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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1371 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 19, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I started reading Kafka's The Trial yesterday, and I was reminded of Jonathan Franzen's Ten Rules for Novelists:

  1. The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator.

  2. Fiction that isn’t an author’s personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn’t worth writing for anything but money.

  3. Never use the word then as a conjunction—we have and for this purpose. Substituting then is the lazy or tone-deaf writer’s non-solution to the problem of too many ands on the page.

  4. Write in third person unless a really distinctive first-person voice offers itself irresistibly.

  5. When information becomes free and universally accessible, voluminous research for a novel is devalued along with it.

  6. The most purely autobiographical fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more autobiographical story than The Metamorphosis.

  7. You see more sitting still than chasing after.

  8. It’s doubtful that anyone with an Internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.

  9. Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.

  10. You have to love before you can be relentless.

I disagree with a lot of this, but #8 jumped out at me. I have ~65k words of an unfinished novel that I want to finish in February. I've been writing it in Google Docs specifically so that I can work on it on my phone on the train. Ideally, I would like to work on it on my laptop with the internet disconnected, to avoid distraction. I understand that you can work on a Google Docs document offline, and the document will sync automatically as soon as you reconnect. My question is, can anyone recommend a piece of software that will prevent my computer from connecting to the internet for a fixed period of time? The workflow I'm envisioning is, I get home from work, sit down at my laptop, disconnect the Internet and set this up such that I can't reconnect for an hour or ninety minutes or whatever. If this piece of software could also block me from opening certain applications (e.g. Steam, VLC) during the period as well, that would be even better.

Why do you need sync if you're only going to write at the disconnected setup? I would think the simplest way to heed that advice is to get a machine that can't connect to the internet and write on that using some offline word processor (e.g. Scrivener). Maybe back it up on a USB drive occasionally if you feel the need.

In most places you can get refurbished office PC's for cheap that should be up for the task. An old laptop with a broken WiFi card could also work.

Why do you need sync if you're only going to write at the disconnected setup?

I'm not. My first preference is to write at home on my laptop disconnected from the internet, but I'll also need to write on my phone during my commute.

When information becomes free and universally accessible, voluminous research for a novel is devalued along with it.

Is it devalued? Maybe. But it's hard to write a novel that takes the reader's time and intelligence seriously if you don't do some research. At the very least a wiki lookup or asking an LLM doesn't hurt.

The most purely autobiographical fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more autobiographical story than The Metamorphosis.

Absolute nonsense of the "sounds deep, makes no sense if you think twice about it" variety. If your work is "pure" invention, then I struggle to see how it can be autobiographical. I expect most objections to be quibbling about what counts as pure invention.

I interpreted the bit about autobiographical fiction as mostly a joke.

Cold Turkey is the best I know: the kinds of blocks you can do are sophisticated and flexible, and so are the ways you can implement those blocks.

Sadly, it doesn't work on Linux. I have LeechBlock but what I really want is the opposite: to unblock things for the next X time and then have them block automatically.

I use Self-Control, which lets you block websites for a length of time. You can block all websites but allow a whitelist, or block only a few websites. That doesn't prevent all internet connection though, just browser use.

My question is, can anyone recommend a piece of software that will prevent my computer from connecting to the internet for a fixed period of time? The workflow I'm envisioning is, I get home from work, sit down at my laptop, disconnect the Internet and set this up such that I can't reconnect for an hour or ninety minutes or whatever.

This is easy on Linux or MacOS with a short command line script. Run the script, it kills the wifi or locks down the firewall, and undoes that step 90 minutes later. You can't undo it unless you have admin rights and remember the command to undo everything without using the internet.

So maybe consider getting an old macbook/Linux laptop and keep the setup bare-bones. Comes with the bonus of far fewer distractions, too.

You could also run the same thing on your router directly, taking the whole house offline. It probably supports scheduled internet disconnects out of the box and you can find that option in the web GUI, but most routers run Linux anyway and you just need to get access to run your own scripts.

