dustylungs's recent activity

  1. Comment on What are some of your personal misheard lyrics? in ~music

    dustylungs
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    A friend of mine used to corrupt Creedence Clearwater's "there's a bad moon on the rise" with "there's a bathroom on the right", and now I can't unhear that. It ruined the song for me.

    A friend of mine used to corrupt Creedence Clearwater's "there's a bad moon on the rise" with "there's a bathroom on the right", and now I can't unhear that. It ruined the song for me.

    16 votes
  2. Comment on What words do you recommend? in ~talk

    dustylungs
    Link
    "Grapholect" is an interesting word. Just as dialect refers to a spoken variant of a language, grapholect refers to a written variant. I like this word because it emphasizes the importance of...

    "Grapholect" is an interesting word. Just as dialect refers to a spoken variant of a language, grapholect refers to a written variant. I like this word because it emphasizes the importance of reading and writing to intellectual life. Walter Ong's book, “Orality and Literacy”, says that oral dialects are typically comprised of a few thousand words, while “the grapholect known as standard English" has over 1.5 million words.

    2 votes
  3. Comment on What words do you recommend? in ~talk

    dustylungs
    Link Parent
    Actually, a great approach to academic writing is through elimination of awkward words and phrases or, more generally, elimination of all but the minimal elements needed to illustrate your ideas....

    Actually, a great approach to academic writing is through elimination of awkward words and phrases or, more generally, elimination of all but the minimal elements needed to illustrate your ideas. Strunk and White would give you a nod of approval.

    5 votes
  4. Comment on What's a setting that you'd recommend? in ~tech

    dustylungs
    Link Parent
    Zooming in on this part of your comment. Before I got an espresso machine, I used an Aeropress for years. I generally live by the KISS principle (keep it simple, stupid) and the Aeropress is like...

    Aeropress

    Zooming in on this part of your comment. Before I got an espresso machine, I used an Aeropress for years. I generally live by the KISS principle (keep it simple, stupid) and the Aeropress is like a Lagrange point in functional simplicity: better-than-decent coffee, easy to clean, portable and-- at least in my experience --indestructible in normal usage. There are a lot of guides online with instructions and recipes for frilly foofoo drinks that can be made with the Aeropress, but for regular old coffee-no-cream, it is really hard to beat an Aeropress. The only non-stock tweak I use on the Aeropress is to use a Prismo attachment with a paper filter.

    1 vote
  5. Comment on What's a setting that you'd recommend? in ~tech

    dustylungs
    Link
    {"coffee": { "cream": "no", "sugar": "no" }}

    {"coffee": {
    "cream": "no",
    "sugar": "no"
    }}

    12 votes
  6. Comment on Investment club? in ~finance

    dustylungs
    Link
    I'm in no position to be giving investment strategy advice, but I wonder if a starting point for a club might be with recommended readings rather than discussion of specific investments*....

    I'm in no position to be giving investment strategy advice, but I wonder if a starting point for a club might be with recommended readings rather than discussion of specific investments*. Personally, I would recommend anything related to the efficient market hypothesis. Burton Malkiel's Random Walk Down Wall Street is hard to beat on that topic. ( *although I too recommend VTI/VTSMX/VTSAX. )

    2 votes
  7. Comment on Question about breathing while exercising in ~health

    dustylungs
    Link
    I ran track in high school and was mildly successful and I never breathed through my nose when doing anything much harder than a mild jog. I was also on my bike 12 months a year for all occasions...

    I ran track in high school and was mildly successful and I never breathed through my nose when doing anything much harder than a mild jog. I was also on my bike 12 months a year for all occasions and would always breath through my mouth when doing anything but the lightest of riding (more than a handful of bugs met their fate in my lungs). Some people have an air passage through their noses big enough to breathe even during fairly strenuous exercise, but not everyone.

    13 votes
  8. Comment on This to That (glue advice) in ~creative

    dustylungs
    Link
    Your handy web-based tool tip of the day. I supposed this could also be a request for other useful single-purpose web-based tools. If you know of one you'd like to share, please glue it to this...

    Your handy web-based tool tip of the day. I supposed this could also be a request for other useful single-purpose web-based tools. If you know of one you'd like to share, please glue it to this post in a comment below.

    1 vote
  9. Comment on Perplexity’s Comet browser invites in ~tech

    dustylungs
    Link
    Related PSA: If you have a PayPal account, Perplexity is currently offering a year of Perplexity Pro for free.

    Related PSA: If you have a PayPal account, Perplexity is currently offering a year of Perplexity Pro for free.

    3 votes
  10. Comment on What creative projects have you been working on? in ~creative

    dustylungs
    Link
    Home renovation projects are one of my creative outlets. Recently one small project turned into a kids-playhouse adventure. I noticed last winter that one of my basement closets was extremely...

    Home renovation projects are one of my creative outlets. Recently one small project turned into a kids-playhouse adventure.

    I noticed last winter that one of my basement closets was extremely cold, like below freezing cold, so I made a mental note to come back and rip out the closet's rear wall in warmer months to see what the problem was. I finally got around to it last week, and it turned out that there was a big unfinished (and poorly insulated) room behind the closet.

