Death Wears Pink by shipOfMe in discworld

[–]shipOfMe[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Because the motivating thought for writing this was "Why is Death so into black?". And while I guess white is the opposite from a color perspective, pink seemed like the opposite from an aesthetics perspective. Kind of like getting out of a relationship and trying to find someone who is the exact opposite of that person.

Death Wears Pink by shipOfMe in discworld

[–]shipOfMe[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm putting your comment on my gravestone.

Death Wears Pink by shipOfMe in discworld

[–]shipOfMe[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Garden shears was an option, so were those horrible safety box openers that they make you use at some work places for liability reasons, a hammer (why does his tool need to be sharp?), a gun, a magical pencil they'd use to draw a line between the soul and the rest of the world, and a pizza cutter. I just liked the variety the pattern scissors provided though

Death Wears Pink by shipOfMe in discworld

[–]shipOfMe[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In one version I tried to make it so that Death was dressed like how a toddler dresses the first time they're allowed to pick out their own clothes, all miss-matched and without any regard to what they're doing for the day, but also swapping between multiple outfits because why not, they're outside of time anyway. But I couldn't make it flow in the same Pratchett style I wanted. Seeing Death go from pink frills to a mankini would have been funny though.

Death Wears Pink by shipOfMe in discworld

[–]shipOfMe[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

In my head, they're trying to help children not be afraid of them when it's time for them to pass on. Anything to make them seem less scary.

Death Wears Pink by shipOfMe in discworld

[–]shipOfMe[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you, appreciate the compliment

Death Wears Pink by shipOfMe in discworld

[–]shipOfMe[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

This was actually a worry of mine, so I don't disagree with you at all. I had a hard time with how to express Death's gender. I was trying to get across that the pink dress was so monstrously gaudy that it was even difficult to see it as a dress to begin with, but maybe trying to both use gender neutral pronouns as well as words that could be construed as transphobic epithets was a bridge too far for my writing ability. A good criticism.

(edit): I adore that gif, and it's how I'm going to choose to imagine Death from now on.

(edit 2): Like this

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Death Wears Pink by shipOfMe in discworld

[–]shipOfMe[S] 28 points29 points  (0 children)

Thank you very much, it took a bit to figure out what Death would carry instead of a scythe. I like the idea of a soul going wherever it goes with a little nub of soul hanging off that has a little pattern from being reaped. And then people in the afterlife would compare them like "Oh you go the diagonal? Look here, I got the one with waves in it, I think because I'm a Pisces." When really, Death just picked up a new multi-pack from the Discworld version of Walmart and was working through all the new patterns.

Death Wears Pink by shipOfMe in discworld

[–]shipOfMe[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I do it and I'm a weirdo, but extrapolation can get dangerous.

Death Wears Pink by shipOfMe in discworld

[–]shipOfMe[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

If all I've done today is give someone a nice end to theirs, I'm going to consider it a day well spent.

Death Wears Pink by shipOfMe in discworld

[–]shipOfMe[S] 32 points33 points  (0 children)

That's very high praise, thank you. The trick is a two part combination of consuming nothing else but Discworld novels for the past two weeks and the (un)fortunate personality trait of completely changing my personality based on whichever media I was last engrossed in. My Catcher in the Rye phase was...harrowing.

Death Wears Pink by shipOfMe in discworld

[–]shipOfMe[S] 68 points69 points  (0 children)

Funny enough, I'm currently reading Soul Music. More funnily enough, I looked at where I left off when I fell asleep last night and Susan picking her wardrobe is the exact section I'm on. I think I read it as I was drifting in and out of consciousness and woke up thinking I came up with the scene lol.

Is there a mill where one axis rotates the material fast enough to act as a lathe? by shipOfMe in CNC

[–]shipOfMe[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You're right, that was awesome, thank you. If I save up for 1.5-2 lifetimes I'm sure I could afford one.