I've forgotten the name of a writer, whom I think was introduced to via The Motte: The webpage that was linked to was a long piece on female physical attractiveness to men, with good examples of convergence in art (e.g., depictions of fertility goddesses) and less persuasive evidence from porn and sex dolls. The author also had an argument that almost no homes should be built with attached garages, and a zoning scheme that would purportedly accommodate everyone having a SFH with a detached garage. (He was much more persuasive that attached garages generally make facades ugly than that attached garages are a net negative. Part of the argument was that cars don't strictly need to be stored indoors, and other things could be stored in a shed. However, most of the things you would store in a garage are things that are designed to be used outdoors, but would benefit from being stored indoors, and cars are far and away both the most expensive of these things and the most likely to be resold to fund their replacement - if you can park in a garage, you should.) Anyone recognize this description?

Shielding your car from precipitation and sunlight at least is generally a good idea and contributes to the longevity of the framework. And if you go as far as to build a garage for that purpose, it should be used for that purpose, and not as a shed, I'd say. If you also need a shed, then get one built.

Multiple people have linked it, but no one has yet pointed out that the author is a female (cis I believe)

Could be lying, but I don't believe she is.

This certainly makes the complaints that she's 'mansplaining' quite hilarious!

In retrospect I probably should have guessed from the handwriting font used in a lot of the posts.

Bro what

It's more apparent in her essay on why the red pill is wrong, and she calls herself a female writer at the end.

It does make me question how accurate the beauty myth essay is, though, since it's apparently written by a (very unusual) woman and not a man.

The critique that the redpill turns men into emotionally annihilated performing monkeys to satisfy women’s dark urges isn’t new (there was some MRA vs PUA drama back in the day), but it’s well made.

Every time I see that blog post, I get irrationally angry.

The author has bad taste and a myopic, illiterate understanding of art and aesthetics, especially in relation to female beauty. There is a fundamental lack of knowledge about mythology, anthropology, psychology, symbolism, female archetypes.

The section on love/fertility goddesses should be a massive red flag. There is no engagement with the mythology surrounding the goddess figures he writes about. And any extrapolation of beauty standards from these mythological figures, without first a correct understanding of the mythos of said figures, is wholly meaningless, surface-level. And you cannot write about sexual archetypes and not mention Camille Paglia. The section on male gaze is laughable. No feminist theory was consulted in writing the piece. No Freud either, nothing. I am asking for the very basics here.

I hate the picture spam. It is dishonest

The author has bad taste and a myopic, illiterate understanding of art and aesthetics, especially in relation to female beauty. There is a fundamental lack of knowledge about mythology, anthropology, psychology, symbolism, female archetypes.

What is a better interpretation of these pieces of art?

I think that the blog post is great, and has a lot of insight. It's overly long and belabors its points sometimes, but is much more right than wrong imo. I think that the things you're describing as "the very basics" are completely extraneous and I have no idea why on earth you're demanding these irrelevant digressions.

I enjoyed the first few paragraphs as I leapfrogged the weird AI pics mixed with what looked like Flashman illustrations. Then he started using lovedolls as evidence for what all men want, then wouldn't stop with the lovedolls already. By the time he got to the picture of I think peak Tyra Banks along with a few other supermodels in their prime wearing lingerie and his caption was "Not really what men want" I felt certain either I am an extreme outlier (because I want) or he was blinded by his own biases for thicc. Admittedly I have not finished reading, and probably will later

Yeah, that was confusing. Those women have ideal 0.7 hip/breast to waist ratios. Men very much want that.

But, of course, what men really want is the impossible 0.6 hip/breast to waist ratio of anime dolls. Sadly, hyperreal does seem to dominate over real in terms of male (and female) desire.

One of the things the author does which is kind of bad from is that he will switch between two meanings of "not what men want". Sometimes he seems to mean "men find this repulsive" (as in the case of many fashion models), and sometimes he seems to mean "this isn't most men's ideal woman". In the second case, someone can not look like the average man's ideal woman and still be attractive to many men (both because men are not insistent on getting their ideal, but also because men's individual preferences vary so that some men's ideal woman does look like that).

sometimes he seems to mean "this isn't most men's ideal woman". In the second case, someone can not look like the average man's ideal woman and still be attractive to many men (both because men are not insistent on getting their ideal, but also because men's individual preferences vary so that some men's ideal woman does look like that).

