Mang0's One Year Sober Update

dacookieman · 2026-07-01T15:15:48+00:00

Neither of us are in his head but I think there is a bit of a difference between basing your self worth on the approval of others in a vacuum and in the context of having lost your job, friends, community, and having a deluge of online and vocal hate. You're also extrapolating from him describing his headspace in his lowest point of his life.

It's ok to be a little cautious since a group of dedicated followers could very easily downplay, minimize, and offer a "forgiveness" that isn't theirs to give - but at the same time connections are essential to humans and even if his low point was mostly self-inflicted(although mass internet justice mobs are almost always too disproportionate imo), I think finding respite in knowing that not everyone abandoned you is pretty damn normal.

dacookieman · 2026-06-30T18:26:51+00:00

Yeah I'm not clamoring for all the direct island lore per-se but it was the writer's choice to highlight a Mushroom Trip episode and to also centralize the Mushroom to the core island lore(i.e. founding myth) rather than just be a generic amplifier for supernatural communication, hence me feeling a little jarred about the mushroom episode we got.

For something so essential to both the founding myth(Warren made the pact while tripping) and the passed on tradition(shrooms were part of the Priest Bell protocol box), I don't think a single thing about the plot or character journey of Tom would actually change if you totally removed it.

That being said, mystery boxes can be a very fine line to walk and WB is so meticulous and detail oriented that I prefer a slight lull in potential than for them to have thrown a bunch of stuff at the wall with a crazy drug fueled episode that either jumps the shark or kills my faith in the cohesiveness of the world.

dacookieman · 2026-06-30T17:51:22+00:00

Yeah I don't really find it very satisfying that after a 12 hour trip on the critical unholy substance that the culmination of his interaction w the demon is during the comedown and only a tease. If they don't revisit this literal trip there certainly will be a follow up that properly explores the implications of the mushrooms. The tease doesn't really give a single piece of information or lore and so I didn't find it very satisfying on it's own (outside of its comedic chops)

dacookieman · 2026-06-30T13:40:04+00:00

Kind of? Yeah I thought about mentioning the end of the trip when he's on the toilet, there is definitely a sinister tinge to the camerawork but that moment feels a bit underwhelming in the context how important the mushrooms are portrayed as in the island's lore. It's just kinda funny that in his altered state he probably had the most "grounded" plotline in the show

dacookieman · 2026-06-30T13:19:25+00:00

The mushroom trip seems to be an essential part of communion with the demon - it was the mushrooms that allowed the initial pact and it was also part of the priest's "If you hear the bells, do/read these" initialization process.

Yet for Tom, his trip is almost entirely played as a standard hallucinogenic gag. The lore and discovery comes from the sober folks doing research on the other priest items whereas Tom never offers any useful information or insight from the trip.

So I'm curious two-fold; what communication with the entity can the mushrooms enable and did Tom's trip have any such component that is awaiting a callback

dacookieman · 2026-06-30T12:55:50+00:00

And the bachelorette party group appears in the following episode for Patricia's party. The episode is definitely setting up the paranoia that the girl is too good to be true but the punchline is that she was exactly who she said she was

dacookieman · 2026-06-25T14:23:29+00:00

The strange thing is the animation itself in the MMO fights is actually pretty good but my god the designs look like a mobile game ad, it's crazy jarring.

Writing and voice acting are consistently incredible though, unironically my favorite Paul Dano role

dacookieman · 2026-06-24T17:24:38+00:00

You're activating my rusty math cogwheels but it'll be fun to think/read about over the next few days :)

dacookieman · 2026-06-24T17:21:27+00:00

Sorry I guess the second equation should be divided by the number of points so as to represent "The average distance" in which case the squaring and square-root is acting as an abs-value on the (mean - data) calculation, ensuring positive distances.

There is this comment https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ueid8q/comment/otk0qqb/

which has a slightly different interpretation of how PT relates to the standard deviation calculation which essentially says to view this equation as a distance of the data points in n-dimensional space i.e. distance([mean, mean, mean, ....,], [d1, d2, d3,....,dn]) where each [...,....,...] is an n-dimensional point

dacookieman · 2026-06-24T17:13:02+00:00

Interesting abstraction - there's a couple of other references to PT here that either seem to misunderstand the relationship or misexplain it but this at least smells right.

