milkywayflyinginsect's recent activity
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Comment on Salt vs. potassium in ~health
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Comment on Salt vs. potassium in ~health
milkywayflyinginsect (edited )Link ParentI tried Cronometer and found it pretty confusing because there are often multiple almost identical food choices, and they all show different nutrient amounts. When I checked fava beans, the...I tried Cronometer and found it pretty confusing because there are often multiple almost identical food choices, and they all show different nutrient amounts. When I checked fava beans, the differences were huge - even in protein content.
I mean, just look at these options yourself: "Broadbeans (fava beans), mature seeds, raw," "Fava Beans, Cooked from Fresh," "Broadbeans, Fava Beans, Mature Seeds, Cooked, Boiled, with Salt." The variation between them is significant.
Since I'm not from the US, there are no familiar brands to reference. Other than just messing around with it, it's hard for me to imagine actually tracking much in the app, let alone tracking absolutely everything. It seems like a real chore, especially when you cook for yourself and deal with leftovers and all that.
As for Michael Greger, I don't see much point in arguing about him as well. I personally trust the guy, which I can't say about the people cited in that Wikipedia article. Good to keep an open mind though.
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Comment on Salt vs. potassium in ~health
milkywayflyinginsect LinkI've been watching Dr. Gregor for years now, and he was the key person who helped me adopt a healthier lifestyle and diet. I was never concerned about the amount of sodium I get, whether while...I've been watching Dr. Gregor for years now, and he was the key person who helped me adopt a healthier lifestyle and diet. I was never concerned about the amount of sodium I get, whether while cooking or when buying food from the store or eating out. I'm a healthy 20-year-old with no real health problems like high blood pressure, so I thought naturally it's fine.
However, this video of Dr. Gregor made me reconsider. I started checking the foods that I buy and was astonished at just how easy it is to go over even the higher American Heart Association recommended dose of under 1500mg. Almost everything has a decent amount of salt in it, and often times we're so used to it we don't even consider it as a problem since it doesn't even taste salty.
Even this healthy bread that I had been buying had 1.2g of salt per 100g, which amounts to ~500mg of sodium. That's one slice of bread! I could keep going on, but you get the point.
Salt intake is linked to high blood pressure, affects gut health, leads to higher risk of strokes, heart disease, kidney disease, stomach cancer, and inflammation in the body.
Dr. Gregor also mentions that most people are deficient in potassium, which actually helps lower blood pressure. Our ancestors ate a ton of it from plants, but today more than 98% of Americans don't even get the minimum recommended amount. Less than 0.015% of people (or about 1 in every 6,000 Americans!) actually meet the goals for both salt and potassium.
He suggests using potassium chloride as a salt substitute to counter both of these problems at the same time.
Do you guys watch your sodium intake? Have you tried potassium chloride?
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Salt vs. potassium
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Comment on The video games to avoid if you don’t want to support Russia’s war in ~society
milkywayflyinginsect Link ParentProfits generated by companies with Russian ties, especially those with investors linked to state entities like Gazprom, contribute to the Russian economy and tax base. You're looking for a direct...United24 haven't uncovered any links or evidence of any kind of transactions or payments between these companies and Russia
Profits generated by companies with Russian ties, especially those with investors linked to state entities like Gazprom, contribute to the Russian economy and tax base.
You're looking for a direct transaction from a game developer to the Russian military / government, which is an extremely high and often hidden bar.Warthunder is hardly funding Russia's war effort because of their publisher making one ad deal with a youtuber?
Gaijin bought advertising on a YouTube channel that filmed with Russian-backed militants in occupied Donbas. It's financially rewarding content created in collaboration with combatants.
Battlestate collaborated with a weapons giant like Kalashnikov and pro-war bloggers.
How is that acceptable for you?I'm curious what small fraction of the money from Space Marine 2 has gone to Russia's government? What smaller percent of that has gone into the war?
