chroma's recent activity
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Comment on Communities, relationships, and navigating the enshittification of absolutely everything in ~talk
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Comment on Slay the Spire 2 | Early Access trailer in ~games
chroma Link ParentNice. I'm currently working on Ironclad, I think I'm on like A13 or something. His kit is way less intuitive to me than Watcher and Silent, who I've beaten A20 with. I've heard Defect is the...Nice. I'm currently working on Ironclad, I think I'm on like A13 or something. His kit is way less intuitive to me than Watcher and Silent, who I've beaten A20 with. I've heard Defect is the hardest class in general though, so good luck to both of us when we get there.
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Comment on Slay the Spire 2 | Early Access trailer in ~games
chroma Link ParentThanks! Act 3 for now, and then maybe if I don't hate myself enough after beating A20 with everyone I'll try to beat Act 4. High ascension spoilers I've thrown many runs on lower ascensions at The...Thanks! Act 3 for now, and then maybe if I don't hate myself enough after beating A20 with everyone I'll try to beat Act 4.
High ascension spoilers
I've thrown many runs on lower ascensions at The Heart _already_. It usually takes me nearly the amount of time to get through A20 as it takes to get through like A5-A19 just because of the double boss. Turn that into basically quadruple boss with the Spire Shield/Spear and The Heart and feel like I'd lose it pretty quickly lol. -
Comment on Slay the Spire 2 | Early Access trailer in ~games
chroma (edited )LinkSpeak of the devil (I was just talking about StS in another topic about another deck builder. I'm 2/4 classes through my attempt to beat Ascension 20 with every class. Time's ticking before the...(I was just talking about StS in another topic about another deck builder. I'm 2/4 classes through my attempt to beat Ascension 20 with every class. Time's ticking before the sequel comes out.)
crawls back into StS 2 waiting room
EDIT: Holy shit they turned the Defect into a chad
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Comment on How open world Soulslike deckbuilder Death Howl was built – The Outer Zone shares the story behind today's PS5 release in ~games
chroma LinkSome of my favorite games are Slay the Spire, Dead Cells, Dark Souls, Elden Ring, Fire Emblem, and Expedition 33. I watched the trailer and added this game to my Steam wishlist in about 2 minutes....Some of my favorite games are Slay the Spire, Dead Cells, Dark Souls, Elden Ring, Fire Emblem, and Expedition 33. I watched the trailer and added this game to my Steam wishlist in about 2 minutes.
... crawls back into Slay the Spire 2 waiting room
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Comment on Communities, relationships, and navigating the enshittification of absolutely everything in ~talk
chroma Link ParentDefinitely prioritize your own health over gestures vaguely all of this, yes. It's unfortunate that general state of the internet/the world manages to become at least tangentially relevant to...Definitely prioritize your own health over gestures vaguely all of this, yes. It's unfortunate that general state of the internet/the world manages to become at least tangentially relevant to whatever it is I'm doing at any given moment, and so I get to feel run down by just existing. It's like taking -1HP environmental damage every 5 seconds in a video game or something.
... I dream about retiring and operating a farm or running a small restaurant quite a bit...
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Comment on Communities, relationships, and navigating the enshittification of absolutely everything in ~talk
chroma Link ParentYou're objectively not wrong. There are way more ways to interact and do stuff on the internet now, everyone's online, etc. For me, therein lies the problem. Everyone is online, yes, but people...You're objectively not wrong. There are way more ways to interact and do stuff on the internet now, everyone's online, etc.
For me, therein lies the problem. Everyone is online, yes, but people are going to gravitate towards the most convenient way to be online; so, platforms like Discord, Reddit, TikTok, Instagram, etc, those which have done an amazing job at either removing barriers to entry or surgically injecting dopamine into one's brain via UX.
So for someone like me who tends to gravitate away from that pattern of interaction and/or the invasive back office behaviors going on in those platforms, I am faced with a dilemma.
There are tons of privacy-oriented options for literally everything.
The majority of people I know don't care about privacy. Do I get to inflict fall damage on myself by accepting that I am being spied on for the sake of interacting with my friends, or do I get to inflict fall damage on myself by choosing to not interact with them, either "as much" or "at all", for the sake of muH pRiVacY?
