doors_cannot_stop_me's recent activity

  1. Comment on Anyone have any ketogenic diet stories? in ~food

    doors_cannot_stop_me
    Link
    I did keto for a while, got to my lowest weight as an adult for a time. I just couldn't hack it long term, it started making me feel really deprived not being able to have my sweet treats. I also...

    I did keto for a while, got to my lowest weight as an adult for a time.

    I just couldn't hack it long term, it started making me feel really deprived not being able to have my sweet treats.

    I also was advised by my doctors to stop keto due to my cholesterol.

    Good luck!

    4 votes

  2. Comment on Announcing the eighth annual Tildes' Make Something Month (Timasomo)! in ~tildes

    doors_cannot_stop_me
    Link
    Put me in, coach! (To the notifications list, that is. I'll see if I can come up with a contribution)

    Put me in, coach! (To the notifications list, that is. I'll see if I can come up with a contribution)

    2 votes

  3. Comment on What's the best Pikmin game? in ~games

    doors_cannot_stop_me
    Link Parent
    Same. Ingress was kind of like that, but the locations were real and you could end up meeting some less than friendly faces sometimes.

    Same. Ingress was kind of like that, but the locations were real and you could end up meeting some less than friendly faces sometimes.

    1 vote

  4. Comment on Do you think you're special? in ~talk

    doors_cannot_stop_me
    Link Parent
    Thanks for the kind words and perspective! The isolation is real for sure, I remember feeling it a lot in my youth. I think there can be a flip-side to finding a niche for your own giftedness...

    Thanks for the kind words and perspective!

    The isolation is real for sure, I remember feeling it a lot in my youth. I think there can be a flip-side to finding a niche for your own giftedness matrix at work, and that's finding a social/friendship niche. As before, it's highly luck-based and (depending on the niche available to you) potentially at a high risk of toxicity (see the incel community, which started innocently as a place for people with a certain type of perceived social deficit to gather and find friendship or commiseration, but turned into... well, yikes).

    I've lucked out majorly in both places, and I'm so grateful. I fell into a career that is shaped around my interests and skills, which is fostering new skills I didn't even know were within my reach. I also, through fortunate happenstance, have been brought into proximity to a couple of people who took an interest in me and keep me from falling back to my social default (reading at home).

    I hope you are doing well though the mental challenges, too! I'm still coming to grips with that part of things, I think.

    And the "potential" thing... Well, I've been disappointing people who could see my potential for decades, so at least that part is fairly well scarred over for me. Disappointing myself sucks, though. I have to make an effort to affirm to myself that, even though I'm not a rocket surgeon or whatever I could have been if I were, fundamentally, a different person with none of my deficits, I am pretty badass at what I do sometimes and I occasionally make other people's day better, which is all that really matters anyway, I think. I try to focus less on how far I am from what I could be, and more on how far I am from where my worst traits would like to drag me. I'm improving, I'm trying.

    5 votes

  5. Comment on What's the best Pikmin game? in ~games

    doors_cannot_stop_me
    Link Parent
    That seems to be true. The game is relatively good about keeping information about your location visible to only you. Best I can tell, the only ways to reveal your location would be via postcards...

    my most likly walking areas are not sharable

    That seems to be true. The game is relatively good about keeping information about your location visible to only you. Best I can tell, the only ways to reveal your location would be via postcards (especially repeats or several different ones that come from the same vicinity) or mushroom battle invites. The postcards thing is entirely your own choice, so that's easy to avoid. Mushroom battles, on the other hand...

    Let's say you and I are in-game friends, but I don't want to reveal my location to you so I'm judicious about inviting you to only mushroom battles that aren't near my home. Over time, assuming I keep inviting you to other mushrooms, you could send friend requests to other people I battle mushrooms with, especially repeats. These people are likely also in my friends list. If I'm inviting them (our mutual friends, which i would have no way of knowing about) to mushroom battles close to home because I don't really care if they know where I live (since they don't know anything else about my life), then it's possible that one of more of them could start inviting you to those mushrooms, too. You wouldn't even have to tip your hand by joining them, you'd just be able to see that I keep joining the same mushroom battles in the same small town and not inviting you to them.

