self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
I'm a transhumanist doctor. In a better world, I wouldn't need to add that as a qualifier to plain old "doctor". It would be taken as granted for someone in the profession of saving lives.
At any rate, I intend to live forever or die trying. See you at Heat Death!
Friends:
A friend to everyone is a friend to no one.
User ID: 454
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
29d ago
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/glucose-biofuel-cell
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11261083/
That's all the excuse you need to have a consistent trickle charge going in a futuristic cyborg. You could allow for rapid recharge from disposable batteries and electrical outlets, and let the player top up in their downtime by "biological" means. The best part is that it's a convenient excuse for turning food item pickups into energy.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
29d ago
It's been somewhere in the ballpark of 15 years since I played the OG Deus Ex. Even then, the recharge bots were rare. Power outlets are... not rare.
Battery packs or capacitors are not like HP, and it does not break immersion to allow them to be recharged at a reasonable pace in-game.
Something that's always pissed me off to no end in the Deus Ex games is the energy management running on consumable power cells. I suffer from a bad case of videogame hoarding disorder, and I've beaten most of them without ever using any of the damn things, at significant cost to my sanity.
Its 20XX, just stick your dick in a convenient power socket, you're a fucking cyborg Denton/Adam.
The newer games do, from memory, let you automatically recharge a few pips with time, but that's lame. I'd rather not play a game set in a parallel timeline where the Note 7 debacle put an end to the development of battery technology.
I've been playing Rimworld again, courtesy of creating a mod for it. Miraculously, the 450 strong modpack of last year somehow worked, even after I threw in another 50 for taste. My runs usually die of boredom, TPS death (a 9800x3d and a 5080 only go so far in this game), or modpack instability/conflict. And I never play without dev mode enabled, because some modders have interesting takes on balance.
For example, I installed a mod that adds a bunch of cool guns and armor. It also, for no real reason, adds a spacer-tech faction that's intent on making a Banana Republic a reality in 5500 - you have one in game year to raise a massive crop of GMO fruit for them, or they'll clap your ass. I forgot about it, and was raided by 2 pawns with armor that could stand up to the scrutiny of God himself, and guns that could give him a migraine. My poor colonists lasted all of 30 seconds, and then I reloaded and deleted the enemy from existence because there is no God but me in these parts. Not quite VOID level, but goddamn. One year?? You're lucky to have a fabrication bench by then.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1mo ago
I have no need to set LLMs to the task of proving or disproving longstanding mathematical conjectures, and it happens anyway. I'm sure the skeptics have some excuse. I do not particularly care to hear it these days.
But yes, I find them incredibly useful. I retain alpha in knowing how to prompt them well, but that hasn't been that important for a good while. Use the best models, give them the necessary context, scrutinize or test their output? If you're not getting good results in July 2026, there's a skill issue involved. Not mine, not the model's, PEBCAK for whoever is reading this and thinks that applies to them.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1mo ago
The injured thumb mostly precluded anything intensive. But I've spent the week on the move, fucking around in Edinburgh and Glasgow till my new shoes gave me blisters.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1mo ago
I say nothing at all on the matter. The mod is exactly as advertised: it adds a bunch of guns to Rimworld. The guns function, and look good. It is immaterial to me how such a product comes into existence, as long as it does what it says on the tin. God knows I wouldn't have bothered to make anything of that scope if I had to do it all manually. I could, it's not impossible, and I've made one mod on my own, but something like this wouldn't happen.
I've successfully made a second, much higher quality mod for Rimworld. It adds 19 new guns, half of them railguns.
I really like railguns, okay?
But then I branched out and added cased telescoped ammo, ETC weaponry, 2 40k Bolters, a laser rifle (where's the rifling?), a plasma gun, a 25mm smart grenade launcher, and a 20mm infantry autocannon. Why? Because it's my mod and I do what I like.
I can already notice the massive leap in capabilities in less than a year of AI development. The LLMs of 8-9 months ago were inadequate for making a niche mod without an enormous amount of hand holding. The last time, I caved, and just did the XML work myself, and used AI images that I wasn't quite happy with.
