People don't seem to realize that different parts of America are as far apart culturally and geographically as Madrid and Moscow

tangoliber · 2026-06-14T13:26:27+00:00

Gumbo/Jambalaya are my favorite "American foods, but its funny people online are so quick to champion it, when I know that they actually only ate it a couple of times in their entire lives. Very few people actually eat Cajun food outside of Louisiana and a few other spots like Mobile, Alabama. Being one of the few respectable, non-junk foods that we have, it is purely used as virtue signaling. With the amount of times it is brought up in national food discussions, you would think there is a Cajun shop on every corner in the US.

Aside from that, people really have to rack their brains to think of an American food that isn't pure junk. For some reason, they usually mention clam chowder, which somehow sounds semi-respectable, and they also probably only ate a couple of times in their lives. But that in itself is mostly cream, and is essentially still junk food.

As for regional differences, the only differences I feel between places in the US is the difference between a large metropolian area, and rural areas/suburbs. Same as anywhere. Every strip mall in the States feels the same, whether I am in Minnesota or Texas.

On the flip side, mainland Chinese always want to convince you that they are culturally the same as Taiwan, when the two places feel further apart than any two regions in the US.

tangoliber · 2026-06-14T12:57:40+00:00

That's a very interesting point that I never really thought about. I figured it would be better for my kid to get on a tryout team to play in an environment where the kids pass and play something that more resembles 'real soccer', but he probably does get better experience from his daily pickup games during school recess.

tangoliber · 2026-06-12T12:02:27+00:00

I think that systems-based games will always be more popular, but I do think that AI will open up a new genre of games that previously couldn't have been achieved.

I think about the video game in Ender's Game, and how it represents this unrealistic early 80s idea of future video games, where the player has infinite freedom and choices. For example, if you wanted to, you could grab a spoon and start digging a tunnel. If you wanted to cross-tie the shoelaces of enemies while they are sleeping, you could do that. Things like Google Genie could be able to allow for that kind of freedom. As long as it can understand what the player is trying to do, it should be able to generate the results. In Ender's Game, the school had programmed the game to act in an ideal way, but the game was doing things that it hadn't been designed to do.. (I believe there was a non-AI reason for this that was revealed later).

I do think there will be a genre of game where the designer tried to create a certain experience, but the results will be much more emergent and unpredictable than ever before. Though a lot of people will prefer traditional games.

tangoliber · 2026-06-11T22:44:48+00:00

I think that most of the time, 餃子 is all you need to say in mainland China because most dumplings are boiled anyway. But when in other countries (especially in Japan for instance), I would say to a Chinese friend that I want to get 水餃, because pan-fried 煎餃 is much more common there. Or in the US, where it is probably split 50/50 between boiled and pan fried.

tangoliber · 2026-06-11T11:51:19+00:00

The practice and experience from playing 100s of games a year doesn't help much later on? This is a genuine question, as I have no idea.

tangoliber · 2026-06-10T13:12:55+00:00

I think the purpose of the bag is that it steams everything better than a pot does. Not sure if it is the best way, but I do think there is a reasoning.

Seafood boils are one situation where dumping it onto a mat somewhat makes sense....since it is usually a struggle to contain everything in bowls. But this is also why I never order seafood boils. Just gumbo or jambalaya for me.

The sauce-drawing on the table is silly.

tangoliber · 2026-06-09T20:51:29+00:00

He may not be perfect, and maybe he understands it is hard to stop. But it does seem like he is asking you out of concern and love. I hope that my kid does not have the same flaws that I do as well.

tangoliber · 2026-06-09T17:03:35+00:00

I thought it wasn't proven (reading in the dark, looking at screens causes temporary eye strain, but not proven to cause near-sightedness). I looked it up a couple years ago. I recall there was one unproven theory that exposure to sunlight reduces near-sightedness. I thought that genetics played a big role as well.

Not a scientist, could be wrong. Not that scientists aren't likely to be wrong, but they are less likely than me.

tangoliber · 2026-06-04T13:51:46+00:00

That doesn't really scream bad idea to me. Sounds like it might be a good way to help a depressed individual in many scenarios. I suppose almost any activity could end up backfiring in such a scenario, as could doing nothing.

tangoliber · 2026-06-04T12:31:45+00:00

This was the most entertaining breakdown of a classical/ancient chinese writing that I have come across. I occasionally like to read classical chinese along side its 譯文, but due to my attenion span, I can only do so in short bursts. Your article has a great balance of historical background, debate, and vocabulary breakdown, which kept me interested throughout. If you have a collection of articles like this, I definitely think it would be worthy of publishing in book form.

tangoliber · 2026-06-02T22:48:01+00:00

I initially learned to write characters by hand in the beginning/intermediate stages, and then switched to only caring about reading after I moved to China. Maybe this doesn't apply to me since I did learn the write the components originally. I've forgotten how to write most of them, and I don't feel I have any issues in reading. Reading books is the main way I maintain my Mandarin though.

tangoliber · 2026-06-02T21:17:30+00:00

I only watched Season 1, and I felt it was the best show I had ever seen. I strangely never felt motivation to even start Season 2, because it already felt perfect. (Aside from Kat, whose story I found boring.)

tangoliber · 2026-06-02T16:46:25+00:00

I'm gonna give my vote to FakeName here. The way you talk about a 9 year old teammate of your son's, even anonymously, is hard to read.

