atchemey's recent activity
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Comment on Test your medical knowledge with daily clinical scenarios in ~health
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Comment on "The therapeutic industry is platonic prostitution" in ~health.mental
atchemey Link ParentJust so you know, I'm glad you shared. It takes a degree of bravery (or desperation) to open up like this. If we all were a little more comfortable being a little uncomfortable (as such open...Just so you know, I'm glad you shared. It takes a degree of bravery (or desperation) to open up like this. If we all were a little more comfortable being a little uncomfortable (as such open discussion often makes us), the world would be a better place.
I hope that you can look to the responses that comfort you to find nourishment. And I hope you find help for what ails you, no matter what that looks like.
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Comment on "The therapeutic industry is platonic prostitution" in ~health.mental
atchemey LinkI am not a therapist. I am not your therapist. I am just a stranger on this pseudo anonymous website of interesting people. It sounds like you have had some difficulties with therapy or...- Exemplary
I am not a therapist. I am not your therapist. I am just a stranger on this pseudo anonymous website of interesting people.
It sounds like you have had some difficulties with therapy or therapists, and you haven't been helped. It sounds like you feel unheard. That deeply deeply sucks.
I don't disagree with much of what you say about society and community. We have become increasingly atomized. Support networks thin as individualism ascends. Everything around us is biased towards isolation. We are a social species, so this is stressful for us, in fundamental ways.
Nonetheless, I sometimes think it's helpful to hear the reminder that our conclusions are contingent - our perspective is incomplete and biased and informed by our past experiences interpreted today. It is not universal, and cannot be. With that in mind, there are a few things I think it might be worth hearing some other perspectives on. These are mine (or near enough for discussion), and they are similarly contingent, but hearing them may bring another's context to the phenomena you are discussing.
You have had difficulties in therapy, sure, and maybe it's not the right approach for you. That doesn't mean it is "prostitution" or a replacement for community. It just means you didn't respond to that treatment. Would you call a doctor a quack because one medicine didn't work? I will say not every therapist half-forgets who you are.
You feel that friends recommending therapy ends a conversation. Have you asked them? I'm sure you feel strongly - your passion and earnestness are clear - but feelings are not objective. If you feel you can't trust them to answer honestly (perhaps you fear they would feel pressured to answer in a comforting way), maybe the challenge is to cultivate those friendships differently, so you can trust your friends to respond.
You call "emotional labor" a "commodity," but perhaps a reframing is appropriately. Maybe, instead of focusing on the transactional nature, you could focus on it being a resource that people do not have an inexhaustible supply of. Someone may care about you and want to share more, but maybe they are also struggling and need to "put on their own mask before helping others"?
Talk therapy seems to me to be about giving a venue for you to work on your own thought processes in a guided/chaperoned manner. It works when you are able to make the connections yourself. In that way, lack of emotional engagement can help the therapist take a step back and look at the problems a person has in their life and help them connect the dots. Is it the only way or the way it has to be? Of course not. But it's the way it seems to be. Maybe that's just not what you need right now?
It doesn't seem to me that therapy is intended to help you stand up alone. No matter who is in your community, you have to be within yourself all the time, and you have to tolerate that person. So, rather than focusing on standing alone, maybe it is about being able to be with yourself, alone or with others?
Regardless of how you read this, thank you for sharing. I hope my words can help you understand what others get from it, and may soften some of your frustrations about it all.
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Comment on Looking for general monitor advice in ~tech
atchemey Link ParentI bought two of these, refurbished, for $110 each. Currently at $132, a steal. https://ebay.us/m/tybeX0I bought two of these, refurbished, for $110 each. Currently at $132, a steal.
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Comment on Which Linux distro do you use, and why? in ~tech
atchemey LinkOh man it's a mess. I'm responsible for my own systems and the folks who work with me since we run some non standard systems. I'll give my non Linux systems first, since I'm in way too many...Oh man it's a mess. I'm responsible for my own systems and the folks who work with me since we run some non standard systems. I'll give my non Linux systems first, since I'm in way too many environments.
