Friends! I got the new job. I started the new job. I love the new job. The new job is a challenge and keeps me super busy and cuts into my hubski time significantly. I am looking forward to the holiday even though I've only been in seat for a week and a half... I love you all... no really...
It's official, my roommate lost everything gambling on cryptocurrency. He went 80% of his savings and cash in on a two-week-old coin that turned out to be a scam. The other 20% is tied up in a crypto ponzi scheme that he was sure would give him steady returns, except he is unable to ever pull out. Him and some other kids in my company are now "investing" with a guy named Teeka Tiwari who runs a pump-and-dump scheme out of Florida on coins with very low market caps. Oh and they owe him a couple grand each per annum for his, uh, financial guidance? Anyway, I'm finally going home for the first time since the summer on 4 days of Thanksgiving leave. Taking my mom to the Met for an opera, catching up w friends in my hometown/NYC, and being irresponsible with alcohol. Also, haven't smoked cigarettes in a month!
I assume bitconnect is the ponzi. I went to a BCH meetup Saturday night in SF. My mind was blown. My intention was to weigh some opinions in the space, particularly on BTC/BCH developments. Most of the people I spoke with (and I spoke with most of those present) had no clue what they were buying. Almost no clue at all. It was disturbing to me. I knew that there are plenty of people buying crypto that weren't following the technical aspects, but didn't expect them to be the majority at a BCH meetup. In short, there are a lot of people buying digital assets that will be worthless in due time, because they can't make distinctions beyond price. Good times for Tiwari.
It's from a JP Morgan exec but I'm pretty sure it represents the vast majority. Including myself, until I actually did my homework."My Daughter Bought Bitcoin. It Went Up, Now She Thinks She Is A Genius"
I typically let the other geniuses tell me when to buy...mk, insomniasexx...a bit facetious, but, you know.
I know it comes and goes. Not my first time quitting, but when you really feel the urge to quit you gotta make that deal with yourself and take your willpower out for a spin now and then. Good luck buddy!
Thais, written by an old Frenchie. It was a wildly corny plot but the production and the show they put on at the Metropolitan Opera is always amazing. I also just enjoy the general atmosphere of the Met Opera because everyone dresses up, looks good, and is in generally positive spirits.
The moth thrives on tragicomedy. You gotta make it seem like a complete fiasco
knock knock "ah, hey, sorry, I am a little early today, can I still get a drink? yeah, I take some Tripel Karmeliet please, thanks :)" I sit down at the table with the "Reserved for Hubski" sign on it, the barman gets me my beer to the table (how nice of him!) and I start to write a note to the hubskiteers across the lake. By the time they pass by I will either be drunk, sleeping, or drunksleeping. How are you doing guys? The past few weeks were good. Some turbulence mainly taking things higher up the mood scale. About a month ago I met a girl. I found her interesting. She was self confident, playful and calm. After meeting twice we ended up hooking up. It was fun, it was exciting but I was not falling for her. I wasn't blown away, I did not have a crush. In a situation like this I usually end things up, right there. I don't want us to invest into something that was only one sided. This time though I felt like I want it to continue. I noticed that she wanted to spend time with me, more than I was comfortable with, but still respected my choices when I wanted to have an evening alone, and that without having the feeling that she didn't like my choice. Slowly over the weeks I got to know her a little better and got surprised more and more. Now we got to the point where we spend 4 evenings a week together and it just feels good. I am still worried and somehow afraid of the "definitions talk" where she asks me "what are we?" and I don't know how to answer her and she then gives me an ultimatum to decide whether we are in a relationship or not and and.... here goes my brain too far again. Fact is, I like her and I am enjoying getting to know her slowly. It is different to any interaction I had before because I was either full on in love or not interested. I am not sure what to do next but maybe I don't have to be sure. All I know is that it feels good. Last weekend we threw a leggings party. It was my birthday and somehow we use that as an excuse to throw a big party and celebrate life. Somehow, I was able to get about 100 people to put on fancy leggins and have their asses slapped on the stage during a spanking contest. It was a hell of a night and probably one of this year's highlights. I also found out that I am surrounded by excellent, wonderful and beautiful people. It warmed my heart. Two weeks ago, I had a small MDMA session with three of my friends. Two of them never tried MDMA before. The main reason for doing it was due to one of them having a hard year and feeling that he is "blocked" inside. He kept asking me to do mushrooms with him but I was worried to go to psychedelics before he experienced something somewhere in between. This lead to this session where we all took a normal dose on a Sunday afternoon. We spend the time indoors, in my room, listening to music, dancing and talking. One of them spend the 5 hours drawing without having much of an interaction with us. It was very weird for the first times, of course, but both enjoyed the experience. The best was the afterglow. Somehow, the friend with the "blockade" had a short "Aha!" moment where he realized that his day to day worries are just that, worries. Deep inside he was still a kid enjoying life. For the past two weeks, he is changed. Smiling, dancing, cooking, interacting. I did not expect that, but damn I am happy for him :) Next summer we might try some low dose of mushrooms... I mentioned the last time I was here that I started a small Psychedelic Research group at uni. I gave my first talk to the group, an audience of 12, about the pharmacology of psychedelics. Starting from basics about ligand binding and receptor types up to explaining a recent serotonin receptor crystal structure paper (http://www.cell.com/fulltext/S0092-8674(16)31749-4). They all seemed to understand the shamanic language I was talking and we had fun discussions. Overall it took us 2 hours to go through 15 slides which felt like a good sign. Really looking forward to the next meeting where one member will introduce us to the works of Stanislav Grof! brm brm brm... I am talking a lot today, my beer is getting warm! Edit: That was the flyer for the party :)
"I am letting myself fall in love with you and watching to see how it happens." The best way to deal with these conversations is to be absolutely clear in your head and then present that clarity in the kindest way possible. People get hung up on semantics. It comes from a fear of expressing yourself, of making yourself vulnerable. You will find, as you get older, that control in any relationship belongs to the person with the most confidence. I dated a girl who, by the second date, knew I would be with either for weeks or forever. When she really pissed me off I said to myself "weeks" and moved on.I am still worried and somehow afraid of the "definitions talk" where she asks me "what are we?" and I don't know how to answer her and she then gives me an ultimatum to decide whether we are in a relationship or not and and.... here goes my brain too far again.