So, fortunately for me I'm able to adopt many of these privacy-oriented options for software and the like. But not all of them, and not to the degree that I'd like, because there are broader implications on my social life.
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Comment on Communities, relationships, and navigating the enshittification of absolutely everything in ~talk
chroma (edited )Link ParentRE: Your point about people being too busy/too overburdened/already dealing with a lot of things: Yes, 100%. I see that in myself when I remember that I've been procrastinating on my home server...RE: Your point about people being too busy/too overburdened/already dealing with a lot of things: Yes, 100%. I see that in myself when I remember that I've been procrastinating on my home server for literal years, my partner when it comes to switching off Google services, etc - and we're two people who care to some degree about this stuff. Many of my friends don't fall into that bucket, and so the "meh" feeling I talk about in the post is a combination of me not wanting to burden them with what I assume they'd perceive as "woo woo privacy bullshit", and slight exasperation that they don't share my set of concerns. Admittedly this is a corner I have backed myself into, and one I could get myself out of by communicating like an adult and actually figuring out what the boundary is. I do have a fear of coming off as preachy though lol.
Another aspect of it is the tendency in tech culture to see technology as "neutral" to the extreme. Where it is just "the wrong use of the tool" that is an issue, not the technology itself. Which, certainly in combination with the other point, can lead to some pretty warped logic and lead to discussions where I am just wondering how far down I have to look for the moral baseline.
So I had actually read your comment a day or two ago but didn't have the bandwidth to reply. I was fixated on this... this idea immediately made me recall an essay I once read in a "Philosophy of Science and Technology" class in college. I don't remember the name, the author, or when it was published... either the mid-1800s or the early 1900s, I forget which. Either way, that essay also touched on the neutrality point, and the idea that technology cannot be inherently neutral stuck with me ever since.
I couldn't find the essay after trying to dig it up for a while, so the most I can muster to elaborate on my view is to present this quote from Wikipedia:
According to Green, a technology can be thought of as a neutral entity only when the sociocultural context and issues circulating the specific technology are removed. It will be then visible to us that there lies a relationship of social groups and power provided through the possession of technologies.
I feel like I'd need to give the topic some deeper thought before I could elaborate much more, but yeah, I just wanted to mention that you bringing up the idea sparked somewhat of an existential response and train of thought for me. Appreciate you sharing.
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Comment on Communities, relationships, and navigating the enshittification of absolutely everything in ~talk
chroma Link ParentFunny you mention the Bay Area. One of the reasons for which I like to tell people I moved out of the Bay Area is all of the tech billboards you see going in/out of San Francisco after the Bay...Funny you mention the Bay Area. One of the reasons for which I like to tell people I moved out of the Bay Area is all of the tech billboards you see going in/out of San Francisco after the Bay Bridge. I visit sometimes, and now it's all AI billboards, and I am still sick of them.
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Comment on Communities, relationships, and navigating the enshittification of absolutely everything in ~talk
chroma Link ParentYes, this one I worry about. Right now I view hand-writing at least some of my code (preferably the first bit before the LLM has had a chance to vomit all over everything) like eating my...even with reviewing all the generated code, my long term understanding of my code bases was lacking [...] I felt my skills atrophying
Yes, this one I worry about. Right now I view hand-writing at least some of my code (preferably the first bit before the LLM has had a chance to vomit all over everything) like eating my vegetables, in that it's just something I should do. Even that's not the best comparison, because I definitely enjoy writing code, I've just learned to be okay with taking the role of reviewer/nitpicker/post-fact editor. As for losing understanding of a codebase, that's pretty tough, and for me I haven't come up with a better way to counteract that than to be disciplined about trying to understand the code.
the sight of any advertising triggered a gutteral reaction against being manipulated. I felt violated any time someone tried to sell me something.
I feel the same. Most ads these days feel borderline dehumanizing, even if that's just my/our perception. There are definitely good/non-problematic ones out there, though somewhat ironically I don't remember them as much as the loud, bright, and colorful ones that feel surgically manufactured to evoke certain emotions.
