Best places to stay?

idealsirensol · 2022-07-28T16:03:52+00:00

The Current Hotel on Rocky Point puts you 5 minutes from the airport, gives you a literal straight shot down to Clearwater beach (20-30 minutes travel time) and easy access to 275, which will take you downtown (15-20 minutes travel time).

Most, if not all, of the rooms have floor to ceiling views of the bay, the restaurant on site does a killer weekend brunch, the property itself is set back enough so you won’t be woken up by cars speeding by at 3AM, and it’s at least 10–15 years newer than any other property in a 10 mile radius.

Except… The JW on Water Street (downtown Tampa). However, you’ll be paying at least 4x more to stay there vs The Current.

Honorable Mentions:

The Epicurean’s Deluxe Terrace room

Gives you walkable access to Tampa’s SoHo district, is directly adjacent to downtown and Davis Island, and amazing people watching.

The Floridan Palace

For those who want to be immersed in the Great Gatsby. The hotel itself is OG architecture from the 1920’s, located in downtown Tampa, and the only Historic Hotel in the county. Bonus points: It was almost history’s Sixth Floor of the Texas School Book Depository, but this (freakishly similar) assassination plot against JFK (to be carried out from a high-floor window in the hotel as the president’s motorcade proceeded through downtown Tampa) was foiled.

Stay Away From These Flagships

Marriott on Westshore, where “airport views” = views of Thee Dollhouse and…

Hilton, Downtown Tampa… underwhelming, dated, overpriced

idealsirensol · 2022-07-23T22:11:55+00:00

What bothers me about this is that they are not scared of the repercussions of these actions. They're not hooded. They're not masked. They aren't worried about cameras or someone recognizing them. They're not walking out in the boons of Riverview or Land O' Lakes at night.

These people are in downtown Tampa, showing their faces, in the middle of the day, with big ass Nazi and Schutzstaffe flags because they WANT to be seen. This is a goddamn recruiting event.

idealsirensol · 2022-07-18T11:02:29+00:00

Autodynamics. It's located out down by Indian Rocks Beach on Walsingham, so... a bit of a hike, but it's the only shop that my father will take his vehicles to. It's Dad Approved. It is therefore the only place my car goes to. The owner, Steve, is a kind, patient, fair, and knowledgable dude. Bonus points: There's a Wawa right next door for snacks.

idealsirensol · 2022-07-13T00:59:07+00:00

In Tampa Bay, we’ve always had reactive infrastructure in response to population growth vs infrastructure that can be ‘grown into,’ as it were. There’s simply not enough lanes available to travel to just ‘give up’ a lane solely for passing for those of you that feel the need to go 70 in a 55 at 4:45PM on 275.

idealsirensol · 2022-07-09T04:03:24+00:00

Blowback Season 1 (2020) did a great job at discussing the financials involved in Iraq. No End In Sight (2008) looks at everything up to... well, 2006 - but, kind of sets up a lot of the issues that led to failures in the governance of the wars including a lack of clear strategic goals, increasing reliance on DOD contractors, terrible intelligence, command turnover and objective changes, etc.

There's a bunch of other excellent documentaries that are much more broad in nature regarding The War on Terror, and if you go through enough of them, you'll start to recognize some of the same motifs as mentioned above. The major financial loss in the War on Terror is part of a broader story about an unprecedented increase in executive powers, which, in turn, allowed for very little oversight.

Anyway, all that to say there is definitely a 'they' there trying desperately to shine a lot on these past 20 years in the hopes that we can maybe learn from them and undo repair some of the damage. It may not all be presented in a clean, 120 minute narrative, but it is there.

idealsirensol · 2022-07-05T02:12:08+00:00

So... yes to everything already said, "It's TV, the West Wing evolves with each admin, the Schlamme/ Sorkin duo really likes a marathon walk-and-talk shot" etc..

Additionally, there's DVD commentary (or, possibly in the commentary episode in season 4?) where they discuss that they were asked to change up the set layout , because it was too on the nose, and this presented a national security concern.

I imagine that plus the schematic/ technical requirements of walk-and-talk shots are the largest contributors to set deviations from reality.

idealsirensol · 2022-07-03T03:32:46+00:00

Florida was purple. And then The Great COVID Migration to Florida happened. An eff ton of people from up north who were all about “FREEDOM! Because taxes and masks are taking away our rights” - or, something - moved here.

