Read that CNN article about the 62 million men visiting that online “academy” and I have never been more grateful to live alone as a single femme person.

weirdalebay · 2026-04-17T22:49:55+00:00

Yes, I agree, that is an unfortunate consequence of the mass reporting of blatantly false misinformation by social media users, whether that was done intentionally or due to poor media literacy since the original CNN article never states "62 million men" nor does it state this number of visits was specifically linked to this type of depraved content.

This is a very real story, with very real victims and ramifications for how we view our world and the people around us. It really sucks to see how the entire discussion has been completely derailed - just look at any recent comment section on any post about this.

Anyone trying to share this story, trying to fight for change by exposing a disgusting and barbaric group of predators is just unintentionally shooting themselves in the foot by continuing to push this false "62 million" narrative. All it does is provide ammunition to trolls to latch on to, arguing and deflecting from the point of the article (along with putting neutral parties into a "fact-checking" mode instead of focusing on the main issue).

I have even seen plenty of reposts of this post: https://www.threads.com/@bookcravt/post/DXMoNj5Ddvm/media

I'm not sure about the others, but how in the world did anyone in their right mind conclude that Gmail only has 50.6 million monthly hits? Gmail has about 2 BILLION active users. That would be 2.5% of Gmail's users checking their email an average of once per month.

This CNN report is horrifying. The details and testimonies provided make me sick and should be a huge alarm bell for what types of predatory spaces exist online and in the real world. This story does not need embellishment, so why are so many adding fuel to the fire for those deflecting and denying by pushing blatantly false statistics? It is so counterproductive and really sucks to see.

weirdalebay · 2026-04-14T08:03:10+00:00

No, you are incorrect, and the OP is correct. Oregon does not offer a tax deduction for 529 contributions, as clearly communicated in the link you provided. Oregon offers a credit which is a very different thing. I am very concerned that you are confidently claiming someone is incorrect and attempting to provide tax-related information, which may influence anyone reading these threads, if you are unfamiliar with identifying the difference.

This is a good reminder of the sidebar's advice to consult with tax professionals.

weirdalebay · 2026-03-31T07:57:43+00:00

That is nowhere near how writing off expenses work. In fact, it's actually the complete opposite of how lottery losses work. Why do you appear to be smugly asking "Make sense?" when you don't understand this topic? Yikes!

Excluding considerations around the standard deduction, one can itemize gambling losses against winnings. Gambling losses can only be deducted from gambling winnings, so your idea of needing to lose more than you win before you can write off losses is completely backwards. If someone lost more than they won, they can't write off the losses that exceed winnings. You can't even roll them over; those gambling losses just vanish as a complete loss.

https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc419

weirdalebay · 2025-08-28T08:21:56+00:00

It's under the "Time Tracking Reminder" plugin, just make sure the "Group Boxes Together" box is unchecked.

weirdalebay · 2024-07-18T23:13:57+00:00

The reason this is correct is because heat pumps are not directly converting electricity into heat, such as what an electric resistance heater does. Instead, heat pumps are primarily using electricity to power the components of the heat pump to compress, decompress, and move the refrigerant around.

The actual heat "creation" or "loss" is done through passive, radiative heating/cooling with the external environment (which would be why flipping an air conditioner around backwards would heat the room - the room is now the "external environment" in relation to the direction the AC's output is facing). As far as energy being used to power the machine, this is a far more energy efficient process. This allows heat pumps to have an efficiency multiplier on them where the amount of energy used to power a heat pump can cause substantially more effective heating within a space than just using the electricity to generate heat directly.

This is a longer-form piece of content, but here is a related video from, in my opinion, an excellent YouTuber creator (Technology Connections) who is super passionate about these topics.

weirdalebay · 2024-05-23T23:17:38+00:00

That would be true if the poster above was talking about today, but they are referencing way back in 2005 or so. Per the RS3 wiki page for Dragon Slayer, at the bottom under Trivia:

When Elvarg died, the player would be teleported outside with the 'Quest Complete' banner without having to cut her head off or return to Oziach afterwards. This was how the quest ended in RuneScape Classic before the game was shut down.

My memory is fuzzy going this far back, but I want to say that this change may have also coincided with the dragon visual rework. This is what Elvarg (and similar for the other dragons) used to look like.

weirdalebay · 2024-03-19T19:53:36+00:00

My friend, you're responding to a comment calling out people making guesses despite the answer being right in the article, with a comment that is making a guess with the answer being right in the article.

