exasperation

@exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Alright you fucking degenerates. It's time to get your edumacation on about corn smut.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I thought we were posting corn to return to actual shitposts, this one is too informative and interesting.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Let's stick with just the one observer from now on, then⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  obversion

  obsevation

  I was hoping that by observing your comment these would collapse into the spelling “observation.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google AI is great. 🙃⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  We think in terms of tokens, too, but we have the ability to look under the hood at some of how our knowledge is constructed.

  For the typical literate English speaker, we seamlessly pronounce certain letter combinations as different from the component parts (like ch, sh, ph, or looking ahead to see if the syllable ends in an E to decide how to pronounce the vowel in the middle). Then, entire words or phrases have a single meaning that doesn’t get broken apart. Similarly, people who are fluent in multiple languages, including languages that use the same script (e.g., latin letters), can look at the whole string of text to quickly figure out which language they’re reading, and consult that part of their knowledge base.

  And usually our brains process things completely separately from how we read or write text. Even the question of asking how many r’s are in “raspberry” requires us to go and count, because it isn’t inherent in the knowledge we have at the tip of tongue. Someone can memorize a speech but not know how many times the word “the” appears in it, even if their knowledge contains all the information necessary to answer the question.

  Even if we are actively thinking in the context of how words are constructed, like doing crosswords, these things tend to be more fun when mixed with other modes of thinking: Wordle’s mix of both logic and spelling, a classic crossword’s clever style of hints, etc.

  Manipulation of letters is simply one mode of thinking. We’re really good at seamlessly switching between modes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Latitudes⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  On which scale? Because that kinda matters.

  The rate of sweat I produce, in terms of ml of sweat per minute.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Latitudes⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Italy was never a great empire.

  Modern Italy does argue that it is the proper successor to the Roman Empire, but if you do look at the history of the nations (and city states) that rose and fell between the split of the Roman Empire into West and East/Byzantine around 395, and the formation of a unified Italy in 1861, that’s a bit of a stretch.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hmmm...⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, it’s funny either way, but would be even funnier if the answer had been correct.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bread mold⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  15 minutes and 30 minutes are a pretty long time to have to heat food up for.

  When I’m reheating soup I generally pull it from the stove as soon as it simmers, so that’s probably around 2 minutes above 95°C and like 5 minutes above 80°C.

  Actually making the soup the first time, I may simmer for hours, but some of the vegetable/herb ingredients I’m adding with less than 10 minutes of simmer time, so that wouldn’t be enough to destroy the toxin reliably.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bread mold⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re getting the labels mixed up.

  As a labeling requirement under U.S. law, anything labeled “American Cheese” must be pasteurized process cheese made from some combination of cheddar, colby, washed curd cheese, or granular cheese, which the law also defines pretty strictly. It must be made from these cheeses, heated and emulsified with an emulsifying salt (usually sodium citrate).

  American cheese is allowed to have some optional ingredients and still be labeled American Cheese:

  • Food safe acid (as long as pH stays above 5.3)
  • Cream or milkfat, such that this added fat can account for up to 5% of the weight of the finished product.
  • Water (but the total moisture content of the resulting product must still be within the other limits in the regulation)
  • Salt
  • Artificial coloring
  • Spices or flavoring that do not simulate the flavors of cheeses
  • Mold inhibitors from sorbate up to 0.2%, or from proprionate up to 0.3%
  • Lechitin, if sold in slices

  You can add milk, cream, buttermilk, whey, or certain other dairy products up to 49% of the finished product, but then you’d have to call it “Pasteurized American Process Cheese Food” instead of just American Cheese.

  American cheese is made from almost entirely cheese ingredients. The individual slices being sold at the store, though, vary by brand on whether they’re even trying to be American Cheese (or whether they’re some kind of cheese product, or even something less).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨*confused flatfish noises*⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Plus evolutionary history shows plenty of examples of animals switching from pure carnivore to pure herbivore to omnivores in between. All birds are descended from a common carnivorous ancestor, but plenty of birds today subsist mostly on seeds or fruit.