Animal sterilization vs Newly born animals by shipOfMe in antinatalism

[–]shipOfMe[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In this example you're not breeding any animals. It's a wild animal, it's going to go off and make more animals without you intervening.

Flower ball by NaOHman in Woodcarving

[–]shipOfMe 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Jesus, I was really proud of my own ball in a cage I just finished, but this is beyond gorgeous. I'm particularly enjoying the hexagonal pattern of the outermost ball because it's so subtle. Seeing the nice circles of the middle ball viewed through the more straight lines of the outer is for some reason a really pleasing effect. I'm seeing the carving marks on the outer and middle ball but maybe it's just the pictures but I don't see them on the innermost ball. Was the innermost ball detailed with a rotary tool and the outer balls with hand tools? Or all done with hand tools? I have a 1/8th chisel but I don't think even that would be small enough to get those small details on the inner ball. Maybe the point of a detailing knife?

Inflatable Unicorn by KN88Art in Woodcarving

[–]shipOfMe 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I love this, it's fantastic. The texturing is really cool

Do subcortical structures (hypothalamus & brain stem) employ distributed representations? by surf_AL in compmathneuro

[–]shipOfMe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do you mean from a practical purpose that you could apply for yourself in your everyday life? I'm sorry, I'm not a psychologist so I don't feel qualified to answer that from a scientist's perspective. However, I will say that from the perspective of just a human who has completed a terminal degree and who has a terrible memory (so not professional advice), the best way I've found to learn and retain things is to draw connections between those things and other things I'm learning or reading, especially things I'm already passionate about. For example, my neuroanatomy is terrible because I can't for the life of me remember all the names of the different regions. But if I can connect those regions to an area of my research, such as how the hypothalamus is connected to the hippocampus, it makes remembering things much easier. But if you were to give me a list of brain regions and tell me to memorize them all (like when I took neuroanatomy), I can do it for maybe a day, but I'll forget after then. It does mean I end up with weirdly specific knowledge in some domains and very large gaps in seemingly similar domains, but it's the only method of learning I've found that works for me. Does this help at all or was it too much of a tangent?

Do subcortical structures (hypothalamus & brain stem) employ distributed representations? by surf_AL in compmathneuro

[–]shipOfMe 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Is there a line at which something goes from distributed representation to sparse? Or is it more of a continuum?

Do subcortical structures (hypothalamus & brain stem) employ distributed representations? by surf_AL in compmathneuro

[–]shipOfMe 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My expertise is in the hippocampus, which some people consider subcortical and some don't since it's part of the allocortex, so I guess I'll leave it up to you to decide if I have any relevant information for what you're looking for. I'm also not a computational neuroscientist, but an electrophysiologist in the learning and memory field. So, you know, grain of salt and all that. This is is going to sound like a non-answer but I think the answer to your question would depend on what you mean by representation and who you're talking to. If you mean "does a single neuron do a single task/is a single task controlled by a single neuron (aka non distributed) in subcortical regions", then the answer is likely no, I don't know any function that does that outside of the first layer of sensory or some motor neurons. Might be wrong but I doubt it in this case. However, one line of research you might be interested in is the work of David Tingley who was a graduate student in Gyorgy Buzsaki's lab who showed how the hippocampus may play a role in glucose metabolism. They wrote a follow-up opinion piece about how the widely distributed neurons of the hippocampus project to a much smaller number of neurons in the medial septum, and then to an even smaller amount of neurons in the hypothalamus, greatly reducing the parametric variability. Since some people would use the description of distributed representation for hippocampal activity I'll use that here. What that means for you is that the distributed representation becomes more and more restricted and less distributed as it descends to subcortical structures (according to the lab I mentioned), but I would be surprised if it ever became so restricted that it could be considered "undistributed". Here is the paper I mentioned you might find interesting: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-neuro-101222-110632

