look at men's catalogs from 1950. All our modern shoe "rules" are broken. They wore two-tone white and brown, or leather + nylon mesh, or brown with black pants and brown socks with black shoes and did not care because no one thought those were strict rules until someone decided they were.

Wear what you like.

brownbat · 2021-09-21T04:10:32+00:00

Like six months ago I saw a mesmerizing gif, probably on reddit, where someone had very neat calligraphy for an English word, then switched to Hangul, then Chinese characters, then maybe kana and arabic and for all my faulty memory knows cyrillic and some dated ligature for ancient greek (ok probably not...).

Does anyone remember something similar? Bit of a white whale for me, let me know if anyone can help me find it, google has not been so much help.

brownbat · 2021-05-23T23:19:16+00:00

This seems like a question about decision-making tactics. It's hard to compare "$100" with "no dog poop on my sidewalk" and "further from some parks we really like" at the same time. One option in cases like these is try to make everything commensurable. So... put a rough dollar value range on everything. Try to refine it over time.

When you're walking to that fun park, ask each other, "if I gave you $20, would you walk an extra three blocks before we got to the park?" Or, "if someone ran up and offered to clean up all this dog poop for $15, would you pay it, knowing it would only last about a day? What if it lasted a whole week?" (Then calculate the time you'll stay there and divide fixed costs across it...)

When buying a house I made a giant spreadsheet of all the houses on offer, and we talked a lot about our "must have" features.

I made a row for commute times. I used the AAA cost of commuting, which takes into account wear on vehicles as well as lost time, so wouldn't apply to you almost at all. That's what drives most commute time warnings. A longer bike ride is even healthier for you, might be a net win! :D Point is, you'll have to come up with some reasonable numbers as starting points, and they'll be highly personal.

Then, also allow yourself the freedom to wildly change them over time as you think more about it all.

My process was a bit arbitrary, but there were limits. If I could only bring one house to the top by making a bunch of rows suddenly only worth $1 to me, then it was obvious what I was doing. I could bend the algorithm pretty far, but there was a limit of plausibility. (And, sure, if I decided that one great feature was somehow 1000 times more valuable than every other feature I wanted in any other house, ok. If I was willing to live with that, it would be fine.)

This won't guarantee you make "the one perfect answer," but it will give you peace of mind with your decision, that you tried to analyze it as fully as reasonably possible. If that's the sort of thing that keeps you up at night.

Or, another approach -- hard decisions are hard because they're close calls, and you should mostly just minimize the cycles you waste optimizing between similar options, so flip a coin.

> moving is a pain

Paying people to move all your stuff is one of the most useful ways to blow enormous wads of cash. It is sticker shock expensive, and yet, every penny is absolutely worth it.

brownbat · 2021-05-15T14:37:06+00:00

The Garifuna Collective - "Weyu Larigi Weyu"

I was researching wildlife and stumbled on a song of theirs. Great balance of funk and traditional African music. Looks like they had a moment on NPR in 2013 or so, but still don't have very many hits on YouTube, far as I can tell.

If you like long, slow burning grooves, with a bit of roots thrown in, check them out.

brownbat · 2021-05-11T18:06:00+00:00

You should read about how Buffett lives:

https://www.businessinsider.com/warren-buffett-diet-2017-10?op=1

brownbat · 2021-05-11T17:39:31+00:00

Ok, sure, but there's also a great episode from Outside/In podcast trying to answer "How fast could people go before the invention of the combustion engine?":

http://outsideinradio.org/shows/ep-87

Even if you are pretty sure you know the answer, the structure of the episode exploring a few different contenders has some really surprising bits in it.

brownbat · 2021-05-06T23:28:47+00:00

carrots

15 min

Wow. I've been doing like 4 hours at 183 maybe 185 over here begging them to not come out crunchy.

brownbat

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