Moofy
Chacrinha of Cold Brazil
No bio...
User ID: 1350
Moofy
Chacrinha of Cold Brazil
8mo ago
I returned to my regular group yoga practice after being absent for 10 months. I was a regular practitioner for 7 years, and the practice came to a halt in the lead-up to the birth of my son. Aside from the expected improvements in my flexibility and relief from minor aches, the most notable effect is a greater ability to focus.
I found that I was rather scatterbrained and overwhelmed with the tasks that I faced while doing WFH and taking care of my home and an infant at the same time. However, the practice of mindfulness and the 'moving meditation' that I engage in during my yoga sessions has made it easier for me to organize my thoughts.
During the months after the birth of my son, I didn't bother to engage in solo mindfulness/fitness practices (aside from walking) because the temptation to do work/housework became overwhelming. It's nice having returned to the community that I've practiced with for so long; just a few casual daily conversations with others (who aren't coworkers) outside of the home does wonders for my mood.
Finally, I want to note that having a kid has done more to strengthen my legs than all my prior yoga practices combined; chair pose is no longer a pose I dread.
Moofy
Chacrinha of Cold Brazil
5mo ago
I believe Obama said that the UK would go to the 'back of the queue' for any trade deals, not taking a trade deal off of the table, but making it clear that the promises of some Brexiteers that the UK could just seamlessly move from the EU into a free trade agreement with the US were unrealistic.
Moofy
Chacrinha of Cold Brazil
8mo ago
Were you able to achieve those experiences via meditation?
Moofy
Chacrinha of Cold Brazil
8mo ago
Very much so. A precocious interest during my teen years, a few courses in undergrad, and continued curiosity afterward. However, after I started using psychedelics I had a appreciation of how the Dharmic religions and Taoism may all be reactions to the same transcendent experience.
Moofy
Chacrinha of Cold Brazil
7d ago
In my primary school a minority of students walked to school. None were permitted to leave school during the day and all ate in the cafeteria during lunch. In senior high it was a similar situation to primary and only 12th Graders were permitted to leave. At my middle school no one was permitted to walk as the school was only accessible via a road with heavy traffic traveling at 45mph+.
Moofy
Chacrinha of Cold Brazil
8d ago
Thank you for sharing. I have a jaded view of arts magnet schools because my wife attended one where she experienced bullying and a generally poisonous atmosphere. It seemed like each student wanted to undermine the others. It's reassuring to know that this isn't always the case.
Moofy
Chacrinha of Cold Brazil
9d ago
I've gone solo hiking in brown bear country and have come across solo women doing the same thing. They were motivated by a sense of adventure and wanting to see beautiful parts of nature and were willing to travel very far to do it. That being said, when these women came across me, a lone solo guy in his 30s, they were quite willing to join with me and hike out together.
Moofy
Chacrinha of Cold Brazil
8mo ago
Whenever we hear a story of a lad engaging in some atrocity in a fantasy realm, I remind my wife that 'little boys have a little evil in them' (and then omit how many times I myself have exterminated whole species in Stellaris).
As is pointed out by others here, it's all about framing. I frame this as:
-Blue pill: You join a death cult that will commit suicide unless half of all people join them.
-Red pill: You don't join this death cult.
Those blue-pillers are going to live or die in circumstances outside of my control, but the one thing I can control is my ability to save my own life. Perhaps another reframing is that instead of making the choice for myself, I am making it for another person. By selecting blue for this other person, I am willing to wager their life on an unknown outcome, and by selecting red I am guaranteed to save one life that would not be saved otherwise. I suspect that the calculus of this decision changes when the life of someone else is being wagered instead of one's own, but the difference is between having compassion for others and having compassion for one's self.
Moofy
Chacrinha of Cold Brazil
1yr ago
How do I deal with my AI-driven existential crisis?
The best I can do for you is plant seeds of doubt with a list of questions.
What is the similarity between Yudkowsky and his milieu and a new religious movement or a millenarian movement? What is the propensity for new religious movements to predict a near- to medium-term apocalypse? Is there something in special about the rationalist community that makes rationalists immune to the sociological dynamics that have popped up in other human groups throughout history, and for this group to be so different as to the the first group that is correct about predicting the apocalypse? Is there something about Yudkowsky that makes him more effective at prediction than the cassandras that proceeded him? Is Yudkowsky better at marketing himself than other cassandras? If Yudkowsky is so convinced of an AI apocalypse, then why would he bother inflicting memetic despair on much of humanity during its final moments? Is Yudkowsky more of a sci-fi writer or a domain expert of AGI? Even granting Yudkowsky the title of domain expert in AGI, how frequently do domain experts make inaccurate predicitons in their areas of expertise (think of Malthusian predictions among economists and ecologists, or of sovietologists prior to 1991)?
Moofy
Chacrinha of Cold Brazil
8mo ago
I was a hospice volunteer and they tend to do a good job at connecting volunteers with people who have no kin or are estranged from their kin. The problem is, those people need to be on hospice to receive the benefit of the volunteers, and there could certainly be benefits for those not just on death's door.
Moofy
Chacrinha of Cold Brazil
10mo ago
Why suddenly hate the laisses-faire outcome of Harvard deciding how to allocate Harvard's resources?
This is Culture War, the integrity of the debate crumbled long ago. As is often said here: My rules applied fairly> your rules applied fairly > your rules applied unfairly.