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Comment on Communities, relationships, and navigating the enshittification of absolutely everything in ~talk
chroma (edited )Link ParentThank you for that last bit, it does feel good to know I'm not alone here. For me, I only started caring about privacy enough to do something about it starting around 2023 or so. I ran Ubuntu for...Thank you for that last bit, it does feel good to know I'm not alone here.
For me, I only started caring about privacy enough to do something about it starting around 2023 or so. I ran Ubuntu for like 4 months at one point in the 2010s as a learning exercise really, as I was pretty new and just trying to get into software development. That turned into macOS once I had fully gulped down the tech hype kool aid (plus all the pitfalls that come with being a starry-eyed junior developer). Anyway, my tenure isn't as long as yours, haha.
But yeah, it definitely feels like you're preaching to nobody when you start talking about privacy to folks who don't know/care/have to/want to know or care. Much less the feeling of "going up against all the billionaire-run corporations all by yourself", as you aptly put it.
EDIT: Oh, I forgot I had something to say w.r.t. agents doing all the coding. This is a tangent, but at one point in my career I took up a people management role. At first I hated it because I wasn't coding and doing the fun stuff (and honestly I still prefer being an IC), but it did open my eyes to the "doing by influence" side of software engineering. It ended up being a valuable experience for me even as I'm back in an IC role now, in that I'm more comfortable contributing to my workplace in ways that don't involve coding, and as a result I feel I'd be a lot less depressed if Claude was writing all my code for me, because at least I know I'm useful elsewhere.
Don't know how that lands with you or how relevant it is for you, but it's yet another thing that crosses my mind frequently. Though I wouldn't mind also just retiring and farming turnips or something.
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Comment on Communities, relationships, and navigating the enshittification of absolutely everything in ~talk
chroma Link ParentRight, I don't think I disagree with that. I will say that the conclusion I jumped to and the sentiment I hold towards Discord for doing this is colored a whole heck of a lot by the general...- Exemplary
Right, I don't think I disagree with that. I will say that the conclusion I jumped to and the sentiment I hold towards Discord for doing this is colored a whole heck of a lot by the general attitude I express in the rest of the post. I did catch wind that one of the reasons Discord is doing this is that they're trying to IPO, and the board hates porn (rightfully so, in the case of the illegal kind plus whatever other nefarious shit is going on on that platform). I mentally lump this in with other instances of "company does X invasive thing in the name of going public/the big bucks", which I have a negative perception on things belonging to that category. My perspective is jaded here.
Discord would love if children went on gooning parties in NSFW channels as long as they were paying for nitro.
Yes lol. I take issue with the way they're going about doing this, partnering with questionable vendors and the like. I get that solving the issue of irregularly occurring problematic behavior happening on your centralized platform isn't easy. But wouldn't it be nice if they were doing this because they cared, we all sang the kumbayah and solved this endemic issue with positive messaging, education, and proactive moderation efforts? (please read this sentence tongue-in-cheek; I am not offering a productive solution, rather I am waving my hands furiously)
It's like wondering if casinos are doing age checks because they want to steal your data.
Eh, yes, it would be good if I didn't conflate these things. If I were to extend this analogy into shaky territory though, I also think casinos have a predatory business model which I take moral issue with. If you squint hard enough you can almost draw a parallel with my attitude towards Discord's news.
So "enshittification" probably isn't accurate there. Maybe "enshittification-adjacent".
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Communities, relationships, and navigating the enshittification of absolutely everything
(I wasn't sure if I should post this in ~talk or ~tech. I went with ~talk because I feel like I'm about to spend a whole lot of this post rambling. Also, be warned: This is a long post.) A summary...
(I wasn't sure if I should post this in ~talk or ~tech. I went with ~talk because I feel like I'm about to spend a whole lot of this post rambling. Also, be warned: This is a long post.)
