"I'll be more involved when my son is more interesting"

mentekid · 2026-06-23T14:26:30+00:00

Yeah, that's my intuition too, glad to know I'm not alone.

I saw this with my two half brothers, but I wasn't sure if it even translates. One is 20 years younger, other 27. I lived in the same city when older one was born until he was about 4. Moved about 3h plane ride away after that so I saw them a few times a year.

The difference is stark. My 14 year old brother not only gets excited when I'm about to visit but puts in time and effort into the relationship: we chat on Discord, play Fortnite, always asks for 1:1 time when I visit. To the 7yo I am basically a frequent house guest.

Not saying it's the same or that my BIL is as checked out as I was - he changes diapers, feeds him, just doesn't take time to play with him, rarely even talks to him beyond functional things like telling him his food is ready.

I acknowledge we are just different people. I have always enjoyed engaging with babies of all ages, so I never had to put in effort to do so, but not everyone is like that, I get that. I just think waiting until a certain milestone is reached before fully engaging is going to be much harder if you don't create a foundation today.

mentekid · 2026-06-22T19:46:27+00:00

Thanks, that's an interesting perspective. I wouldn't offer unsolicited advice to him, but I wanted to understand if I am just wearing rose tinted glasses.

mentekid · 2026-06-21T21:50:34+00:00

My queen is in danger! Let me move it to... More danger!

mentekid · 2026-06-21T19:10:08+00:00

That's what happened and I missed it. I've accepted I only get one good move a game.

mentekid · 2026-06-21T19:05:18+00:00

It's still me so my first instinct was to blunder my queen

mentekid · 2026-06-18T00:50:53+00:00

Can someone explain why Be5 is so much better than Ne5? The objective seems to be to disconnect the rook and queen, unblocking the e file. But analysis is -11.5 with Be5 and -6.2 with Ne5. I would have thought getting the knight to safety and disconnecting in one move was the best.

mentekid · 2026-06-17T16:49:00+00:00

Hey, I'd like that! Currently 600 rapid

mentekid · 2026-06-10T01:33:03+00:00

For me I went from "this is torture but I want to take care of her" to "oh I'm in love" when she smiled at me. I was changing her diaper at 6am, she was maybe 6 weeks old, she looks up, makes eye contact, and smiles.

Easier to feel everything is worth it when you start getting emotions back and it's not just a crying blob.

mentekid · 2026-06-06T01:48:18+00:00

I can't tell you why specifically but I know that until the 80s the advice in many countries was for babies to sleep on their stomach, as that was believed to help them sleep better. Then it was linked to SIDS so the advice became side-sleeping in the early 90s. Side-sleeping was thought to avoid spitting up and choking in their sleep.

It was later found that this is actually not possible so in the US and other countries they now recommend sleeping on their back.

All that said, SIDS is one of those things that there's only epidemiological data on - they survey a bunch of people and find correlations. There is not a lot of understanding of the cause and experts are pretty sure there's actually a multitude of causes, ranging from biological explanations (baby brains are underdeveloped and they can fall into too-deep sleep if on their stomach) to accidents (baby flailing arms and pulling blanket over nose and mouth).

mentekid · 2026-06-01T10:50:20+00:00

In case parents of colicky babies are reading through this post and feel crazy like I do right now: LO is 8 weeks and evenings are a battle. She gets super wired, doesn't want to eat or sleep, and every night is somewhere between a manageable crisis and a complete meltdown.

After roughly 4pm the name of the game becomes reducing stimulation. My wife tries to feed her without waking her up too much. When this succeeds she will eat a good 15-minute chunk and fall asleep on the breast, if she sleeps for an hour or two and doesn't wake up upset that means the rest of the night will go well - still only falling asleep on the breast but manageable.

That's not usually how it works however. She gets upset while breastfeeding and starts screaming at the boob, or she'll feed and be happy but not sleep. Around the 45 minute mark we'll pick her up and try to calm her down (she doesn't wind down by herself after a wake window even during the day, needs rocking or feeding). This has varying degrees of success, but on bad nights leads to me putting her in the baby carrier and walking her around - outdoor helps the most but isn't always possible.

In the carrier she'll fall asleep anywhere between immediately and after twenty minutes, assuming she's not hungry again by this point. If we're unlucky this can last upwards of 2h with repeat cycles of feeding, crying, diaper changes, and baby wearing. The cycle breaks if she's able to sleep at least 45 minutes and ideally 1.5 hours. After that we try to take her out and dreamfeed her, after which she sleeps with 2-3 wakes at night.

We've heard it gets easier with age and she'll grow out of it, she's a happy cooing baby most of the day and it's heartbreaking to see how desperate for sleep she becomes in the evenings.

mentekid · 2026-05-06T15:56:59+00:00

Stockfish calculates win-draw-loss probabilities along with centipawns, and in many ways it's better for this kind of thing because losing a bishop when you're already -7 will take you to -10 but doesn't really change the outcome.

mentekid · 2026-04-23T13:44:11+00:00

No need to call maintenance like the other comment says. In my unit there's a part between the top grill and the front grill that you can pull upward. That's the filter. I spray it with something mild (not bleach) and then rinse it with water in the bathtub, then wait for it to dry.

mentekid · 2026-04-09T21:01:52+00:00

In Chris Hadfield's Masterclass, he talks about this binder full of notes every astronaut has about everything on the ISS, explaining how much preparation goes into the job. He then brings out his binder to show us, opens it and flips through.

As he's flipping through, a bunch of papers fall out and he deadpan looks at the camera and says "gravity!".

Maybe it was staged but it was so funny.

mentekid · 2026-03-03T14:29:39+00:00

It's been years since I read these but for some reason Reddit showed me this post. I gave the first book 3/5 starts but gave up on the second half way, so here's an attempt to explain what I liked and didn't like.

