zazowoo's recent activity

  1. Comment on What are some “sore thumb” lyrics for you? in ~music

    zazowoo
    Link
    Emerson Lake and Palmer's "Still... You Turn Me On" : I love that song, but that ladder line makes me cringe every single time. Just hits me like a something written by a 13 year old stretching...

    Emerson Lake and Palmer's "Still... You Turn Me On" :

    Every day a little sadder
    A little madder
    Someone get me a ladder

    I love that song, but that ladder line makes me cringe every single time. Just hits me like a something written by a 13 year old stretching too hard for a rhyme.

    10 votes

  2. Comment on What are some “sore thumb” lyrics for you? in ~music

    zazowoo
    Link Parent
    Funny, I actually love the way this lyric sounds and it's one of my favorite lines to sing along to. Something about the rhythm of those words and even the repetition itself just feels satisfying...

    Funny, I actually love the way this lyric sounds and it's one of my favorite lines to sing along to. Something about the rhythm of those words and even the repetition itself just feels satisfying to my ears.

    9 votes

  3. Comment on What have you been listening to this week? in ~music

    zazowoo
    Link
    Been getting into the earlier albums of Rishloo. I completely fell in love with their most recent album, Living as Ghosts with Buildings as Teeth, a year or two ago, and I've been a little scared...

    Been getting into the earlier albums of Rishloo. I completely fell in love with their most recent album, Living as Ghosts with Buildings as Teeth, a year or two ago, and I've been a little scared to listen to their other albums in case they weren't as good. But damn, I've been just drawn deeper into this band. I've been putting the songs El Empe and Omega from their album Eidolon on obsessive repeat.

    If you're into Tool or lyrical progressive metal in general, I recommend checking them out. The singer and lyrics are absolutely incredible.

  5. Comment on US President Joe Biden announces that he will not run for re-election in ~society

    zazowoo
    Link Parent
    Oh, I misunderstood the original poster to mean they announced she'd died before she actually died, which really confused me. But this makes much more sense.

    It doesn't strike me as unbelievable that they'd fudge the time of death by a few hours to let the family fly home and gather without being surrounded by media.

    Oh, I misunderstood the original poster to mean they announced she'd died before she actually died, which really confused me. But this makes much more sense.

    4 votes

  6. Comment on US President Joe Biden announces that he will not run for re-election in ~society

    zazowoo
    Link Parent
    This is the first I've heard of this. What's it based on?

    I ask because it was almost certain that the Queen didn't die when they announced that she had died.

    This is the first I've heard of this. What's it based on?

    1 vote

  7. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~tech

    zazowoo
    Link
    Wow, I'm not used to seeing such accurate and well-explained computer science content in mainstream media. I wasn't familiar with him, but the the author is a science fiction writer with a...

    Wow, I'm not used to seeing such accurate and well-explained computer science content in mainstream media. I wasn't familiar with him, but the the author is a science fiction writer with a bachelors degree in CS and an impressive Wikipedia page.

    Props to him for a great analogy and ability to explain this stuff so clearly.

    14 votes

  8. Comment on What have we liberals done to the US west coast? in ~society

    zazowoo
    Link
    Direct link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/15/opinion/progressives-california-portland.html

    Direct link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/15/opinion/progressives-california-portland.html

    Conservatives argue that the problem is simply the left. Michael Shellenberger wrote a tough book denouncing what he called “San Fransicko” with the subtitle “Why Progressives Ruin Cities.” Yet that doesn’t ring true to me.

    Democratic states enjoy a life expectancy two years longer than Republican states. Per capita G.D.P. in Democratic states is 29 percent higher than in G.O.P. states, and child poverty is lower. Education is generally better in blue states, with more kids graduating from high school and college. The gulf in well-being between blue states and red states is growing wider, not narrower.

    Politics always is part theater, but out West too often we settle for being performative rather than substantive.

    For example, as a gesture to support trans kids, Oregon took money from the tight education budget to put tampons in boys’ restrooms in elementary schools — including boys’ restrooms in kindergartens.

    “The inability of progressives, particularly in the Portland metro area, to deal with the nitty-gritty of governing and to get something done is just staggering,” Representative Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat who has been representing and championing Portland for more than half a century, told me. “People are much more interested in ideology than in actual results.”

