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bobbyfiend

@ bobbyfiend @lemmy.ml

Posts
2
Comments
94
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Python!

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  • This has got to be the best, most legitimately funny programmer/computer joke I've seen in years.

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    Brain breakthrough: Dopamine doesn't work at all like we thought it did

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  • And that's how it's been understood for decades. The article creates a silly and false premise.

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    Brain breakthrough: Dopamine doesn't work at all like we thought it did

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  • Yes, that's always been more or less the case. However, the brain's uptake/use of neurotransmitters like Dopamine has been understood for decades to have at least some specificity to it. We always knew we were shooting flies with shotguns, though.

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    Brain breakthrough: Dopamine doesn't work at all like we thought it did

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  • Dopamine doesn’t flood the brain as once believed – it fires in exact, ultra-fast bursts that target specific neurons.

    Thank you. Almost every word of the sentence above is very much not what college freshmen have been taught for 30+ years. Dopamine was never thought to "flood the brain." For a few decades it's been understood to have highly targeted action, restricted by various factors not least of which is the fact that dopamine is only produced in/near certain synapses.

    Straw men are sometimes the most annoying men.

  • Lemmy, what's the meaning, or point if you prefer, of life? I know 42, but I'm serious. Nothing lasts, everything is meaningless - are we just amusing ourselves until death?

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  • Rational hedonism rocks.

  • Lemmy, what's the meaning, or point if you prefer, of life? I know 42, but I'm serious. Nothing lasts, everything is meaningless - are we just amusing ourselves until death?

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  • If you have a worldview that includes gods, spirits, fairies, the universe as an entity, etc., that worldview often also provides you with the "meaning" bit. It can be stifling, reassuring, motivating, or depressing, depending. That was me for a few decades. Without that set of beliefs there is no built-in meaning afaik. You can study the stars or atoms or human behavior or plants your whole life and those things will not reveal a purpose or meaning for you, the universe, or humanity.

    In the absence (for me) of any built-in meaning or purpose, we make our own meanings. If your meaning is "nothing matters so fuck it," that is the meaning you are choosing or accepting as some kind of default. Like many other people I choose meanings around happiness: the greatest good for the greatest number, as Spock (and probably some lesser figure) said. In this mechanistic universe we somehow came to be, and we can think and feel and understand and learn. That is almost unimaginably amazing to me. We are people, not just idk viruses grinding away. I choose a set of meanings that value people and their happiness. Life is miraculous and apparently rare. In that special group we, humans, are the most phenomenal thing we know of in the universe. I choose to value us.

  • A team of construction workers in China operating excavators remotely

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  • I'm sure this might be interesting, but the video is letterboxed so aggressively that even on fullscreen my laptop screen is 80% black with a postage-stamp of video in the middle that lasts about 3 seconds.

  • Have you ever worked for a scam?

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  • The usual: in college, desperate for work in a saturated college-city market I worked for Vector Marketing selling Cutco knives--one of the more humilating periods of my life--and interviewed for several other "jobs" that turned out to be MLM sales (e.g., I think a knockoff perfume company called "observe l'essence"?). I also tried to sell cars. Holy shit the people I worked with were horrible humans (except 1.5 of them).

    In a slightly less horrible vein I spent a summer (late 90s) in a call center for BellSouth.net, which mostly consisted of telling people to type their passwords in very carefully or reboot their computer. When someone found out I spoke Spanish I was given all Spanish, Portuguese, and even Italian customers, and released from all quotas and average call time metrics. This was good, because trying to work out what a Brazilian customer was saying on the phone was hard enough, but Italian (and maybe one time Romanian)? Took hours.

    Oh, the scammy part of that was minor: we were in a faceless warehouse on the outkirts of Columbus, Ohio, but we were instructed to always keep websites open for Atlanta, GA and to talk about the weather, sports, etc. and pretend we were in Atlanta.

    The oddest part of that job was that our floor of the warehouse/call center was shared with a brand new and kind of weird company that had just started running TV ads: priceline.com. We had breaks with priceline employees on a regular basis.

  • Have you ever worked for a scam?

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  • This reminds me of Foucault's Pendulum :)

  • Liberals: “Stalin was a brutal dictator!”

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  • Yes, critical thinking is hard.

  • Communism is when there is justice for everyone

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  • This echoes my concerns every time someone (especially under the age of about 40, especially American) praises "communism" (as if it were one thing) with some kind of absolute adoration.

    In this case, OP: how did that justice work for the political dissidents sent to gulags?

  • What's a random line from a movie that fans of it will instantly know?

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  • "I have no response to that."

  • It's an escape character.

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  • Wait, in the first one it looks like the S has a cape.

  • WHAT'S THE GODDDAMN HOLDUP?

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  • It's my goddamn IBS again.

  • What's the best time of day for crime?

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  • Depends on the crime.

    White collar: Probably daytime, so your presence (real or virtual) doesn't stand out.

    Physical property: I'm guessing this is mostly at night.

    Illegal U-turns: first week or two of the month.

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    P-Hacking in Startups | Briefer

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  • There's a much larger (and not resolved, even among statisticians and Serious Quant People) about what approach to take--and some people say don't take any--but just getting this info out to people who are unaware is a great thing to do.

  • WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?

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  • Bob

  • A skill or knowledge that you have that is typically associated with people of the opposite gender but that you think is odd or stupid that people of your own gender don't have?

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  • As a man, I've found this applies to almost any traditionally* feminine activity.

    • "Traditional" is a red herring, quagmire, and propagandum with gender roles. What is "traditional" for men vs women shifts around over time and place, and within cultures and subcultures. I actually mean something like "hegemonic" or "stereotypical within your specific cultural milieu."

  • A skill or knowledge that you have that is typically associated with people of the opposite gender but that you think is odd or stupid that people of your own gender don't have?

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  • Thank you for typing this all out. It was lovely and inspiring to read.