It's explained at the end of the article: the goal is to move into a niche where demand exceeds supply. You can have a body that 15% of men find appealing and 40% of women have or you can have a body that 40% of men find appealing and 15% of women have. Unless you have The One in your sights or have a Groucho Marx approach to mate selection ("I won't date any man that finds my gravity-defying anime tiddies attractive") it's better to have the latter body, simply because now you have seven times more men to choose from and can get to be picky.

It is a really bad post. If I was going to try to annoy the majority of posters here, I would call it mansplaining, but that really is what it is. It starts from a strange premise that women don’t know what men find attractive, and are all out here starving themselves trying to be as skinny as coke era Kate Moss because they’re too stupid to understand that men like the slim thick build with big tits (something rather incongruent with the huge implant industry, almost entirely driven by female demand - ie not husbands demanding their wives get surgery). If anything, it’s men who seem more confused about what women like.

It starts from a strange premise that women don’t know what men find attractive

I actually am much more willing to believe this than I would've been in the past. As I've gotten to know my wife better and better over the course of our marriage, it is shocking the number of times she'll say something which shows that she (or her friends sometimes) doesn't really understand men. My takeaway has been that women do not actually understand men as well as they think they do. It wouldn't surprise me to find that women don't have a very good idea of what men find attractive either.

For what it's worth, some here claim the author is female, and I've seen her referred to as "her" in essays she re-tweeted.

It starts from a strange premise that women don’t know what men find attractive,

Men are belittled for not knowing what women find interesting in dating app pictures (ie not the stereotypical photo of a man with a large fish he caught). Why would only men not know what women like, while women would have insight into preferences of both genders?

If anything it is the opposite: a literal hairy pigwoman can get laid, thus showing women do not need to know anything about men to get their attention, while only a smattering of men will ever be considered worthy of female attention. Thus men have an incentive to try to understand women, which diesn't exist vice versa.

If anything it is the opposite: a literal hairy pigwoman can get laid

Women generally don’t want to get laid, they want commitment from a good man who treats them well. Kudos to circus freaks who find that, but ‘had sex’ does not necessarily indicate it.

Why would only men not know what women like, while women would have insight into preferences of both genders?

Because I think being attractive to men is simpler than being hot to women because men care more about physical features alone while women care about both physical features and more intangible but easily perceived qualities like a sense of presence and charisma, for which being hot is often necessary but not usually sufficient. If that’s misandry I do apologize.

Say you ask the average relatively attractive woman to wear the outfit she thinks men will like the most - she will probably know what it is. Will the average man know the inverse? It’s not that women don’t care about men’s style, either. Men just don’t seem to think about it.

If anything it is the opposite: a literal hairy pigwoman can get laid, thus showing women do not need to know anything about men to get their attention

Since most women have little interest in maximizing the number of sexual partners they have, whether they could find ‘someone’ to fuck is irrelevant. What matters is finding someone good, who will commit, who is nice and who is attractive (in various ways), and that is very much as competitive for women as finding a good partner is for men.

It starts from a strange premise that women don’t know what men find attractive

Do they? If they do, I think the most charitable explanation is that they prioritize other evaluations of their appearance:

  • evaluation by other women, who rate fashionable outfits higher than they rate attractive ones and who downrate women that exploit their attractiveness to the fullest, branding them pick-mes/sluts
  • deliberately lowering the amount of male attention they receive. Back when my wife was my GF I asked her to get a bodycon knit dress, because she had the right figure to rock it (still does). She bought one (nothing racy: long sleeves, knee length, crew neck) and wore it just once, because sudden lulls in conversation when she entered the office really upset her. Her friend would wear the same model in a different color to the same workplace with no regrets

It's fine, you can always annoy us. The lesson of ‘mansplaining’ is that women find correct information threatening.

something rather incongruent with the huge implant industry

Not huge enough, evidently. He probably thinks it should be near-universal, personal interest well considered, given that it’s like 3 points of attractiveness for little effort.

He doesn’t really cover the issues with implants which is that rupturing is an issue, they have to be replaced every 10 years for life (expensive, time consuming, recovery process, inherent risk of anaesthesia), and the initial cost is quite high for many young women, plus you want to shop around to find someone good.

