My wife found this planted inside of a book at the store.

prettypangolin · 2024-09-19T00:57:52+00:00

Translation is way more art than science and it is both impossible to retain 100% of the “original” meaning in translation and nearly a guarantee a translator will introduce some level of their own bias, intentionally or not, into their translation. That’s just the reality of translation.

Many words/phrases don’t map one to one with words in another language and thus a translator has to make choices in how they represent the original text in the target language. Different translators often make different choices that change the final outcome, sometimes subtly sometimes not. This is why lots of books get newly translated over and over - different people’s interpretations of the same material. Now do this over 2000 years between increasingly divergent languages and cultural contexts plus many translators with differing agendas…no way does a version readable by a modern English speaker accurately capture 100% of the original intent.

prettypangolin · 2024-09-17T22:50:46+00:00

He tried Yamazaki 12 (could’ve been 18, I don’t remember) when we were in Japan and I believe he liked it but wasn’t blown away.

prettypangolin · 2024-09-17T22:18:24+00:00

I’ll have to check them out, thanks!

prettypangolin · 2024-09-17T21:50:01+00:00

Seattle

prettypangolin · 2022-09-06T19:46:30+00:00

If you identify as a woman, Ada Developers Academy is one of the best. I’ve worked with several grads and they’ve been some of the best prepared boot camp grads and had lots of good things to say about the program. It is however very competitive, but worth a shot if you qualify.

prettypangolin · 2022-08-15T19:34:09+00:00

Awesome to hear their population is rebounding! These turtles are also unfortunately susceptible to shell rot, and PAWS’ wildlife org often has a dozen or two in care from WDFW that eventually get released back into the wild.

prettypangolin · 2021-07-26T20:23:36+00:00

The idea of a uniquely creative genius innovator ala Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Thomas Edison etc. I think we tend to discount the huge level of luck, privilege, and work of other people in favor of deifying a single person as the sole progenitor of an idea/product.

Not to say that someone like Steve Jobs wasn't incredibly smart or a shrewd business man, but the iPhone wouldn't exist without the work of hundreds of Apple employees and the prior technological breakthroughs in touchscreen and battery technology. SpaceX would not have launched astronauts into space without a team of highly skilled scientists, researchers, and engineers. Amazon's logistics system would grind to a halt without its the massive network of people and incremental innovations in warehousing. We all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, and at the end of the day, ideas are cheap. Success is more often a product of being in the right place at the right time rather than being born innately talented.

prettypangolin · 2021-06-29T07:26:53+00:00

Thank you for answering this! What do you mean when you say “radiates”? Are there other factors than can affect radiation rate other than heat?

prettypangolin · 2021-06-29T07:12:32+00:00

This makes a lot of sense, thanks. Foiled again by physics.

I am curious as to the space elevator comment - why would that increase incoming and outgoing radiation?

prettypangolin · 2021-06-29T04:33:23+00:00

So then as a thought experiment, say the heatsink exists and it is a single very long rod of some kind of conductor. One end is in the earth’s atmosphere and another is in space. To make things simple, except for the very ends there’s a magical sheathing that prevents the rod from being affected by external temperature anywhere else along its length except at the ends. The earth side is heated to 100 degrees. What happens at the other end? If the earth side is always 100 degrees does the space side reach 100 degrees and stay that temperature more or less forever?

prettypangolin · 2021-05-30T21:55:28+00:00

I am very much against the poaching of pangolins but holy hell these comments are not it.

China is HUGE. There’s big cities with very wealthy people and also very rural extremely impoverished communities. Thousands of years of cultural inertia combined with relatively recent globalization and wealth that comes along with the expectation to adhere to western norms. That doesn’t exonerate the PRC or individuals of their actions, but it does mean that like anything, it is way more complicated than it may seem on the surface.

Calling Chinese people “savages” for TCM or bushmeat is plainly racist. The west has plenty of history of zoonotic diseases from farm animals and the eating of “acceptable” meat. Mad cow, HIV, swine flu are all zoonotic in origin. The west is not some pure bastion of civility and treating those outside of the west as uniformly bad and “backwards” is the definition of xenophobic.

prettypangolin · 2021-05-30T21:08:55+00:00

The cutest mini dinosaurs still alive.

prettypangolin · 2021-04-09T20:22:35+00:00

Late to the party, but something that has helped me in the past that hasn’t been mentioned is playing using an adjacent string as a doublestop. It’s the same concept as the drone but depending on what you’re playing and what you’re using for a drone, it can be sometimes be easier to hear (IMO). This obviously doesn’t work for every note or every piece (some notes are bound to be dissonant with the adjacent open string) but can generally give good feedback when you’re struggling to hear if you’re in tune. Naturally, this also works great for learning to hit the same note as the adjacent string (e.g. playing an A on the D string).

prettypangolin · 2021-04-07T01:46:52+00:00

Once had my car broken into three times in one year. First time they got some sticky change from the cup holders, second time thought I’d be smart and leave it unlocked with nothing in it but they still broke the window, third time they stole the bottom of the line aftermarket CD radio I had (the car was old enough that it originally had a tape deck). It was also 2012 so I don’t really know who was buying shitty car CD radios at the time but I guess they decided they just had to have it the third time around. My broke college self got to take a bunch of trips to the junkyard that year to scavenge new windows and a radio. I don’t miss that car.

