Interesting's recent activity

  1. Upcoming solo trip to San Diego - any advice?

    ~travel Ask (advice)
    Hey, I'm headed to San Diego in March after getting selected for a work conference. The last time I was in California was San Francisco more than a decade ago with my dad, so I'm excited to be...

    Hey, I'm headed to San Diego in March after getting selected for a work conference. The last time I was in California was San Francisco more than a decade ago with my dad, so I'm excited to be visiting again.

    The first few days will be the conference (which includes a recreational afternoon for networking, I picked the San Diego Zoo). I purposely scheduled my plane flight to be a few days after the conference ends to I can explore the city, but it'll be my first real solo trip; originally, my sister was going to tag along in my hotel room, but she had an injury and needed to drop out.

    I fly in on March 18th, check out from the conference is the morning of Saturday the 21st, and I fly back home on the morning of the 24th. That gives me almost all of Saturday, and all of Sunday and Monday to explore the city.

    Definitely, one of the things I want to check out is Balboa Park, though I would appreciate advice on specific museums, since I can't imagine it's possible to see even half of them in a day.

    Another thing I've considered is a day trip to Tijuana to walk around. It's been a while since I had a good opportunity to practice my Spanish. Worst case scenario I can get a dental cleaning if I can't come up with any other ideas 😂.

    Eating out alone isn't really something I've done before either. I think I want to do a nice sushi bar Omakase one night just to treat myself, if people have suggestions on where, and I'd love other suggestions for places to try where it wouldn't be too weird eating solo.

    Does anyone have any suggestions for other things to do, places to see? Where I should stay after leaving the Marriott Marquis, since at >$500/night it's a little expensive for me? I won't be renting a car, so ideally, something either in walking distance or easily accessible via transit. I'll probably do a mix of ride shares and public transit for travel.

    I'd love to hear ideas, along with what anyone else here has done in San Diego. Worst case scenario, I'm sure I'll figure it all out, but it's nice to poll the crowd sometimes.

    12 votes

  2. Comment on I recently finished the Cradle series by Will Wight and have post series depression. What shall I read next? in ~books

    Interesting
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    I started there as well and branched out into the LitRPG genre, so here are some similar things I have liked in the last few years Dungeon Crawler Carl (before it was cool lol) Apocalypse...

    I started there as well and branched out into the LitRPG genre, so here are some similar things I have liked in the last few years

    Dungeon Crawler Carl (before it was cool lol)
    Apocalypse Parenting by Erin Ampersand
    I did like Mother of Learning too, but also,
    Years of the Apocalypse, if you don't mind something in progress

    A little more off the wall suggestions based more just on what I like:
    Scholomance
    Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels
    The Martian
    Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow

    Will Wight also has a few other series if you look on his website. I haven't read any of them though.

    5 votes

  3. Comment on Ian's Shoelace Site is still the best site for tying your shoes in ~tech

    Interesting
    Link Parent
    Hm. Perhaps an "answered" label that only the person responding to you can add? Kind of like the button on StackOverflow

    Hm. Perhaps an "answered" label that only the person responding to you can add? Kind of like the button on StackOverflow

    1 vote

  4. Comment on Before and after the trigger press that killed Renee Good in ~society

    Interesting
    Link
    An incredibly in depth article about the legal circumstances and usual law enforcement procedures relevant to Johnathan Ross's shooting of Renee Good. I highly recommend reading the full article....

    An incredibly in depth article about the legal circumstances and usual law enforcement procedures relevant to Johnathan Ross's shooting of Renee Good. I highly recommend reading the full article. My "taste" here really only shows how much analysis there is.

    Regardless of whether deadly force was legally justified, Renee Nicole Good’s death was preventable.

    ...

    Whether Ross violated Homeland Security’s deadly force policies—and thus also potentially Good’s Fourth Amendment rights—is certainly one of the most important questions to arise out of her death. But amid the high passion and tumult of the debate, other, equally pressing issues remain largely unaddressed: Namely, what do the events which occurred immediately before Ross took the slack out of his trigger, and the response of him and his colleagues right after the final press, tell us about how ICE is conducting itself as it executes the largest apprehension and deportation operation in the history of the United States?

    ...

    At every step which led to the fatal trigger press, ICE could have behaved differently. It could have behaved more tactically. It could have behaved more humanely. The nation—to say nothing of Renee Nicole Good’s family—deserves an honest accounting of why it did not.

    ...

    Why was ICE interacting with Good in the first place?

    The question isn’t rhetorical. Video footage shows that she was clearly—at least for a few moments, if not longer—blocking traffic by positioning her car in the middle of the road; furthermore, she was doing so while in the presence of law enforcement vehicles with lights and sirens activated. Such behavior would appear to be a prima facie violation of Minnesota Statute 169.20 §5, a misdemeanor punishable by a $300 fine, and perhaps diversion to a remedial driving school. If a peace officer with the appropriate authority ordered her to move, and she chose not to comply, she also may have been violating Minnesota Statute 169.34 §1(11).