A summary of this post: My personal decision to try to preserve my own online privacy, the chaotic equilibrium that is me attempting to make sense of my feelings towards AI and the current zeitgeist, and the tiny concessions I've had to make in navigating all of this makes me feel, at best, tired, and at worst, a crazy person. I am tired of the direction the internet is going, I am tired of the endless discourse about AI, and my chronic tiredness is all marinating together into a tired admixture of tired chicken soup.
First of all, hi everyone. I don't post here as often as I maybe would like to. Randomly chiming in with a big ol' post like this a bit daunting. Participating in an online community isn't a muscle I flex very often nowadays, which is actually relevant to what I'm about to talk about.
Latelyfor a long fucking time now I've just been tired of the direction in which the internet, specifically the "corporate web", has been heading. This all started when I first joined Tildes; around that time was when the big Reddit API fiasco happened, leaving a bad taste in my mouth, and it was not long after when AI started to become A Big Thing. If you had asked me why these things had left a bad taste in my mouth back then, I wouldn't have been able to respond with anything articulate, just "big tech bad".In the three years that have passed, I've developed enough of an opinion and have gone through enough soul searching to give a more concrete answer to why I don't like how things are going:
- Everybody wants my data, and I'd rather not give it to them
- I am tired of finding figurative AI hairs in my figurative sandwich
- Every company wants infinite growth at the expense of everything that made that company good, if it was ever good
- It's really hard to find a third space on the internet these days
- Almost nobody I know cares about any of this
Among privacy-conscious folks and small internet communities like Tildes, none of the above are particularly novel thoughts. And yet I think about all of this frequently enough that I felt the need to post a topic here for discussion. In this post, I'm going to get on my little soapbox, recount how I got to this mind space, and attempt to explain why I find all of this both endlessly tiring and constantly present in my mind.
Everybody wants my data, and I'd rather not give it to them (and almost nobody I know cares about any of this)
In the past few years I've taken the steps realistic for me in order to protect my online privacy. Why? Well, I hate being advertised to. I hate the idea of surveillance-as-a-service. I'm fortunate enough to be able to just pay for, or configure/self-host, things that do the thing they're supposed to do without knowing that I'm a 512 year old nonbinary alien from like, Nova Arrakis Prime the 2nd, Esq. or something (I am not that old, that is not how I identify, and I'm obviously not from there). I just don't buy the idea that everybody on the internet is a consumer who needs to accept this compromise in order to participate. Again, this might not be novel for a lot of you reading.
For me this has involved switching away from Gmail as an email provider, ditching Windows for Linux everywhere, cancelling my YouTube Premium subscription, deleting Facebook/most Meta stuff, browsing behind a VPN, etc. Some things I'm working on going further on; some things, like deleting Instagram, I don't want to do because that platform is how I connect with a lot of my friends. Essentially I've done what's realistic for me.
All of this has worked out fine for me. My quality of life has not measurably changed as a result, other than maybe the fact that it's slightly inconvenient to open up a new browser session and log in to my otherwise-abandoned Google account just to interact with a random Google Sheet someone sent me.
The first bit of mental friction stems from discussions I've had with my partner on this topic. She's also privacy-minded, and so isn't against the idea of taking very similar actions. But she's not in a place where she can just do so as easily as I did, either because it's massively inconvenient for her (all of her data is holed up in Google services), would require a very large mindset/workflow shift (She is not technical enough to switch to Linux without a ton of friction, for example), or would damage her relationships (It's completely unrealistic to get everybody she knows to switch to Signal tomorrow - hell, she doesn't even want to do it herself to message me). I want to be very clear that none of this is inherently bad or a stain on her character or whatnot. My point is that privacy looks different for everybody, especially over time.
Extrapolate that friction out to people who aren't as close to me though, and it feels somewhat like dying by a thousand cuts. Not in the sense of mental anguish, just general fatigue. Over 50% of my communication with my good friends takes the form of them sending me memes on Instagram. I react and reply because I'm not just going to ghost them because of muh privacy. But there's that like 1% of my brain that goes "yeah I wish you wouldn't do that". I have not bothered to ask them to stop, because I don't (yet) care to proselytize to them in the name of privacy at the risk of shutting down what is effectively one of their love languages.