It is impossible to track what a specific tax dollar is spent on and the moral objection is not to the amount of money, but to the fact that any money is contributing to the economy of a state engaged in an invasion. I for one choose not to participate in this economic chain, regardless of how small one's individual contribution is.
Any profitable company operating or paying taxes in Russia is, by definition, helping to fund the state as a whole, which includes its military actions. Therefore I will avoid all Russian companies if I can help it.
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Comment on The video games to avoid if you don’t want to support Russia’s war in ~society
milkywayflyinginsect LinkI also found a steam curator that lists all Russian linked games. I can’t verify the validity of the list, so take it with a grain of salt: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/42985013/I also found a steam curator that lists all Russian linked games. I can’t verify the validity of the list, so take it with a grain of salt:
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Comment on Wireless earphones: a belated review in ~tech
milkywayflyinginsect LinkTo me though, this feels more like a theoretical problem. I switched to wireless back in 2015 - many years ago now - but I went with Anker ones that still had a wire connecting one earbud to the...The second reason was my conscience, which took a while to accept that wireless earbuds have a limited lifespan because of the battery. On average, after two years capacity hits about 80%, the threshold for good performance. Except for rare (and expensive) exceptions, earbud batteries aren’t replaceable, which means most wireless earbuds are destined to the nearest landfill.
To me though, this feels more like a theoretical problem. I switched to wireless back in 2015 - many years ago now - but I went with Anker ones that still had a wire connecting one earbud to the other, even though the device itself was wireless. Used them for 5 years and generally didn't complain about the battery life. And they didn't even have a charging case! I had to replace them because one side stopped playing completely, not because of battery issues.
Then in 2020 I bought Anker Liberty Pro 3s - now completely wireless earbuds with noise cancellation and all that jazz - and I'm still rocking them. Battery capacity problems are almost completely nonexistent since there's the charging case and they charge pretty fast. That being said, I did run into charging issues quite early on (one side wouldn't charge sometimes), but I started regularly cleaning the contacts with isopropyl alcohol and I think that solved the problem.
Before wireless, I had these expensive wired earbuds - I don't even remember the company - they cost around 80 euros. After a couple of years I also had to replace them because one side was no longer playing.
So yeah, from my experience it seems like you're more likely to replace them eventually because of some other non-battery related issue and they last generally okay.
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Comment on AI tokens are getting more expensive in ~tech
milkywayflyinginsect (edited )Link ParentYeah, it's not that the tokens are getting more expensive, it's that reasoning models are putting out more tokens and because of that AI cost has actually gone up overall despite the predictions...Yeah, it's not that the tokens are getting more expensive, it's that reasoning models are putting out more tokens and because of that AI cost has actually gone up overall despite the predictions in the past that everything's going to get cheaper. This is unsustainable for businesses who give unlimited AI usage for a flat subscription cost.
This is certainly true when using AI for coding, but I’m not sure it’s true for consumers in general. How often do you need a deep research query outside work?
While it may be true that for deep research, i don't think it's true for reasoning models. I think we will be relying more and more on these reasoning models as we go into the future. They're just so much more reliable and better. And most people will always go for the best models. It's one of the points the author makes.
I almost never use the non-reasoning models for medium+ difficulty tasks. Only for easy questions.It used to be before that reasoning models would be very unconversational, unnatural sounding , robotic, have weird formatting and that is still the case for a lot of them, but googles gemini 2.5 pro bridged that gap. I don't know what they did, but I remember having that wow moment when using it. It was a big leap. I almost exclusively use it now.
I think non-reasoning models will still exist and have a place but most people will just be using the reasoning ones.
By the way, there's this Youtuber that went through this article and also shared his experience (he has an AI business as well), i found it insightful how costly grok 4 is.
https://youtu.be/mRWLQGMGY80 -
Comment on Guilt and video games in ~health.mental
milkywayflyinginsect Link ParentExactly! I haven't read Becoming Yourself yet. Mentally putting it to my "to-read" list. I did go through both Zen Mind Beginners Mind, and more recently, Not Always So. I enjoyed the latter way...The monk drying mushrooms was simply hot Buddha, right?
