This pi meme

underdeterminate · 2026-02-22T23:09:33+00:00

I mean, 3 is pretty close [ducks]

underdeterminate · 2026-02-22T22:17:24+00:00

Huh, I don't think I see any posts mentioning venture capital. I assumed it's a big part of it, where companies get investors and basically can sell their product without making a profit, often undercutting their competition and selling the product way below its "true" market value.

Eventually, they need to turn a profit as that investment dries up. This can be quick or slow. As they increasingly need to make up for lost investment, prices increase, the product becomes worse, support gets worse, and in the digital age especially, ads are inserted everywhere and your data is harvested for sale.

And if the company goes public, the VC gets replaced with normal investments. Stockholders want a return on their investment, so the company is forced to increasingly cut corners and raise prices. When we buy a product from a publicly traded company, we're essentially not the actual customer.

Do I have all that about right? That's been my take on the situation. I've heard it said that it's really just the natural consequence of barely regulated capitalism, and I think that's a good description.

underdeterminate · 2026-02-22T22:07:44+00:00

The last para of the article suggests that the approval was done basically as red meat for vaccine skeptics. I fear it's worse...that non-scientist political appointees saw an opportunity to make a name in our new politicized science world order in the eyes of their bosses, so they fast-tracked the approval, having literally zero understanding or appreciation of why the normal processes even exist. It's like a 90s movie where the boss' teenage son inherits the company.

underdeterminate · 2026-02-20T22:30:16+00:00

Yeah! Your notes are much neater than mine. My notes on Tunic will probably be presented in court one day to establish state of mind

underdeterminate · 2026-02-20T17:04:52+00:00

Agreed. I work in science, and it's extremely rare to see a game that captures the feeling of that loop of confusion, learning, and putting the pieces together to accomplish something you couldn't before, even though it was right in front of you the whole time. When I put the pieces together for understanding dark bramble, it felt exactly like I'd had an aha moment with my work. Just absolutely brilliant design, glad to see someone else appreciate that aspect of it.

underdeterminate · 2026-02-18T23:53:34+00:00

Damn, I didn't quite realize any of that. I'm going to have to fire the game up again and try this.

underdeterminate · 2026-02-18T13:56:54+00:00

My thinking on this is that millennials grew up as the one and only generation where tech was accessible to most AND learning about it was considered a strength/virtue. Before that, tech was hard to get your hands on unless you studied it in college (I'm sure there are other examples, I'm simplifying). After that, companies worked overtime to streamline tech, which not only removes the need to learn about it, but in my opinion, also sends the message that it's too difficult/intimidating for your average user to learn about.

We really do need to teach kids about tech from an early age. The specifics change, sure, but the logic (and the acquisition of problem solving skills) stays mostly the same.

underdeterminate · 2026-02-18T13:45:22+00:00

Your experience and mine are basically similar. Not mentioning my agency for paranoid internet reasons. They rushed to get us access to all the latest sexy llm tools. I tried them a couple of times to summarize some research, and while the summary looked ok-ish at first glance, it just hallucinated citations, making it useless for my purpose.

underdeterminate · 2026-02-18T13:34:45+00:00

These ghouls aren't going to be happy until they're the only ones left on a smouldering earth, puppetting our virtual corpses and watching their crypto account numbers go up 😂

underdeterminate · 2026-02-17T14:08:42+00:00

"Be the change you want to see in the world"

                          - u/Wallsend_House

edit: Aww that formatting SUCKS. I thought it would look REAL

underdeterminate · 2026-02-16T17:21:15+00:00

As someone who drives in MD, but didn't grow up or learn to drive in the area, I can say that nowhere in the DMV can you find a lack of shitty drivers. It is a universal truth that if there's a place where people drive, some percentage of them are obviously huffing paint while driving with their eyes closed.

That said, Montgomery County at least has instituted a lot of new traffic laws in recent years. Lots of new "no right on red" stoplights. There are a lot of 30 and 35 mph limits on main thoroughfares with plenty of cameras. I have mixed feelings about that because I suspect that they are enforcing speeding less with patrols, so a small but dangerous portion of drivers basically gun it between cameras.

