cutmetal's recent activity

  1. Comment on Honk your horn in ~health.mental

    cutmetal
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    It's funny but it's true! Even if you're chainsawing with a purpose, it's a fairly mindless, repetitive task. Activating that default mode network in your brain is so good for you and something we...

    It's funny but it's true!

    Even if you're chainsawing with a purpose, it's a fairly mindless, repetitive task. Activating that default mode network in your brain is so good for you and something we don't get enough of.

    (In Peter Brin's later Uplift books there are POV characters who are sentient chimpanzees, the product of accelerated directed evolution. When facing problems they sometimes regret that humans have given them sentience. I feel like this a lot - sentience is the problem, it sucks to be aware of things, and that's why meditation and similar (and alcohol and some drugs) can be so great.)

    You also get to feel good about using a green source of fuel to heat your home, as long as you're sourcing the firewood locally from naturally-dead trees.

    3 votes
  2. Comment on The goon squad. Loneliness, porn’s next frontier, and the dream of endless masturbation. in ~life

    cutmetal
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    I'm glad to see that you all enjoyed that one as much as I did. It was grim and long but also funny, interesting and very eloquent. None of my IRL people are going to read it, but I sent it along...

    I'm glad to see that you all enjoyed that one as much as I did. It was grim and long but also funny, interesting and very eloquent. None of my IRL people are going to read it, but I sent it along to them anyway.

    3 votes
  3. Comment on The goon squad. Loneliness, porn’s next frontier, and the dream of endless masturbation. in ~life

    cutmetal
    Link Parent
    Man, me too. I still think that, if you could zoom out far enough and see all of future history, you'd see that the line does trend upward. But we are certainly in a very deep, dark pit right now....

    Man, me too. I still think that, if you could zoom out far enough and see all of future history, you'd see that the line does trend upward. But we are certainly in a very deep, dark pit right now.

    The pendulum always swings. These fucks out there right now are going to lose their grip on power sooner or later, and when they do it will be glorious.

    5 votes
  4. Comment on Honk your horn in ~health.mental

    cutmetal
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    Being in nature and interacting with the natural world are the best stress relievers for me. Gardening, harvesting and processing firewood, cuddling my dog, going for a walk in the woods.

    Being in nature and interacting with the natural world are the best stress relievers for me. Gardening, harvesting and processing firewood, cuddling my dog, going for a walk in the woods.

    10 votes
  5. Comment on Honk your horn in ~health.mental

    cutmetal
    Link Parent
    Oh shit, my old 1999/2000ish (first gen anyway) CRV had that! Man I miss that car sometimes.

    Oh shit, my old 1999/2000ish (first gen anyway) CRV had that! Man I miss that car sometimes.

  6. Comment on What is your 'Subway Take'? in ~talk

    cutmetal
    Link Parent
    I was very fortunate to go to an above-average high school, and while most of it was pretty normal there was one oddball class taught by an English teacher that I took called Media Literacy. Being...

    I was very fortunate to go to an above-average high school, and while most of it was pretty normal there was one oddball class taught by an English teacher that I took called Media Literacy. Being 15-17 years old and being shown how deceptive advertising and the media can be was an important formative experience, and I wish more people had similar. This was maybe 2002, before these sort of ideas got co-opted by mainstream-ish lunatics, dumbed down and turned into something like "Don't trust the MSM, the real news is on Newsmax/Truth Social/Twitter/Tiktok/some random Telegram channel!"

    Also I've always said that formal/philosophical logic and rhetoric should be required for all high school graduates. I don't know what subject you deprioritize to get the time to teach it, but surely being able to spot fallacies and logical inconsistencies in life is at least as important as being able to name the parts of the cell, who the 11th president was, recite and use the quadratic formula or do stoichiometry.

    (Been a while since I thought about them, and sadly these ideas are starting to feel quaint - we can't move forward until we can stop moving backwards. In the end I'd be happy if we could just teach safe sex and evolution and leave Jesus and ChatGPT at home.)

    2 votes
  7. Comment on What is your 'Subway Take'? in ~talk

    cutmetal
    Link Parent
    Hahaha, stirring the pot! 😈

    Hahaha, stirring the pot! 😈

    1 vote
  8. Comment on What are some interesting landmarks in your neck of the woods? in ~talk

    cutmetal
    Link Parent
    Mine either. How cool would it be if she started writing scifi/fantasy/horror, but set in the mid-Atlantic region like so many of her works are. I'd be all over it!

    Mine either. How cool would it be if she started writing scifi/fantasy/horror, but set in the mid-Atlantic region like so many of her works are. I'd be all over it!

    1 vote
  9. Comment on What is your 'Subway Take'? in ~talk

    cutmetal
    Link Parent
    Preach! If there aren't many cars on the highway and I'm going fast then why should I have to get back into the right lane after passing a slower driver? If feels like a rule imposed by the sort...

