elight's recent activity
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Comment on Time blocking, do you do it? in ~health.mental
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Comment on Students invent quieter leaf blower in ~engineering
elight Link ParentYep! That's much of what a muffler is. And somehow, in the US, we allow people to do ridiculous things to their exhaust systems to make their cars louder at the cost of everyone else around them.Yep! That's much of what a muffler is. And somehow, in the US, we allow people to do ridiculous things to their exhaust systems to make their cars louder at the cost of everyone else around them.
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Comment on Time blocking, do you do it? in ~health.mental
elight Link ParentI put it all in the calendar. Since I'm Apple most things, I use Apple Shortcuts that set a timed Do Not Disturb along with a timer that alarms when the DND turns off. I sometimes use that like a...I put it all in the calendar.
Since I'm Apple most things, I use Apple Shortcuts that set a timed Do Not Disturb along with a timer that alarms when the DND turns off. I sometimes use that like a pomodoro but also to make sure that I come out of my focus when I need to.
Unrelated: could you have ADHD? Asking as someone with it. Your loss of time to procrastination-like activities smacks of ADHD.
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Comment on Students invent quieter leaf blower in ~engineering
elight Link ParentAnd the exhaust? If so, I really dig this.And the exhaust? If so, I really dig this.
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Comment on Students invent quieter leaf blower in ~engineering
elight LinkCan they get on top of a weed-whacker suppressor and lawnmower silencer? And then a mute button for the exhaust systems of all of the cars that drive through my neighborhood? Then I may finally...Can they get on top of a weed-whacker suppressor and lawnmower silencer? And then a mute button for the exhaust systems of all of the cars that drive through my neighborhood? Then I may finally get something resembling peace and quiet around here.
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Comment on Time blocking, do you do it? in ~health.mental
elight LinkAs a student, I never did this. As an engineer, I never did this. As a manager, I was completely and hopelessly overwhelmed until I did this (and even then still fairly overwhelmed). When you have...As a student, I never did this.
As an engineer, I never did this.
As a manager, I was completely and hopelessly overwhelmed until I did this (and even then still fairly overwhelmed).
When you have a LOT of different balls your juggling and many are high priority that require attention soon, time-blocking helped in my calendar helped me to see what and when. This also assumed that I could reasonably estimate how long. Sometimes, though, for higher risk things, having lots of unknowns, blocking out time just to understand WTF helped me figure out the rest.
Guess what? This is almost exactly how I manage teams. And I only realized this, right now, writing this. The differences are:
- My day gets replaced by a 2-week team iteration and my 30 minute to 3 hour time blocks replaced by hours/days-long tasks worked by the team members.
- I give my teams as much autonomy as they can handle on deciding who does what and how so long as we're aligned on what matters and why.
When it's just me, doing the tedium/paperwork/meetings/planning, I'm a team of one doing my work to support me and my teams.
This shit scales.
Also, nice to realize that at least sometimes I practice what I preach (because I'm a lot harder on myself than I am on anyone who has ever worked for me—another topic and an area that I'm now working on improving; it turns out that, if doing "your best" means that you have to nearly bleed yourself dry, you're killing yourself for everyone else around you because you value yourself that little.... and this should be a separate post perhaps sometime).
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Comment on Indiana judge rules tacos, burritos are sandwiches in ~food
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Comment on Students invent quieter leaf blower in ~engineering
elight Link ParentI can't give them my neighbors' money fast enoughI can't give them my neighbors' money fast enough
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Comment on Nicolas Cage to star in Spider-Man Noir live-action series in ~tv
elight LinkNothing much to say other than that I'll watch the heck out of this.Nothing much to say other than that I'll watch the heck out of this.
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Comment on I gave up meat and gained so much more | A tale of one person's life, culture, and growing up in ~life
elight (edited )Link ParentAnd, in good faith, If you find yourself feeling any guilt at all, which seems ever so slightly implied by your need to defend, perhaps you should reconsider. You came into this post, with your...And, in good faith, If you find yourself feeling any guilt at all, which seems ever so slightly implied by your need to defend, perhaps you should reconsider.
You came into this post, with your first comment, unfairly accusing and blaming OP of poor intent.
You've since, from me, received the response that you seem to have invited.
