1 karma · joined July 5, 2025
The primary study that spread the idea that caffeine dehydrates is from a 1928 study with a sample size of three men[0]. It may very well be that caffeine does dehydrate, but I have yet to see overwhelmingly conclusive evidence to make such a claim as matter of fact. For now, I believe it’s safer to err on the side of moderate and regular caffeine consumption not causing dehydration to a perceptible level. This could of course be entirely incorrect, but I haven’t come across research that has convinced me otherwise so far. My understanding is the reason a cup of coffee (or tea’ does not dehydrate the consumer is because it is almost entirely water.
I think an important frying to remember is that science is a field of research and discovery, so we should try to avoid arriving at conclusions and refusing to accept differing opinions. Look at how we treated Ignaz Semmelweis for an extreme example of that type of fallacy.
[0] https://jpet.aspetjournals.org/content/33/2/167
More studies:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3886980/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11022872/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21450118/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9194998
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...
The lack of HSR has absolutely nothing to do with consumers’ obsessions with cars and everything to do with business lobbying, difficulty in acquiring private land, and lack of government interest. It does not stem from the Texas citizens.
Further, DFW has (far more than) last mile transit from the airport with DART. How can you ignore that even if it’s not perfect? It can take you from Dallas to Fort Worth!
How has no one mentioned the actual reason it won’t happen? Texas citizens are not so enamored with cars that they prevent this from happening. Texans that frequently travel between Houston and Dallas fly Southwest Airlines because Southwest has spent an inordinate amount of money lobbying to prevent rail[0].
> Furthermore, HSR also requires some level of last mile connectivity by local mass public transit.
What do you think all the current business travelers are doing with their cars when they fly?
[0] https://www.texastribune.org/2014/03/07/firm-planning-texas-...
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As an aside, browsing this website on an iPad is terrible. It doesn’t respect my request to increase the font size, and when I zoom in, it starts moving and wrapping the text defeating the purpose of the zoom. That being said, the quote formatting and response is fantastic and how online communication should be.
Does anyone have advice on what I should call myself? I was a senior in public accounting (~3 years of experience) when I switched into software development after self-teaching for 5 years on the side. I settled for an entry-level role to get my foot in the door, but after 7 months I was made the lead of one of a few teams with the rest being led by principal engineers. I think it’s fair to say im clearly not a recent college graduate and am performing like I have already been a software engineer for a few years now.
I now have 2 engineers below me. My technical skills have grown much stronger than an entry level, and my non-technical skills are on par with the other principal engineers. My team has been thriving and has received quite a bit of recognition from the company.
I’m coming up on a year and ready to ask for a raise since I believe I’m vastly outperforming an entry-level role compared to my peers, but I don’t know what to push for since these job levels are less clear than they are in accounting. Level II? Level III? Senior? It’s tough to rank the experience gained from my CPA and accounting background (that would be very valuable if I were still an accountant of course). Naturally engineers want to devalue it (fair enough), but it’s clearly paying dividends in my ability to deliver the company value.
- Nicotine helps mitigate the negative symptoms of ADHD, but US society has seen a major drop in tobacco usage
- Having access to a secretary greatly compensates for workplace related tasks that are difficult for those with ADHD. I have had a few conversations with people at my company much older than myself about how the number of secretaries has vastly shrunk. My boss’ secretary used to reach out to me about a meeting she had scheduled for us. Now my boss doesn’t have a secretary, and I have to schedule those meetings, update them, and communicate this with multiple parties while also having a full plate of my own dev work.
> I don't think there's any task in which someone with ADHD is more suited to than someone without; there are tasks which are less difficult for the person with ADHD than other tasks, but ADHD doesn't bestow many, if any, advantages over a neurotypical person.
Your experience is totally valid! I can only speak for my own experience, but I find compared to my neurotypical peers, I am much more capable at learning a breadth of topics. My peers are significantly better at performing 40 three-way matches for invoices in a work day while I would totally fail at that. But let me make my own video game where I have to learn how to program it, design art, and create music, and I’m great at that! My power comes from the ability to bounce around things depending on what I want to focus on that day. I create an environment for myself where I have dozens of tasks I can do, so that I always have something that will grab my interest.
The way this usually plays out in the actual working world is that I struggle with boring, repetitive tasks, but now that my boss knows how I work, he has let me set a more friendly set up and now frequently sees me deliver major changes that would have taken another developer weeks to accomplish given the diversity of tasks I have solved. Meanwhile the other developer is delivering on certain types of tasks I would be much worse at accomplishing. Our team plays to our strengths.
I’m great at deeply learning various concepts then hyperfocusing and delivering significant code changes at work. Some days I’ll complete 3 major jira tickets complete with testing because I’m so focused. Now of course there are other days where it’s much harder to get things done. But setting up that environment where I have diverse things to work on lets that aspect of my ADHD shine.
