jbrains
@jbrains@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on Why is it ok to replace -ed at the end of a word with -t in some cases? For example, why are "vexed" and "vext" both acceptable, but "thrilled" and "thrilt" aren't? 4 days ago:
Scrabble is not a language game, but instead a spatial and arithmetic game using arbitrary strings of letters. Don’t look to it as a reflexion of the state of English as she is spoke.
- Comment on Can you read and understand this passage? 3 weeks ago:
Thanks for that. Indeed, that makes me less confident in their suitability to teach those subjects, but I worry about a sensational conclusion about their general literacy.
- Comment on Can you read and understand this passage? 3 weeks ago:
I would want to repeat that study with novels written in the past 25 years before concluding too much. Yes, the participants had access to a dictionary, but I imagine that needing to decipher certain parts, such as foreign cultural references and familiar words with unexpected meanings, interferes with the brain’s usual functions for turning words into images in the mind’s eye. And this even ignores the folks wtih aphantasia like me.
- Comment on Can you read and understand this passage? 3 weeks ago:
Yes, although I’m struck by some of the words, particularly this sense of 'wonderful ".
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
Political discussions online rarely lead to satisfying resolutions. As a result, political discussions bleed into everyday discussion in the desperate hope that something, somewhere, will magically make sense.
Similarly, when businesses have meetings that don’t actually resolve matters, every meeting becomes a desperate chance to discuss things that matter in the hopes they’ll be resolved, so then every meeting that needs to happen will happen during every scheduled meeting, even wrhb ostensibly unrelated. This continues until meeting culture changes and even overall communication culture changes.
It seems natural and reasonable in such an environment for many people (like you) to want to disengage. Why continue doing something that never seems to lead to resolution?
- Comment on What programs do you wish a good FOSS alternative existed, but doesn't or most of the FOSS alternatives simply aren't good? 1 month ago:
First, thank you for the thoughtful and detailed reply. I find it helpful.
Plain text accounting (and all the variants) sounds great, right until you need to use it to generate invoices, or depreciate assets, or do a monthly Business Activity Statement, or convert a currency, track repayments, etc.
All of those things require that you write software to achieve that, which means that now instead of solving problems and writing software for my clients, I’m burning hours writing software so I can run my business
Oddly enough, I feel the opposite: I’m so glad that I have the freedom to use other tools to do what I need and that I can simply write some custom software to achieve that. I always felt locked in by QuickBooks and now I can do anything from messing around in a spreadsheet to writing what I need with jq. Plain text as an interface means that the sky is the limit for flexibility.
It has also made my company’s financial information more accesible to me. Previously, I’d given it over to bookkeepers and accountants and only seen out of date financial statements when it was time to file taxes. Now I know what’s going on whenever I want.
It has also turned bookkeeping into a programming exercise, which made me more interested, not less. I don’t have clients waiting impatiently for me to produce features for them, so I can enjoy this wro instead of having it feel like a distraction.
I’ve been writing software for over 40 years and until last week I’d never heard of it. That’s not something you want in business software.
I feel that!
Because I’m still running a 25 year old accounting package that doesn’t run on current hardware, isn’t supported, doesn’t run under Linux and has all my data hostage.
Our motivations definitely seem compatible, even if our constraints and preferences don’t.
Thanks again. Good luck.
- Comment on What programs do you wish a good FOSS alternative existed, but doesn't or most of the FOSS alternatives simply aren't good? 1 month ago:
I’ve been using Plain Text Accounting for the past two years and have mostly enjoyed my experience. I’ve found hledger both well documented and well supported. I don’t know the space very well, so which applications and/or packages have you tried?
- Comment on Am I going crazy, or has people's spelling gotten awful lately? 1 month ago:
I speak a couple of languages in which there is no continuous present, but rather they use phrases such as “I sit and study Swedish” to mean “I’m studying Swedish (as in right now, that’s the task I’m doing)” or “I am in the process of reading a book”. They don’t change the form of the verb to highlight this continuous aspect, so perhaps they aren’t used to it.
