sometimeshuman

A constant focal point is not good for eye health either. I had considered converting my two monitor setup to one traditional monitor and one project that is > 10ft away. But projectors have too many disadvantages atm (e.g., high power consumption, brightness, etc.).

Slight skepticism should be applied to any productivity claim. There was research to determine if changing X in the office boosted productivity. But in the end it was found that X didn't matter, within reason. Changing any X boosted productivity and the benefits often diminished with time. I thought this was called the Hawthorne Effect but I am no longer sure.

"sounds absurd, by the way".. that perhaps explains all the downvotes. One of the surprises about getting older is that stories from your youth sound more and more absurd with time. I didn't grow up with the Internet and the "MIT whiz kid" wasn't common in movies/shows until the mid 90's and ever after. What was a thing during my high school days were the relentless TV commercials for tech schools masquerading as advanced degree institutions. Who lies on HN about a personal story BTW ? What would be the point.

As an ancedote, I was told by my low income peer group that you get 600 points just for filling out your name on the SAT and that 800 points could get you into a great school like MIT. So I assumed it was a pass/fail exam in a sense and left early during the verbal part because I found it condescending and boring.

Before the exam, I couldn't understand why the higher income kids were paying for SAT training classes. What is the point of scoring 1600 if 800 could get you in the "best" school. It would have interfered with my after school job anyway.

To add further, I thought MIT was just DeVry for rich people but otherwise equivalent and that only black kids get scholarships (ironic since I am Latino). Are things different now ? Are most kids from lower socio-economic backgrounds still clueless about the college admissions process, the difference between colleges, and scholarships. It seems like that is the part that needs to be fixed and eliminating SATs is shortsighted.

Related, a few months ago Dr. Brickell provided a fascinating discussion about this topic.[1]

A minor note, when I was in Japan I heard the term obachan as mildly derogatory slang for old people (e.g., the old lady who throws elbows if you are in her way). I hadn't heard of the similar term rougai referenced in this article.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNqCRvDbCVI

Not arguing, but there are also many people who do not rent their vacant property because they are too rich to be bothered and are content with the capital gain appreciation.

Perhaps there needs to be a higher tax rate for vacant property that is not a primary residence.

"David Roberts would like to you to use a dull knife because you can’t handle a sharp knife."

Given I am a poorly coordinated and easily distracted, I only own dull knives. It takes twice as long to saw through meats which equates to an extra minute. I have that kind of time.

You do not want someone like me owning a car with godlike acceleration. And we all know how this story ends -- regulations on acceleration. Knowing that, why wait ? Because the anti-regulatory alter of freedom needs human sacrifices first ?

It is possible to take this even one step further. The last U.S. president for example exclaimed, "China is raping us" and other angry nonsense to which I wondered how will that translate to a thin skinned authoritarian. Well they stopped taking our garbage and cracked down on Hong Kong shortly afterwards.

Then the current U.S. president starts off by declaring "Putin has no soul". Again how does that translate ? Could that blunder be the match that set off this bomb. And in the latest state of the union we proudly brag how we have destroyed their currency. Why!

So we do this shit over and over again. American politicians and the media dismiss, lie, and humiliate. Why does the Muslim world hate us ? "Because they hate freedom and are jealous of our success" according to our self-destructive trope. I could go on.

I think it was Y.N. Harari that claimed historians make a living by connecting cause and effects that are sufficiently equal in proportion to be plausible explanations. Maybe they are right. Or maybe, he contemplates, that it's trivial random causes more akin to chaos theory.

From personal experience, someone who orchestrates this sort of crime sets up a fall guy. The person who mis-declared the contents is probably just a pawn. It is surprisingly easy to manipulate young ambitious people, ideally from poor immigrant roots who have been preconditioned to observe a code of silence, if the senior person implies it is a routine business practice. Then they get caught, the fog lifts, and they blame themselves because the prosecutor/investigator has a rock-solid case.

