Akir's recent activity
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Comment on What small thing made a big impact on you? in ~talk
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Comment on What small thing made a big impact on you? in ~talk
Akir (edited )LinkThis won't be a long story, mostly because I've forgotten the details, but it's actually something that I think had a major effect on my overall personality. Some time in my Junior year in high...This won't be a long story, mostly because I've forgotten the details, but it's actually something that I think had a major effect on my overall personality.
Some time in my Junior year in high school, I had a particularly bad time with my father in the morning and I arrived to my first class late and an emotional wreck, so much that I broke down crying in the middle of class and had to leave. Two students who were taking the class came out and checked in on me, listened to my story, and commiserated with me.
That's the whole story. I don't even know who they were. I might have known who they were but I had too many tears to even see them. They couldn't save me from the hell that I was living in - my childhood was the worst period in my life by miles and miles - but they listened and that was a great source of comfort. I didn't have a lot of friends at the time so maybe the fact that they were practically strangers actually made their attempt at comforting more impactful.
It ended up teaching me the power of compassion. I was a very misanthropic kid, and if this didn't happen to me the chance I would have become a libertarian and fall to the right would have been significantly higher. If someone's having a bad time, you don't have to know who they are to have a huge impact in their life. Just being there for someone can have a huge effect on someone's life. And now I strive to be that person.
Now that I think about it, I think being nice to someone I dated who was having a bad day is probably the reason why I ended up marrying them....
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Comment on Razzie Awards nominations: ‘Snow White,’ Ice Cube-starring ‘War of the Worlds’ lead with six nods each in ~movies
Akir LinkI'm honestly kind of surprised to see Snow White on the same level as War of the Worlds. Aren't the razzies supposed to be for bad movies? Snow White wasn't really bad, it was just boring (which,...I'm honestly kind of surprised to see Snow White on the same level as War of the Worlds. Aren't the razzies supposed to be for bad movies? Snow White wasn't really bad, it was just boring (which, honestly, is probably a worse thing for a movie to be).
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Comment on Why America needs fewer bus stops in ~transport
Akir Link ParentI get you now. My problem with the writing was that it seemed like he was making having fewer stops the singular answer to the problem of American public transportation. It might help some places,...I get you now. My problem with the writing was that it seemed like he was making having fewer stops the singular answer to the problem of American public transportation. It might help some places, but even with the amount of people who live in those places, it's still a pretty small portion of the whole.
To be clear, when I was talking about BRT lanes becoming regular traffic lanes, I meant to say that it was primarily happening during the early stages before the BRT opens. When the will to open a dedicated bus lane boils over, it's really easy for people to say "Hey, why don't we relieve traffic congestion by opening it to cars?" It does happen to running lines as well, but I'm only aware of one example where it was for an experimental semi-autonomous vehicle.
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Comment on A global explosion of absurdly spicy foods in ~food
Akir Link ParentI previously thought that szchuan peppercorn was banned or at least rare, but it turns out the reason why it’s so hard to find, even in Asian markets, is that for whatever reason it’s being sold...I previously thought that szchuan peppercorn was banned or at least rare, but it turns out the reason why it’s so hard to find, even in Asian markets, is that for whatever reason it’s being sold as “prickly ash”.
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Comment on Sony’s TV business is being taken over by TCL in ~tech
Akir Link ParentTo be fair, Sony had long stopped manufacturing the actual displays in their TVs. AFAIK, Sony has been buying the majority, if not all, of their displays from LG, which is something of a losing...To be fair, Sony had long stopped manufacturing the actual displays in their TVs. AFAIK, Sony has been buying the majority, if not all, of their displays from LG, which is something of a losing proposition when LG itself is one of the world's largest manufacturer of finished consumer televisions sets.
The point of buying a Sony TV over the others, though, was the far better design of their accessory components. Sony had one of the best upscalers, for instance, so your old media would look just a bit better on theirs than their competition with the same exact panel. Sony also never really stopped making a minimum baseline of quality for their remote controls, with all of the ones I've seen actually having all the buttons you'd expect of a TV remote. Their software was also better and they tend to behave better as a system than most manufactuers do: my Sony TV is the only one I've ever owned that actually handles CEC correctly.
TCL seems to be a fairly decent company as far as I'm aware, but my only experience with them was their very low end which I purchased for my dying grandmother. Who knows how much of the Sony "sauce" will survive?
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Comment on Does anyone else find CBS News particularly stressful? in ~tv
Akir Link ParentThe Weiss thing is a fairly new development. But that being said, I have noticed that traditional news outlets generally have been leaning farther and farther right in more recent years,...The Weiss thing is a fairly new development. But that being said, I have noticed that traditional news outlets generally have been leaning farther and farther right in more recent years, presumably in the attempt to appear to be "balanced".
