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deanSolecki's comments
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deanSolecki  ·  3090 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Mountain Goats- This Year

Woah, the memories.

deanSolecki  ·  3093 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Windows 10 patches make a return on Windows 7 and 8

Bash shell or bash skulls!

deanSolecki  ·  3094 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How compassionate should I be to a manipulator?

I think by letting her get something positive out of bad behavior you're teaching her to keep doing it. Try giving her the response you think will teach her to interact with people in a productive way.

You can't help anyone that much. Just play your small part in teaching this person to be an adult and be on your way.

I just swapped ubuntu for fedora on my macbook air and the setup for that was super, super easy. With ubuntu I needed refind, but fedora shows up right in the OSX bootloader. On my desktop I use separate drives so I don't know how fedora plays with Win 10, but I think it is also pretty easy.

If you want easy install the big distros are probably your best bet. A live usb might help you with fix/recovery as well, including looking at the partitions and seeing what's going on (fedora's install has pretty straightforward tools for this.)

deanSolecki  ·  3112 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: I'm about 15 hours into my switch from smoking to vaping.

The future, man. I mean, like, the future.

deanSolecki  ·  3112 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: I'm about 15 hours into my switch from smoking to vaping.

It's a lot easier than quitting smoking outright. For me the important thing was letting my cigarettes run out and not buying any more instead of trying to "phase out" smoking, which didn't work. Also, the last time I tried I bought shitty "cigarette style" vaporizers which didn't last the whole day, were easy to lose, and didn't provide much of a hit. Because I was "phasing out" cigarettes every time something happened with the vaporizer I just smoked a lot more that day. Spend the extra money for a nicer rig (I went with the vaporfi pro-II; dropped about $130 with 3 10ml e-liquids, two batteries, and 5 extra atomizers; should be good for, at minimum, 2 weeks, and that's as a 2-pack a day smoker, so you'd probably be set for well over a month, then your "operation" costs would drop down to something like $20-30/month.) If you let yourself run out of cigarettes and vape full time you'll make it work, because it isn't that tough; it really isn't. Just don't try to do both because you'll keep smoking and eventually phase out the vaporizer (which is what I did the first time.)

The other thing is accepting that it is just different from smoking a cigarette, and forcing yourself to be alright with that. You're not burning plant matter. It won't be the same. That's fine. Why is burning plant matter so great, anyway? Wouldn't it be better to suck a cloud of unicorn farts and marshmallows? Well. That flavor is probably available.

You can download an app like QuitNow! to keep track of all the money that's staying in your pocket. The upfront cost of the vaporizer will pay for itself in a few weeks, so keep that in mind. It will also project how much extra time you'll live as a result, which is nice, if not a touch morbid.

Anyway, good luck to you, too! It isn't hard, but you have to take the steps. Once you do it's nothing like quitting cold turkey, so don't put it off; it's easy and all up-side. :)

deanSolecki  ·  3113 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: I'm about 15 hours into my switch from smoking to vaping.

I think I'm just going to embrace the fact that it's different, instead of trying to make it the same, if you follow me. I mean, if it can taste like anything, it might as well taste like fruit-loop-unicorn-glitter-party-daiquiri, or what have you; it's the future, man. Your nicotine cloud can be whatever you want it to be.

But yeah, I'm yet to find anyone that thinks the cigarette flavors are remotely close to a cigarette. Which is maybe a good thing, since it breaks the association somewhat.

deanSolecki  ·  3115 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Game Theorists Take on Television and Media Bashing Gamers

As someone who has been playing video games since childhood and occasionally talks about them in public, I really don't know what you're on about.

It seems like every time white men get criticized in any domain they behave as if criticism was invented purely as a weapon against them.

No. It wasn't. Video games are criticized far less than film and tv. You just don't seem to notice it (which is fucking amazing, because it's everywhere.)

Yes, gamers get made fun of. Like everyone else. People make fun of the kardashians ruthlessly. They make fun of movie stars. They make fun of pop stars. (Do you really think gamers get made fun of more than Bieber? You're insane if you do.) They make fun of politicians. You haven't been singled out, and you aren't a victim.

I wish there were more to say, but there isn't.

XoXo,

Another person that plays video games.

deanSolecki  ·  3123 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hey, Hubski! What games would run on an old HP2000 Windows 7 laptop I'm using?

