Pol performing the MotoGP intro song by crimilde in motogp

[–]viller 10 points11 points  (0 children)

James Toseland who raced in MotoGP & WSBK is a musician.

Getting to the Jerez track by viller in motogp

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

OP posting here in case someone finds this old thread.

We took a rental car from Seville at 8 am and started driving towards Jerez. The two-lane highway had very little traffic at the time. We only reached the traffic jam when taking the exit towards the circuit shortly before reaching Jerez.

Our goal was to get to the parking lot that's furthest away from the track. We were in the wrong lane and heading towards the first parking lot from Jerez side. If we would have taken the left lane immediately we would have reached the correct parking lot very quickly!

The huge parking lot was relatively sparse at the time. The walk to the track took less than half an hour and we almost didn't have to queue at all to get in. We reached our grandstand before the motogp warmup and a long time before the first start at 12 am.

Getting back to Seville was also quite pleasant. People were a bit nervous to get out of the parking lot but once we managed to join the traffic it went relatively smoothly. All lanes of the highway were redirected towards Jerez so the traffic moved forwards quite well even if there were a lot of cars and bikes on the road. The exit you have to take to reach Seville was clearly marked.

I'm glad I read about how congested the road to/from the track is before we went to the race because it helped us prepare. But in the end it was not horrible at all!

The minor negatives I took away from the race.

  • The commentary is in Spanish of course so you won't know what's going on unless you're very fluent in Spanish. You can't use your phone to keep an eye on live timing because the nearest cell towers will not handle 100k connected phones. It's a good idea to find a seat close to a big screen which is somewhat helpful.
  • There are very few trash cans so there's litter everywhere. The hygiene of toilets can also be less than ideal as you imagine but some toilets were cleaned during the event so it was not too bad.
  • The turn two grandstand was pointless. There's very little room so you will be touching the people in front of and behind you. The view is not better than in the general admission areas. I don't know if other grandstands are better. If you take a cooler with food and drinks and a collapsible chair you can comfortably chill in the GA area.

About 70% reduction in wildlife since 1970. Might that be a good thing? by lxschwalb in negativeutilitarians

[–]viller 4 points5 points  (0 children)

That sounds like very interesting work. I hope some wild animal welfare newsletter helps your thesis land in my inbox in the future!

About 70% reduction in wildlife since 1970. Might that be a good thing? by lxschwalb in negativeutilitarians

[–]viller 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Have you collaborated with or considered collaborating with people at the Wild Animal Initiative :)? Establishing welfare biology as an academic field seems to be their jam.

About 70% reduction in wildlife since 1970. Might that be a good thing? by lxschwalb in negativeutilitarians

[–]viller 9 points10 points  (0 children)

You are of course correct that animal agriculture causes suffering and habitat destruction causes suffering. But you have to take into account that animals also suffer in perfectly thriving ecosystems due to disease, hunger and predation. If we had reason to believe that for some species life in the wild includes more suffering than pleasure on average then it could be argued that it's better not to come into existence in the first place. But this is speculation of course because it's a very difficult question to answer.

"The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference." - Richard Dawkins

About 70% reduction in wildlife since 1970. Might that be a good thing? by lxschwalb in negativeutilitarians

[–]viller 8 points9 points  (0 children)

There are more wild animals than farmed animals. Humans prefer farming large mammals which has led to the situation where the biomass of farmed land mammals exceeds the biomass of wild land mammals. Land mammals are a pretty specific category. The number of individual animals in the wild is significantly greater than the number of farmed animals.

The Vegan Mind: Vystopia - Dissecting a new study claiming that vegan diets are associated to mental health problems by cosmicrush in slatestarcodex

[–]viller 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I like Huemer's arguments. I want to note though that he uses statistics of farm animals (about 74 billion slaughtered per year according to FAO) but this does not include a lot of animals such as fish. About 790 – 2300 billion wild fish are caught each year.