I couldn't have put this in better words. This is exactly how I feel this time. I am not coming from a point where I am already madly in love and discovering things that I don't like about the person but the other way around and it is very refreshing. Thank you for the advice bl00!
My only experience with MDMA was weird, I just sat around my friends room talking to him all night thinking this wasn't doing anything until I moved the black out curtain away from the window and realized it was mid day. I bet had I had the resources I could have sat quietly in a room full of people and drawn the entire time. It wouldn't surprise me if it was mostly speed. The jaw grinding thing really creeps me out too.
The jaw grinding is an annoying side-effect that can be handled well with some chewing gum. It also depends on the dose and (apparently) how muscular of a person your generally are. I for example don't get jaw problems unless I go for 150mg. At 100mg it is not a problem. Some magnesium beforehand seems to help some people, maybe try that before the next time.
Glad to hear you started with MDMA, and not the more common "ecstasy", in its myriad forms. The insightful and useful properties of MDMA are often diluted or completely overshadowed by the speed/amphetamines they cut into it to make ecstasy. I am a fan and enthusiast for psychedelics. Mushrooms are my Thing. But MDMA and LSD have their place, as well. nod of recognition to a fellow mental traveller...
A fun fact about "ecstasy" tablets. In recent years, specially in europe, ecstasy pills have contained pure MDMA. The times where they were cut is over because the production got much cheaper, drug checking is becoming mainstream and bad dealers are basically kicked out of the market by the consumers. Another fun fact, MDMA got cheaper when a new synthesis was discovered that starts with PMK oil. PMK oil is rather easy to produce in masses and is not as heavily regulated as saffrole which had to be shipped from Cambodia to Europe for further processing. Now customs are ceasing huge containers coming from china filled with PMK landing in Europe... It is not helping as Europe is flooded with it. Another fun fact, the major production of european MDMA moved from Belgium/Netherlands to Poland which also has lower labor costs further dropping the price. In some areas in poland you can get a pill of pure MDMA with 140mg inside for 1,50€. In Berlin a gram of MDMA goes for 30€.
No, it literally just stopped having any effect on me. It's not like I ever took much - once every 6-9 months or so, for about 2 years - but at some point it just didn't do anything for me. I tend to have an extremely high resistance to pretty much anything. Caffeine. Pain killers. Recreational drugs. And I don't take anything on a regular basis. I even have a fantastic collection of single malt scotch whiskys, and I will have maybe one or two drinks a week. In fact, I wanted to get high the other day on cannabis. But it doesn't have much effect on me, usually. So we went to the cannabis store, talked to the pros there, and the woman gave me two different tinctures to try out. (I had previously tried the Legal Weed coffee drink, which has 40mg of CBD in it, and it had almost no effect on me.) I finally found my sweet spot! 50mg of CBD. FIFTY milligrams!! And it takes about 2 hours to take effect. So yeah... I don't do any sort of drugs often because it simply isn't very predictable.
Due to its lack of desirable effects on me, I have little to no knowledge of how cannabis, or any of its components or compounds, actually work. Or what they mean. For example, I have no idea what the relationship of CBD to THC is, or even what they stand for. I had to google the Legal Weed drink I had, because I knew it had "40 of something" in it, but didn't know the measurement used. (I think it is 40mg.) So ... I know some of the words in your comment, but am not really equipped with the background info to understand how it applies to me... I feel kinda derpy right now, honestly! :-)
In very general terms: CBD is a semi-legal anti-inflammatory, anticonvulsant, possibly tumor suppressing, pain reducing compound found in cannabis. Delta-9 THC is a psychoactive compound found in cannabis, responsible for the high. Both are found in the plant and breeds have been developed that contain high amounts of either or both kinds. CBD is semi legal, in that you can buy it, possess it, but the process of producing it involves growing cannabis which is still illegal for those of us living in the dark ages. Also, most CBD extract or tincture has some amount of THC present. Not enough to get a buzz, but enough to fail a drug test or catch a felony for possession.
That helps a lot. This makes conversations with my parents (CBD users) and my wife (THC user) make WAY more sense. Yeah, I went to the pot shop to get high. Not to get healthy. So they provided me with the sativa tincture I needed to get my 50mg dose that finally had the desired effect.
Would you say that's equivalent to developing a crush on someone? Or, are you enjoying this, but still not having the initial feeling you were looking for? MDMA is one of those things I've always wanted to try once, but never have.Fact is, I like her and I am enjoying getting to know her slowly. It is different to any interaction I had before because I was either full on in love or not interested. I am not sure what to do next but maybe I don't have to be sure. All I know is that it feels good.
