DamnInteresting

I made a stereogram a few years back that turned out to be unusually easy for people to view. Perhaps you'll have luck with it:

https://www.damninteresting.com/temp/damn-interesting-stereo...

The trick is to focus normally on the image, then move your focus to be a few inches behind your screen, as if you're looking through it at something behind.

A colleague of mine wrote about the bat-eating problem in 2006: https://www.damninteresting.com/the-hazards-of-eating-bats/

(Technically this is a self-link, but it wasn't written by me, and there are no ads or the like)

If you use https://news.ycombinator.com/active, [flagged] and [dead] threads are shown, so long as there is engagement. I wish that @dang would make this the HN front page in these harrowing and hectic times. It is currently too easy for important threads to be smothered.

> This is mostly personal preference

For sure! I basically went directly from manual transmission to EV, so I was already accustomed to using the drivetrain to slow the vehicle when not accelerating. For me, one-pedal EV driving feels like a natural progression from the manual lifestyle.

I own a Chevy Bolt EV, one of the less expensive EVs on the US market (after tax rebates, it was about $30k USD). I purchased it in May 2017, so I've had almost 8 years with this car.

I feel like a lot of these write ups overlook other advantages of EVs. Some of my favorite things about this car:

* It is very quiet, inside and out

* It is very torquey, moving instantly when I push the accelerator

* One-pedal driving is very pleasant

* Charging at home feels like an incredible luxury (which it is)

Occasionally I am required to drive my wife's Corolla, and despite being in good repair, it feels like driving an old jalopy; it vibrates constantly, it smells vaguely of exhaust, it moves forward on its own when I release the brakes, and it doesn't slow down much when I release the accelerator.

There is also the time factor. Stopping at the gas station costs time, oil changes cost time, etc. I had to refill the windshield washer fluid a few days ago, and the tires need to be rotated occasionally, but that's about it so far.

It is true that EVs depreciate quickly, but for someone like me, who intends to drive it until the wheels come off, that's of little concern. Also, due to the battery's thermal management, I have not observed any meaningful loss in average range yet (though I did receive the battery replacement recall a few years into my ownership, so the battery is only ~5 years old).

Your mileage may vary, as they say.

I write a lot about history, and as part of that work I occasionally file FOIA requests. There was one occasion where the FBI's response contained dozens of pages that were typewritten memos consisting of:

To: [recipient name]

From: [sender name]

Date: [date]

[Multiple paragraphs of redacted text]

...and that was basically it. It was funny, but frustrating (funstrating?).

Example: https://www.damninteresting.com/temp/memo.jpg

"Move fast and break things", where the "things" are laws, economies, lives, infrastructure...

> Elected officials trying to do what they told voters they would do is literally the textbook definition of monarchy.

I expect that you intended to say "textbook definition of democracy", but the Freudian slip is quite something.

The 'Grand Teton' mountain in Wyoming is just a French phrase meaning 'big boob'.[1] And 'McKinley' was just some politician who had never even laid eyes on his namesake lump of rock.

[1] https://www.davehansenwhitewater.com/how-the-tetons-got-thei...

It could be a backronym for Asshole Design.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backronym

Myself and a small group of curious souls have been sharing links here for years:

https://www.damninteresting.com/curated-links/

We mainly share articles on science, history, psychology, philosophy, true crime, interactives, and other such stuff. We avoid politics as much as feasible. I just checked, and we're coming up on 42,000 links in the catalog so far. Yowza.

When I was a lad, I spent some time in front of a mirror trying to teach myself to move my eyebrows independently, like Spock. I eventually succeeded, but in the process I also learned how to move my ears. One downside is that these ear muscles began to involuntarily try to help. For instance, if I am looking down while wearing glasses, my ears contract to grip the glasses so they don't fall off, and after a while these seldom used muscles ache from the effort.

> I developed gluten/lactose sensitivity during covid times

Same here, at least in regard to gluten. I was in my mid-forties, and I started experiencing painful bloating that often led to difficulty breathing, and after an hour or so of pain, vomiting. The involuntary 'protein spill' alleviated the pain of bloating, but I was left exhausted for the remainder of the day.

At first, these episodes occurred about once every 2 weeks, but they grew more and more common over a few months, until it was a nearly daily occurrence. I had become overweight (I'm still working on that), so my doctor concluded that I just needed to lose some body fat. It felt like there was something more serious more going on, but US health care.

Weeks later, I stumbled upon a science article describing how millions of people develop gluten sensitivity later in life. It described familiar symptoms and progression. As an experiment, I tried eliminating gluten from my diet (which is tricky, that stuff sneaks into surprising places), and I felt much better within a few days.

In the ~2 years since, I've had a few episodes, but I can almost always find a place where gluten snuck into my food (e.g., a taco place that added flour to its corn tortillas). On one occasion, I deliberately ate a bit of bread, and sure enough, 30 minutes later I was begging the porcelain gods for forgiveness.

I miss real bread, but for me, the blowback isn't worth it.

I've adopted the habit of always having an e-book on my phone, and when I crave a distraction, I read a few pages instead of opening reddit etc. It's been great.

> It really makes me want a 1980s-style cellphone with no screen and big physical buttons.

If you're using an iPhone, you can use Assistive Access to disable a lot of stuff, making it functionally simiilar to a flip phone:

https://support.apple.com/guide/assistive-access-iphone/set-...

There's probably an Android equivalent, but I can't speak to that.