If all universities receiving federal funds were allowed to discriminate on the basis of race and could discriminate against any race, I think libertarians would have a more tempered view. But when its only against Whites and Asians, the one-sidedness of the argument becomes apparent and we enter the matrix above.
Moofy
Chacrinha of Cold Brazil
5d ago
Wikipedia says their black population is 10%, i.e. a smaller percentage than what the US has.
Going deeper into this, the Wikipedia article on the Demographics of Brazil makes it seem as though only those with almost entirely African ancestry are counted as black (at 7.6% of the population) and then indicates that 42% are classified as Pardos (with a mixture of white, indigenous, and black ancestry). The article on Pardo Brazilians includes some genomic analysis that indicates between 10 and 30% African genomic ancestry for Pardos in most areas, and that in many areas, those classified as black have at least 40% European genomic ancestry.
Moofy
Chacrinha of Cold Brazil
8d ago
In the US public schools I attended, we were restricted to eating lunch in the cafeteria. We were only granted liberty to leave the campus for lunch during our senior year. In suburban/rural districts most students are bussed and walking home and back within a 45 minute period isn't practicable (and at many schools, walking isn't an option at all).
Get an Italian Hoagie somewhere. Carmen's is in walking distance from the convention center so that's convenient, but there's usually a line. There are dozens of hoagie places which do something similar which can be easily searched for.
If you're looking to dine, then Cuba Libre, Zahav or Buddakan are all solid choices in Old City, as is White Dog in U City and Gran Caffe L'Aquila near Rittenhouse.
Moofy
Chacrinha of Cold Brazil
5mo ago
I've kept a regular handwritten journal for the past 8 years. I started doing it while entering sobriety, initially as a way to track cravings and triggers, but eventually as a way to track thought/emotional patterns, self-narrative, and as a reference for the important events of my life. I had a viciously negative inner voice for years that manifested with self-destructive behaviors. By writing my daily thoughts and behaviors onto the page was I able to view my experiences with a different perspective and write counter-narratives to the negative voices. Countering the negative self talk wasn't easy because I believed the negativity was right, but eventually the positive counter-narratives and affirmations became reflexive when any negative self talk came about and I lost the negativity.
Nowadays when I am brought into an emotional state of intense anxiety or panic, I reference my journals to see how I'd been triggered similarly in the past and see how the prior events played out while also gleaning any coping mechanisms that were effective. Similarly for depression.
My journals are some of my most important possessions. I find that when I go back and read my journals, I like myself a lot more than on a regular day and have much more compassion for myself and what I struggle through regularly. There were days when I used the journal as motivation, wanting to go out and do things that were worthy of writing down and that I would enjoy reading in the future. The journal also encourages me to treat every day as a different experience and to break up the mundane routines as much as possible. Finally, they're an archive of all the stuff I've done, and as I get older, it's nice to be able to go to the journals and get dates for certain events and place them all in a time line, as it becomes all to easy to forget.
Moofy
Chacrinha of Cold Brazil
8mo ago
Yellow Magic Orchestra (and the various solo projects of their members).
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Discogs to find other works and collaborations by producers, musicians and labels that I like.
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Collecting entire discographies has allowed me to find hidden gems and collaborations with artists that I didn't know previously.
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Shazam.
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Maroofy has assisted me in finding songs that are sonically similar to ones I already like. It's a gem for finding stuff with <100 YouTube views.
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The YouTube algo, which is worse than it was in 2015 or 2016 but still delivers gems on occasion. Finding full DJ sets on YouTube also has introduced me to tracks and artists that I'd never would have gotten into otherwise.
I discovered the band that I've listened to the most in the past 10 years by just by hitting the random article link on Wikipedia. Also, I spent a substantial amount of time on /mu/ during the pandemic, and wasn't introduced to a single artist that I liked through the wisdom of that community.
Moofy
Chacrinha of Cold Brazil
6mo ago
If I'm Iran, I take this gambit. Make the Americans spend blood and treasure openly defending Israel, actively alienate them from their Arab allies and force the US government into yet another unpopular war in the Middle East.
Moofy
Chacrinha of Cold Brazil
12d ago
It depends on the individual. For me, going on long solo walks in nature is my favorite way of de-stressing and having introspective time. Hiking with others doesn't lower my stress and doesn't give me the unbroken mental space for self-reflection.
Moofy
Chacrinha of Cold Brazil
5mo ago
After poking around in the rules of the Dems and the GOP it appears that the Democrats will have a meeting of the national committee, and the new nominee will be selected by a majority vote of the committee, one person, one vote. The Republicans will do the same, but members representing each state will receive the same amount of votes their state had during the convention. The replacement will be selected by a majority vote.
In neither case is it a rule that the Vice Presidential nominee will automatically assume the Presidential nomination.
Moofy
Chacrinha of Cold Brazil
9mo ago
Motte: In my opinion the compassionate thing to do is to mitigate any suffering and withhold the truth in regard to any interpersonal interactions. Bailey: I would even take this to a grander level and say that certain Big Lies can be ethical as they allow humans to cope with almost unbearable sorrow.
No, it is in the middle of what used to be a cow pasture (and was still surrounded by it when I went there). The school (built on a 60+ acre property in the '70s) is centralized to serve a group of exurban communities to ensure kids don't have a long commute time.
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