Exactly!
I haven't read Becoming Yourself yet. Mentally putting it to my "to-read" list. I did go through both Zen Mind Beginners Mind, and more recently, Not Always So. I enjoyed the latter way more even though the former is more well known. The talks in Zen Mind Beginners Mind feel deeper in a sense, but it's a bit harder to wrap your mind around.
Currently reading Crooked Cucumber and Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness. Loving both a lot ! -
Comment on Guilt and video games in ~health.mental
milkywayflyinginsect Link ParentWere you listening to a book by Shunryu Suzuki ? Perhaps his 'Zen mind, beginners mind' ? I have been reading his talks for a long time so naturally something of him must have rubbed off on me....Were you listening to a book by Shunryu Suzuki ? Perhaps his 'Zen mind, beginners mind' ? I have been reading his talks for a long time so naturally something of him must have rubbed off on me.
But yeah, good spot on the Zen thing. It teaches you to go beyond your conditioned mind deeply into what IS right now. A good story that I recently read from a book, i think it speaks to your situation:
“Kato liked to hear Suzuki’s English-language version of classic Zen stories—some about the great old masters of China, others about the life of Dogen. In one story Suzuki told during a Wednesday evening lecture, Dogen met an old monk in China who was drying mushrooms by a monastery wall on a hot summer day. “Why are you out here in the heat? Why not go in and rest until the sun is lower in the sky?” Dogen asked. “This is what I’m doing now,” answered the monk. “It’s my job and no one else’s job. Why would I try to be somewhere else?”
“The time is now,” Suzuki said after he told the story. “What we are doing is now. There is no other time. This is reality. I am here now. You are here now. That incident with the old monk taught Dogen what a Buddhist life is, what reality is. It is not for another time or another place or another person.”The monk isn't thinking about comfort or a "better" time to do his job. He's not resisting the heat or wishing he was in the shade. His reality, in that moment, is drying mushrooms. That's it. His mind isn't divided between what he's doing and what he'd rather be doing. He is fully present with his task.
Dogens mind is in the future, in the shade, calculating just like yours, thinking about how to make things more ideal, productive.
So, the whole point is to stop mentally running away. If you're washing dishes, just wash the dishes. If you're drying mushrooms in the sun, just dry the mushrooms in the sun. That, in itself, is the entire practice.
Once you do your whole guilt problem just fades away, things become finally clear. At some point you will look back and think "boy was this a dumb 'problem' that I had".
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Comment on Why the internet really wants your ID... (and why now?) in ~tech
milkywayflyinginsect Link ParentI think he actually claimed the opposite by listing a lot of smaller company breaches and stating that they can't be trusted to handle your ID, while something like Googles digital credentials API...First point I disagree with in the video is the claim that there is a downside - risk of being hacked. Big Tech security is basically the best you're going to get, they have dedicated security teams fending off nation-state level attacks.
I think he actually claimed the opposite by listing a lot of smaller company breaches and stating that they can't be trusted to handle your ID, while something like Googles digital credentials API would be safer as you wouldn't need to hand out some random companies your ID and Googles security, like you said, is far superior.
The usage of age verification data / ID for ad targeting would violate GDPR as they are only allowed to use the data within the bounds you have consented to or in some reasonable manner, so that seems very likely to be false to me.
They might not use your data at all. They will just create a new, highly valuable user category : the "Verified Human". They can serve you an ad that says "you are pre-approved" not because they've seen your ID, but because Google's system has confirmed you belong to a verified, credit-worthy demographic.
"online businesses would need to pay a fee to them for their identification services" - not sure where this is coming from, don't think this is that likely, it's free right now and also there's plenty of competition from other services so it wouldn't make them that much money.
Just because it's free now doesn't mean they won't start charging some small fee into the future. The competition exists, but the argument is that by shaping legislation and leveraging their market power Google can make its solution the indispensable default. Look at the amount of Oauth providers. But most websites use Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft (big tech).
The video doesn't really provide any evidence for this claim despite it being critical for their argument.