    Similarly, if I invite you to a mushroom battle and I'm the only one fighting it when you see it, then you can be fairly certain (unless I'm spoofing my location to get better access) that I'm physically close to that location, since it's incredibly unlikely that someone else invited me to it and then quit. This could give you information about my rough geographic location, maybe even travel habits.

    I'm not particularly worried about these things, as I'm unfortunately not as hard to locate based on information freely available on the Internet as I'd like to be, but it is the sort of thing I think about.

    1 vote

  6. Comment on What's the best Pikmin game? in ~games

    doors_cannot_stop_me
    Link Parent
    I am! Been playing daily for just over two years, and it has certainly gotten me out of bed some mornings for walks I otherwise would have skipped.

    I am! Been playing daily for just over two years, and it has certainly gotten me out of bed some mornings for walks I otherwise would have skipped.

    2 votes

  7. Comment on What's the best Pikmin game? in ~games

    doors_cannot_stop_me
    Link
    /noise As someone who has only played one Pikmin game, I have to say Pikmin Bloom. It's Pokemon Go, but Pikmin and better.

    /noise
    As someone who has only played one Pikmin game, I have to say Pikmin Bloom. It's Pokemon Go, but Pikmin and better.

    5 votes

  8. Comment on Do you think you're special? in ~talk

    doors_cannot_stop_me
    Link
    I definitely believe that I'm special, and I believe everyone else is, and I believe Syndrome can eat a big one. Growing up I, like many here, was told I was special. It was an explanation of my...
    • Exemplary

    I definitely believe that I'm special, and I believe everyone else is, and I believe Syndrome can eat a big one.

    Growing up I, like many here, was told I was special. It was an explanation of my school performance, good and bad. It was an expectation of future performance, which was equal parts inspiring, incorrect, and hurtful. It was true.

    It was also relative. When you're in a small town, a small school, a small world, it's easy to be not just special (unique in the universe, as we each are) but exceptional (above average, not falling into typical ranges), at least in some regard. There were things I could do that nobody around me could do so well. Few of them were socially valuable, like being good at sports would have been. Nobody "cool" cared that I could, before the age of 16, guess a grown man's pants size from 10 feet away to a high degree of accuracy. But it was something that made me exceptional. I was also academically gifted (for certain values of "gifted"), which didn't necessarily endear me to other kids, but impressed adults and could make life easier later. I was also exceptionally annoying to my teachers, but they tended to let that slide.

    But then I went to college. I met other exceptionally academically gifted kids, and they were more exceptional than me. It hurt. They were driven by the competition; I was daunted by the work of keeping up with them and gave up. My mind was accustomed to being a big fish in a small pond, and the ocean in which I found myself (in reality, another tiny pond - a small, private, conservative college nobody has likely heard of) broke me for a bit. I have a need to be exceptional, healthy or not.

    It took years to realize that the existence of people better than me at something did not negate my own exceptionality. People that score like me on standardized tests are a dime a dozen at universities. Not so at the hardware store I worked at after I dropped out of college. On the other hand, people who know how to change their own wall outlets, rekey a lock or properly use a glass cutter are common in hardware stores everywhere, but are exceptionally rare in the frat houses I've visited. Being exceptional doesn't mean being the best. It means being rare in context.

    I'm monologuing (dang it, Syndrome). But my rambling has reminded me of a scene from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, wherein the main character (an extraordinarily average man) finds himself stranded on a planet where technology is somewhat primitive. He doesn't know how to turn any of their resources into food, or how to build his own hut, or anything useful in his new context. But he finds a niche - he knows how to make a mean sandwich. His adoptive people have never seen such a thing, and he has tons of practice, so he becomes the closest thing to a restauranteur in that society. It's played for laughs, and at the time I first read it (as a still-academically-exceptional high-schooler) I assumed it was making a point about how unexceptional modern society makes us, that we become useless. Maybe that was the author's point, he was awfully pessimistic on modern society. But now I'm coming to view it as a demonstration that exceptionality is all about context.

