R3qn65's recent activity
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Comment on The film students who can no longer sit through films in ~movies
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Comment on What are some of your recent "little" failures? in ~talk
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Comment on The film students who can no longer sit through films in ~movies
R3qn65 Link ParentIt's pretty trivial to go to Google scholar and see just how many studies have actively explored the link between social media use and attention span. Obviously not one of them is perfect, but...I don't agree that social media use and internet access in your pockets are the causes. Nor that removing those things is the solution. I would need to see studies conducted to draw a conclusion like that
It's pretty trivial to go to Google scholar and see just how many studies have actively explored the link between social media use and attention span.
Obviously not one of them is perfect, but this is something that is being actively studied.
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Comment on My relationship feels like it's collapsing and I don't know what to do in ~life
R3qn65 Link ParentI really like your posts, sparks. Extremely this. Though I do think it would be very amusing to see the skew: "wow! tildes has the neatest population ever -- not a single one of these people is...I really like your posts, sparks.
I'm also not particularly convinced self-reporting whether you're more neat/tidy than your partner is super valid when you only have one party in the relationship participating. I suspect we'd see pretty big differences between relationships where both parties agree on which of them is messier and relationships in which both parties think the other is.
Extremely this. Though I do think it would be very amusing to see the skew: "wow! tildes has the neatest population ever -- not a single one of these people is the messy one in the relationship!"
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Comment on My relationship feels like it's collapsing and I don't know what to do in ~life
R3qn65 LinkObviously B— shares the blame, but fundamentally we can’t change other people, so I’m going to mostly focus on you and your actions. Not because you deserve it more, but because you’re the one...Obviously B— shares the blame, but fundamentally we can’t change other people, so I’m going to mostly focus on you and your actions. Not because you deserve it more, but because you’re the one asking and you can only affect what you do and how you feel, not her. Before any of that, though:
In general, it's been pretty smooth sailing, but the past four months or so have been increasingly stressful
What changed?
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It’s no surprise that a huge part of the stress in your relationship is finances. For better or for worse, your financial issues seem partly self-inflicted. I think you guys are biting off more than you can chew. You’ve blown through most of your savings, have 10k in debt, and yet you’re planning a pseudoelopement and an afterparty?
Getting them all into bed takes at least two hours every night…
Respectfully, your youngest is 8, and your other two kids are teens (or close enough). This is crazy. I have a feeling that whatever’s going on here might not be causing all of the stress itself, but is probably emblematic of the broader issues. What’s going on? Why do kids this old need help going to bed - much less so much help that it takes two hours?
Dishes pile up. The laundry basket overflows. Surfaces become cluttered. The children need feeding. At every turn there is another responsibility that it feels like B— is heaping onto me…
I completely understand why you feel this way. Even so, I think you need to change your mindset here. These are tasks that need to get done. B— isn’t heaping them onto you, they’re part of life. It’s unfortunate that you don’t have a partner who can share the load, but you’d need to feed the kids anyway. Laundry needs to get done anyway. The house needs to be tidied anyway. Doing this things is part of being an adult — and by the sound of things, you’re the only adult in this family (and probably always have been). To that point…
the only way that B— can not feel anxious is for her to have her own way… I feel like I am buckling under the weight of all B—'s worries and stresses, and the accommodations that need to be made... I had better do it cheerfully and with a smile on my face, because B— experiences another shame spiral if she perceives someone to be cleaning around her in a bad mood.
Look. Just as only you can change how you feel, only B— can change how she feels. If she’s too paralyzed by anxiety to do any of the housework/finances/etc and you’ve chosen to accept that because of what else she brings to the table, fine! But that means she doesn’t get to dictate how you do the housework/finances/etc.
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Comment on A lot of population numbers are fake in ~society
R3qn65 LinkThis is a good one. You know, it’s weird. I have personal experience with more than one of the countries in question, and it was sort of widely accepted that nobody actually knew how many people...This is a good one.
You know, it’s weird. I have personal experience with more than one of the countries in question, and it was sort of widely accepted that nobody actually knew how many people lived in X city. But for whatever reason, when it came to GDP, I never thought to question it. (The same author argued very convincingly in a follow-up post that a lot of GDP figures are completely fake, too.) I don’t know how it somehow got fixed in my mind that GDP in these countries was legitimate — the veneer of respectability, I guess? Maybe it’s that I didn’t realize how much of The Number comes from the countries in question.
Anyway, good post.
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Comment on Lawsuit alleges that WhatsApp has no end-to-end encryption in ~tech
R3qn65 Link Parent...then why did you say "When I buy a new phone WA just works and I can see all the messages sent and received"?Actually, I don't use WA.
...then why did you say "When I buy a new phone WA just works and I can see all the messages sent and received"?
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Comment on We are witnessing the self-immolation of a superpower in ~society
R3qn65 Link ParentThis is a valuable addition to the discussion, but I do want to underscore - I know you did, but again - that an additional 4% tax on high household income (the Massachusetts proposal, so far...This is a valuable addition to the discussion, but I do want to underscore - I know you did, but again - that an additional 4% tax on high household income (the Massachusetts proposal, so far working) is completely different from a flat wealth tax (California's current proposal).