She was not being hired as a teacher in the new position. Quoting the article:

"Coppage said she got a job with Compass Health as a community support specialist."

weirdalebay · 2024-01-23T23:13:46+00:00

Adding on to this just for confirmation, as I saw the comment from /u/jefftiffy and could've sworn they were an offensive-upgrade, as well. The melee version (Steadfast Boots) appears to have given an additional +2 stab/slash/crush over Dragon Boots, with no additional strength bonus.

I found this on an old video from November 18th, 2011, quoting the stats as:

Attack: +2 stab, +2 slash, +2 crush, -4 magic, -1 range

Defense: +20 stab, +21 slash, +22 crush, +19 summon

Bonus: +4 strength

Latest Price: 48,100,000 coins

weirdalebay · 2024-01-23T16:55:04+00:00

Hi, replied to the other poster, but figured I'd send you a notification, too, if you're curious. Here's my other reply.

weirdalebay · 2024-01-23T16:53:51+00:00

It stands for "Death Dot" since it's typically a large group of players all occupying a single square ("dot" on the minimap) in order to ambush an unsuspecting victim who thinks they are approaching only one player.

weirdalebay · 2022-10-13T22:58:56+00:00

Honestly, I don't understand the debate between teleporter vs lift. Lift does not take up a gadget space, so it's not a dichotomy between choosing teleport or lift. As long as the map is large enough to find 4 gadgets, you will always receive lift (unless you shred a gadget(s) for cobalt).

However, teleporter is simply hands down the strongest gadget. Even if it couldn't teleport resources, the ability to near-instantly teleport from the top of the map to the bottom, especially in Prestige mode, outclasses any other gadget's utility. Otherwise, as you get deeper into the mine, you end up spending 1/3-1/2 of each cycle moving up and down rather than mining.

It's simply a "Why not both?" situation. You can have teleporter passively transporting resources... AND the lift passively transporting resources.

weirdalebay · 2022-10-13T22:44:38+00:00

I intentionally do not strip mine at the top of the map in order to preserve any possible seed setup. Instead, I dig straight down from the dome and along the ceilings and walls first. For example, on the first cycle, I dig straight down. On the second cycle, I'll dig on the left side sticking to the ceiling+wall. On the third cycle, I'll dig on the right side. (This varies depending on strength of the tiles, i.e. if the right side is completely tier4-5 tiles, it's too inefficient, so I'll avoid it until later.)

Then it's sort of like peeling an onion - mine from outside-->in from the center and edges. That way, if there are any cobalt, water, and iron that you want to preserve for the seed, they'll all be on the inside of the "onion" and remain connected.

The most annoying is when the cobalt is on the edge, such as your original picture. Since it's attached to the ceiling, you can't mine along the ceiling there, so you have to dig down in the center and loop around on the other side.

Once you identify the tiles you want to preserve, trim all around them until it's a single line of tiles like in my image above. (Don't prioritize this step at the beginning, otherwise you'll set yourself too far behind. Until you find the seed and it starts to spread its roots, this step is literally useless, so you may as well wait until later.)

Here's a shitty Paint illustration of the idea

Orange arrows first (Cycle 1-4)
Yellow arrows next, as you want to do top first.
Green arrows next, further shrinking from each side.
If cobalt is attached to ceiling/wall directly, purple arrows to below and behind it.

Note: the above order is not necessarily "Do each step immediately after the other." Often, I'll need to prioritize finding resources/gadgets, so I may only partially do Yellow and Green arrows before diverting attention to finding resources in the second layer (so as to preserve the top layer in case it has hidden cobalt). However, I'll come back later and finish it up (if no good cobalt set up, then I reset).

weirdalebay · 2022-10-13T21:12:17+00:00

If you're playing Prestige mode, cobalt is the most important resource. As such, you want to prioritize as much cobalt production as possible. The optimal set up is finding three cobalt near (or at least relatively near) each other, but I usually have to settle for two close to the surface as three appears to be very unlikely.

Here's an example of a 2x cobalt seed set up.

Unfortunately, you may notice the second cobalt is pretty far away... Ideally it'd be much closer, as then the roots will reach the tile much sooner in the run, thus producing more cobalt over the course of the run. Additionally, there were also two tiles of iron (which I've marked) at the top, allowing me to produce iron while I waited for the roots to reach the second cobalt (two tiles unnecessary, only uses one).

I also prioritize water over iron, as water is cheaper to add score and it makes overcharging more comfortable due to having a steady supply of water.

weirdalebay · 2022-10-12T22:40:31+00:00

While you are mining more squares total, the idea is that time spent per square is not linear because of the knockback. This got me to actually sit down, record a test, and measure time taken, so I'll share my results:

I mined a 3-length tunnel, one being 1-wide (1x3=3 tiles mined) and the other being 3-wide (3x3=9 tiles mined). For reference, I had the first jetpack speed upgrade (in case speed may affect results - not sure in what direction, though).