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Comment on Why America needs fewer bus stops in ~transport
Akir Link ParentI feel like you ignored my reasoning entirely. Las Vegas has spacing that is roughly the same as the most sparsely spaced European cities and the service is abysmal. So obviously things are more...I feel like you ignored my reasoning entirely. Las Vegas has spacing that is roughly the same as the most sparsely spaced European cities and the service is abysmal. So obviously things are more complicated than just stop spacing! Did you notice that roughly 2/3rds of the cities in that graph are within the same range as European cities?
A bigger problem with their analysis is the use of the word “America”. The problem is not with the country, it’s with a very small subset of America overall, and if we were talking about it by coverage it would be statistically insignificant. As bad as the service in Las Vegas was, the vast majority of the country has even worse bus service even with very few bus stops. I wrote in another comment that if I wanted to take the bus near my home, the nearest stop is a 1.6 mile walk, and I’m in a suburb. So while too many bus stops might be a problem in some metro areas, there are far more problems that need to be handled which are universal across the country.
Another thing that I feel like the author is missing is that busses tend to be a different experience in the US, which others have been talking about; busses in the US are essentially the thing you take if you are too poor to afford a car, not the thing that affords you to not need to buy one. This is the fundamental problem that causes bus service to be bad. Busses are shoehorned into a system made for cars, and drivers hate big slow busses that slow down traffic in that lane. This is combined with the double whammy of cities built for cars, which has places separated with lots of space and is generally hostile to pedestrians. If people hate or are scared off walking, they sure as hell aren’t taking the bus. And if people aren’t taking the bus, why improve service?
Also note that I said “like tramways”; is BRT not like a tramway? BRTs are fine. The only problem is that they have the tendency in America to lose their importance over time to eventually become car lanes, which is why tramways are more preferable here, since they aren’t just another road lane.
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Comment on Does anyone else find CBS News particularly stressful? in ~tv
Akir LinkCBS news is garbage now. The parent company got bought by the Ellison family, of Oracle fame, and their move with the news branch was to install Bari Weiss as editor in chief, a right wing nutjob...- Exemplary
CBS news is garbage now. The parent company got bought by the Ellison family, of Oracle fame, and their move with the news branch was to install Bari Weiss as editor in chief, a right wing nutjob who happens to do a better job of sanewashing than most. You are probably better off getting news off of Instagram these days.
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Comment on Why America needs fewer bus stops in ~transport
Akir Link ParentFor sure! I responded to this with my experience in Las Vegas, but truth is that my current living situation has even worse public transit. I just mapped out what route I would have to take if I...For sure! I responded to this with my experience in Las Vegas, but truth is that my current living situation has even worse public transit. I just mapped out what route I would have to take if I wanted to take public transport to a nearby university, and it would start with a 1.6 mile walk to the nearest bus stop. And to make things worse, literally one minute after plotting the course, I got an update that the bus was going to be 23 minutes late. On a service that is supposed to arrive every 30 minutes, no less.
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Comment on Why America needs fewer bus stops in ~transport
Akir LinkThis article seems strangely out of touch to me. Given the mixture of meters and miles, I assume they come from outside of the country (and as a side note, the fact that they kept mixing the units...This article seems strangely out of touch to me. Given the mixture of meters and miles, I assume they come from outside of the country (and as a side note, the fact that they kept mixing the units made it extremely difficult to understand to me).
The majority of time I have had to deal with busses was in Las Vegas, which by their own graph has station spacing that is on the far end of European countries. And bus service in Las Vegas is absolutely terrible. If you had to go anywhere that was not on the street you were on, then your trip would take an hour and a half seemingly regardless of where you were going. And before you say "maybe people should walk more", it's a fucking desert that is unbearable to be outside for the majority of the year.
On the other hand, if you were trying to take the bus on the Strip, you had the easiest time of all. There are actually multiple concurrant bus lines that go through it - at one time it even had an express bus line that would skip stops, though as of the last time I was there It didn't appear to be there anymore. Stops are also very frequent in that area and the busses that service the strip-specific line are double-decker and have frequent service because there's a lot of ridership. It's faster to take the bus than walking if you're going any reasonable distance even though Las Vegas Boulevard is one of the worst, most congested streets I've ever come across (seriously - it should be paved and left to pedestrians). Things are great for tourists but for people who actually live in the area have a very different experience.
By far, the biggest problem with bus service is not that there are too many stops. Reducing stops just makes the bus service less accessable. There may be improvements to be had in some places, sure, but that's the cowardly "we'll take what we can get" answer that just eventually leads to less service and worse outcomes.
