I'll try to be brief.

I lost my older brother March this year. Barely a year after I moved to the same city as him, he passed away from a bacterial infection he got in a hospital. He went for stomach surgery, everything went fine. Suddenly, a month later, this bacterial infection got to his brain and he was gone.

It was a big shock to our family and things are not the same anymore. My parents are old, mother is 73, father is 78.

My mother is simply just existing these days. She is barely eating and is now weighing 48kgs (105 lbs). She needed to go to the hospital a couple of days ago because she was so weak.

She already had problems before the death of my brother. She is losing her eyesight and despite all the treatments, it does not get better. She can see up close, she can use her smartphone, but it's hard for her to recognize people if they are not right up in her face.

She has three hernias and can't stand too much. She can get up to make breakfast or coffee, but after 20 minutes has to lie down because of pain. It does not help that she barely eats and is getting weaker every day.

She does not want to go to a psychologist. She just says she is not crazy and won't go. I tried contacting one that can go to her house, but she says she simply won't open the door. My father is trying to convince her, but I know it won't change.

I can understand her and I can't see what more can I do. She never had much going for her, now her oldest (and dearest) son is dead all of a sudden, she has all this physical pain going on for years, eyesight getting worse and I can understand the fact that she simply don't care for it anymore. She simply lost her appetite.

She is going to doctors to take exams, she did a battery of tests and everything seems fine. Even her cholesterol which was problematic is fine.

He prescribed something to help with her appetite and vitamins, but it is not the first time. Don't think this will change much.

I don't know really what I'm asking here. I sometimes think I should do more, but there is already my father which lives with her and my other brother who is there in the same city. I already tried sending a psychologist to help her at home, I don't know what more can I do.

I go visit every two or three weeks (i am going for christmas and new year) and she is the same way. 80% of the time lying down in the couch, she gets up to make food or coffee, go sit in the front of the house for some time, then it's time to go to bed. This is repeated every day.

It's not like it was much different before, but at least she ate some food. There was a day that she just ate an apple and that was it.

She goes out of the house if she needs, like going to the doctor or groceries, but avoids for any other reason.

Are you comfortable following most bread baking recipes? Looking to start making your own recipes, and understand what ingredients do at what levels? If yes, this is what I'm going to try and explain the basics of, and point you in the right direction. If no, still feel free to read and ask me to explain anything I did a poor/insufficient job of.

Baker's Percentages

A baker's percentage is calculated by dividing the weight of the ingredient by the total weight of flour, times 100. You might hear it referred to as baker's math, or as a symbol with b%.

For example, if I had 100 grams of flour and 60 grams of water, that would be:

60/100*100 = 60% water, or in bread recipes that's referred to as the hydration. You might have seen on YouTube things like "90% high hydration sourdough!!".

It's important to note that if I had 90 grams of bread flour and 10 grams of whole wheat, that would be 100 total.

Why is this important? Whilst it's not an exact thing, for most breads you can tell a lot by seeing what the baker's percentage of the recipe is. It's also a great way to share those recipes, it's a ratio, so it's easy to scale up or down a batch. I share recipes like this, and it might look as simple as something like:

Flour - 100%
Hydration - 50%
Salt - 2.50%
Lard - 20%
(The flour tortilla recipe I use)

In my experience, I would say that most breads fall in:

50-70% hydration
1.5-3% salt
~3% oil/fats is the optimum for loaf volume without it being very enriched (added fats and sugars), although it's also common for rustic loaves to be lean (no added fats/sugars)

There's not much I can do in terms of the typical range for other ingredients, apart from recommending resources that help to explain what these ingredients do, and give examples using bakers percentages. Michael Suas' "Advanced bread and pastry" explains what all the commonly used ingredients for each section are used for, and gives lots of recipes for different items in both weights and baker's percentages.

Bakerpedia is a great resource for seeing the typical ranges used for various products, as well as offering example recipes in some cases. It's much more geared towards industrial/commercial baking, including the use of functional ingredients (additives), but I find that kind of stuff interesting too.

If you have a lot of money to spend, Modernist Bread by Francisco Migoya and Nathan Myhrvold is definitely interesting, informative, and the photography/graphics are as helpful as they are beautiful.

The main way I learnt is to convert recipes I liked/used into baker's percentages, and start to change them. You can find various ones online, but one thing that really helped me was creating a spreadsheet calculator.

I'm going to walk through how I first made my calculator, and hopefully that will show how all the maths actually works.

Recipe Template

This is the recipe for a lean dough, so I keep the name in the top left. The "weight per" is how much I want each loaf or roll to weigh. I can change the number of them, and it'll change the total weight in the recipe to match that. I input the bakers percentages under "percentage" and the formulae display the total percentage of the recipe, and the weights of each ingredient. I like to centre align calculated cells, and right align cells that I have to change.

Showing the Formulae

So how does this actually calculate the weights? You can see that the "Total" for percentages sum up all the percentages in the recipe, and for weight is multiplies the weight per by the number of. Why? Like I mentioned above, baker's percentages are like a ratio. If I know I want 100 grams of dough, and I want to figure out how much flour I need, I need to figure out how many grams each percentage is worth and multiply it by the percent of that ingredient.

100 / 168.40 = 0.5938 grams
0.5938 * 100 = 59.38 grams

You can see me doing this in one step for each weight, where I divide the total weight by the total percentage and multiply by the column to the left - the percentage for each ingredient.

You can make one of these for all of your recipes, and then you can change the weights or batch size very easily by just changing a number or two. As you start to experiment, you can keep a "main" template with lots of blank spaces to write what ingredients you want.

This is my own personal calculator, where I've added things like pre-ferment calculators, double hydration, offsets for water loss with evaporation, something that calculates the amount of vital wheat gluten depending on what protein I want, and checks/balances for seeing if all my flours add up to 100. I also have a vlookup table underneath that tells me the nutritional information for the ingredients I'm using. I also use cell colouring as a validation tool. You can see a screenshot of it here

I don't want to share this with the idea of you using mine, there are many things I'd change about it if I decided to start over, but hopefully it shows you the flexibility and customisability of making your own calculator.

One thing that this can't do is tell you how long to knead, how long to proof, how long to cook, what temps, et c. The only thing I can recommend for that is continuing to read and do other written recipes, until you get the intuition - although I still look up recipes similar to what I've written to double check things like cooking time!

In terms of how long to bulk/final proof, generally you'll get a feel for things like judging volume (if i'm not doing an open crumb bread, I like to proof in a large 2L jug to measure change in volume). For final proof I like to use the poke test, although you'd expect a poke test on baguette dough to spring back much more than you would on challah. You want more oven spring with baguette than challah, so understanding what the tests mean and reading through resources that explain those things are very useful.

I hope this has made sense, I'm not very experienced with long-form writing and trying to teach a topic like this, but I'm trying to lean into the tildes mindset.

I'm interested in hearing your stories.

• What are/were your symptoms like?
• Do you know how/when you were exposed?
• What was your timeline of events, including symptoms, testing, quarantining, etc.?
• Did it affect other aspects of your life (e.g. employment, relationships, etc.)?
• Have you fully recovered?
• What's something about your experience that you haven't seen a lot of mentions of elsewhere?

And of course, feel free to share anything else not asked in these questions.

If you personally have not had it but someone close to you has, feel free to share your experiences with that as well.

META: If this topic is better served in ~health.coronavirus feel free to move it!

Hello everyone!

Some of you may remember last years census. I did say I wanted to repeat it, and have decided to push the date forward, as last year a few people said that doing it in December at the end of the year probably wasn't the smartest choice, due to well, christmas and new year's eve and I totally agree. Wish I would've seen that earlier, but I guess I'm dumb lol. Summer may give us better stats because more people are on vacation any maybe check in more regularily. Or maybe there's also less people around because everyone's on vacation. Who fucking knows, I don't know. I don't know anything.

Anyway, just like last time, I'd like to organize a preliminary discussion about the census and what questions we should ask this community. As a reminder, this was the 2019 census.

Areas that I'd like to improve: Politics, mainly. The 8values test I think is good, but maybe there's something better out there. We could do it with the political compass and go full quadrant and r/politicalcompassmemes, but of course that's also not going to be very accurate. I honestly don't even know if there's a good solution to this problem.

Other than that, are there other questions you'd like to ask the community? Let's discuss!^{I hope someone replies or this is gonna be emberassing.}

With the incredible pace of automation and AI taking place across all sectors of our Global Economy, countries/governments/citizens need to start seriously thinking about how we can continue to survive when there are simply not enough jobs to be had. UBI is one option that countries have attempted to "beta test" with varying results. What is ~'s[sic] opinion on UBI and automation and AI "taking our jerbs"?

I think my son is the cutest six-month-old that has ever lived, but damn, this month has been so hard.

We all had COVID in the beginning of March, so my wife and I burned a bunch of sick days while being very ill, exhausted, and awake all night with a screaming baby. Screaming.

