My understanding is that it’s not necessarily porn addiction that causes this, but a particular style of masturbation that some people refer to as “death grip”. Source: a friend of mine who used to masturbate every night before bed to sleep better, but this began causing issues with his partner due to ED. He eventually solved it by using a different grip while masturbating.

In short, if you feel like you’ve come away from this conversation with things to reflect on, then that’s great and I’m glad about that. However, “porn addiction”, as a term, describes a whole bundle of stuff that is still pretty poorly understood, because it can be hard to discern between symptoms and causes

Your explanation is good and thorough.

I always struggle to know when to use the square brackets. The straightforward answer is to just quote directly where possible. But especially in interviews, someone’s answer may be jumbly, so the most honourable thing to do may be to use square brackets to make it easier for the reader to understand the speaker’s point, but you’re not being misleading.

For example, maybe this interviewee said something like “in the future, it — we might come to see that game development, and games overall, will end up turning out to be player-driven”, which could be straightforwardly shortened to what we see in the screenshot: “in the future, it [will be] player driven”. Square brackets, in the hands of a skilled journalist, can be used to manipulate a narrative through selectively quoting people, but they can also represent a speaker’s point far more authentically and cogently than the literal words.

"in the future, it will be player-driven

I feel like I’ve seen a few things recently that would be suitable, but I can’t recall them right now (my mind always goes blank when I try to summon memories like this). Your comment has caused me to make a mental note to try posting there if I stumble across anything suitable.

I agree with your characterisation of the UK, but I also think that any country denouncing another’s actions has power — it may affect how other countries actions towards Russia if nothing else.

Yeah, I fear that these calls for investigations may be a grief-ridden family grasping for some meaning. If there were some deeper nefarious goings on behind this death, then that might allow them to make sense of their pain. I’ve been fortunate to have not lost anyone to suicide, but I understand it’s especially difficult to come to terms with.

I feel angry because as you allude to, retribution upon a whistleblower need not directly kill them in order to ruin their lives. Morally, I’d say that OpenAI may still be responsible for this death even if this wasn’t an assassination. Unfortunately, the legal system isn’t well suited to respond to diffuse responsibility, so the family is unlikely to find justice regardless (even considering that one version of “justice” would be OpenAI being held accountable for the original things that were highlighted by the whistleblower)

When I imagine how much pressure Balaji must’ve been under, and how I have felt under much milder circumstances, I can understand how that might’ve made a person feel suicidal. Blowing the whistle sucks because although it’s rarely a case of just bringing the truth to light and letting the world do with that information what it will; becoming a whistleblower doesn’t mean participating in a singular act of revelation, but adopting a new identity for the foreseeable future, as you continue to be defined by the one act, whether that’s in terms of professional reputation, harassment of one’s family, or being required to be a witness in court.

My greatest sympathies go to Balaji’s loved ones.

I once heard a baby with whooping cough. I’m almost crying now just remembering. I think that sound would change the mind of many anti-vaxxers, except by the time people hear it, it is too late to prevent their anti-vax beliefs causing harm

I knew very little about Palestinian culture before this genocide. I have learned so much, which I’m immensely grateful for, though I regret the circumstances that fuelled my interest. I have found that learning about Palestine and its people has helped me to understand this conflict beyond the horror of the ever-increasing casualty figures, while keeping me grounded enough that I don’t emotionally burn out and have to tune out from what’s happening.

You might enjoy this article about Palestinian weaving. It’s quite short, but it has some good links for more reading.

Damn it I wrote a long comment and it got discarded because I’m wearing gloves which are already hard to type in.

Ugh, I’m all too familiar with that frustration. Thanks for rewriting what you able to, I appreciate your comment even (especially?) if it isn’t as coherent/details as your intended one was.

Cumulative interest is absurdly powerful. Turns out that the best way to earn a fuckton of money is to start with a heckton.

Tangentially related: a friend told me that they worked out that £1,000,000 in the bank/invested in safe options would accrue enough interest that you could retire and have a decently comfortable income just off of the interest (meaning that the million pounds would remain untouched and able to be inherited by kids of whatever).

It weirdly reminds me of growing things like moss, yeast (for bread) or fungi. It takes far more time than work; you set up the conditions for them to grow, and then you leave them to their own devices for a while. I can’t imagine treating money like this; growing up poor means that no matter what level of financial security I achieve as an adult, I will always be acutely aware of exactly how much money I have, and how fast it is growing or shrinking.

I’m answering a different question than the one you’re asking, but I switched to Linux (specifically Fedora) as my main computer not too long ago. I had been trying to improve at Linux because I work in scientific research, but I was anxious because games seemed far…messier and complex than the scientific stuff I was more familiar with, and I didn’t want to kill my recreation. This worry was unnecessary, because I have been immensely impressed by how straightforward playing Steam games through Proton (the windows emulation thingy that Steam uses). There have been a couple of minor issues that were easy to troubleshoot, and it was the kind of problem that sometimes crops up on Windows too.

