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ArbitraryValue

@ ArbitraryValue @sh.itjust.works

Posts
2
Comments
735
Joined
3 yr. ago

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  • He's got a point... I didn't spend this long in school in order to treat people who know less than I do without contempt.

  • How Honeycrisp Apples Went from Marvel to Mediocre

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  • Honeycrisps from my farmers market were typically better than those I purchased from the grocery store, but even those Hudson Valley–grown apples weren’t immune. As recently as September of this year, I had several Honeycrisp apples from a local farm that were terribly mushy and flavorless, making me wonder if they had mistakenly labeled another apple variety—nothing about those apples was like the fruit I had once loved.

    I often wonder if the sellers at farmers' markets really grew all the fruits and vegetables that they sell. I suspect that sometimes they're reselling grocery-store produce at a high markup. How would the buyer of an apple ever be able to know?

  • What news sources do you follow with which you generally disagree?

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  • What if what I consider to be the most plausible and persuasive expression of an idea is not the one that most believers in that idea would express or even be aware of? For example, if I read the work of an economist who presents strong evidence that Trump's tariffs would benefit the American economy, have I actually engaged with the beliefs of most Trump supporters or Trump himself?

  • Should you or should you not make friends in your workplace?

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  • I recently came back from visiting my old boss. I stayed at his house for a week. (He lives on the coast in Florida; it's great!) I've known him and his family for over ten years, and I consider them my dear friends.

    But I still introduce him as the guy who fired me :)

    (He objects, because he's actually the guy who laid me off.)

  • Embarrassed Teslas Drivers Buying Huge Numbers of Anti-Elon Bumper Stickers

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  • Just driving your Tesla without trying to apologize for it would be a lot more dignified.

  • What's the most manipulative thing you've ever done?

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  • When I was at a small company that worked with radioactive material, we had to register and secure all radiation sources, even the extremely weak ones that anyone can order online with no restrictions. Before the state inspector came, we deliberately left one of those weak sources out where it wasn't supposed to be so that the inspector would find something wrong, tell us to fix it, and leave feeling like she did her job. It would be the smallest possible violation and it wouldn't actually get us in trouble. We did that because we figured that if there was nothing obviously wrong, the inspector would look for problems a lot more carefully.

    (Nuclear physicists are rather more nonchalant about radiation than the average person is, for obvious reasons. By nuclear physicist standards, we didn't actually have any dangerous sources at all. Thus we felt like we weren't doing anything morally wrong, but I suppose that the average person might have disagreed.)

  • What is something that you experienced that changed the way you viewed the world?

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  • I have been exposed to hospitals as a guy who worked on their software, as a friend to a doctor, and as the relative of a patient. What I have seen is that hospital staff are generally well intentioned but extremely overworked, to the point that they can overlook obvious signs of a life-threatening illness. You can't just assume that if you're in a hospital then you'll be taken care of. The doctor can be too busy to pay attention to you or too tired to think clearly about your condition. The doctor might even just forget that you're there. You have to make sure that you're getting a doctor's attention, even if that means acting in a way that makes you feel like an entitled jerk.

    My grandmother went to the hospital a couple of years ago because every few hours her heart would stop for several seconds. After she was in the emergency room for a day without receiving any treatment, some hospital employee came and wanted to discharge her. She and I refused so she ended up in a hospital bed for a couple of days, still with no treatment. Finally my sister came from another state, and my sister is less shy than I am. She actually found the cardiologist and made sure he looked at my grandmother's condition. Once he did, he immediately sent her to surgery. She had a pacemaker put in and recovered.

    (In case anyone is curious, my grandma says that when her heart stopped for long enough that she lost consciousness, she felt a wave of heat go through her body, her vision faded to black, and then she passed out. It didn't hurt. In her case, her heart started again on its own but I suppose that for someone less fortunate, that would have been what it felt like to die.)

  • Harris Tried to Win Over Republicans. Democratic Support Collapsed Instead.

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  • Many senior Democrats were calling on Biden to resign long before he got covid, but he repeatedly made defiant announcements that he would never resign (and Harris supported him). He's the guy who said that he would only resign if God told him to! His covid infection appears to have been mild (lasting less than a week), and he resigned not because of it but because pretty much the entire Democratic establishment (led by Pelosi) told him that he must.

