JulianRota
7d ago
Never heard of that podcast either.
I try to make an effort to understand Russia's point of view enough to get an idea of why they think it's necessary to fight this war, and why they have shown such dogged persistence in it despite disappointing results of their opening moves and staggering casualty counts. I still can't see how they would think it's a good idea to start throwing nukes around now, especially at the other European powers. It seems to me like it would read to a lot of people as an admission that they are unable to achieve a result they consider favorable on the battlefield with conventional weapons, which isn't going to be much of a plus for their standing in the region. I also find it unlikely that there are any good targets in Europe for "tactical" nuclear weapons right now. It seems highly likely to me that any use of nuclear weapons against formally uninvolved NATO nations at this point would escalate to strategic use exactly as fast as pretty much everyone has always expected. I suppose there's no way to know what might change in the next year, but it's hard to imagine what could happen that would change that.
So yeah, I think it's just Russia supporters being all butthurt that they haven't been doing all that hot.
JulianRota
7d ago
Finished reading Andy Weir's Hail Mary, and I watched the movie too. I still think both were great overall, though the movie traded off leaving out some of the less important details and hamming things up a little for some amazing visuals. Not to spoiler things too much, but I think the ending does show Weir trying to get a little more into character development side of things, though it's probably still not his strongest point. The Sci-Fi is a little hand-wavy on the details of a few things, but probably no more than needed for future tech, and mostly does a good job of sticking to its own rules.
JulianRota
13d ago
I'm no expert either, but it strikes me as being 4 spotlights doing some kind of light show, and I'm assuming the shifting of the center point around in the frame is due to the camera moving around. It's hard to see the details you describe from that video, but I wouldn't be surprised if the cloud conditions as far as altitude and density made it reasonable for ordinary spotlights to look like that. I'd more wonder whether it seemed reasonable for there to be some event in an appropriate location to have a spotlight show like that.
There's also the obligatory nerdy gotcha that it stands for Unidentified Flying Object, so it is a UFO by definition if you don't know what it is, but that doesn't make it an actual alien spacecraft or anything.
JulianRota
17d ago
Is there a cost factor to it?
I'm near one of the stadium locations. I'm not really that into soccer, but I might be inclined to check out a game just for the novelty factor of it. But then, the cheapest tickets are currently ~$1400, plus probably a few hundred more in incidentals, like transportation, food, drinks, etc. That's a bit above what I'm willing to spend to check out something I'm not super into. Maybe like $50-100ish for that.
If you're not all pretty wealthy, that could generate some conflict over who's paying for who, who can really afford that, does anybody owe anyone else anything, etc.
JulianRota
21d ago
I've been reading Andy Weir's Hail Mary, since I liked Artemis. About 2/3 of the way through, and I think it's great! Good Sci-Fi, and the stakes are certainly exciting. I suppose the character development might be considered a bit weak, but eh, that's most Sci-Fi. The character does seem rather similar to the similarly isolated character from The Martian. It does also tempt me to make a more general post somewhere about nonlinear storytelling and how it's done well and poorly. Short version is, I think Weir's books are good examples of doing it well.
I also finished Day Of Ascension by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Feeling a little meh about it. It's an okay story I guess, but it seemed a little predictable, and it feels a little tough to get into that universe.
JulianRota
22d ago
Perhaps it is a bit ideological. I would note in turn that widespread obesity is a relatively new phenomenon. I am not the person to know for sure exactly what change caused it, but clearly something changed in the last ~100 years to cause such widespread obesity. Maybe it's better to fix that, whatever it is, than for everyone to go on medication for life. Keto, or any other diet, may not be perfect, but I'm skeptical that there's anything worse about eating in a way more like some of our ancestors did than going on a medication that was approved for human use not quite 10 years ago. Where is the concern for what the long-term health effects of that might be?
I would ask in turn, do you think there is any possibility somebody's diet could be so obviously bad that they really should stop eating that, whether or not they go on medication as well? Like multiple 2-liters of sugary soda a day, multiple bags of chips, tubs of ice cream, etc? Do you agree with DradisPing's implication that it is completely impossible for anybody to lose weight and keep it off with dietary changes?
JulianRota
23d ago
From what I've learned, I don't think there is a universal dietary weight-loss solution. I think there's too much individual variation in how peoples' digestive systems work. Too many people have reported success with a wide variety of diet types, often ones that contradict each other. That's why I think any individual seeking to lose weight should try several and see how their body responds, like a month or two each. Try weight loss drugs only after you've tried several diet types and failed to make much progress. I think it's probably best to avoid the worst types of food even if you've decided to turn to weight loss drugs. Consuming tons of junk food and sugary drinks every day just can't be good for you.