MDMA was my introduction to the "world of drugs" and has since triggered my interest in the biology behind these substances. I think I posted the story of my first encounter here on Hubski. I remember walking across the Thames after that party at 7:30 AM and thinking "how can this be prohibited?", it did not make sense to me.
Because it was decided back in the early days of the 20th century that it was politically advantageous to make the sovereign right of altering ones consciousness through the use of entheogenic chemicals illegal. The US set the standard and the rest of the world followed suit. Modern drug laws directly descend from this decision. The DEA's refusal to even allow the phrase 'medical cannabis' in the court of law comes directly from this political motivation. Death to Tyrants.I remember walking across the Thames after that party at 7:30 AM and thinking "how can this be prohibited?"
It is particularly scary to think about this whole deal. Europe, specially Germany, which I would consider a country of science and reasoning just signing that UN treaty basically banning all entheogens and psychedelics over night. It makes me wonder if such centralized organizations are a good thing at all, specially when decisions are taken so fast and without proper research.
Usually, I have an initial obsession with a person. This is usually because of a specific trait of the person that I envy. My brain goes into overdrive, extrapolating a shared future and all the situations that we could go through. Kind of like a simulation. The person would usually be on my mind 24/7 and I would crave their company. This time this feeling was not there. Not at all and it really got me worried/panicking at first. So I would not call it a crush but rather falling in love.
I love belgian tripels. They have a taste that I really enjoy and one bottle gets me to the sweet spot. They are scary though. If you are used to drinking a few german pils or helles and you try the same thing with the tripel you are in for a crazy evening!
I think I'm probably drinking gin this afternoon. Gin gets me glum. Warning: Rambling thoughts on an extended interaction with a far-right pundit below... There was a guy in my wife's master's cohort at uni - the type of guy who's just really toxic politically. It's tough to characterize him; I'm not sure I've met many people like him, and I've definitely not interacted with them like I did with him. So he's all up in far-right news cycles, consuming memes and half-truth news stories and re-hosting them on his Facebook page. He's been doing this for months maybe years. He's not the type to keep to himself, and his social media is an extension of the types of conversations he has in person. Nearly every person in his cohort tried reaching out to the guy to get him to tone it down, or at least get him listen to some even-keeled opposition - I think they figured if they were thoughtful and articulate, he'd come around to some type of rhetorical moderation. And that's the thing too because this guy is approachable. He's pretty kind and at least a little polite in conversation, but his ideas are so fucking noxious that every person who tried talking to him eventually gave up. And it's not just his ideas, it's his conversational style. He fact-checks nothing. He researches nothing. He doesn't believe in statistics. He doesn't trust academia. Conversations with him are pages and pages of vitriolic opinion-vomiting. It's tough to handle. It's not just that he sources Breitbart and The Daily Caller for nearly every story (Fox News is moderate to him); it's primarily that he gets his ideology from memes. Not kidding. His Facebook history is full of fucking memes - and I've got to reference Dawkins here for the literal and original meaning of meme, because the sourced knowledge this guy has on politics is insidiously hard to pin down. His news feed is full ubiquitous, pint-sized ideas and fact-checking every meme he's ever come across and internalized is a herculean effort. Impossible, even for him - i.e. you can argue him into a corner, get him to agree, and 3 days later he's sharing the same exact shit again. He dropped the program at the recommendation of the faculty and director for reasons unrelated to his politics and entirely related to his academic performance. He lost ties to all the cohort except my wife, who kept him added (but unfollowed) on Facebook because she loved the drama of seeing some Lib-missionary get offended, argue with him for hours, and bite the dust in frustration. I'd never met him in person, only heard stories about him. I ended up friending him and starting a dialogue with the specific idea that I'd just try to figure out what he was about - not attempt to "convert" him politically, just see what his version of the far-right was. The conversation was wide-ranging and long - months-long. I started talking to him in February this year, and I cut ties with him last week. That's what I want to talk about here (at "the bar"), and if you've made it this fucking far, "Congratulations!" because you've got every right to throw whatever you're drinking into my whiny, doom & gloom face. This conversation with him took me to a dark place; if I'm being honest, I talked to him for too long for my mental health. He's representative of a massive demographic in America, and that started to weigh on me existentially. Point me to historical bipartisanship; point me to political indoctrination; point me to religiously-branded Conservatism; fuck, point me to the horrors of the Democratic party too. I've read almost all of it, and if I haven't then I'll read more gladly. But I'm convinced the American politico-intellectual rot will not heal. For sure, nationally-speaking we'll keep on chugging along, I guess. That's what a nation-state does. But this guy has been failed. He's been ruined. What the fuck do we do about that? tl;dr: To what extent is it our individual civic duty to try to reconcile with political opposition? I started talking to him out of curiosity, and it ended with depressive horror. I wish there were a better way to explain my experience. I'm going to go actually drink now :) 1. Do we drag him along, forcing healthcare down his throat, mandating tax reform in his interests, fighting the FCC for him, and offering his daughters birth control and prenatal options? 2. Do we involve ourselves personally, talking to him for months, reasoning him through his own warped thought processes, educate him on how to research and fact-check? 3. Do we let him rot?