Tough to say. Looking at the current hp2000 I would guess it would run most games 2010 or earlier without too much trouble, but I think there may be some exceptions to that. You could maybe give half-life a go, portal, perhaps a fall-out title. All of those are fun games that shouldn't be too taxing.

Try picking some older stuff out on steam that you can score for a few bucks and test your luck. Some of those titles are next to free. Also give Team Fortress 2 a try, since it will cost you nothing.

If you're more in to tactical stuff, perhaps a civilization title.

Check the specs and see what you can get away with.

deanSolecki  ·  3123 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Google in Kansas City: A tale of two-speed America

With this sort of thing I think you have to look at the delta to give an honest reading of what google is doing. What can you think of in which the better-off aren't favored in this country? Nothing.

The question is: Is google creating more access than comcast, time warner, etc? I'm sure the answer is yes.

The answer to broadband really should be the government. We don't have private roads because if we did poor people wouldn't have roads. (Hey, this is America, maybe we will take roads away from poor people soon enough.) In terms of who lays the cables, that could be provided by private entities, but the infrastructure for this should be designed and managed by the government to ensure fair distribution, and anything else will always lead to inequality. Capitalism and inequality are different ways of saying the same thing. It doesn't matter how well-meaning a corporation is, they can't exist without making a profit. You make a profit off people that have money, not off people that don't. You can't sell anything to people that can't afford anything. None of this should be surprising.

Eventually internet service probably will be something every government provides as a basic service. The US will probably be far, far behind, like it is on everything else that doesn't involve dropping bombs.

deanSolecki  ·  3130 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Field Guide to the Female Psychopath

This was interesting right up to murdered bunnies, then I decided I didn't need to know any more about the subject.

deanSolecki  ·  3139 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Are you scared to post?

For a long time I've used my full name as my username on the internet, for accountability reasons. That is, if I say something on the internet, I say it knowing that anyone that cares to look for it will be able to find it and attribute it to me in the "real world."

I wish I could say that this has always insured that I behave on the internet the way I would in person, but that hasn't always been the case. I'm far more inclined to express anger or disdain than I would be if the actual person I was interacting with was standing right in front of me. Still, it's a lot closer to "real life" when I use my real name, and that's the accountability I was talking about. It's mostly a way to hold myself to account and I'm not worried of backlash from other people.

Am I afraid? No. I'm not a racist or a revolutionary. I'm not planning to take down the US government or burn any crosses. If someone wanted to "out" me for things I've said on the internet they would mostly be things I would say in person.

I think the internet is a frightening place if you're advocating for things that would disgust people. If you avoid that, what is there to be afraid of?

Yours,

Dean A. Solecki

deanSolecki  ·  3141 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What are the things people can only learn from schools and/or universities?

I have a friend that does education research and we've talked about this a lot. For me, a university is almost completely useless. I have no problem making friends, I'm self-motivated in my intellectual pursuits, and I learn best by doing rather than listening. So from my perspective it's really easy to assume that universities are basically a profiteering racket, and in a lot of ways they in fact are.

But for a lot of people universities provide the only exposure that they will get to a lot of intellectual domains. Most people will never do any higher level math outside of a classroom, will never read philosophy outside of a classroom, will never read world literature outside of a classroom, will never do an empirical experiment outside of a classroom, will never read world history outside of a classroom... the list goes on and on.

So in terms of efficiency, the university system is a joke, but in terms of forcing people to approach things that they don't want to approach, there aren't any real alternatives.

As test-fetishism turns most universities into shallow stick-and-carrot degree factories the value of approaching those subjects is largely diminished, but that isn't inherent to the university model, and has more to do with distributing privilege to a handful of people at the expense of everyone else. This is a problem with capitalism more than a problem with the university model. When only a handful of people went to college, those colleges could get on with educating and the distribution of privilege didn't play a factor, because privilege was already adequately distributed by other means (race, economic standing, gender, what have you.) Since there has been a very strong push to send everyone to college, the distribution of privilege has become a function of the university system, and now they operate as gatekeepers of privilege, which really isn't a role that they should play (they should take in the students that they take in and teach them as much as they can; letting other forces operate on privilege.) The reason universities have turned into gatekeepers of privilege is the unseemly relationship between universities and corporations. Mass education and economic gain are not necessarily aligned with one another, but if they become aligned, universities will necessarily operate as gatekeepers of privilege.