For myself, I went on Keto, and it worked amazingly well for me. I started in about 2018 and was able to lose weight and have kept it off. I actually got a little bit too skinny for a while, and backed off to a more sustainable level. At no point did I ever actually cut calories, feel hungry, or lack energy. I feel more and more consistent energy on it, and several other minor medical problems seem to have cleared up too. Granted, I was never at the 350lb level, but I decided I needed to fix my diet when I had gained 10-20 pounds, not wait until I had gained 200lbs. I have met several people who have been able to lose hundreds of pounds with it though.
I will say again, and more clearly, I do not assert that this particular diet, or any other particular diet, will definitely work for everyone. But I did ask thread OP what, if anything, they had tried so far as far as their diet, not trying to sell them on any particular diet, since they didn't mention a thing about it. I do think it's best to give several different diet types a best-effort try before turning to weight loss medications.
JulianRota
24d ago
The good news for thread OP is, basically none of that is true at all. You really should engage with some of the things we've learned about diet and nutrition in the last 30 years before you opine so confidently.
The key trick with fixing your diet and actually losing weight is that you have to take the morality out of it. It's a science experiment, not a religious law. If you want to lose weight, you need to find a diet that works for you. Not working includes not being able to stick to it, feeling hungry, making too much effort, and not having enough energy.
Calories in = calories out is not true; it's a vast oversimplification of how hunger and nutrition work. You don't need to count calories and stick to a limit to lose weight. Most of the failure of many peoples' dieting is a religious/ideological devotion to these terrible ideas about dieting from the 1990s - that you need to treat it as a moral failure that you are not able to stick to an ineffective diet. That is only a road to feeling even worse about yourself and still being fat.
Still being hungry after eating is not some magic thing that happens for "whatever reason", it's a specifically engineered outcome. Many foods are deliberately engineered to not make you feel full so that you keep eating. Obviously you're going to not feel full if you gorge yourself on foods designed to make you not feel full! If you're doing that, in my opinion, you need to fix that before you go on fancy drugs. Exactly as if, if you're doing heroin, and it's causing bad things to happen to your body, you should stop doing heroin, not look for even more drugs to counteract the effects.
JulianRota
24d ago
What have you done as far as your diet? I have tended to think that diet is by far the most important thing in body fat level. It's hard to say much, though, without some idea of what your diet is like now and what, if anything, you've tried. But I don't think any level of physical activity can overcome a really bad diet.
I'm skeptical of weight loss drugs too. I never liked the idea of taking multiple drugs to counter-act each other. Similarly, this might be more of a personal ideology, but I never liked the idea of eating a terrible diet and trying to counter-act the body-fat effects of that with drugs. Why not fix the diet first? It may be another thing, though, if you've tried absolutely everything on the diet front and can't make any progress.
JulianRota
1mo ago
It depends on what one considers to be ethical or unethical. Which is a substantial problem - I'm not sure even your "obvious" examples are really that unethical.
Third world "sweatshops" are a bit of a mixed bag. Sure, they're a harder day's work than being a Starbucks barista. But is anyone actually forced to work on one? As far as I know, that's never been a thing. That means they can't get workers unless they're a better deal than their local competition, usually subsistence farming, as far as time and difficulty of work versus payment. In addition to that, they bring foreign currency and industrial infrastructure into the nation, get some local laborers and probably managers used to how to operate an industrial business. That's a big part of how you actually lift a third-world country into the first world. And the companies are getting cheaper labor, yeah, but they're not going to bother bringing industry into that country without getting something for it. Yeah, it's sad not everyone in the world is a first-world latte-sipping poet or something, but you don't get there from subsistence farming by wishes and magic, you get there by gradual economic progress, some of which might look like "sweatshops".
Even if we granted that they were "unethical" somehow, would that make Taylor Swift "unethical" automatically? As far as I know, her money comes mostly from ticket sales, album sales, other royalties, and such things. Making merch is probably a tiny part of her budget however it's done. If that's enough to make her "unethical", is anyone with any actual power "ethical"?
Not paying employees what some uninvolved party thinks is the fair value of their labor seems a bit iffy too. Usually neglected is the stability value they get too. Owners risk losing some or all of their money if the business does poorly, but the workers either continue to get paid, or get fired at worst. They don't stand to lose much. That's worth something too.
