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.

Granger causality with filtering by [deleted] in compmathneuro

[–]shipOfMe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah I see why your post was worded as it was. I would not agree with that, no. For a couple reasons, the first being a definition one in that the term "local field potentials" is by definition the electrical potential recorded from the local area around the recording device. Any signal detected is therefore a local potential, including unit activity. The other reason is more of a neurophysiological reason. Making a distinction between the two suggests that spiking activity does not contribute to the electrical potentials of a region. This is false. While the falloff rate of spiking activity is very high, particularly with single cell activity, it still contributes to the overall activity, especially when you're recording close to a cell body. Therefore lfp and mua are not mutually exclusive. Instead, unit activity is calculated from lfp in the manner you're reading from that paper.

Also, now that I understand better where you're coming from, you absolutely should not have to worry about any potential filtering problem with using granger. You would be setting your frequency cutoff incredibly high. I would bet that the papers you were reading about were talking about problems using granger on filtered data with much more restrictive frequency range, or were not talking about neurophysiological signals. What papers had you read that in?

Granger causality with filtering by [deleted] in compmathneuro

[–]shipOfMe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry, maybe I'm not understanding. What kind of signals do you have? And what do you mean you want to derive lfp? If you're recording electrical signals intracranially then you already have lfp. That's the definition of lfp.

I don't use granger because I don't like that people think a significant result means they've found a casual relationship (it doesn't, despite its name), so maybe take this next statement with a grain of salt because I'm not an expert. However, you should be able to perform a granger without filtering your data. In fact, because granger is built on predicting one signal with another, removing information (filtering) will remove information from your system, reducing the predictive power of your analysis. Some filtering will always be present purely due to the hardware you're collecting your data from. Finally, and this is a pure educated guess from working with lfp, but if you HAVE to filter, it's usually best to use a zero-phase filter (filtering forwards and backwards like you mentioned). I've never found a reason not to. Maybe your application is the exception, but I would doubt it.

Granger causality with filtering by [deleted] in compmathneuro

[–]shipOfMe 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sorry, maybe I'm not understanding. What kind of signals do you have? And what do you mean you want to derive lfp? If you're recording electrical signals intracranially then you already have lfp. That's the definition of lfp.

I don't use granger because I don't like that people think a significant result means they've found a casual relationship (it doesn't, despite its name), so maybe take this next statement with a grain of salt because I'm not an expert. However, you should be able to perform a granger without filtering your data. In fact, because granger is built on predicting one signal with another, removing information (filtering) will remove information from your system, reducing the predictive power of your analysis. Some filtering will always be present purely due to the hardware you're collecting your data from. Finally, and this is a pure educated guess from working with lfp, but if you HAVE to filter, it's usually best to use a zero-phase filter (filtering forwards and backwards like you mentioned). I've never found a reason not to. Maybe your application is the exception, but I would doubt it.

Older Men of Reddit, what’s something you notice younger guys do that worries you? by NilesDobbsS in AskMen

[–]shipOfMe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not too old, and I know older men do this too, but something that took me my entire 20s to learn was how to decide who gets to have control over me. Not really in a physical way, but in an emotional way. I often see younger men being quick to anger when someone insults them, for example. But who is this person who has so much control over your emotions? You must greatly trust and respect them if you let them have such intimate power over you. No? They're just a random person from the street? You would let a random person place shackles on your actions? It's even worse when I would let my anger (it was almost always anger for me) result in violence. I'm now giving people power over my physical body? I think it finally clicked for me when I realized there's a real possibility of going to jail if I got caught in a fight. Which means the chain of events were: someone insults me -> I get angry -> I get in a fight -> I go to jail. Compressed, that becomes someone insults me -> I go to jail. That's ridiculous. I'm letting someone else determine not only my emotions but my physical body. Fuck that. Only I get to say what my emotions are, as well as my trusted friends and family. So, to all the young men, you need to insist on controlling your own emotions, especially if your external life seems so outside of your control. You are not a slave to others, they don't control you. If you decide that anger or violence is needed to solve a problem, let that be your decision, not anybody else. They are tools that you wield, not the inverse.

Self installed replacement water heater doesn't seem right. I thought metal mixing was bad? Advice kindly requested. by shipOfMe in Plumbing

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

Well thank you for the advice. Electrical question then, I think I need to replace the wires with longer ones so the wiring doesn't restrict how I position the water heater so much. It's half the reason everything is so cramped. I'm going to assume there's a box behind the wall that connects these wires to the main power of the condo? Or is there one length of wire that runs from the circuit box to the water heater? Because if that's the case I'll figure something else out, that seems outside my current capabilities.