The thing is, they either aren't aware of the degree of data collection going on on every major internet platform, or they don't care. I do not believe myself in the slightest to be superior to them because of this. I don't fault them for either, and I, again, don't care to intervene because I don't want to be the person that gatekeeps the entire internet from them in the name of rebelling against big corpo.
So yes, I would say the majority of my friends are not as opinionated on this as I am. Because of this, I sometimes feel I'm a little crazy whenever I propose to my partner the idea of self-hosting our own file storage, or when I happen to say "Yeah, I try not to use Google Maps really. Why? Oh, I just don't want them to know where I've been". But then I talk with those of my friends who share this mindset, or browse online communities which do, and I feel normal again. And then I bounce between these circles, and I feel, I dunno, weird.
Interlude: The AI bubble and my pride as a software engineer
Frankly, I don't know how to feel about AI. This is compounded by the fact that I am a software engineer both by trade and as a hobby.
As a cultural phenomenon, I am pretty sick of it. I cannot stand AI-generated ads, AI-generated media, AI-generated writing, AI-generated whatever. I also cannot stand ads about AI-generated ads, AI-generated media, AI-generated writing, or AI-generated whatever. The last time I was spoonfed information about a topic to a remotely comparable degree was back when crypto/NFTs were the monster of the week. This round of industry hype has felt orders of magnitude more prevalent and exhausting.
As a software development tool, it's... fine. I was pretty against AI-assisted coding at first, but after having learned how to properly utilize it (whatever "properly" means), I've found it pretty helpful as of late. I'll usually hand-write the code and patterns I want the LLM to use, tell it "ok, now do this everywhere", approve/reject its output, and it gets a lot right with an acceptable amount of post-fact correction from me. It's also been useful as a learning tool: These past few months I've been working on a project that involves data mining/parsing a proprietary encryption/encoding format for a reasonably popular video game. I was not comfortable working with binary formats to this extent before, but after several back and forths with Claude and an earnest effort to understand just what the fuck it was writing to my codebase, I feel somewhat more knowledgeable now.
The tension I've had to balance given my above stance: I work at an AI startup.
Everyone around me is AI-pilled out the wazoo. This isn't meant to be an insult. They're all great people whom I get along great with, and I like my company/don't hate our vision enough to jump ship (inhales copium). It's just that I constantly have to deal with stuff like:
- Vibecoded PRs, which I have the wherewithal to push back on when appropriate, but in so doing must balance maintainability vs. urgency (and all that other pragmatism crap that comes with being a software engineer)
- AI-flavored communications - I do a mean ChatGPT impression. "That's an excellent observation. The tension you're feeling isn't imagined. It's real. If you want, I can break down the reasons why people tend to pour the cereal before the milk—just say the word."
- Building the meta-inference layer through a combination of carefully curated ground truths, a robust evaluation pipeline, and a multi-step, quantized agent selection algorithm that's resilient to both external disturbances and continuous platform evolution (this is basically a real sentence I had to read in an engineering strategy document someone put out)
And so, similar to the privacy dilemma I spoke about earlier, I find myself constantly doing mental gymnastics while working here. I am one of a few cynics in a room full of zealots (Again, I'm not trying to paint myself as some pariah here - I'm in this situation by choice, I'm just trying to note the juxtaposition). It would be easier if I just flat out hated the idea of AI to its core - I could just leave and choose not to engage with AI anything - but no, I use it, and I find it useful. In fact I enjoy applying software engineering principles to AI, because it's an interesting set of problems to wrangle.
Again, death by a thousand cuts. Firstly, I hate the prevalence of AI in mainstream culture, and I hate how it's being pushed as a panacea in my industry. Secondly, I don't hate AI as a tool. Thirdly, I'm surrounded by the first thing. Fourth: I have to explain my job to my friends and family. Doing so usually results in them asking me surface-level questions about AI (which I don't mind entertaining), them relaying how AI is god/the devil because it made them look like a Disney character (which I am tired of dealing with), or them asking me what my opinion on AI is (if I were to give them the whole story, it would be this entire post, so I just go "eh, it's fine").