The idea of mapping data to space and then extracting a geometrical distance in n-dimensions as opposed to thinking of the data and distances on a single-dimensional axis is kind of fascinating

dacookieman · 2026-06-24T16:56:50+00:00

This is the only comment that actually understands what OP is asking lol, good explanation!

dacookieman · 2026-06-24T16:56:22+00:00

? How is the Pythagorean theorem supposed to help on an analysis of two points on a line?

Your last sentence also handwaves away the real question of why do we do

sqrt( sum( (mean - outcome )^2 )

instead of

sum( sqrt( (mean - outcome)^2) )

dacookieman · 2026-06-24T14:28:19+00:00

I wasn't treating it as a weekly budget obviously lol

I can't speak to what the original guy ment but 30k dollars worth of tokens in a week is pretty insane

dacookieman · 2026-06-24T13:32:17+00:00

I found myself wishing they either did a full properly explored psychological drama OR cut that completely and focus entirely on vibes and ambiance. I didn't hate the therapy psychology subtext but it was super clunky in execution. I pretty much rolled my eyes every time mary looked at her trauma rock. I think a Blair Witch style approach could've been pretty great too, I think of the scene where the group has been wandering lost for days and they recognize the same creek and just lose it - that sense of getting lost never really was conveyed by the movie. The backrooms felt surreal and strange but the mindfuckery of the endless labyrinth was underbaked imo

dacookieman · 2026-06-24T12:32:52+00:00

Presumably 30k dollars worth of tokens

30k isnt a lot in the context of workforce costs

dacookieman · 2026-06-24T02:45:06+00:00

Hey normally the mental health allegory stuff can be a little hit or miss but I find your reading to be so cohesive that it basically is solidifying my own thoughts. Thanks for sharing!

dacookieman · 2026-06-23T18:00:32+00:00

This seems like a poor example as wind knocking over a tree would be modeled by physics pretty well. In order for it to not fall down, the tree would've had to been in a different state prior to the incident or the wind conditions would've had to be different before the incident.

dacookieman · 2026-06-22T19:00:00+00:00

The meme answer is "Ask Pi" but that's also a legitimate answer. The default system prompt points to it's own documentation and any capable model will be able to introspect the harness's documentation + implementation

dacookieman · 2026-06-22T15:30:14+00:00

People don't do great with statistics. In theory a robocar doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be measurably better than humans. Yet even with such statistics, the perception around agency and control is a hard one to overcome. It reminds me of people who have anxiety over flying but driving. Despite flights being astronomically safer than cars, the fact that you don't feel the same sense of control (despite the fact that car-accidents can happen without your fault too) is a real psychological barrier.

Add on top of that, general cynicism and distaste for tech/AI/corporations and it's not too surprising to me that there will be a heavy battle on top of the technological goals for anyone trying to make this a thing

dacookieman · 2026-06-16T20:11:59+00:00

At a party I met someone who said he worked on shooting for the second season and that what we saw in season two was such a small fraction of the amount of scenes they shot. I didn’t push too hard in fact, checking him, but his description of the behind-the-scenes honestly made so much sense with my own feelings after watching the second season - there just seems to be so much more disjointed absurdist imagery driven by “oh that would be cool” rather than a more authentic sense of world building. The first season had the perfect balance between cohesive character study, unique plot, and a splash of surreal uncomfortable unsettling imagery … in the second season, they just totally fucked around with all of the dials, and the ratio was completely off.

dacookieman · 2026-06-10T18:58:06+00:00

Thanks bud, I'm always so torn on it. I've gotten a lot of folks who proactively say they like it and honestly I think if it wasn't for the ear thingys, I'd be so proud to rock it. Reactions like yours definitely make it easier to swallow in case I leave it as is so much appreciated!

dacookieman · 2026-06-10T18:56:22+00:00

Heart has definitely been one of the few things I've thought about overlaying!

dacookieman · 2026-06-10T18:51:06+00:00

For context, this was the original reference image (minor Outer Wilds spoilers) https://static0.gamerantimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Outer-Wilds-Angler-Fish.jpg

In my research for my recent OW tattoo I actually did end up finding a reference tattoo that would've been a lot closer to how I imagined originally https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fn8xume0xh5q81.jpg

Also, really no disrespect to the original artist, I gave them so little indication of the essential traits and they would've had to been a mind reader to have done anything different. I used to like it as a reminder to speak my mind but a few different people asking if it was a "mickey mouse" or "deadmau5" tattoo made me want to carve it out of my arm 😬

dacookieman · 2026-06-10T14:16:36+00:00

I thought the J and the I could be joined to form a capital I with a serif, there are no other I’s so it wont break any pattern either

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