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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • the answer is basically all TVs are subsidized to some degree. A list is somewhat pointless because they all do some sketchy shit and as lg has recently shown they reserve the right to change the terms years after the fact with firmware updates, even if you buy a flagship model that cost 3-5k

    Basically you need to use it intelligently. Either don’t connect it to the internet at all, only connect it to an intranet/isolated vlan, or (least effective) block every suspicious outgoing request with your router or a dns thing like adguard/pihole.

    The alternatives are to buy a non consumer display (eg something for signage or for like a meeting room in an office) which are usually more durable but also often far more expensive (no ad subsidies), the panel quality is generally noticeably worse (unless you’re buying a mediocre tv), and you lose out on enthusiast features (earc, vrr, etc). Or you can get a solid projector; the cheap projectors are usually kind of junk but nice ones are quite nice and often (but not always, they’re increasingly “smart”) have barebones ui/os. This can be pretty impractical for your living situation though




  • The policy issue to overcome here in America is a robust pension system. Home values are obscene for a lot of reasons but one of the biggest reasons no one does anything about it is because for most non elite Americans the home they own is their most valuable asset and the growth in equity ends up becoming a significant contributor to retirement

    Even with that the dream is over; the days of baby boomers buying houses and seeing explosive growth of 12-20k in 1960 to 200ish-k in 2010 or even gen x buying a house for 100k in 1995 and seeing it mature to 400k in 2020 are unsustainable. The people buying 250-400k houses now (like me) would be foolish to expect their homes to be worth millions in 30 years outside of hyperinflation.

    But I bet money we will cling to it. It’s difficult having seen the past several generations retire very comfortably via the equity in their home, while we make the $2000 mortgage payment that will get us housing but not this benefit. Another way millennials get fucked out of something that every modern generation before them had. To be fair this one had to die but it just sucks all of this gets saddled on us because it’s not like there’s a strong likelihood social security is getting fixed in time






  • You don’t

    You have lived with diffuse boundaries for some time and are now reaping the penalties. You can and should proceed with care and grace as you implement boundaries and define roles to move to where you want to be but it is absolutely foolish to think that it will not be at least a little hurtful to your pseudo partner.

    they will implement their boundaries in response to changes you are proposing; you have to respect these. If they chose to leave and tell you to fuck off then you have learned a valuable lesson in why you shouldn’t let boundaries be so diffuse for so long through so many changing contexts.

    It’s not realistic (usually) to expect you to know everything you need and want from a relationship up front but when contexts change you need to clarify what is and is not okay. If you’re okay with keeping it casual after things don’t work out that’s fine but make sure they’re aware. If they suddenly have to move in consider the boundaries of the situation again: are they still cool with keeping it casual? Are they now that you share a bed? Are they now that you’ve purchased a bed together?

    If you’re the one that wants it casual and wants the door open for new relationships it’s your responsibility to make sure your partner is aware of where you stand. One could say your friend/partner is foolish for assuming you’ve changed where you stand, and they’d have a valid point, but one could also say that you’ve been very misleading here. Boundaries need to be enforced and they need to be occasionally reviewed as contexts change, otherwise they fade away


  • This is one of the issues with the obscenely rich that isn’t as discussed. Here in the USA in New Jersey there was a single man that left the state. there was an uproar because he was one of the wealthiest in the state and there was a genuine concern on the impact of the state budget. The exact dollar amount wasn’t disclosed because it’s confidential in nj but he returned a few years later and there were statements that he contributed about 120-140 million in taxes. The state collected 31.5 billion in taxes in 2016 (the year he left)

    So he alone made up almost a half a percent of the entire state revenue in the state with the 7th highest tax revenues in the country. That’s an immense amount of power. When it happened people were wondering if nj would extend deals to keep him. They didn’t, but it’s not crazy to think somewhere would in that scenario when they’re looking at a 9 figure loss that could make up a noticeable percentage of their budget. If he had left Wyoming or South Dakota that slight less than half a percent of the budget could’ve been more like 4-5% or more



  • Clicker training is just paired stimulus to provide an easier and cheaper mode of reinforcement, training a behavior is separate

    like you do the clicker training by associating a noise (or whatever) consistently with a positive stimulus. what stimuli you use to prepare depends on the learner as different stimuli have different potency depending on the learners preferences. eg you can say a blanket “I’ll use food” for your dog and for some dogs this is fine. mine certainly seems to be food indiscriminate with no serious preference and very few refused items. But even with that I still need to take care not to use the non preferred (he spits out lettuce and celery. otherwise literally anything gets him salivating)

    but then to change a behavior you’re still relying on operant conditioning which would be something like upon exhibiting the desired behavior provide access to reinforcement consistently and then fade it out as the behavior strengthens. Operant conditioning is much more complex than this of course but this is a pretty standard jumping off point.