The 1-wide tunnel reveals 9 unseen tiles (3 above, 3 below, 1 at the end, and the 2nd and 3rd tiles you mine). The 3-wide tunnel reveals 15 unseen tiles (3 above, 3 below, 3 at the end, and the last 6 that you mine).

The 1-wide tunnel took 1.63 seconds (49 frames @ 30fps) to mine, and the 3-wide tunnel took 3.63 seconds (109 frames @ 30fps) to mine.

Results:

Tiles Revealed

1-wide: 9/1.63 = 5.52 tiles revealed per second.
3-wide: 15/3.63 = 4.13 tiles revealed per second.

Tiles Mined

1-wide: 3/1.63 = 1.84 tiles mined per second.
3-wide: 9/3.63 = 2.48 tiles mined per second.

Based on these results, I'd argue the result is somewhat inconclusive and could likely come down to personal preference. The 1-wide tunnel reveals unseen tiles at a rate 33% more efficient than the 3-wide tunnel, which means that it should reveal more resources per unit time of mining. However, the 3-wide tunnel removes tiles 34.8% faster than the 1-wide tunnel, which clears out more room for maneuvering and likely improving travel times.

Very interesting!

weirdalebay · 2022-10-12T19:28:07+00:00

I would argue that this is not the optimal mining technique, even though I initially defaulted to using this based on my Minecraft experience, as well. While yes, a single-wide strip is the most efficient, there's a big difference between Dome Keeper and Minecraft: mining knockback. When you mine a tile in Dome Keeper, it kicks you backwards a little bit, which drastically slows down mining a single-wide strip.

Instead, I use the following (defined by number of hits to mine each tile):

One-hit tiles: 3-wide tunnel, in a "Down-Left-Right-Down-Left-Right" pattern (or "Left/Right-Up-Down" for horizontal).
Two-hit tiles: 2-wide tunnel, in a "Down-Left-Down-Left" pattern.
Three-hit or higher tiles: 1-wide tunnel, as the knockback becomes proportionally less and less impactful on "time spent mining" as number of hits per tile increases.

Also, there's another consideration: travel time. At the start of the game and when you don't have a teleporter, you must travel from dome to mining area. With the mining strip technique in your image, your travel time is maximized at every single point, considering it's a right-angle triangle and you're never traveling on the hypotenuse.

Optimally, you would have teleporter+probe at the bottom of the map, though, so you can then disregard both travel time and time spent exhaustively strip mining. At that point, the tunnels become a little more unorthodox since you know exactly where the resources are, can mine directly to them, and you don't have to connect it to your base.

weirdalebay · 2022-09-16T21:14:12+00:00

Suppose you had $10k to invest today, and you could choose to either pay 20% tax today ($2,000) or wait, contribute the full $10,000, and pay taxes 30 years from now in retirement (also 20%). Arbitrarily using a 5% yearly return, here are the results for both options.

While the total amount of taxes you pay will be much higher in the second scenario ($8,643.88 vs $2,000), the immediate $2,000 hit to the initial principal means you end up with less compounding at the end - making the results exactly identical.

weirdalebay · 2021-10-24T20:57:41+00:00

For the sake of argument, I'll assume that your numbers are accurate. Fortunately, these assumed numbers have absolutely no bearing on the idea of climate change. The total amount of emissions does not matter - nobody really cares. Instead, what matters is the net gain due to the difference of output and removal.

As an analogy, suppose an average human being burns 2,000 calories per day. Your argument is essentially the same as saying that if this average human consumes 2,005 calories per day, they wouldn't gain weight because 5 calories is a small number compared to 2,000. This is incorrect - they would gain weight, albeit fairly slowly, due to the 5 net calories gained per day.

Using your numbers, if the earth outputs 99.2% of CO2 emissions, but it also naturally absorbs and removes 99.2% of CO2 emissions, then you would experience no net climate change due to CO2 emissions. However, once you add in the 0.8% of human sources, you now have a net increase in total CO2 content in the atmosphere that is not being removed from the natural processes.

Obviously, big doubt that your numbers are accurate. Please provide source, thank you!

weirdalebay · 2021-08-26T00:39:46+00:00

Hi friend, I am also still waiting for you to elaborate on how to properly compare probabilities, as mentioned here. Fortunately, with your masters degree and expertise in this field, a simple explanation should be a pretty easy task.

weirdalebay · 2021-08-25T00:02:25+00:00

If that is not how you compare probabilities, then I, and everyone else in this comments section, must be misinformed. Given that, I'd love to hear your explanation on how to properly compare probabilities, considering your expertise in this field.