My point with this section: I feel I am constantly doing mental gymnastics to justify the attitude I have towards AI. My stance is somewhat neutral. I read a blog post absolutely glazing it, I roll my eyes. I read a blog post absolutely trashing it, I roll my eyes. I think about AI, I roll my eyes. It's all just so tiring.
And also, as is evident by now, I have an Opinion about all of this. Am I crazy? Wouldn't it be a lot easier if I could just roll over and accept AI for what it is?
Turbo capitalism has fucked up how I navigate internet communities (and almost nobody I know cares about any of this)
The most recent development that's caused me to think about the topics presented in this post is Discord's recent rollout of its identity verification system. There has been plenty of discourse on this topic as of late, so I won't go on about too long about it here.
I view this motion by Discord as the next step in the enshittification of that platform. Given my views I've shared on surveillance capitalism as well as AI's effects on the industry and the garbage shoveled into the world by its most annoying proponents, you won't be surprised that my reaction to this news is negative, and I am currently deciding on whether or not to divest myself from Discord completely.
This decision is a small dilemma for me. On the one hand, muh privacy. On the other hand, I am part of a server centered around that one video game for which I'm working on that side project, and leaving the platform means severely reducing my participation in that community, because there's no way in hell they're moving that server off Discord. I don't know which way I'm going to go. This is also the same dilemma that occurred when I decided to partially divest myself from Meta and the like: Do I care about my relationships with my friends/family more than I care about muh privacy? (Yes).
(I feel like I'm finally getting to the point of my own post here...)
I'm very tired of the fact that these small dilemmas and points of contention have been popping up for me fairly consistently over the past few years. If we all just held hands and prayed I'd have it my way, I wouldn't have to choose between being an outsider in X community and *~\muh privacy~*, and I'd be 6'3" and jacked. But the way the corporate web is developing towards the endless rat race of turbo enshittification, I feel the rate at which I'm going to have to make these kinds of choices is going to be as consistent as it is now, or it's going to go up. Probably until I die.
Epilogue: The side project I was working on
I mentioned I was working on a video game side project. I feel it encapsulates the gripes I describe within this post pretty well, because it contains the following elements:
- Parsing binary data of a proprietary encoding/encryption format (I previously didn't know shit about how to do this, so I used AI to help me do it/learn more about the topic)
- A website which acts as a game database/search tool for in-game entities (I wanted to contribute to a community I'm currently deciding whether or not to somewhat isolate myself from)
- A Discord bot as an alternative method of interacting with the application/a way to submit drop table information, all of which must be crowd-sourced (Discord Bad. I figured I'd just stand up an authenticated REST API and let others do a Discord integration if they want, but still, I wish I wasn't about to force myself to cut this out of my roadmap.)
If you managed to read through all of that, thanks. I've been writing for like an hour, and I feel my ramblings have become more nonsensical than usual.
A summary of this post (copied from the beginning): My personal decision to try to preserve my own online privacy, the chaotic equilibrium that is me attempting to make sense of my feelings towards AI and the current zeitgeist, and the tiny concessions I've had to make in navigating all of this makes me feel, at best, tired, and at worst, a crazy person. I am tired of the direction the internet is going, I am tired of the endless discourse about AI, and my chronic tiredness is all marinating together into a tired admixture of tired chicken soup.
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Comment on Fitness Weekly Discussion in ~health
chroma Link ParentLol yeah, HIIT and intervals are my worst nightmare. After a certain point I feel like I'm flailing instead of sprinting or whatever the movement is. Props to you for liking that style of...Lol yeah, HIIT and intervals are my worst nightmare. After a certain point I feel like I'm flailing instead of sprinting or whatever the movement is. Props to you for liking that style of training. I'm happy to continue staying as far away from it as possible though. 🌞
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Comment on Fitness Weekly Discussion in ~health
chroma LinkI have discovered the magic of zone 2 running. I didn't hate running before, but I didn't particularly enjoy it. Didn't think the day would come where I would actually genuinely like running, but...I have discovered the magic of zone 2 running.