He got better for about 2 days and then immediately got a nasty cold which he kindly passed to us. More sick days, more screaming, less sleep than we got with COVID.

The cold turned into an ear infection after two weeks of horrible congestion, so his doctor put him on Amoxicillin. Except the Amoxicillin didn't work on the ear infection after 9 days of treatment. Oh, and he started having bloody diarrhea.

We went to the doctor immediately and they said, "Oh, yeah, that's definitely blood and that's not great. We're going to try a different antibiotic now and send his stool to get tested."

Then, my washing machine, which was full of diarrhea pajamas, broke down. After several hours of tear down, I was able to drain it and replace the drain pump.

Washing machine was working great, except the gasket/seal on the door is old and didn't go back on properly during the repair. Water on the floor (minor leak, no big) and now have to deal with replacing that.

Meanwhile, the kid still doesn't sleep at night and seems to communicate mainly through crying, whining, and grunting. The fact that he isn't babbling, squealing, or mimicking us is honestly a little stressful. He's six months old and I'm seeing him "become conscious" in a lot of really amazing ways. His laugh is absolutely incredible, he plays with toys in what seems like a pretty advanced way, he is crushing his physical and cognitive milestones way ahead of schedule, but he has a handful of social milestones he hasn't hit yet. My wife has autism in her family and I have ADHD, so any developmental delays are obviously pretty concerning to me. He is making eye contact and laughing though, so I guess that's good.

I really shouldn't complain. I'm a teacher and we just had a week off. Most people don't get that. But I'm so exhausted and work tomorrow just sounds daunting. We can't send the kiddo to daycare with bloody diarrhea and I seriously cannot take any more sick days this year. I guess one silver lining is that my mother-in-law came up from out of state when my wife told her she was losing her sanity over all of this. So, we do have a couple days of childcare covered this week.

Tl;Dr: Month from hell.

Edit: I'll add a positive. He was super funny and full of laughs today and yesterday during the day time (night time still isn't fun). He also seemed to get a little scared during the eclipse today during totality, and I think that's adorable in a way. He did a pouty whine and only stopped when I put him closer to me and let him see my face.

Anyone else want to share some war stories?

Since pretty much the beginning of the year, I've been searching on-and-off for something WFH-related, but it feels like the only thing that ever calls me back is something that either defines itself as 'contract work', requires cold calling or sales (which is insanely stressful and comes with those good 'ol CommissionsTM!), or lists as remote but is actually hybrid.

I'm fine with tech support, customer support, data entry-- I just don't want a job that has "make your own hours!" or shift bids or whatever. And yet, I never hear back from anything that isn't either pseudo-telemarketing or something else that relies on commission in order to actually justify a viable living.

And don't get me started on the website applications. What in the fuck is the point of Indeed if every single major company just asks me to apply on their site afterwards, anyway? I already have all of this information, along with about 60 of those proficiency tests that are supposed to get me noticed, already filled out on Indeed. And even if I download my Indeed profile as a resume and upload it to another site, if I'm lucky it'll pull my previous employer's name and my job title. But that still means filling in contact information, references, and the whole shebang of everything else.

I've also tried to find something local that's not Remote, but unless I want something super-mega-corporate, full-time seems to be out of the picture.

So anyone have any suggestions? What do I do at this point? Indeed feels like how most people describe Tinder if you're a straight man, or finding a D&D group if you're not a DM.

Oh, as an aside: About 50% of WFH jobs seem to be related to medical in some way, and all of those require someone who already has experience in medical data entry or something already. How does that work? Ditto insurance companies, I guess.

There are many tips or techniques that are strongly recommended for cooking, but it's hard to know which are evidence based and which are just passed along because that's what people always do.

Which are the tips that need more evidence?

Here are two that I struggle with, about stainless steel pans:

1. Water drop test / leidenfrost

People say that if you get your pan hot enough to get the leidenfrost effect and then add the oil you'll have less problems with sticking. My problem with this is that it means the pan gets very very hot - much hotter than it needs to be for most uses. My other problem is they all say "Look, I'll cook eggs and they won't stick" and those videos either have a ton of cuts, or the eggs stick and you can see the person pushing with a spatula to get rid of the stick, or their "scrambled eggs" is really a chopped omelette.

2. Heat the pan before adding oil. I don't understand this. Again, people say it helps prevent sticking, but they use some argument about "pores" which just feels hokey. I add cold oil to a cold pan and bring it up to temperature before adding food so the pan and oil are both at the right temperature, and food sticks and then releases, because that's how stainless pans work.

I'm aware I could be completely wrong here and that there may be a good evidence base for these, but they don't seem to work based on how I cook.

Last year (June 2022) I was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. I had surgery (which left me with a permanent stoma) and I had a bit of adjuvant chemo to kill off any remaining cells. I've been discharged from oncology, and I've started my 5 year surveillance. Staging is complicated but my I was pT3pN2bM0 (tumour was stage three, I had lots of lymph node involvement, but no metastasis).

Alongside that I've had problems with gall stones, starting in April 2022, and ending this year when my gall bladder was removed.

When I tell people about the cancer they pull on their serious face and say things like "oh no how awful hope you're okay glad to see you're doing so well now it's good news that you're in remission", and when I tell them about the gall bladder they're kind of baffled and not at all concerned.

But here's the thing: cancer was not such a big deal. I do have a permanent stoma, but for some reason my brain has disconnected that from being a cancer thing. I had a relatively gentle chemo regimen (short, and it was CAPOX which is less rough than other meds) -- don't get me wrong, chemo SUCKED, and left me with neuropathy in my feet, but I got through it. When I compare that to repeated[1] hospitalisation for cholangitis (a gall stone stuck in a bile duct causes bile to back up and that causes pretty severe problems), well, those repeated hospitalisations were a much bigger deal for me.

English NHS hospitals tend to have dorm wards. In the ward I was on there were 6 beds to a bay, and 5 bays to the ward, and then a further 6 or 7 single occupancy rooms. Some of the bays were smaller, and had 4 beds. Once the hospital was very full, so I spent a night in a bed (proper bed, not a trolley) but in the ward corridor. I spent over 60 days in hospital for the gall bladder stuff, and just 7 as an inpatient for the cancer. (And Sartre was right, hell is other people ).

There are lots of health forums online and I always feel deeply uncomfortable in the cancer forums. I feel okay in the ostomy forums[2], but I don't use them because they're all a bit odd.

I dunno what the point of this post is. Maybe it's "sometimes cancer is treatable and the person isn't particularly bothered by it", or maybe "people with cancer want support, but sometimes that support won't have anything to do with cancer".

[1] When a stone gets stuck they need to do some emergency work to stabilise you and remove the stone. And if you keep getting stones stuck they want to remove your gall bladder. There's some discussion about when to take the gall bladder out. Hypothetical Bob has a stone stuck - you stabilise him, so do you take the gall bladder out then (when he's still recovering) and then monitor him for a few days and discharge him home to fully recover? Or do you stabilise him, then discharge him home to recover, and call him back for planned surgery to remove the gall bladder? Evidence is inconclusive about which is best, so there's a bit of a lottery depending where you are in England. My local hospital took the later approach. The problem was that i) I had cancer, ii) My gall bladder was very active in kicking stones out and iii) we had several Covid pandemic waves causing huge disruption. These meant that by the time I had recovered enough to have the surgery, and they had a space on their surgical list for me, my gall bladder had kicked out another stone and that reset the whole thing again. They gave up this year and took my gallbladder out.

[2] Online health forums can have this really weird dynamic. English speaking forums are usually dominated by Americans, and Americans fall into 2 groups: 1) People with bad or no insurance and 2) People with good insurance. When someone says "I'm having this problem" the replies from the first group will all be along the lines of "go the the vet and buy this fish medicine" and the second group will be "here's a huge list of tests and products to use".

EDIT: I forgot to mention, I am in England, and so I am very fortunate because all treatment is free and a cancer diagnosis opens up quite a lot of support.

Do you love a good trail? Are you a hiker, backpacker, trail runner, or neighborhood saunterer? If so, this conversation is for you! Share your favorite routes, dream trips, the gear you love, where you find inspiration, or essential advice. Got any cool trips planned, in the near or distant future? Whether you’re a newbie or trail-tested veteran, share what you know!

I've been trying to set up a dev enviornment for Tildes, mainly so that I can actually test my MR (!136), and I've been running into a few issues.

However, since we also have a new influx of people who might be interested in contributing to Tildes, it seems like a good time to collect resources on setting up the dev environment, as well as helping anyone running into issues.

So, if you have issues or advice, post them here! I'll be adding my questions in a comment shortly.

