Yeah, but I like to try to use it to move in a certain direction emotionally. Like, instead of pure sad, I’ll put on something sad and wistful to move a little in that direction, or sad and angry to shift a little that way, depending on my current needs.

Like, this is sad and wistful, with a touch of determination:

https://youtu.be/es9MQweZzvc

This is sad and angry:

https://youtu.be/6NXnxTNIWkc

This helps avoid wallowing in the pure sad feeling, which I don’t really like.

Given the distance required, what kind of economic payoff could be possible from such an expensive project? It’s not like overland would be a cheaper transport option than Pacific shipping routes or anything. It’s not just the Bering Strait being the problem with connecting the two after all, but the fact that there’s nothing in NE Siberia or NW Alaska to bother connecting together. Are we making it for the polar bears maybe? Or are people going to drive the thousands of miles from Juneau to Vladivostok to sightsee?

Big yellow flame probably indicates its not getting enough air mixing with the fuel for complete combustion. I’m guessing something got clogged up with soot, or possibly rust. Look around at all the little holes the gas comes out of, see if any of them are clogged up. If you find some, something like a safety pin can probably get them opened up.

if someone is doing that

Key words. I think we can look at

Someone showed me a TikTok video of a…

and assume with a fair degree of confidence that something a little fishy is going on here.

5/10 interestingness gets 0 seconds of watch time for me, there’s just too much quality content produced in my topics of interest every day for me to keep up with. I already have to miss some 7/10 projects just because there’s only so much free time in a day.

Regarding the time question, for something that barely crosses the “okay I’ll watch it” threshold, 10-15 minutes is probably what I’ll give it. It can be longer than that, I’ll just skip through parts of the video for the gist to decide if I want to give it more time.

Worth noting though, that for extremely interesting content, a 15 minute duration actually dissuades me from watching it, as I doubt there’s enough time to cover much of anything at a decent level in that little an amount of time. So like, for a neat history vid on a topic I’d like to hear more about, if it’s 30 minutes or less then I’m less likely to give it a chance, unless it’s covering something super narrow where there wouldn’t be as much to talk about. But if you’re going to cover a major historical event, you better be at least a half hour. There are some exceptions to this, Indy Nidell(sp?) is a good example, but it’s my general rule.

Yes, absolutely.

I’d probably take something like 10% of it and go ahead and enjoy spending that, you can get some cool stuff for 1.5k that you can enjoy right now.

How you want to invest the bulk of it depends on your plans, but don’t forget that things like a reliable car or a computer you might need for future schooling are also “investments” of sorts into your future.

I’m not so knowledgeable about all the different sorts of investments out there, so maybe someone else can help out there. Knowing what your medium-long term goals are will help them fine-tune their advice though. Are you planning on any sort of post-secondary education or job training?

Yeah, I won’t say it’s impossible or anything. I just think there’s other reasonable explanations too.

Personally I just avoid mentioning China when I’m over there. lol It’s easier to keep everything civil if you avoid naming names, and China is a particularly sore spot for them. You also can’t forget that free speech is not a foundational part of their ideology like it is ours. They’re more about seizing the means of production than the free contesting of ideas.

It does feel a little like walking on eggshells.

I kinda doubt it. Let’s not forget this is a global community, and Marxism-Leninism has different levels of support in different parts of the world.

If this was a state-funded project, I think the development would have gone a lot more swiftly, and the leads would be even more puritanical in pushing their beliefs. As it is, I’ve argued pretty extensively from a liberal perspective on .ml before, even personally with dessalines, and while they don’t exactly love me over there, I’m careful to respect their rules and they haven’t banned me.

I think they really are just idealistic supporters of communism, mostly from places where that’s a little more common.

When the Generative Agents system was evaluated for how “believably human” the agents acted, researchers found the AI versions scored higher than actual human actors.

That’s a neat finding. I feel like there’s a lot to unpack there around how our expectations are formed.

Vampires…? Uh, garlic. lol

What flavor of apocalypse matters a lot. If it’s zombies, ammo becomes critical. If it’s nuclear, ammo is less important and water filtration probably becomes critical. If it’s a gigantic asteroid that blots out the sun, water is easy to find but food is critical.

For an unknown apocalypse, I think I’ll go with gasoline. Not critical in and of itself, but helps a lot more generally with a lot of stuff, being able to power a generator and move camp more easily.

It actually has a hopeful ending, fyi, despite being about such difficult subject material. It’s not all gloom, though, it is a very well-made movie, overall. Liam Neeson is fantastic in it too.

Schindler’s List was shown in one of our history classes, I probably never would have watched it otherwise due to being black and white and me thinking I wouldn’t like that.

I can’t say that I enjoyed it, it’s not a particularly “enjoyable” film. It was moving though, and talking in class about what humans are capable of was interesting.

I cannot specifically remember any of the others we watched, but I remember that I liked movie days because you tended not to get homework. They certainly weren’t nearly as memorable though.

The line I’ve seen the most is that god uses even sinful unbelievers to accomplish his goals.

Yeah, okay I’ll grant that.

That one doesn’t bother me quite as much, just because it relies on some finer numbers regarding the structural properties of materials, that people won’t realistically have day-to-day experience with. They have to trust sources, which I do understand people sometimes being reluctant to do for whatever reason.

The concept of heat accumulation in an enclosed space is something everyone has experienced, though. If they have cooked, or gotten into a car in the summer, or any other manner of experiences, they should realize how it works with just a minute or less of thinking. If you contain heat, say, inside of a building, it can build up. Simple as that. Very intuitive, can be fully understood by even a small child. These folks would understand it too, if they just thought about it for a second instead of just believing randos on the internet who are appealing to their feelings.

This one is the most annoying for me. It betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of heat, where a person clearly doesn’t understand that heat can accumulate regardless of where it comes from.

It’s like saying a garden hose cannot fill up a swimming pool because the mouth of the garden hose isn’t as big as the pool.

A whowouldwin community.

Battleboarding communities draw a lot of engagement and help retain new users among the younger demographics.

In a world where trolling was done as a recreational activity, this was a good strategy. This is not that world anymore, though, this is a world where right wing fight clubs are popping up in dozens of countries. Trolls are no longer recreational, they’re trying to slowly and gradually change the world in their image.

You’ve never needed everyone for something, that’s unrealistic. A village doesn’t require the exact same behavior from all people to function smoothly, and any such bottleneck would create weaknesses anyway. You just need that to be the prevailing culture.