Add to that that the continuous aspect in English is surprisingly complicated and arbitrary. If you try to nail down rules for how and when to use it, you might struggle. 😉 Folks struggling to use it correctly might be overcorrecting or merely confused.
There are, I’m sure, other reasons, but this is enough to account for some of what you’re seeing.
- Comment on Am I going crazy, or has people's spelling gotten awful lately? 1 month ago:
The distinction between simple past and past participle is disappearing in English. I’m curious whether it will be considered quaint to distinguish them before I’m dead.
- Comment on How do people develop feelings for someone? 1 month ago:
I suppose I don’t understand yet what you expect from a “relationship” that’s different from a friendship, so it’s hard to offer any advice.
If you want to have sex with someone, it helps to ask. I understand that asking has risks, so you probably want to have some sense that the other person is not going to hit you before you ask. 😉 I don’t know how to magically get them to ask you, except for maybe being generally sexually irresistible. That’s outside my expertise.
As you learn what you want, it will become easier to look for it and ask for it. Maybe it would help you to think more about what you want for now.
- Comment on How do people develop feelings for someone? 1 month ago:
It’s not clear to me yet what you want: not too serious, but more than friends, so… sex?
- Comment on How do people develop feelings for someone? 1 month ago:
Nothing wrong with that, but then what is your actual challenge here?
- Comment on How do people develop feelings for someone? 1 month ago:
I just don’t know how to (for lack of a better word) make others see me for more than just a friend.
You don’t. It’s complex and subtle and annoying. 😉
You don’t turn someone who doesn’t love you into some who does. You keep looking until you find a person who was already going to love you. And there are many, even when it doesn’t seem like there are. And it takes a maddeningly long time for some folks. It did for me.
- Comment on Why do people insist on not answering ALL the questions in an email or text message? 1 month ago:
I’m not sure. Maybe. Sometimes. I don’t know.
I can only tell you that my best results have come from replying with a neutral “Thank you”, then repeating the questions. I prefer it when they answer all my questions, but ultimately, if I want answers, I need to persist, and so I do.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
What’s normal is that you had a traumatic experience, then internalized a Survival Rule to avoid repeating the behavior that led to the trauma. Depending on your age when the original incident happened, the Survival Rule might sit very deep, causing you to follow it even without thinking and without knowing why.
All that is normal: expected, sensible, reasonable.
The rule itself might no longer be needed. Can you imagine a situation in which it would be perfectly fine to interpret as a joke something that someone says without specifying it as a joke? Can you imagine three? Ten?
- Comment on How would we choose a "world language" in a fair way, for a hypothetical one world government? 2 months ago:
- Comment on low iq in love with high iq person, is that bad?? 2 months ago:
Forget IQ for a moment, for all the good reasons that other people have given you.
One of you will know more than the other or learn more easily than the other. That’s unavoidable. Even if the gap seems small, there might be key moments where the gap causes conflict. This is going to happen, whether it’s you or them who “is ahead”.
The question is this: how do you handle it?
If you treat each other with contempt, that’s a problem. That could be you assuming that they are always going to look down or you or them assuming that you’re not trying to “be better”. There are many ways for this kind do contempt to show itself in your relationship. Each of you has the responsibility to not think that way. Each of you has the responsibility for accepting and loving the other.
If you can’t learn to do that, then your relationship is doomed to fail. If you can learn to do that, then you stand a chance.
You both can choose.
Some things about my partner used to irritate me and I learned to accept them for the things they’ve tried to change but just can’t. That acceptance is key.
Good luck and peace.
- Comment on If a mysterious force secretly changed EVERY clock worldwide one minute forward, how long would it take until people notice, and how would people/governments react? 3 months ago:
Yes, I’ve heard. And even when they were quite punctual, a difference of one minute was very noticeable and reliably commented on.