Relevant wiki pages:

• Development / Initial Setup
• Development / General Development Info

Edit: A more recent post on setting up the dev environment on Apple Silicon / M1 Macs

I received my Steam Deck on June 6th and have used it literally every day since then. Here are some assorted thoughts that might be of value to people either waiting on theirs or on the fence about ordering:

The Good

• I had no idea until I got it that there's an official Deck test game: Aperture Desk Job. It's essentially a cute test/tutorial for the Deck's controls, set in the Portal universe. Takes about half an hour, but it's a fun onboarding for the device.
• On the past two Saturdays, I have woken up and played Vampire Survivors with one hand while I held my morning coffee in the other. This is the way.
• The control remapping options are absolutely incredible. It is a very robust system. Even simple fixes (like putting A on a back paddle so I can play Vampire Survivors one-handed) can make a world of difference.
• I haven't run many heavy games on it, but I started up Bugsnax, and it was keeping a solid 60 FPS and looked great.
• Emulation on the device is a dream. I haven't done anything past OG PlayStation games yet, but the power of the device, the robust control customization, and the ease of installing emulators (adding Flatpaks in desktop mode) make this absolutely ideal for revisiting older consoles. I've spent probably 80% of my time on the device in PSOne games.
• Battery life is fine, but I don't really use it. I bought a long power cord and spend most of the time with it plugged in on my couch since it has passthrough. I thought the cord sticking out the top of the device would bother me, but it hasn't really been an issue.
• Game selection is increasing steadily (1700+ verified games currently). If you're buying it to play specific games you might be disappointed, as there's still a lot that doesn't work. If you're buying it for games in general though, there is plenty to keep you occupied.
• The grips are MUCH more comfortable for bigger hands than standard Switch joycons. Those would always cramp my hands, but the Deck feels natural and comfortable.
• The middle of the device gets warm to the touch during gameplay, especially on more demanding stuff, but the grips remain cool and you won't feel the heat at all unless you specifically move your hands to the back middle of the device.

The Bad

• The paddles on the back are a little awkward, and I accidentally click them more than I like. In most games they're not mapped to anything so it's fine, but in emulators I use them for save states. I had to set them to respond to long presses only so my accidental clicks didn't mess things up.
• The software is... still getting there. I get navigation issues on store and profile pages frequently, along with frequent UI lag. It's a bit unpolished at the moment.
• Don't know if it's specific to my hardware or a software bug, but sometimes it won't log me in to my Friends list and the only fix is a reboot.
• I wish the control sticks had deeper indents for your thumbs. They're pretty flat, and my thumbs tend to slip off on stick-focused games (most noticeable on my right (aiming) thumb during 20 Minutes Till Dawn).
• Bluetooth headphones have to be manually reconnected in the Settings menu each time. No idea why this is, but it's a bit of an inconvenience.
• Mid-game suspending is still clunky. I don't really do it, as I don't trust that it'll save like it should. It also still counts playtime while suspended but seems to have a rollback feature? I put the device to sleep with a game open that I'd played for 20 minutes and came back to it saying I'd played it for 3 hours. The playtime ended up dropping back down to 20 minutes, but only after I restarted the device.

The Ugly

• There isn't any ugly. I absolutely love this device. Despite my nitpicks above, I think it's nothing short of splendid. I'm more excited about this than I've been about anything in videogaming in a long time.

If anyone has any questions, ask away! Also if any other people here have their Steam Decks and want to chime in with their experiences (@Autoxidation), go for it!

Posting this as a text post so that nobody has to go to Gab, but the source is here if you really want to. Full post copied below:

An update on "New Gab" and what to expect:

Progress on our new codebase is going well. For those who don't know, our plan is to fork existing open source software, Mastodon, which is based on the ActivityPub social networking protocol.

What does this mean in layman's terms?

• Gab will become an open source project, meaning developers from around the world can contribute the project and help us build.
• Gab will get several new features and PRO benefits, such as video uploading.
• You'll be able to log into and use dozens of existing mobile apps that exist on both App Stores with your Gab account and use Gab through these apps.
• We will be porting over all of your Gab posts, followers, etc to this new codebase.
• Gab will be getting a fresh paint job and be much more "user friendly." (See a mockup below, which isn't final.) Don't worry, it won't look anything like Mastodon (for those of you who know it is,) it will look like Gab.

What does the timeline look like for this going live?

At the moment we are working on building in Gab features that this open source social networking protocol does not currently have. Things like Gab Groups and editing. We are also finalizing a fresh redesign of the Gab interface. Once these two things are done, we will start porting over all existing Gab data. During this time we will invite Gabbers to beta test New Gab and give us feedback. Once Gabbers give us the go ahead we will finalize the transition and push it to Gab.com. All of these steps will occur over the next few weeks.

Why are you doing this?

• Moving Gab to open source brings transparency and additional help from developers in our community from around the world.
• Moving to the ActivityPub protocol as our base allows us to get into mobile App Stores without even having to submit and get approval of our own apps, whether Apple and Google like it or not.
• Ultimately we want to make Gab more user friendly, perform better, and be a product you all love. This will accomplish all of those things.

We are excited to share this with you and will have more information soon.

Thank you

This is a pretty interesting move by Gab. They had been kicked out of app stores, and like the post mentions, this will allow them to just piggyback on existing apps that work with Mastodon instead of needing their own. I saw at least one app dev say that they'd specifically block it from being used on Gab, but they probably won't all do that, and I'm sure they'll probably end up with some options.

People in the fediverse don't seem very happy about this overall, but it's probably also not a big deal. The main dev of Mastodon posted:

So Gab has decided that their own code that they spent $5M of investor money developing is so unsalvageably bad that they're going to use Mastodon's code instead, with the added bonus of leeching off of our apps (with Gab apps being banned from app stores)

This is an early warning to fellow admins to be vigilant and domain-block them on sight, when/if they appear (unconfirmed whether they intend to federate), and to app devs to consider if blocking Gab's domains from their app is necessary.

Remember that Gab is a sinking ship and they're basically grabbing onto Mastodon like a parasite in a desperate attempt to get attention from the "drama" of doing so.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/gab-is-in-full-meltdown-and-founder-andrew-torba-blames-the-deep-state

Torba has no self-awareness to see how pathetic it looks that his master race ass is incompetent at making a working website so he has to resort to using software made by a Jew instead.

App devs will block their domains, server admins will block their domains, and that'll be the end of that.

I have, at times, experienced that opinions I share online fails to win people over, to the extent that the essence of the thread transforms from that of an exchange of ideas into that of a shitstorm.

Curiously, this is seldom caused by me having controversial views. I’m not especially hateful, and I don’t hold any conservative core ideas, such as advocating for an even less equal society or attacking or belittling various minority groups. If it were just that, then there would be no mystery; my views horrible, and for that reason, they provoke a strong reaction. But despite this not being the case, my views, which are truly very civilised and boring indeed, are sometimes intepreted in interesting ways.

I think the issue is me not expressing myself as well as I could. Assuming this to be the case, what follow is my own notes on how to better get your (mine) ideas across without misunderstandings.

Beware of the shortcoming of contemporary writing

Most of todays readers do not read. Rather, they impatiently give the text a quick glimpse, their brain already craving the next bit of novelty. I've noticed this in myself when I impatiently select random random test when trying to get my brain to read a text online. What's more, those who write has begin taking into account that their audience does not read. This has spawned a peculiar writing style which, for the first time in history(?), is designed not to actually be read, but merely glimpsed through.

It mostly consist of short paragraphs.

Often just a single sentence.

Sometimes two sentences. Maybe three. Four sentences are considered the max.

To help readers easier skim through it.

Read more: How can you write web content that people can skim?

If actually read, it has a staccato-like feel.

Almost like free verse poetry.

There are other characteristica too.

• Scattering links throughout.
• Inserting “Read more about“ references to other articles.
• Inserting list such as this one.
• Adding heaps of headlines.

I guess pretty much everyone have seen this particular style, and, to some degree, adapted it themselves. So there is a tendency to naturally try to boil everything down to a single, ultra-short paragraph. However, human language is not computer code; trying to destill a deeper set of ideas down to a Xwitter-length sentence will inevitably cause its fragile essence to be lost in translation. There is a reason why books are the length of, well, books, and not just the SparkNotes summary thereoff.

To build upon this idea, note that most dog-whistles comes in the form of a single, short sentence, as the shortness, unlike computer code, make it vague, opening it up for multiple interpretations. Indeed, some dog whistles doesn’t contain any words at all, but consists of a single emoji, such as “milk” or “the OK sign”.

If you write about more elusive fluffy ideas, ideas where your angle runs the risk of being read the wrong way, your writing has to go all the way, fully exposing your point with absolute clarity. You have to show it from every angle to make your vision travel through the written words and into the mind of the reader.

Sleep on it

If you aren’t sure you got everything right, no rush. You can always wait a bit, and go over it later.