I didn't hate running before, but I didn't particularly enjoy it. Didn't think the day would come where I would actually genuinely like running, but now here we are. Turns out if you go slow as hell you can run a lot longer and it doesn't feel like death. I've been running 3x/week for the past month, and now with these easier runs as of last week I'm at 4.5 miles at a time at like 13 min/mi, all while blasting 2010s EDM and thinking about things like what I'll have for dinner today, or "I really have to pee", or just generally going "lalalalalala" in my head. It's great.
I've been better about gym 4x/week too over the last like month or so. RDL is up to 405x10, DB bench is at 90x5, DB OHP 65x7, leg press is at 5 plates + 20 + whatever the sled is x8. Combined with the running I'm pleasantly surprised at how maintainable this routine is. Recovery feels fine. I'm not in a rush to up the volume of either modality, at least until I decide to gain a bunch of weight again at some point later.
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Comment on Fitness tracker (2025 edition) in ~health
chroma LinkI use a Garmin vivosmart 5. I actually also have an Apple Watch, but it's sitting unused in a drawer somewhere. The rest of my comment will get to why lol. #0: I'd say the Garmin is worth the...I use a Garmin vivosmart 5. I actually also have an Apple Watch, but it's sitting unused in a drawer somewhere. The rest of my comment will get to why lol.
#0: I'd say the Garmin is worth the money. It was $150. This particular one is their second-cheapest fitness watch offering that they still sell. There was an eight month or so long period where I just stopped wearing my Apple Watch because it was annoying and the battery life made it a hassle, so I decided to just ditch it.
I decided to get the Garmin after that period of time mostly because I started playing basketball for a bit, so wanted a step tracker that covered for when my phone wasn't in my pocket. I fell off of basketball and started running, so it's still useful.
#1/2: I'd just get another Garmin, maybe a more expensive model, but most likely the same one. I vastly prefer it over the Apple Watch because
- It's more of a health tracker than a smartwatch. I want it to count my steps, track my heart rate and stuff, and track my sleep. That's really it. I don't need apps or anything else.
- The Apple Watch was more annoying than it was helpful after a certain point. I couldn't walk to the store without it asking if I was working out (that's mostly on me - I'm sure there's a way to turn that feature off). I'd randomly get jumpscared if I was listening to music and happened to turn the volume up on accident with the crown. I don't track strength workouts on it, because nothing of value is really recorded - just heart rate, and it artificially inflated my move ring. I don't need rings or social incentives to work out. If I wore lifting straps at the gym, the crown would sometimes bump against the straps and stop my music or do something unrelated. I just don't need a smartwatch.
- The Garmin battery lasts like a week, Apple Watch a day.
- The vivosmart in particular is subtle enough that I can wear another actual watch on my other wrist if I want to.
#3: I mostly realized that I don't need any other heuristic for my daily activity other than step counts. I don't put much stock in "active calories" or whatever because I know those measurements tend to be inaccurate. Step count is nice because it translates into how much I've intentionally moved around that day. And yeah, again, I just don't need a smartwatch. I do not want notifications on my watch (or my phone even), I don't want to take calls from my watch, I don't want to know that my friend ran a 5K without them feeling the need to tell me.
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Comment on Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the Oklahoma City Thunder beat the rested Minnesota Timberwolves 114-88 in Game 1 of West finals in ~sports.basketball
chroma Link ParentWolves definitely lost this game, but the whistle for SGA was absolutely exhausting to watch. At least 2 of the shooting fouls called for him involved literally no defender(-initiated) contact....Wolves definitely lost this game, but the whistle for SGA was absolutely exhausting to watch. At least 2 of the shooting fouls called for him involved literally no defender(-initiated) contact. Plus that travel flop that got overturned into an OKC possession.
Praying the Wolves get it together. My beloved prince Steph didn't die for this.
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Comment on Single most useful program you daily use? in ~tech
chroma Link ParentI spent some time fiddling with it today because of this, haha. The motions are familiar, but weird... in a good way, because the whole "motion first" thing is logically more intuitive to me, but...I spent some time fiddling with it today because of this, haha. The motions are familiar, but weird... in a good way, because the whole "motion first" thing is logically more intuitive to me, but 6 years of vim muscle memory makes me have to think a lot. Actually, the mnemonics and modes are all more intuitive than vim IMO. One problem I have is that so many default bindings want Alt, which is "special" in macOS for sending composed characters and emojis and stuff. I actually use that feature a lot, so I'll have to rebind a lot of the defaults I guess.