I still feel quite overwhelmed by Linux, because I still don’t really understand why some things work on one operating system and not another. Like, I understand that .exe files don’t natively work on Linux (they require something like WINE, or Proton (WINE is like Proton, but not specialised for games)), but I don’t understand why. I think to properly understand it, I’d need to become a kernel developer or something silly, so I think I need to make my peace with not really understanding the difference. I think that’s okay though, because I don’t really need to know that. It’s sufficient to just know that they are different, and know how to respond (i.e. Knowing that the .exe version of software isn’t intended for my system, but that I can probably run it if I use WINE or Proton).

Most of my teething problems with Linux have been non game related, and although some of them were very stressful to troubleshoot, I found it refreshing how easy it was to learn how to fix problems. Especially given that a big thing that drove me away from Windows was constantly feeling like my computer wasn’t my own. Often when Windows goes wrong, it makes fixing the problem harder via hiding away settings, or obscuring information in a way that perversely makes solving small things require a much higher level of expertise. It ends up feeling like the system isn’t trusting me to be able to solve problems for myself, which makes me feel powerless. I suspect you may relate to much of what I have said in this paragraph.

Coming to Linux from Windows can be stressful because suddenly, you are trusted with a lot more power. You can delete your entire operating system with one command if you want (sudo rm -rf /* , if you’re curious) and there’s nothing stopping you. The lack of guardrails can be scary, but there are far more helpful and kind Linux nerds on the internet than assholes, in my experience, so I have found many guides that guide me through solving problems such that I’m not just blindly entering commands and praying to the computer god. You sound like a person with a mindset towards progression, so you will likely do well with this challenge. If you’re like me, you may relish the learning. Certainly I enjoy the feeling of progression that I’ve had the last year or so.

People here may suggest dualbooting or using a virtual box to try it out. I would suggest diving in, if you can. Unless you have software that you know is strictly windows only, setting aside some time to fully switch is a good way to immerse yourself. I tried with virtual machines and dual booting, but I ended up getting lazy and just using the Windows because it was the path of least resistance. I had to fully switch to actually force myself to start becoming familiar with Linux.

Hardly any of this directly answers your question, so I apologise if this is unwelcome; I wrote so much because I am more enthusiastic about this than the tasks I am currently procrastinating. Best of luck to you

Edit: some games have anticheat software that can cause issues. I play some multiplayer games with anticheat stuff and I’ve not had any problems, but I think I am fortunate to not play any with the kind of anticheat that gets its hooks in deep — they may be the rare exceptions to gaming being refreshingly straightforward. I didn’t consider them because they don’t affect me, but others have mentioned them and may have more to say.

I got started with Spyder when learning python in biochemistry

I don’t disagree with the spirit of what you’re saying, but “war crimes” is a useful construct because there are clearly some forms of warfare that are worse than others (bombing civilian targets compared to bombing purely military targets, for example). By designating something so profane it should not ever happen, we create a powerful construct that aims to deter these acts. Though the extent to which that’s effective or not is beyond the scope of this comment

It probably is irrational, but humans are pretty irrational.

I think this kind of tension is inevitable when so many people say “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”. Many people with work burnout tried that, and found that they came to hate the thing they love.

Often, when we get stuck in that rut, we can’t undo the harm that it’s done to our passion, and retraining in a different field may be difficult or impossible. Maybe there was a period where it was possible to toe thelp line and make a career out of a hobby, and an attempt to regain some elements of that. In many cases, it’s dumb as hell to keep throwing oneself at the same thing that made someone burnt out in the first place but sometimes, reclaiming something they love is liberating and healing.

I say this speaking as an academic who has always found it hard to separate my work from what I love doing, because even my “extracurricular” projects tend to have a fair bit of overlap with my work. I sometimes wish that I was someone who could have a clear divide between work and fun, but to do that, I’d need to find work much further away from my passions.

I feel quite anxious trying to make sense of geopolitical events like this, especially given I’m ashamed of how little thought I gave to Palestine before Israel escalated from apartheid to all-out genocide; as you say, this is a ridiculously complex situation, and the snippets we get on the news are ridiculously oversimplified at best, and egregiously biased at worst.

Syria seems like a far away, foreign land where conflict is the inevitable norm. But it feels like that’s something that I’m meant to think, because it’s politically useful for people like me to think that way. Unfortunately, simply knowing that you’re subject to propaganda is far easier than actually gaining a more full and nuanced understanding of a conflict.

I made a few Romanian friends in university. Granted you’re going to get some skewed perspectives when talking to expats, but each one of them said that Romania was a shit hole that they were glad to have escaped. Decree 770 (and other policies that were enacted by the same regime, that have left a scar on the country) was a large part of why.

