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Cake day: June 27th, 2023

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  • There’s this dude at the gym who watches netflix on his phone between sets, taking 10+ minute breaks while people wait in line to use the machine.

    I normally try to be charitable about these things. I have no idea if he has some type of fatigue issue or something along those lines justifying the long breaks, right?

    But I need to actively push my thoughts in this direction, in some probably misguided attempt to cultivate kindness within my own life. Truth is there’s just something infuriating about watching a movie while sitting in the building’s only leg extension




  • As mistaken as I believe they are, I can see why some women support him.

    Lots of single issue voters see him as the abortion ban guy. Also tons of people that don’t see “him and his ideas” per se, but are so immersed in conservative propaganda that they simply think “Trump presidency = my kids will be able buy a house and live a normal life”

    Then there’s the backfire effect, where people tend to double down on their beliefs instead of correcting them when presented with contradictory data. Obviously makes it really hard to pull someone out of the cult, needs a pretty extraordinary set of circumstances in many cases.

    Even then, usually it won’t stick. There’s a very well done essay, “The only moral abortion is my abortion” by Joyce Arthur, I highly recommend giving it a read. Women who faithfully protest at abortion clinics and harass other women will one day come in for their own abortion, and then be back to protesting the following day








  • So, a limiter and a compressor are actually the same thing! Just used in different contexts. You can think of a limiter as being a compressor set to extreme values, so that you can guarantee that at no point will the volume go beyond a certain threshold.

    So let’s think of like, a guitar string being plucked. It starts out loud and percussive, you get some string noise as well. Then the actual tone is played, starts as loud as it will ever get, then gradually reduces in volume over time naturally as the energy in the string is lost.

    Suppose we set the limiter to be a very low threshold, just above the quiet ringing you would hear after like 15 seconds of letting the guitar string resonate. Essentially the limiter will aggressively turn down the volume during the whole beginning, then ease off as the tone naturally quiets.

    The final result is that you’ve transformed a sound wave that started out with a large amplitude that gradually got smaller, into one that has a generally uniform amplitude throughout its entire duration! Then, as with all compressors, since you’ve actually reduced the amplitude of the wave, you can now turn the volume waaaaaaay up without clipping out. So now, stuff that used to be quiet is now just as loud as the loudest parts of your recording. A rustling leaf would be played at the same volume as a gunshot.

    The issue this creates with vinyl is that carving such an extreme waveform into a physical medium results in a path the needle simply can’t follow accurately.

    Imagine an old wooden roller coaster, one in which the cart isn’t attached to the track other than by gravity holding it there. If you included a sudden massive drop when the cart was moving at high speed, it wouldn’t follow the track, it would actually fly off the track briefly as it can only accelerate downward as fast as gravity will allow.

    If the needle is the cart, and the carving in the vinyl is the track, these moments of air time will create audible distortion. It’s actually a bit more precarious than that, even, as vinyls actually use not only the up and down components of gravity, but left and right as well. The two tracks superimposed are what allows us to create a stereo image (having distinct sounds in the left and right speakers).

    There’s also a ton of other things that can cause distortion, but I don’t want to ramble on forever! The basic rule of thumb is that a vinyl master essentially just has less low end. From what I understand, this is the root of why many people prefer “the sound” of vinyl, they simply prefer a slightly more mid-dominant mix




  • Hey, Outer Wilds super fan here. Bought the game twice, recommend it to everyone, etc.

    I’ve seen a couple people bounce off the game because of the space flight, which is totally valid! It’s legitimately very difficult, doubly so if it’s your first time doing a zero G type of thing.

    I’ve also seen people thoroughly enjoy the game despite crashing into everything! So that’s possible, too. I wish I knew the secret to making it click, as I think once the story really gets its hooks in you it’s one of the most rewarding experiences out there.

    With all that being said, a couple tips:

    The autopilot let me crash into stuff blocking its path so I gave up on that too.

    Don’t give up on auto pilot! I simply can’t imagine traveling between planets without it.

    You just have to keep in mind that the auto pilot isn’t intelligent. When you activate it, it does exactly three things: it lines you up, it accelerates you, then it slows you down to a stop in front of your destination. You have to watch and be willing to interrupt it if it looks like you’re going to crash into a planet or the sun. You also have to make sure you’re reasonably far away from a planet before activating it in the first place. Once you’re there, keep a close eye on your instruments and just guide the ship in slowly until you can land.

    Even if you don’t have any obstacles, the auto pilot can still rarely result in a crash in certain scenarios where the planet is orbiting directly at you. This is especially prevalent with the twin planets.

    But the game is designed with crashes of all sorts in mind! Make sure to always put your suit on immediately when you first enter it on Timber Hearth. That way you can abandon the ship if necessary. There’s even a working eject button!

    I hope things work out, but best of luck no matter what you end up doing!



  • Carnelian@lemmy.worldtoCool Guides@lemmy.caa cool guide to diets
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    4 months ago

    Yeah it’s pretty wild considering how fervently people buy into it, but if you’re an evidence-driven person keto is not particularly attractive for weight loss unless you just personally enjoy it.

    Scroll down a bit, we already have someone who swears the magic is real (and CICO isn’t) because they lost weight on keto, and their partner estimated their calories to be waaaaaay higher than before starting the diet. It’s a very compelling narrative if you come into it wanting keto to be true, which is why there’s almost like a religious fervor built up around it. But it’s never played out that way in an actual study



  • Carnelian@lemmy.worldtoCool Guides@lemmy.caa cool guide to diets
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    4 months ago

    I’ve been thinking a lot lately, what if you were asking about how to hike up a mountain. Like you really wanted to get into it seriously, and learn and be prepared for the demands of the trail. What if the internet essentially just kept telling you “the only thing that matters is increasing your elevation”

    Like, yeah, that’s true in a very unarguable way. The summit is higher than the base. But if that’s the only thing on your mind you’re probably gonna make a lot of mistakes that make things way harder for you.

    Nobody told you about hiking boots, so you just showed up in flip flops? Technically you still only have to accomplish the same task of increasing your elevation, but now you’ll be miserable and about 100x more likely to just quit.

    What if the mountain path suddenly dips down before going back up? If all you know is you’re supposed to increase your elevation, you might get really freaked out and think you’re doing something wrong when you start descending.

    All of this is to say, the multitude of details are very much worth discussing in terms of weight loss. Two things can be true at once: being in a calorie deficit will result in weight loss, and calorie counting as a strategy may not work for everyone unless they have the requisite knowledge required to design a sustainable diet for themselves