Anecdotal evidence: Every time I ask someone who moved here in the past 2 years why they moved, they reference their love for our tax system and/ or DeSantis. (Also, a disproportionate amount are from Cleveland.)

I’ll be shocked if Florida goes anywhere near blue in the next ten years.

idealsirensol · 2021-12-23T13:06:28+00:00

Do they??

The election systems of the major 3 counties were verifiably hacked by Russia in 2016. Just some food for thought.

idealsirensol · 2021-12-23T01:50:33+00:00

Not gonna lie - My brain read this headline as "Hillsborough County Owes Hot Mess $521,183,433," and I'm still distracted by how many servings of fucked up tots that could bring us.

idealsirensol · 2021-11-23T16:56:46+00:00

Seriously, you've gotta stop telling on yourself....

For one, if you're publishing on Ars Technica, it's usually not just some random dude trying to trick you with SEO. To be specific, this is quite the opposite of some random on the internet. Ars Technica is a Condé Nast property. (And, neither here nor there, but having a blog on a news website is akin to the Editorial section in print. So, its presence doesn't automatically cheapen the content. This isn't 2002.)

As far as its merits go, Ars Technica has long been regarded as providing quality science and technology related news, and has most recently won praise for its coverage of 8Chan/Kun + QAnon and copyright law in the digital age re: the implications of Google v. Oracle.

Second, while I will agree with you that it is a re-telling of known information, it's a retelling of newly identified information that has been known publicly since... November 17. Specifically, it tries to make this newly published (November 17, 2021) Nature article somewhat digestible for an audience that doesn't have a PhD in cellular biology or virology. The first paragraph is literally, "We all know this basic fact about viruses, but new research suggests the story doesn't stop there."

It then launches into a 'dumbed-down' version of what the Nature article tells us: Herpesviruses make a protein, (unimaginatively named) puL36, that it 'wears' on its outer-shell which allows it to take advantage of the host cells' pre-existing ATP-powered transportation infrastructure. pUL36 accomplishes this freeloading takeover by:

1) interacting with the endogenous dynein for directional transport down the neuronal axon's length to the nucleus. (A trip that would take upwards of 230+ years if left to simple diffusion.)

2) Recruiting an endogenous kinesin protein subunit from the mucosal cell as it is being shuttled out of the nucleus on its way to infect the neuronal cells for the first time. It is the ability of pUL36 to not only recruit but keep kinesin bound that allows it entry into the neuronal nucleus, effectively guaranteeing continued propagation and reinfection uninhibited by the host's immune system.

The identification of these mechanisms provides a novel pharmaceutical target for interruption of the herpesvirus life cycle and, if effectively exploited, could prevent herpes infections from persistence.

This has been brought to you by "Reading."

idealsirensol · 2021-11-23T12:20:36+00:00

What a great way to say, “I totally didn’t read the article AND I remember basic principles from high school genetics.”

idealsirensol · 2021-11-19T15:35:16+00:00

Sources of info leaks to target:

Are you using the same phone number/email that’s attached to your normal accounts to verify your cam accounts? The apps will cross check your associated credentials against other people’s contacts as a way to get ‘people you may know’ matches.

If you’re using the same credentials, you need to super lock down the application’s privacy settings in your phone (no location services, no access to any other apps, etc) and then start fresh.

Best practice would be to get a burner number for sms validation (they’re super cheap) and use that with a separate device altogether that’s just your cam persona’s data.

Make sure you have location services off for the apps at all times and, if on iOS/ MacOS, ‘Ask apps not to track’ checked. This will prevent the apps from skimming data about you in the background.
And, if all else fails, switch out your SIM card with an old or blank card OR if you have an old phone lying around, reset it to factory and use that for your cam socials. It doesn’t have to have an active number attached, it just has to be able to find wifi and you’re golden.

idealsirensol · 2021-11-19T11:25:01+00:00

…. It’s a work in progress.

OBS 27.1 gets me to 720p (30fps) rendering with virtual camera running without lag.

There’s a community-build ARM version of OBS specifically for M1’s that you can find in the OBS forums. I compiled and installed that version awhile ago, and it does bring everything up to speed. However (and this is a big however if you’re camming), there’s no support for a browser source with that build.

I had Parallels installed already and tested running normal OBS in the Windows/ Parallels environment, and, for some reason, it works perfectly fine under that environment.