Don’t accidently target other users

Lets say that someone posts the notorious recipe “Chicken and ham extravaganta”, and say that they don’t think society should go vegan because a balanced diet is better than a green one. You just happen to have a bunch of replies to that. For one thing, flesh food is not traditionally balanced, but centered around the meat, with everything else being mere decoration. Also, there are lots of protein sources other than meat. But most importantly, the vegan movement is not about what is the most healthy diet, but about it being morally wrong to kill a sentient creature just to eat its meat.

But this is a general argument about veganism. If you write it as a reply to someone recomendinging a “Chicken and ham extravaganta”, you’re essentially calling them a bad person.

So don’t reply. If you want to push your point, at least wait a bit and then create a new post, so you don’t target a specific user.

Don’t drink and post

Nope. Just don’t.

Avoid provocateur headlines

I might have given this post the headline “How to speak honestly without being banned for misogyny, racism, transphobia, and fascism”, or maybe “I was banned and censored on tilde.net. Here’s my conclusions.” Headlines which are undeniably more juicy, more clickbaity, if you will. You can almost smell the raising adrenaline. Controversy! Read all about it!

To me, this is hard to resist, because I really love the aethetic of blatant, vulgar marketing. But it also tends to backfire more often than not.

Also, even if the actual content of my post is okay, people who have experienced racism or transphobia might not be super thrilled about me playing around with racism and transphobia in my headline. Saying something “jokingly” is still saying it.

As an aside, me being temporary banned and having my posts deleted was what inspired me to write this post. I don’t have anything much to say about this itself, other than I would have liked it if removed post had a line about the reason for removal, and I would also note that, if you get banned, the red text bleed into be backgrund in a way which is aestetically displeasing.

Diversity reading

You might try mentally test reading your post from the perspective of groups which play a role in the content of your post. After all, if you talk about someone, you should be able to say it to their face. Also, it is entirely possible that your post will be read by those you talk about.

Take the rules for being a good listener, then invert them

Listening is a skill which most people haven’t learned. So when you speak your mind, it is worth taking precautions for the likely scenario that your readers will not follow the rules for the optimal listener. So let’s try inverting the rules:

When listening to others, always give their view the most generous intepretation —> If your words can be interpreted as ignorant, biggoted, or fashy, they will be, always.

Truly listen to others and try to understand them before giving your answer —> Assume that people will skim through your post.

I want to point out that (in bold and uppercase just for the heck of it) I DON’T SAY THIS TO WHINE ABOUT BAD PEOPLE READING MY POSTS UNFAIRLY. Nope, absolute nope. My point is the exact opposite; I have a deeply held belief that any writer or author who is “misunderstood” could have avoided it by writing better. The writer should be expected to know his audience and know how to write in circles around any potential misintepretation.

Got that? Ok. Let’s look at what we can do to address those two issues.

If your words can be interpreted as ignorant, biggoted, or fashy, they will be, always.

When writing a post, I sometimes get the notion that something I write might be taken the wrong way. But then I forget about it, because I’m busy building a clever metaphor finding just the right word. And without fail, my post get misinterpreted in exactly that way I thought it would. So always listen to that little voice. In my experience, it is seldom wrong.

This is not just to avoid you getting trashed online. Another more important aspect which is typically overlooked, is that if your post can, somehow, be misinterpreted in horrible ways, it may also be read as such by people who truly hold those views, people who then sees you as an ally. You really don’t want that.

Sometimes it is a simple matter of changing your phrasing. Other times, directly stating what you do or do not believe is in order.

Assume that people will skim through your post.

While you can’t predict exactly how our post is going to be skimmed through, It is likely that they will have read your headline. So use that as leverage to push your most important points, or the general vibe of your post. Your first paragraph is likely to be read too. If your post is longer, you can also add subheaders with key info. You can also use the inverted pyramid structure, leading with the information any reader must know, followed by things which will grant them greater understanding, and ending with the interesting nice to know stuff.

This is what I got so far! If you got any advice of your own, please share!

Recently Lockheed Martin put out a post on social media [1] where they showed a silhouette of a yet-to-be-revealed aircraft. Most people seem to believe it will be the reveal of their entry to the NGAD program [2] (Next Generation Air Dominance).

While not much is publically known one interesting tidbit is how much it looks like the silhouette of the Testor Corp [3] F-19 [4] model that was released back in the mid 80s. Testor said at the time that the model was based on intelligence (aka leaks) of what would eventually become the F-117.

Aviation forums in the past have said F-19 model is what they WANTED the F-117 and it does look quite a bit like the Have Blue [5] test craft they built, however, the legend is that they couldn't get the math to work for radar deflection properly at that time due to lack of computational power and ended up with the geometrically simpler F117 design we got.

[1] Lockheed Martin Teaser: https://theaviationist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/LM-NGAD-story.jpg
[2] NGAD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Air_Dominance
[3] Testor F19: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testor_Corporation#F-19
[4] Testor F19 Image: https://test803.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/img_6712-1.jpg
[5] Have Blue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Have_Blue

Just tested it myself. Here’s the process that worked for me, in case anyone else needs a guide. No guarantees, of course, but hopefully it works for others too:

From Desktop Mode

Download the Battle.net installer
Add the installer as a non-Steam game
Change the installer settings in Steam to run with Proton Experimental
Run the installer
(tip: to make it easy to find the launcher in the next step, you can change the install path to be in your downloads folder instead of deep in the Proton path)

Once installed, exit the installer
Add the installed Battle.net Launcher.exe as a non-Steam game
Change the launcher settings in Steam to run it with Proton Experimental
Run the launcher
Log in
Install Diablo IV
(tip: uncheck the high res textures option which is on by default to save yourself about 40 GB of space)
Close launcher
(tip: if D4 is the only Bnet game you’re planning on playing, you can rename the launcher in Steam to Diablo IV)

From Gaming Mode

Launch the launcher
Click the Play button on Diablo IV
Enjoy!

Other Tips

During installation or the game, whenever you need a keyboard, press STEAM + X to call it up.

Occasionally, during installation or in the Launcher in game mode, my trackpad input would get wonky or stop responding. When this happens, hold the STEAM button down while using the trackpads, and they should work again.

Beyond that, the game automatically worked from me. It loaded low graphics settings (which are perfect for the Deck) and recognized my controller. It even opens with some accessibility settings before you start playing that lets you scale the font size up too, which makes it easier to read on the small screen.

I can’t say much about how the game actually plays as I really just did this to test if it works. I’ll be putting in my first actual time with the game tomorrow.

I'm wondering if there's anybody here who plays the original Doom/Doom II that might be interested to try some of the maps I've been working on. I primarily make maps for the first because I prefer the episodic format and theme progression. Having someone else to try your maps can help to identify issues that you may have overlooked during testing or refine clunky design. I've been trying a new approach where instead of working room by room, I sketch out a rough outline of the entire map flow in the editor and gradually fill in the details as I see opportunities to do something interesting with what I've got laid down.

I make maps in Doom Builder using GZDoom, so you'd need some form of Boom-compatible source port since I used a few generic linedefs for more complex map features (most common non-ZDoom ports I can think of like Zandorum have this). Generally I stick to old-school map styles without scripting and excessively-detailed architecture; think '94 WADs but better detail. Primarily I make singleplayer maps that are open to being modified to work in co-op.

Trying to get the mapping mojo back, so any help is appreciated!

EDIT: Here's the link for the map. It's E3M1 of Ultimate Doom.

I joined Tildes a couple of days ago, and I'm absolutely loving the interface and community.

In the last few days of using Tildes, I noticed a particular problem that was mildly annoying; if you have the "Collapse old comments when I return to a topic" setting on, and you click on a link that is supposed to lead to a comment in a topic you have already visited, it won't jump to that comment.

Searching around, I found a post about it from a day ago, in which long-time users have mentioned that it's been a known problem for a while now. In those comments, someone mentioned permalinks as a solution, but it appears that's still in the works.

For now, I've made a quick userscript that will address this issue (and adds some slight related functionality). It hasn't been thoroughly tested yet, so if any issues occur, please let me know. This userscript is designed to be used with Tampermonkey (a privacy-friendly alternate that should work is ViolentMonkey), which is available in all popular desktop browsers. Installation instructions for Tampermonkey are available on their site (it's installed like any other extension).

To install the script, you can head to this GitHub Gist which contains the code (click "Raw" to open the TamperMonkey install prompt), or you can copy and paste the code from the following dropdown block into a "New script" on the TamperMonkey dashboard. The dropdown is not guaranteed to contain the latest version.

