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Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: December 15th, 2021

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  • I agree that there is no free will, but to act as if that is true is pointless. Nihilism isn’t useful. If it makes you feel better, you are doing what you would have done regardless even if there was free will. I don’t think the fact every action is predetermined matters much. If anything, it makes me have compassion for the worst people, who arguably were fated to be what they are because of the domino effect.

    I often wonder if the dominos will ever fall in a way that guarantees us all a positive outcome. Can we heal our monsters? So that every domino thereafter creates no more?

    ¯_(ツ)_/¯

    Poetically, you are the universe trying to understand itself.


  • Good for gaining an outside perspective/insight on an argument, discussion, or other form of communication between people. I fed it my friend’s and their ex’s text conversation to it (with permission), and it was able to point out emotional manipulation in the text when asked neutrally about it:

    Please analyze this conversation between A and B and tell me what you think of their motivations and character in this conversation. Is there gaslighting? Emotional manipulation? Signs of an abusive communication style? Etc. Or is this an example of a healthy communication?

    It is essential not to ask a leading question that frames A or B in particular as the bad or the good guy. For best results, ask neutral questions.

    It would have been quite useful for my friend to have this when they were in that relationship. It may be able to spot abusive behaviors from your partner before you and your rose-colored glasses can.

    Obvious disclaimers about believing anything it says are obvious. But having an outside perspective analyze your own behavior is useful.


  • You saying you’d straight up cancel a dinner because someone gave you a thumbs up instead of a verbal response genuinely blew my mind lmao. Ngl fam, that’s a bit extreme. I give people the thumbs up all the time, and imagining someone becoming so upset at me for doing it that they’d cancel our dinner together is insane to me. I couldn’t be friends with such a person without feeling like I was constantly walking on eggshells.



  • You underestimate people’s laziness and their burn out. An extra click to reject all is an extra click people won’t bother with. I literally used to go all the extra steps to reject these things, even when a reject all button was not provided. Plus I’ve found that sometimes the reject all button doesn’t actually reject all, and there are a few hidden settings still left to uncheck. It’s ridiculous. It should be 1 click, just like hitting accept is 1 click. The ease of use should be 1:1. I was getting burned out by those extra clicks and all that manual checking that took like 20s-2mins of my time. That adds up. All to read a single paragraph on some website? Bruh. Used to do this until I discovered ublock origin has settings that can be used to block cookie consent forms.

    To you, one extra click is no big deal, like a paper cut of inconvenience. To me, it’s the thousandth papercut I’ve received. I am tired of it.



  • Happy Birthday, Pop Goes the Weasel, Auld Lang Syne, Here Comes the Bride are obviously here to stay. Lots of Christmas music has potential as well: Jingle Bells, and POSSIBLY Feliz Navidad by José Feliciano, as well as All I Want for Christmas is You by Mariah Carey.

    But I also think Barbie Girl by Aqua has a decent chance of being practically universal. In that vein, maybe the Hampster Dance too, but idk. Dragostea Din Tei?

    I think the real answer though is that most of the popular songs are probably ones that are connected to specific uses outside of the song itself. Pop Goes the Weasel is used in like, every pop-goes-the-weasel type toy, and even in movies when something scary is about to pop out at you. Happy Birthday is literally sung at every birthday. (That reminds me of For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow as well.) Auld Lang Syne is a popular New Years song across the world at this point. Here Comes the Bride at every wedding, etc. Maybe National Anthems will also hold the test of time, depending on if the nation lasts long enough and doesn’t change its anthem.

    The point is, if it’s a practical and traditional tune it’s more likely to last, I think.

    Oh. I forgot Reveille which is the military wake-up call bugle song lmao




  • Part of that is also how in our car-centric society, our public transportation sucks. And biking is unsafe in many places— even spots that have bike lanes. Everything is too far way, so you can only get there by car. Everywhere you that is close is either unsafe or actually impossible to bike to, unless you’re lucky. And if you wanna take the metro or bus, it’s slow af, unreliable, and in many places has very few stops and runs infrequently.

    And then the lack of people using public transportation only leads to more cars on the road which makes the problem even worse! More lanes, more land used for parking lot deserts, etc.

    Nowhere to go, no way to get there, nothing to do.



  • Mentioning the obvious things: Remember that depending on your location, you will not get full sunlight everyday of the year. The orientation of your roof and whether it’s pointed toward the sun also matters. If you have any young trees around you, they might grow and cast a shadow on your roof. If you have neighbors, they might plant trees.

    You can use Project Sunroof to roughly estimate the average sunlight your location receives during a full year (accounting for weather conditions): https://sunroof.withgoogle.com/


  • Personally, YouTube isn’t other people’s inane rambling for me. It’s science education, it’s about how to identify and forage for food, it’s video essays about nuclear disasters… it’s constantly introducing me to new concepts— like why lawns are bad for the environment, how other countries tackle the problem of traffic and public transportation, why DIY air purifiers are more effective than nearly every commercial air purifier on the market, etc.

    It’s a platform where the medium is video form content. Everything is available there. Both garbage and gold. It’s the way that you use it that determines which one you get. For me, it’s like Wikipedia in video form. With the occasional bit of entertainment on the side, as a treat.




  • You are indeed expected to come up with all those answers. Usually someone who already knows the answer asks the questions to you in person, and you guess until you get it right. Slowly, you realize the answers all have to do with the previous questions, and it makes it easier to think creatively hahaha. I wish I knew more than just this series of questions, but these are harder to come up with than it seems like lol.