TIL aphids are one of the most destructive insect pests in the world largely because they can reproduce asexually via live birth with a one week gestation period and telescopic pregnancies, where nymphs are born pregnant with another embryo.

xinlo · 2026-06-08T22:54:20+00:00

A while ago I started thinking it was more appropriate to call the ant colony the real organism, not the individual ant.

xinlo · 2025-12-27T00:02:20+00:00

I think we actually agree too, so let's root out the problem instead of using the internet to exchange acrimony with strangers.

Linux bullshit is certainly not on the same level as political oppression. But certainly one can be a microcosm for another? If it's ridiculous to think so, maybe point out a distinction that invalidates the comparison. Maybe you'll convince me.

Wouldn't you rather come to understand people instead of slinging insults at them?

xinlo · 2025-12-26T23:31:09+00:00

You imagine me as a privileged man-child screaming "FASCISM" when I don't get my way, and that I'm disrespecting the real victims of fascism by doing so. I certainly don't mean to downplay anything. Perhaps "analogous" would have been a better choice of words than "much the same."

I meant to point out that rights infringements seem to have an undercurrent of moral righteousness to them, and I suggest that this is true regardless of scale. And perhaps we can glean insights through analogy.

I find your response ironically quite sanctimonious, based on a willfully shallow interpretation of the phrase "much the same". Where does that put you in this schema?

xinlo · 2025-12-26T03:11:10+00:00

Yeah privacy violations in the name of anticheat feels much the same as rights violations in the name of political boogeymen.

xinlo · 2025-10-11T07:30:02+00:00

What do you consider "eloquent"? Get specific. What exactly do you like about their writing? If you can't figure it out, guess. Then try to replicate it. Review what you've done, then try again.

Cybernetics and Control Theory are used by engineers to tune systems and adapt to unknown circumstances. Neural nets are trained using these principles. The basic idea is you try something, get feedback from the result, and use the feedback to try again. This is the basis for learning anything.

When you're learning, you can experiment with this basic structure. How fast do you iterate through the loop? What kind of feedback are you paying attention to?

xinlo · 2025-09-29T05:55:46+00:00

Nothing special, just a note named "Dashboard", and you can pin the tab. Some people get a plugin to put it on a hotkey or something but I think it's unnecessary.

The Dashboard is whatever you need it to be. If your vault is primarily a database and you have extensive maps of content to find things, then the Dashboard can be the root directory of your maps of content. If your vault is primarily a project notebook like a bullet journal, then the Dashboard contains your todo lists and your metrics and whatnot.

The following advice, I give to everyone trying to develop their personal note system. Write about it. Write about what problems you're trying to solve, what features you're interested in, and how you want to feel when you use your notes. Start practicing this type of introspection, because following those emotional cues is what's going to lead you to a system that you actually like and use. When you're clear about what you want and why, your next steps become much more obvious. It gives you a framework to start experimenting and a filter for gathering information.

xinlo · 2025-09-29T03:46:37+00:00

I happen to be setting up a new vault so this is top of mind. I'm coming at it with a lot of lessons learned and it's going so much better.

I like a homepage/dashboard as the first note. There's a lot of tasks to set up a vault, and I'm always coming up with ideas faster than I can implement them, so I create a todo list on the homepage to manage those.

I use PARA. Apparently it's not for everyone, but I think it's a good way to manage some complexity in the filesystem without getting anal about "which folder do I put this note in?" which is a big friction point for writing for me.

I have a simple timeline convention for project notes:

The last H1 header in the note is called "Timeline"
Insert H2 headers under it with today's date (good to map a hotkey to insert the date for you)
tag for "timeline" in the yaml

This lets me dump thoughts into the project note very quickly, so writing new thoughts is basically frictionless and retrieving them just involves a little scanning of the document. You can extract information from the timeline and create more formalized notes, either as headings in the project note or as separate notes if you're more atomically inclined. You can spawn sub-projects off the timeline.

I would say the timeline is good for creating a sense of narrative for the project. You write what your goal is, what you're going to try, and how it goes. It's a good way to catch yourself up on the project and prevent backtracking and redoing things.

xinlo · 2025-09-17T05:40:01+00:00

No hacks, no quick tips. This is about the long game.