This time? 5.6 Sol did pretty much everything I asked of it, with some mandatory manual testing to find and share errors and balance issues. It took me several days to implement the 4 weapons I'd made last time, in half the hours, I made 19, of significantly higher quality in all regards. I even managed to create brand new types of ammo, which I never managed to get the hang of last time. The art is far, far better. 🅱️ anilla Rimworld has art of the quality you'd expect at a special needs art therapy session, so it's not like it's hard to do better.
All I had to do was guide the overall design, use my knowledge of existing mods to direct the model to find out the poorly documented little extras or tacit knowledge that it wouldn't know, and make sure nothing was glaringly broken. Along the way, it even managed to troubleshoot and fix a 450 mod Rimworld map-gen issue, which the models of last year could not do.
It was fun, albeit tiring. I intend to add more guns, and now that I know it can handle more ambitious challenges, turrets, guided projectiles, and pretty much anything else I'm willing to burn time and tokens on.
Predictably, this caused drama on the modding discord. I was expecting it. I told the modder with a fetish for fetish art in the thumbnails of completely unrelated mods to go fuck himself, or thereabouts. I'm making free content, and it's good stuff. End of line.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1mo ago
I noted that the average person is far more amiable. This was distilled exposure to the leftest of the left - comedians are known to be happy and well adjusted people after all.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1mo ago
I was rather surprised to see how outright hostile the sentiment was towards Americans, while attending a reasonably high profile comedy show in Edinburgh tonight. Even directed at the poor sods who responded when the MC/individual comedians asked if there were Americans in the crowd. Apparently "I didn't vote for him" is no defense.
I ran into a very nice gentleman from Washington state while sheltering from the rain under the alcove of his building, next to the venue. I told him that while the show was nice enough, he's better off pretending to be Canadian. He was a tad bit strange, since, as he explained and then demonstrated, he'd stepped out to get soaked in the rain in lieu of a shower. That is probably whimsy and not pathology, but I opted to stay dry.
To be fair, I was sampling from the most vocally leftist/progressive strata of Scottish society. The average Scot seems to be much less deranged, and outright welcoming of the odd American tourist. Anyone else notice such obvious hostility in other countries?
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1mo ago
Boooo
(Good one)
I'm sorry. I recall seeing your comment, but I lacked the context for a proper response. I suppose the title of the book is all the context I really need, unless you want to talk about it. I hope you figure things out, and find someone new, who is better for you.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1mo ago
They could just have normal coffee or tea?
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1mo ago
Phlebas is a decent but underwhelming book. The rest of the series is great. The only other one I was somewhat disappointed by was the Hydrogen Sonata. Lovely name, but a disjointed, unsatisfying mess by Banks standards.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1mo ago
Ugh, this reminds me to post my review that compares the Golden Oecumene against the Culture. My backlog is getting out of hand.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1mo ago
I've done my fair share of psychedelics, but I have my limits. As far as I can tell, my personality remains intact, I've just learned to be more fond of myself and value my limited amount of time under the sun appropriately.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1mo ago
Boba tea. Women love it, I'm perplexed by the appeal. Or matcha, which has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. It tastes like liquid grass.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1mo ago
To be fair, I have written the story. Every detail of that day, somewhere in the ballpark of 9600 words. The problem is that it is too personal, and making it safe or suitable for public consumption would take an enormous amount of time.
Hey, at least I was coaxed into spilling one of the more cinematic moments. There was so much, that day, it took at least 5 hours to cover most of it. Why? I forget. Human memory is imprecise. I wanted to capture what I felt in the heat of the moment. I am, despite my best efforts, a romantic. And I'm very good at missing opportunities and then making up for it the first chance I get.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1mo ago
I'm grateful, I really am. All I can promise is that this is a considered decision, and I haven't cut things off.
I will note that I'm not as old as you seem to think I am. Far from it. I'm in my late 20s. I intend to bite the bullet in the next 2 or 3 years, 5 max. I'm quite far from worrying about only having the leftovers of the dating pool at hand, and I keep that a live concern.
I may or may not have fractured my thumb, so I'll keep it brief.
A sober, frugal Dutch doctor who wants a farm and a family, and you're passing on this because she's too organized?
She's not "too organized", I might be lacking in that regard, but I'm not scared off by people who have their shit together. She's too busy, I think. She's intent on entering a brutal specialty for further training, and she's moved/moving to a different city. Not too far, by itself, but in conjunction I'd be surprised if I saw her more than once every other week for the next few years. Even worse if either of us seek a competitive job later, which might require serious geographical upheaval.