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Comment on Terra. Invicta. in ~games
R3qn65 Link ParentThe moon is very short on resources compared to almost everywhere else in the solar system, so you really want to use the moon as a stepping stone to Mars and beyond, for your planning. You likely...The moon is very short on resources compared to almost everywhere else in the solar system, so you really want to use the moon as a stepping stone to Mars and beyond, for your planning. You likely don't want more than 1-2 bases there - just enough to get some resources and decrease the boost cost for missions elsewhere.
In case it hasn't become clear yet, you'll need boost and money to establish any sort of facility in a new orbital system, but once you have the core (and it doesn't even have to be finished building), you can use space-based resources to build everything else. Your power sources, your mines, etc. That'll save you tons of boost, to the extent that boost stops becoming the bottleneck quite quickly.
Also, you'll likely want to build a construction center/nanofactory on your first mars facility. That will let you build additional facilities with resources instead of boost -- and, much more importantly, will let you start it from the facility instead of Earth, meaning your construction time for the facility will drop from something like a year to 40 days.
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Comment on Terra. Invicta. in ~games
R3qn65 Link ParentThere are definitely flaws, but I still consider it a great game. I think for me, for a game like this, I’d rather the devs have this massive, ambitious vision and mostly pull it off than have a...There are definitely flaws, but I still consider it a great game. I think for me, for a game like this, I’d rather the devs have this massive, ambitious vision and mostly pull it off than have a perfectly polished, balanced, but ultimately less interesting game. I do think your point about having to buy into the devs’ specific vision is fair, though: I’ve also had the experience where I get too far ahead of the other human factions and get crushed by the aliens, which is kind of inevitable given the threat meter mechanic. But with a lot of that sort of thing (see also: unifying nations, sometimes aggressive behavior by other human factions, sometimes subservient behavior, etc.) I’m willing to accept it as part of the emergent story about humanity being massively overpowered by the alien arrivals.
Weirdly, exofighters have only ever been a positive for me. If I were to complain about the tech tree it’d be the 16,000 different drives, which I understand are apparently quite realistically modeled but only about 5% of which are good.
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Comment on Terra. Invicta. in ~games
R3qn65 Link ParentHe's also in the game, in a little easter egg. You can amass organizations that help you run the world, and one of them is Perun.He's also in the game, in a little easter egg. You can amass organizations that help you run the world, and one of them is Perun.
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Terra. Invicta.
I controlled Mars, but the Servants, who worship the aliens as gods, had taken Phobos and Deimos. From a previous failed campaign I knew that if I let the Servants gain orbital superiority over...
I controlled Mars, but the Servants, who worship the aliens as gods, had taken Phobos and Deimos. From a previous failed campaign I knew that if I let the Servants gain orbital superiority over Mars, they would shell all of my mines into regolith from low orbit while I watched helplessly. Then, starved of crucial shipbuilding resources, my faction - the Resistance - would wither and die. I’m sure they felt the same fear looking at my fleet. We were both building up our forces as quickly as we could: reinforcements, whether from Earth or the Inner Belt, would take more than a year to arrive, meaning that whoever won the battle for Mars orbit would control the fate of the red planet - and its riches - forever. Or at least until the aliens arrived to wipe us off the map, which amounts to the same thing. Eventually I was able to gain a sliver of a technological lead and force their fleet to battle.
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Hooded Horse came out of nowhere a few years ago to become one of the best (IMO) indie game publishers anywhere. I still haven’t been able to figure out whether they’re actually that good or if my tastes and theirs just overlap perfectly, but who cares: they’ve produced hit after hit. Not necessarily critical successes - though almost all of them are rated “overwhelmingly positive” on Steam - but games that just rule. The kind of game that swings for the fences and succeeds in more than it fails.
Terra Invicta is one of those games. Aliens have come to Earth, and you play as one of the secret societies reacting to that news. The first 10-15 hours of a run are spent in what is basically a political thriller simulator - your agents subvert governments, spread propaganda, and initiate coups to try to control as much of the globe as possible. All the while, you devote every resource you can to sprint towards where the actual game begins: space. At that point Terra Invicta turns into an outrageously detailed orbital mechanics simulation. I haven’t actually won yet so I’m not sure what happens after that, but so far it’s awesome.
It’s not for everybody. The game is kind of hostile - it’s obscenely complicated, really doesn’t give you much in the way of tutorials, and in each of my four attempts, thus far, I’ve realized that I made a deadly mistake about 3 hours ago from which there’s no recovery. (Specifically: One time, I concentrated too much of my space infrastructure on Mars, so when the Aliens cracked the planet, I lost everything. Another time, I was so focused on space that when the China-India-EU alliance invaded my America, I was wiped out. Another time, I was so aggressive against the Alien quislings so early that the Aliens left everyone else alone and crushed me.)
But if you’re the kind of person that thinks spreadsheets are fun - if you’re the kind of person whose biggest problem with strategy games is that they’re too easy - TI is the game for you.