I used to know someone who worked on Assassin’s Creed 3 (and probably other games, but idk). They told me about how surreal and disheartening it was to work somewhere so bafflingly huge. The part of the game they worked on was small and insignificant, but they were the kind of person to take pride in small things done well, and as such, they were pleased with what they had made. It was insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but this was something that they had made, and they didn’t mind being a small cog.

That is, until the game released and they got to see the rest of the game. They were immensely disappointed to see that clearly many components of the game didn’t have nearly the same amount of care put into them, and furthermore, coordination between different teams/systems was poorly executed. The game wasn’t bad (imo), but it was fairly meh, and it certainly felt undeserving of the effort my friend put into it.

They ended up checking out somewhat from their work after that, because they became disillusioned with the idea of being a small cog in a big machine — part of what allowed them to do such good work was that they immersed themselves in what they and their immediate team were working on, but that approach only works if you can trust that the rest of the project is well managed and resourced.

I fell out of contact with that friend, but I often think about them, and how effectively they captured the dismay they felt to realise that in a big machine like Ubisoft, it’s probably naive to care about your work. One of their colleagues had the thing they made not even feature in the game — it was cut, fairly last minute (and they didn’t even find out until release). This story was striking because it highlights how, even in soulless AAA games, churned out by corporate behemoths, there are people who do genuinely care about their work (until the company grinds that care into dust as they wring their workers dry). It’s quite tragic, actually.

This isn’t a problem of being pregnant while in law school. This is a problem of someone’s Title IX protections being violated. Your comment implies that you think that Brittany Lovely was unwise to continue at law school while pregnant, but it’s fairly reasonable to expect a law school to be following the law.

When I first switched to Linux, I was nonplussed at why many videos didn’t work. It ended up being a positive learning experience, but it certainly would be nice if the codecs could be shipped directly, as you say.

I agree that season 1 is far more engaging but imo, that’s mainly because the level of intrigue that I felt at the beginning of the story was insane — they were great at keeping that intrigue rolling in an interesting way. But that kind of mystery can only last so long, because it grows weaker as the audience learns more about the characters and world.

I think there was a part of me that felt disappointed by season 2 simply by the fact it couldn’t give me what I felt during season 1, and actually, I wouldn’t want that — the final episodes of a series shouldn’t have the same kind of tension of the beginning of the story.

Overall, I’d say that season 1 is excellent (in particular, there were some visually impressive and stylish sequenced that I loved) — Riveting" was the word OP used. Season 2 is also decent. I don’t recall it feeling rushed, and it does end decently.

Something I’ve thought about a bunch re: recommendation engines is the idea of a “sweet spot” that balances exploration and safety

Though actually I should start by saying that recommendation engines tend to aim to maximise engagement, which is why manosphere type content is so prevalent on places like YouTube if you go in with a fresh account — outrage generates engagement far more reliably than other content. I’m imagining a world where recommendation algorithms may be able to be individually tailored and trained, where I can let my goals shape the recommendations. I did some tinkering with a concept like this in the context of a personal music recommender, and I gave it an “exploration” slider, where at maximum, it’d suggest some really out-there stuff, but lower down might give me new songs from familiar artists. That project worked quite well, but it needs a lot of work to untangle before I can figure out how and why it worked so well.

That was a super individualistic program I made there, in that it was trained exclusively from data I gave it. One can get individual goals without having to rely on the data of just one person though - listenbrainz is very cool — its open source, and they are working on recommendation stuff (I’ve used listenbrainz as a user, but not yet as a contributor/developer)

Anyway, that exploration slider I mentioned is an aspect of the “sweet spot” I mentioned at the start. If we imagine a “benevolent” (aligned with the goals of its user) recommendation engine, and say that the goal you’re after is you want to listen to more diverse music. For a random set of songs that are new to you, we could estimate how close they are to your current taste (getting this stuff into matrices is a big chunk of the work, ime). But maybe one of the songs is 10 arbitrary units away from the boundary of your “musical comfort zone”. Maybe 10 units is too much too soon, too far away from your comfort zone. But maybe the song that’s only 1 unit away is too similar to what you like already and doesn’t feel stimulating and exciting in the way you expect the algorithm to feel. So maybe we could try what we think is a 4 or 5. Something novel enough to be exciting, but still feels safe.

Research has shown that recommendation algorithms can change affect our beliefs and our tastes [citation needed]. I got onto the music thing because I was thinking about the power in a recommendation algorithm, which is currently mostly used on keeping us consuming content like good cash cows. It’s reasonable that so many people have developed an aversion to algorithmic recommendations, but I wish I could have a dash of algorithmic exploration, but with me in control (but not quite so in control as what you describe in your options 3). As someone who is decently well versed in machine learning (by scientist standards — I have never worked properly in software development or ML), I think it’s definitely possible.

“When [Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)] was first voting against the bill, most Democrats disagreed with her. Since then, they have become concerned that a law they would have considered reasonable under a Harris administration would be dangerously applied under Trump.”

No shit. People like Tlaib must be frustrated (having voted against this bill three times)