Anyway, the native IDE-ish features it has so far (mostly pretty good LSP support and config) are basically enough for me to want to switch. Neovim's LSP support is good, but a bit much config-wise. I can pretty much do what I normally do for all my projects without any plugins, which is nice.
helix --healthfor default LSP health check is really helpful too.I'll probably drive this on my personal machine for a bit before I decide to fully switch. Thanks for the shout!
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Comment on Fitness Weekly Discussion in ~health
chroma LinkOooh for some reason I had no idea Tildes had a weekly fitness thread. Hi everyone! That being said, I haven't made any exciting changes to my training lol. General strength training/bodybuilding...Oooh for some reason I had no idea Tildes had a weekly fitness thread. Hi everyone!
That being said, I haven't made any exciting changes to my training lol. General strength training/bodybuilding 3-4x a week, indoor bouldering 1-2x a week (more like once now since I recently moved further away from my gym). I've been teetering on the idea of running again for a bit, but the first two things are plenty enough for me to balance with everything else in my life.
Recent PRs of 365x8 RDL, 210x8 pendulum squat (I don't know how pendulum squats vary from gym to gym, but mine is one of those ones where you have to load a ridiculously light amount of weight; 210 is 1 plate so wooo milestone), 195x8 lying machine press.
As I type this, I remembered the one exciting thing I've got going for me. I've been dealing with a shoulder impingement forever now and haven't been able to overhead press or do certain movements with my shoulder for months, but I've found a rehab routine that works well enough for me that I can specifically do neutral grip machine overhead presses without pain, which is awesome. I've been out of that game for a while so I have no benchmark for how my current intensity compares to what it was before, but I'm just happy to be doing some kind of vertical pressing again.
I will leave you all with a simple recipe that I've been making most days this week: Meathead imitation crab salad (like what you get at a poke shop or in a California roll). Food processor or hand blender recommended.
- 150g imitation crab
- 80g 2% cottage cheese
- 5g kewpie mayonnaise
- Sugar, MSG, chopped green onions to your liking
- Mince or blitz the crab until it's at your desired consistency; I usually make it look like what's in a California roll
- Mix cottage cheese, mayo, sugar, MSG. (If you have a food processor you can puree all of this together for a creamy consistency, but it still works fine without)
- Mix all that together, fold in green onions
That's it! Imitation crab is pretty high in sodium so beware if you're sensitive to that, but otherwise, this makes a pretty good way to satisfy a sushi craving (which is like every day for me). Macros roughly 256kcal/6F/29C/19P
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
chroma Link ParentYeah totally understandable, that's how most of my attempts to learn chess have gone. Puzzles are definitely one thing, but the idea of not focusing too hard on "winning" moves for now, in games...Yeah totally understandable, that's how most of my attempts to learn chess have gone. Puzzles are definitely one thing, but the idea of not focusing too hard on "winning" moves for now, in games and instead just trying to play a solid foundational style is what helped for me to break past that mindset. It's indeed pretty depressing when the engine calls half of your moves inaccuracies, lol.
Ultimately, what I realize is yes, they're misses/inaccuracies, but they still developed the piece/controlled the center/whatever at the cost of missing material or letting the opponent play a tactic; and they weren't blunders. The engine is rated at like 3600, which we are not; it's basically perfect. But "don't let perfect be the enemy of good" is how I'd summarize the mindset that helped me.
No worries :)
Mostly comes down to wanting to also live near friends and family. My parents are a few hours drive upstate, my partner's parents and her sister only live 20 minutes away from us in either direction. All of our friends are close by too. It would just take a lot of effort, planning, and coordination outside of just ourselves to fathom being able to uproot ourselves. Might be something to do when we're both older though.
I am jealous that you have had the opportunity to move yourself though. Mind if I ask what made it possible for you?