At what point do moderate citizens of Russia, who don't support the war, become so poor, beat down, Nihilistic, that they delude themselves into believing the propaganda that all their misery is because of evil Western/U.S. hegemony. These escalating sanctions that end livelihoods are arguably adding to Russia's military reservists and Kremlin loyalists. If that happens to the creative class then it's reasonable to conclude there are no dissenters remaining.

"who can easily eat 4000 calories of real food in a single meal"

"4000 calories" ? With "real food" ? In one meal -- how ? I eat 3 full meals and a weight gain smoothie and barely pass 2700 calories for the day. Is there something you would recommend adding to my diet so I can increase my calories a bit as I would like to gain some weight. But seriously unless your meal is 100% deep fried, I can't even picture a 4000 calorie meal.

The question is if these vectors of addiction are compounding or if it always affects people who were prone towards addiction anyway. My hope is the latter. Not that having a population of 10%(?) addictions isn't tragic, but it's better than eventually having a population of 90% addicts because we eventually offer personally tailored addictive products at scale.

"social/peer pressure in the moment"

It can be more subconscious and insidious. Anger, hate, and violent action is incredibly contagious. Mob mentality hijacks brains, and spreads like wildfire among peers. It's likely part of our DNA and it takes a special awareness to escape its grip.

Winning also helps. There were times when my side business was killing it. Emails from customers telling us how much they love the product and growing sales. I had endless energy.

Evolutionarily you are programmed to not expend energy unless you either have continuous progress/rewards or threat of harm if you don't keep at it. Perhaps these can be hacked but I haven't yet found a way.

In a past NFT discussion an HN'er commented that "NFTs are the world's most convoluted and expensive way to store a bookmark."[0]

But it is plausible to store low-resoltion low-color-depth bitmap "art" like a cryptopunk on a blockchain. Based on the image in the tweet, the cost of a raw encoding may be 24x24x3 = 1728 bits which would cost 1728/256 * (20000gas * $0.0018) = ~$243USD on the Ethereum blockchain which isn't all that expensive if the NFT gains traction.[1]

Can someone confirm. Does a cryptopunk's complete image data exist on the blockchain ? Perhaps that partly explains why it gets higher valuations than other arguably more creative art projects.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29845208 [1]https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/872

That's what poor and backwards cultures do and we are far from that point. Would anyone sincerely trust the government with the authority to chop off a hand. From personal experience, it is really easy to frame someone for theft. There must be no mean streets in your past.

If you don't have many of these outlier biases then you're probably ok turning down the work because of poor cultural fit. But if you have a few more like this, then yes it could come across as petty. Also it is no fun to work with some whose anger is often surprising and then contagious.

I said outlier above because I use Teams everyday and would never have thought anyone would dislike it let alone be angered by it. But some of the other comments echo your sentiment so perhaps there is something in my blindspot and I am glad for that.

It could be he feels passionate about his ventures and just wants them to be as successful as possible. The money is just a consequence.

Personally it is harder to understand that upper middle manager who works on something they aren't passionate about, who isn't a co-founder, and yet keeps committing more and more of their life and ambition to the company.

The ad was written in my early childhood. "Can you pinch an inch ?", was the tag-line in a Kellogg's commercial decades ago.

In part thanks to that advert, my entire life whenever I can pinch an inch I simply stop drinking my calories. Admittedly it is harder to eat healthy when you are time constrained and poor. But could there be anything faster and cheaper than pouring a glass of filtered tap water ? Can we advise that first before developing more PSAs about nutrition, exercise routines, etc.

While the initial subscription rate is high, the annual renewal, including this year, has been $19.95. However, given I receive this offer over e-mail it is unclear if this other accounts get the same offer.

This is a concern. In exploring any space we risk getting stuck at a local maximum. But this may occur when one holds on to their current ideas too strongly and immediately rejects ideas that go downhill so to speak. Flagging does seem overused on HN lately. It would be interesting to know many HN active users there have been over the years and perhaps that is the reason flagging occurs more frequently. For the record I have had various HN accounts for almost a decade and last month was the first time I was ever flagged.