    Sure, you may be a ho-hum coder at your big tech firm, but you'd be the best anyone's ever seen at thousands of small businesses. You might be so bad at your favorite video game that you can never get into competitive, but you dominate in your friend group. You might not be as funny as your friends, but you're the funniest dude at the office. It's all about context.

    And sure, some people derive their drive from being surrounded by exceptional people - they tend to gather, after all - and use that drive to improve. But if you're burned out, if you've hit your own personal ceiling in the skill, and you miss being exceptional, then try to find a new context. It's tough to do, and often very luck-based, but if you nail it it's so rewarding.

    But even if you don't find that niche, I think it's ok to believe you're special. We all are. You might just need to find the right people to recognize it.

    13 votes

  9. Comment on Fitness Weekly Discussion in ~health

  10. Comment on Fitness Weekly Discussion in ~health

    doors_cannot_stop_me
    Link Parent
    So true. I didn't mention this in my main comment, but there's a secret layer below all of the above that provided part of the motivation to go on all of those walks in the first place: Pikmin...

    So true. I didn't mention this in my main comment, but there's a secret layer below all of the above that provided part of the motivation to go on all of those walks in the first place: Pikmin Bloom. It's like Pokemon Go, but focused on planting flowers and destroying mushrooms. But most importantly, number go up is in full effect. There have been so many mornings where I would rather stay in bed, but if I don't get my walkies then number won't go up! I always say "If it looks stupid but works then it's not stupid."

  11. Comment on Fitness Weekly Discussion in ~health

    doors_cannot_stop_me
    Link
    I've been trying to get a bit more fit lately, and I'm proud of my progress. I haven't run in close to 20 years (other than to chase the occasional nephew), and even when I did I was not fast and...

    I've been trying to get a bit more fit lately, and I'm proud of my progress. I haven't run in close to 20 years (other than to chase the occasional nephew), and even when I did I was not fast and hated doing it. For years I've been doing walks as my only form of real exercise, including a few 5ks.

    I recently started the habit of walking about a mile and a half almost every morning before getting ready for the day, which has been nice. Then I got a Fitbit, and started paying attention to my heart rate as I walk. That got me to try a bit of jogging to get that heart rate up, trying to get more cardio minutes. Maybe a minute or so at most.

    Now for the past few weeks I've been actively trying to improve my ability to jog for longer periods. I'm jogging very slow, barely faster than my walking pace, but it definitely gets my heart pounding so I figure I'm doing it right. But I've improved from alternating 1 minute jogging then 2 minutes of walking to 2 minutes of jogging then 1 minute of walking. I've also been attempting longer, single jogging sessions during a walk, and the first time I could only do 3 minutes or so. But the last time I tried I got to about 7 and a half.

    I'm not sure how I should feel about the fact that extremely slow jogging can get my heart rate up so easily, but I'm very happy that I've been improving and even (gasp!) wanting to jog. That's never been a thing for me I don't think. I'm excited.

    7 votes

  12. Comment on What do you listen to while you’re reading? in ~books

    doors_cannot_stop_me
    Link
    I listen to music if I'm drowning out other sounds (like someone near me watching tv), and it's usually EDM. I always opt for something I'm very familiar with and that doesn't have lyrics, since...

    I listen to music if I'm drowning out other sounds (like someone near me watching tv), and it's usually EDM. I always opt for something I'm very familiar with and that doesn't have lyrics, since novelty and lyrics tend to distract me while I'm reading. Lately I've been listening to some bardcore tracks by Perceval when I read.

    2 votes

  13. Comment on Are there any passionate Nissan Leaf owners here? in ~transport

    doors_cannot_stop_me
    Link
    I know you specified gen 1, but I have a gen 2 and some of my experiences might translate to your search, so I'm pasting in my response to the other EV thread that popped up today: I have (and...

    I know you specified gen 1, but I have a gen 2 and some of my experiences might translate to your search, so I'm pasting in my response to the other EV thread that popped up today:

    I have (and love) a 2021 Nissan Leaf. It doesn't have the major battery woes of the first generation, it's a hatchback with good safety/quality of life features (radar cruise control, collision detection, lane assist, cameras), and it's fun to drive.