Most people also aren’t relentlessly focused on maximizing their hotness, which is why plenty of people don’t care about style, don’t go to the gym, are overweight etc.

Jesus Christ, I had no idea how shitty they were. All the sales-talk about "helping you achieve the feminine curves you desire" followed by dropping the "hardened scar tissue and breast deflation" stuff is surreal.

The cost/benefit of those things is far higher, especially for women. Men don't care if women have no style, don't go to the gym, and are (slightly) overweight.

You’re typical minding when you say most people know this. People’s opinions bounce off random shit they hear (eg, lies by men reassuring their wives), they can’t cut through it with a sharp intellect like yours.

What would you imagine drives that demand for boob jobs, if women's wants are indeed the driving force (maybe they are, I'll take your word for it)? Women imagining this is what men want them to look like? Personal self-consciousness before the judgment of other women? Or something else?

It ties into intrasexual competition which is ultimately derived from opposite sex attraction but in practice sublimated beyond a broader layer of activity best described as posturing. Men and women both do this in different ways, throughout their lives. Being a man with a small dick is bad, imagine if everybody knew you had a small dick, including other men.

Whoah whoah whoah, who have you been talking to? If it was Ingrid, don't believe a word, plus we dated in the winter time, so there's that.

No feminist theory was consulted in writing the piece. No Freud either, nothing.

I cannot tell if you're serious or sarcastic.

I would suggest if he's serious it's not an unreasonable point. Straw(wo) manning a view isn't a compelling argument for any but the already devout. There are, as well, a gamut of feminist views, from the pathological (Andrea Dworkin) to the clear minded but currently criticized (Germaine Greer) to Ms. Male Gaze herself (Laura Mulvey). He didn't need to write a treatise but not even naming any of these people suggests he just has an idea of what Womyn TM think. I agree the author should read a few books of Camille Paglia's.

https://www.jsanilac.com/essays/

Thanks

It's this guy.

Thanks

https://www.jsanilac.com/dispelling-beauty-lies/?ref=jsanilac.com

This guy, I think.

Thanks

Why on earth is a detached garage a good idea? Just complicates electrical service and makes the house insulation less efficient.
I really regret having so many shitty outbuildings, but it's optimal for property tax purposes.

Unless the house has a very wide and/or particular facade, attached garages are ugly. (And, if you have a large enough lot that you can spare the outdoor area, the indoor area might be put to better use.) In every other way, attached garages are superior, though he believes that most garages are unnecessary and detached garages are a lesser evil, more precisely.

An attached garage lets you enter your house directly after getting out of your car, which is rather practical whenever it rains/snows, or whenever you need to wipe your feet.

This has nothing to do with attached garages and everything to do with garages being the most prominent part of house facades. The latter is indeed bad, but an attached garage is neither necessary nor sufficient for this to happen.

There's also a section on other ways to utilize the interior space. I disagree that attached garages are a net negative, but the argument is not purely aesthetic.

I think this has to do with the lots getting narrower and narrower in the US. You can no longer build your house next to a garage without violating various bylaws about setbacks. Look at "Walter White's house", a two-car garage takes up literally half the frontage. You would need to replace the house with a two-storey one to be able to get rid of the garage on its façade and even then it would be a squeeze: the lot is 72 feet wide, with two 6-foot side setbacks it's just 60 feet, a nice two-storey house is 40 feet wide, which leaves just enough space for an attached two-car garage that doesn't crowd the facade.

Front setbacks are bullshit, no doubt about it. However even in this case, plenty of Mista White's neighbors are parking their cars further back. Seems it should be trivially possible to put a garage where that car is and move the main house closer to the curb to compensate. There's no windows on the side facade of the house anyway. I am not aware of setback requirements treating houses and garages differently, but I may be unaware.

Are lots getting narrower in the US? It is my impression that they are getting wider.

I have seen US houses built on agglomerations of four 25′×110′ lots. Obviously, a 25-foot-wide lot would have approximately zero buildable area under most modern zoning codes (example). But such a lot was perfectly buildable back when the lot was originally laid out, one or two hundred years ago.