I truly wonder how many people sleep poorly because they ruminate about dysfunctional relationships at night. After many decades of miserable sleep I finally set boundaries with certain family members and long time co-workers. I can practically fall asleep on demand now and sleep through the night. It's beautiful! and so many of my life-long mental health problems, even minor physical issues, are gone. I wish I would have asserted myself decades ago but I kept thinking it's my fault, not theirs, that I am not mentally stronger.

same. I wish Amazon would allow rental of a movie for 2 weeks so I could watch a film in small segments. I no longer rent movies at all because often the running time is too much to complete in just 2 days.

Humans can learn to have an exceptional judge of character, see the big picture, and quietly subvert bad policy by feigned incompetence. These benevolent bosses/bureaucrats are history's unsung heroes and we need to be very careful before automating them out of our future.

The description of your college days implies that you are not incompetent socially. That's encouraging! Tell yourself this social drought will pass and just bare it a little longer until the Covid situation stabilizes.

In another comment you mentioned digital nomad plans. I'm planning that too. My strategy is to stay in a 20+ room co-working hotel that requires a 1 month minimum stay and then hopefully forming a bond with a few people. Then perhaps traveling with them to the next city. With a few friends it becomes much easier to make the first move with a woman you find attractive since dates are just inviting her to hang out with your pals. Just having friends makes you more attractive to women too, but I think you know this. I live in a desirable coastal city so hopefully encouraging her to move might possible if I find the right person, or heck I can move. It sounds like you live in an interesting city too but even if neither of you can move and it ends, you'll at least break your losing streak.

That's the hope anyway. The fact that you are thinking about and have some ideas is again encouraging. I think you'll be fine.

Lastly it may get psychologically easier as you get older. IME a few high quality half/full day interactions a year are enough for me to stay happy. But unfortunately it is not a strategy for forming a romantic relationship.

Berberine is commonly promoted as a vitamin alternative to Metformin. Even if Berberine also has no impact on all-cause mortality (idk), I can anecdotally share that 500mg 30minutes before lunch considerably lessens my post lunch fatigue.

As for human growth hormone, this Huberman Labs podcast advises against taking it but also offers many natural ways you can boost it[0].

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7qbJeRxWGw

I'd rather not say my age because I rather not influence any young men to follow my path. The general data is there, a life without a family is not healthy long term. Follow my path at your peril since a lot of other things have to go right to make up for the void usually filled by family. For the record I don't play video games or view much porn and if that is how I were filling the void I would have severe existential anxiety. I volunteer/mentor, play sports, run a business, and am successful professionally.

There is no stigma these days for not starting a family kids and men can privately retreat into video games and pornography. When confronted about their selfish* lifestyle the above comment is convenient cover but it is not backed by solid data. I'd take birth in this past decade over birth in my decade any day.

*I'd argue that not having at least one child and possibly adopting others is selfish assuming one has financial means. For example, while I thought I wanted kids, upon reflection what I really wanted are mini-me's. If I could buy a clone I'd do it immediately, but child roulette?, no thanks. My selfish lifestyle had made me very happy so far and that feels like a character flaw.

"If you disagree with someone, you need to get into the arena with them and criticise what they say and debunk it."

This is the challenge Dennis Prager often offers to young college students in his audience. It is comically grotesque to see a senior professional debater and speaker take joy when he shuts down a young nervous challenger. Sure, you and I can think of quick responses, in the same way when we watch a boxing match and can see where the challenger made a mistake. But in a real life arena most of us would probably take a beating when matched against a pro.

A sincere debate can be had when one is willing to steel-man the other's argument but that's not an option when being right and winning is your opponent's brand.

"Most journals already allow authors to distribute copies by request." Does anyone know how this works in practice ? I'd like to ask a few of my favorite researchers for a copy of their papers but I am a hobbyist and don't want to take their time and add to their likely overflowing inbox.

BTW, "this is nuts" isn't a claim you can make if you don't know the answer to questions you posted.

From their website: "an article is submitted and is assessed by our editors. If suitable it will be put through Peer Review". That peer review process could quickly exceed the $11.4k for example.

[edited] added the BTW paragraphs after responses were received to the question in my first paragraph.