Focusing exclusively on billionaires seems a bit iffy to me too. It seems to me, what we're really concerned with here is power. Yes, billionaires have a moderate amount of power, but they're not the only ones. Why shouldn't we focus on Government too, both elected and un-elected officials too? They're the ones with the power to tax us, fine us, imprison us, start wars, etc. Why isn't any government official who doesn't magically make the world operate like some activist wants also "unethical"? Billionaires can only create great products and services we all like to make money, and they lose it again if their businesses fail. Governments can impose terrible economic systems like marxism on a nation, causing millions to starve to death.
JulianRota
1mo ago
I used AI to replace what I guess could have been a doctor's visit. I had some questions about an OTC medication I was taking for seasonal allergy issues, so I went to Gemini. The initial question seemed a bit basic to bother setting up an actual doctor's visit. It gave good answers to everything, helped identify some issues it was causing me, and suggested some other treatments (other OTC medications), one of which I tried and was much better. It's honestly a way, way better experience than anything I've done with the "proper" healthcare system. AI will give you an answer to any sane question at any hour of the day or night immediately, doesn't mind at all if I ignore a conversation for a week and then ask another question to continue it, and it actually listens to things you tell it better than most doctors. I know it's not as reliable as a real doctor, but I think I'm smart enough to apply common sense, ask for references to properly validated information sources, and only actually use treatments purchased from a real brick-and-mortar drugstore that are advertised to treat the proper conditions and used in accordance with their labeling etc.
In comparison, a proper doctor requires the slog of finding one of the appropriate specialty that my insurance accepts, setting an appointment that might be a week or two away, travelling to the office, usually filling out a ton of forms answering a slew of questions unrelated to my actual complaint, usually getting seen late, talking to a nurse first, then actually talking to a doctor for a few minutes, and that's the only time they'll actually answer any questions, since apparently email is too insecure, so nobody uses it, even if I positively give zero fucks who knows about my allergy issues. Though even if the system worked perfectly and I could use email or some similarly convenient modern communication medium to ask questions of a doctor, it's a bit much to expect a real expert to answer any question instantly 24x7. I know there are some things that will basically always require a real doctor, but for the minor stuff in the gaps, this feels like a great solution to me.
JulianRota
1mo ago
Finished Artemis by Andy Weir. It turned out roughly as I would have expected. It's a simple nice fun Sci-Fi story, would probably make a good movie if anyone cared to produce it.
I started reading Day Of Ascension by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I haven't generally been real into the Warhammer stuff, but trying it out to see if it scratches my itch for plots that don't go in the direction I would expect.
JulianRota
1mo ago
I got 50%. Not too surprising. I often feel like I'm worse at recognizing faces than average, and that I often recognize people more by their body language and way of moving and voice than by face. I also occasionally get the impression that a person who is a random stranger is actually a person I know.
JulianRota
1mo ago
I wouldn't expect to get much from a local model unless you're basically an expert in how to set up these things with world-class hardware. If you really want to see what it can do, pony up the $20 for a subscription to Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Cursor, whoever. AFAIK, they're all easy to cancel after that one month. On a personal device if you need to and corporate is being all uptight about what's done on work devices.
I still don't trust it to write large amounts of code that isn't just boilerplate or make any architectural decisions, but it's quite good at tracking down problems and fixing bugs on its own. I've been using it a significant amount on a Python project I've taken on at work - I don't really know Python all that well, and it's a big help with some of the trickier parts. Using OpenCode with our corporate account for Claude Opus 4.6 in Agent mode, it seems to work well to set up a unit test that exercises a problem and tell it to run that test and fix the issue in the proper place. When I run into some bug or confusing point that I can't make much sense of, and I expect that solving it myself would involve hours of web searching and poring over library docs, it usually is able to solve it in under a minute. And the fix and reason why it works is explained and usually only a couple of lines of code, so it's easy to verify that it's correct and not doing any other crazy stuff.
You definitely do IMO need to treat it like a over-enthusiastic junior and carefully review everything it does to ensure it makes sense.
JulianRota
1mo ago
Yeah, I've read it, it's been a while though.
Personally, I think the first space colony is likely to be a stiflingly regulated affair populated only by people the supporting state considers to be scrupulously rule-following good boys and girls. Maybe possibly the tenth might be a little more frontier-like.
I haven't red a ton of Heinlein, but I got the impression that the politics of his books vary widely over a bunch of axes. Like he's trying to explore or feel out a variety of viewpoints rather than jamming any one particular one down everyone's throat.
