a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
raysmuckles's profile
raysmuckles

x 4

stats
following: 1
followed tags: 10
followed domains: 0
badges given: 0 of 0
hubskier for: 3211 days

recent comments, posts, and shares:
raysmuckles  ·  2893 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hello

Yeah I found it through Reddit too. Hubski is a LOT smaller. When I joined I didn't quite realise how much smaller it was, but I get the feeling that although there are thousands of users here, the majority of comments and commented-on posts are from the 20 most active users. It wont be long at all until you start recognising names. I think that makes communication on hubski much more like real life. People are nicer and speak to you like a human being. Endless pun threads are basically unheard of. It feels almost like you're part of a real life private conversation, especially when regular users get chatting. The submissions are not nearly as attention-grabbing or juicy as what's on Reddit, but the comments are always a pleasure.

raysmuckles  ·  2893 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 1000 Days of Hubski

Sorry to butt in to the conversation, but I absolutely love Hendrick's... as long as I'm in the mood for something very gentle and delicate. Cucumber really does work perfectly with it. However, I could definitely see it is not for everyone; the taste is quite delicate and you can't make it strong (I think 30ml for 150-200ml tonic is about the limit). It's the gin that you could happily drink with breakfast.

raysmuckles  ·  2895 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Dear hubski, what was the biggest/hardest event of your life?

Thanks so much! Really kind of you. I'm actually totally fine at getting to sleep when I need to. I read about 3 pages on my Kindle paperwhite and I'm down.

I ended up taking a day off work not long after posting this, and slept until 12pm (had a meeting at 2pm). I should have done that long ago. Also we have got a cleaner and we have a calorie-controlled meal delivery thing going on ("lite n easy") which have both been SO helpful. Plus the baby is now on formula so is generally sleeping better. So I'm not sure if that's what you had in mind by "doing things I should already have done" but that is exactly what I did! :)

My wife is now doing well since she stopped the night feeds, it seems like she only has two major triggers: lack of sleep and antibiotics (for some reason). I've only witnessed one seizure but it was completely terrifying because I assumed she was dying of a stroke (she already had a stroke for unknown causes at age 20 so she can't use her left arm). After it looked like she was going to survive the 'stroke' I assumed she had lost the baby. Finally we heard the baby's heartbeat on ultrasound after several hours. My wife was super chill through all this but I was pretty anxious to say the least. Turns out babies are very well cushioned in utero and can survive all sorts (she is a wonderful 2-year-old now so she turned out ok).

My wife is on lamotrigine (various brand names starting in lamo-) and it is generally very well managed. She has a lot of petit mals but grand mals are very rare (every few years really).

What got you into mindfulness? My wife is a psychologist and is very familiar with it and we do some mindfulness exercises together.

I just checked out your 3 questions post (text only) - have you started the IBM internship yet?

raysmuckles  ·  2899 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Dear hubski, what was the biggest/hardest event of your life?

I have a great deal of respect for the people here who are surviving through really tough times. My biggest and hardest experience of my life is happening right now. My wife had an epileptic seizures while she was at the playground with the kids (6 months and 2). Everyone was fine, but it meant no more waking up at night for her. So for the last 4 months I've been waking 3 to 5 times a night then going in to do a full day of work on our company's biggest project. I've always been terrible with sleep deprivation and I have felt on the verge of breaking down in tears for what feels like forever. I have put on weight, I look older, I have zero libido and I don't have any conversation other than "I am so tired". I also find myself narcissistically craving sympathy and for people to say "well done, you're amazing". But I am blissfully happy. I watch my daughter drop off to sleep and look forward to her 3am screaming so that I can get cuddles. Everything is just right in life and I am completely satisfied. I will miss this time of my life. When people ask what it is like to have kids I am not even attempting to answer any more. It makes no sense.

raysmuckles  ·  2908 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: (No Title)

I just meant that once you've got hooked on one big book series, you will find yourself craving another series, just like an addiction. But it's a healthy addiction, so you can indulge that addiction as much as you like :)

raysmuckles  ·  2908 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: (No Title)

It's a bizarre feeling when you get to the end of a huge series you've been really invested in. I read The Baroque Cycle (Neal Stephenson) in my early twenties and when I got to the last 40 pages or so, I started rationing them out, because I wasn't ready for it to end. Then when it ends, it's almost like a pleasant version of grief.

But once you've been so invested in a book series that you feel like this, it means you've got an addiction. A healthy addiction that you can indulge again and again.

