temp234

If videos had to match the field of vision, and this was the audience's primary concern, I'd 100% agree! I think it's close to their primary concern when watching something like a nature documentary or a historical drama or playing a video game where you walk around a landscape. Vertical video has convinced me that you can tell some kinds of stories and convey certain kinds of info without using deliberate backgrounds, people standing next to each other talking, and people moving around. In vertical video you see a lot of cutting between two people, people talking about being in an environment that does not match their background, or one person playing multiple people. You don't need to learn pesky blocking or how to act with your body. Things that used to seem static, like giving a lecture while standing still, can seem reasonably dynamic. You can just focus on the human face. It's an option with pros and cons and it will encourage certain kinds of uses

I hadn't considered this! It's a good point.

Aspect ratios were surprisingly all over the place in early film. Now I'm wondering what parts of aspect ratios were driven by the actual physical characteristics of film.

Landscape has a super old history, but it made the most sense where it originated, which was the stage, with curtains, for live theater. It got carried into film and then streaming video as a kind of analogy

You are living through a transition in human tech and society on the level of the printing press! The switch to vertical video makes sense right now because this is how people tend to consume scrolling content and hold their phones one-handed. I think it isn't better or worse, it's just different and interesting and a sign people are relating to the medium in new ways

Read The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp

I wouldn't bother. You need to enjoy and trust the process instead of staking everything on whether or not you complete some goal.

Contrary to OP, I'm having trouble imagining tech and the arts thriving in NYC, if this keeps up. Will it become one of those cities where lots of the properties are really being used as investments, not homes or commercial spaces? And the edges of what we consider the metro area get pushed further and further out? Even more so than pre-pandemic? Someone explain the possible futures here to me if you can

This is realistic, OP. Hop jobs every few years!

There are so many horror stories about academia waiting to come out.

The way vulnerable people are exploited and mistreated in what is, in fact, a work environment; moral hazards and conflicts of interest everywhere; lots of untrustworthy research results and inability to reproduce research.

Universities are big business and ought to be regulated just as much as any other big business

So many companies are so unbelievably dysfunctional... I know amazing devs who slog through years of frustrating, uninspiring jobs. There are also just bad fits. Good person, good company, just the wrong match

Maybe make a written list of things that you liked vs didn't like about these companies? It took me a while to realize I didn't actually want the stress and chaos of a young company that isn't making a profit yet

I'm familiar with the crash of self-loathing and frustration after thinking that finally this job might be a good fit and then it isn't. It sounds like you're really feeling powerless right now so blaming yourself. What helped me in those times was a lot of patience with a long, long job search while getting my positive emotions from stuff outside work for a while. Like, still doing great focused work at work, but checking out deep in my soul and getting super oriented around personal life and hobbies every other moment of the day. Escapist, maybe, but it's surprisingly sustainable for the searches I had to do which have lasted months or years

I found my current job, which is great, through a former colleague I trusted who was already working there and said it was a great place to work. Right signs supporting that recommendation appeared while talking explicitly about healthy versus unhealthy work environments and best work practices during the course of the interview. I felt super lucky that everything happened to work out.

I think you should always be trying to iteratively improve the environment especially as a manager but if you start to go beyond frustration into feeling that something is hopeless or broken about the situation that's a sign it's time to move on. You should never feel doomed at work

I'm sorry it's so hard right now. You sound like you've been thoughtful about this, it may just be a long season of job hopping in your life right now. Best of luck

This made me feel really sad. If you had to decide today, what are you gonna do? Did you know you wanted kids 5y ago?

Feeding myself well. Carla Lalli Music has great cooking tutorials on YouTube. WFH is ideal for becoming a great home cook https://youtube.com/c/CarlaLalliMusic123

Stretching, especially for whatever gets tight and slumped due to sitting down. I like Essentrics https://youtu.be/U85YqRN0iy0

Weighted blanket and lights out before midnight.

