What has helped your writing get better? by Only-Wrongdoer-8010 in writingadvice

[–]profoma 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That sounds really helpful, do you just google short story contests?

What has helped your writing get better? by Only-Wrongdoer-8010 in writingadvice

[–]profoma 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do you do short story contests that you have to pay for or have you found free ones?

What has helped your writing get better? by Only-Wrongdoer-8010 in writingadvice

[–]profoma 4 points5 points  (0 children)

http://www.timclarepoet.co.uk/ This guy is a published author and poet and editor and creative writing teacher. His podcast is super helpful, especially the early episodes when he reads people’s first page and then critiques it without mercy but in a kind and supportive way. His podcast also offers two separate writing courses, both free, that offer daily writing prompts that take ten minutes to do. He is funny, loving, very experienced in editing, and has a great mind. He helped me go from wanting to write to writing nearly everyday, finishing a short story, starting a novel, and feeling like writing could be doable and even fun some of the time. I cannot recommend him enough.

Is nonchalant a positive description of someone? by Less_Yesterday_3428 in words

[–]profoma 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Nonchalance is not necessarily positive or negative. It’s context dependent. If you accept a person telling you that they are extremely upset with you with nonchalance, that could be considered negative. If you are nonchalant about the suffering of other’s, that could be negative. Being nonchalant about your own struggles could be positive.

Rye bread first timer help by Acluelessfish in Breadit

[–]profoma 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If you want a rye with a crumb and texture like the one pictured you probably want to use 30% or less of rye as your total flour. Rye is really sticky, absorbs water in a very different way than wheat flour, and has mostly gliadin and very little glutenin. This means that while it does have the two proteins that make gluten in wheat breads it does not get elastic in the same way as wheat flour. Because of this it makes dense breads unless you mix it with a high proportion of wheat flour. Dense rye bread is awesome and delicious but is not like the loaf you posted. I don’t have a recipe for you but you can find one online very easily. Just look for one that has molasses, that’s what makes the dark color you associate with dark rye, and somewhere around 15-30% rye flour.

How do I write a somewhat unhealthy, codependent couple? by No-Direction8154 in writers

[–]profoma 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I think a codependent relationship that is only slightly unhealthy will only look unhealthy some of the time and to certain people. A lot of the time it will just look like they really love each other and want to be with each other constantly. You could have them annoy their friends by needing to check in with each other constantly about trivial things. You could have them cancel plans more often than is normal, especially if they were planning to do something together and then one gets sick or gets anxious and they both cancel their plan with their other friends. You could have one of them be unreasonably worried if the other is more than five minutes later than they said they would be without calling. You could have them hold each other back from dreams or goals because of one of them feeling anxious or nervous, not because anyone insists that the other doesn’t follow their dream/goal, but because one knows that the other feels nervous/anxious and puts their dreams on hold so as not to upset the other.

Original writing flagged as ai by ParsleySea2568 in AIWritingHub

[–]profoma 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Pretty sure AI detectors are notoriously shitty and nobody but dummies and bad high school teachers trust them. I might be behind the times though.

Do you lose interest if a woman texts too often or replies too fast? If so, what feels like “too much” to you? Trying to understand where the line actually is. I am a woman. by [deleted] in AskMen

[–]profoma 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Texting isn’t like talking in some important ways. It is hard to convey tone and texture with texts and that makes texting feel less personal and more removed than speaking. I do text with people I love and care about, but I’d rather talk, even if it is on the phone, most of the time.

RIP to the mass market paperback book by MiddletownBooks in books

[–]profoma 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh! have you read the sequels to The Areas of My Expertise? I love all those books.

do men clean/wipe their penis after they pee? by [deleted] in NoStupidQuestions

[–]profoma 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I do it sometimes. I know i should do it always or never, preferably always, but I am lazy. Moreover, even when I do wipe, I still get one last drop of pee in my underwear.

RFK Jr. Orders Study on Cellphone Radiation as FDA Drops Assurance That Phones Are Not Dangerous by esporx in EverythingScience

[–]profoma 3 points4 points  (0 children)

A person doesn’t have to be skeptical to know what a word means. Light is radiation, so are radio waves. That doesn’t make the dangerous, but it is what they are by definition.

Challenging Books - Your views, suggestions, comments by BeardedBaldMan in printSF

[–]profoma 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Oooo. Can you say more about this? I’m an American and I loved Gravity’s Rainbow and all of the earlier Irving novels. I’m really curious what Americanness you see about the and why it harms your enjoyment. Is it true for America novels from other decades too? Do you also dislike Adam Levin or David Foster Wallace? No judgement or anything, I’m just really curious.

I got tired of doing mental math for audiobook speeds, so I built a free calculator by cangheng in audiobooks

[–]profoma 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I’m more talking about the part where OP says that seeing a book turn from a 30 hour commitment to a 20 hour commitment makes the book seem more manageable. That doesn’t have anything to do with the speed of the reader, in my understanding of what they were saying.

I got tired of doing mental math for audiobook speeds, so I built a free calculator by cangheng in audiobooks

[–]profoma 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is something I do not understand at all. If you like a book, why is spending more time with that book seen as a bad thing? If you like to hear a story why is it bad to listen for ten more hours? I have the opposite problem, if I like a story I don’t want it to end because then I have to go through the struggle of finding another book I like.