I haven't ready the inheritance cycle, but Half a King is a lovely little book of a similar type that I could highly recommend.

raysmuckles  ·  2908 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Oils, my Hubski Debut

I quite enjoyed this as well - the combination of senses (touch and sight) is clever and incredibly effective; I feel like I know exactly how the artwork should look. Great writing technique.

raysmuckles  ·  2909 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Thrivers & Strugglers: A Growing Economic Divide

Rant alert:

"Successful" is a strange word. The way it gets used in common parlance seems to mean a very specific outcome: if you're a man, that you wear a suit, people look up to you based on your job, and you have lots of money. If you're a woman, you need to also somehow be in charge of looking after kids and making them bullshit crafts off Pinterest. We all know what "successful" is meant to mean.

But in the dictionary, it means accomplishing your aim. Over the last couple of years, I've cut my salary by taking more time off to spend at home with my baby/toddler and turned down an expat job for the same reason. The numbers in my bank account are lower than what they could be, but I'm more successful than I've ever been in my life - I'm achieving my goals, which are to put a roof over my head, play peekaboo with my baby, and spend as much time with family as possible and as little time at work as possible.

Financial success, by definition, is just achieving your life goals with respect to money. Those goals don't need to be "make the numbers go up at all costs".

(my rant is largely unrelated to this article, just the abuse of the word 'successful' sets me off. I'll get back in my box now)

raysmuckles  ·  3087 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Why People Under 35 Are Unhappy

This article made me angry, because of the condescension. I am under 35, and admittedly I have been blessed in my career, but my expectations of a career are perfectly reasonable. I put a lower priority on career advancement and a higher priority on family compared to my parents' generation but I don't expect to own two cars and go on foreign holidays every year. I find it aggravating to be told that I think I am a special unicorn and don't live in the real world - all my friendship group are realistic and down to earth as well. I feel like the 'entitled Gen Y' trope is made up. Unfortunately, I predict that when I am in the senior generation I will forget all this and will probably believe that the young generation are entitled snowflakes.

raysmuckles  ·  3091 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: May I introduce to Hubski....

Hi Al, I've been on hubski a few months now from time to time. I haven't commented much, but if you do join, definitely check out The Sunday Paper and pubski - they're both regular features and my two favourite parts of the sites.

raysmuckles  ·  3102 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: [48 Hours] War Nerd: Syria Bombed Stupid

Thank you very much for posting these articles, I really appreciate it. I'm in no position to truly fact-check Warnerd's positions, but it's refreshing to get a perspective that is not in any sense nationalistic. You get the impression that everyone else is looking through the lens of an individual faction and Warnerd is at least attempting to stand back and look dispassionately. I'm not sure you can ever really be dispassionate with this subject matter, but at least this blog gives it a very good shot.

raysmuckles  ·  3105 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What are you proudest of right now?

I'm not sure 'achievement' is the right word, but there is something I'm incredibly proud of. She's called Sophie, she's 18 months old, and she is an awesome person. I always knew I'd love my daughter, but I never realised how much I'd like her. She is good company.

It seems most of the commenters in this thread are from an IT background (understandably). As a completely casual computer user, I love Windows 10. It has been just a small enough change that I know how to do everything without really having to learn anything new, but there are endless tiny improvements (much more pretty and functional Win+Tab / Task View feature, searching for your own applications is now superfast), and in fact everything seems to be running a little bit more slickly than on Windows 7, which is what I upgraded from. There really does seem to be a move to make a user interface which is totally suited to casual users like me who just want to get stuff done fast.

I haven't tried out the Phone Companion yet, but that clearly sounds like the direction desktop OS's should be going nowadays - integration across phone, home computer, TV and possibly work computer.

It really seems like Microsoft have worked out what the majority of everyday users actually want. If I have any criticisms, it's that there aren't any features where you think "wow, that's clever!"... like when I first tried out Google Now or Chromecast or remote access... there are no dramatically innovative features.

raysmuckles  ·  3188 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: A Three-Question Quiz To Test Your Rationality

Supposedly the bias is that we give more credence to a more specific and credible-sounding description than something vague. In the book, Kahnemann asks three completely independent groups one of those three questions each and gets them to assign a likelihood. I think the '85% of people got this wrong' is an incorrect description of Kahnemann's experiment... it'd be more like "in 85% of cases, the probabilities assigned by independent groups gave an impossible result"