    There are definitely drawbacks. The infotainment system leaves something to be desired in my use case, since it's wired Android Auto instead of wireless and bugs me on occasion to enable a bunch of data tracking that I've refused to agree to. But it works.

    It's also not the greatest for longer distances. Like any EV, range is highly dependent on speed and conditions outside, but I've personally driven it 180 miles to visit my parents and another 180 back home a couple of days later with level 1, 120v AC charging off of regular wall outlets only, no fast charging of any kind. I had about 30 miles of stated range remaining each way. Now, I had my Google Maps set to avoid highways, which added about 45 minutes to my typical trip when I drive my ICE car. However, in a previous trip in the Leaf where I took my normal, faster route, I had to stop and fast charge (which is super annoying given the Chademo port on the Leaf) which added about the same amount of time, and was a more stressful trip overall.

    But! I bought this car knowing full well that I would not intend to take longer trips in it, based on its weird fast charging connector and the fact that, without the kind of active battery cooling present in other EVs, I can only expect to successfully fast charge about once a day before temperature-based charging slowdowns begin. So this doesn't bother me.

    For my actual use case, I drive about 14 miles a day during the work week, and make a couple of excursions a week to a larger city for shopping or meeting up with friends. I only have to charge 2-4 nights a week (120v AC slow charging from a normal wall outlet in my garage, mind you, no special equipment) most of the time, and I could do that less often if I weren't trying to baby the battery by only charging to 80% or less most of the time and not letting it dip below 50% most of the time.

    It's got quirks, it's not perfect, but man do I love not having to deal with the gas station. And it's cheaper to fuel, and it's needed no service yet (2 years in), and despite being one of the slowest electric vehicles in recent years, with Eco Mode on it will still put you back into the seat if you want it to.

    You can't go wrong with other, nicer EVs, but the Leaf really ain't bad.

    2 votes

  14. Comment on Help me choose a small electric car in ~transport

    doors_cannot_stop_me
    Link
    I have (and love) a 2021 Nissan Leaf. It doesn't have the major battery woes of the first generation, it's a hatchback with good safety/quality of life features (radar cruise control, collision...

    I have (and love) a 2021 Nissan Leaf. It doesn't have the major battery woes of the first generation, it's a hatchback with good safety/quality of life features (radar cruise control, collision detection, lane assist, cameras), and it's fun to drive.

    There are definitely drawbacks. The infotainment system leaves something to be desired in my use case, since it's wired Android Auto instead of wireless and bugs me on occasion to enable a bunch of data tracking that I've refused to agree to. But it works.

    It's also not the greatest for longer distances. Like any EV, range is highly dependent on speed and conditions outside, but I've personally driven it 180 miles to visit my parents and another 180 back home a couple of days later with level 1, 120v AC charging off of regular wall outlets only, no fast charging of any kind. I had about 30 miles of stated range remaining each way. Now, I had my Google Maps set to avoid highways, which added about 45 minutes to my typical trip when I drive my ICE car. However, in a previous trip in the Leaf where I took my normal, faster route, I had to stop and fast charge (which is super annoying given the Chademo port on the Leaf) which added about the same amount of time, and was a more stressful trip overall.

    But! I bought this car knowing full well that I would not intend to take longer trips in it, based on its weird fast charging connector and the fact that, without the kind of active battery cooling present in other EVs, I can only expect to successfully fast charge about once a day before temperature-based charging slowdowns begin. So this doesn't bother me.

    For my actual use case, I drive about 14 miles a day during the work week, and make a couple of excursions a week to a larger city for shopping or meeting up with friends. I only have to charge 2-4 nights a week (120v AC slow charging from a normal wall outlet in my garage, mind you, no special equipment) most of the time, and I could do that less often if I weren't trying to baby the battery by only charging to 80% or less most of the time and not letting it dip below 50% most of the time.

    It's got quirks, it's not perfect, but man do I love not having to deal with the gas station. And it's cheaper to fuel, and it's needed no service yet (2 years in), and despite being one of the slowest electric vehicles in recent years, with Eco Mode on it will still put you back into the seat if you want it to.