    Preach!

    If there aren't many cars on the highway and I'm going fast then why should I have to get back into the right lane after passing a slower driver? If feels like a rule imposed by the sort of people who need everything to be at right angles and panic when presented with choices.

    The only rule should be: if you're driving slower and aren't already on the right, get on the right when someone going faster is nearing you.

    (Sidebar: did you realize how controversial this would be? Some of the nastiest exchanges I ever got into on reddit were on this very subject.)

    1 vote
  10. Comment on What are some interesting landmarks in your neck of the woods? in ~talk

    cutmetal
    Link Parent
    Wow, such a small world. I'm from Frederick County myself. Being from Boonsboro, do you know Nora Roberts?

    Wow, such a small world. I'm from Frederick County myself. Being from Boonsboro, do you know Nora Roberts?

    1 vote
  11. Comment on What are some interesting landmarks in your neck of the woods? in ~talk

    cutmetal
    Link Parent
    I'm from the same general area, and sort of close to me we have the Washington Monument. Not the big, majestic phallus we all know and love in Washington DC, but rather an earlier and much more...

    I'm from the same general area, and sort of close to me we have the Washington Monument. Not the big, majestic phallus we all know and love in Washington DC, but rather an earlier and much more modest little chode in rural Maryland. Don't go out of your way but if you happen to be nearby then check it out, I guess!

  12. Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of October 13 in ~society

  13. Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of October 13 in ~society

    cutmetal
    Link Parent
    Jesus fucking Christ. The Based Ritual piece feels more like dystopian fiction than reality. Just... fuck.

    Jesus fucking Christ. The Based Ritual piece feels more like dystopian fiction than reality. Just... fuck.

    5 votes
  14. Comment on What code editor / IDE do you use (2025)? in ~comp

    cutmetal
    Link Parent
    I should really give that vim extension a go. At work we're also using it with WSL, thank goodness. LSPs and such almost seem to get in the way as much as they help, but that's probably just...

    I should really give that vim extension a go. At work we're also using it with WSL, thank goodness. LSPs and such almost seem to get in the way as much as they help, but that's probably just because I never really got used to them.

    3 votes
  15. Comment on What code editor / IDE do you use (2025)? in ~comp

    cutmetal
    Link Parent
    Another neovimmer checking in. At work folks mainly use VSCode, and I'll use it sometimes, but it doesn't seem worth the hassle to configure, with the possible exception of interactive debugging.

    Another neovimmer checking in. At work folks mainly use VSCode, and I'll use it sometimes, but it doesn't seem worth the hassle to configure, with the possible exception of interactive debugging.

    1 vote
  16. Comment on An AI that turns any book into a text adventure game in ~books

    cutmetal
    Link Parent
    The fidelity is pretty bad, as others have pointed out. I didn't want to bog down my comment with more things, but before commenting I tried a book I just read (Revelation Space) and it was...

    The fidelity is pretty bad, as others have pointed out. I didn't want to bog down my comment with more things, but before commenting I tried a book I just read (Revelation Space) and it was frankly terrible.

    As it exists now, this website isn't a threat to anyone's copyright, because nobody will have much fun using it. But it's still fun to talk about.

    2 votes
  17. Comment on An AI that turns any book into a text adventure game in ~books

    cutmetal
    Link Parent
    Seems more like a tech demo to me, not a site intending to make money. Also being transformative from the original novels and movies I think it would fall under fair use.

    Seems more like a tech demo to me, not a site intending to make money. Also being transformative from the original novels and movies I think it would fall under fair use.

    7 votes
  18. Comment on Meta: A Human-Friendly Programming Language in ~comp

    cutmetal
    Link Parent
    Like 15 years ago I was working on a low-powered embedded Linux system, we thought we wanted to add support for date and time synchronization but the processes for adding packages to the system...

    Like 15 years ago I was working on a low-powered embedded Linux system, we thought we wanted to add support for date and time synchronization but the processes for adding packages to the system were byzantine, so rather than go through that to get an ntp client I mooted writing a little shell script to get time sync using daylight protocol. We didn't go that route but I still think it would have been fun and worked pretty well.

    3 votes
  19. Comment on Tech companies are finding out everything is political in ~tech

    cutmetal
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    What's the drama with Hyprland? I literally just heard about it in a comment over in the "I want to do a Linux halp" thread.

    What's the drama with Hyprland? I literally just heard about it in a comment over in the "I want to do a Linux halp" thread.

    2 votes
  20. Comment on Travel essentials: eight items to pack for your next trip – and what to leave at home in ~travel

    cutmetal
    Link Parent
    I think it's to boil water, so you could make tea or coffee in a hotel room with no kettle.

    I think it's to boil water, so you could make tea or coffee in a hotel room with no kettle.

    3 votes