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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • Please inform yourself before diminishing others’ plights.

    Diarrhoea that is characteristic of coeliac disease is chronic, sometimes pale, of large volume, and abnormally foul in odor. Abdominal pain, cramping, bloating with abdominal distension (thought to be the result of fermentative production of bowel gas), and mouth ulcers[35] may be present.

    Coeliac disease leads to an increased risk of both adenocarcinoma and lymphoma of the small bowel

    Long-standing and untreated disease may lead to other complications, such as ulcerative jejunitis (ulcer formation of the small bowel) and stricturing (narrowing as a result of scarring with obstruction of the bowel).

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coeliac_disease


  • Thank you for calling that out. I’m well aware, but appreciate your cautioning.

    I’ve seen hallucinations from LLMs at home and at work (where I’ve literally had them transcribe dates like this). They’re still absolutely worth it for their ability to handle unstructured data and the speed of iteration you get – whether they “understand” the task or not.

    I know to check my (its) work when it matters, and I can add guard rails and selectively make parts of the process more robust later if need be.








  • There are a lot of analogies but they all fail in some way. I think PBS Spacetime does the best in general, with good graphics to back up the words.

    My layman’s explanation is probably all stuff you’ve heard before. Massive objects “warp” spacetime and things that get stuck in those “wells” eventually fall to the bottom due to drag (from a variety of sources).

    You’ve also probably seen the rubber sheet with a bowling ball in the middle used to represent that warping. To visualize that in 3D, I like to imagine a 3D grid of nodes and edges (like a jungle gym of joints and bars) where the whole thing is flexed inward towards a center point. More warped near the center, less warped further out. That kind of conveys the acceleration from gravity felt by things around that center mass.


  • Thank you for calling this aspect out. I’m surprised so many people are overlooking it. I protest YouTube for the same reasons, but I’ve got one more to add.

    When they merged Google Music into YouTube, the service became worse. I’d often have music streaming throughout the day over my speakers, but that broke after the merge.

    Anytime I watched a video on my phone that had Content ID-recognized music in it (even in the background), they would cut the stream to my speakers because I am only allowed one stream with any music in it at all.

    This isn’t the behavior when you use the ad supported service. Only the paid.

    Not to mention all the proper features of Google Music that didn’t carry forward.


  • If you’re struggling to think of a use-case, consider the internet-based services that are commonplace now that weren’t created until infrastructure advanced to the point they were possible, if not “obvious” in retrospect.

    • multimedia websites
    • real-time gaming
    • buffered audio – and later video – streaming
    • real-time video calling (now even wirelessly, like Star Trek!)
    • nearly every office worker suddenly working remotely at the same time

    My personal hope is that abundant, bidirectional bandwidth and IPv6 adoption, along with cheap SBC appliances and free software like Nextcloud, will usher in an era where the average Joe can feel comfortable self-hosting their family’s digital content, knowing they can access it from anywhere in the world and that it’s safely backed up at each member’s home server.


  • I’m also a UBI layperson, but this is my understanding:

    Basic incomes don’t need to match or exceed the cost of living to provide some of their purported benefits. One of those benefits is replacing difficult to administer welfare services (of which there are some discussions in this thread). In that way the $2700 per person per year can be more efficiently allocated (towards an ideal national gross prosperity) by the individual.

    This might solve issues like the infamous “welfare cliff” that have arisen from difficulties in administration.


  • You’ve gotten some good answers already but I’d like to stress a point I haven’t seen mentioned: It’s easiest to make friends during downtime. By which I mean, time you spend with another person doing nothing in particular. Shared activities are not bad, but if they are too engaging (work, sport, even worship) there isn’t time to get bored and find entertainment in conversation, wherein you can discover shared interests and build comeraderie.

    You’ll find a lot of Americans formed their closest friendships while in school (usually high school or college). I argue that’s because there is a ton of downtime with your peers in those environments. Try to find similar environments where you are effectively “stuck” with a peer for an hour or more at a time. Hiking clubs are fantastic. Beginner art classes. Book clubs.

    Beyond that, don’t be discouraged. Some people will have a hard time getting over their own inhibitions about exposing themselves to new people. And many casual friends will fall by the wayside along the way. That is okay. The ones you keep will be worth it in the end.