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Tildes Comment Link Fix
// @namespace    https://gist.github.com/blankdvth/6da89fff580e8cf6e50f88847ddb5729
// @version      1.2.0
// @description  Fixes comment links (anchors) not working as a result of Tildes' comment collapsing feature.
// @author       blank_dvth
// @match        https://tildes.net/*
// @icon         https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?sz=64&domain=tildes.net
// @grant        none
// ==/UserScript==

/* 
    USER SETTINGS
    This script is not big enough to warrant a visual settings menu, so adjust settings here.
    true = enable, false = disable
*/
const alwaysRun_S = false; // If enabled, will always run the script, even if the comment was not collapsed (site works fine in this case). This is useful if you want to make use of the other settings.
const smoothScroll_S = false; // If enabled, will smoothly (animated) scroll to the comment. If disabled, will jump to the comment.
const uncollapseIndividual_S = true; // If enabled will uncollapse parent comments into one line instead of fully uncollapsing them.
const uncollapseChildren_S = true; // If enabled, will uncollapse all children of the comment. If disabled, will leave them collapsed.
const collapseIrrelevant_S = true; // The script uncollapses all parents to ensure the comment is visible. This will collapse irrelevant (not direct parent) comments again.
// END OF USER SETTINGS

/**
 * Uncollapses the comment if it is collapsed.
 * @param {HTMLElement} element Article element of the actual comment
 * @param {boolean} individual If true, will "uncollapse" into one line instead of fully uncollapsing
 * @returns {boolean} True if the comment was collapsed, false if it was not
 */
function uncollapse(element, individual = false) {
    if (element.nodeName !== "ARTICLE") return false;
    var removed = false;
    if (
        !individual &&
        element.classList.contains("is-comment-collapsed-individual")
    ) {
        element.classList.remove("is-comment-collapsed-individual");
        removed = true;
    }
    if (element.classList.contains("is-comment-collapsed")) {
        if (individual)
            element.classList.add("is-comment-collapsed-individual");
        element.classList.remove("is-comment-collapsed");
        removed = true;
    }
    return removed;
}

/**
 * Uncollapses all direct parents of the comment.
 * @param {HTMLElement} element Article element of the actual comment
 * @param {boolean} collapseIrrelevant If true, will collapse irrelevant comments again
 * @param {boolean} individual If true, will "uncollapse" into one line instead of fully uncollapsing
 * @returns {boolean} True if any parent was collapsed, false if none were
 */
function uncollapseParents(element, collapseIrrelevant, individual) {
    const relevant = []; // List of relevant elements (direct parents)
    var wasCollapsed = false; // Whether any parent was collapsed
    while (
        element.parentElement &&
        element.parentElement.nodeName !== "SECTION"
    ) {
        element = element.parentElement;
        relevant.push(element); // Add parent to relevant list
        if (uncollapse(element, individual)) wasCollapsed = true;
        // Collapse all irrelevant sibling comments (if feature enabled)
        if (collapseIrrelevant && element.nodeName === "ARTICLE") {
            element
                .querySelectorAll(
                    `article#${element.id} > ol.comment-tree > li.comment-tree-item > article:not(.is-comment-collapsed)`
                )
                .forEach((child) => {
                    if (!relevant.includes(child))
                        child.classList.add("is-comment-collapsed");
                });
        }
    }
    return wasCollapsed;
}

/**
 * Uncollapses all direct children of the comment.
 * @param {HTMLElement} element Article element of the actual comment
 */
function uncollapseChildren(element) {
    element
        .querySelectorAll("article.is-comment-collapsed article.is-comment-collapsed-individual")
        .forEach(uncollapse);
}

(function () {
    if (!location.hash.startsWith("#comment-")) return; // Not a comment hash
    const comment = document.getElementById(location.hash.substring(1)); // Get comment element
    if (!comment) return; // Comment does not exist
    // Uncollapse the comment itself, and it's parents, then perform other actions if needed/enabled
    if (
        uncollapse(comment) |
            uncollapseParents(
                comment,
                collapseIrrelevant_S,
                uncollapseIndividual_S
            ) ||
        alwaysRun_S
    ) {
        // Uncollapse all children (if feature enabled)
        if (uncollapseChildren_S) uncollapseChildren(comment);
        // Scroll to the comment
        if (smoothScroll_S) comment.scrollIntoView({ behavior: "smooth" });
        else comment.scrollIntoView();
    }
})();

I've seen a few posts about sharing issues, but I don't think anything about habits. I'm former "quantitative-self" hobbyist (if you want to call it that), keener and have a side interest in psychiatry. So in my personal life I'm very active and serious about my own short and long-term mental health. I'm wondering if anyone shares my habits or has others I have not considered. I wont link any literature because there is a lot out there to support most of these habits and I can't make this exhaustive (but I'm happy to help find specific resources).

Morning quiet time. I wake up early and spend about an hour drinking tea, looking outside and reading. The major benefit here is it gives me a buffer before the start of the day. I used to get up and rush out of the door - I would be stressed from the start and wouldn't have an idea of how to go about my day effectively.

Reading fiction. I used to read a lot more non-fiction (pop sci and "self-help") but I found with fiction (and also biographies) not only is it generally easier content to process, but the narratives can be therapeutic. There is something about getting exposed to other peoples thought processes (real or not) and overcoming of challenges that can be comforting or inspiring when facing your own.

Aerobic exercise. And also anything exhaustive - as in you gave it all of your energy. The general health benefits are obviously well established at this point. But, a subjective (AFAIK) experience of mine is the feeling of self-actualization - a sense of victory and fulfillment you can get almost anytime anywhere, and fairly frequently.

Regular social contact. Specifically AFK/face-to-face. This seems banal but it's really not. I make a serious active effort here - I think about who I haven't seen in a while, who I might feel like would complement or share my vibes right now or near future and make plans ASAP. This among the most important of my habits, or at least has the most therapeutic effect. Something about social interactions, even if they're just about talking shit, can be therapeutic and energizing. And this is coming from someone who is generally an introvert and would usually prefer to stay home.

Restrict social media. I probably don't need to explain this one. But I'll also add that, after following the advice of someone on Tildes (sorry I can't find the post!) limiting my news source to only the Current Events of Wikipedia has done wonders for me! I've stayed informed and have avoided the anxiety-inducing clusterfucks of newstainment. I group this with social media because they're so close nowadays (gossip?).

Meditation. Big one right here. I've been practicing for ~7 years now, and it's very noticeable when I skip a 20 min session a few days in a row - I become more agitated, short tempered and anxious (is depressed, but mainly just too focused on myself either way). Specifically "mindfulness" (loose term) or Vipassanā style (I use and highly recommend Waking Up). Style here is important because they all exercise different neural pathways. The product of this practice 1) being much more aware of what has emotionally triggered me and 2) being more able to let go/resolve of negative states of mind. E.g. instead of grinding my teeth with a negative thought train the past 3 hours I notice it's all petty within a moment or two and am able to move on and focus on my task at hand and later sleep soundly.

Psychedelics. Namely the tried-and-true classics. This one is finally getting the attention it deserves in the public domain. As opposed to the others which I do on a near-daily basis (aim for daily), psychedelic experiences I limit to only a handful of times per year because 1) it's work, it requires planning and a day or two off; 2) the positive/resolving effects last for months/years/lifetime; and 3) it requires integration with you baseline reality life to really be effective.
This one hands down has provided me the most benefit out of all and has inspired me to actively pursue everything above, especially meditation and social life. Specifically, it's the perspective you can get from a psychedelic experience that can be like years of therapy because it's all internally-motivated - you can get an objective perspective on you own life that no one else can offer and one you normally would not accept, especially if it's self-critical.
For best results I do this with close friends, at home and/or in nature - taking long walks by the river or woods. Sometimes quiet time at some point as well, to allow self-reflection, taking a moment for an honest review and check in.

One thing (amongst many) that always bothered me in my 6+ years of using Reddit was their lax rules about posting clickbait articles and straight up misinformation. In my opinion this was something that contributed to the rise of radical communities and echochambers in the website.

In this post I'll talk about Clickbait, Unreliable studies, and Misinformation. I'll give examples for each one and suggest a way to deal with it.

Clickbait-

Let's start with the most benign one. These days most big websites use clickbait and hyperbole to gain more traffic. It's something that they have to do in order to survive in today's media climate and I sort of understand. But I think that as a community in Tildes we should raise our standards and avoid posting any article that uses clickbait, instead directly link to the source that the article cites.

An example would be: An article titled "Life on Mars found: Scientists claim that they have found traces of life on the red planet".

But when you read the original source it only states that "Mars rover Curiosity has identified a variety of organic molecules" and that "These results do not give us any evidence of life,".
(This may be a bad/exaggrated example but I think it gets my point across.)

On Reddit the mods give these kinds of posts a "Misleading" tag. But the damage is already done, most of the users won't read the entire article or even the source, and instead will make comments based on the headline.
I personally think that these kinds of posts should be deleted even if they get a discussion going in the comments.

Unreliable studies-

This is a bit more serious than clickbait. It's something that I see the most in subjects of psychology, social science and futurism.
These are basically articles about studies that conclude a very interesting result, but when you dig a bit you find that the methodologies used to conduct the study were flawed and that the results are inconclusive.