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Comment on No knives, only cook knives in ~hobbies
R3qn65 Link ParentIf it’s a good fit, it’s a good fit! Also, 2000 was way before Shun became the sort of meme knife that it is now, so nothing to laugh about. Besides, I don’t think Shun deserves the...If it’s a good fit, it’s a good fit!
Also, 2000 was way before Shun became the sort of meme knife that it is now, so nothing to laugh about. Besides, I don’t think Shun deserves the middling-to-bad reputation it has on knife forums. They don’t make bad knives. Can you get something better for the price? Sure. But do they make a good product that’s a good foray into Japanese steel/handles for non-knife-obsessed-weirdos? Also yes. Not everybody needs a kiritsuke made out of Blue #2 that can cut silk but will rust if you look at it wrong, you know?
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Comment on No knives, only cook knives in ~hobbies
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Comment on No knives, only cook knives in ~hobbies
R3qn65 Link ParentYou know, I think the watch analogy is pretty good, but I wouldn't equate artisanal to pretty. An expensive mechanical watch (e.g. Rolex) will hold time significantly better than a cheap...You know, I think the watch analogy is pretty good, but I wouldn't equate artisanal to pretty. An expensive mechanical watch (e.g. Rolex) will hold time significantly better than a cheap mechanical watch (e.g. cheap Seiko). Sure, you're paying for the assembly time and the brand to a certain extent, but it is legitimately a better product also.
Similarly, artisanal knives are typically made from better steel and/or with specific blade geometries. Just like with watches, you're paying in part for the looks and the scarcity, but they are actually better tools as well (or at least more specific tools).
(And before you point out that no mechanical watch can hold time worth a damn compared to quartz -- well, yeah. But that's why I said more specific tools. Same reason it's not legitimate criticism to say "why can't this $400 eel knife slice bread).
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Comment on How I stopped cooking breakfast every day - baked oats in ~food
R3qn65 Link ParentThis is a completely unhinged take :) I'm an excellent cook, so it's not that what you're describing is beyond my skill level or something, I just think it's wild that you're talking about cooking...This is a completely unhinged take :)
I'm an excellent cook, so it's not that what you're describing is beyond my skill level or something, I just think it's wild that you're talking about cooking a hash as if it was as simple as making toast. All power to ye!
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Comment on Tether freezes $182 million in stablecoins as reports point to heavy crypto use by Venezuela in ~finance
R3qn65 Link ParentTether sort of doesn't count. It's centralized and pegged to the dollar. It's a cryptocurrency by technical specification, but not in the way lay people use the term.Tether sort of doesn't count. It's centralized and pegged to the dollar. It's a cryptocurrency by technical specification, but not in the way lay people use the term.
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Comment on How I stopped cooking breakfast every day - baked oats in ~food
R3qn65 Link ParentHere's a gift link from the NYT for you: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1020948-baked-steel-cut-oats-with-nut-butter?unlocked_article_code=1.ElA.gw-n.zQJ1dSpdH_NOHere's a gift link from the NYT for you:
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Comment on How I stopped cooking breakfast every day - baked oats in ~food
R3qn65 Link ParentDead simple, but I'm still impressed that you can commit 30-40 minutes to making breakfast each morning.Dead simple, but I'm still impressed that you can commit 30-40 minutes to making breakfast each morning.
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Comment on Is it possible to live without WhatsApp? in ~tech
R3qn65 Link ParentRight. A significant number of businesses do everything via Whatsapp. There's not really an american equivalent that I know of.Right. A significant number of businesses do everything via Whatsapp. There's not really an american equivalent that I know of.
Right, though in theory having well-randomized groups addresses this (since an equal proportion of people in each group presumably would be wrong about YouTube shorts, so it should wash out.)
This is a great instinct in general, but... I'm trying to think of how to phrase this. When I first got involved with the research world, I (very similarly) mentally threw out any study that didn't meet the gold standard. I had a couple of professors who encouraged us to think that way, in fact, because it's a really good starting point for critically examining research. Later, though - and this is after literally years of experience - as I developed into a more mature consumer of information and data, I completely reversed course. There are still junk studies, of course. Those don't deserve an iota of your attention. But - and this is what I was struggling to phrase - you develop this sort of sense of "where there's smoke, there's fire." Meaning that even though none of these studies are yet very good, in toto they point to something we should take seriously at the very least.
To return to the professors from undergrad, though, the tricky thing is that it's really difficult to differentiate that mature sense of "though none of this is great, altogether this is compelling" from, like... "vaccines cause autism!" You know?
I think an example that could connect the dots here is the example of food. Despite a million correlational studies, there has never yet been a study conclusively showing a causation between junk food being worse for you than equicaloric nonjunk food[1]. And a couple authors have tried and accidentally demonstrated the inverse. But even so, it's totally reasonable to believe that that's true, right?
[1] mostly because it's nearly impossible to put together a long enough, controllable enough study.
I wholeheartedly applaud this and hope this discussion isn't taken as a sign that I disagree.