Alabasata
17d ago
Factorio: Space Age progress is going slow. The bare bones of the lava planet factory is automated, and its science is being delivered with few hiccups. The ruins planet factory is now underway & the first science packs are being crafted now.
Rolling for quality this go-round is still a chore. I knew enough to bring blue-quality advanced miners to maximize my rolling chances. Probably should have brought logistics bots with me instead of trying to build them from scraps scratch. Not to mention buildup of higher-quality materials on the lava planet occasionally creating jams & back up.
I wonder when I'll be ready to really start building the Mark II of home planet's base. Kinda thinking I should wait until unlocking some researches from the swamp planet first. But maybe I'll run out of patience first, so hard to say.
Alabasata
26d ago
Khan Academy has pretty much solved this problem for pre-college math.
It depends on the goal you're trying to accomplish. I used KA as a private tutor to measure my student's work in between sessions. As anybody who plays music will tell you, it's the practice between sessions that makes a habit. Those who used it, tested better. Those who didn't - did not. Which is well and good if all you're trying to do is test surface-level knowledge. KA does introductory and standardized word problems very well.
I reflect also on how "passing the test" was insufficient for me to earn enough income to support myself. But that may be a problem that pre-college math was never meant to solve?
Alabasata
1mo ago
First off, /r/Parenting is not the only game in town. I personally prefer /r/Daddit, largely due to earlier members posting actionable advice like the concept of 20 second hugs. There is some reee'ing as the sub has grown (e.g. "Why do people default to moms as the relevant authority?!", relationship troubles above the paygrade of Internet Strangers) but it generally upvotes posts displaying agency so I lurk there more often.
To answer your question, I only have experience with toddlers so my perspective is limited. Right now the majority of the behavior work we do is picking up toys, tantrum mitigation & risk management during playtime. For the latter, partner & I have settled into classic gender roles: mother's "safety first" vs. father's "she'll succeed or she'll learn something".
Generally, daughter isn't doing enough yet to put herself at enough risk (as I perceive it) where I have to intervene much. I'm sure that will change, but I don't know when or how that will be. Maybe drugs, maybe content diet, maybe choosing her friends - hard to say. But I know I'll have to draw lines eventually.
Alabasata
1mo ago
Swapped out laptops due to a hardware error. Now running a x10 science/railworld run, as per my usual style.
Just got back up to running space science again. Only shipping up raw material after placing enough platform to support iron/steel smelting. It's a slow run to craft things in space that only require iron, but the long-term resource savings are worth it, I feel.
Probably won't hit Vulcanus again until next week. I'll be more ready than last playthrough.
Alabasata
2mo ago
This is the first time I've ever heard about Griggs v. Duke, and I grew up around Roe v. Wade Republicans. Mostly because they were government workers or independent contractors, never managers or small business owners.
I'm not sure what to do with this new information.
Alabasata
2mo ago
BreadTube would call this "sigma-coded" behavior, and they believe failsons from Red Tribe are more susceptible to it than Blue's failsons. Whether that's true is hard to say. I don't know if anybody has done the work to sort out whether Harris & Klebold were Red or Blue. That's not polisci I personally want to touch.
And then, most mass shootings that make the news & get talked about are also not most mass shootings. So many news consoomers get a slanted view of who's really doing the shooting.
Alabasata
2mo ago
Saturday night, my partner & I filled out our respective ballots. Sunday morning, we dropped them in the mailbox by our local library.
This morning I got an email from my county. My mail-in ballot was processed & my vote was counted. The voting system in my state is working as intended, from my vantage point.
Hopefully more states can vote in the same manner I am. No theater, no drama, just a couple selections & bada bing bada boom. I just want more people to have my level of privilege, whatever their candidate of choice is.
Alabasata
2mo ago
Factorio 2.0 and Space Age dropped on Monday. A new batch of puzzles & logistics to solve & optimize are here. Since I discovered the game back in 2016ish, it's good to see new challenges outside the mod scene.
So far, I've put in enough time to launch a rocket (formerly endgame research, now mid-game) and research bot logistics.
I'll need to make notes of an actual bare-bones build for the new space station mechanics. Other people who can put in more time than I have are already handling exploring other planets. I'll get to that in due time.
Please no strategy spoilers. I haven't had a chance to get it wrong in a while - going from "suboptimal" to "good enough" to "pretty sharp" is going to be the most fulfilling piece of the game.
Alabasata
3mo ago
Polymarket is not legal to trade for USAians. Do we follow it for sport, or do we have "other methods" of participating?
Alabasata
3mo ago
Just picked up Bastiat's "The Law". It's...fine, I guess. It deserves to sit next to Communist Manifesto as an example of Romantic political pamphlets - their use of language points to their beliefs as self-evident truths. They don't wish to persuade, only to start talking points that they hope others repeat. For 1800s Europe, I guess that worked? It's still used on Twitter, Tumblr & Reddit today - so the technique seems useful enough.