  If there is a lot of available biomass to be eaten, nature will find a way and some animal is going to fill that niche. Many of the folivores (herbivores specializing in digesting leaves) that descended from carnivores have to deal with the low nutrient/calorie density of their foods by just eating a lot of it, and have varying levels of microbial symbiosis for helping with that digestion.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stretch marks⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Dude knows ball

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Might not be efficient, but at least it... Uhhh, wait, what good does it provide again?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Does that actually add up, though?

  Google released stats recently that the median Gemini prompt consumes about 0.24 watt hours of electricity.

  For humans performing knowledge based labor, how many prompts is that worth per hour? Let’s say that the average knowledge worker is about as productive as one good prompt every 5 minutes, so 12 per hour or 96 per 8-hour workday.

  Let’s also generously assume that about 25% of the prompts’ output are actually useful, and that the median is actually close to the mean (in real life, I would expect both to be significantly worse for the LLM, but let’s go with those assumptions for now).

  So on the one hand, we have a machine doing 384 prompts (75% of which are discarded), for 92 watt hours of energy, which works out to be 80 kilocalories.

  On the other hand, we have a human doing 8 hours of knowledge work, probably burning about 500 calories worth of energy during that sedentary shift.

  You can probably see that the specific tasks can be worked through so that some classes of workers might be worth many, many LLM prompts, and some people might be worth more or less energy.

  But if averages are within an order of magnitude, we should see that plenty of people are still more energy efficient than the computers. And plenty aren’t.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sensory issues⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This is a joke about Tylenol during pregnancy causing autism, a ridiculous claim made by Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sensory issues⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I wouldn’t say it’s all that “nonstandard.” The word “loud” is often used to mean distracting or attention-grabbing in a visual context, so extending it to other senses doesn’t seem like that far of a leap.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The less complicated life of a male⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If you’re talking about a “large patch of psoriasis” that is apparently always on your skin and don’t know the first thing about cleaning and moisturizing products for your hair and skin, it might be worth exploring whether your psoriasis is aggravated by certain substances (including your hair touching your skin) and can be mitigated by consciously avoiding certain products/ingredients.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The less complicated life of a male⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Are you talking about Dr Bronns, which also comes with large amounts of reading material printed all over the bottle?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Following your dreams⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Attention seeking and validation seeking are baked into human personalities to varying degrees, and plenty of behavior predating social media (and even the internet) was motivated by those tendencies.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is lemmy dying?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re making the common mistake of believing that newcomers are somehow dumber than the ones who have been here a while.

  No, Lemmy/piefed has a deep user base of people knowledgeable about Linux, programming, Star Wars, and a few other topics, but plenty of other topics still leave a lot to be desired.

  For example, I’ve noticed that Lemmy’s userbase is probably below the internet average at picking up on satire and sarcasm.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Radon⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It describes something going to a location, but not what you do.

  Going to that location is a much bigger part of the astronaut job than it is any other job you’ve listed.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Radon⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Go to space

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's been downhill from that day ⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In 2001? As I remember that song didn’t become a dominant Christmas song until Love Actually came out in 2003, and still took a few years before it became the single most popular Christmas song on the radio, first reaching number 1 in 2019.

  As of this picture nobody (including Mariah Carey) had any idea what that song would become.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can we have a healthy life only with fruits or fruits and plants combined alone, and if not why?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  some can be toxic if you dont prepare it correctly though right?

  This is true of many different types of foods.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon lives in 2056⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Vampires are extremely gay coded though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Screw your zodiac sign, tell me..⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It was just a dominant brand of dishware in the U.S.

  Corning, one of the world leaders in glass manufacturing and materials science, figured out how to make thin tempered glass that was lightweight, very durable, resistant to thermal shock, and safe to use in microwaves, dishwashers, and up to medium temperature ovens (350°F/175°C is the manufacturer recommended max). It became the dominant dishware brand in the U.S. as a result, for “everyday” use.

  Personally I don’t like the heat transfer characteristics (poor insulator which means hot food makes the dish hot to the touch) and don’t mind thicker plates/bowls for most situations. But I can see why they became immensely popular, especially for families with kids.

  Side note, Corning spun off its consumer products division in 1991, so the company that makes the Gorilla Glass in basically everyone’s cell phones is now technically different from the company that made all these kitchen dishes, even if they were once part of the same corporation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon travels overseas⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It was very dry and bland, not really that good, yet I looked up the nutritional info and apparently this small burger alone was over 1200kcals??

