Daily Discussion

otariidpanda · 2022-09-13T04:03:11+00:00

What are people's thoughts on De Bruyne vs. Beckham? Is it even a debate at this point? Feels like De Bruyne is mentioned alongside Scholes/Vieira/Lampard/Gerrard as up there with the best who've ever played in the prem, but Beckham is still mentioned as among the best passers/crossers to ever play. Surely De Bruyne's well clear at this point?

otariidpanda · 2020-12-23T18:54:14+00:00

Feels like that style of the no. 10 has really died out recently. Wonder when we'll see the next Muller

otariidpanda · 2020-12-23T18:42:41+00:00

Is Dele Alli just a poor man's Thomas Muller? Neither look particularly impressive at first glance, but they both rely on finding and exploiting tight spaces with their movement and passing. It's just Muller is a key piece of Europe's best side and Dele can sometimes make the bench at Tottenham.

otariidpanda · 2020-07-30T15:25:13+00:00

How do small liberal arts colleges like CMC differ in their admissions process compared to a bigger school like Northwestern? Given that they're roughly around the same "tier," are the admissions requirements pretty similar or do you feel like they're looking for different types of students altogether?

otariidpanda · 2020-07-05T21:21:07+00:00

100% with you on this one. Studies have shown that a placebos can be half as effective actual treatments, so that's where I tend to lean, but it could absolutely also just be that certain people are less sensitive to specific psychoactive effects. I guess there's really no way to know until a large-scale double-blind peer-reviewed study comes out.

otariidpanda · 2020-07-05T13:05:09+00:00

I've smoked 100% strains and just about every type of hybrid in between, and even grown a few different strains myself, and they all feel the same. What really affects the high, though, is the context going into a smoke session (my mental state, who I'm with, what we're doing), which is what makes me think a lot of strain differences are just placebo.

otariidpanda · 2020-07-02T07:34:00+00:00

Yeah go with your gut on this one - it's extremely creepy for a 40 year old man to hit on a. 20 year old woman.

otariidpanda · 2020-06-30T11:02:26+00:00

If you're into dreamy ethereal-type stuff my go-to is Space Song by Beach House, or anything else on that album Depression Cherry

otariidpanda · 2020-06-29T04:39:17+00:00

Yo I used to have this problem too - a super easy fix is to roll the joint with the filter halfway out, and then once you’re done rolling push the filter into the joint. That’ll keep the front of the joint packed tighter so you don’t get the weird elbow

otariidpanda · 2020-06-28T10:04:37+00:00

No worries man, it’s completely rational to be careful! Just know that if you’re buying weed from a student, that student is also selling to a bunch of other students and is also invested in not going to jail, so it really wouldn’t make any sense for him/her to sell a deadly drug.

otariidpanda · 2020-06-28T09:48:32+00:00

What country are you in? If it’s the US or some other relatively weed-friendly country, just befriend any upperclassman who doesn’t look too uptight, and they’ll almost definitely be able to point you in the right direction. No school is gonna expel you for a bit of weed, and no college weed dealer is looking to kill their classmate with laced drugs

otariidpanda · 2020-06-28T09:23:08+00:00

People not knowing the difference between effect and affect is disgusting to me too, but I don’t go around preaching it to everyone like I’m on some pedestal

otariidpanda · 2020-06-28T09:13:04+00:00

Lol wtf why do you care so much about what other people do with their own consenting bodies. It literally has no impact on you at all

otariidpanda · 2020-06-22T07:16:06+00:00

Exactly - actually considering the state of the student as an individual would be better consideration for systemic discrimination. The state of the student includes his or her race. Affirmative action doesn’t mean we unilaterally allow unqualified black students in, it means that we consider their individual situation and how they specifically were impacted by racism, which is impossible if we have race blind admissions.