JulianRota
1mo ago
Started reading Artemis by Andy Weir, also known for the Martian. I'm about 60% through, and I like it quite well so far. The Sci-Fi seems pretty hard so far - all of the technology and systems seem reasonable by current-day or near-future tech and physics. If anything is a bit implausible, it's the politics - a Moon colony formed by a space industry based out of Kenya, just based on the government deciding to let rocket companies do what they feel like with minimal taxes and regulations? And becoming sufficiently populous to resemble a real city with hardly any real government at all? Seems like a bit much of a Libertarian pipe-dream to me. The story is engaging and keeps me wanting to read more though. It does lean a bit hard on the trope of desperately poor but plucky young girl saves the world through daring and determination, but I'll allow it. I might have more to say when I finish it, but I doubt it - Weir's books so far seem to be more about telling a pretty good if somewhat predictable story with some Sci-Fi elements, not so much surprising plot twists and daring societal commentary.
JulianRota
1mo ago
I recently finished reading Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, perhaps better known as the Ice-9 book, first published in 1963. It seems like it's supposed to be a highly satirical book that probably made a lot more sense at the time it was published. For me, reading it in 2026, it seemed kind of weird and lame; a bunch of weird characters who didn't make much sense running around and doing stuff that doesn't make much sense. At least the chapters are strangely short, I did at least manage to finish it. I was more interested in the Sci-Fi Ice-9 stuff, but that was maybe like 10% of the book, mostly the last few chapters, and very little discussion of it. I expect a good Motte thread about the idea would be way more interesting. My recommendation is, if you're genuinely interested in 1960s-era social commentary, it may be worth a read. If you're interested in Sci-Fi around the Ice-9 idea, don't bother.
JulianRota
1mo ago
For cash, usually zero to a thousand or so. I don't pay particularly close attention to keeping it up. It's more for if I'm about to go somewhere but find I don't have that much cash in my wallet, it's slightly easier to grab some than to stop at an ATM, though that's not at all hard either. I don't take it too seriously as emergency prep, mostly since living in a big city, any massive crisis that results in me not being able to get more cash from ATMs easily or buy things with cards will also cause much bigger, more widespread, and difficult to predict chaos that a little cash is not likely to save me from.
What I do consider as more useful emergency prep to keep safely stored at home is a valid working credit card and ATM card, working spare phone with no service, and expired spare ID. I can lose pretty much everything I typically carry on me and not experience significant hassle.
JulianRota
2mo ago
I tend to think that it ties in with the Socialization point. Drinking at home alone is generally pretty bad for your mental state in my opinion, and ditto any other drugs. I would even agree with pouring out any alcohol you have at home. Drinking with a bunch of friends or at a bar is mostly pretty good, presuming you are capable of not overdoing it. Even going to a decent bar by yourself, where you are getting out of the house, and maybe have the opportunity to chat a little bit with a bartender or some other customers, or maybe possibly even make a friend or two, overrides the negative effect of the drinks and even of some not super great food.
I'm not sure where it belongs on an ordered list, but I think there should also be a point for taking care of yourself and your spaces. I mean like, take a shower every day, shave, trim nails, get regular haircuts, any other standard grooming tasks that apply, put on fresh clean clothes every day, that are in good condition, no holes or stains or whatever. Do it every day, no matter what, whether or not you're feeling great or planning on going anywhere. If you don't have any decent clothes, go buy some. Do laundry and wash the dishes regularly too. Whatever space you live in, vacuum, mop, dust, scrub, and otherwise tidy up regularly. Not necessarily every day or perfectly, but don't let anything get too dirty. Make your bed every day, put away dirty laundry, clean up half-finished projects, etc. Fix any broken stuff around the house too. Generally take care of everything along those lines. This creates a reasonably nice and clean space you can take a little pride in all the time. It helps you see and feel that you're not completely falling apart. It's nice, positive work to do that keeps your mind off of all of the negative influences listed above. And if you get a unexpected urge or invitation to go out and do something, or have friends or family over, you don't have the automatic excuse of looking like a slob or your place being a disaster area, you can just do it.
JulianRota
2mo ago
Yes. I'm in my mid-40s now. I suppose I'd be called a social binge drinker, and I do have a fairly high tolerance, but I have cut down on how drunk I am willing to get in the last couple of years due to hangovers getting worse.