Windows: XP (legacy scientific equipment), Vista (retro gaming), 7 (legacy scientific equipment), 10 (less legacy scientific equipment), 11 (regrettable but necessary for gaming for a few things I run).
Mac: 2011-2020 Intel silicon iMacs (second hand free/cheap work computers for my team), 2017 iMac Pro with stupid ram (work computer for me), and M1 Pro MacBook Pro (daily driver laptop, coding test bench).
Linux (other than Android):
Ubuntu: very old laptop I dual booted to learn Linux on when I started research at a place with a headless server. Not in active use.
Linux Mint:
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slightly newer laptop that Win 10 slowed way down. Has some legacy hardware so I keep it around.
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Several VMs I made on my iMac Pro when I needed some Linux software, various versions.
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Programming test bench computers for part of my team that does a lot of coding and need dedicated Linux computers. These are "spyware computers" that had broken Windows installs on them from Amazon, but they came with i9s for $300, so we wiped them and installed Mint, upgraded RAM and SSDs, and boom mini compute...thermal throttling sucks though, working on it.
Debian:
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Old (Buster) and New (latest, I don't remember) Data Acquisition computers for work. Old started slowing to tar, so we upgraded - custom build for $300, very proud.
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Home Server (latest), for backing everything up and streaming my media to devices. Similarly, my to-be-remote backup solution is a 2014 Mac Mini that I wiped and put a duplicate Debian install on with some huge USB HDDs.
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Various work VMs (buster mostly?). When the old Daq computer got me into Debian, some software didn't run right fast for Mint, so I added some here. Now, my main coding environment at work.
Pop_OS!: 24.04 test environment/sandbox computer. I asked some questions about it a while ago. Had to reformat (out of computer!?) the install SSD to then install a new version of it. Nuts. But it's working well with my RTX 5070, which is why I tried it. Not sure if it's a forever option, but I'm pretty pleased for now.
I...have too many fractured computer environments between work and home, but I can tell you exactly what each one is for, so that's probably a sign I have the right amount sadly.
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Comment on Am I German or autistic? in ~health.mental
atchemey Link ParentIt's not anybody else's voice, it's more like... Trains of my thoughts that are going in parallel tracks. If you are far away, you can see them all at low detail. Or I can go close to one and...It's not anybody else's voice, it's more like... Trains of my thoughts that are going in parallel tracks. If you are far away, you can see them all at low detail. Or I can go close to one and really focus on it and get a lot more detail... But those other trains are still there.
When I'm trying to explain this, for example, I feel out different words similtaneously, different trains of thought, different ways to express what I'm feeling, and then choose one. All of them are me, my voice by default, but just like I could imagine different color trains or different models, I can imagine them with different voices.
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Comment on Am I German or autistic? in ~health.mental
atchemey Link ParentI am doing it right now, just to show I can.I am doing it right now, just to show I can.
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Comment on Taskmaster Season 21, Episode 1 - 'Cube is good.' | Full episode in ~tv
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Comment on Am I German or autistic? in ~health.mental
atchemey Link ParentHuh, til, I have a very large and flexible inner monologue. It's like ten different conversations in here, with my voice as default, but music, accents, imagined and real voices, all at various...Huh, til, I have a very large and flexible inner monologue. It's like ten different conversations in here, with my voice as default, but music, accents, imagined and real voices, all at various levels of my attention.
Sounds very different from your experience!
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Comment on Boomer hate in ~society
atchemey LinkI want to come back to this, if someone sees this, would you kindly ping me?I want to come back to this, if someone sees this, would you kindly ping me?
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Comment on TV series suggestions in ~tv
atchemey LinkM*A*S*H. It made history in so many ways. The modern taste of sitcoms covering serious subjects did not exist before M*A*S*H, so the revolutionary aspects of it may be underappreciated today. One...- Exemplary
M*A*S*H.
It made history in so many ways. The modern taste of sitcoms covering serious subjects did not exist before M*A*S*H, so the revolutionary aspects of it may be underappreciated today. One early episode - in a season noted for hijinks and humor over narrative - even prompted a producer to ask, "what is this? A situational tragedy?"