    In 2022, the Portland Freedom Fund helped a Black man named Mohamed Adan who had been arrested after allegedly strangling his former girlfriend, holding a gun to her head and then — in violation of a restraining order — cutting off his G.P.S. monitor and entering her building. “He told me that he would kill me,” the former girlfriend, Rachael Abraham, warned.

    The Freedom Fund paid Adan’s bail, and he walked out of jail. A week later, Adan allegedly removed his G.P.S. monitor again and entered Abraham’s home. The police found Abraham’s body drenched in blood with a large knife nearby; three children were also in the house.

    Perhaps on the West Coast we have ideological purity because there isn’t much political competition. Republicans are irrelevant in much of the Far West, so they can’t hold Democrats’ feet to the fire — leading Democrats in turn to wander unchecked farther to the left. That’s not so true in the Northeast: A Republican, Charlie Baker, was until recently governor of Massachusetts, and Republicans are competitive statewide in Maine, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Hampshire, New York and New Jersey.

    Maybe a healthy Republican Party keeps the Democratic Party healthy, and vice versa.

    12 votes

  10. Comment on How it feels to get an AI email from a friend in ~comp

    zazowoo
    Link Parent
    Hm, I'm a millennial, and I used to have really deep, long email conversations with particular friends. I guess it was like how letter writing used to be. We'd both take some non-trivial amount of...

    Hm, I'm a millennial, and I used to have really deep, long email conversations with particular friends. I guess it was like how letter writing used to be. We'd both take some non-trivial amount of time out of our week to sit down and write paragraphs to each other, sometimes about personal things, sometimes about philosophy, etc. And of course there would be days in between responses, so the conversation had a slow, deliberate feel to it. And enough stuff would happen in between emails that there was usually something new to weave in to the conversation.

    I haven't done that in years, and now that you mention it being surprising, it makes me as a little sad that something like that is considered so strange these days. I really loved writing and reading those emails, but my brain today doesn't feel patient enough to do something like that again, even if I found an email partner.

    34 votes

  11. Comment on Illinois Democrats speedily change candidate law; Republicans call measure ‘election interference,' "undemocratic" in ~society

    zazowoo
    Link Parent
    Even as a strong democrat, I'm happy to see this. This does feel like changing the rules in the middle of the game, and I don't like seeing dems play that way.

    Even as a strong democrat, I'm happy to see this. This does feel like changing the rules in the middle of the game, and I don't like seeing dems play that way.

    5 votes

  12. Comment on Is Emacs or VIM worth learning in today's day and age? in ~comp

    zazowoo
    Link
    I just love using Vim. It regularly gives me little moments of joy throughout the day when I get to solve mini-puzzles like how to write a macro that lets me automatically change a bunch of lines...

    I just love using Vim. It regularly gives me little moments of joy throughout the day when I get to solve mini-puzzles like how to write a macro that lets me automatically change a bunch of lines that I'd otherwise need to do manually. It absolutely takes a lot of investment to learn it, and on top of learning the basics of how to use Vim, you also need to figure out how you want to configure it (unless you go with some turn-key config like LunarVim). For me, the journey has been tough but ultimately worth it. I feel like I'm flying when I'm working in Vim.

    If you're interested in learning it, you could try out Vim Adventures, which is a little browser game designed to get you familiar with the keystrokes. I also really like this cheatsheet for discovering what various keys do. And my biggest piece of advice to people learning vim is to try to avoid using the arrow keys. It's really hard in the beginning to learn the navigation keys, but if you are hanging out in Insert Mode and using the arrow keys to get around, Vim is just going to be a difficult-to-use text editor without much benefit to make up for the struggle. The fun/power in Vim comes from what you can do when you're hanging out in Normal mode by default.

    These days, ChatGPT is also really good at being a Vim tutor when you have questions about how to do something or how to configure plugins that you'd like.

    This probably won't apply to many people here, but I work at a place where we pair program remotely all day, and I find the combo of vim and tmux makes pairing super low-latency (since you're sharing a shell, not anything graphical) and easy to organically switch driver/navigator similar to how you would in person. At my last full-time pairing job, everyone used vim and tmux and it was wonderful. At my current job, not everyone wants to learn/use vim, which is fine, so I use vim/tmux with some coworkers and screensharing or VSCode LiveShare with others. The vim/tmux pairing sessions are noticeably smoother and more focused on just coding and being in the flow state vs the meta aspects of remote pairing orchestration.