Universities have become an instrument of corporations because people get degrees in an effort to appeal to potential employers and this has the adverse effect of pushing universities to gear themselves towards the interests of corporations, to appeal to potential students (the three-way relationship between employers, universities, and students/employees could be discussed at length, but this is the gist of it.)

And so the problem arises therein, but again, it's principally a failing of capitalism (there are only a handful of "good" positions in society that everyone is fighting for) and is not inherent to the university model itself (which should attempt to educated everyone as much as possible, rather than just the top few.)

deanSolecki  ·  3143 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Finland considers basic income to reform welfare system

They prefer being called "Mechanical Americans." -.-

deanSolecki  ·  3144 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 17th spasmodic quotes from what you've been reading

If you read ol' Schop with a sense of humor there is so much there worth thinking about. A lot of people are turned off by the negative tone, but I've always thought of him as a great counter ballast to the positivism that runs through everyone else's thoughts. And, he's really funny.

He's pretty terrible about women, though.

deanSolecki  ·  3144 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What Makes American Men So Dangerous?

There's a Louis CK bit about how men are the most dangerous threat to women and I believe that this is factually corroborated. Extended bit here

Further, I think if you look at it in terms of social inheritance it makes a lot of sense that a boyfriend/husband is the most likely person to kill a woman. If the historical record says, in no uncertain terms, that a wife is a husband's property, then any attempt on her part to liberate herself would be "just cause" for her husband to take extreme actions. I don't think shaking off thousands of years of precedent is easy, and that entitlement is having a little renaissance in the US presently.

The other side of the coin is that a lot fewer people are murdered in general, so the threat is maybe a little overblown, but the people that pose a threat are the same characters that they've always been.

deanSolecki  ·  3144 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What Makes American Men So Dangerous?

I think the cultural enablers are part of the macro problem, but I agree, that friend with the Facebook options isn't going to hurt anyone; he'll watch as other people get hurt and say, "eh, I like having a gun and it's only black people that get murdered." -- Getting meaningful legislation requires a culture war with these types more than the cast-asides, but certainly, the cast-asides are the ones that pose a tangible individual threat. It makes intuitive sense that the less you have to lose, the more likely you are to "risk it all."

Great post, btw. I hadn't seen it before. :)

deanSolecki  ·  3144 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 17th spasmodic quotes from what you've been reading

The scenes of our life resemble pictures in rough mosaic; they are ineffective from close up, and have to be viewed from a distance to seem beautiful. That is why to attain something desired is to discover how vain it is; and why, though we live all our lives in expectation of better things, we often at the same time long regretfully for what is past. The present, on the other hand, is regarded as something quite temporary and serving only as the road to our goal. That is why most men discover when they look back on their life that they have the whole time been living ad interim, and are surprised to see that which they let go by so unregarded and unenjoyed was precisely their life, was precisely that in expectation of which they lived.

- Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

deanSolecki  ·  3145 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What Makes American Men So Dangerous?

I've been calling them douche bags, but that is more of a catch-all.

I had an unreasonably heated argument with a Facebook employee about gun control shortly after their IPO, so I think we should keep in mind that gun fetishism isn't limited to our society's cast-asides. Gun fetishism is an outright cultural identity in the United States and it isn't just Deliverance-style hicks that have bought into it.

deanSolecki  ·  3146 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What has been hidden away from us..

Hire a web designer.

deanSolecki  ·  3146 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: August 17th: What are you reading this week?

I'm re-reading Arthur Schopenhauer's "Essays and Aphorisms."

One of my favorites that I first came across about a decade ago, and occasionally I skim through it again for giggles. :)

deanSolecki  ·  3147 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Feature request: #Spam button on post listings

Overall, I like this idea, but I feel like it would have disparate impact on well-meaning dumb people, people with a weak grasp of english, and probably some other well-meaning people I'm not immediately thinking of. Maybe a timeout on the post restriction could fix that problem, but the other issue that might arise from this would be comment spamming.

deanSolecki  ·  3147 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Tumblr vs. Hubski

Yeah, when it first started to show up I wondered if I had just never noticed it, but now the whole site is liable to have a racist/misogynistic circlejerk completely out of the blue. Seems like over the last 2 years there has been a strong sea change and the site is pretty much unusable at this point.

deanSolecki  ·  3147 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Tumblr vs. Hubski

Reddit has a very severe libertarian, anti-woman, anti-black culture. Overall, reddit doesn't mind gay people.