The show is golden and has aged unevenly. It was simultaneously incredibly progressive, and in some ways deeply upsetting by today's mores. It has "a very important episode" about women's rights and equality (several of them in fact), black soldiers, Asian soldiers, racism, US foreign policy, gay rights, trans rights, family matters, conscientious objectors, the meaning of life, the impact of death, the nature of dreams, physical handicap, mental handicap, sanity, insanity, desperation, hope, phobias, panic attacks, memory, heroism, depression, family, childhood, the loss of innocence, alcoholism, drug abuse, gambling addiction, disappointment of parents, disappointment of peers, idol worship, the burden of leadership, chauvinism of all sorts, faith, loss of faith, medical abuse, surgery as mutilation, surgery as salvation, and love. Sometimes it addresses these themes in ways that are now passe, but which were radical at the time. Despite all of this, it is RELENTLESSLY FUNNY!
The characters evolve in ways that feel earned - not always for the better. I won't lie - all of the "heroic" characters have real flaws (most prominently alcoholism and treating the nursing staff as sexual playthings), but the flaws are earned by the cast. Moreover, they get their comeuppance later in meaningful ways, which helps soften the tone a little. They are scarred by and shaped by the war around them. They are human and they are not to be worshipped, but it is in their resistance that they soar.
There are some recurring tropes, some evergreen story beats, and narrative consistency was not really a thing. Some episodes are not as great as others, but all are memorable in their own ways. The overall impact of the 256 episodes is remarkable. It culminates in the 2 hour final, the most viewed ever (by % of viewers, and most viewed by # of viewers until 30 years later when a Super Bowl overtook it) show, where they go home. Well, most of them do, mostly.
Seasons 1-3 are the lightest entertainment, though still serious at many times. 4-6 see it get a bit more serious. 7-9 are a bipolar bunch of madcap capers and some of the most dramatic tv ever written. 10 is an attempt to recapture some of the early tone, and it is uneven in many ways. Season 11 is too short by half for me, and feels a little rushed, but it finished with a few strong episodes that compensate.
My advice: watch the first two episodes of each of the first three seasons, then decide if you want to watch beyond, and only then return to season 1 episode 3. Don't look up spoilers, big changes happen after the episodes I've mentioned, and their impact deserves its time.
Good night, farewell, and amen.
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Comment on The cognitive dark forest in ~tech
atchemey Link ParentYou raise good and practical points, if the goal is good praxis. The goal is not good praxis, it is to "flood the zone with shit," so nobody new can get a foothold. And as soon as one does it, all...You raise good and practical points, if the goal is good praxis. The goal is not good praxis, it is to "flood the zone with shit," so nobody new can get a foothold. And as soon as one does it, all who can do it need to do it. It's like the NAFTA jobs moving from the US to Mexico - if one company does it, all feel the need to do so. In a more direct comparison, it's like exporting the core technical support and coding for many apps to India - lower cost and sloppier, but an offshore "necessity" if one company does. It's just a techno race to the bottom.
Regrettably, I believe you're also mistaken about the state of the art available for LLM coding tools. I'm a scientist, a chemist by training, and I am bad at coding. For focused projects, the free tier of a number of different LLM coding tools is more than sufficient. Is it perfect? No, of course not. Is it very fucking fast and free? Yes. And that's good enough for many things. These are the baby versions of the real tools out there, the heavy compute clusters that require MW of power and cooling with vast context. Agentic AI with appropriately calibrated loss functions are very much able to do exactly what you're saying at minimal cost once the data centers are there...and Lord knows they are there...one agent to strategize and dialogue with an executor ai, a couple sub agents to focus on back end, front end, UX, image generation, etc, and you've got it. Hell, a standard test for self-deployed AI is to make a full travel website and publish it to a domain - while vastly simpler than an App with services in the background, it is made within 10 minutes on a gaming computer with no coding.
It's closer than you think, but it'll be worse than we currently have...turboenshittification.