This video I watched says they are: https://youtube.com/watch?v=b8wnnFUazOY

That article appears to have been written by someone who doesn’t work with his hands… or drive a nice car, for that matter.

You put the nice car in the garage so you don’t have to spend a bunch of time brushing off the car when it snows. If it’s a ragtop, you don’t have to worry about vandals slicing it open; if it’s a truck with a tonneau cover, you don’t have to worry about leaving it open lest the tweakers break it open to see all the nothing inside.

You also have a garage so that you have room to do things to maintain the house. Need to paint a door, or space to marshal furniture, or maintain the car? You can’t do that if you don’t have a clear workshop… which is what the people in those pictures with their cars outside are using their garage for, and dedicated shop areas are even rarer than garages are.

Detached garages are still ugly for the same reasons attached ones are, but if your lot’s on an incline there’s usually no place to put one. With an attached garage that’s not a concern, obviously.

Oh yeah, and you can just put another storey on top of an attached garage. Sometimes you can even fit two floors, so you have rooms on the second storey with a better view.

You can’t do that if you don’t have a clear workshop… which is what the people in those pictures with their cars outside are using their garage for,

I like attached garages but realistically speaking 3/4 of garages I've seen open in my neighborhood are stacked floor to ceiling, wall to wall with various garbage. Only about a quarter are usable shop spaces, gyms, etc.

Also, even if you don't have a particularly nice car or live where it snows, your car is probably better off not sitting in the sun all the time.

Also it's really nice not to have to go outside to get a tool from the garage.

Glad to know I'm politically unbiased and want to punch nrx architecture nerds in the face just as much as /r/yimby-communist ones.
I'd love to have a giant shed extension on my house instead of having to haul everything out to the workshop(s) in the rain. Having a two car garage was the only thing I liked about living in Texas.

How do you know he's a NRXer?

What’s up with Nasim Taleb? I read Black Swan recently and found it generally insightful. But the guy constantly boomerposts on twitter and gets into pretty stupid arguments calling people racist for mentioning IQ

Taleb is just another example of the corrupting influence of Twitter. Read his books when he publishes and ignore anything else

He is a boomer (well, he was born in 1960, the 46-64 baby boom was mostly an American phenomenon) and he is very argumentative.

Re: IQ 1. He did have a sample of people working for him, where all IQ scores were above 115 and the highest scores didn't reliably correlate with increased short and medium term success. 2. Lebanon scores 82, which he takes as a personal insult, and he points out that the Lebanese diaspora having plenty of very successful people.

The low national IQ score matches up well enough with the low PISA score and unfortunate economy. With any country getting a bad score, I think plenty of times it could be reasonably be said that it's somewhat depressed by malnutrition/trauma. Also different subpopulations could have very different scores. Looking at lists of successful people in the Lebanese diaspora on wiki, it's pretty Maronite, and not particularly Orthodox or Muslim and very little Druze (with apologies to Casey Kasem). Given IQs from Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia range from 74-76 and Jordan is 80, if we assume the Lebanese Muslims are closer to those numbers, the Maronite average IQ could be anywhere from 86-96. Also, brain drain can be a bitch.

He's kinda like Elon or Trump: a savant in some ways, a complete fuckwit in others.

The problem with Taleb is that his contributions to society are fairly minor. There's no reason to tolerate him since he hasn't had an interesting idea in years. In 2025, he's just a pimple on the ass of Twitter.

So, what are you reading?

Still on The Wisdom of Insecurity and other things.

Just started Starship Troopers. I wanted to read something fun, and I'm enjoy it so far.

Just finished the Odyssey. This read, I thought a lot about connections to other epics, like Milton or the Ramayana. What do the differences tell us about the cultures that produced them?

I picked up Gaiman's Sandman series. I'm on to volume 4 now. It might be that I'm not used to horror or comics or horror comics, but the first two volumes (A Doll's House and the process of getting the tools back) struck me as witchy and atmospheric, but pretty uninteresting plot wise. On the other hand, the self-contained stories in Dream Country like The Dream of One Thousand Cats were great. Though, given recent news, having the author in Dream Country repeatedly rape his imprisoned muse for story ideas is a liiiitle...well...you know...