Related: Meta to move content moderators to Texas as part of plan to end fact-checking program

https://www.texastribune.org/2025/01/07/texas-meta-content-m...

SponsorBlock[1] does a pretty good job of skipping inline adverts and similar stuff on YouTube. It is, however, crowdsourced rather than using machine learning (so far as I am aware).

[1] https://sponsor.ajay.app/

Agreed, I strongly dislike this trend of "new feature tours" on application startup. When I launch an application it's because I have a task I need to complete, and these dumb popups just step in the way and slow me down.

There is a hypothesis/philosophy called Society of Mind [1] which posits that our minds are a collection of individual 'agents' that each have their own motivations, sometimes cooperating and sometimes competing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Mind

I've subscribed to her channel for a long time, and my impression has been that she loves these kinds of things (otherwise why keep exploring the space?), but she finds it interesting and potentially productive to talk about the flaws, as a way to strive for better. It's like she's acting as an editor to an author--sure, editors are technically criticizing, but they do so intending to improve the original.

I have a Wordpress site I've been operating since 2005. In recent days I've seen notifications that a Wordpress core update is available, and I find myself very reluctant to install it. I no longer trust this organization. But I also don't want to fall behind on security updates. What an unnecessary mess.

My parents-in-law, who live hours away, buy an enormous quantity of toys for my five-year-old. Big, obnoxious play sets. We have to frequently shuffle toys out just to have room for new stuff. On the occasions when they actually visit, they make snarky remarks about how we have so many toys for one kid. They are causing the problem and then mocking us for it. Make it stop.

Under $100: Some cable management boxes for my desk. No more unsightly power strips and tangles of cables. They go great with velcro cable ties.

Under $1000: A warm water bidet. I had a cold water one for years, but on winter mornings it was...challenging. When it broke I replaced it with an electronic alternative. Uranus is no longer an ice planet.

I've been building sites on WordPress for almost 20 years. A couple of years ago I ran into an old friend, and it turned out she worked for Automattic. She encouraged me to apply there, so I did.

The initial interviews went well, so I moved on to the code test. It was a slog; I was working full-time and raising a three-year-old. But I loved the idea of working for the keepers of WordPress, so I powered through. During this process I got a peek inside Automattic, and there were some concerning oddities. One that stuck out to me was that there is an annual week-long gathering of employees, and it is mandatory.

Then my "trial" began. It was certainly within my technical capabilities, but it was something like 2 weeks worth of full-time work, all to write code that would ultimately be thrown away. I was instructed to invoice Automattic $30/hour for the time I spent on it, and told that taking too long to finish would result in rejection. I got a few hours in before I concluded that it was just not possible, and I withdrew my application.

There was also a fair amount of weird forced corporate jargon in the materials. Instead of "employees" it was always "Automatticians," and things like that. It felt a bit cultish. In retrospect, I think I dodged a bullet.

I've been using WordPress non-stop since 2005. I even hoped to someday work for Automattic. I applied and got through the initial process, but with a young child and a full-time job, I couldn't make time for the laborious "trial" part of the interview, so my application was put on indefinite pause. It pains me to watch this unfolding series of unforced errors. I hope WordPress survives.

I have a "tinker" directory with decades worth of small, just-for-fun projects I've coded. Many of them are bleeding-edge browser experiments, and I don't want to bother with "requires such-and-such browser" messaging, I just want to see what is possible.

For most of them, building the thing is fun and instructive--and every once in a while I can draw from this reservoir of creativity for new public-facing projects. It's great!

I've used a strategy like this in the past, but as the short-sprint roles pile up, I find that one develops a bit of a resume problem.

If one lists the positions and dates on one's resume, recruiters/interviewers notice this and regard the applicant as flaky and noncommittal. They don't want to invest in someone who will jump ship after a short stint.

If one doesn't list those positions, it's hard to prove experience, and creates the appearance that you've struggled to find work, which can be a red flag.

So, I think that works well for younger folks, but I'm in early graybeard territory, myself.

I have indeed worked as developer/IT for non-profits, and so far it's always been a positive experience. Those positions can be tricky to find since they often don't list the openings on traditional tech job sites, and networking is less likely to lead to those places. Maybe I need to do a Google alert or something. Hmm.

It's quite a tricky problem; whether or not a page is "paywalled" is not always black and white. Many sites allow X page views before the paywall appears, so visitors will have different experiences depending on whether they've interacted with the site previously. Some sites offer "gift links" that bypass the paywall, but not necessarily forever and always. Sometimes paywalls are regional based on IP address. Some sites only paywall certain stories, so if you're a subscriber to that site it's not clear whether the story you wish to link is behind a paywall for others.

With all of these qualifiers, a "paywall" tag would usually just mean "paywalled for some," and the only way to find out whether it's paywalled for you is to risk wasting that click. So it would not substantially improve the situation.

> If someone steals your car and uses it to run over a pedestrian, both you and the pedestrian are victims. They're far more damaged. And you aren't at any fault, even if you e.g. didn't lock it or even left it with the keys in. It's still going to create a mess for you.

A more fitting analogy: Imagine a bad actor buying a car that strongly resembles your own (same make, model, year, and color), then they convince the DMV to give them a duplicate of your license plate. In this analogy, the DMV is the bank.

The bad actor runs over a pedestrian. Sure, it may be a headache to prove that it wasn't actually your car, but once you do so, how much of the responsibility should you hold?