Of course, any individual reddit user might not fit that at all, but the defaults are absolutely littered with overt bigotry directed at a variety of groups, although the one that is conspicuously missing is bigotry directed at gays. Which makes sense, since younger people generally don't view homosexuality the way people over 30 do (the line might be 40, but old vs. young being the key thing.)

At any rate, that much bigotry bubbling up to the top of reddit isn't an accident; it is upvoted heavily by a very large swath of reddit users.

deanSolecki  ·  3147 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Boyfriend Trouble...Do I have a lying problem?

I think all three of us are of the same opinion. This looks like a bad situation, with a lot of red flags.

Still, OP sounds young. There could be some embellishment, or some misdirection. In that case would it still look like a bad situation? Yes, I think so. But a few paragraphs of text isn't enough for a mathematical certainty.

On top of that, a litmus test is a way for OP to convince herself, and not take it on faith from the internet that things aren't as they should be. Will that work? Eh. Probably not. But it might get her to start thinking about things in a different way, as a first step.

I agree, though, it sounds like OP is trying, feels guilty, and her boyfriend has all the power in their relationship and isn't kind about it. I'd be genuinely surprised if things were not very, very bad. If there's victimization going on it certainly isn't OP's fault.

I get the feeling we've heard the last of OP, though, so we'll be left guessing. :\

deanSolecki  ·  3148 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: "God and the Fine-Tuned Universe" Philosophy Talk podcast

I've always found the fine-tuned argument to be really strange. The universe has the emergent properties it has because of its basic properties. Of course! It couldn't be otherwise. So yes, the basic properties are necessary for certain emergent properties.

The question I would pose is, how do you know that emergent properties are impossible with other parameters? We can say that these emergent properties are impossible with different parameters, but by virtue of the first paragraph you should understand that that is an automatic assumption.

Maybe very different emergent properties could exist that we would have no way of thinking about or describing, and those would, naturally enough, be "fine-tuned" to their outcomes, by necessity.

So anything that is is fine-tuned to its outcomes by default.

Fine-tuning seems to me to explain nothing at all.

deanSolecki  ·  3148 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Boyfriend Trouble...Do I have a lying problem?

The short answer is, "yes," you seem to have a very pronounced issue with honesty.

From the things that you've said, it might be possible that you're in a bad relationship and this makes it hard for you to be honest. It also might be that you've been so dishonest, so often, that you've turned it into a bad relationship.

Instead of saying, "I'm going to be gone for 20 minutes," say something like, "I'm going to be gone for a while." If he insists that you give him a very precise estimate, tell him that you can't. If that isn't acceptable then I would say that he has way, way too much control over you, and you are probably in an unhealthy relationship. As an adult you don't need to give a detailed, precise itinerary of your every moment to someone you're in a relationship with. If this is the case for you, something is very off. If you are giving bad estimates of how long you're going to be doing things, try not to give estimates at all. If he insists tell him you can only give a rough estimate because you're not a psychic.

I don't know what else to tell you. Once you damage trust it takes time and effort to rebuild it. If you think that lying about "little stuff," "infrequently" is going to lead to a better situation I think that you are mistaken, but I don't know all the details of your relationship. It sounds like there are a handful of distinct problems.

deanSolecki  ·  3149 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Has Tinder Really Sparked a Dating Apocalypse? (Spoilers: No.)

I don't know about you, but every time I find a new app I immediately throw out my integrity and moral compass.

The one thing we can absolutely count on is that Americans will shit themselves if sex is vaguely involved in anything.

The third world war will probably be started by a nip slip.

deanSolecki  ·  3149 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Beware the Bachelorette! A Report From the Straight Lady Invasion of Gay Bars.

Yeah, don't get me wrong, I may not have put enough emphasis on this, but I only ever felt out of place when I was alone at a very aggressively segregated lesbian night.

If anything I've found it easier to talk to women at lesbian bars because there isn't a weird sexual cat and mouse game going on and I feel like I can just put on a casual persona and chit chat. I don't think that I would necessarily seek out a lesbian bar without a lesbian friend (actually I know that I wouldn't,) but if my neighborhood bar happened to be one I'd probably feel comfortable enough getting a drink once in a while. The sexuality of the clientele would never really be me first concern anyway.