If you want a really interesting comparison to fit in with those three (particularly assuming you've read the Iliad), I would recommend adding The Song of Roland.

Still on Master and Commander as my falling asleep book.

I'm quite enjoying it and didn't expect it to be so positive, but I guess it being written in the 70's inured it against cynicism.

Last week I finished Katalin Street by Magda Szabó. It was pretty good, though I doubt I'll read it again. On Thursday I started Boy Parts by Eliza Clark and it was so compulsively readable I had it finished by Saturday. It touches on a wealth of CW topics: female violence, the male gaze, false accusations of rape, whether there's any meaningful difference between fetish art and porn. Ultimately ends up feeling a bit like an extremely online, gender-flipped version of American Psycho. Very impressive, especially for a debut from such a young writer, even if I did feel like Clark was pulling her punches slightly.

Started The Trial by Kafka last night.

"The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties," by Christopher Caldwell, which argues that both the Great Society and Reaganism were misguided. Caldwell seems scrupulous, so I'm enjoying it.

Between Two Fires

A knight in ex communicatio and a bugger priest team up to escort a loli with visions of angels across plague-stricken mids 1300s France. Shenanigans of demonic and mundane nature ensue.

I'm only about a third of the way through. This could have functioned as a straight historical fiction novel but it leans fairly into the supernatural. The character dynamics of the main trio are carrying it so far.

The White Knight Syndrome, which is an interesting read so far, even if it hasn't magically transformed me into someone other than Don Quixote...

Natural Right and History by Leo Strauss for philosophy book club. Generally enjoying it, but I feel like he makes some dubious assumptions about things. Also working through Judas by Amos Oz and the last few hours of Solaris.

Favorite line of poetry or prose? For cleverness, beauty, or metaphor.

"War is good business, invest your son."

That line was incredibly influential to teenaged me.

"Mejor los indios".

What is this from?

Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West, by Cormac McCarthy.

Context: It's a graffity that shows up after our protagonists succesfully hunted down a large group of indians, took their scalps and arrived as heroes in Chihuahaha, which had offered a bounty for this purpose. They then proceed to party so hard that the townspeople end up wishing for the Indians instead of the Gringos.

I find it hilarious.

"With a car you can go anywhere you want" he said to himself, out loud.

I love poetry, but this just cracks me up.

"I always wonder why birds choose to stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on the earth, then I ask myself the same question."

-Harun Yahya

They fuck you up, your mum and dad,
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had,
And add some extra just for you.

The Tiger - Nael

The tiger

He destroyed his cage

Yes

YES

The tiger is out

One of the few poems that reliably induce frisson in me. I felt it again just reading it.

This isn't what you asked, but some of my favorite poems are:

Ulysses, The Present Crisis, Lepanto, The White Man's Burden, Recessional, various hymns (to be clear, this is not an endorsement of every sentiment found therein),

From Virgil's Georgics:

Poor creatures that we are, the best days of our lives
are first to fly

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn. A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road. One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive, Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles. I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

  • Czelaw Milosz, Encounter 1936

“There can be no doubt that gods have appeared, not only in ancient times but even late in history; they feasted with us and fought at our sides. But what good is the splendor of bygone banquets to a starving man? What good is the clinking of gold that a poor man hears through the wall of time? The gods must be called.”

  • Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil

I first saw this on Calling the Gods on Arya Akasha By Curwen Ares Rolinson

To the Motte, Seeking your sage wisdom, I come back asking for advice on how to make an LDR work.

Duration:

  • Best case - 4 months (with visiting)

  • Worst case - 7 months (with month long visit)

  • Medium case - 4 months without visiting

Time Delta: EST vs GMT+4:00, so 9 hours.

Overall sentiments: We want to make it work even though it's painful given its a new/fresh relationship and we know each other for roughly 4 months. (Things progressed very fast)

I am aware of the common pitfalls, failure modes, ways to make it work. But what are some unknowns and lesser known tips or pitfalls?

One that comes to mind is that undercommunication is a common failure mode, but so is overcommunication. Couples tend to overcompensate for the distance, but as a result overwhelm each other with their constant digital presence, which ultimately harms the relationship. I'm not sure exactly how to pull this off given my girl wanted almost constant communication while she was here and was very needy.