    5 votes

  13. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~tildes

    zazowoo
    Link Parent
    The small text at the bottom of the login page does say "Tildes is currently in invite-only alpha." (you need to be logged out to see it)

    The small text at the bottom of the login page does say "Tildes is currently in invite-only alpha." (you need to be logged out to see it)

    23 votes

  14. Comment on Oregon decriminalized drugs. Voters now regret it. in ~society

    zazowoo
    Link Parent
    Is there evidence that the decriminalization in Oregon was purposefully setup to fail? I don't know much about it, so this is a genuine question. With my limited background here, I just imagine it...

    Is there evidence that the decriminalization in Oregon was purposefully setup to fail? I don't know much about it, so this is a genuine question.

    With my limited background here, I just imagine it being more likely that people really thought decriminalization would help. If you'd asked me before the law went into effect, I would've been one of those fighting for it, and I would've assumed the law was going to be successful in reducing harm.

    I worry that we are generally too quick attributing things to malice, which makes the world feel colder and meaner than it really is.

    6 votes

  15. Comment on Looking for songs that include recordings of commentary in ~music

    zazowoo
    Link
    I also love the combination of spoken word or commentary with music. I'm sure I'll think of more after I post this but some that come to mind: The New Math - OSI Space Dye Vest - Dream Theater...

    I also love the combination of spoken word or commentary with music. I'm sure I'll think of more after I post this but some that come to mind:

    2 votes

  16. Comment on Three long-term effects of a "plastic wrap parenting" style in ~life

    zazowoo
    Link
    This reminds me a recent article in the New York Times about how many parents are restricting their kids' sleepover experiences (like picking them up before bedtime or staying at the house...

    This reminds me a recent article in the New York Times about how many parents are restricting their kids' sleepover experiences (like picking them up before bedtime or staying at the house themselves). Growing up in the 90s, I had so much fun and social growth at sleepovers, and it makes me sad to think some kids are not getting to experience that in the same way today.

    9 votes

  17. Comment on CMV: Once civilization is fully developed, life will be unfulfilling and boring. Humanity is also doomed to go extinct. These two reasons make life not worth living. in ~talk

    zazowoo
    Link Parent
    Yes!! And how unbelievably lucky are we that out of all the lifeforms in the world, we get to experience life as a human? We get to self-reflect and dream, or simply sit and observe, or observe...

    Yes!! And how unbelievably lucky are we that out of all the lifeforms in the world, we get to experience life as a human? We get to self-reflect and dream, or simply sit and observe, or observe our observing. We have such interesting and complicated minds that we get to experience and explore.

    3 votes

  18. Comment on How to watch Super Bowl 2024: All the best streaming options in ~sports.american_football

    zazowoo
    Link Parent
    Well, most browsers. "Due to our security rules, you can't log in to our site with the Brave browser. To access the site, you must use browsers such as Chrome, Safari, Edge, Mozilla." Even so,...

    is viewable in any web browser.

    Well, most browsers.

    "Due to our security rules, you can't log in to our site with the Brave browser. To access the site, you must use browsers such as Chrome, Safari, Edge, Mozilla."

    Even so, thanks for the link!

    1 vote

  19. Comment on Jon Stewart returns to ‘The Daily Show’ as host in ~tv

    zazowoo
    Link Parent
    I thought the jury was still out on the lab leak theory? Is there some conclusive evidence against against it?

    I thought the jury was still out on the lab leak theory? Is there some conclusive evidence against against it?

    25 votes

  20. Comment on What’s something you wish more people understood? in ~talk

    zazowoo
    Link
    If you read or watch something online and feel outraged, try to notice that outrage and invite skepticism and curiosity about other explanations or framing. Given the same facts, what other...

    If you read or watch something online and feel outraged, try to notice that outrage and invite skepticism and curiosity about other explanations or framing. Given the same facts, what other headlines might have been chosen? This is especially true where there appears to be some evil or incompetent guy/organization/institution to blame.

    Regardless of whether you're on the left, right, or something uncategorizable, I believe most of us have a tendency to jump on these outrage bandwagons, and it takes intentional effort and humility to resist this.

    13 votes