What are you trying to get out of these interactions, is it new friends and romantic partners or literally just the novelty of meeting a stranger?

Do you think at this point people might be sensing that you're bracing for boredom as you're talking to them? I don't mean to blame you but vibes are powerful and real and it takes a lot of effort to truly conceal our emotions and assumptions

Ha cool, I have a similar story to you but for me it was plain coffee not soft drinks, and the sugar I was getting in lots of places in my diet. It sounds like I had fewer withdrawal symptoms but it definitely took a couple months to stop wanting caffeine or sugar. Sleep that I don't sabotage with screens is amazing, it feels like that deep sleep I got when I was a little kid. I think it's definitely the bright lights keeping us awake but also the fact of being mentally active with a task or entertainment. I don't like "winding down" but I'm realizing I need to and probably once I do I'll love winding down and wish I started doing it sooner. If anyone has a wonderful soothing no-looking-at-screens bedtime routine I'd love to hear it

I still drink hot cocoa and nice water process decaf, which have some caffeine but don't seem to affect me. I still will eat a couple bites of a special dessert under social pressure

If you freelance you are now just going to have to obey the client. If you start a start up, you have to please and obey VCs. I would recommend you finish school while trying to figure out your strong emotions about perfection, feeling special/meaningful, your parents, and authority because you can't escape those through any career decision. You sound like you care a lot and will have a lot to offer the world no matter what you do during working hours as an adult

OP take this suggestion seriously. Therapy is not overkill, they are not gonna make you do anything you don't wanna do, you do not have to feel out of control when you try therapy. You can tell them the specific issues you want to work on.

If you enjoyed their work also check out the work of http://giorgialupi.com/ and https://www.accurat.it/

Step back from the content of the claim and think about the form. It's just another millenarian fantasy, flavored for tech kids this time. Not taking millenarian claims literally is a historically safe bet.

Yes. I actually tend to call people back when they text me if I'm on the Light Phone lol, the physical experience of typing is that frustrating. I find myself hoping nobody texts me when my SIM is in the Light Phone because then it's hard to keep track of what info is on what device, iPhone or Light Phone, because yeah, I had to keep both, while I love the Light Phone and regret nothing and it's helped me practice better habits, the lack of productivity tools means the Light Phone is mainly a hike phone or going on a date phone for me.

I still would love an everyday phone that isn't an iPhone. Amazing rec for Wise Phone, has anyone tried it personally?

A high quality, huge storage volume, dedicated music player like the Sony NW-A55 stockpiled with all the music I want to share w my doomsday grandkids. Nice headphones and file backups too. Would hoard beloved media in general.

Yep. It is never cool, charming, or necessary to have chaos in the workplace. You can have uncertainty, fast paced change, or open ended goals, and still be an organized shop with clear communication

If you exude chaos and don't show any sign of wanting to change, in fact go further and admire your own chaos, many people who know their own worth and want what's best for themselves will avoid you. It's just like dating.

Novels didn't exist as we currently think of novels before the printing press. A lot of novels were serialized in magazines and authors paid by how much they wrote. Now some of that creative and gotta-earn-money energy goes elsewhere, because we invented a different mass distribution method (internet) that does text, audio, and video all at once.

I don't worry that the decline of the literary novel means anything negative about the present era. Still got a lotta new words and sounds and images worth reading, listening to, seeing.

I am also sure that a lot of the "significant" creative work from our time that future historians will dwell upon will be popular mass culture that engages with recent changes in technology. Shakespeare falls under that definition!

This may be leaping ahead of where you're going with this, but: Earlier in life I went down the line of thinking that society/arts etc is getting spiritually or creatively worse compared to some earlier era I valued and it's important for me to resist this and notice how contemporary trends are bad. All I found down that path was a lot of loneliness, suffering, and being oblivious to great things that were happening around me. I only did creative work I still feel good about after I stopped feeling so negatively about the present era from an arts/culture perspective and started enjoying and being curious about contemporary arts/people around me. I never consciously decided to change but what finally worked for me was trying a lot of new creative stuff on purpose that I wouldn't normally think I would enjoy and giving myself permission to have a great time even if it something first struck me as silly, bad, not my thing, etc. I was able to do this and it only deepened my love for any old, obscure, highbrow, acquired taste arts I already valued.