  • Harris Tried to Win Over Republicans. Democratic Support Collapsed Instead.

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  • Petty leftists weren't even a significant part of the problem, IMO. Biden is very unpopular, people didn't want more of the same, and Biden's vice president looked like more of the same. However, the Democratic party was too hierarchical to nominate the sort of candidate that they needed to nominate.

    Hell, they nominated Biden himself even though his age could have given them a perfect excuse not to nominate a sitting president. He was only forced to step aside once his inadequacies were undeniably obvious to all, and even then he was like a child throwing a tantrum. History is going to remember him as the emperor with no clothes.

  • Harris Tried to Win Over Republicans. Democratic Support Collapsed Instead.

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  • I'm not sure that the problem was going too far towards Republicans rather than not going far enough, because I expect that the leftists staying home stayed home in solidly blue states. I think that the political positions that many people here on Lemmy wanted Harris to take would have been extremely unpopular with the electorate.

    With that said, it might have been impossible for Harris to move to the right convincingly, because she couldn't plausibly distance herself from Biden's unpopular policies. I wish the Democrats nominated someone who could have criticized Biden in a way that Harris could not.

  • What's your favorite kind of tea?

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  • lemon and sugar

    Ah, memories. I can't drink that any more unless I don't want to eat for several hours until my teeth stop being sensitive, but during my childhood it wasn't just delicious, it was a way to bond with my older relatives.

  • What's your favorite kind of tea?

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  • Impra Gold orange peoke. Get the loose-leaf kind that comes in a metal container.

    But one time, I was dragged into helping a guy I didn't know move a couch up stairs. Afterwards his wife (they were an Indian couple) made me some chai tea that was the best thing I ever drank in my life. I would happily carry another couch for one more cup. I was a fool and didn't ask what that tea was, and since then I have tried different chai teas (including when I went to India) and I never even found one I liked at all.

  • Practice Safe Sex

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  • Why would you pay to make your Rhino's bulge smaller?

    Also, how is Warframe now? I last played eight years ago and I'm a little surprised that it's still going strong.

  • Practice Safe Sex

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  • Always remember to wear a steel codpiece.

  • They took the bait

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  • They better hope they're not in New York state.

  • Kamala Harris Pulled Off a Miracle | The fact that the election is a toss-up, rather than a Trump landslide, is a testament to the vice president’s political skills

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  • If God intervenes but He's not powerful enough and things go to shit anyway, does that count as a miracle? I mean, I hope that doesn't happen but I wouldn't be calling things miracles yet.

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  • Conrroversial

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  • Another thing to consider is that Melkor was never known to show understanding or mercy to his servants who failed him. I would have to think that any balrog who failed to come to his aid would have been killed (or worse as you postulate) as soon as Morgoth was freed.

    Hah, now I'm imagining an alternate, sillier Arda where the balrogs had the same conversation as the villain's abused lackeys did at the end of Disney's Hercules. (A really underappreciated movie, IMO. Just don't watch it expecting it to be about the Greek myth.)

    He's not going to be happy when he gets out of there.

    You mean if he gets out of there!

    If. If is good...

  • What does being in a calorie deficit feel like?

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  • I did a 1000-calorie daily deficit for a few months, in order to lose two pounds a week. I got used to being hungry all the time after a couple of weeks, but having a lot less energy and being sleepy during the day were harder to deal with. My body was trying to conserve calories that way, but pushing through it was possible.

    The hardest part was actually accurately counting the calories. It was relatively simple for off-the-shelf food, but a lot more annoying for things someone else home-cooked for me. I had to ask for the recipe every time, weigh how much I ate, and then track the calories per ingredient on a spreadsheet. Restaurant food was effectively impossible to count, but that didn't matter much because I was so focused on filling food that I wouldn't have eaten it anyway. I'm a vegetarian, so I ended up eating mostly beans, tofu (which is also beans, now that I think about it), and vegetables. Other things weren't as filling per calorie as those foods.