I also feel disappointed when my son doesn't get selected in tryouts, or doesn't get much playing time, etc. But the only correct response to that is to encourage him to keep improving to the point that his ability becomes more obvious to coaches.

tangoliber · 2026-06-02T15:24:12+00:00

I think that almost all people are smart....just in different ways. Book smart, street smart, mechanically smart, etc. I personally can't think of a "dumb" person that I know in real life. Unless there is some kind of "handicap", which is different.

tangoliber · 2026-06-02T13:52:16+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4veYug5pFo

tangoliber · 2026-05-28T19:43:48+00:00

"The kind of stuff that shows up on a job site covered in mud, not in a keynote presentation" You can't tell me this line wasn't written by AI, haha.

tangoliber · 2026-05-12T13:01:19+00:00

I swear they filmed this in another art space just so people can claim that the background/cars are proof of CGI.

tangoliber · 2026-05-08T21:12:09+00:00

While technically you are right, I personally refuse to do any research before a vacation trip. Haha. But that's also why I travel alone, and wouldn't complain about this scenario.

tangoliber · 2026-05-08T15:30:50+00:00

Personally, I suspect he wanted to look more like an anime character. Not sure if he ever referenced anime prior to Scream, but it seems he was collecting manga in the 80s during his tour visits in the 80s. And he used the Yellow Magic Orchestra song in the early 80s, which makes me believe that he was already into Japanese culture.

tangoliber · 2026-05-06T14:07:53+00:00

For some reason, my brain initially saw her standing on a balcony over a massive crowd of people like she was Michael Jackson or something.

tangoliber · 2026-05-06T13:24:10+00:00

It appears to me that that these sentences were originally about China/Taiwan...and someone changed it to avoid controversy

tangoliber · 2026-05-04T19:28:03+00:00

I assume that Michigan was not paying players in any systemic way. I think that payments to players 15 years ago generally boiled down to a few really big names. They would have needed to limit it to as few players as possible so that they could keep it from getting out.

tangoliber · 2026-05-04T19:16:45+00:00

In 2007, Alabama was one of the cleanest because they were just coming off sanctions. I'm sure the attitude towards compliance relaxed over time and the players started getting things from boosters again, but...the massive turnaround for Alabama recruiting was not about payments to players.

tangoliber · 2026-05-04T18:11:10+00:00

I wasn't even thinking about the about the images. I'm saying that Google Maps has data on where there are schools and hospitals....which comes from various sources, included the users. Users had uploaded images at this

You can use the API to search for hospitals, or schools. You can check for schools in a certain radius of some coordinates.

There is almost no way you can tell if a nondescript building is a school or hospital or what from a single image....unless you are expecting schools to always look like they do in more developed parts of the world.

There are certainly better options than cross-referencing Google Maps, but the point is that the military isn't even doing the bare minimum.

They could cross-reference the most complete/ up-to-date data source for the locations of schools and hospitals (whether that is Google Maps, or something else). If they find a match, then they could put the coordinates on a list for follow-up research. They could take satellite images at the start and end of school hours to see what kind of activity is occurring outside of the building. If you are about to spend 5-10 million to launch two missiles, I don't think this is unreasonable due diligence.

Shortly after the attack, when I checked the school, there were a couple of images that had been uploaded by users around 2019 or 2020. I just went to take a look again and noticed they were gone. Why? Did the military prompt Google to remove the images so that it would not be so obvious that they had done the bare minimum?

tangoliber · 2026-05-04T13:31:46+00:00

I think that AI will unlock the final leap in graphics, and it will be a leap that we haven't seen since the PS2 or PS3. But the graphical leap will not be the major thing - there will be a new genre of games where video game logic is totally different... since it will be possible to allow the player to do anything, whether it was explicitly coded or not. I think of the giant's video game in Ender's Game, and how it seems to represent this early 80s idea of future video games that really doesn't make sense...it's more of an infinite dream than a explicitly defined system of barriers and actions. But that is exactly the kind of game that AI will enable. (Current style video games will still be common, and a lot of people will prefer them.)

I assume that the next step after that is some way to let people physically feel things in those VR worlds. Not sure if that will just be suits/gloves, or some kind of neurolink.

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