- Comment on If a mysterious force secretly changed EVERY clock worldwide one minute forward, how long would it take until people notice, and how would people/governments react? 3 months ago:
*Germany has entered the chat. *
- Comment on what is the actual name of this type of „logic”? 3 months ago:
False syllogism (you’re Chinese, so you’re an asshole) or premature generalization (some Chinese people are assholes, therefore all Chinese people are assholes).
- Comment on Which song are they covering here? Small snippet played as Diane Morgan walks into the studio 4 months ago:
Cunkroll!
- Comment on [deleted] 4 months ago:
Would you enjoy it even if he didn’t care? Would you enjoy it even if he leaned against it?
If yes, why?
Perhaps trying to answer these questions would help you clarify your feeling about it.
- Comment on Do you ever simply not understand a piece of text no matter how many times you read it despite the fact that you understand the language and individual words? 4 months ago:
I found that text difficult to parse, due to a relative lack of punctuation. This means that I spent my energy trying to parse the sentences and my brain struggled to engage with the meaning and significance of the text. Maybe if I tried reading it again a few more times, I’d find it easier to follow and therefore easier to understand.
Maybe it’s just as well that I never tried to read any Joyce. Or maybe if I’d tried, then I’d be better prepared for this. 🤷
- Comment on What is "forming questions in an affirmative voice?" 4 months ago:
Forget “affirmative voice” for a moment, since that seems to be tripping others up as well as you. Prompt Engineering suggest sounding like the LLM, asking questions with “the same voice” as the one the LLM uses to respond. Perhaps PE needs to clarify this with some examples, because calling it “affirmative voice” hasn’t seemed to make it clear enough.
I suggest asking them, then perhaps sharing what you learn for the benefit of other folks who are similarly confused.
The only interpretation that comes to my mind is avoiding “not” and “don’t”. Ask for what you want instead of what you don’t want. 🤷 That’s just a guess.
- Comment on Why is it considered sexist to ask women to smile? 4 months ago:
I’m enjoying being told about these counterexamples, as I’m seeing even more clearly how this attitude is embedded in our shared culture.
So far, all the specific contexts in which men are being told to smile is one in which others feel entitled to the man attempting to impress them. In contexts such as dating or performing on video or working in retail, this doesn’t particularly surprise me.
I suppose another reasonable context is one in which the people asking you to smile are genuinely worried about your emotional state and want you to seem happier. By chance is it typically like that for you? (Let’s set aside for now the complex matter of whether they actually want you to feel better or they merely want to control your behavior or feel less uncomfortable themselves.)
- Comment on Why is it considered sexist to ask women to smile? 4 months ago:
How interesting! That makes it even less surprising.
- Comment on Why is it considered sexist to ask women to smile? 5 months ago:
That’s one exception that doesn’t surprise me. Do you have any sense how often they are doing this with intentional irony compared with genuine obliviousness?
- Comment on Why is it considered sexist to ask women to smile? 5 months ago:
Tell us a story of the last time you witnessed someone telling a man to smile because he would look so much better if he did.
- Comment on why does everyone i know treat me like a child or if i was a very childlike person?? 5 months ago:
Think of the people who seem to do this to you. Pick the one who trust the most. Now ask them.
- Comment on how do I become the dullest, most boring coworker so this needy man leaves me alone? 5 months ago:
You’re not responsible for meeting this man’s needs. You don’t need to trick him. “Please leave me alone.” If he does not do this simple thing, then you have not committed any offence and you can train yourself not to feel bad about it. You already meditate, so you might make your tendency to feel bad about this into a object of meditation.
Unfortunately, you can’t control his behavior. He might still try to sit down next to you and talk to you about things that don’t interest you. I don’t know what more you can do than ask him to stop doing this and hope he complies. “Please stop doing this. I’m just not interested. I prefer to be alone.” It is compassionate to say nothing more than this.
As for why you’re like this, that’s very likely because someone taught to you to care about other people’s feelings and didn’t teach you that their feelings are not your fault. This seems pretty common.
The stories you tell yourself about why he does this and the stories you tell yourself to explain your own behavior… they probably don’t help you much, do they?
Peace.