This is insightful. I've experienced it. I have not put my finger on it before but you have the most of it. I work with a couple die hard conservatives. They are lonely people in Hollywood; there's a contingent to be sure and they're insular as fuck but the overwhelming majority of Hollywood liberals are in fact liberals. One of the things I've noticed in discussions with them (careful, respectful, well-bounded discussions) is that the conversation is not built around ideas. It's built around factoids. It's built around totems. It's built around memes. These ideas are not, in and of themselves, coherent components of a greater philosophy. They are not arguments. They are touchstones. They are bookmarks in an internet search of alienation, secret handshakes of cultural identity. A funny thing happened when Trump won: they got cranky. Keep in mind: I know people who worked with Trump. a lot. Had I gotten here a few years earlier I totally would have been crew on The Apprentice. He's a known quantity around here and yeah - it's a right-wing conservative orgazmotron. But at the same time, with Republicans owning the house, the senate, the executive and the judicial, the world should be perfect, right? But they knew - they knew - it'd be a long way from perfect. Theirs is a philosophy of opposition, particularly here in liberal Hollywood, and it wasn't so much that they were right, it's that everyone else was wrong. HERE's MY THINKING We don't drag him along, we live our lives and do the right thing. We don't assail his ideas hoping that eventually something sticks. It's an oppositional mentality and so long as he wants to oppose, it really doesn't matter what he's opposing. They're a tribe that want everyone else to lose. They don't really know what that looks like, but they want it really badly. This is the way cognitive dissonance works: it starts by feeling uncomfortable so you ignore the sources that assail your worldview. Then it pushes you into an insular place because you're retreating from information. Then you lose sight of reality because you're working so hard to keep up your microcosm. Then one day it snaps - and it snaps hard. And now you're a disillusioned searcher. Trump and the modern conservative universe is about the purest form of cognitive dissonance challenge you could ask for. He's not a conservative by any stretch. He's leading the party towards the reductio ad absurdum place the liberals always joked about - Trump literally defended Nazis. And they have nothing to build on, and their efforts to tear down are failing. There's going to be a reckoning. There's going to be soul-searching. And we'll need to welcome them back. but not yet, goddamn it it's primarily that he gets his ideology from memes. Not kidding. His Facebook history is full of fucking memes - and I've got to reference Dawkins here for the literal and original meaning of meme, because the sourced knowledge this guy has on politics is insidiously hard to pin down. His news feed is full ubiquitous, pint-sized ideas and fact-checking every meme he's ever come across and internalized is a herculean effort.
I agree, but would like to also add I feel these characteristics are those you see in zealots of any stripe, conservative or ultra-lib -- living in a college town with lots of varyingly "woke"-stage friends, there are definite collectives of young ultra-liberals around who also thrive on the anger and the attention and the falsely-derived meaning of their life they pull from loud protesting and agonizing about such Incomprehensibly Life Important Issues as the fact that the university doesn't offer gender neutral bathrooms in most (if not all) buildings. These are the same people who opt to go guerilla with their equality warfare and "fix" problems by, say, painting up graffiti in the form of gender-enlightened quotes all over every wall and stall of the men's and women's bathrooms in a single art building and cover up the "Men" and "Female" signs by the doors with "Gender Neutral" advocating/pontificating/polemicizing 3-paragraph posters. Congratulations, you "fixed" the University's gender-neutral bathroom problem. In one building. In two bathrooms which total can service 5 people at once. Wow. What an impact. When instead they could've tried, I don't know, sitting down with some tenured professors or deans, making their arguments, and seeing if there's a symbiotic way that their needs can be met, their perceived inequality issues mitigated or resolved. Never communicate if you can shout instead, right? At least if you're 19, 20, 21, 22 and lost and scared and confused about the meaning of life - your life, that is. Hell, it was the goddamn Art department - I am pretty sure if this group of malcontents had run their restorative idea through proper-enough channels, gathered support from TAs and a few LGBT profs, they could have gotten permission to do the same exact thing (at least as a temporary semester-long living/performance art installation, I mean, c'mon sell it right and liberal art professors would absolutely eat that shit up). But instead they basically vandalized a university building. Because that was the right choice. And then were quoted in the student newspaper 2 weeks later as being utterly shocked and astounded that their guerrilla group had been identified and now punished with the responsibility of cleaning both of the two 2/3-stall bathrooms up, or at least back to prior condition. Sorry, people piss me off in real life and I bring it here. As a venting addendum, to finish my portrait: the ring-leader of this group is the type of person who posted an anti-Memorial Day meme on Veteran's Day. Because finding something to be angry about is more important than insignificant facts.
The code words of the leftists include "loose change", "Jeckyll Island", "Bilderberg Group" and "Goldman Sachs." They are every bit the mirror image of the Bhengazi Bros. Your argument is against that particular breed of liberal, the sheltered college undergrad. They are a special case.
I anonymously sent a copy of Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People" to the Memorial Day/Veteran's Day/guerilla ringleader c/o her university club address. Btw, college kids - be aware of what information about students your school makes public online. I used google-fu for bad, and I should not do that. Then I blocked her everywhere on the internet because I really don't need to spend my time or money on anonymously sending anyone books, let alone people who I'm just trying to make a snotty point to.