I basically never drink at home. If I'm staying home on a given night, I won't drink at all. I try not to drink more than 3 nights a week or so on average, with some variation depending on what events are going on. Usually I go out with friends or to some sort of event, and I may drink like 4 to 8 drinks, depending on how big and strong they are. That's mostly mid-strength beers, since I like the taste and find it easier to regulate myself with beer. I may drink wine, mixed drinks, or shots occasionally, depending on the type of place and who I'm with, but I try to limit that to 1, maybe 2 a night, since they go down too easy and tend to lead to getting excessively drunk. Most of my friends drink around the same amount most of the time.
One weird quirk that seems to have started hitting me more in the last few years is that I don't like to drink too little, because I find that drinking only 1 or 2 drinks tends to disrupt my sleep patterns, making me wake up too early and have trouble getting back to sleep. Drinking a moderate amount, per above, usually results in a pretty good night's sleep and minimal hangover effect the next day. If I drink too much, then I still sleep decently well, but get a much worse hangover that might take the better part of the next day to get over.
Another quirk - I started making this electrolyte drink in a big pitcher at home, and I'll try to drink a glass full anytime I get home after a session of drinking. I think it helps cut down on the hangovers, which I have come to think electrolyte deficiency probably plays a big part in. Notably, if this is true, it also means that the common advice of drinking lots of water when drinking alcohol may work against you, since it only contributes more to draining your electrolytes. It's the same mechanism by which you can die from drinking too much water.
JulianRota
2mo ago
Whether it's "easy" depends on your point of view, but you can request a set of API keys from the Apps page on your setting panel, and then it's pretty straightforward to make API requests to retrieve all of your posts - I already did that for mine. You might have to ping Zorba on the Discord to get him to approve the request, but he probably will as long as you aren't trying to do anything crazy or dumb.
JulianRota
2mo ago
I haven't noticed those particular things, though I may be the wrong person to ask because I never had a very strong sense of taste.
I have however noticed that the types of beef available at most, but not all, of my local grocery stores seems to have changed. Most of the selection used to be in those styrofoam tray things covered with shrink-wrap, and it consisted of ground beef in various semi-random weights and various cuts of steak also in various semi-random weights. Items that seemed as if somebody in a butcher shop somewhere was lopping of cuts of meat and scoops of ground beef onto these trays in a semi-sloppy way, wrapping them, then weighing and labeling them. Now, those items seem to be gone from a number of stores, replaced with similar items in a fancier-looking package and a more mass-produced style. The ground beef is now only in quantities of exactly 1lb, and too bad if you want any fractional quantities. The steaks also seem to have a more uniform style and cost at least double the price too. The other meats I've looked at seem to have some similar changes, but without as much mass-produced uniformity. I do not like this change, and have been doing my purchases of such things from other stores that seem to have better selections.
I got 294, weakest on the Aesthetic Knowledge part, which seems reasonable to me.
It does help a lot to actually read the rules on the first page and consider them when answering - knowing that exactly 5 are correct on every one and that it mostly works against you to guess randomly since not picking wrong choices wins you a point too.
JulianRota
5mo ago
Hello! I'm not particular sure why I managed to get the lowest currently-valid non-admin user ID. I was more involved in the site and in the coding of this version at the time we switched over, but I wouldn't have thought active enough to be the first registered. Oh well, here we are!
I agree about the armchair warriors bit. I do think their motivation for the war is much deeper and more fundamental and not really like Putin thought he could grab Ukraine all quick and easy and is now in over his head. Instead, I think the entire Russian power structure is existentially petrified of invasion from the West. It's all long memories about how horrifying Operation Barbarossa was to be on the receiving end of - this also fits in with how they talk about "denazifying" Ukraine. This is why they're willing to make incredible sacrifices to ensure that Ukraine remains in their sphere of influence. That also explains how there doesn't seem to be all that much discontent in Russia about how this war is going. I'm not super confident in my ability to determine exactly how much unrest there really is in Russia, but I would have expected to see more signs of it with how much of a grind this war seems to be for them.
On the IT side, I also discovered the Ukrainian scam call center thing - big article about it in Russian, Google Translate works pretty well. Apparently there's a ton of these call centers actively working to scam random Russians out of money and blackmail them into committing various petty, and maybe sometimes not so petty, crimes. Thinking from the Ukrainian side, it's understandable that they'd lean into that sort of thing and attempt to integrate it with their formal intelligence agencies to gain an asymmetric advantage when so many things are stacked against them. But then from the Russian side, that is a much more reasonable explanation for why they're cracking down so hard on the communication and messaging systems.
More options
Context Copy link