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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 12th, 2023

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  • how would you fare teaching in a classroom of students young, or older at high school age?

    I’m not sure. I think I’d probably do better around children than adults. I’m pretty ok with my younger cousins at least. I have had someone suggest that I might be a decent teacher, but I’ve never looked into it. I’ve got some CS skills from taking various classes in college and I did well at them although I didn’t end up managing to get a degree. I do sometimes wonder if I’d ever go back to finish that if I sort out my health issues. But perhaps teaching could also be a route to look into.








  • You need to enjoy your life. Otherwise what is the point? If buying the thing helps you accomplish that and it’s not going to ruin your ability to acquire the basics, why not?

    I guess the one pitfall to avoid is trying to evaluate if you ACTUALLY want it. Is this actually satisfying some desire beyond random consumption? Could you fulfill that desire more cheaply or for free? If you do get it, are you going to use it or are you going to forget about it and move on to another thing to fill the void?

    I go back and forth on having either end of this problem. Sometimes I will spend somewhat recklessly to try to overcome boredom but the things I get don’t really do that and then I end up spending more to keep trying to fix a problem that clearly isn’t getting solved by what I’m doing. Other times I will get so unwilling to try or commit to new things that I stop myself from getting anything even though something might make me happier.

    Also, your enjoyment of things isn’t static over time. For example, when I was a kid, getting a new piece of technology, a phone, a new computer, a tablet, a console, etc. was super exciting. It was shiny and new. It opened up all of these new possibilities to me and I had fun both with the things I could do with it but also just fiddling around with the tech. Now? I get a brand spanking new computer or phone or whatever and… it just feels normal. Sure it might be faster, but I can more or less do the same things I used to do. I’m sort of just getting it to maintain what I already had. So now I’m not as quick to go get the new shiny thing. I pretty much hold on to what I have until it’s borderline unusable.


  • My philosophy is that languages are made up to make communication easier and they change all the time anyway. So as long as you are understood, that’s more important than getting the grammar to be perfect. Getting it like 80% right is plenty and that last 20% consists of a bunch of obscure or ambiguous rules that would take up way too much of my processing power to keep track of while communicating, thus hindering the purpose of using language in the first place. Also, English is a stupid mess of a language. I don’t have enough respect for it to follow all of it’s rules.

    That said… what DOES bug me a little is people who make videos who regularly misuse words. Not because I think it’s that big of a deal, but… come on… this is your job and you have complete control over the work at every step of the way and have so many opportunities to correct mistakes. You write the script. You read it. You watch it again while doing editing and could easily re-record bits that are wrong or awkward. Although perhaps this is less about the language specifically and more about leaving mistakes and bloopers in videos in general. That’s what editing is for. We have more advanced editing tools available to the average person than ever before. USE THEM!


  • This is what has been most depressing/distressing about watching all of this unfold. People online (and I’m not immune to this either) have this impulse to think “Surely not right? Surely these people will come to their senses and not just blindly follow transparently evil orders right? We’ve been told these people are heroes who stand up for freedom and democracy and our safety right? Surely at least some of them will do the right thing right?” It’s so ingrained into us through support our troops propaganda and various TV/Movies showing them and cops as principled heroes saving the day. We’ve also seen this with corporations. “Wow I can’t believe this company turned away from DEI so quickly. I can’t believe this company is going to keep selling surveillance tech to the government. Surely someone will see how wrong that is.”

    And then I snap back to my senses and remember history. We’ve seen what horrors these people are willing to commit, whether they want to or are “just following orders.” Maybe you at least believe that they won’t do it to US, as cynical as that is… and then you remember Kent State, segregation, the violent crackdown on unions, the police rallying around protecting cops who execute people in the streets, etc.

    Nobody is going to come to their senses. None of them are coming to save us from themselves. If we don’t stand up for ourselves this is just going to happen and be another chapter in a long history of cruelty.