The best you can do is screenshot their posts and laugh about them with friends. I’m still laughing about the guys caption on a meme that said something like “64% of Ontarians are against Kathleen Wynne( the premier)” He simple wrote “65.” As if he represents an entire percent of the population of Ontario. We’re not that small. You know what the MP for the Conservative party in his area did ? She posted a full page ad in the newspaper saying Save Canada Post... vote Conservative. They were the ones cutting things like door to door delivery and she still got elected. From what I’ve gathered people who do ridiculous stuff like this are seeking out a feeling they get from it. Somebody else I know is only Liberal because it’s cool. Closeted gay congressmen are against same sex marriage. I haven’t figured out the flat earth people yet but it seems like they have trust issues. The point is when people have emotional/mental problems it will show in other aspects of their lives. Fixing the cause instead of the symptom is the important part. Nostalgia is what made a lot people vote for Trump, they never believed he would bring back their childhood dreams but it felt good to think about it for a bit.
Here in Washington State, we are basically bunkering down for a long winter. My state is so liberal and progressive, there is little effect I can have on the national political landscape. We checked all the boxes here, have demonstrated how well these programs work, and are just waiting for everyone else to follow our lead. There's not much I can do to inspire some legislator in Kentucky to look at our success, and adopt our policies. So we hunker down. States' Rights. Make our little corner more livable and comfortable for everyone, and wait for the storm to pass. People in hurricane country know the drill: Read the weather reports. Prepare. Batten down the hatches. Stock up on supplies. And wait for the storm to pass...
I have a little display thing to hang medals on. It's by my door. Today while putting my shoes on I thought "I think I'd like to have another marathon finish." (ButterflyEffect wasoxygen). These are my medals, plus my car key. That's two five milers, one 10K, two 20Ks, six halfs, one marathon, and one 19.3 challenge (comprised of the 10K and one half). Outstanding is my 45.5 challenge medal for adding the full. It's coming in the mail. One of the five mile runs was my first finisher medal. At the time I thought it was kind of stupid and a waste of money, but now I'm kind of proud of it. But I want to finish the Adirondack High Peaks before signing up for another full. If the weather next weekend keeps looking good, I'm going to give it a shot.
If WanderingEng combined his Subaru with his love for the outdoors.
Ha! No rally car, though. house, I have an Impreza five door. It's red, and I like it.
Mines a '16 with Eyesight! I sometimes feel like the adaptive cruise control is a little dim when it does things like accelerate at a somewhat distant slower car only to slow rapidly once that distance has closed, but I still love it. When my speed is close to the car ahead of me, it really works well. You have the push button start then, too? I really like that. It seems simple, but it's nice. I think it was seeing Crosstreks that turned me on to Subaru (along with Google searches for "smallest cars with AWD"). They look great, but I like small cars and couldn't justify the higher cost or lower gas mileage.
Oh what up, week old convo? Yeah I really wanted a Crosstrek but at my budget it would've meant foregoing Eyesight to get one, so I went with the Impreza for the bells and whistles. And yeah mine will accelerate in weird situations too, like if I'm coming to a red light and the car I'm following changes lanes. It definitely takes some practice to adapt it to city driving. Push button start and automatic unlocking is amazing; I feel like a peasant when I drive my wife's car and have to PRESS THE UNLOCK BUTTON and actually INSERT AND TURN A KEY.
Chessbrah Internship: We have former US Chesschampion Yasser Seirawan staying over right now (we're live right now!), which is pretty neat: https://www.twitch.tv/chessbrah He exudes the aura of a life well lived. Warm, jovial, frank, and witty. Me: I am in love with Montreal. I am trying not to be so quiet, but I'm realizing it's natural for me when you don't have the deep knowledge pools of the surrounding people- I love being the dumbest person in the room. I sense that everyone has a thing where they get worried for me "Jaron, you haven't talked for two hours"- but hey, that's me, and I'm alright with that. Montreal: I've been here for a week, and I just left the street I'm on for the first time yesterday. There is no reason to leave St. Laurent. Ever. I never want to leave. Right in front of me is an A & W, and in a drunken stupor, I proclaimed that their Mozzarella Burger was just as fresh and of high a quality as an In and Out Burger- and dammit, my sober self still believes it. Pinball: I found out that I live a block away from a pinball place, and finally made it there and made friends with the resident experts- they're so good I want to cry. The place specializes in classic pins, old pinball machines are completely foreign to me. I've been training bad habits out of myself by playing with this Paragon machine, if you try to drop catch every shot you'll just end up draining.
Thanks! I'm glad you checked out the stream too, it's been so fun being constantly surrounded by chess professionals. I'm getting a lot of practice in and getting rid of some of my bad chess habits. I'm making it my goal to feel confident enough to get a game off you next time!
So I asked Yasser your question just now (actually, I asked: "what's the best way to prepare for a tournament?"), I'm going to try to distill it the best I can: I don't like general questions, because it usually depends on your level, the way that you prepare is much different depending on your competency. But a lot of people try to memorize a lot of opening theory and lines, and the problem with that is that it's easy to get them jumbled, I know that I did that many times in tournament situations. I think the most important thing is to try to bring energy to the tournament.