Did you expect a different outcome?
Did you not remark, initially, that if you continued further that you would get personal? Is that on me or OP?
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Comment on What is a value or belief you have that is extremely outside the norm? in ~talk
elight LinkUnapologetically vegan. I'd argue that 4% of US population qualifies as "extreme".Unapologetically vegan. I'd argue that 4% of US population qualifies as "extreme".
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Comment on I gave up meat and gained so much more | A tale of one person's life, culture, and growing up in ~life
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Comment on I gave up meat and gained so much more | A tale of one person's life, culture, and growing up in ~life
elight (edited )Link ParentI'll trade you a landmine for a landmine. Leaving aside the other arguments, regarding guilt, I ask this sincerely: How does one not feel guilt at taking life when there was the easily available...I'll trade you a landmine for a landmine.
Leaving aside the other arguments, regarding guilt, I ask this sincerely:
How does one not feel guilt at taking life when there was the easily available choice not to?
How attached are you to your own consciousness?
How much resentment and anguish would you experience at the prospect of losing it all?
Factory farming all too easily hides us from the repercussions of these choices.
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Comment on I gave up meat and gained so much more | A tale of one person's life, culture, and growing up in ~life
elight (edited )LinkVegan for about a decade now. I am unsurprised that this topic has generated so many emotional responses. It is painful to be asked to reflect on the harm we cause by being. I've caused this same...- Exemplary
Vegan for about a decade now. I am unsurprised that this topic has generated so many emotional responses. It is painful to be asked to reflect on the harm we cause by being. I've caused this same harm too, for many years.
As a child, I've always had pets. From birth, I was raised with cats. I literally had one next to me in the crib.
I loved going to petting zoos. All of the animals there had their unique behaviors and redeeming qualities.
Yet, as a child, I was raised in a family that eats meat even now. Yet, as a child, I always had this thought slinking in the back of my mind: I don't eat my pets—and what separates my pets from the other animals I see?
This bothered me for a few years. And then I forgot about it.
At about 40, I find my blood pressure is high. I read Joel Fuhrman MD's "Eat to Live": that is an extreme book but eye opening. I thought that, ok, I'll go plant-based. I'll cut out processed foods.
In the US, that's playing on hard mode. Doing it in the backwater I lived in at the time, iron man.
After a year, my then-primary doctor was astonished to see how healthy the blood of this severely overweight me came out in lab results. Even now, many years later, and still quite overweight, my doctor, well over ten years younger than me, looks at my blood test results and tells me, "Even my blood doesn't look this good!"
But I digress.
After a couple of years of being plant-based, I remember how I thought about animals, as a child. That's when I realized that I was now "vegan". I could no longer passively choose harm of other beings, animals or humans.
Why consider not eating animals? At our basest, we are animals ourselves, yes.
However, wasn't it Descartes who said cogito, ergo sum? We think. We, questionably, have free will. We are conscious. We have evolved.
Yet we still eat like other animals—with the sole exceptions that we learned to process food to facilitate digestion. One can argue that we are not so special. We are not even the only tool-using species.
For being so evolved, we still do violence onto one another: there is war and greed. We still mostly fixate on procreation, even in the face of ecological collapse.
But there is another choice available: to attempt to exceed our animal nature. Given the abundance of vegetation in nature, that we have also learned to cultivate, and how we have learned to improve and enhance these qualities demonstrably through our own learnings, it is possible to eat well and do so without taking the lives of other conscious beings.
Is it realistic to do this when we still harm each other? One could also ask: if we stopped harming animals, would we free up enough resource to be able to feed more people of this world?
If we are better than other animals, why must we continue to eat other animals?
If we are no better, how are we civilized? Why then do we deserve civilization?
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
elight LinkHomeworld 3. See my review here: Homeworld 3 review from someone who treasures HW as perhaps the best game in 25 years (w/ minor spoilers) In short, wait for total conversion mods to come out. The...In short, wait for total conversion mods to come out. The base game just isn't worth it.
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Homeworld 3 review from someone who treasures HW as perhaps the best game in 25 years (w/ minor spoilers)
Warning: this post may contain spoilers
I almost need a "thumb sideways" button but I can't give this game a thumbs up.
Why should you listen to me?