    ...

    Minnesota defines a peace officer as “an employee of a political subdivision [i.e. a local municipality] or state law enforcement agency,” and only grants their federal counterparts arrest authorities for the purposes of state and local violations when a number of conditions are met. The most important of these prerequisites requires that the federal officer be on duty, acting at the request of a local or state officer, and operating pursuant to the supervision of that local or state officer. At this point, neither ICE management nor any executive branch officials have argued that these conditions were met; indeed, the tenor and tone of statements by the Minneapolis mayor and Minnesota governor would certainly suggest otherwise. The proper remedy, then, for Good’s obstruction of traffic would have simply been for the ICE officers to request that local police join in the response and facilitate the movement of her vehicle.

    But let’s put this argument aside, for the moment.

    ...

    But let’s put this argument aside for the moment as well.

    ...

    But let’s put aside this argument, too, for the moment

    ...

    But let’s also put this argument aside, for the moment

    ...

    But let’s put this argument aside as well, for the moment

    ...

    At this point, we have run out of arguments which we can momentarily cabin. As videos of the incident show, as Renee Nicole Good turns her steering wheel to the right and begins to drive away, three shots ring out, her vehicle careens into a parked car and light post, and the assembled bystanders scream.

    ...

    Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, and within hours of the event, Secretary Noem—whose own deadly force experience recalls nothing so much as the finale of “Old Yeller”—quickly pronounced the shoot justified. The vice president and president of the United States followed suit. And to be fair, many critics of ICE have come to the opposite conclusion with similar alacrity. But this article is not about whether deadly force was justified at the moment Ross let loose with three rounds of ammunition; it is simply a series of observations about steps that could have prevented the need to even make that choice.

    12 votes

  6. Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of January 12 in ~society

    Interesting
    Link Parent
    I kind of wish that reporter had done everything short of showing up to their first day of work, just to see how far they could get. There's more actual checking to adopt an animal than for the...

    I kind of wish that reporter had done everything short of showing up to their first day of work, just to see how far they could get. There's more actual checking to adopt an animal than for the government to give you a gun and enforcement powers...

    9 votes

  7. Comment on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shoots and kills a woman during the Minneapolis immigration crackdown in ~society

  8. Comment on Mohammed Ibrahim's stolen year: the newly freed sixteen-year-old Palestinian American shares his first account of 9½ months in Israeli military detention in ~society

    Interesting
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    Fuck Ben Gvir and those who enable him to create torture camps.

    Fuck Ben Gvir and those who enable him to create torture camps.

    6 votes

  9. Comment on Hate Brussels sprouts? You may be living in the past. in ~food

    Interesting
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    The words I would most likely use are "kick", "brightness" or "freshness", but what you meant came through clearly, so I would call it a success =)

    as it adds a much needed sting

    The words I would most likely use are "kick", "brightness" or "freshness", but what you meant came through clearly, so I would call it a success =)

    6 votes

  10. Comment on Hate Brussels sprouts? You may be living in the past. in ~food

    Interesting
    Link Parent
    I'm going to have to disagree with you. I love a salad made out of modern sweeter brussel sprouts, dressed in olive oil, lemon and maybe some parmesean, it's genuinely one of my favorite foods.

    I'm going to have to disagree with you. I love a salad made out of modern sweeter brussel sprouts, dressed in olive oil, lemon and maybe some parmesean, it's genuinely one of my favorite foods.

    5 votes

  11. Comment on Food: Your personal year in review for 2025 in ~food

  12. Comment on $6 Michelin stock in sixty minutes in ~food

    Interesting
    (edited )
    Link
    The visualizations in this video are beautiful and it has detailed explanations of the chemistry involved so I highly recommend watching it in its entirety, but in short: Remove and shred the meat...

    The visualizations in this video are beautiful and it has detailed explanations of the chemistry involved so I highly recommend watching it in its entirety, but in short:

    Remove and shred the meat from a rotisserie chicken, do not include all the bones. Add half an onion and half a carrot, thinly sliced, lightly sauteed. Pressure cook in an instant pot with 2 quarts of water for 1 hour. Allow to natural release. That extracts maximum flavor from the meat, and pressure cooking means you avoid 'stirring up' particles the way that a very long simmer would.

    The second recommendation is for perfectly clear stocks. He provides two methods. The first is to use a high powered blender to blend raw meat into your strained stock, and then pressure cook again, which makes a very solid 'raft' that you can pour through a strainer, clarifying the stock.