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Comment on The cognitive dark forest in ~tech
atchemey (edited )Link ParentI think you're missing the analogy of the dark forest. All it takes is one bad actor to do this for it to become the dominant strategy. The existence of one "hunter" mandates a response that...I think you're missing the analogy of the dark forest. All it takes is one bad actor to do this for it to become the dominant strategy. The existence of one "hunter" mandates a response that proliferates. It is, quite literally, "if you can't beat them, join them."
I think you are unnecessarily discounting the absolutely trivial risk to reward ratio that mass data center compute offers. Why not spend a few tens of dollars in electricity to make a duplicate of something that could gross millions a year? Code ten million projects for half a billion dollars, and if 1% take off, you break even. It's trivial to implement "clean room" rebuilds of extant products with AI and change them modestly to avoid IP/copyright limitations, all while allowing your competition to do the expensive experimentation and optimization for you...more importantly, you deny a competitor their unchallenged market, even as you take a slice. What's the response for a competitor once this happens once or twice? Well, they have to, too. And so do all of their competitors. It is an inherent race to the bottom for digital properties, one where increasingly marginal margins are whittled away as duplicates propagate.
Or.
Cartelization is another possibility. A handful of tech giants could, hypothetically, just agree to snipe new innovators, while protecting their own. In such a scenario, margins can remain robust, but innovation from the outside will be absorbed. Why bother to buy a promising app for a few million dollars, when 5 companies can spend $1k on apps, swamp the market, and destroy the original concept? One or two of those apps will survive, the other companies take the modest loss, and move on, while the winning companies take profits. Unfortunately, taken to a maximalist extreme, this will still eventually fail due to economic degradation, as the paths for individuals to earn money reduce, while extraction increases...hello Black Mirror.
I'm not the author, but I think the author raises thought-provoking points. It may be worthwhile to look into the "Genesis" Project, and the goals (explicit and implicit) it sets out for technology, engineering, medicine, and science, then complement it with Curtis Yarvin's concept of technofeudalism, which is supported by deep-pocketed donors. The dream is a fully vertically integrated economy where the "no money only spend" meme is a reality. In short, CEOs have autonomy and absolute freedom to do as they wish, while others are serfs. (A brief article on Yarvin). Put another way, whether literally or figuratively, "the humans will be discarded." Of course, all the AI absolutist supporters assume they will be the CEOs, and don't think about the inherent absurdism of a self-propagating money machine that turns us all into paperclips, but, hey, they are smart, just look at all the money they have...
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Comment on Requesting your thoughts that may help me decide between moving to Chicago or Portland (Oregon)? in ~life
atchemey (edited )LinkI love Chicago and I love Portland. I am a Cubs fan through and through, I grew up a few hours away, and I now love living life in the Willamette Valley. The thing I always tell folks before they...I love Chicago and I love Portland. I am a Cubs fan through and through, I grew up a few hours away, and I now love living life in the Willamette Valley.
The thing I always tell folks before they move here is that the grey is not as bad as you've told, but it's the biggest thing to complain about. Chicago (and the rest of the Midwest) are as grey for as long and colder. Now me, I miss the cold and snow, but I get why people don't like it. In general, if you didn't like the grey winters in Oregon, you'll have difficulties most places north of Texas and east or the Rockies, because those places will be similar, they're just depressing enough in other ways that folks don't complain about the skies!
However.
You've tried Oregon. It has not captured your soul. That's okay. My experience in the Midwest was flavored by rural isolation and incredible flatness of landscape and societal perspectives. Maybe it's not as gray as I remember? Certainly, Chicago is an AMAZING city for summer and autumn, incredible food, and abundant options for culture and travel that you may find in parts in Portland, but which will be fully at your beck and call in Chicago.