I will note that I’m properly medicated and have a great diet that helped a lot. School was always really tough for me. Then I discovered when I was studying for the CPA exam, that I learn much better from books than from a teacher in a classroom. I experienced this again when I self-taught CS. These days, I view my ADHD as less of a hindrance and more of a different approach. It’s true that it has downsides compared to a neurotypical, but I feel that it absolutely has its upsides as well when in a healthy state.
You’re completely misrepresenting ADHD, so I don’t see how this anecdote proves your point.
ADHD isn’t the inability to focus. In fact, it often comes with the ability to hyperfocus better than neurotypical minds. ADHD is the inability to regulate focus on specific activities, particularly ones that are boring and not what the individual finds stimulating. Camping and fishing are not what I would typically consider a difficult task to focus on for someone with ADHD. Especially because it’s a physical activity, which are often better suited for an ADHD mind rather than mental tasks that involve being sedentary.
Perhaps what you’re unintentionally getting at is people with ADHD are much better suited for specific tasks than neurotypicals, and society is largely set up to favor neurotypicals at the expense of those with ADHD.
https://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/26/magazine/gm-vs-ross-perot...
- How did you go about setting it up?
- What are the benefits of adding one?
- Can you use it with 4 HDDs installed?
- Which NVMe do you use?
I upgraded the RAM on mine to 20GB and saw massive performance gains, so I’m curious if adding an NVMe cache down the line would have similar performance increases.
I did briefly have a 2020 M1 Air for 2 years. It was fine for carrying around. It failed for portability primarily in its inability to dock to a 2 monitor workstation. I still vastly prefer my Nano as a portable laptop to travel with (e.g. plane or bus travel outside of my city). The Air indeed weighs very little, but it still weighs 40% more than a Nano! I usually travel with a portable screen that weighs half a pound, so my combo still weighs less than just an Air.
It’s hard to describe the experience with an Air, since weight is about physical feel, but that weight saving does make a difference. The Nano is so lightweight that I can quickly pick it up and use it on the sofa as comfortably as an iPad. My Nano even has a 5G SIM card slot that I can pop my cellphone SIM into. However, that only works on the Windows side for now. Finally, the keyboard is much more pleasant to type on with the Nano. It really is a great travel laptop. Add in the ability to natively run Arch Linux, and I’m happier than ever with it.
On the other hand, I cannot stand my work M1 MacBook Pro, but that’s primarily because it weighs so much and the keyboard is pretty mediocre, so it’s not fun to travel with. It’s more of a docking laptop, which defeats the purpose of a portable machine for me.
This is sometimes how I feel about Athens. It’s such a cool city, and the Acropolis is a marvelous site to see from a rooftop across the city. Yet I have this desire for the city to properly restore the Parthenon, paint it again, and turn the Acropolis into a public space of gathering. Many would object to that idea for legitimate reasons, but it makes the city look like a has-been, long past its peak. Ancient Greece was an area full of beautiful colors[0] rather than white and brown marble. I would love to see a return to that.
I need to give Tokyo a visit. I’m interested in cities that keep their character while also maintaining themselves and driving forwards.
[0] https://theacropolismuseum.gr/en/exhibition-programs/archaic...
It looks like a 5-pack of Provia 100F is really expensive from BH, and my local film studio charges a bit more to process E6 compared to developing C41. Ektar seems to have a much more reasonable price. I'm not good enough yet to justify spending too much.
For photographing nature, would you generally recommend using 100 ISO film? I'm not planning on using a tripod since I don't want to carry one around while traveling. I'm looking for vivid colors akin to the National Geographic of old.
My lenses for the Nikon F4 are:
- Nikon 28mm f/2.8 Series-E
- Nikon 50mm f/1.4 NIKKOR-S Auto
- Sigma AF 50mm f/2.8 Macro
- Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 AF NIKKOR ED
- Tamron AF 200-400mm f/5.6 LD IF 75DN
The CPA exam was a mix of practical information and a bit of unnecessary gatekeeping in my opinion. I felt that I had already learned most of that information during my undergrad degree and that my graduate degree was overkill. Having to spend more time studying for the exam after two degrees and then spend a year working under someone was too much in total. I believe that accounting is a craft that can be learned while working under a master. I feel similar about my software engineering career now.
My experience with all of the credentials to become a CPA is a big reason why I decided to self-teach computer science rather than pursuing another degree. I recognized that if I studied the fundamentals and then worked underneath someone highly skilled, I would be able to build up my skill set as a developer. So far I think that direction has worked out.
After cleaning the Minolta, I purchased some Kodak Portra 400 film and then took it on a vacation to Albania and Greece. I had an incredible time lining up shots patiently and deliberately since every shot cost $1.50, and I could not review the results in the moment. The feeling of using a camera that my grandfather had used to capture moments from his trips four decades previously is hard to put into words.