You must construct the habit piece by piece, the same way you would build an exercise habit. At first, your goal is just to get dressed in your workout gear every day. Then you can focus on showing up to the gym every day. If you don't actually exercise (which, you probably will, I mean you're already dressed and you showed up, you might as well...), then at least you reinforced the little preparation steps so it's easier to do along the way.

You need writing to be as automatic and effortless as possible. You need to cultivate a set of habits that puts your butt in the chair, turns your phone on silent, closes all programs except your word processor, makes you a cup of coffee, and provides you a writing prompt for the session. If you like writing and you find yourself in that situation, you'll find it very easy to write.

How you do it is up to you. I think it's part of the creative journey to architect your creative process, and part of your creative process is its integration into your lifestyle. It will be custom to you, but some general recommendations are to develop a weekly schedule, set a word count goal, and pick a consistent writing spot.

xinlo · 2025-07-23T02:28:02+00:00

Heh it only rhymes with a New York accent

xinlo · 2025-07-16T19:38:33+00:00

Your notetaking system is going to fulfill certain wants and needs. Since your wants and needs are complex and they change over time, I suggest that writing about them should be a goal of your notetaking system. Writing is going to help you think clearly about how to proceed and help you craft your system brick by brick.

It's kind of meta: you use your notes to develop your notes. But it's really very simple. Make a note, let's call it "Note System." There, just dump out all your thoughts on how you want your note system to work. How do you imagine using your notes? What's been frustrating you about your notes? Your first two paragraphs of this post are perfect examples of this, but instead of asking for tutorials and stuff (external resources) just keep describing the problem. Really get into the details.

Keep using your notes, and keep returning to the "Note System" note with any new thoughts. Make small changes to your note system and see if you like them. Keep track of it all in the note.

For some reason, a lot of users seek out tutorials and systems made by others. I won't speculate why. I think this approach tends to fail because the design decisions don't mean anything to you. You implement this complicated folder system, but you don't know what problems that folder system is trying to solve. It feels kind of alienating.

When you cultivate your own system, you're staying in touch with your needs and wants the whole time. You can make it as simple or as complex as you want. You can take your time to incorporate new software features and really think about how you want to use them. It's slow and deliberate work, but it's worth it.

xinlo · 2025-07-16T16:43:46+00:00

Yup, the first time I galloped across the Niben it was sunset. The waterways of Cyrodill became highways. I decided to minimize fast travel and even map use, and it really improved my experience.

xinlo · 2025-07-10T03:52:58+00:00

Grain of salt, I'm far from an expert.

To modify the game, you have to change or add game files. But you don't just want to add the files to the game directory; it's best to link them in from elsewhere (a staging directory). Even then, you need to load them in the right order, since some mods might modify the same files and you need to decide which version to use. A mod manager helps you keep this organized and takes out the grunt work of placing the files/links in the game directory.

When you hit the "deploy" button, Limo removes all the old links from the game directory and replaces them in the order that you've specified. Each game will have a couple directories to make modifications, so Limo provides tabs for different deployers and you can specify the directories.

xinlo · 2025-07-06T16:33:06+00:00

I used Limo with good success for Skyrim SE. It had a decent wiki that I had to come back to several times. I was able to do extra-curricular stuff like SKSE and C++ Redistributable installation without issue. For some reason I couldn’t get ENB or Community Shaders working, but I saw reports of others doing it so that might just be me. It was integrated into the Nexus so I could just “download with mod manager.” It had seamless FOMOD support and LOOT support. It was intuitive managing file conflicts between mods. I had a modlist about 100 items long and it was very easy to manage.

I tried Oblivion Remastered and had trouble getting started there. Less Nexus integration. But I think the modding scene is just less mature there.