You can't always get things right when you try something new, but what you can do is make new mistakes. That's growth. Go make a new mistake. Go live life and love Chicago. You can always move again :)
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Comment on Pope Leo calls universal healthcare a 'moral imperative' in ~humanities
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
atchemey Link ParentI can endorse the a310 for exactly that purpose. It's exceptional. I have it transcoding and running video for my server. Intel QuickSync does an excellent job of transcoding to the maximum...I can endorse the a310 for exactly that purpose. It's exceptional. I have it transcoding and running video for my server. Intel QuickSync does an excellent job of transcoding to the maximum quality my Roku can handle over wifi. I ran for a couple months without using it to transcode, and it was super blotchy for dark frames (like the intro of The Crown - smoky over black with gold) ... QuickSync made everything MUCH better. I found that in ordinary use, my A310 eco draws less than 20 Watts more than the same system without any graphics. Considering I am running 6 HDD, 3 sdd, the host bus adapter for the drives, an E5 v4 Xeon, and all the fans to cool the system off a 500 W PSU, the efficiency of the GPU was very important. Hell, my GPU was as much as all the other electronic components put together, and I still think it was a deal.
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Comment on Reducing Europe's nuclear energy sector was 'strategic mistake', EU chief Ursula von der Leyen says in ~society
atchemey Link ParentQuite, @nukeman. The "hope" with 232Th-233U breeding fuel cycles is that you can produce enough 232U (which has an 80 year half-life and gives off a wicked gamma radiation line, while 233U...Quite, @nukeman. The "hope" with 232Th-233U breeding fuel cycles is that you can produce enough 232U (which has an 80 year half-life and gives off a wicked gamma radiation line, while 233U doesn't) can "self-protect." Basically, you want enough heat and gamma radiation from 232U given off such that you cannot handle the 233U for...320 years or so? The problem is in the production paths to 232U and 233U. The process leading to 232U is way weaker, and you can just wait and have more 233U produced because of intermediate nuclei decaying at very different rates. It's a real stinker of a problem, and I've spent a long time thinking about how to make it safer, since a 1963 report even noted that 233U was so suitable for proliferation that, if the US infrastructure had not focused on 239Pu until that time but instead had focused on 233U, they would not advise making the switch.
Lots of online folks - smart, earnest, enthusiastic folks - look at thorium and hear the propaganda line about it fixing everything. I got tired of some Twitter tech-evangelist types saying how it was all a giant conspiracy to prevent the oil companies from losing money and stuff. So the short answer is that it's a prospective path to lots of fissile material, but it also could make secret bomb stuff, and I got tired of tech-bros ignoring that lol (You're not the problem, they are, honest!) @tomorrow-never-knows, hope this helps!
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Comment on Reducing Europe's nuclear energy sector was 'strategic mistake', EU chief Ursula von der Leyen says in ~society
atchemey Link ParentThorium...has some serious problems. It's not a panacea. It is a direct path to weaponizable materials, which is a major reason it hasn't been developed - it's too easy for states to "break out"...Thorium...has some serious problems. It's not a panacea. It is a direct path to weaponizable materials, which is a major reason it hasn't been developed - it's too easy for states to "break out" by chemistry rather than physics. That's a lot cheaper, smaller-scale (hideable), and therefore more dangerous. I have some musings on research to make it safer, but those are still "grasping at straws" approaches - I can't think of a clear solution that would prevent a truly determined state from proliferating with thorium. I'd love to see thorium developed, but only if it can be done safely.
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Comment on Reducing Europe's nuclear energy sector was 'strategic mistake', EU chief Ursula von der Leyen says in ~society
atchemey Link ParentDepends on the specific reactor technologies being used. In general, yes, you're right. In the context of, "countries seeking to get by with nuclear power without relying on third-party countries...Depends on the specific reactor technologies being used. In general, yes, you're right. In the context of, "countries seeking to get by with nuclear power without relying on third-party countries that are potentially willing to control the flow of uranium as a control," though, it's less of a concern.
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Comment on Reducing Europe's nuclear energy sector was 'strategic mistake', EU chief Ursula von der Leyen says in ~society
atchemey Link ParentBasically, if unscrupulous countries try use these technologies, they could potentially divert weaponizable materials. Aka, "security implications." The good news is that there are ways to go...Basically, if unscrupulous countries try use these technologies, they could potentially divert weaponizable materials. Aka, "security implications." The good news is that there are ways to go about developing these technologies to avoid those issues, but you have to work with organizations like the IAEA to ensure auditing the materials is a constant - rather than intermittent - effort.
Same. I'm a normie non-medical doctor, so I'm kinda shocked lol.