The real problem with bus service is always the same thing: they're busses. They have to share the street with traffic, full of cars that almost universally hate busses and will always try to pass and cut them off. Even though they are holding far more people than cars, they have the same priority at intersections, so they're waiting around for the lights all the same. But actually they're more likely to hit them because they have to move slowly.
There are many ways to fix these problems, such as having bus lanes and bus priority signalling. But these are expensive, and worse - they have the appearance of inconveniencing drivers, which makes them unpopular. So they simply don't happen.
And this is without talking about some of the other also-important parts of American public transportation, such as extremely poor quality rail options for long-distance travel. We're also ignoring the fact that busses themselves are kind of a bad idea compared to how much better things can be if we were to install something like tramway lines which don't have to deal with car traffic at all.
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Comment on Scott A. on Scott A. on Scott A. in ~comics
Akir Link ParentIt’s kind of amazing how one’s perspective narrows and broadens over time. Personally, I was really negative about the newly released Dietary Guidelines for Americans produced under RFK Jr....It’s kind of amazing how one’s perspective narrows and broadens over time. Personally, I was really negative about the newly released Dietary Guidelines for Americans produced under RFK Jr. recently. Between the return of the food pyramid, the contradictory advice on saturated fats, and that absolutely stupid “ending the war on protein” line, it just seemed crazy. Then I came across a PBS show with a panel talking about it and they pointed out that in spite of those obvious deficiencies it was the most progressive DGA released to date, even acknowledging the problems with ultra processed food. Yes, it was obviously still tainted with the beef and dairy industry and their propaganda, but every version of the guidelines has been also.
It just goes to show that even people you disagree with with are still doing their best to make a better world. As much as I am in the “punch fascists” team, we’ll never truly be rid of them and we should probably still try to understand them (which very clearly doesn’t include trusting them with power).
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Comment on No knives, only cook knives in ~hobbies
Akir Link ParentExcerpts are my enemy, and if they all went away I have a hard time believing anyone will ever miss them. It’s one thing to have them in print media with their large pages, but it’s another thing...Excerpts are my enemy, and if they all went away I have a hard time believing anyone will ever miss them.
It’s one thing to have them in print media with their large pages, but it’s another thing entirely to put them on small screens - cellphones especially.
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Comment on Bad Bunny Super Bowl halftime show | Trailer in ~music
Akir LinkI know it's weird to post a commercial here, but damn, this thing hit me right in the feelings. Dance is powerful!I know it's weird to post a commercial here, but damn, this thing hit me right in the feelings. Dance is powerful!
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Bad Bunny Super Bowl halftime show | Trailer
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Comment on Canada agrees to cut tariff on Chinese electric vehicles in return for lower tariffs on Canadian farm products in ~transport
Akir Link ParentWhen existing car brands are tracking sexual activity (yes, really), I wonder how much worse things can get with Chinese cars.When existing car brands are tracking sexual activity (yes, really), I wonder how much worse things can get with Chinese cars.
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Comment on What's the benefit of avoiding the debugger? in ~comp
Akir Link ParentJava is a very opinionated language. If you can agree with it it's your best friend. If not, you're going to have problems. I'm also lucky because in my career I haven't had to deal with other...Java is a very opinionated language. If you can agree with it it's your best friend. If not, you're going to have problems.
I'm also lucky because in my career I haven't had to deal with other people's shitty legacy code because the few times I had to work with others I've been in charge. I can understand why people might not like Java's exception system. The flexibility and extensibility can make it into a double-edged sword, and I can see poorly implemented exceptions being a real pain to deal with.
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Comment on What's the benefit of avoiding the debugger? in ~comp
Akir Link ParentThere's likely a greater chance that I'm not understanding what you meant instead. I'll freely admit that I know very little about F# or other languages that are strongly focused on functional...There's likely a greater chance that I'm not understanding what you meant instead. I'll freely admit that I know very little about F# or other languages that are strongly focused on functional programming.
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Comment on What's the benefit of avoiding the debugger? in ~comp
Akir Link ParentIt’s proprietary so I can’t share it with you, I’m afraid. But it’s also very simple, so honestly you could probably do better just going on with what you’re doing. I actually worked with a...It’s proprietary so I can’t share it with you, I’m afraid. But it’s also very simple, so honestly you could probably do better just going on with what you’re doing. I actually worked with a student making a mad libs program earlier this week, and another first-term student is making an ELIZA style chatbot for their final project.
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Comment on Why should anyone care about low-level programming? in ~comp
Akir Link ParentI would also say that there are a lot of applications I wish were available outside of web apps, such as the VIA configuration tool.I would also say that there are a lot of applications I wish were available outside of web apps, such as the VIA configuration tool.
I totally get that. And you look back and it seems like the most obvious thing, doesn't it? Diet culture has really hurt a lot of people and most people don't have a clue.