This is true. Weakest part in the videos argument.
Also also, I don't see how the video's argument generalises to tech companies which aren't google
Also true, but it's not too far fetched that platform owners like Apple will most likely quickly follow up here.
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Comment on Guilt and video games in ~health.mental
milkywayflyinginsect Link ParentBit of a side note, but a good read on this is a book called Burnout Society. A great quote from it:I think the desire to feel like we're always being "productive" with our time is an insidious one, sometimes a cultural expectation ingrained in at least some of us, for decades
Bit of a side note, but a good read on this is a book called Burnout Society. A great quote from it:
“Today’s society is no longer Foucault’s disciplinary world of hospitals, madhouses, prisons, barracks, and factories. It has long been replaced by another regime, namely a society of fitness studios, office towers, banks, airports, shopping malls, and genetic laboratories. Twenty-first-century society is no longer a disciplinary society, but rather an achievement society [Leistungsgesellschaft]. Also, its inhabitants are no longer “obedience-subjects” but “achievement-subjects.” They are entrepreneurs of themselves.”
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Comment on Guilt and video games in ~health.mental
milkywayflyinginsect LinkWhat has helped me immensely is to create a dedicated 'gaming window' during the day. For me, it's in the evening, before heading over to sleep. At some point I noticed my sleep quality worsened...What has helped me immensely is to create a dedicated 'gaming window' during the day. For me, it's in the evening, before heading over to sleep. At some point I noticed my sleep quality worsened significantly if I did anything that would excite my mind before bedtime so now there's a window when the day is basically over for me and I use that 'gaming window' to relax and wind down. I also noticed long-term if I don't have this time of deep relaxation I burn out. So intentionally setting that window and understanding that this is needed for your mental health is key. The evening works great because it's the end of the day so it's easier for your mind to let go of the idea that you need to do something more.
Also, since you have this window don't play during the day. Make it a special time.Secondly, I have found that even if you do set a window, there's another problem that arises. The problem of choosing what to do and sticking with that decision. I don't limit myself only to 1 game within that window. I also like to read, occasionally watch a series and play different games. I find this helps greatly with keeping things fresh and not getting attached to one activity. So I have a system of "flipping" what I will do within that days window and some extra rules like if I do the same activity two days in a row, It's not even considered on the third day. This system allows me to commit to one undertaking and ignore the mental wobble that you get of "maybe i should do something else?".
These two things have completely transformed my gaming experience. But here's the key: they work because they help quiet your mind and allow you to fully commit. The real foundation underneath both of these techniques is learning how to deeply immerse yourself in an activity. The time windows and rotation system are just tools, helpers that make that deeper engagement possible. Without it, your activity has no meaning to it, it's pointless and there is some dissatisfaction in it. Now there's a lot of various aspects that go into this, but the crux of it is turning your activity into a meditative practice.
Gaming can be a wonderful way to practice for that. Actually, anything can be. And if you learn the art, then the whole endeavor transforms into something beautiful. Then there is no problem.I largely no longer have this problem. If you do what needs to be done during the day, don't get attached to one activity, and turn it into a learning experience - something beautiful, not something outside of your life that you do so you can get back to doing "real, productive stuff," but as part of your life - there's no problem. I genuinely enjoy gaming now.
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Comment on Why the internet really wants your ID... (and why now?) in ~tech
milkywayflyinginsect Link ParentYou don't really use PayPal and Google Pay to verify your identity, though. In the same way PayPal solved the problem of 'how do i pay online?', Google and these other big tech companies aim to...You don't really use PayPal and Google Pay to verify your identity, though.
In the same way PayPal solved the problem of 'how do i pay online?', Google and these other big tech companies aim to solve the 'how do i prove who i am online?' problem. They will charge a small fee and if you think about the industries where this will be used (financial services, online gambling / gaming, regulated commerce, maybe even gov services) this will add up to billions.I'm guessing they will integrate google pay and this digital credentials stuff together somehow so that it streamlines the purchasing process even further.