An (real) example would be: "A new study finds that cutting your time on social media to 30 minutes a day reduces your risk of depression and loneliness"
Link: https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-instagram-snapchat-social-media-well-being-2018-11

At first glance this looks legit, I even agree with the results. But lets see how this study was conducted:

In the study, 143 undergraduate students were tested over the course of two semesters.

After three weeks, the students were asked questions to assess their mental health across seven different areas

Basically, their test group was 143 students, The test was only conducted for 6 months, and the results were self-reported.

Clearly, this is junk. This study doesn't show anything reliable. Yet still, it received a lot of upvotes on Reddit and there was a lot of discussion going. I only spotted 2-3 comments (at the bottom) mentioning that the study is unreliable.

Again, I think that posts with studies like this should be deleted regardless if there is a discussion going in the comments or not.

Misinformation-

This is in my opinion the biggest offender and the most dangerous one. It's something that I see in political subreddits (even the big ones like /r/politics and /r/worldnews). It's when an article straight up spreads misinformation both in the headline and in the content in order to incite outrage or paint a narrative.

Note: I will give an example that bashes a "left-leaning" article that is against Trump. I'm only doing this because I only read left-leaning to neutral articles and don't go near anything that is right-leaning. Because of this I don't have any examples of a right-leaning article spreading misinformation (I'm sure that there are a lot).

An example would be this article: "ADMINISTRATION ADMITS BORDER DEPLOYMENT WAS A $200 MILLION ELECTION STUNT"
Link: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/11/trump-troops-border-caravan-stunt

There are two lies here:

1. Trump administration did not admit to anything. (The article's use of the word 'Admit' is supposedly justified with 'They indirectly admitted to it'. I personally think this is a bad excuse.)
2. Most importantly, the 200 million figure is pure speculation. If you go to the older article that this article cites, the 200m figure comes from a speculation that the operation could cost up to 200m if the number of troops sent to the border is 15,000 and they stay there for more than 2 months.
   In reality the number of troops sent was 8,500 and they stayed for only a few days/weeks.

A few days after this article was published it turned out that the operation costed 70 million. Still a big sum, still ridiculous. But it's almost a third of what the article claimed.

The misinformation in this example is fairly benign. But I've seen countless other articles with even more outrageous claims that force a certain narrative. This is done by both sides of the political spectrum.

Not only do I think that we should delete these kinds of posts in Tildes, in my opinion we should black list websites that are frequent offenders of spreading misinformation.
Examples off the top of my head would be: Vanity Fair, Salon.com, of course far right websites like Fox News, Info Wars and Breitbart.
A good rule in my opinion would be: If three posts from a certain website get deleted for spreading misinformation, that website should be blacklisted from Tildes.

In conclusion:
I think we should set some rules against these problems while our community is still in the early stages. Right now I don't see any of these 3 problems on Tildes. But if we don't enforce rules against them, they will start to pop up the more users we gain.

I'll be happy to know your opinions and suggestions on the matter!

EDIT: With the help of @ducks the post now has illustrations to clear up the experimental set-up.

Introduction

I want to give an introduction on several physics topics at a level understandable to laypeople (high school level physics background). Making physics accessible to laypeople is a much discussed topic at universities. It can be very hard to translate the professional terms into a language understandable by people outside the field. So I will take this opportunity to challenge myself to (hopefully) create an understandable introduction to interesting topics in modern physics. To this end, I will take liberties in explaining things, and not always go for full scientific accuracy, while hopefully still getting the core concepts across. If a more in-depth explanation is wanted, please ask in the comments and I will do my best to answer.

Previous topics

Spintronics
Quantum Oscillations
Quantisation and spin, part 1

Today's topic

Today's topic will be a continuation of the topics discussed in my last post. So if you haven't, please read part 1 first (see link above). We will be sending particles through two Stern-Gerlach apparatuses and then we'll put the particles through three of them. We will discuss our observations and draw some very interesting conclusions from it on the quantum nature of our universe. Not bad for a single experiment that can be performed easily!

Rotating the Stern-Gerlach apparatus

We will start simple and rotate the set-up of the last post 90 degrees so that the magnets face left and right instead of up and down. Now let's think for a moment what we expect would happen if we sent silver atoms through this setup. Logically, there should not be in any difference in outcome if we rotate our experiment 90 degrees (neglecting gravity, whose strength is very low compared to the strength of the magnets). This is a core concept of physics, there are no "privileged" frames of reference in which the results would be more correct. So it is reasonable to assume that the atoms would split left and right in the same way they split up and down last time. This is indeed what happens when we perform the experiment. Great!

Two Stern-Gerlach apparatuses

Let's continue our discussion by chaining two Stern-Gerlach apparatuses together. The first apparatus will be oriented up-down, the second one left-right. We will be sending silver atoms with unknown spin through the first apparatus. As we learned in the previous post, this will cause them to separate into spin-up and spin-down states. Now we take only the spin-up silver atoms and send them into the second apparatus, which is rotated 90 degrees compared to the first one. Let's think for a moment what we expect would happen. It would be reasonable to assume that spin-left and spin-right would both appear 50% of the time, even if the silver atoms all have spin-up too. We don't really have a reason to assume a particle cannot both have spin up and spin right, or spin up and spin left. And indeed, once again we find a 50% split between spin-left and spin-right at the end of our second apparatus. Illustration here.

Three Stern-Gerlach apparatuses and a massive violation of common sense

So it would seem silver atoms have spin up or down as a property, and spin left or spin right as another property. Makes sense to me. To be sure, we take all the silver atoms that went up at the end of the first apparatus and right at the end of the second apparatus and send them through a third apparatus which is oriented up-down (so the same way as the first). Surely, all these atoms are spin-up so they will all come out up top again. We test this and find... a 50-50 split between up and down. Wait, what?

Remember that in the previous post I briefly mentioned that if you take two apparatuses who are both up-down oriented and send only the spin-up atoms through the second one they all come out up top again. So why now suddenly do they decide to split 50-50 again? We have to conclude that being forced to choose spin-left or spin-right causes the atoms to forget if they were spin-up or spin-down.

This result forces us to fundamentally reconsider how we describe the universe. We have to introduce the concepts of superposition and wave function collapse to be able to explain these results.

Superpositions, collapse and the meaning of observing in quantum physics

The way physicists make sense of the kind of behaviour described above is by saying the particles start out in a superposition; before the first experiment they are 50% in the up-state and 50% in the down-state at the same time. We can write this as 50%[spin up]+50%[spin down], and we call this a wave function. Once we send the particles through the first Stern-Gerlach apparatus each one will be forced to choose to exhibit spin-up or spin-down behaviour. At this point they are said to undergo (wave function) collapse; they are now in either the 100%[spin up] or 100%[spin down] state. This is the meaning of observing in quantum mechanics, once we interact with a property of an atom (or any particle, or even a cat) that is in a superposition this superposition is forced to collapse into a single definite state, in this case the property spin is in a superposition and upon observing is forced to collapse to spin up or spin down.

However, once we send our particles through the second apparatus, they are forced to collapse into 100%[spin left] or 100%[spin right]. As we saw above, this somehow also makes them go back into the 50%[spin up]+50%[spin down] state. The particles cannot collapse into both a definite [spin up] or [spin down] state and a definite [spin left] or [spin right] state. Knowing one precludes knowing the other. An illustration can be seen here.

This has far reaching consequences for how knowable our universe it. Even if we can perfectly describe the universe and everything in it, we still cannot know such simple things as whether a silver atom will go left or right in a magnetic field - if we know it would go up or down. It's not just that we aren't good enough at measuring, it's fundamentally unknowable. Our universe is inherently random.

Conclusion

In these two posts we have broken the laws of classical physics and were forced to create a whole new theory to describe how our universe works. We found out our universe is unknowable and inherently random. Even if we could know all the information of the state our universe is in right now, we still would not be able to track perfectly how our universe would evolve, due to the inherent chance that is baked into it.

Next time

Well that was quite mind-blowing. Next time I might discuss fermions vs bosons, two types of particles that classify all (normal) matter in the universe and that have wildly different properties. But first @ducks will take over this series for a few posts and talk about classical physics and engineering.

Feedback

As always, please feel free to ask for clarification and give me feedback on which parts of the post could me made clearer. Feel free to discuss the implications for humanity to exist in a universe that is inherently random and unknowable.

Addendum

Observant readers might argue that in this particular case we could just as well have described spin as a simple property that will align itself to the magnets. However, we find the same type of behaviour happens with angles other than 90 degrees. Say the second apparatus is at an angle phi to the first apparatus, then the chance of the particles deflecting one way is cos^2(phi/2)[up] and sin^2(phi/2)[down]. So even if there's only a 1 degree difference between the two apparatuses, there's still a chance that the spin will come out 89 degrees rotated rather than 1 degree rotated.