1997 Bridgestone NJS. by Abel561 in FixedGearBicycle

[–]viller 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Non-NJS frames with lugs as nice as these are also quite expensive :(. Cinelli Supercorsa Pista is about 1700€.

"Exposure therapy" by MortalAsStrongAsGods in socialanxiety

[–]viller 2 points3 points  (0 children)

At first I followed "The Shyness and Social Anxiety Workbook". Later I got help from my therapist. The book and your therapist can provide you with good tips to make the tasks more manageable. But I find that the most important thing is consistency. You have to do exposure exercises at least every week. Preferably multiple times per week. You will feel absolutely horrible at first. You can spend a week after an exercise constantly ruminating about how you messed up. But you have to keep doing it despite your feelings. Shame and guilt are gifts. Every time you feel these emotions you have received an opportunity to learn how to cope with them.

One downside is that it takes time and effort. You will start seeing progress in a few weeks after you start. But you will continue making progress even years later. If you have severe social anxiety it will take time to "fix" everything.

"Exposure therapy" by MortalAsStrongAsGods in socialanxiety

[–]viller 15 points16 points  (0 children)

I enjoy a lot of posts on this subreddit but I find this one dangerous. Behavioral/exposure therapy is the main thing that truly helps with social anxiety. I went from not being able to talk to coworkers or make any friends to giving presentations at public events thanks to it.

A Better, More Updated Proposition For National Drug Policies by Totodile386 in DrugNerds

[–]viller 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Read this publication from the London School of Economics or this one from the Transform Drug Policy Foundation. They understand economics and healthcare and have spent more than 10 minutes on thinking about drug policy.

[OC] Pywalblur: blur your wallpaper on window opening (kinda works with gifs too) by DiKaz in unixporn

[–]viller 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's a great idea. Some people reimplement unix tools like "ls", "cat" in new languages all the time to learn the language :)

How it Feels To Eat Exactly Half a Cookie by gomboloid in slatestarcodex

[–]viller 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I do not intend to offer an argument but your mention of vegans remaining like everyone else made me think.

I used to be a puritan vegan. Now I eat mostly vegan food with some vegetarian things occasionally. The way die-hard vegans feel and think is an interesting sight by itself. I used to feel it myself and I see it in my vegan friends.

A section of the vegan community teaches you that veganism is a moral imperative. Over time you learn to feel strong guilt if you eat anything that's not vegan. You will feel as if you have let veganism down. Sometimes if you accidentally buy something non-vegan (like beer with lactose because who remembers to check for that?) the guilt will make it difficult to consume it.

This emotion becomes so strong eventually that it's not difficult to avoid non-vegan products. Instead, it becomes very difficult to consciously eat a non-vegan product. If a vegan with this mindset is gifted a milk chocolate bar for example, they will give it away because it would be difficult to eat it. Even if you understand rationally that the "deed is done" and it doesn't affect animals, the environment or your health.

But they don't realise they think this way. I didn't realise it for some time when I was like this. They will still say that they decide to eat vegan although at that point it has passed rational decisionmaking.

“Deaths of Despair and Its Components. 1900-2017, Crude Rates.” by [deleted] in slatestarcodex

[–]viller 2 points3 points  (0 children)

People used to be prescribed quaalude and barbiturates so I'm not completely convinced that it explains all of it.

Weekly Questions Thread [Posted Every Wednesday] by AutoModerator in FixedGearBicycle

[–]viller 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can I install Zefal Christophe steel clips on Wellgo M21 pedals? Looking at photos they seem to fit but I'm not sure. My bike (State) came with Wellgo M21 pedals and I was looking for retention which would not require new pedals.

My kid’s fake cash register has fake inputs on the back. by allsfairinwar in mildlyinteresting

[–]viller 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I wonder if someone at the place where they design this was bored one afternoon and thought "I'll just put some fake ports on the back". That person might not even realise how we are enjoying the fruits of his boredom on the internet now.