I don't want to make demands of her. It's one thing to make those adjustments when you're engaged or married, and it's another to enter a relationship like that. You probably don't understand what an absolute pain in the ass rotational training is, especially when both parties are doctors. She clearly loves her career, and is visibly worried about how that'll impact having a family. I don't go around giving IVF advice for nothing, she's well aware of the health risks of delaying pregnancy, and my impression is that she wants to hold off for a good while.
You're not supposed to "keep up" with her!
True story: I was walking her back to a party, which she had delayed going to for the said 4 hours. We took a shortcut through a uni campus. I was a few steps behind.
"SMH! You walk awfully slow for someone with such long legs."
"I used to run everywhere, once. These days, I'm older. I like to linger and smell the roses."
She raised an eyebrow, "I don't see any roses."
I shrugged. "It's a metaphor, I'm not hallucinating." I sniffed a flower of uncertain taxonomy.
"I thought you'd keep up." She declared, walking off at speed, looking back over her shoulder with a smile.
"I'm still here, am I not?" I resumed chasing her at my own pace. One step behind.
No, she does want someone who keeps up. I can keep up. I'm just tired, sometimes, very often. I'm not too far from taking a stand, digging in my heels, and declaring this is where I'll live now. I just want it to be where I want to be.
You're not internet semi-famous for nothing, and that charm and turn of phrase makes her feel as insecure as her conscientiousness makes you feel.
I genuinely don't think that's the case. I'm not insecure that she, in her chosen field, is visibly more competent. I'm good at my job. She told me she appreciates that. I can pick up on the insecurities she does have: her body, the tension between her career goals and her craving for a family. I don't contribute to these.
I almost let a good woman go for the same reason: I was insecure she would keep charging ahead, and I could barely keep my phone charged. (plus I was enjoying my own grippy-socks/grippy-box decisions). But I didn't, and kid number three is slowing mom down enough that I can just about keep up.
I'm glad you got the happy ending. I'm quite sure I'll get mine too. Say hi to the kids and the missus for me.
Don't walk, run back to her, with as grandly romantic a gesture as her Northern European temperament and the rules of the NHS HR department will allow.
We don't work together any more. But if I see her (big if), I'll bring a bouquet of roses, and ask her to smell them while I stand by and grin like a loon.
At some point in the last few months, without ceremony or consent, I became the most responsible person in my family. There was no coronation. Responsibility in families obeys a conservation law: it never disappears, it just migrates toward whoever flinches last. My parents are getting old and fretful. My brother, now that med school has stopped supplying its ambient excitement, is possibly mildly depressed, and his relationship of five years has come apart in his hands. Seeing it coming didn't dull the pain.
All of which culminated in my vacation falling apart, and me frantically darning it back together. He didn't apply for his visa in time; then, at our parents' gentle nudging, he postponed the whole thing to September. How kind of everyone involved. It's not as if I needed that vacation myself. I was fucking counting on those two weeks to undo several months of pure misery, which, granted, is a lot to ask of two weeks. I was asking anyway.
So I coped. I spent time in Glasgow, which I've warmed to; I can see myself living there in the long run, and God knows the demand for psychiatrists exists. I went to Loch Lomond, which is absolutely gorgeous, and overrun with tourists trailing dogs and small children, a combination calculated to make my heart ache. I ended up in Pitlochry, realized I'd left my keys behind, and did something I'd always meant to do and never had: backpacking.
Or an approximation thereof. I crashed at a hostel, despite being able to afford an actual hotel without checking my balance. Mixed experience. The kids were all on their phones. I looked comprehensively out of place, dressed in work-adjacent clothing and boots never designed for hiking. I could not have given less of a fuck.
I didn't sleep well. My bunkmate has an INCREDIBLY clingy nephrologist girlfriend, who began video calling him at eight in the morning. Ringer on. He slept through it. I did not. She kept this up for fifty minutes, per my watch. I silenced several calls. I tried to shake him awake and failed; the man was auditioning for the morgue. I considered throwing his phone in the bin and, in a display of restraint that should count toward my revalidation, relented.