This is basically the next evolution of "Login with Google / Facebook / X" where they will have factual, verified data about who you are and this will be able to make their ad business even more lucrative. E.g, "Congratulations, your verified identity means you are pre-approved for this mortgage" just like it was mentioned in the video.
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Comment on Why the internet really wants your ID... (and why now?) in ~tech
milkywayflyinginsect Link ParentYeah the problem was people generally wanted to remain anonymous on the internet rather than tying their identity to everything, so this digital credentials stuff was a hard sell. But now laws...Yeah the problem was people generally wanted to remain anonymous on the internet rather than tying their identity to everything, so this digital credentials stuff was a hard sell. But now laws will force people to use it.
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Comment on Why the internet really wants your ID... (and why now?) in ~tech
milkywayflyinginsect LinkI found this video insightful because: It revealed why big tech companies did not oppose these laws as they usually do and actually lobbied for them and helped "shape" them. On first glance you...I found this video insightful because:
It revealed why big tech companies did not oppose these laws as they usually do and actually lobbied for them and helped "shape" them.
On first glance you would think they would be against as it would hurt any potential profits from underage users. But that's not what occurred. According to the author, it also wasn't because these companies believed the benefits of mapping users' real identities to their accounts outweighed the profit losses.
It's because some of these big tech companies are investing hard into what they call "Digital Credentials" API. Which is essentially Google’s framework that lets websites and apps request verified identity information about you - things like your age, driver’s license, or national ID, without you needing to manually hand over scans or type the info every time. Something like "Login with google" but for your identity confirmation.As he states, "they are creating the need and then providing the solution."
Gave insight on how something like a digital credentials API could be monetized and why it's so valuable for these tech companies:
- They might be able to give you targeted ads that otherwise they wouldn't be able to and companies will pay higher prices for these kinds of ads. Like loans, credit cards, gambling sites.
- Will make things purchasing easier as you won't need to enter your personal details. Good for their ad partners so good for them. Even if you don't buy from an ad, they might take a small cut from a business since you used their system to fill in the details.
- They might charge businesses fees to use their systems.
- Even more dependence on big tech companies.
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Why the internet really wants your ID... (and why now?)
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Comment on You're going to use Gemini on Android whether you like it or not in ~tech
milkywayflyinginsect Link ParentThe Fairphone /e/OS (Gen. 6) seems like a decent one. I haven't looked into it too much as I'm not in a need of smartphone now but they will be the first company I'll be checking out once I will...The Fairphone /e/OS (Gen. 6) seems like a decent one. I haven't looked into it too much as I'm not in a need of smartphone now but they will be the first company I'll be checking out once I will be buying!
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Comment on The 2025 Steam Summer Sale is live (runs June 26 - July 10) in ~games
milkywayflyinginsect Link ParentI will have to revisit Outer Wilds at some point. Played it a couple of years back and the the games lack of direction is exactly why I couldn't get into it. It was very different from any other...I will have to revisit Outer Wilds at some point. Played it a couple of years back and the the games lack of direction is exactly why I couldn't get into it. It was very different from any other game I had played by then.
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Comment on Have I been conversing with bots or humans? in ~tech
milkywayflyinginsect (edited )Link ParentI assume most stories I read on the internet are untrue in some sense. That's why even long before AI got to where it is now, I never got the appeal of subreddits built around taking these stories...I assume most stories I read on the internet are untrue in some sense. That's why even long before AI got to where it is now, I never got the appeal of subreddits built around taking these stories at face value. I'm looking at /r/amitheasshole or similar ones.
To me, they were just like reading pure fiction. Now, AI makes these spaces even worse - but the baseline was already bad to begin with, kinda like you mentioned with political subreddits.
And I think these will be the subreddits that will be hit the hardest by LLM generated content and it will force people to eventually re-evaluate the content they find valuable and how they interact with it.
Yeah after reading about the sources I understand a bit better as to why there are a lot of identical listings. I'll try it out and go with NCCDB where possible for consistency, thanks.