I'm damn near done with a feature. I had 19 notes to execute across 110 minutes. I'm totally done with a short film. I had 7 1/2 pages of notes (single spaced) to execute across 15. The short film was not worse than the feature. It was actually a much better mix. But the director is an asshole. He gave me those notes last Monday and he had assets last Friday. My buddy, the one who dragged me into this miasma, was instructed to inform him that he was getting no more work. Keep in mind, though, that he gave me 7 1/2 pages of notes and I executed... let's say six pages of them. Across 15 minutes of content. Thursday night I observed that four of his notes were related to the fact that his composer didn't give me what I asked for. I pointed this out to the composer. The composer told me he did it the way he wanted to, not the way I wanted him to. Friday morning, the director stepped in to forbid me from asking for anything more from the composer. I was to complete my task as instructed "in the interests of saving time." So I synthesized my own bits of score to match what the composer hadn't provided and uploaded everything by Friday noon. Friday night, he thanked me for my participation and then asked me to hand over all my work product. This is a major faux pas - among post production sound mixers, when someone asks you for your session files you inform them that nobody gets session files for the friend rate. Major studios get session files because they pay the daily and the rental. That's $1600 a day to me, and I'm a good month into the project. I chuckled to myself, observed that the director is the kind of guy who will demand session files before he attempts to patch up the catastrophe he made of the work environment and moved on, particularly knowing as I do how much he hates to be ignored. It took me the better part of a day to realize that he demanded my work product less than twelve hours after refusing to give me anything to make my job easier on his film. Two days pass, during which he gets no response. He writes to me again Monday night explaining how he and the other editor think they're almost there, there isn't a whole lot left to be done, could I please "stop holding the project hostage" and upload my OMFs. This is beyond a faux pas - this is like asking for session files without any of the stuff that makes it work. It's the equivalent of asking for an Adobe Illustrator file with no fonts or media. Like asking for a report executed in Word to be converted to rich text so someone else can fix the formatting. In a way, it's both less of an insult than the session files and more at the same time; there is zero probability of success in going from a 5.1 pro tools session with 150 tracks and two dozen instances of Altiverb with proprietary IRs. But the director isn't even interested in understanding the difference. It's also worth noting that I executed 6 pages of notes in four days, and that I don't have so much as a handshake on this, let alone money. I was watching the credits roll by as I printed work product. They put all the post people at the front of the movie, ahead of the actors, which is a major no-no. All the post people except me, of course - me, they put after the PAs. They spelled my name wrong, too. And then I realized that they put the compositor behind me. A guy I've never met, but my first interaction with this product was going to dinner with my buddy and having to drive his car so that he could attempt to browbeat the compositor into reissuing assets on a Friday night because the director lacked the competence to integrate good assets into the project ahead of a Sundance submission deadline that had snuck up on nobody. Friday night. Stomping and screaming and wheedling and cajoling to deal with the incompetence and hubris of the director. There he was, name after mine (who knows if they spelled it right or not). Maya Angelou said to believe people when they tell you who they are the first time. I really could have seen this coming from a long way off. Problem is, I like my buddy. And I'm going to have to explain to him that when he uses his goodwill to do the bidding of an asshole with none, he just becomes a hostage of the asshole. I'm having a much easier time dealing with the project now that I no longer have to put up with my buddy's feelings. Not that it's been fun. Not that I like being reminded that it exists. Got the music for the feature yesterday. Also not to my specs. Also not useful. Also only gotten to me after the director begged the composer to finish the job he was paid handsomely for. It's a clusterfuck. It sounds like ass. And it's going to take everything I have to make it sound not like ass. That composer? Also a recommendation from my buddy. So I'm kind of grappling with the realization that for my own mental health, I should never work with my best buddy again. Now I gotta make stuffing. andthetablecame
I have an idea. It's not a very good idea, but it's an idea. You like to write. You like to do movie making stuff. You probably know a bunch of other people who like to do movie making stuff too. You should write your own short film with you and some buds (whom you trust to not ruin shit) and have a time of it. It doesn't even have to be anything outrageous. It could be like a five minute scene in the back of an alley where there's some kind of misunderstanding and some poor dude gets shot, fade to black. Write it, film it, edit it, share it on Hubski, get a badge from me. Shoot, I'll even twist Dala's arm to badge you as well, so now you got double the incentive.
OMG DAT TABLLLE Man, it totally sucks when you do the friend rate and it just becomes a shitshow like that. I've had some design projects like that go south, but never a "you're infuriatingly insulting" kind of going south. I think the only way forward is to sternly let him know that you will never do that again because you can't save the Titanic by calling in a friend. Maybe there's a slim chance he'll understand where you're coming from...
Anyone else finding it weird that casper2018 and mario2017 have shared all of each others comments, and are popping up in the same places? Maybe it's just me?
Oh, already did, just felt like pushing the point a bit more than that...as if anybody will get much of an SEO boost from here (I think)
My office smells of frying turkeys, and it is AMAZING. My company has an annual turkey fry the day before the Thanksgiving break. The company provides five deep-fried turkeys, and people bring side dishes, desserts, and other stuff for the potluck. (I've got my garlic roasted new potatoes sitting next to me on my desk, ready to go into the heating dish...) My mind is full of sweet, juicy thoughts of turkey. Can't think. And I will miss the internet. It had a good run, and a lot of new companies, products, and markets now exist because of its open nature. Once it is closed down, I expect the GDP will probably drop by 20%, and unemployment will skyrocket as programmers find themselves out of work. It's a bummer, but... hey... change happens. I look forward to Trump re-opening all the old coal mines so I can find a new job next year...