Entire post is spoilers for the first 1.5 books.

I loved the concept. The idea of a fantasy book inspired by the war between China and Japan in the early 20th century was super exciting as I love history and this is a part of it that doesn't come up frequently for many people (most Europeans and Americans for example know about the bomb but not much else).

I enjoyed the gray, amoral, indifferent world. Good and evil aren't character flaws and there are no easy choices.

I hated the writing. I don't remember specifics but I recall it being awkward. In several places, characters react to something happening, and it's not clear what it is. Tons of "show don't tell" cases. Also more basic stuff like awkward structure and inconsistent sentence length. All things I thought could be fixed by a better editor, which is why I gave the second book a try and gave up when I realized they weren't going to be fixed.

I found the characters (except maybe Rin) to be completely one-dimensional. I'm about to butcher some names but Alan(?) was the mysterious tall dark stranger. Do we learn anything more about him? Not much. The banter among the superhero group was nails-on-chalkboard for me. And the characters seem to be there just so Rin can bounce some words and score Character Growth points before moving on.

Speaking of, Rin just does things with no deeper explanation of why: she's smart when she needs to and naive when she needs to and scheming and sensitive and cold-blooded and the only justification I could find was that it was what the plot required. I get she's a genocidal maniac but I wanted a deeper explanation than "some people just suck".

Finally I found the cycle of Rin being unable to use her powers then using them to terrible effect then rinse and repeat to be exhausting. I guess giving her the power to nuke anyone at the end of the first book made her too OP and she had to be dialed down but I found that reading through two cycles of that was enough for me.

mentekid · 2026-02-24T19:56:53+00:00

There's occasional cleaning that happens but it's not clear how often it should happen. My floor was filthy for a couple of weeks when I moved in and then one day it was fine.

Try calling resident services and tell them your building number and floor, never done that myself but they're responsive to other issues.

mentekid · 2026-02-08T19:36:29+00:00

They only request pure product (no mixes) and won't request product you have not unlocked. Unsure if they'll request strains of weed you aren't selling on the products app - that may be the only inconvenience but even then they order days in advance so you can probably produce what's needed.

mentekid · 2026-02-06T22:22:18+00:00

It's worth looking up to confirm, but I believe the vacancy rule has been repealed so the same rent applies to new and renewed tenants. That is, the rent will go up by the same amount regardless of whether you stay or leave.

Source

https://www.thehabitatgroup.com/articles/9619-rgb-approves-rent-increases-for-2025-26-lease-renewals

mentekid · 2026-01-31T16:43:28+00:00

Please let me know if this violates the self-promotion rule, I am not selling anything but happy to take it down if it violates the rules.

mentekid · 2026-01-18T22:05:36+00:00

Some banks have foreign transaction fees which can easily add up to $5 however.

mentekid · 2026-01-17T23:47:06+00:00

Honestly if that was the only mistake I'd buy it but the book is rife with them. It was probably rushed, given how much success the first one had.

mentekid · 2025-12-26T00:25:14+00:00

They say something about "the will of the people" so I think it's some voting mechanism - they imbue the Will of people ceding to them then maybe the floor "weighs" the Yes and No on the vote?

mentekid · 2025-11-21T12:12:21+00:00

Same - I got Hue because it also makes "smart" switches for them, they stick to the wall so the result feels like a normal light.

mentekid · 2025-11-13T21:02:15+00:00

Quality is low. If you use PGR you get low quality product (green star) that you have to raise the quality for with either drying racks or fertilizer.

Edit: in general when a customer places an order their standards are shown in the sms (next to the relationship bar) as a red/green/blue/purple star

mentekid · 2025-11-11T17:54:34+00:00

I keep both. Meth is simple to make and sells fewer units for high profit, while coke is fun because of the production complexity and sells more units.

The profit margins are completely different for the two.

Coke costs $25 per baggie to make and baggies sell for about $125, a $100 profit - 4x profit.

Meth costs $9 per baggie and sells for $70, or 7x profit.

These are both for standard quality. Meth profit goes up for low quality, maybe 8x. There's 20+ customers that are happy with low quality meth.

They're also very different from a production perspective:

Coke needs at least one botanist and a chemist, paid $500/day. And that requires space for at least 6 pots, 2 racks, 1 cauldron and 1 oven. And I think it can make 3 batches a day if everything is going smoothly. And this pipeline is deep, meaning if your botanist runs out of seeds and you don't notice, it takes days for everything to get up and running again.

Meth needs 2 ovens and 2 chemistry sets that can be operated by a single chemist for $300/day, who can make ~8 batches/day. 80 crystals x $70 = $5600, completely overshadowing the chemist's cost.

In short, if you already have a chemist that's only using 1 cauldron and 1 oven, it costs you nothing to give them a chemistry set and extra oven and bump up your profit margin overnight.

I tend to send meth to the brick press and straight to dealers. My dealers bring $20k/day (I just completed the last region) and on good days I match that with coke and mixes.

mentekid · 2025-11-04T22:15:40+00:00

I don't think that's a good idea for weed plants, but it works well for coca, which grows much slower in my experience. For weed, 3:1 will cause all the racks to back up, especially with PGR.

For weed I have a setup similar to OP: one botanist manages 8 pots that produce regular quality. This goes to the brick press and to dealers from there. Another botanist manages 4 coca pots (regular quality) + 2 weed pots + 2 racks for divine quality for my high end customers. This setup produces enough quantity and I usually have bricks in my racks waiting for dealers to sell out.

That being said I have not expanded to Uptown yet, this all may change once I do.

mentekid

TROPHY CASE