    You can't go wrong with other, nicer EVs, but the Leaf really ain't bad.

    1 vote

  15. Comment on Screenless Day discussion topic: September 2026 in ~life

    doors_cannot_stop_me
    Link Parent
    I think the biggest challenge was the force of habit. I found myself picking up my phone, staring at it for a moment, then remembering that there's nowhere on it for me to go for the day. I have...

    I think the biggest challenge was the force of habit. I found myself picking up my phone, staring at it for a moment, then remembering that there's nowhere on it for me to go for the day. I have an almost pathological need to distract myself from many things, and the phone has been an easy salve.

    I guess that's the second part that was difficult: I have currently got some health stuff going on that is as yet unidentified, and the symptoms are a bit scary to me. But being worried about the symptoms makes them worse, so distraction is a real blessing. My book-reading helped a lot, but I had a pretty rough, anxious evening last night that I really wanted to drown in some TikToks. Oh well, it didn't kill me last night, and I felt great this morning. So, challenging, but also a bit affirming.

    Thanks for asking!

    2 votes

  16. Comment on Screenless Day discussion topic: September 2026 in ~life

    doors_cannot_stop_me
    Link Parent
    All right, first an admission: I thought Monday was a work day when I committed to this, and that was gonna be easy. I only later remembered that it's a holiday and that I would be less gainfully...

    All right, first an admission: I thought Monday was a work day when I committed to this, and that was gonna be easy. I only later remembered that it's a holiday and that I would be less gainfully distracted from my phone than I'd thought.

    Nevertheless, I think it went well. I still used my phone for a step-tracking game and a few other sundries, but no scrolling and no refreshing. I even refused to check IMDb (as is usually my custom) during a movie we watched that was so terrible I felt compelled to see how it existed (it got two sequels!). I feel pretty good about this.

    Also, I got back into my book reading as I had hoped, so all in all very successful. Will do again.

    3 votes

  17. Comment on Screenless Day discussion topic: September 2026 in ~life

    doors_cannot_stop_me
    Link
    I think I'll try and participate on Monday, but with very large carve-outs for work and certain daily routines. Mainly, I guess, I'm going to take the day off from "refresh-bait" and scrollers....

    I think I'll try and participate on Monday, but with very large carve-outs for work and certain daily routines. Mainly, I guess, I'm going to take the day off from "refresh-bait" and scrollers. For me that means no tildes, TikTok, or YouTube (other than the shows I watch with my wife). I want to spend the time that those soak up in the little gaps of my day on reading instead. I have a book series I'm trying to catch up on, except I find myself turning on the e-reader and checking my phone during boot up, which just ends up turning into a scroll session instead. I'll report back on Tuesday how that goes.

    Thanks kfwyre for making a space for this to happen in!

    3 votes

  18. Comment on Taskmaster Season 22, Episode 1 - 'In my mind there’s a river.' | Full episode in ~tv

    doors_cannot_stop_me
    Link
    Just started the episode tonight, everyone is a delight! And it's obvious that Greg is just delighted by them all, which is always so fun to see.

    Just started the episode tonight, everyone is a delight! And it's obvious that Greg is just delighted by them all, which is always so fun to see.

    3 votes

  19. Comment on That book you remember some details but can't recall the title in ~books

    doors_cannot_stop_me
    Link
    There was this sci-fi book I read in high school from the library, I chose it because of the cool cover art (a woman in a spacesuit wielding an enormous rifle, crouching on the surface of a space...

    There was this sci-fi book I read in high school from the library, I chose it because of the cool cover art (a woman in a spacesuit wielding an enormous rifle, crouching on the surface of a space station or something). I think I enjoyed it, I really don't remember much of the content other than that there was a scene where a tour guide or captain or somone in a kilt was showing people around, and there was a mishap with the artificial gravity with predictable results that was played for laughs. Haven't seen it in years, but every so often I search for it just to try to see that cover art again.

  20. Comment on What do you call a bun, bacon, some amount of cheese, and two burger patties? (Not a setup to a joke) in ~food