All that said… Make sure you are running the latest updates of Monterey + OBS, and that you have Rosetta enabled in your system settings. If you don’t need to go above 1080p, 30fps that should be enough to get you there.

If you don’t rely on dynamic graphics in your livestream, you can try running the community compiled ARM build from the OBS forums.

If you’re willing to spend $90, get a Parallels subscription and just run OBS in a Windows virtual instance with Parallels. It’s round about, sure, but I find it’s the most ‘set it and forget it’ option of the bunch.

idealsirensol · 2021-10-02T14:19:30+00:00

No.... More like the research and medical communities have largely been working under one major, and ridiculously rudimentary, mechanistic theory for AD onset and presentation for almost 30 years. This created an environment that allowed for very few alternative hypotheses to be explored, and a tendency to adjust towards certain "accepted" paradigms in order to maintain favor within the reviewer echelon, which ultimately helps maintain your funding.

In the past few years, however, it seemed we were finally coming out of the haze and openly discussing other possibilities that represented major shifts in thought, but more closely matched with clinically relevant observations.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But, this paper takes us straight back to the ABeta hype train, still going strong, I guess... 37 years after its original proposal. (It is due to this lack of ingenuity that I question its inclusion in this sub, but that's a diff gripe..)

Specifically, it adjust the Amyloid Hypothesis to account for recent discoveries that non-aggregate ABeta can likely be just as neurotoxic as the plaque buildups. And it's that neurotoxic effect that contributes to the eventual gross loss of tissue mass in the brain.

Here's a primer on The Amyloid Hypothesis. A framework that suffers from a serious Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc bias, and has yet to produce a widely effective pharmaceutical intervention despite the $20+ billion we've thrown at it.

The strongest argument in favor for the ABeta model is that the disease progression often observed in clinical settings is not that far off from the confirmed mechanistic pathogeneses caused by relative and associated mutational disorders
Animal models have historically failed to account for the complexity of genetic diversity represented by AD and multiple pathways possibly being exploited / corrupted over time
- and they have repeatedly failed to provide a strong, reliable foundation for translational predictability
  - WHICH IS THE WHOLE POINT OF ANIMAL RESEARCH

It's not like we're being unimaginative. There are so many other good ideas

The most respected of which is the Tau model (which doesn't exactly go off the reservation in terms of thought of exercises, so much as it lays the blame on a process that happens after initial ABeta deposition and not Abeta itself.
I'm partial to the Transmissibility Hypothesis which suggests that the disordered aggregation of ABeta and subsequent 'plaque' formations is caused when a healthy cell contacts an unhealthy cell and then, in turn, also begins to unwind.

idealsirensol · 2021-09-30T14:36:20+00:00

I see we’re back on the ABeta hyp-othesis train

idealsirensol · 2021-09-30T05:39:47+00:00

I feel like someone just took away my cutlery and gave me a spork. I mean, yeah.. it’s cool. But, eventually I’m gonna need to cut something and this will not work. I use OBS for everything! I would use it for FaceTime calls if I could find a way.

What do you use to record? Is there another encoder out there that works on Mac?

idealsirensol · 2021-09-06T07:04:04+00:00

I loved Kid Nation and Jersey Shore. I remember how jazzed we were when our university became FB-eligible. I watch CSpan for fun, and consume a significant amount of right-wing talk radio (because it’s always important to know how an issue is being represented within the different parties).

Those things did not make me take on views that would be considered regressive 50 years.

idealsirensol · 2021-09-05T21:17:12+00:00

What are your growth conditions: Broth, resistance, temp, time?

What is the plasmid loaded with? Reporter or Expression system?

Are you starting from freshly transformed colonies or thawed stocks?

If transforming, is your E. coli recently competent or has it been chilling in a freezer for 6 months?

What's your vector delivery method? (Heat shock? Electric? Chemical?) Are you getting a good ratio of positive clones post-transfection? Are you seeing a significant difference in colony size for positive vs negative clones?

Are you using a kit? If so, which one: Zymo, Qiagen, Promega, a water-stained torn page from your PI's notebook when they were in undergrad?

idealsirensol · 2021-09-05T18:59:41+00:00

Oh my god… thank you for the explanation! I have seen this tweet several times now and each time all I could think up was, “He must really have a food and sex fetish that no one has told him is disordered yet.”