    That said there are pros and cons to clicker training humans. This is something that is practiced and even has some evidence behind it. The clicker solves a lot of potential reinforcement issues: it’s far easier to deliver immediately (which matters a lot). But I worry about the potency loss translating a strong reinforcer to a clicker. If you pair it with a food you really love or something it will potentially be effective but never as effective as the food itself.

    This is still potentially worthwhile as food reinforcers are often problematic (increasing caloric intake, often food reinforcers for people aren’t healthy options, promoting unhealthy eating habits) and reducing it to a click eliminates those issues. But if the behavior you’re trying to create is particularly difficult or aversive the reduction may mean the potency is no longer high enough to motivate.

    Often this can be countered by making the behavior less complex and working up to it (eg instead of learning a complex task in its entirety breaking it down into more manageable chunks). In practice this may look like just initiating the task at first and providing reinforcement, then as comfort increases raising the bar for reinforcement. Eg I need to keep my room clean but I hate cleaning so to start out I provide reinforcement for just picking up one item/small area. But then when I do that consistently I raise the bar and now I have to pick up 2 areas. Etc. or you could approach as a tolerance thing, I start by cleaning for only 3 minutes and reinforcing, then 5, 7, 10, etc. numbers are arbitrary and depend on the learner. Approach depends on the learner too, the toleration approach makes more sense for most people but if you do a bad job cleaning and need to develop the skill of cleaning thoroughly the first can make more sense. Then reinforcement is not time based but quality based, Eg did you clean the area sufficiently even if it took you 8 minutes. Drawbacks and positives for every approach

    And of course there’s the issue of delivering your own reinforcement. If you control access what’s to stop you from just taking the thing even though the behavior wasn’t exhibited. These strategies typically work better with external control of r+, but some people do have the self discipline to do it alone.

    There’s a LOT more to conditioning and reinforcement but I’m getting bored of this lmao. Also you may notice I didn’t describe anything about punishment. That is intentional because it is generally at a much higher risk of creating adverse effects and some studies suggest it is not nearly as effective as reinforcement based strategies wrt general population (and some specialized populations)



  • I worked homeless outreach in a rural area. My job was to connect people to housing, assist with obtaining government benefits, and mental health services if necessary. They would spend the day at local hot spots, well trafficked convenience stores in the morning, well trafficked stores like the local grocery store for most of the rest of the day. A lot of them would hang out in the stores as long as possible to escape the heat/cold and many would also hit up strangers for money at these spots

    They were often very hesitant or completely unwilling to share where they actually slept. Even though I worked for a nonprofit a lot of them saw me as a government employee and even the ones who didn’t still were very hesitant to trust me or any of my coworkers with that info. I’m pretty sure they were scared that I would call the cops or something. Some slept in wooded areas, some slept behind stores, some couch surfed, etc from the ones who did share and who I found (part of my job was being the point of contact for police and other emergency services who found people staying outside in dangerous weather and getting them emergency housing).

    Even though it was probably like 2013 or so that I did this job the absolute cheapest room that would rent to the homeless was $700/mo. There were cheaper rooms around but they tended to require big deposits and would often refuse to rent to someone that didn’t already have a permanent address. I’m pretty sure that’s illegal but they would get around it usually by being vague and ghosting. “Oh so sorry someone else got the room”, stuff like that, and you’d see it was still available for 3 more months. I can’t even imagine what the rent is like now

    Super depressing job. It’s very difficult to escape that cycle once you’re in it. It radicalized me a lot to work with people who were literally left on the street in a town with hundreds of vacant apartments. By our estimate there were maybe 20-40 homeless people in said town at any given point


  • You can also use komf alongside komga/kavita to just scrape metadata automatically upon import. A bit finnicky to get going (a tampermonkey script is required to give it accessible setting on the komga page) but works very well and even has a gui for identifying results and selecting the correct option if the auto scrape fails similar to jellyfin

    For the actual reader part I just use komga as a server and read through Mihon (one of the tachiyomi forks) on my ereader mostly. occasionally I’ll use paperback on my iphone (although recently I’ve been trying Tachimanga, which is basically an iOS tachiyomi fork). Loads library, can sort by tag/library/date added, reads most things very well, can sync read status with the komga server (and/or manga updates or whatever), etc.



  • The important takeaway from this is that “supplements” have 0 oversight. The CBD, probiotics, vitamin d, etc that you buy could just be capsules of vegetable oil that does nothing at all. Or they could be asbestos and cyanide for all you know (that probably would lead to an investigation though). There’s also no safety regarding packing and handling, so it might literally be a guy with unwashed hands who just picked his butt loading your gelcaps in a dirty bathroom that someone just took a massive shit in. No one checks and verifies any of this and that’s why shills and hucksters jump onto this shit, it’s a completely unregulated market where can cut corners everywhere and say whatever you want as long as you include *not intended to treat any diseases and not evaluated by the fda

    A $1200 thing you buy on instagram that sends “good waves” to your brain? Supplement. The cbd you buy at the gas station? Supplement. Doterra oils? Supplement. No regulation, no oversight, just robbing people based on their desperation to fix chronic pain and mental illness