    For a more perfectly clarified stock, freeze the stock as ice cubes and allow them to melt in a fridge through a filter into a final storage container. The gelatin and fat will be left behind in the filter, and can be used elsewhere. If you want this stock to gel, you will need to add back gelatin.

    7 votes

  14. Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong | Sea of Sorrow teaser in ~games

    Interesting
    Link
    ... did anyone else go straight to the Silksong subreddit to spy on the silksanity?

    ... did anyone else go straight to the Silksong subreddit to spy on the silksanity?

  15. Comment on Fifteen killed in shooting targeting Jewish community at Australia's Bondi Beach, police say in ~news

    Interesting
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    For me, this is a reminder of how interconnected Jews all over the world are. I wouldn't call myself particularly well connected, but I'm in a few WhatsApp groups and people were talking about...

    For me, this is a reminder of how interconnected Jews all over the world are. I wouldn't call myself particularly well connected, but I'm in a few WhatsApp groups and people were talking about personal connections to people who were injured (to ask for prayers, typically with a full Hebrew name)

    All of them were on the East coast of the US, and 3 people in a small group chat had a personal connection to someone there today.

    17 votes

  16. Comment on Whatever happened to _____? in ~talk

    Interesting
    Link Parent
    It may have ended in 1995, but they were playing reruns on Nick@Night well into the 2000's

    It may have ended in 1995, but they were playing reruns on Nick@Night well into the 2000's

    5 votes

  17. Comment on Whatever happened to _____? in ~talk

    Interesting
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    What happened with ffmpeg being pissed at Google for spamming then with AI slop CVEs?

    What happened with ffmpeg being pissed at Google for spamming then with AI slop CVEs?

    23 votes

  18. Comment on Whatever happened to _____? in ~talk

  19. Comment on Ireland among countries boycotting Eurovision after Israel allowed to compete in ~music

    Interesting
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    My bad -- I had originally read this thread, and then several hours later seen that article; rereading now there are two sentences in the cheep_cheep's comment that mention this as a motivation....

    My bad -- I had originally read this thread, and then several hours later seen that article; rereading now there are two sentences in the cheep_cheep's comment that mention this as a motivation. That said, I still think there is a benefit to highlighting that point in an individual comment for folks.

    ...to make up for their (currently) poor international reputation. They are undermining the contest for everyone...We've spent years clamoring for it to be less political

    So I'm not actually super familiar with Eurovision. I've never watched more than a couple of songs. Being a US-American person not super into music, I really only started hearing about it when it became very political amid Russia's aggression against Ukraine. And reading online, I also see that there was a relatively recent change to allow people to pay for up to 20 votes, which is perceived to have made the contest more political. I wonder if the early increase publicity from political involvement was seen as a positive by the EBU, since it increased the people who knew what Eurovision was.

    It seems to me like Eurovision was already political and Israeli organizations, knowing that they could not naturally compete in the number of voices speaking up based on its size, ended up with an organized effort to counter grassroots folks in other nations. So I think you're right that this is just an escalation of Eurovision always having been somewhat political, with Israel just moving from a (minor, before October 2023) victim to a beneficiary.

    As for a solution, I don't know. I do think that removing Israel would only encourage the use of Eurovision as a political cudgel. Likely, the best solutions to a less political Eurovision are changes to how Eurovision is run. I've been poking around trying to come up with ideas,, and I saw a paper here that noted

    Interestingly, the professional background of jury members also significantly influences the individual voting bias, for instance, experts with classical music backgrounds display significantly less bias than presenters of radio or television programs or music journalists.

    It was focused on positive bias, but if the a similar principle applies to negative bias, perhaps a first step would be to look carefully at the juries and select them with an eye for people uninterested in politics -- and beyond avoiding negative bias, I think the EBU would end up with fewer political songs they needed to reject in the first place. Reducing the number of votes per person would likely also improve things, since it would make organized campaigns less powerful. I imagine someone more familiar with how the actual contest works than me could have better ideas on how to do that.

    Of course, all of this assumes the EBU wants the contest to be less political. More controversy is more eyes, more eyes is more advertising revenue. And I believe votes are paid as well?

    4 votes

  20. Comment on Ireland among countries boycotting Eurovision after Israel allowed to compete in ~music

    Interesting
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    People interested in the topic of Israel and Eurovision might find this to be an article with a perspective they may not have seen or considered:...

    People interested in the topic of Israel and Eurovision might find this to be an article with a perspective they may not have seen or considered:

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-next-threat-to-israel-at-eurovision-is-coming-from-inside-the-house/

    Staying in the European Broadcast Union is presently incentive for the Israeli government not to gut the "neutrality"(it is much further left than the current government) of their public broadcasting service.

    I imagine many of you here in the comments have come to your conclusion and don't consider that "enough" of a reason, but given the otherwise near unamimity of what's posted, I figured I would drop in some information for anyone lurking in the background.

    10 votes