Another failure mode seems to be doing an LDR at all. Things would have picked up just fine once the partner was back and resulted in a healthy relationship, but going through an LDR results in the potential relationships failure due to the challenges it brings. I don't think this is a good strategy if things are already serious.

What are the signs you know it will work? How to make it work? Give me all your LDR knowledge.

I'm not sure exactly how to pull this off given my girl wanted almost constant communication while she was here and was very needy.

Discuss this in detail before she leaves. Set realistic expectations. I was in the exact situation 15 years ago, we didn't discuss that, and as a result still get stress flash-backs when I hear the classic Skype ringtone.

While I'm not a relationship expert, I've had an LDR which eventually fell apart because we were poorly suited to one another; chemistry was great but values and interests didn't align. I've also been married (with kids) for more than a decade to my current partner.

The reason your relationship will or won't work is going to have more to do with your compatability and commitment to each other than any strategy you might have for dealing with physical separation. It sounds like you care about making it work, so do the things you would do in a regular relationship: work to be the best person you can be, listen, make time, and try to maintain mutual friends. This last one is huge; no one really seems to think about how your girl is much less likely to drop you if you're friends with her friends.

Just bear in mind that if this isn't a good match, there's probably nothing you can do to keep it going, and that's really OK. At this stage in your relationship part of the point is for each one of you to try to tell whether it's a good match, and that's not easy to be confident about until you've known someone for over a year. This isn't just true of girlfriends, it's true of coworkers, employees, neighbors, and just about anyone you might know. Enjoy it while it lasts, and good luck that the two of you are right for each other!

Not sure how prone you would be to cheating but really avoiding even the first step that would lead to that process is key.

Specified date nights is big, but then occasional phone calls when you're free and walking somewhere. That can help alleviate her stress if she's an anxious texter and you aren't a big one.

Possible to play a game with her at the same time? Could be anything - animal crossing for instance

Playing a game is a great suggestion, it offers a pleasant distraction and a shared focus for something external to the relationship. Having nothing but updates on how each other's life is going can get a bit monotonous so building up some shared activities will help prevent falling into that.

Her being more eager to text/call you are good signs, the opposite is not. As long as you do not appear needy, you should be fine for a while. I turn off girls routinely over the phone and on text because I overgame them or go to the opposite end. As long as you are able to not care too much about the worst-case scenario, you should be fine as caring too much always leads to you being needy.

I don't think this is a good strategy if things are already serious.

I have never had a relationship. Those who I learnt from, yareally in particular mentioned that if you have friends with benefits who you meet once a week or more, then she will eventually fall in love with you, conversely if you are not around a girl physically, keeping attraction alive is hard. In your case, you already are doing fine. Refrain from texting her obsessively.

You can try having communication be centred around calling instead of texting since texts can eat up far more time, and convey way less and you can always just be a notification whereas calls let you be yourself far more.

Lastly, be ready to walk away, 4 years ago I was given the same advice here and I ignored it which led to my now infamous post about that one girl and learning pickup. You seem like a fairly upstanding guy so you should be fine but in case you think it is going sideways, be willing to walk away knowing you can always recreate special things.

What are the signs you know it will work?

Her investing more in you is the only visible sign. In every interaction, one person invests more than the other. I completely ignored this and thought that texting more meant more windows to make a girl like me, instead, I should have texted less, and not cared too much about her at all.

Clear commitment to a shared future helps. Seven months apart is not that long in light of years of marriage. My husband and spend several months apart while engaged, and I know married couples who spend a few years working in different states (and even countries).

Does anything prevent the two of you from getting engaged?

Set aside a regular daily time slot for video calls. Discuss in advance and in person how you plan to sext: just watching each other masturbate, doing it to the same video, connected sex toys or JOI.

Suggestions for a fast CAS for Linux? I know there's a bunch of good free stuff for Linux that has shoddy/no Windows support.

(Main use-case is arithmetic with nested loops, to sum over cases for a combinatorial problem. Mathematica is ~3x the speed of Maxima on Windows.)

Does Julia count?

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