About this one: https://tildes.net/~news/19bm/regional_news_thread

First of all I want to thank everyone who participated and gave it a shot despite the weird setup, and apologize for ghosting the meta-discussion about it. Y'all have many suggestions which convinced me that my original idea was flawed.

For one, I agree with Algernon_Asimov that splitting into a separate 'US-local news' and 'non-US global news' would have made more sense. If there's a next round, I think I'd focus on US states first, then non-US countries in another thread. But before that I want to get some feedback to make sure.

Do you think general news threads like that are necessary?

Algernon_Asimov said that news should just be posted directly to the frontpage to be more visible.

spit-evil-olive-tips made a point about the distinction between local news of general interests vs. local news of local interests, and the latter could benefit from having dedicated threads.

For me, I believe megathreads are fine as long as they're optional. In my experience, people do sometimes prefer to post in comments instead of as full topics. As long as people are free to choose either way (which is different than on Reddit where if there's a megathread then posts outside it got removed), overall we should end up with more activity not less.

Does the comment-to-comment format make sense?

In my head I imagine that to be a natural way to generate location-based grouping, but I could see the convoluted setup might be confusing and unenforceable. One the one hand, if each location only has 1 post then the extra step is unnecessary. On the other hand, if there are multiple locations, each with multiple posts then trying to find your regions of interest would be a pain.

Is the scope of the thread too broad?

This was a point made by skybrian here, which was in the context of the original thread being both US and non-US. But even if we divided them into separate US and non-US, are they still too broad?

Having one thread for each location is probably the most natural way, I fear that currently that would ended up being too niche. This was touched on by merry-cherry here as well. I could imagine that would work for a US state (which ever has the most people here) but since no one tried it yet, it's hard to know which states are most likely to succeed. And we probably shouldn't just make one each for all them (which would fill the entire frontpage with nothing but state names).

Should these threads be news-focused?

While that was my original goal, maybe megathreads could be more useful if they fills the needs of the people posting in it rather than just the one starting it. Usually that requires guesswork by the poster but since I'm already asking, might as well.

For the US-local thread, if the goal is to serve as testing grounds to see whether there's enough activity to make the case for local groups, maybe news is not necessarily the most popular when it comes to local content? If anyone support this direction, please share some examples of what types of content you'd like the most when visiting local groups. If you do, please also rank them in order of importance. That way the scope of the thread could be made to focus on the most needed activity as starter.

For the non-US global thread, do you still want dedicated global news? If so how should we set it apart from just regular posting? boxer_dogs_dance mentioned r/anime_titties being quite high quality for global news, any lessons we can adopt from them?

Digging around and I found this post asking about how to do cultural exchange on Tildes, maybe shifting the focus from global news to this might be more fruitful? (people are probably more willing to share nice things about their country than drama). Each subthread can be something like this Turkey Information Thread, or something else maybe.

Should they be recurring?

News probably make sense as recurring, others depend. Since this is still in trial whatever arrangement we agree on, I'll probably just make one and see from there.

Anything else you want to let me know (like maybe don't do this anymore haha), shoot away. Also it's not like I'm an official thread maker or anything, if any of y'all have your own take, go for it! The more people trying out stuff the better.

Edit: Formatting by the generous PetitPrince.

† shared between CPU and GPU; exact memory access scheme unspecified
†† ~2.5 hrs at rated 15W APU power draw; also consider SSD, screen, controls, WiFi, etc.

7nm process

This APU is probably on the exact same TSMC process node as the Ryzen 7 4800U.

CPU cores

Half the cores; worse multithreading performance. More power for the GPU†.

† power management features probably do this in practice.

Overall this shouldn't matter much. Maybe impacts people who compress game files or want to use the Steam Deck for things other than gaming.

CPU clock speeds

A somewhat low max boost. Probably from power and thermal considerations. Is it the sustained max boost? With just the CPU? How about max GPU? Can it clock higher when docked?

A surprisingly high minimum clock. I hope it can clock lower than 2.4GHz.

Overall, this is subject to power and thermal limitations and management. Needs to be tested by a trusted third party. I am hopeful that as a handheld PC, we can adjust clocks and boosting behavior. These behaviors may be different on Linux compared to Windows.

CPU cache

Unspecified, I expect 8MB from AMD but we could see 4-6 as a cost and power saving measure.

GPU

Docked performance will likely be held back by the 8 CUs.

The clock speeds look good, about what was expected. Same goes for sustained boost as for the CPU boost.

By implementing the Radeon RX Vega 8 on 7nm, the process improvement gains have already been realized. Additionally, I speculate that AMD has had ample opportunity for some under the hood improvements to the aging microarchitecture. Some benchmarks found it to be 30-40% faster than an RX Vega 10 (a larger GPU) on the older process node. However, the clock speeds were twice as high compared to the RX Vega 10. Consider also that the 15W laptop was pulling ~48 watts.

Since it becomes difficult for me to speculate on GPU microarchitectural improvements, I will consider the APU's 8 CU RDNA 2 GPU to have comparable performance to the Ryzen 7 4800U's Radeon RX Vega 8.

This is mostly for convenience. It may be realistic to expect somewhat lower performance because the handheld Steam Deck APU is unlikely to be allowed to pull more than 20~25 watts. More on this in the battery life section.

By far the most significant improvements from the RDNA 2 GPU, in my mind, stem from the latest GPU features; modern video decoding, Vulkan features, mesh shading, and more. Also, being the same microarchitecture that console developers will be targeting.

Feel free to substitute your own speculative performance, but please don't let hype bias your expectations, and be careful when seeking out benchmarks.

APU power draw

4 watts is pretty clearly the minimum idling draw seen in windows laptops with Zen 2 CPUs.

Unfortunately this is high compared to ARM CPUs. It may also be subject to the level of optimizations done on the firmware and the custom Linux distribution. People willing to roll their own might be able to get this lower? It would require getting your hands dirty, and don't bank on it. I'll be happy if Valve actually gets idling consistently down to 4 watts.

As for 15 watts, it is pretty clear that commonly shared expectations of the hardware are not tailored for this rated power draw. People are expecting performance that comes with 40-80 watts. I expect the APU to draw as high as 20~25 watts in certain circumstances, but this is speculation, and cannot be verified until Steam Decks are in the hands of trusted third party reviewers such as Gamer's Nexus.

And make no mistake, drawing anything over 15 watts in the APU will have battery life implications, which I will cover later.

RAM

If there is anything I am allowing to build my expectations, it is probably this. To my knowledge, we haven't much seen LPDDR5 in devices yet, so there is some novelty and some unknowns.

Compared to DDR4/LPDDR4, even this reduced speed (saving more power btw) LPDDR5 memory will be faster, finally reaching something similar to dedicated GDDR memory speeds on older budget discrete mobile graphics cards. It has plenty of new power saving features, and should generally draw less power anyway.

But let me be clear on what it isn't; it is not GDDR5, and it is not GDDR6 as seen in the Xbox Series X or S. Please do not confuse these. I have seen people refer to it as all kinds of things. IT IS NOT GDDR, IT IS NOT LPDDR4, IT IS NOT LPDDR6.

Okay. With that out of the way, the other half of this that has me tentatively hopeful is the listed 128-bit quad channel memory. I am not qualified to speak on the nature of memory accesses and on memory channels, but generally, this should be responsible for the memory bus bandwidth to approach that of budget discrete graphics cards.

Hopefully this improves the GPU performance significantly.

Also, while I initially assumed 16 GB of RAM was such overkill for the target resolutions that it could only be to pander to the PC gaming crowd which would identify the gratuitous RAM with a premium product, I speculate it was just a byproduct of having four memory packages for quad channel. I'm guessing the smallest packages LPDDR5 came in was 4 GB. Anyway, I might be wrong on this account, and it doesn't much matter; there is more than enough RAM, faster I believe than any older APU already on the market (we aren't counting the consoles okay), and it should save power all the while.

Considering people would still be buying the Steam Deck regardless, I say well done Valve, even if it was required to hit performance targets or actually a financial boon behind the curtain.

Storage

At first I was upset the base model was eMMC rather than an NVMe SSD, given how cheap 64/128 GB SSDs are in bulk. On second consideration, it makes a lot of sense.

I speculate that at best, the base model has an extremely narrow profit margin. Even a cheap SSD might eat into that. But even more, eMMC should be more than enough for anyone intending to use the Steam Deck primarily for 2D games and emulation, which is historically a staple segment of the handheld market. These are the games that will also be happy on a microSD.

In this way, there is some product segmentation for the mid and high tier models, which are making money on the storage.

I personally have placed a reservation for the base model, although I intend to upgrade the storage myself. However, it is difficult to obtain benchmarks of power draw for m.2 SSDs of this size beyond "less than bigger NVMe drives because fewer chips and no DDR4 cache probably", so it might not be an advisable tradeoff to anyone but the budget conscious and those seeking a full 1TB fast NVMe storage.