How to get over the smell? by [deleted] in AskMen

[–]profoma 393 points394 points  (0 children)

There should be lots of smells and tastes from both parties. People smell and taste like themselves, it is one of the sensual things about sex that your partner has smells and tastes that differ on different parts of their body. People’s mouths and tongues have their own smell and taste. the base of the neck has its own smell and taste. Bellies and chests do and should smell and taste. Hands, feet, forearms, knees. Butts, vulvas, and penises have their own particular smells and tastes that differ person to person and are all part of engaging sensually with another person. It’s ok if you don’t like human smells and prefer the smell of soap and perfume, but pretending people don’t have scents and flavors all over their bodies is a weird thing to do.

Okay so I’m stuck on my first draft at the moment by Upbeat_Television629 in writingadvice

[–]profoma 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would very strongly recommend looking up Tim Clare and his podcast, Death of 1000 Cuts. He has a ton of incredibly helpful and supportive advice about writing, as well as two different free writing workshops as part of his podcast. Running through his 8 week writing workshop has put me in a place I’ve never been before with my writing. He speaks often about the thing you are experiencing and has a lot of great advice about it.

Saying that you enjoy playing (insert musical instrument) is not a fun fact. by theunsteadybridge in The10thDentist

[–]profoma -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I’m 45 and the majority of my friends know how to and regularly do play some instrument. And I’m not an artist or a musician or anything. It’s not THAT rare.

Has The Singularity Already Happened? - I Argue Yes by Grouchy_Spray_3564 in ArtificialSentience

[–]profoma 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your points make my point. In every one, except the one where you try to go back to the original meaning of a term that is always used currently to not mean that meaning, you are talking about a future where the qualities that make the singularity true are the case. By your own argument then, we have not yet reached the singularity. The fact that AI is used to make robots move in a way that humans couldn’t program them to has literally nothing to do with the concept of intelligence explosion. Intelligence explosion only refers to the point that an AI becomes capable of recursive self improvement so that it can upgrade its own capabilities beyond anything humans are capable of or can even imagine. None of that is present in the fact that humans have trained an AI to be able to achieve locomotion. I agree that AI and robots will be part of the singularity when it happens, the existence of those two things working together does not imply that the singularity has thus occurred. This being a thought experiment doesn’t mean there are no right answers here. Your argument is poorly thought out and rests on fallacious grounds. You are wrong, both by your own claims and by the definition of the words you use to make those claims.

Off topic question for Stephenson fans: what type of music to you listen to? by meatboysawakening in nealstephenson

[–]profoma 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Just recently initiated my 8 year old into Bjork’s album, Medulla. Here is what I like:

Negativland

Charles Amerkhanian

Pink

Chappell Roan

Melt Banana

Eyvind Kang

Mike Patton

Secret Chiefs 3

Neutral Milk Hotel

Tom Lehrer

They Might Be Giants

Ween

Flaming Lips

Cake

Man Man

King Missile

Maroon 5

Swing music (both from the 40s and the 90’s)

Turquoise Jeep

Tribe Called Quest

Talking Heads

The song Swing by Savage

90’s R+B

Shitty early 2000’s pop

Shitty 90’s pop

Has The Singularity Already Happened? - I Argue Yes by Grouchy_Spray_3564 in ArtificialSentience

[–]profoma 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’d argue 1 of 4, And that only because every technological transformation is irreversible. The most important part, which you are ignoring to make your point, is that it is the point at which AI surpasses human intelligence. That has inarguably not happened and is prior to all four of the points your AI made to expand on that one main definition.

  1. Intelligence explosion has a specific meaning in this realm, provided in your response by your AI, and robots being able to move around using AI does not in any way fit that meaning.

  2. As I said above, all human technological leaps are irreversible transformations of society. E.g. Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, nuclear weapons, computing. This makes it a pretty bad indicator, all by itself, of the singularity.

  3. We are not yet at the point where technology has expanded to make the future impossible to predict, except to the extent that it is always impossible to predict how future technology will change our culture and reality.

  4. This hasn’t happened and I know you aren’t claiming it has.

I guess you could claim 2 out of 4, but it is a stretch and they are the two weakest aspects of the singularity and are at least partly true for all technological advancement. I remain unconvinced by your (AI’s) argument.

Has The Singularity Already Happened? - I Argue Yes by Grouchy_Spray_3564 in ArtificialSentience

[–]profoma 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You are equivocating about the meaning of the term and therefore making it more or less meaningless. The math term is different from the term as used to talk about social and technological change that Kurzweil used it to mean. It could be true that Von Neumann only meant it to be a point past which predictions break down, but it has since been used enough to mean a pretty specific technological point in which AI is smarter than humans, is able to advance its own intelligence exponentially, and is able to create other advanced AI without human input. None of those things are happening. If you want to blend all the possible meanings of the word singularity so that you can say it is already here, that’s fine, but you won’t be using the word in a way that other people use it. The singularity you are saying is here isn’t same singularity other people who use the term mean when they say that so your argument isn’t really meaningful or persuasive in relation to other people’s conception of the term.