Eventually I picked up the fucking phone myself and informed her that her boyfriend was not dead, merely doing a very good job acting like it, and that she might be better served dating an ENT specialist who could address the hearing loss, or someone from GI who could work up the clonazepam autobrewery syndrome he had evidently developed. She sounded understanding, or at least relieved to hear a male voice, then immediately pivoted to texting him, with a follow-up call ten minutes later. He did apologize at some point. I have forgiven him, because his life is clearly its own punishment.
I believe I've mentioned a cute Dutch doctor before. The one I was rather confident had a crush on me. With my tolerance for workplace drama being what it is, I'd kept things strictly platonic, barring some barely contained wheezing at her accidental innuendo. My Emotional Support Lesbian (asexual) had long lobbied for me to make a move. I always declined, explaining that I knew perfectly well my reluctance was downstream of a bad inferiority complex and a healthy impostor syndrome, and that knowing this did precisely nothing to dissolve it. Insight, as I tell my patients, is necessary but not sufficient.
She rotated to a different department, but I saw her again before she left. She got to see me doing much better than I'd been when we first met. Without going into detail, I managed to pay down some of the enormous mental debt I felt I owed her. It's a very good story, it really is, and I can't be arsed to write it. I returned favors. I was there for her on the day the NHS cracked even her armor. And we ended up on what even the most self-loathing, insecure version of me couldn't classify as anything other than a date, accidentally on purpose. Four hours. I could practically feel the ionizing radiation as she assessed me for husband material, and, unless I've badly misread the dosimetry, found me to her liking. Not the first sign, either, unless someone wants to tell me that Dutch women casually announce "It's such a shame that men are scared away by competent, career-oriented women" while you're mid-bite of a sandwich. I choked slightly. As I've always said: true of many men, but not me.
I hadn't expected to see her again, and I'd already gotten the platonic farewells out of the way, wishing her well on a career that plainly requires no blessing from me. She is very good at her job. Good enough that I genuinely wondered what the fuck I'd been doing at her age. I got better at some point, is my defense.
I will probably not move ahead with it, and it hurts to write that sentence. I have nothing against women with careers; I just watched myself fall for one. What I have is a finite battery and a realistic model of what it means to love someone who lives at a hundred miles an hour and fits more into an evening than I do into half a week. Distance. Rotational placements. I might be able to keep up. I'm not sure I have the energy to find out. I did have the energy to write 9000+ words about her that evening, because that is the only way I know how to process anything: I pin the longing to the page, next to the pain, where neither can hurt me on the move.
All I can say is that I said and did the things that the SMH of three months ago, that shivering, scared and sorry bastard, had wished he could say and do. I'd like to promise there will be no regrets. I'll settle for reporting that I took the worst of them out back with a shovel and came home alone. I've never been one to hope too hard for second chances (a lie), and I got one I could never have dreamed of. It's a considered decision. It is also a painful one; the two categories overlap far more often than anyone admits. I hope she finds what she's looking for: a family, a farm and a future. And at least she leaves with my link to a LessWrong essay on embryo preservation, plus my own comment underneath. I am exactly that kind of nerd.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1mo ago
Don't even ask. I mean, do, but if you're looking for exercise, it's mostly been impromptu backpacking and solo adventures. I think I did push-ups, once, last week.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1mo ago
I can see the humor in it. I don't feel very gay about it still.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1mo ago
All I care about is the object level question.
A man can wear pink, listen to Lana Del Ray, and paint his nails while not being gay, if he does not have sex with men given the opportunity, and declines to report any such desire.
I don't wear pink, I don't listen to LDR, and I remain straight. I also think traps are hella gay. You are free to accept or deny this, of course. But you sought truth, and there it is.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1mo ago
I forgive you for the unforgivable sin of not knowing the ins and outs of my dating life, particularly aspects I haven't written about before. I do appreciate the concern, I just wanted you to know that I have about the right degree of concern myself. And that instead of simply sitting there being concerned, as would be tempting to some, I'm taking action.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1mo ago
I used to do that back when I was less gainfully employed. I mean, I was still gainfully employed, I just had more free time.
https://openai.com/index/ten-advances-in-mathematics/
Fellas, I regret to tell you something you should have realized last week at the latest: it's incredibly over.
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