Recent life, in two photos: Almost there. It's my MyFitnessPal streak, for those of you in the dark. My 1 year chip officially comes in the day after tomorrow. The bittersweet photo #2, aka, I don't believe I'll be running my December 1st 5k. But that is OK. There are plenty of 5Ks. And I will still be picking up my race packet and getting the shirt for this one. (The whole reason I'd been set on running this particular 5k was because I ran it 2 years ago and never got the shirt. I wanted the shirt, gol dang it. So fractured/sprained/broken toe or not, this year, I'm getting it.)
It went well! My committee thought that the core of my thesis is incredibly good but that I really need to streamline the shit out of my thesis. My goal was to strive for comprehensiveness, but they argued that it is much better to have a concise main story and leave the comprehensive details for the appendices because I was boring them to tears. Fair enough - I'm rewriting most of it anyways because I'm porting it all to LaTeX. I found a neat thesis template that, after some fiddling around, checks all the boxes. The one downside is that I won't be graduating December 21st like I had planned because one of my thesis councilors will leave the country a few days before that. The next available date is halfway through January, which means that I didn't achieve my goal of graduating this calendar year. A bit of a bummer, but also a blessing in disguise because it gives me the breathing space to polish and perfect my thesis. Like, it gives me the time to have my thesis printed as a softcover 7x10.5" book, circulation of ~8. Partly because it'll make a splash, but mostly because it is cool af. (Especially because LaTeX allows me to format everything in Garamond beautifully.) ---- After some more job conversations I think I finally have a great answer to the age-old "so what do you want to do" question. It's a long answer, but the short version is a crossover between business development & innovation, data science, and urban planning. The great thing is that I can do that at all three companies that I'm in serious talk with. Tomorrow I'm gonna discuss details with my so-far-favorite. (I count my blessings that it's a close race though!) ---- Aldi and Lidl are know for temporarily selling random, cheap stuff in between the rest of the groceries. I found a 10-hole harmonica for like €4. I couldn't resist its sillyness. So if life ever blows I can blow that. ---- edit: I forgot to mention that that Punch Brothers album I posted in the music thread is really growing on me. It's eccentric and creative and I love it.It's not the final document, but a 90%-done document that determines whether you can graduate or whether you need to put more work into it. That meeting is next week
On my way back to the Mitten for Thanksgiving after a few days in SF. I can now drive around without GPS. Interesting things are happening at Forever Labs, and I visited with some friends and YC batchmates. I have a SF business/social circle that has established some roots. I am excited about the future, and am pleased to be able to work with some of the people that I am. I don't think I like clear boundaries between work and life, and I am happy to say that I have few. mk_RSS: I am going to paint tonight; I am looking forward to it. My Casio Illuminator is out of battery. I bought some Reeboks last night. I'm excited to pick up my daughter from her grandmother's on my way home from DTW. lil, I need a December poem. I have a secret project. I need to make an appetizer. thenewgreen and I did this podcast last week.
Any December poem? Or a famous one? Do you want a poem about hating Xmas and the weather or one about the days getting shorter or one more reflective and philosophical? Does the word "December" have to be in it? Should I commence a hubski writing prompt and squeeze every bit of Decemberism out of the community?
Last week I worked...a lot...and ran a half-marathon on Saturday on basically no sleep and shit nutrition for the preceding week. Which has prompted me to start doing more things like oatmeal with various seeds and protein as a lunch, pinole with various salsas for dinner, and less snacking throughout the day. One thing that has not changed is my coffee consumption, but that's okay, it's still under 16 fl oz/day. Sometimes it feels like I don't rest enough, but then others it feels like I'm not doing enough. It's a tough thing, this whole life-balance nonsense. Especially when you've gone on a couple of dates with somebody who seems interesting, and you wouldn't mind seeing again, but also lives 30 miles away. I get more excited about going on a long run or going rock climbing than I do about going on a date these days. I'm not quite sure what to make of that yet, but here we are. There's not much of a feeling of anxiety (in a good way, that feeling in your stomach), or for lack of a more appropriate word, fear, when I meet somebody and go on dates with them. Maybe it's a confidence thing, maybe it's a lack of interest thing, maybe it's an I haven't met the right person yet thing. But I do get that feeling with outdoor adventures, and kind of chase it. There are few things better in the world than placing yourself in a struggle against yourself and against the environment (balance safety, yo, don't be reckless)...that's a hard feeling to find... Anyways, I want to build a home coffee bar out of wood.
Flip Phone Predictive Text Here are some words that are in my flip phone's predictive text. Countries like Yugoslavia, Czechoslovkia, Suriname, and Zimbabwe. Places like Mogadishu and companies like Exxon. Fancy words like disintegration and precognition. Here are some words that are not on my phone. Penguin, raccoon, panda, rhino, mustang. I'm gonna be on the level here. In the grand scheme of things, I can type the word "panda" into my phone by pressing 726632 or the word "raccoon" by typing 777222222266666666 with sufficient pauses in between the numbers so the phone knows when to start a new letter. I honestly, sincerely, have zero problem with that. My fucking question is, who the fuck decided that Czechoslovakia, a country that dissolved in the early '90s, is a more common word than "raccoon." Here's a text I would send my wife "Baby, don't put the trash out until morning, the raccoons in our neighborhood have been getting into trash cans again." Here's a text I would not send my wife. "Baby, I'm moving to the area that was once known as Czechoslovakia. I hear they don't have raccoons there." My theory is that they have names of big countries and cities to make texting easier for business people who might have a need to talk about said big countries and cities. If that's the case, I want to wonder what kind of go getter businessman is using a fucking flip phone in 20fucking17. My sympathies to that poor bastard. The Matrix I rewatched The Matrix the other day. I remember when this film first came out, I saw it in the theaters and was BLOWN AWAY. The special effects were mind boggling and the action was like nothing I've ever seen. That was almost 20 years ago and honestly, it's showing its age. The Watchowskis made something amazing, but looking back after what we have today, their execution was pretty stunted and some of them kind of got in the way of the flow of the action. Nowadays, the special effects are much more subtle and seemless and if you don't know what you're looking for, you're gonna miss them. It's something you kind of take for granted until you go back and see The Matrix again. That said though, ground breaking film at the time. Kudos to those guys. They made something cool.