But at least I finally have an idea of where "taxation is theft" came from. I wasn't fond of the idea before, and this book doesn't do it any favors.
Alabasata
3mo ago
This came up in a meeting with whitehairs. I claimed that setting up childcare on site would help attract parents. To which one replied, "Well, I'm a parent, and I don't see how that helps me any!"
My primary impulse is still "No, you were a parent." And there's some background wars of framing that go into this.
Alabasata
3mo ago
The pun is appreciated, though the conclusion is not. In my deferens, it's always taken at least two to tango when children are made.
Alabasata
3mo ago
Survey about parenthood: how do you describe people whose kids have left the nest? I was under the impression that the social role of "parent" took a back seat when the kids move out, but a conversation with grandparents last night has gotten some responses I did not expect.
Some people always want to be referred to as parents once they've had kids...and my gut feeling is that I don't like unspoken implications of that. Haven't put it into words yet why, though.
Alabasata
3mo ago
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Over 20 years, a high school classmate presented me with a star chart. I used to remember what my rising sign was. I never remembered the squares, trines, or other angled relationships with other signs. We haven't spoken aince graduation.
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A year before COVID, I danced with a woman at an independent art show. She asked me my sign. I asked her to guess. She smiled & said what her favorite signs were. I was not in that list. The next morning, she thanked me for the cup of tea I prepared. I sent a couple text messages, but she seemed uninterested. I moved on.
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Another coder I know posts about star signs roughly one a month. He has a lot more women in his social circles than I do, and they engage with him fairly well. I have noticed this, as well as his interest in the well-being of his toddler daughter.
Astrology is a tool. You can use it as a game, or you can get autistic with it and try to make grand statements about people's character. Lots of people like games; not a lot of people like to be defined.
Keep in mind that when someone is tasked with a decision and is suffering from analysis paralysis, even an irrational & arbitrary distinction such as birth month can narrow the field down to a reasonable set of choices.
Alabasata
4mo ago
This ignores the potential for either favoritism or lack of oversight towards people who are in the same church. After all, our church has the best people. /s
Alabasata
4mo ago
Also note that deliberate race-swapping can still make good art. Both Spike Lee & Mel Brooks made "Where did we go right?" movies where the premise is that terrible stereotypes actually sell great. (Bamboozled & The Producers)
"X But it's a $Demographic Movie" doesn't have to suck. It's still all in the execution.
Alabasata
5mo ago
I misread this at first. I had thought the daughter said "eat me" as a retort. That would have been twisted-sitcom funny.
No, this was a proposition from the father from the start. We do not share the same sense of humor.
Alabasata
5mo ago
I actually did miss your mention in OP, thanks for calling my attention to it. (I also actually have no idea who Bill Diblasio was before this thread, so am not keen to comment on him in particular.)
If the concepts of races get more defined than they are now, you'll find a lot more Diogenes "Behold!" cases cropping up. Blackness in particular is a more interesting thread after the Drake/Kendrick throwdown earlier this year.
I prefer to think of Black as an ethnicity, much like how the Jews are. It's less DNA than it is culture. "This is our music, these are our dances, this is how we tell history to each other." If you were raised in it, you are at least informed by that culture - even if you reject it later in life.
And because these identities are going to be internally & externally checked, the edge cases will keep coming. Generally, I'll defer to the groups who have more at stake to claim her or not.
Kamala Harris was accepted into Alpha Kappa Alpha, one of the Blackest sororities you can find. I trust them to vet & measure Blackness better than Donald Trump (or TheMotte) can.
If she's Black enough for them, she's Black enough to me. Total distraction of an issue, not unlike talking heads asking if Obama was Black enough during his primaries.
ASIDE: Is there a programming term for classes with predefined variables that are declared but not defined? It's the only analogy I can think of that approximates the issue.
Alabasata
5mo ago
I'm a bit hazy on Cerebus, but I seem to recall he had a bit of a brain-break during Church & State II. Where, like, not many of the remaining 200 issues were actually worth reading.
Gorgeous scenery, though.
Alabasata
6mo ago
Counterpoint: it is becoming more common for grocery stores & gas stations to lock their bathrooms. This is a downscaling of trust.
Maybe retail is more accepting to take money from anyone regardless of appearance. But the real trust is if they'll let you take a shit like a civilized person.
I'm not worried about death. That's inevitable.
Post-pandemic worried me. I heard a lot of stories about how people were profoundly affected by COVID & the lockdown. I...wasn't especially. I worked, I shopped with a mask on, I went home.
If my lifestyle was such that a national state of emergency barely affected my weekly routine...what parts of society have I missing out on all this time?
Dying? It sucks, but it's not a problem. Living on a pandemic-proof autopilot? Problem.
This may not answer your question about the Big Stuff. But hopefully this will help answer why I'm not especially interested in Big Stuff questions.
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