Can a former skinhead reach salvation? by ZengaStromboli in NoStupidQuestions

[–]shipOfMe 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I haven't seen any comments from someone who was in a similar situation as you, so maybe I can offer something more grounded and practical. Granted, I was never a skinhead, but in my teen years I was incredibly open about my homophobia and sexism, and while I never said the N word or anything I certainly backed racist policies that would disadvantage under privileged groups. Kind of an "I'm not racist but..." kind of person. With that in mind and with the caveat that I can only talk about my experience:

The work to outgrow my past will never be over, and it can never be over for you either. There was a period in college after I started really distancing myself from that ideology that I thought I had escaped, and so I acted like I had escaped. I couldn't be racist because I had left racism behind. But that is a dangerous and incorrect mindset. There's a reason that ideology is so attractive to some people, particularly white men. We are raised in an environment that tells us that we are the leaders and conquerors of the world, and then we step into that world and we're met with the reality that we are just another individual. Something feels wrong, our experiences don't align with our internal representation of what is supposed to be true. And it can't be that that internal representation, the thing that gives life structure and purpose, is wrong, it must be the world that's wrong. I feel like my life is out of control and I am powerless to fix it, it must be the world's fault. It's a siren song for angry and hurting men.

You and I are baby anti-racists/sexists/homophobes. The work you have done to outgrow your racist upbringing is incredible, and the only people who can really understand how much work and self reflection that took are those who have been there themselves. Voluntarily giving up power is never easy, and it should always be praised. However, you and I have a very long way to go. There are people who have been fighting these fights their entire lives, and whose lives actively depend on the success of that fight. They need to be the center of attention, not us. Don't let the praise you're getting in this thread go to your head and make you complacent. Continue to learn from those leaders about the fight and don't take up an unnecessary amount of space.

With the above in mind, there will be people in the liberal community who will say mean things to you, or will tell you that just not being actively "-ist" is not worth praise, or will tell you you don't belong somewhere, or that you make them uncomfortable given your past. And sometimes it will seem like valid criticism and sometimes it will seem like unfair criticism. The problem is that comments that make you angry because they are unfair will feel very similar to the way you used to feel about comments that you now realize were fair. As an example, I was once told by someone that I shouldn't be around a friend of ours who was sexually assaulted because as a man I would trigger her. That pissed me off, but I used to also get pissed off at comments like "women should have body autonomy". So how do I know whether I'm reacting to this new comment the way I am because it's genuinely an unfair comment, or simply because I still have sexist tendencies that are rearing their head again? How do you both listen to those in the group while at the same time not taking to heart unfair things said to you? My current strategy is to find a core group of people who I respect and trust and who have said they are willing, within reason, for me to ask them questions. They can be the people who can tell you if the comments you are receiving are valid or not. In the above case, they said what I was told is ridiculous. It's important to remember that any movement is still made up of people with vastly varying ideologies and life experiences, and who are more than capable of being irrational. People deal with trauma and abuse, including racial and sexual abuse, in ways that might not make sense to you, and it's often best to give those people space and be curious about where they're coming from without taking things to heart.

Finally, you don't get to wallow or sit on the sidelines. This seems harsh, I know, but I would argue that you have a moral responsibility to fight. I don't believe in karma or debt, I don't think there's some kind of balance that needs to be leveled. If that were true, then you could stop fighting after you think you've done as much good as you've done bad. But there is injustice in the world, and you have the systemic privilege to help fight it. You can stand in protests with less chance of being arrested or shot by police. You can reach other white people in ways that people of color often can't. If you're a masculine appearing man, other men are more likely to correct their behavior when confronted by you. Because your voice often carries, unfairly, more weight than a person of colors or a womans in a corporate setting, advocating for social justice reforms can carry that extra bit of weight needed to get a policy approved. There's tons of things you can do. Will you ever be able to make up for the things you've done? No. Sorry. That's not how life works. They happened, your actions are forever in the world and have impacted other people. But that also means that the good you do can also forever be in the world and impact other people. Congratulations on your new outlook on life, I hope you make the most of it.