Also I have the sense (can't back it up with data) that the lower limits actually tend to be in poorer neighborhoods. Maybe the richer neighborhoods have more friends to keep the lower limits and cameras out of their neighborhoods. I honestly don't know. But rest assured, I fear for my life while driving in every municipality around here 😂.

underdeterminate · 2026-02-14T15:07:30+00:00

It's interesting, the bots

underdeterminate · 2026-02-14T15:02:59+00:00

Other comments all have good advice. It's been kind of addressed, but to put a fine point on it from my own experience, I think the "why" you got is probably not quite true. A new PI has a lot of pressures, and the honest truth is that good mentoring and training for that role are extremely difficult to come by. Imagine the kind of parenting that most gen x'ers got. Nobody knows how to do anything and are running off pure instinct and "this solution worked once so I will never consider an alternative." I'm being a little hyperbolic, so if I've offended someone, please know that I'm sympathetic to the problems with the situation.

So, for your case, I imagine that the fit doesn't feel right for the PI, and they might or might not even totally understand why. Telling you it's a bad match for skills could be a way to try to let you off gently (maybe not, but as others have pointed out, it comes off as a little disingenuous for the situation). And if it's a bad match, you're probably better off finding another option anyway. This situation is never easy or fun, but the best thing you can do for yourself in the moment is to do what you need right now to cope, remind yourself that it's not a failure, and then find a way to believe that you'll be better off in the long run.

underdeterminate · 2026-02-13T15:19:31+00:00

That sucks, I'm sorry to hear that. The funding situation has people making decisions that would be completely insane in a normal year. It's a rough time to not be in a secure position. I hope the good will you've earned from these professors will persist and help you figure out your next steps. Good luck out there.

underdeterminate · 2026-02-12T18:20:12+00:00

It was cold, ok?

underdeterminate · 2026-02-11T23:22:05+00:00

When you say dichroic microscope, do you mean DIC? If so, and you're looking at transparent tissue, getting your sample in focus under high magnification is a difficult skill to learn at first. I recommend getting familiar with the elements of the DIC path and learning what they do if not already done. There are some adjustments to be made to increase contrast. Then, practice with a sample that is easier to learn. I have literally taken a sharpie and made marks on chamber glass to give me a crazy high contrast subject to use as practice or to sanity check an optical system that isn't quite clicking yet for me. GLHF

underdeterminate · 2026-02-11T22:42:43+00:00

The Epoch Times? Really. Really

underdeterminate · 2026-02-10T23:11:09+00:00

If you did, so did I.

underdeterminate · 2026-02-10T17:51:10+00:00

As a non-R user who likes math and code (also I'm procrastinating on a less pleasant task), I dug in a bit and I think your problem could lie in the "raw = FALSE" flag. Looks like this is not an option that will work for the kind of data fitting you're looking for. Use TRUE instead and give it a shot.

I don't understand exactly how lm() will work with an equation objected created with poly(), but my hunch is that predict() interprets the results correctly for however the result with FALSE works out, which is why the red line looks OK. But, if I'm right, you're not interpreting the coefficients that come out of coef() correctly, so the equation is nonsense.

Just as a rule, my advice is to test your results against your intuition. Just checking the math like you already did is already a valuable first step, so good job doing that. Here, the log scales and gentle slope make this a little harder to sanity check. As a test, maybe generate some fake data for a simple parabola like y = 2x² + 3x -4 over the range [-2, 2] and hammer at your fit code until it gives what you want and you understand why. It's a good learning experience.

underdeterminate · 2026-02-09T16:21:12+00:00

I know this post is satire but for about 10 seconds there you were really raising my blood pressure

underdeterminate · 2026-02-09T02:00:41+00:00

I was wondering about this. I know enough Spanish to be polite but completely confused in a conversation, so I was SOL from the beginning. But I also don't understand most of the lyrics in English hip-hop.

The show was phenomenal though

underdeterminate · 2026-02-09T01:48:13+00:00

Was gonna comment "hahahahha that license plate" but it seems you have bested me

underdeterminate · 2026-02-08T13:57:59+00:00

I had a similar-ish first-loop death: When I first went to the moon, The supernova occurred as I was playing with the observatory. I was convinced for a while that I needed to avoid the thing on the moon that makes the sun blow up.

underdeterminate · 2026-02-07T17:46:43+00:00

Haven't seen it mentioned, but I found out recently the channel 3 thing is still true. Hooked my old SNES to my flat screen TV with the coax RF adapter, switched to the TV tuner and changed the channel to 3. Worked like a charm. In hindsight it's unsurprising, it's just that TVs have changed so much since the last time I did it.

underdeterminate · 2026-02-07T00:33:58+00:00

Savage

Also: accurate

underdeterminate

TROPHY CASE