    Finding this felt almost like one of those Reddit threads where someone discovers a boarded up old room hidden in their house. --almost; but this room wasn't quite so big; under 200 cubic feet, with 4-foot ceilings. More storage space! You know I was excited.

    My kids were excited too, but they decided that additional storage was boring and that it would be better used as a playhouse. Being the pushover dad that I am, and realizing the potential to create my legacy as "Dad who can do anything!", I caved and began planning how to convert the dark and cold cavern into a safe, fun and WARM playhouse for them. And now I'm in the middle of building it.

    So far I have sealed up air leaks in the exterior wall with expanding foam, added a layer of foam board insulation to the walls, framed the walls with studs, wired an electrical outlet, wired ceiling lights (on a 3-way switch to prevent older siblings from shutting off the light when a younger sibling is in the back), routed HVAC air supply ductwork to the room, and cut and framed a window into the drywall facing out into the main basement room. The final steps will be to hang and tape drywall inside the playroom, trim and paint the walls (color scheme TBD), and install flooring. Then we'll "furnish" it with a plush rug, some beanbag chairs, a bookshelf, and some easy-open picture frames on the wall so the kids can swap in and out their own artwork.

    Given that this is a less-than-half-height room, working inside of it has meant I'm either crouching or kneeling a lot. My body hurts. It has been fun designing and building this, but wow it is exhausting. The next project the kids have been asking for is a treehouse-like loft built in an open area above their bedroom closets. I'm going to need an extended recovery period from this current project before I start thinking about that one.

    2 votes
  11. Comment on Old Man Trump by Woody Guthrie in ~society

    dustylungs
    Link Parent
    What do you think? Is there possibly a sensible way to interpret my comment? Or are you seriously suggesting I'm excited about bringing back songs about killing Native Americans? Or is your...

    Even the ones with lines about proudly killing Indians?

    What do you think? Is there possibly a sensible way to interpret my comment? Or are you seriously suggesting I'm excited about bringing back songs about killing Native Americans? Or is your comment just a form of a value-signaling purist gotcha game? Look at my comment history and that of pretty much anyone on tildes and answer your own question. Commenters like you drive people away from this site.

    9 votes
  12. Comment on Starting a tool library in ~tech

    dustylungs
    Link Parent
    On the flip side, people like that make it possible for the rest of us to find a "mitre saw (barely used!)" for 75% off the original price on FBMP or Craigslist.

    I know at least six people that own miter saws that have used them exclusively for one project of cutting baseboard trim one time

    On the flip side, people like that make it possible for the rest of us to find a "mitre saw (barely used!)" for 75% off the original price on FBMP or Craigslist.

    4 votes
  13. Comment on Old Man Trump by Woody Guthrie in ~society

  14. Comment on Old Man Trump by Woody Guthrie in ~society

    dustylungs
    Link
    I think Woody Guthrie's music deserves a revival. His see-through-you defiance of fascism and his anthemic support for solidarity among the working class seem like they might be very welcome in...

    I think Woody Guthrie's music deserves a revival. His see-through-you defiance of fascism and his anthemic support for solidarity among the working class seem like they might be very welcome in current times.

    As I was reading more background on Guthrie, I came across this fact that I thought some of you might also find interesting: In 1950, Guthrie rented an apartment from a landlord by name of Fred Trump. Guthrie's impression of Trump was one of disgust, motivating him to write lyrics for an (apparently never-performed) song called Old Man Trump. He references Trump again in another song called Ain't Got No Home.

    9 votes
  15. Comment on 'I destroyed months of your work in seconds' says AI coding tool after deleting a dev's entire database during a code freeze: 'I panicked instead of thinking' in ~comp

    dustylungs
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    In technical terms, what does it mean when an AI agent says this? "I panicked instead of thinking"

    In technical terms, what does it mean when an AI agent says this? "I panicked instead of thinking"

    8 votes
  16. Comment on Some AI music I generated in ~creative

    dustylungs
    Link Parent
    Thanks! This is really interesting. I also found the work songs Wikipedia entry and spent a good bit of time crawling around further in the topics. "I love folkways and foodways and how they...

    Thanks! This is really interesting. I also found the work songs Wikipedia entry and spent a good bit of time crawling around further in the topics.

    "I love folkways and foodways and how they reconnect us to our land and each other". (!) As someone with a bit of anthropology in my background, that reminds me very much about what originally interested me in the field. I love that in the study of diversity (e.g. in music, food or connections with the land) we can find fundamental commonalities.

    2 votes
  17. Comment on Happy Bastille Day! in ~society

    dustylungs
    Link
    July 14th is Bastille Day. If you celebrate, what do you do? What significance does Bastille Day hold for you? And what relevance or symbolism do you think it has (or should have) in present day...

    July 14th is Bastille Day. If you celebrate, what do you do? What significance does Bastille Day hold for you? And what relevance or symbolism do you think it has (or should have) in present day society, including outside of France?

    2 votes