When I returned home from my trip, I had the film developed and digitally scanned. I thought the pictures turned out pretty well for being as inexperienced as I am. I built my own gallery on my website to host them because they hold a much more special meaning to me than all of the photos I have previously taken on my iPhone. After curating the photos, I went to visit my grandfather. When I showed him the photos, he really enjoyed them. My grandparents shared a few stories about traveling with that camera and how they had the prints of the animals on their wall made.
Nobody else in my family wanted the film cameras. I am very glad I acquired them, and I plan to maintain them and eventually pass them on. To me, these are absolutely an heirloom. They are high quality, still functional, were revolutionary when they were released, and came with valuable stories and experiences from my grandfather. I couldn’t have asked for a better object to receive from him. I plan to take these cameras on all of my future trips and hopefully visit places he went to and recapture them half a century later.
One of the most crucial components of operating a 501c3 is the financial statements reporting requirements[1]. From an accounting perspective, the organization cannot keep retained earnings (owner’s equity) balance at year end since there are no owners. Rather than having retained earnings, 501c3s deal with net assets, which no person can have ownership of.
The crucial thing here is that the business does not retain profits at the end of the accounting period. However, it can earn what we would call profit in a non-501c3 scenario and then use that money for business activities, paying employee wages, investing, etc. Accordingly, a 501c3 can take in more than it needs to spend. It just has to properly handle that excess money to meet the accounting standards.
See the Wikimedia Foundation’s financial statements[2] for a great example. They spend a minuscule amount of their net assets on actual business expenses. They spend quite a bit on wages, travel and conferences, and various other things that are arguably unnecessary to serve their core mission. However, they follow all of the accounting guidelines and are therefore granted reasonable assurance that they are fairly representing their financials according to KPMG.
Back to the initial topic, it’s now clearer to see why and how a university such as Harvard can be a 501c3 and bring in exorbitant amounts of “profit” that probably do not better serve their core mission as an education center. However, it’s all about following rules and how you spin it. Harvard isn’t begging alumni for donations because they need it. They had $61B in net assets at year end[3]. I think it’s completely fair to argue that Harvard doesn’t need that much money while they deliberately stay at their current size. In fact, I would argue one step further that they have so much money on hand, they shouldn’t even be charging tuition. Their $59B investment portfolio makes up the bulk of their net assets. From a book perspective, they are essentially an investment fund with a university attached.
Looking at a public university, the University of Texas ended the year with a $66B net position[4]. They paid their football coach over $5[5] from their massive pool of assets and are still paying their former head football coach tens of millions of dollars.
I would be interested in hearing if there are universities in Europe that operate like this. Quickly looking up the aggregated statement of financial activities for all Oxford colleges[6], I see that they had a 63M£ expenditure (loss) but carried forward 1.35B£ to end the year with positive funds carried forward of 1.36B£ (after a prior year funds adjustment). That’s incomparable to Harvard. As a CPA (who is not an expert on UK tax law), Oxford’s financial statement appears much more inline with the spirit of what I imagine a non-profit university should be. Harvard and the University of Texas look like two of the most successful companies in America to me.
[0] https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organiz...
[1] https://www.fasb.org/document/blob?fileName=ASU_2016-14.pdf
[2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/2/26/Wikim...
[3] https://finance.harvard.edu/files/fad/files/fy22_harvard_fin...
[4] https://www.utsystem.edu/sites/default/files/documents/repor...
[5] https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/22/steve-sarkisian-sala...
[6] http://d307gmaoxpdmsg.cloudfront.net/collegeaccounts2122/agg...
Six weeks ago, I tried to change my email but got frustrated that an obvious option wasn’t available in the settings page. So I deleted my account and went to create a new one. When I got to the phone verification, it told me that my phone number could only be used for two accounts, so I was not allowed to sign up. This was the second account I attempted to create, so my phone had only been used once. Naturally, I tried using my google voice phone number, but the system told me that type of number wasn’t allowed.
At this point, I navigated to their support page and had to talk with a chat bot that apparently isn’t powered by ChatGPT. I found it maddening and couldn’t locate an email address to communicate with a human. After a few 10 minute sessions over the course of a few days in search of an email, I finally located one. So I fired off an email explaining how I no longer had access due difficulties stemming from wanting to change my email.
After four weeks, I finally got a response that I’m not sure was written by a human. It completely misunderstood my succinctly described issue and desired resolution. I went back and forth multiple times with support including them suggesting if I am unhappy with their service to sign up for a pro account, pay for the service, and then request a refund. Ignoring the irrationality of the suggestion, I explained how I couldn’t log in to an account at all and simply wanted to access their service again. They continued to insist that once an account is deleted, it is deleted permanently, and I can never have access again. I don’t recall a warning of these major implications at the time of deleting my account with an old email address. At this point, I requested to be escalated to a human and have not heard back for a week now.
Admittedly, I shouldn’t have deleted my account initially, but I had decided that ChatGPT was something I wanted to continue using and needed to switch to my new email address since I have deprecated my old one. This entire process has left me so unimpressed with their company. It’s truly ridiculous how complicated every step has been along the way when I’m normally competent at these types of tasks.