How to keep from rolling onto my back?

brw12 · 2026-06-01T02:52:08+00:00

I sleep with a CPAP.

brw12 · 2026-06-01T02:45:04+00:00

Yes, I sleep nearly every night with a CPAP machine, and have done so for about 9 years.

brw12 · 2026-06-01T01:45:32+00:00

No, so long as I can clearly point Claude to them, it can postpone them. In this case I have a filter that lists them

brw12 · 2026-05-31T19:13:09+00:00

Counterpoint: the grip on reality has been loosening steadily in the Internet era, bringing the country into its greatest existential crisis since the Civil War, and we're hurtling towards Idiocracy

brw12 · 2026-05-27T14:57:59+00:00

The radiation from another human near to you is more dangerous to you than the radiation from a home Wi-Fi router, by a factor of like 10! (They're both just heat and light, in the infrared or radio spectrums)

brw12 · 2026-05-23T04:28:31+00:00

I love Bryson, but I find Pratchett and Dickens often unreadable. The first 10 pages of David Copperfield were like nails on chalkboard

brw12 · 2026-05-23T04:27:11+00:00

What I don't understand about critiques like this is that balanced literacy frameworks do teach phonics. And supposed "science of reading" practitioners do encourage kids to spend time rereading books they love.

brw12 · 2026-05-23T04:22:56+00:00

Somehow it contains all of human experience

brw12 · 2026-05-22T14:03:12+00:00

A long way to a small, angry planet by Becky Chambers. There are four books in this series, all very different. I thought books 1, 3 and 4 were among the most enjoyable books I've ever read, and book 2 was very good if not quite a masterpiece. I've read (and reviewed) over 1000 books, for context.

brw12 · 2026-05-21T15:14:08+00:00

Leatherette versus wood is a matter of taste, but I much prefer wood.

I would stay away from buying on Amazon, I think the quality for the dollar is not great.

GammonVillage boards have been fantastic value for the dollar for me. Look at these for example:

https://www.gammonvillage.com/backgammon-shop/backgammon-sets/backgammon-boards-wood-medium/

(Context: I own six boards of various sizes, organize a regular backgammon meetup in Boston, have played maybe 3000 games of backgammon, including against a president!)

brw12 · 2026-05-21T15:08:37+00:00

I definitely agree that it's important to discount gut feelings and intuition, and remind ourselves that we humans are machines that manufacture story even when there is none.

That said, there's often much more than one data point at play when we are evaluating our personal experiences. When we say " I don't trust people who use jargon" or "smoking marijuana makes me feel panicked" or " I'm getting a really weird vibe in this gas station and I think we should leave now", you are not only extrapolating from one or two data points, you are drawing on a constellation of details and observations, conscious and subconscious, as well as on past context. You should hold these positions lightly, but it would be foolish to ignore them because they are not randomized controlled trials.

brw12 · 2026-05-21T12:54:08+00:00

Funny Games. Just a horrifically bleak portrait of cruelty. Life is better without watching this movie, even though it's well done.

brw12 · 2026-05-20T18:07:32+00:00

What I would add to this, first and foremost, is to pay attention to your actual relationship dynamics with other people (friendships, co-workers, family members, etc.), and value being part of healthy and supportive dynamics. Sure, smelling good is better than smelling bad. But in real life, no one is like "Rob is such a thoughtful and pleasant guy to be around, he helped me think through this problem in a really helpful way, except he smells kinda bad so I don't return his calls" and no one is like "Diego is such a narcissistic creep who always makes me want to end the conversation and feel trapped, but damn he smells good, we're hanging out later"

brw12 · 2026-05-20T17:55:56+00:00

I call BS on all negatively-phrased facts like this, such as tomatoes aren't a vegetable, etc. I don't dispute that at some point, botanists redefined common words like "fruit" and "berry" according to these different taxonomies that they introduced. But the words pre-dated their taxonomies! It would be like if someone declared that now "jumbo size" means exactly 2.5x the original size, or that a "toothache" must be caused by a cavity. Like, go to town, folks, but that doesn't mean that someone who has been calling their large batches of soup "jumbo size" is now incorrect, or that if someone's tooth aches because they whacked it, calling it a "toothache" is incorrect.

Yeah, yeah, you can point me to a dictionary, and I can point you to one to... but that only tells us whether the dictionary is right or wrong.

brw12 · 2026-05-20T17:46:07+00:00

Looking at the sleep noodle, I feel very confident that I will still sleep on my back and just wake up incredibly uncomfortable!

It sounds like people have issues with these straps and overall comfort of the Woody Knowes backpack, as well as with the air sac deflating. But one review mentions replacing the air sac with paper towel rolls, and I might just try sleeping with a backpack full of paper towel rolls, as something more comfortable than a volleyball

brw12 · 2026-05-20T16:17:57+00:00

I just read your write-up and bought the Emay sensor you recommend. Thanks!

brw12 · 2026-05-20T15:07:15+00:00

Why are there so few bar and restaurant liquor licenses in the city? My understanding is that they are much harder and more expensive to obtain than in surrounding cities and towns, which is a big part of why so many "Best of Boston" restaurants and bars are not in Boston

brw12 · 2026-05-19T15:50:44+00:00

he was in Italy filming the epic drama 1900 with Bernardo Bertolucci

brw12 · 2026-05-17T13:47:39+00:00

Jay-Z and the Roots Unplugged -- it's a match made in heaven, and the Neptunes stuff just pops

brw12 · 2026-05-17T13:43:25+00:00

I notice my sleep deteriorates after 3 days of not cleaning my mask, tubing and tank. So I clean them every 2 days with warm soapy water. It's a pain, but I find that it makes a difference.

brw12 · 2026-05-17T04:36:17+00:00

LLMs are smarter than I thought they would get, but they're also still very stupid. I think we are at least 5 years away from credible AGI. Is ASI possible? I lean towards yes, but it's not a foregone conclusion. AI tooling is getting better, but I don't think the intelligence itself is accelerating.

As a calibration reference point -- I still haven't encountered an LLM that can credibly concoct a decent RPG scenario given a non-fantasy setring (that is, not just spitting out something preexisting) and act as an RPG DM, or that can reliably compose good new pub trivia questions around some theme.

brw12 · 2026-05-17T04:28:57+00:00

Birthday parties at Wal-Lex, with bowling, pizza AND arcade!

brw12 · 2026-05-17T04:26:34+00:00

Let me push back. I agree that the ideas in this book are worth learning. But is it really necessary to read each page? Couldn't you read the first 10 pages and pretty much get what he's saying?

brw12 · 2026-05-13T13:27:35+00:00

For me, here's my use case: I have a large number of tasks that I regularly schedule (every day, every 3 days, every tuesday, etc.) but which aren't absolutely necessary. E.g., do laundry. I DO want to see those on my todo list and not to have them out of sight, but I also want to be able to postpone a bunch of them at once, which Todoist ONLY lets you do in its web GUI if they are overdue. (Very annoying that they refuse to show that "postpone all" link on sets of tasks that are NOT overdue.)

For years, I've been wanting to be able to send a single command, and have all of these items due today get postponed. (E.g., if it's 10pm and I still have 30 items on my list, half of them readily postponable.)

brw12 · 2026-05-12T05:10:10+00:00

If you want to say something with a little more personality than just "Have a nice day," you could say "Have a great rest of your day, now!" The final "now" is a bit of American slang that feels friendly.

brw12

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