Speaking of power, my limited findings are suggesting ~3.5W power draw from appropriate m.2 NVMe SSDs, meaning the eMMC model may also deliver the best battery life (even before accounting for less demanding titles). That is probably the listed 8 hours.

Keep in mind I don't know much about the power draw of eMMC, and the power management differences between eMMC and NVMe.

One last thing; Microsoft promised optimized games for the Series S that would have reduced asset sizes for the reduced storage. A promise it appears they haven't been able to deliver on. However, this is a very good idea and I would be THRILLED if Valve was able to wrangle a user selection of asset quality when downloading games. Some PC games have higher quality assets as DLC, and generally as a handheld PC we have some ability to do this manually. Compressing game files might also be an avenue?

Battery life

Everyone looks for different things in a product. So far I've tried to provide a relatively practical, unbiased take on the Steam Deck's listed specs, leaving it up to readers to decide what they care about.

But if you saw the Steam Deck and a short battery life never once crossed your mind, it probably isn't a concern for you. I don't know what your usecase is; maybe permanently docked, perhaps just keeping it around the house. It doesn't really matter, and I think the Steam Deck is a particularly solid value for you in particular.

It is pretty easy to do a battery life calculation. So everyone should do so with their own speculations on the total system power draw, when gaming, idling, etc. Things to account for are the APU, screen, WiFi, SSD, RAM, and so on.

I figure something like 1.5 < x < 2.5 hours for full fat gaming. I probably should have watched the video (holy cow can you believe I'm going to post this whole essay without watching the video!?) but I believe 6 hours 30 fps was thrown around, so that should be the upper limit possible for general gaming and optimized titles. I'm pretty confident the 8 hours is a best case scenario only on the eMMC model running 2D or generally less demanding games.

The math here is simple so make up your own mind!

Lastly, with a PC we have some wiggle room to optimize settings and we can also destroy battery life I'm sure. So remember, frame limits are your friend on a 60 hz screen, and on mobile devices in general. Also, reducing settings possibly. It really goes against my nature as a PC gamer though, considering I play Skyrim with an ENB on a GTX 660M. At a stuttery 10~15 fps. Yeah, sometimes a stable 30 fps is the way to go, but I'm a hypocrite who just can't wait to run 1080p and downscale to remove jaggies!

Weight

I wasn't sure if I should include this, as I am skipping other things like the microSD card slot (other than that I genuinely would have preferred a regular SD card slot so I could emulate having game cartridges; actually, I need to look up splitting game files across onboard and removable storage).

Still, it deserves a mention; I have no clue if it will be too heavy for me. I suspect going from the Switch to the Steck will be frustrating, although some have pointed out that the placement of buttons and joysticks will make it easier to rest it while playing. Also I'mma just call it the Steck from now on, my apologies.

Overall, it looks bulky and heavy and might be a pain to tote around. But modding makes this worth it for me personally.

Actual Performance Numbers Please, or APNP

I am now realizing this is way too long, and I'm spiraling out of control; there's no way I can edit all this! How long has it been since I've slept? Did I eat yet today? I will be downvoted to Oblivion for posting something this unwieldy and unreadable!

Oh well. Before I loose consciousness, I pretty much expect 1280x800 30fps on all titles. Doesn't that seem too low? But there are overheads that go into running unoptimized PC ports of games on Linux, and frankly while Proton does great things, I'm mostly familiar with it on a desktop. What is the experience with a power budget? The Radeon RX 8 struggles with 1080p on some titles; will the Steck be able to hit 1080p 30fps on all titles, let alone 60fps?

Anyway, I've made my base expectations. I personally anticipate for 1280x800 60fps for all titles, albiet at a limited battery life, but I don't think we can take it for granted. Docked performance, remains to be seen. 1080p 30fps seems realistic. Basically my clunky 11lb gaming laptop from 2012 with the GTX 660M, but with waaay more RAM and a tenth of the power draw. In a handheld.

Freesync

I don't think the display supports freesync or, as I've seen some people say, Valve would advertise that. Seems strange given the market, and if expertly implemented could potentially let the display downclock way down when appropriate. To tired to check, but possibly could be implemented down the line? That means NOT a feature, unless it is on the box when you are paying BTW.

Wow, I Can't Believe FlippantGod Won't Shut Up

The price is right, folks, but please don't pretend that this will double as a serious VR rig. That isn't the sort of thing you speculate on before a console is even released and benchmarked by trusted third parties.

What do y'all think of my expectations? Too low? Too high? Any interesting morsels I may have missed? And lastly, will Reddit eat me alive if I post this there? Willing to take any and all criticisms when I wake up! And hey, if someone high up on the Tildes social ladder wants to tag this "Steck", I will forever be in your debt. I am much too scared to do so myself.

Inspired by this comment, and thinking about how we today look back on (for example) segregation, or the treatment of homosexuals through the last 100 years.
In the year 2120 what do you think human society will look back on and be disgusted to think about?

The big one for me I think will be the treatment of animals, and not just battery farming, but straight up growing them for slaughter: food, clothes, lab-testing, etc. With the nascent industry of 3d-printed/lab-grown meats gaining traction, as well as vegan and vegetarianism on the rise through much of the West, it's not hard to imagine our great-grandchildren being horrified at the thought of their ancestors raising animals just to kill them.

Decided I'd post a text post and provide links to all the content, since there's so much and it's all quite diverse. I'll update this post throughout the day with more content:

• NASA Press Release: NASA Astronauts Launch from America in Historic Test Flight of SpaceX Crew Dragon
• Live stream & launch video, courtesy SpaceX & NASA. This is going to be live all the way through to docking with the ISS.
• NASA Spaceflight (Good resource, quite in-depth): SpaceX Dragon’s historic launch dodges weather to launch and end the gap
• SpaceNews: Crew Dragon in orbit after historic launch, by Jeff Foust
• The Verge: A cute stuffed dinosaur hitched a ride on SpaceX’s historic launch
• The Verge: Watch NASA astronauts fly SpaceX’s Crew Dragon using touchscreens

Getting to that age that I know my hearing is declining and I have steady tinnitus, which I'm pretty used to already. Conversation in a quiet room is no problem but in a busy restaurant I have to concentrate and strain to pick up what's being said. I can tell I have to play things a bit louder than I used to. I'm delaying going to an audiologist for a test out of anxiety that I'll have to get hearing aids.

Which makes me wonder what they're really like - How does using them change your hearing? Do you get back the crisp highs and lows in music? Is conversation in a noisy place easier? How much maintenance do they require?

I have lost my r/finch community, and am feeling curious to see if there are any folks here who also find apps can be helpful for their mental health.

I struggle with anxiety and am processing a lot of grief, and may or may not have ADHD (I am in the process of getting tested, but it takes a while). My experiences with therapy are a bit mixed, so I am currently going down the route of trying to DIY my wellness a little. Starting simple with things like, sleep more, try to focus on drinking enough, go out in nature, switching off podcasts and phones and reading more. It's actually helped me, bit by bit.

One of my 'tools' is an app called finch, a virtual pet that encourages you to set goals, check in how you are feeling, journal, do mindful breathing and such. I tried many things and this app is the one that stuck and actually works.

Just wanted to ask, do any others here use wellness apps? And have they worked for you? Which do you recommend?

Just to be clear, I mean apps that work as a stand alone solution, rather than apps like 'better help' which ultimately just connect you to a therapist. Although Better Help has its uses too!

After reviewing all the beginner friendly tags on the GitLab and figuring out easy answers the hard way, I finally made my first merge request for issue #700 to an open-source project! It isn't much, and probably took me 10x the amount of time it would take for someone who knows what they are doing, and it probably has some issues that needs to be worked out (although I tried to test as thoroughly as possible), I still submitted it. Even if it doesn't get accepted, I'm sure if someone wants to pick up my pieces, they can do so and build out this functionality in a better way.

I just wanted to share and put it out there that you don't have to be a master programmer to make contributions to this site))

I figured it'll be easiest to consolidate discussion of all these in one place. As you find more good, thoughtful ones feel free to comment it and I'll edit them into this list.

Overall impressions seem very positive. LTT, in particular, tends to be pretty comfortable being critical of Apple and even he seems impressed (though I think his is the only review that doesn't have a hands-on component.

The Bloggers:

Daring Fireball: https://daringfireball.net/2023/06/first_impressions_of_vision_pro_and_visionos
Nilay Patel: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/5/23750003/apple-vision-pro-hands-on-the-best-headset-demo-ever

The Vloggers:

iJustine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtCEGztr8cw
MKBHD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFvXuyITwBI&t=917s
Linus Tech Tips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqB0lUcqFbA
Snazzy Labs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUblFIaZKIk
Norman Chan (via Adam Savage Tested): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0HBzePUmZ0