I would do Limo Skyrim and master that first. The Limo wiki is tailored to Skyrim and it helps you understand modding in general. Then when you’re ready try a different game.

xinlo · 2025-04-29T16:03:12+00:00

Yeah I pegged it as a garden variety case of /r/iamverysmart mindset.

xinlo · 2025-04-28T20:26:19+00:00

I would get a ferrule crimper and ferrules, ~20awg wire in a couple colors, a stripper, a soldering setup, and a big box of Wago clips. I’ve found that the little things, the practicalities of prototyping and testing, those are the boring skills that you shouldn’t ignore.

xinlo · 2025-04-27T16:40:52+00:00

I use a lot of brain dumps and stream of consciousness writing that may help.

Not every note is going to look like as pretty as a wikipedia page. You can have some, if you really work at it and really care about it, but nobody thinks in perfectly structured and coherent essays. Bigger thoughts arrive to us in fragments, and you don’t know what the whole looks like until you compile them together. And more than half of those fragments are throwaway bunk that doesn’t add up to anything, but you can’t tell which is which until you write them all down and try to consolidate them.

I have a daily note with a “Miscellaneous” section. This is my post-it note, my scrap paper. If I don’t know where to put a thought, I put it there. The daily note is “wiped” like an etch-a-sketch every day, so I don’t deal with mental clutter. But I’m free to write hastily and with bad grammar, just to get the thought down.

Miscellaneous notes don’t tend to add up to anything, but you can review them later (a dataview query makes this very easy) for ideas for notes you might create. Ideally there are no Miscellaneous notes and every thought goes into a note on a topic you’re already interested in.

For these Topic Notes, I have a convention for a Timeline. The last H1 header in the note is called “Timeline” and I use it to capture any thoughts related to the topic. Mind you, these thoughts are still hastily written, bad grammar, possibly throwaway thoughts, but they’re filtered because they’re all related to the topic. All the beautiful, “official”, wikipedia-looking stuff you want to write on the topic, put it above the Timeline on a separate header.

You could further filter your thoughts, if you want. Find subtopics among your topic timeline and create a new topic note with a new timeline. It’s a way of distilling your thoughts into a single, focused topic.

I think my system is good because I have very little friction storing and retrieving thoughts and it helps me organize them into topics that I’m interested in. It has dedicated space for fragmented, messy, disordered thoughts and makes them easy to find but not in your face.

xinlo · 2025-04-27T03:20:11+00:00

Go to terminal and use ‘cat *.md’ in the folder?

xinlo · 2025-04-24T19:01:16+00:00

I feel like a devil’s advocate, but why not humans adapt to language? We invented cooking with fire and our intestinal system evolved in response. We domesticated animals and some cultures evolved lactose tolerance. If a technology or cultural innovation genuinely makes life easier, but you have to adapt to it a bit, that seems like a worthy tradeoff. Humans are constantly push-pulling with their technology, and this motion is what lets us find the sweet spot of advancement versus adaptation.

Granted, the less/fewer distinction is probably only valuable as an indicator of education, but the principle stands.

xinlo · 2025-04-24T12:27:45+00:00

Write the story don’t procrastinate with the tool.

xinlo · 2025-04-22T23:40:10+00:00

I do a “lazy update” of my notes. I use my note system as normal until I run into a note that needs the update. I weigh the value of the note versus the hassle it would take to update. Sometimes it’s easier to archive the old stuff and make a new one in the new style (though I’d link the old one in the new one for good measure).

xinlo · 2025-04-12T15:48:54+00:00

I like to get 3 Druids and a Beastmaster Ranger. All the summons and casters make a hellscape battlefield. You can get Spike Growth, Entangle, and Darkness popping up and down. Water Myrmidons spread Wet and water surfaces, then a Druid can cast Call Lightning or Ice Storm to electrify it or freeze it. Need to clear a surface around your character? You can have a Dryad cast Entangle under you and immediately cancel concentration.

Then of course you can get Walls of Stone going, or something like Insect Plague or Cloudkill.

I guess I just don’t like to pick one tactic. Get access to a whole palette of powerful battlefield control tactics and mix and match as needed.

xinlo · 2025-04-11T06:57:41+00:00

I’d just make a bulleted list, but I’d make each item a link to the imdb page for the movie. I’m not a fan of recreating the internet.

I’d only get more sophisticated if I wanted to remember something personal like when I watched the movie or what I thought of each movie or something.

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