For background, I beta tested Homeworld for Relic back in '98-99. I've played every single PC Homeworld game. I've sunk hundreds of hours into playing vanilla Homeworld, Complex, and Every. Single. Star Trek mod that anyone has ever made for Homeworld and Homeworld: Remastered.
That's to say: I adore love Homeworld/Homeworld 2. Over 25 years of PC gaming, they may be my all-time favorite games period!
Of course, I bought the "Fleet Command" edition. In truth, I did it to encourage the developers to keep pumping out more Homeworld.
Alas, the only thing I want right now is a complete and amazing mod toolkit so that this game can quickly become the substitute and successor for the original.
A little history: Homeworld (and Remastered) thrived with its mod community. The original game was not designed for modding. Yet so many intrepid individuals out there struggled their way through cracking the binary format(s?) of the game. And, at least, as I understand it, some of the game behavior is scripted in Lua, a less common but publicly available programming language. Just go look at the Workshop for Homeworld: Remastered. The number of different total conversion mods out there is staggering. The love put into so many of those mods is utterly mind-blowing!
In a nutshell, HW:3 plays a lot like Homeworld (the original) but, if anything, dumbed-down
significantly from the original but with 2024 visuals--except for the cut-scenes that oddly look rendered using vintage 2000 technology. The game mechanics lack the depth of any of the HW sequels. The campaign is linear and, at times, glitchy (I'm looking at you, asteroid mission and you, the one cut-scene where some of the lines repeat causing me to wonder if I'm suffering auditory hallucinations or if their QA missed something like that).The gameplay is not particularly innovative or deep. The default pace of combat itself tends to be faster than previous Homeworlds. Though, in single player, you can change the game speed. However, the default speed can be overwhelming compared to previous Homeworld games, which can make multiplayer frustrating.
For fans, while it should not be surprising It's not Homeworld: Complex (or EVO), I expected to see more of the depth, introduced by HW:C and HW:2, For instance, there are no subsystems on ships; you can't target engines or weapons. Ships either blow up or they don't. There's no defense field frigates and no cloak generators.
My hope is that the mods (Star Trek or The Expanse, anyone?) will make this game shine. But right now? Unless you're a true super-hardcore Homeworld fan, who needs their Homeworld story fix, you should hold off.
On the plus side: it doesn't crash as often as a NASCAR driver like Helldivers 2 or the original Homeworld, for that matter.
Ultimately, I'm disappointed that Homeworld 3 plays like a dumbed-down version of Homeworld 1. I suppose this shouldn't be surprising, what with game studios increasingly desperate to get that larger market share which means appealing to a broader audience. But that means that if you long for the depth of Homeworld 2 or Complex, you're waiting for mods.
The modding tools aren't out yet.
And, so, thumbs down.
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Comment on Florida man worries about his ruined reputation after pulling gun on Uber driver dropping the man's daughter off at their house in ~transport
elight LinkCan we just take a moment to recognize the amazing, unfortunate, yet always mind-boggling hijinks of Florida Man? He's the world's worst super hero (?) who is always in the news!Can we just take a moment to recognize the amazing, unfortunate, yet always mind-boggling hijinks of Florida Man? He's the world's worst super hero (?) who is always in the news!
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Comment on Why VO2 max is the greatest predictor of lifespan | Dan's journey back to health and fitness (Pt. 2) in ~health
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Comment on I understand climate scientists’ despair – but stubborn optimism may be our only hope in ~enviro
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Comment on A big new facility built to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere opened up in Iceland. It's a stepping stone to bigger plans in the US. in ~enviro
elight Link ParentProof is in the pudding. Let's see what happens to pollution in the US. The increase in data centers doesn't bode well for this. Generative AI eats unfortunate amounts of power. As for China,...Proof is in the pudding. Let's see what happens to pollution in the US. The increase in data centers doesn't bode well for this. Generative AI eats unfortunate amounts of power.
As for China, good. But they're still the net worst polluter on the planet, IIRC. The US is worse per capita.
Medication is extremely effective with ADHD. Highly recommend seeking a diagnosis.
If I'd had treatment when I was in college, I'd be leading a very different life. Instead, I discovered my ADHD in my late 40s. So many missed opportunities.