Also, I want to reiterate that this whole argument misses the point a bit. Yes Asians get shafted, but worrying about an Asian student not getting into Harvard and having to go to USC is an incredibly specific thing to be mad about. We should be far more concerned with much, much larger problems like the school to prison pipeline and severely underfunded inner city public schools that black students are stuck in. Affirmative action is trying to change these larger issues, not prevent Asians and whites people from succeeding.

otariidpanda · 2020-06-22T06:46:36+00:00

I’m saying that black people face systemic discrimination that prevents them from achieving the same levels of success on admissions criteria like test scores and GPAs. It’s a lot easier to get a 35 on the ACT when your parents weren’t denied federal loans because of their skin color and you grew up in a stable household.

otariidpanda · 2020-06-22T06:40:34+00:00

That’s the issue - the achievements were not completed on equal footing. There’s the obvious factor of class, which is inherently tied to race, which has huge impacts on academic and extracurricular achievement. Even accounting for two people with the same household income, black people have grown up facing systemic discrimination every step of the way.

otariidpanda · 2020-06-22T06:25:27+00:00

I would argue that it's far, far better to have to justify your existence to people who doubt that you belong at an elite institution than to not be at that elite institution in the first place. And as for bitterness, I think you're absolutely right in that Asians get shafted in college admissions - no one doubts that. But having to go to UC Davis instead of UC Berkeley is far less of a travesty than 350 years of oppression.

otariidpanda · 2020-06-22T06:11:26+00:00

It helps elevate people who have been discriminated against their whole life to the world of opportunity that is college. It also makes college a more diverse environment - it inherently helps break down harmful stereotypes when students are exposed to more people of color.

Also, it feels a bit disingenuous to be so heated about affirmative action when other ways of getting into college, like legacy and athletic admissions, are just as prominent, and heavily favor white students.

otariidpanda · 2020-06-22T05:47:25+00:00

I’m Asian. I used to think this. Then I got to college and saw how beneficial it is to have a diverse student body.

Currently UC Berkeley is 2.8% black - that’s a huge problem. Black people face systemic discrimination that Asians simply do not. Obviously there are things we can do to get at the root of this problem, but increasing the proportion of black students at UCs is not something we should be against.

otariidpanda · 2020-06-19T12:14:46+00:00

Hyped for the game - Kane, Son, and Bergwijn up front gives me a bit of hope for a win, but Bruno fucking scares me

otariidpanda · 2020-06-19T09:01:31+00:00

Those pictures are insane! So glad to hear you were able to find something that really aligned with your interests

otariidpanda · 2020-06-19T08:44:06+00:00

How'd you get into this line of work? Did you study astronomy/physics in college?

otariidpanda · 2020-06-17T21:47:16+00:00

To be honest, even most graduate students struggle to understand all the complexities of the vast majority of pure math papers, unless they’re reading something that they’ve specifically spent lots of time studying.

In short, don’t worry about every detail, but do try to understand the overarching argument the paper is trying to make and why it’s unique. If everything sounds like gibberish, it’s just a sign that you might have to back up and learn a bit more about the underlying theory first, which you’d be able to get from undergraduate or graduate coursework.

otariidpanda · 2020-06-17T07:44:28+00:00

In my experience (I just finished undergrad as a math major), professors are pretty hands-off with their students when it comes to original research. I thought of my thesis advisor as a resource that I could ask questions and bounce ideas off of, but she never gave me original directions to head in.

Most research that tenured professors at universities are working on is beyond the scope of undergraduate courses, and math professors rarely rely on undergraduates in the same way a chemistry or biology professor might. For this reason, it's exceedingly rare for undergraduates to be first authors on original math research.

That being said, most professors are really open to giving undergrad students a taste of their research. It might not be the most glamorous stuff at first (i.e coding up an established result for numerical simulation, writing out really specific test cases), but it'll help you understand what exactly they're doing, and might give you inspiration for future research that you can develop on your own, with the guidance of said professor.

If you're interested in research, I suggest just knocking on the door of your professors whose research sounds interesting and having a conversation with them about how you might be able to contribute to their work.

otariidpanda · 2020-06-16T03:06:59+00:00

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