Tar_Alcaran

Turns out when things suck, people tend to point out that things suck.

Are larp arrows supposed to have a flat foam tip, or a rounded foam tip?

Either side will claim the other had blinded a dozen of their friends, impaled their cattle and poisoned the well!

Gordon Freeman. He just fucking suuuucks at communicating.

i found out they shoved a knife up their vag to pierce their hymen because they wanted to ‘give their virginity to Jesus’,

Wow, and I thought my first time was pretty lousy…

All these things are true. But they are far from true for the vast majority of obese people. Once you realize that you are, at least partially, contributing to the problem, you make it possible to, at least partially, SOLVE the problem.

I have PCOS, I have hereditary thyroid issues. Those all contribute to obesity. I also retain a fuckton of water when it’s that time of the month. I also used to have BED.

And then I went to a therapist who basically said “so, what if you had to the power to fix a quarter of the problem? Would you do it?” I said yes, and she said “Then why aren’t you?” That was a super shitty thing to say to a 19 year old, but she was entirely correct. I could fix a quarter of my problem!

So I stopped infantilizing myself, and said I was able to lose a quarter of my overweight kilos. And you know, once that first quarter was off, it turns out that taking ownership of a problem will actually let you work on that problem.

PCOS and hypothyroidism and water retention don’t magically put fat inside your body. You can absolutely lose weight with them. It’s not as fast as someone who is otherwise healthy, sure, and that’s kinda unfair, but its also not impossible. It’s just slower, and my caloric needs are lower than other people while my stomach started out at the same size and with the same demands for satiation. And yeah, that sucks. I will gain weight if I eat the same portions as my husband, even though I do bodybuilding, sword fighting and am very active. That’s just how it works, and no amount of crying will fix that. None of my other problems went away, but I decided to deal with them instead of ignoring them. (Although the PCOS is much better without the obesity, and the BED was a lot easier to handle in therapy without the guilt)

You can recognise the unfairness and work on it, or you can just raise your hands, pretend it’s entirely out of your control and deal with obesity. Lots and lots of people opt for number two these days.

This is pretty useless, mostly because assholes will never put effort into not being assholes.

I wish the Dutch cattle graph looked like that

Imagine a new pharmaceutical that was found by a researcher. (…)

Now with AI the thought process is similar. (…)

The two are nothing alike. The pharmaceutical has a pre-determined market, and a known effect. A researcher who finds a treatment for Somethingitis will know in advance that people with the disease will want it. They will want it because the medication has a proven effect. Nobody has to hand out the cure under cost to get people enthusiastic about it (In fact, without proper controls, the exact opposite happens. See the USA)

LLMs are pretty much the opposite. They’re a solution looking for a use, and are only very marginally successful in that. Nobody can say “this product will cause that effect”, pretty much by definition.

That’s why they’re giving their product away, and massive subsidizing the use of it. If they stopped, nobody would use it. And every month, the models get more and more expensive even as the scale increases. Actual results are few and far between, except for very niche applications which won’t recover the costs before the next millennium.

The best comparison I’ve seen is someone selling stale bread covered in gold leaf for ten bucks. Is there a market for it? Sure, decorative bread is on display with many bakers, and I’m sure you could sell some of it for croutons and such. But nobody is buying stale bread en masse. But if you sell stale bread for 5 cents, you bet your ass people will buy it. It might not be great, but come on, for 5 cents I’m willing to eat a lot of toast.

No

I do feel dumber and less capable after spending time with certain people…

I thank my husband dozens of times per day, and vice versa

Then screw you

Ask the vet you want to use to neuter him.

Seriously, don’t diagnose medical problems when you’re just some rando, ask a professional.

Using your logic, I could drive to the next town over commit some crimes and have the same effect.

Correct. It’s pretty well known that this skew per capita statics in small-scale analyses. It’s also why you shouldn’t do per-capita analysis on very local scales

In the US our census counts residents, not citizens.

No. It counts residents who cooperate with the census. Guess what undocumented immigrants won’t be doing?

Going door to door to count people is a terrible method of kering track of people, which is why most places stopped doing that, using running registries instead. It’s pretty stunning that the US only has the vaguest concept of who lives there.

Film does, depending on how it’s stored. VHS is much thinner, and more prone to damage. There’s also a huge difference between professional tapes and “get the cheapest 5-pack at the store” we all used to have.

I’ve teleported twice in my life. However since I’m a functioning adult these days, allow me to condense the relevant finding of those experiences for you:

Don’t mix drugs and alcohol.

I do workplace safety, and it’s incredibly hard to work with (manufactured) stone in a safe way. The dust gets everywhere, and you basically have to take the same safety precautions as with asbestos remediation.

Every resin-based material is friable after the resin decays. That’s one of the major problems with asbestos roofs, the resin holding the asbestos is breaking down after decades of sunlight.

What do you think most brake pads are made with?

Today I learned the US allowed asbestos brakepads till mid 2024. Jesus fucking christ people.