  Fried food hides a lot of fat and carbs in the fried breading. There are a lot of calories in that crunchy matrix.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon travels overseas⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, you can, but it takes a lot of running to expend the calories taken in with a pretty typical American diet, especially when you account for the increase in appetite exercise typically brings.

  But it is possible. If you can burn 2000 calories on a single run, that’s a lot of room to maneuver to fit your macros while eating a significant amount of junk food.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Dances with Wolves and The Last Samurai and Avatar are white soldiers who integrate themselves into some “exotic” (that is, non European) culture and slowly adopt their ways and renounce their previous military loyalties. Then they are called upon to take up arms and coordinate tactics against their former side.

  Pocahontas as told in the movie is more of a woman who learns to play peacemaker. There’s not that much cultural exchange, and nobody switches sides to fight against their former team.

  Pocahontas as actually happened, historically, is more the story of a native teenager kidnapped, forcibly converted to Christianity and married off to bear a child, and paraded around England as a novelty, until she died far away from her home at the age of 20, maybe 21.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon travels overseas⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  also nearly half of adults overweight

  One thing worth pointing out is that the “overweight” category (BMI between 25 and 30) actually has lower all cause mortality than the “normal” category (BMI between 20 and 25:

  pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37405977/#gid=article-fig…

  I think that suggests that being merely “overweight” probably isn’t a significant health problem.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stop stressing my GPU and start hiring artists⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  aight this scene takes place in Mexico so lemme color grade it very Mexican, but also it’s a flashback to the 50’s so I’m gonna dial down the color saturation and digitally add some film grain

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I couldn’t imagine putting in the effort to even try to be attractive and build a connection with someone else, much less in a way that I’d have to hide from my wife and kids.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I handle it just fine now, but I did lay some groundwork before kids to make sure my life was going to continue to be easy even with the added responsibility of parenting:

  • Insignificant commute. I can leave my house and be at my desk at the office in about 10 minutes, even during rush hour, because the bike lanes still flow efficiently.
  • Small home. I don’t want to fuck around with house maintenance or even cleaning up around the house any more than is absolutely necessary, so I don’t have excess rooms in the house and don’t have big spaces. I also don’t fuck with yard work so I have only a small patio with a few planters for a modest garden.
  • Flexible career that I actually like. I have a decent chunk of work to do in any given week, but most of it can be done on my own schedule, so that I can start my day late or end my day early as needed, so long as I can find the time elsewhere to fill in as needed. This did take some work to find a career that I like and that actually complements my strengths (several complete resets in my 20’s and 30’s, including going to law school as an older student), and then advancing in that field long enough to where I just have credibility to get things done without other people supervising me. I do work more than 50 hours per week fairly regularly, but I largely do it on my terms.
  • Money. My wife and I both earn more than average, and we were already rich before we had kids. That gave the flexibility to do things like take unpaid leave for each kid being born, paying for childcare when they were young, grabbing takeout on days when time is tight, etc.
  • Social support network. We have some family nearby, and they can help in a pinch (and we in turn help them as necessary). Our neighborhood social group is amazing, with a lot of other parents and similarly aged kids who can provide the social and emotional support for navigating the very real challenges of parenting. We don’t feel like we’re doing things alone, and we have a village. Many of these relationships predate parenting, too, so in a sense we knew that we had that ecosystem of friends and family to continue to grow with (even if we wouldn’t have been able to predict in advance exactly which friendships would thrive and which would wither after kids, we had the baseline to be able to be flexible with that).

  There were tradeoffs, to be sure. We were older than average when we had kids, and that might translate into lower energy levels for each stage of childhood, and may eventually mean that we get to enjoy less overlapping time as adults. We live in a small place so we do need to basically leave the house regularly so that our kids don’t get bored, and that’s more of a challenge in the winter when outdoor spaces aren’t all that pleasant. During COVID, while working 100% remotely, being close to the office wasn’t all that much of a perk.

  And we got lucky on other things. Our children are healthy and (mostly) well behaved, so we don’t have to worry as much about a lot of things other parents have to deal with. We also really get along with our own parents, so there aren’t challenging dynamics with the grandparents/in laws.