I like this answer a lot, particularly the point about hobbies... options are power, OP, if you're feeling burnt out try to frame this much broader than just needing time off. Things that can be part of feeling better are: self care, fixing your sleep, eating well, drinking water, thinking about the substances you use, different habits, change of place, time with people you love, going to your doctor for a check up, maybe considering therapy. If it feels cringe it may be particularly worth investigating. For the longest time I thought being really disciplined about sleep was just a meme for uncool people but no, it's the best

Go for it, with a good public portfolio that you keep working on while at the first job you'll have no trouble making your first few hops and at that mid-career point your degree is way less scrutinized

Sounds similar to problems predicting hourly call volume. Statistics research might give you examples, also operations management research

Masochistic minimalism?

I am occasionally guilty

Yeah this is where I'm at now with people misusing "OCD" :/ Sometimes, online, I just link them to stuff that explains what OCD actually is. My hope is that if people learn exactly how complex and life-ruining actual OCD can be, and how long people take to get diagnosed, they'll actually find it interesting and naturally stop using "OCD" to mean "neat" or "particular"

I have used the exact same language... "not malicious"... but it's still term overloading that hurts people with OCD and keeps them living in what is legitimately hell on earth

I only briefly played w vim adventures ages ago after I already learned vim and liked it but don't remember how far it goes and am not the OP but:

I wouldn't underestimate how good it is to just get those basic moves and simple commands in muscle memory... frees up your attn to get curious about "I wonder if vim can do X" and then self-study is a breeze

> These companies are simply structured that way whether they know it or not.

Dang, I love this. This is so true. Never listen to the recruiting marketing about how we love our people or reassure yourself by looking at people who have been at the company for so long (6-10y). Look at what realistically happens to the everyday programmer who makes B+ effort and be frank with yourself

But yeah OP, you sound fine for now. Enjoy being young with some cash and save some

Sounds like you're at a good company with a structured plan for retention/promotion, don't worry about it. At a good company like that you're probably also learning a lot. If you start to feel like there's no way up or skills are stagnating, start switching jobs every 1-3y for similar or bigger pay bumps.

Eventually you hit a point where you feel financially secure or you're hitting the max rate for your skills and your decision to stay/leave gets more nuanced and less about money

I'm torn about your thoughts. One part of me says: you're describing how it feels to think, and how it feels to think you're thinking more clearly than other people. There are people who have come to the opposite conclusion on every issue you raised, also due to what they see as their ability to think more steps ahead than the average person. I also think there's something seductive about characterizing suffering people as shocked. If only it were so satisfying for us, the correct ones. A lot of people do know that something in their life is limiting them, maybe even slowly killing them, but they're also not fixing the problem. Others are thinking really hard but not seeing their own suffering or cruelty at all. The idea that smart people who think deeply might still be suffering or hurting others can be a frightening idea to play with, because opening up our reality to that idea means potentially realizing that we ourselves are suffering or hurting others in a way that all our HN-quality cleverness can't save us from. It's a tender seam for "gifted kids" to start mining, there can be some half-healed wounds in there. A lot of people on here probably had to protect themselves or people they love with their minds, or still have to.

I do think you describe beautifully, with the car story, how people exist now in systems that offer them an overwhelming number of choices, and how these systems are large and confusing enough that people are cut off from the consequences of their choices: maybe because their choices hurt someone else, maybe because the consequence is delayed, maybe because they just don't see clearly in the blur of everything happening. Many outcomes are dissatisfyingly murky and multi-factorial even when people are paying close attention and conducting scientific research.

Thanks for your post, it made me think.