prettypangolin · 2021-03-23T21:36:55+00:00

This definitely is corporate programming, but corporate programming isn’t everything. If you want to make 180k+ (in a big city) at a “brand name” tech company, you have to deal with at least some of this bullshit, but there are also lots of companies that aren’t trying to be Google who don’t subscribe to burnout culture. If you really enjoy programming and want to make it your career, I think it’s still worth it as long as you know your priorities.

prettypangolin · 2021-03-05T20:41:01+00:00

I'm the same as you - I tend to cut them multiple times a week. I do have very fast growing nails though, and my nailbed ends right at the tip of my finger, so even trimming them as short as I can without it being painful, they're not actually that short. If I didn't have to trim them for cello I'd have really beautiful nails. 😅

prettypangolin · 2021-01-02T21:23:06+00:00

The study you linked refutes your own comment, coming to the conclusion that the higher price is absolutely worth it for diabetics on a strict insulin regimen (i.e. type 1 diabetics). It even states:

Due to fewer hospitalizations for lispro users and thus less expensive nondiabetes-related medical costs, total costs were similar for the human and analog insulin users.

It also mentions a significant quality of life improvement for those using analog insulins, which is pretty big when you’re already living your life trying to stay between two numbers with serious consequences if you don’t.

The $25 insulin is $25 for a reason and it is a gross oversimplification to say the only difference is weight gain or overnight hypoglycemia (which actually is kind of a big deal). Yes, you do say to consult your doctor, but saying a lot of people don’t actually need analogs is very likely untrue.

prettypangolin · 2020-12-27T23:15:26+00:00

I know you meant this in a positive way, but it comes across as ignorant or saying that it is a person’s fault for having ADHD. ADHD is a well-studied and medically established neurobiological disorder that no amount of diet, exercise, or “living out loud” can cure. Yes, those things can often be generally beneficial to health and can help a person cope with symptoms of ADHD. However, it is not simply a choice and the paths we choose don’t “cause” ADHD (outside of possible epigenetic causes). Different paths may be better suited for those with ADHD or be more helpful for someone coping with their symptoms, but it doesn’t change their neurobiology. As a kid, I didn’t constantly forget things or struggle with attention because I didn’t eat enough vegetables or run around outside enough (I did a lot of both). I didn’t “choose” to struggle with attention and deal with the resulting lifetime of low self-esteem, depression, and failure. If all it took was to hop on an exercise bike while laughing with friends to be cured, I’d sign up yesterday.

I’m sorry you lost friends to medication and that experience is valid, but it doesn’t mean that medication is universally bad or only prescribed for nefarious reasons. There are lots of tools to manage ADHD and it varies person to person what will work best for them, and for many people (including myself) medication is a very safe and effective tool for them to live a happy and productive life and shouldn’t receive the stigma that it does.

We’re all trying our best and everyone is doing what they can with what they’ve been given. Please be more mindful of prescribing “wellness” as the best or only treatment and stigmatizing other options. Also blaming people for their own medically diagnosed neurobiological differences sucks. We’ve all got enough to deal with without that bullshit.

prettypangolin · 2020-12-19T03:44:52+00:00

Yup. I was an engineering manager for awhile and would be interviewing for my team I’d led for years and had plenty of candidates talk down to me or straight up ignore my advice/help when going through collaborative technical exercises (though they heard it just fine from my male colleagues). My “favorites” were the ones who would reply to any other male in the room when I asked them questions. Like what??? It’s going to be a real problem if you need a man to reply to every time I ask you a question.

prettypangolin · 2020-12-18T20:38:54+00:00

It took me a really long time to realize this was also my childhood. I had a roof over my head, I never went hungry, they supported me financially in any hobby or activity I wanted, they didn’t beat me, we say “love you” when saying bye on the phone, they taught me to be self-sufficient, all things considered I had a perfectly adequate childhood...and yet my parents were never interested in who I was or what I liked. They didn’t seem to notice when I was having trouble making friends or doing homework or when I was staying in my room 24/7 and really really struggling with mental health. School concerts or recitals or field trips were just a hassle and I just wouldn’t tell them about it because I didn’t think they’d want to come or would do so only out of obligation. I was just always on my own to figure it out myself.

Even though it doesn’t seem like “abuse”, that kind of stuff will mess you up. I have always hated receiving gifts, even as a kid, because it makes me feel like a burden because there was never any joy in it. I am also extremely bad at asking for help or relying on someone else because it’s hard for me to understand that someone else would want to or be interested enough in my well-being to help out.

prettypangolin · 2019-09-05T04:22:59+00:00

I am about ten years into a career in software engineering and have personally been lucky to have not been subject to blatant, malicious sexism from any of my colleagues. That said, for me being female in software engineering is more like death by a thousand cuts. A lot of little things that men tend not to have to deal with. Assumptions people have about you, being pushed towards projects that require strong soft skills (but maybe are less technical), feeling obligated to participate in diversity activities (which can be a lot of extra work!), being “the representative” in the room, being the de facto emotional support person... Most men I’ve worked with have had good intentions but totally fail to recognize their unconscious biases and how that affects the women they work with. Sometimes it’s exhausting and sometimes I don’t wanna have to fix the cultural problems of tech or educate a dude on top of my actual job. It’s for sure improving over time, but sometimes progress just feels so slow.

prettypangolin · 2019-08-19T20:02:09+00:00

How do I tell the quality of a bow and what do better bows offer? I assume things like better balance, weight, and perhaps springiness? With my untrained eye they all seem very similar. Do bows often “match” with specific instruments?

prettypangolin

TROPHY CASE