Work I have to work over the holiday weekend. My coworker/supervisor was the one listed on our on-call schedule, but somehow I wound up taking all four days. Not sure how that happened. We have a patient who needs to have some blood processed each day that they are in the hospital. Bloods are drawn between 0430-0500, and have to be processed within 2 hours of collection, preferably within 30 minutes. After I am done, I leave. But that still amounts to being at the hospital from 0500 to 0800, every morning, over the whole long weekend. I get time and a half, and I should be grateful for the extra hours as I need the dough. Struggling with that though BECAUSE Holiday My parents are divorced, and I am already sick of this double-holiday stuff. Thursday is Thanksgiving #1 with my mom, some of her siblings and my grandfather. Immediately after we have dinner there, I have to stop by my dad's house to prepare the bird and some other stuff for Thanksgiving #2 on Friday, with just me, my brothers, my dad and whomever he chooses to invite. Immediately after THAT meal, I have to drive to the RPS's grandparents house to prep ANOTHER bird that is going to be deep fried on Saturday for Thanksgiving #3 with her grandparents and a few cousins. Her parents are away visiting some other relatives for the holiday, so that leaves the deep frying of the bird to me, because of geriatric feebleness and my desire to have her family see me as capable and a valuable addition to their tribe. I've never deep fried a bird before, but I watched Alton Brown's tutorial on how to do it without burning down a building and it seems manageable. Hopefully the leftovers will make up for all my curmudgeonliness. (Is that a word?) I had a conversation with the RPS yesterday about how I have absolutely no positive regard for the upcoming Yuletide season, and at the moment I am framing it entirely by my obligations. That's no way to live, and she agrees. Tonight we are going to make a short list of things we can do to enjoy it, make things meaningful for us. We are a family, that means we get to make our own traditions, make our own meaning. Body We've been good about doing regular yoga lately, even if it's not all long sessions. I've committed to doing at least one one hour session of yoga per week, with the goal of having 2 or 3 hour long sessions in a week as regular practice on top of daily stretches. Still disappointed in my biking. I was at a steady 10 miles a day for a long time, took a break, and now it's an achievement if I manage to get to 8 miles in an hour of biking. Not happy about that. Not sure how to fix except by stubbornness. Brain Mostly beat back the funk that had grip of me last week. Had to remind myself that I'm already dead anyway, and this is all bonus rounds that I should be grateful for. I'm not going to save the world, I'm not going to save anybody from anything. But I might be able to make the experience of being human a little nicer for somebody, for a few somebodies if I work hard. One day I'd like to be able to say that with a smile instead of through gritted teeth. I have these flashes where I'm the guy who wrote the screed against optimism again. Where I am seeing the world through those blood and offal stained lenses, and I begin to swiftly and thoroughly devalue and demean every bit of progress I've made towards a healthier mind, healthier body, healthier relationships, etc and it hurts deeply. I'm trying to be proud of me, and nobody is better at tearing me down than me at my worst. Started something called the 'Self Authoring Suite' by Jordan Peterson. Will report back if it's helpful. The first exercise is in identifying your virtues, to build up your sense of coherent, valuable self before you start critiquing and making changes. Because I struggle to think or speak positively about myself, it's been quite challenging because it feels more masturbatory than actual self-pleasure. tl;dr - Lots to do.
Work on the album is coming along quickly. My artificial deadline is the 30th and I'm sticking to it. That is ostensibly plenty of days to wrap everything up, but looking at my schedule most of those potentially productive days will be wasted on ordinary life tasks. I'm trying to master some tracks now as "properly" as I can. I've been doing pseudo-mastering with a plugin that just so happens to sound decent as a one-step master, but I'm thinking I can do better. If all else fails I'll submit to just pseudo-mastering all of it. Right now I have a track that's at the level I want with the right amount of dynamic range I want, and there's no clipping. Except when I put it in the LUFS meter, which tells me my kick is exceeding the true peak max sporadically. So now I need to learn how to fix that without wrecking everything else. I'm pretty sure I'll have this issue for every track. I also need to figure out album art. I have an idea for it but I don't know how the execution will go.
Spoke some Chinese yesterday. Have never spoken Chinese in my goddamn life. Impressed some people with it. Had a realization that it's hot when a girl speaks Chinese. Managed to work myself into a headache. Preparing for speaking Chinese had something to do with it. Going to my favourite city to celebrate soon. Turns out there's a lot of things I haven't seen since the last visit a year or so ago. Going to spend a few days there, walk a whole lot, eat some of the less-healthy stuff and finally get my teeth on sweets.