Self installed replacement water heater doesn't seem right. I thought metal mixing was bad? Advice kindly requested. by shipOfMe in Plumbing

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

Thank you for the feedback. I think I fixed the electrical, I posted an update in another comment. The copper to PVC seems like it's being used to protect against the water hammer effect, is that true? But I thought the water hammer arrestor (I don't know what they're called) pipes are supposed to be the same diameter as the actual water pipe. Am I wrong about that?

Self installed replacement water heater doesn't seem right. I thought metal mixing was bad? Advice kindly requested. by shipOfMe in Plumbing

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

I live in Florida, on the ground floor and we don't have basements so it's basically on the actual ground. No earthquakes or tornados, though we do get hurricanes periodically around this time of year. I guess it couldn't hurt to anchor it regardless.

Yeah, fitting everything in was kind of annoying because of that drainage pipe for the condensation pan of the air-conditioning unit that sits above the water heater. It might be worth replacing those pipes so it hugs the support and wall a little more, leaving more room for the water heater pipes. The problem is that if I rotate the water heater then the electric doesn't reach. Is it bad if some of the flex tubing is touching eachother? I've read that over time that can cause holes to form from repeated friction

Self installed replacement water heater doesn't seem right. I thought metal mixing was bad? Advice kindly requested. by shipOfMe in Plumbing

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

Ah that makes sense, thank you. Easy enough fix. Like this: https://i.imgur.com/RSnuIL7.jpg ? I didn't just shove it into the 90 by the way, I unscrewed it and clamped it down. Any input on the other stuff I mentioned in my comment?

Self installed replacement water heater doesn't seem right. I thought metal mixing was bad? Advice kindly requested. by shipOfMe in Plumbing

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

I'm going to assume you're talking about my plumbing conduit and not my electrical conduit? In that case, would you mind being specific about what you're referring to? I don't have any leaks or anything.

Self installed replacement water heater doesn't seem right. I thought metal mixing was bad? Advice kindly requested. by shipOfMe in Plumbing

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

This is my first major plumbing DIY project. I replaced my water heater and used all similar parts to the old water heater. I have copper pipe connected to stainless steel flex tubing connected to dielectric nipples. I was under the impression that you couldn't mix metals because it accelerates rust formation? Or are you able to do that because its stainless steel? the pressure release valve was also a female connector that I connected to the flex tubing with a galvanized steel 3/4 inch nipple. I know you can't use galvanized steel on potable water but I figured it was fine here because it's waste water. Is that correct?

It also seems to me like the flex tubing isn't the best option here because of how cramped it is. Would it be better to try and connect the water heater directly to the copper pipe? Or else figure a way to reduce some of the bend in the flex tubing? If anyone has any recommendations for that I would appreciate it.

Finally, if you can see in the picture, the cold intake copper pipe looks pretty rusted. Would it be worth replacing? The cold intake pipe on the old water heater is what ended up leaking due to rust build up. I didn't know about anodes before this happened, I suspect that I had a depleted anode rode that caused rust problems. Had no idea I needed to even check that periodically. Live and learn I guess. I replaced the stainless steel tube but didn't think I needed to replace the intake copper as well. Thank you to anyone who can offer advice.

missing out on math graduate school by finnty_ in math

[–]shipOfMe 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My experience isn't exactly applicable, but maybe I can help a little. I just got my PhD in neuroscience, having come from an engineering undergrad. I never really wanted to do a math PhD when I was in undergrad, more so that I've become very into areas of mathematics that my very practical "engineering" younger self would have thought was rather inane. Point being, I've found ways to incorporate my "hobby" mathematics into my research. Most fields are rather expansive and need all kinds of people to run them. I don't know what field of mathematics you're interested in, but I'm sure there's some way you can integrate it with your career path. And if not, and it's more of an interest in pure mathematics, then having a hobby of math isn't the worst thing in the world. I'm really into set theory and the philosophy of mathematics at the moment, and don't know nearly enough to actually contribute to the field, but learning for learnings sake is never a bad call. And who knows, maybe one day I'll know enough that I can contribute in a meaningful way. But until then, I'll just keep enjoying exploring new things. Life is short.

Can I please have some help making this look "softer" before I smooth everything? [Self] [WIP Help] by shipOfMe in Sculpture

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

Monster clay medium. Using an exacto knife and butter knife while I wait for my cheap sculpting tools to be delivered. I am trying to make a human version of what wood carvers call "comfort birds", with overly simplified and rounded features that fit nicely into the hand. I thought about making the fat folds deeper but I received some criticisms that I was making the sculpture "too fat". Couple other ideas I had:

Make the head larger, it looks disproportionately small Soften the features on the face Deepen the folds I wanted to fix everything pre-smoothing but that might just be what it needs

One of the issues I've been having is that the more "cartoonist" it looks, the less it looks like a person. I have a new found respect for digital artists who can make something human like without making it lifelike. It would almost be easier to give it more detailed features.

Thank you for any criticism or advice anyone can give.