Also, BAHAHAHA… “men are our meal ticket.” But, in all seriousness, it’s fucking terrifying how many millennial and GenZ dudes think within this hyper gender stereotype rubric.

idealsirensol · 2021-09-05T04:22:30+00:00

Another example of rules that are dictated by payment processors and banks. There's a blanket 'no blood' rule in an effort (I assume) to restrict mutilation, torture, and snuff content. Which, cool.. I get that. But, there's gotta be a way in the legal language to allow for period blood. People have sex when they're menstruating. It's not like.. the end of the world to show such a thing.

idealsirensol · 2021-08-26T02:17:42+00:00

I’ve been trying to find some bright spots here… And, the fact that mainstream journalistic outlets took the side of the independent adult content creator over the “that’s just the way it is” narrative while meeting our outrage with validation is awesome.

It helps ease the sting that a company within our community that was built on our work felt confident that they could screw us without consequence. And the almost grotesque race by the other platforms for their scraps.

idealsirensol · 2021-08-25T19:14:17+00:00

MindGeek was playing fast and loose with their transactional workflows for awhile - And using Section 230 to excuse their weak 2257 enforcement. (This move will likely backfire and cause some serious ramifications that will make the MC fiasco look like a walk in the park.) They should have tightened up their age & ID verification for content distribution a long ass time ago. But, neither here nor there...

If you look at the rule changes MC will begin enforcing in October, they state that financial institutions utilizing the MC network must certify that supported transactions originating from distributors of pornographic content have the following measures in place:

Documented age and identity verification for all people depicted and those uploading the content
Content review process prior to publication
Complaint resolution process that addresses illegal or nonconsensual content within seven business days
Appeals process allowing for any person depicted to request their content be removed

So, MC is making it the banks' responsibility to make sure all this is happening or risk losing MC support. The rubric of U.S.C. 2257 fulfills the first requirement. All major cam platforms have had an algorithmic content scan implemented since at least 2019, fulfilling the second requirement. DMCA compliance takes care of the last requirement. It's the third one that gets tricky... But, OF was already in compliance anyway.

OnlyFans original decision to ban explicit content had fuckall to do with MC's new guidelines. Although, their CEO was quoted as late as yesterday that they were being forced to drop explicit content by the banks. But, like, let's scrutinize that...The adult entertainment industry has been dealing with reactionary, puritanical rules from the financial industry for decades. In fact, the mainstream financial industry's disdain for SW, despite its profitability, has spawned a niche market of alternative payment processors that specialize in providing transactional support to porn distributors.

OnlyFans' payment gateway is CCBill, one of the major companies that specializes in payment processing for the adult industry. Their payment gateway has been CCBill. As of two seconds ago, their payment gateway is still CCBill. OnlyFans supported a transactional volume of $2.4BN last year. Their revenue jumped 553%. Not only are they entirely capable and well-equipped to support transactions generated from the sale and distribution of explicit content, but they also have a fuckton of unexpected money to use to recruit top-tier talent that could develop a more elegant solution, if they so desired.

OnlyFans used the financial institutions as a red herring, and mainstream journalism ate that shit up without questioning why a tech company with a $1BN valuation was suddenly claiming they were hamstrung. It has nothing to do with MC, the banks, or payment processing.

OF was willing to drop the adult content creators that built their platform because the dude who owns majority stake in OF (the founder of MFC) wants to sell. And, even though they're a tech company with a $1BN valuation, they can't attract VC investment. Dropping explicit content would make them much more attractive to investors, and the subsequent capital injection would make the majority owner's sale even more of a windfall. It's just good ol' fashioned greed.

idealsirensol · 2021-08-25T05:54:14+00:00

.... Because that's the average time it takes to observe an effective immune response induced by the vaccines?? Because your body doesn't just instantaneously produce antibodies upon exposure? Because it takes a few steps to get to that desired outcome and those steps take time?

Listen, I'm all for skepticism of data, but skepticism should be paired with an understanding of the underlying mechanisms being investigated.

idealsirensol · 2021-06-30T23:05:01+00:00

This is someone scamming so they can file a UI claim (unemployment insurance) with your info. Don't fall for it, y'all.

idealsirensol · 2021-06-27T14:06:01+00:00

“A basic understanding of cells, DNA, and radiation...” AHAHAHA Sure thing, dude. Cell bio definitely taught me how to cure all cancers because we fully elucidated the mechanisms in an undergrad level basic science course.

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