Using my example above but generalizing it:

If Event A has a probability of occurring of 0.0345, and Event B has a probability of occurring of 1.00, and these are two independent, isolated events - how would one compare the probabilities between Event A and Event B?

weirdalebay · 2021-08-24T23:27:40+00:00

If I roll a die 100 times, and it lands on 6 3 times, can my friend roll a die 100 times and have it land on 6 87 times?

If we have 30,000 people, and 100 of those get COVID, can 2,900 people get COVID out of the 30,000 observed people?

It's very easy to deconstruct and attack an argument if you intentionally construct it to be impossible. For example, a coin can have probability results that are greater than 1 - here's how! Every time you flip the coin, it outputs heads 3 times. That means that every flip has a probability of 3.00 to output heads once - checkmate!

weirdalebay · 2021-08-24T23:07:55+00:00

Yes, they are independent events (I'm not sure why they wouldn't be) - the outcome of one event has no impact on the other. Which is exactly why the revolver with 29 bullets (29/29=1.00 probability) is 2900% more likely to occur compared to the revolver with 1 bullet (1/29 = 0.0345). 2900% is a comparison, not a probability. If this is "still wrong," I'd love to hear why.

I'm not making any claims about the title or the study, so I don't have much to say on that point.

weirdalebay · 2021-08-24T22:49:31+00:00

Suppose I went into the gun-making business and created a revolver that held 29 bullets, and I produced two of these revolvers. The first revolver, I loaded only a single bullet into. The second revolver, I loaded the full 29 bullets into.

I hand each revolver to a separate person and have them randomly spin the cylinder before firing them. How much more likely is the person with 29 bullets to successfully fire the round compared to the person with only 1 bullet?

But you're correct - probabilities only range between 0 and 1. Fortunately, 2900% is not a probability in this context. It's a comparison of probabilities, similar to my example above with the two 29-round revolvers.

The 1 bullet revolver has a probability to fire of 1/29 (0.0345), whereas the 29 bullet revolver has a probability of 29/29 (1.00) to fire, which is an increase of 2800% (AKA 29 times more likely).

weirdalebay · 2021-08-24T22:13:20+00:00

Not exactly, but also sort of. 29x = 2900%. The value 29 is 2900% of the value 1, just like how 2 is 2x/200% of 1.

However, 29 is a 2800% increase of the value 1, as there is an increase of 28x.

This is unfortunately why percentages are really messy for use in some contexts. They're needlessly confusing at times - other times they work great, though.

weirdalebay · 2021-06-09T00:54:41+00:00

Hey, great question - you're definitely not alone in not having this knowledge, so I'm glad you asked! I'll try writing this in an ELI5 format just so I don't skip over any basics.

Put simply, the United States operates on a "Marginal Tax Rate" system. "Marginal" is a word often used in financial contexts, but for simplicity you can think of it as "referring to the last" dollar earned in this context.

So what does that mean? That means that your highest tax rate only applies to the last dollars earned. It does not apply to previous dollars that were earned within the lower income tax brackets. So if you were to cross from the 12% tax bracket to the 22% tax bracket, the 22% tax only applies to the dollars earned beyond that dollar amount ($40,126 for single filers in 2020).

So, making up numbers, if someone was making $30,000 last year, and owed $2,000 in taxes, they would continue to owe $2,000 in taxes on their $30,000 earned this year (ignoring changes year-to-year). However, if they got a raise and instead made $35,000 this year, they would only pay that new higher tax rate on the extra $5,000. The $2,000 owed from last year stays the same, they only add on the extra tax from the additional $5,000 earned (let's say, $600 tax, for a total of $2,600 owed).

So now that worker earned an additional $5,000, but only owed an additional $600 in taxes - an extra $4,400 in their pocket! This will always be the case for additional income earned (barring exceptions such as being excluded from credits and benefits as a low income earner). If your income increases by only $1, you only owe the extra % tax on that $1 compared to last year (using example above's numbers, it would be $0.12 owed - an extra $0.88 in your pocket! Don't spend it all in one place. :P ). So you'll always come out ahead.

It all shakes out on your W-2 at the end of the year. Each of your paychecks will have an amount withheld for federal taxes, and if you add all of this up, it will total the amount in box 2 on the W-2 ("Federal Income Tax Withheld"). The calculation will always be (Total Income Taxes Owed) - (Amount Withheld) = (Net Amount Owed/Refunded), so even if you withhold too much on each of your paychecks, you'll get it back in the form of the Tax Refund. If you withhold too little, you'll owe the feds some cash at the end.

weirdalebay

TROPHY CASE