• 1 Post
  • 70 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 1st, 2023

help-circle

  • It really depends, but ultimately a lot of social interactions can only happen between two people at once. Say you and your wife get into a fight. Instead of fighting it out & making up, she now has the option to stop fighting you and go hang out with your co-husband - and you aren’t invited. She also has the option to emotionally strong arm you to get her way by not only stonewalling you/withholding affection, but also by threatening to push you out of your marriage for another guy who literally lives with you both. Conversely, she does the same thing to the other guy.

    Basically, now all those 2-person social interactions that happen in a marriage become much more complicated due to the presence of a 3rd person.

    You’d need to have a lot of trust in your wife (and this other guy too) - she’d need to have a tremendous amount of emotional stability and be non-manipulative. She’d suddenly have a lot more power in the relationship in a very inequitable way.

    My wife and I are very into monogamy. But she has a serious temper and can be very manipulative when she’s angry (she’s gotten better about this, but it’s a known issue). It’d be very easy for her to do something hurtful. I’m not talking about sex, just the emotional threat of turning to someone else for relief from me - and the implied threat of pushing me out.






  • You get other benefits though. Like the few social safety nets we actually have, public school funding, social security (unless it runs out/gets cut), fire departments, regulatory agencies that keep your food, water, and drugs safe. Etc. It costs a lot of money to have a society. Even if you don’t directly benefit from them, they still make society less shit.

    That said, it’d cost a lot less if we didn’t spend so much of it murdering children.



  • Depends on your goals. I’d say learn the one you have the most use for. If you don’t have a use and are just learning for fun, then pick the most interesting one. If you’re learning intending to acquire the language as quickly as possible, then either Italian or French would be good choices.

    I am learning Chinese (mandarin, aka 汉语, aka 普通话) and I personally find it very logical, interesting, and fun as a native english speaker who used to be conversationally fluent in Spanish. There are definite difficulties with the language (soooooo many homonyms, characters (汉子) take some getting used to, tones, etc) but if you learn it, there is a lot of reading material and media that will become accessible to you. Additionally some things about it are easier than other languages - like the grammar is very simple, you don’t have to worry about conjugations and tenses as much. Also, I think that it provides more cognitive benefits because of how different it is to romance languages.

    汉语是很酷。我推荐你!


  • It’s illegal unless there’s a bonafide occupational qualification that your disability prevents you from performing. Like you couldn’t apply for a job as a furniture mover if you’re a quadriplegic and cry discrimination when they don’t select you. And the employer can ask things like “this job requires that you lift heavy objects of up to 600lbs with the assistance of another person and a back brace. Do you have any medical or other reason you could not perform these duties?”.

    Now if that weren’t a real occupational qualification, that’d be discriminatory. Like if they said you had to be a man for that moving job - there’s no reason you have to be a man, you just have to be able to move 600lb things.


  • Learn what you need to do to follow recipes, and then you’ll learn the rest over time. Cook things you like to eat.

    Don’t get a bunch of junk for your kitchen. You only need basic things and can buy them as you go.

    • Knives - you only need a chef’s knife (8" or 10") for most kitchen tasks and a paring knife for small things. Optional: bread knife (i just use a chef’s knife), filet knife, boning knife, cleaver.
    • Pots and Pans - get all stainless steel and/or cast iron/enameled cast iron. Don’t buy aluminum or nonstick. Frying pan. Saucepan. Big pot and/or Dutch oven (can use as a soup pot on the stove or in the oven for other things, enameled recommended). Baking sheet (and a silicone matt for nonstick).
    • Other: peeler, box grater, garlic press (way easier than mincing garlic), citrus juicer, steamer insert for a pot, measuring cups and spoons, cutting board (plastic is OK - bamboo is another good budget option, one for meat and one for plants recommended)
    • Know what it means to steam, boil, simmer, sautee, bake.

    • Keep your knives sharp.

    • Learn the basic cuts (dice = .5 - 2cm cubes, mince = very tiny little pieces, julienne/batonnet/chiffonade - strips of stuff of various sizes).

    • The key to cutting anything is to break it down into manageable, regular pieces that you can easily turn into cubes or rectangles.

    Since you have difficulty tasting:

    • Don’t over-salt. You can always add more, but you can’t remove it.

    • Acidity and fat are important to make food taste good. Vinegar is often a hack to make food taste better.

    • Adding MSG to your food is also a great way to make it taste better.

    • Learn what herbs and spices belong in different kinds of food. Some can go in a lot of different cuisines and dishes - like salt, pepper, garlic, onion, parsley, and chives. But others have more niche uses, and some combinations are very typical of specific cuisines. Buy individual spices, not spice mixes. Dry spices are stronger than fresh spices, so if substituting dried for fresh, you will use less than you would use if they were fresh.

    The head chef of Alethea (3 star michelin restaurant) totally lost his sense of taste for years and still ran one of the best restaurants in the world.



  • I largely analyze data and create software to automate business tasks. This allows people in my company to make informed decisions about the business, how money is or should be spent, who & where to hire, helping non-techical people automate repetitive tasks. I also present/interpret data and influence decision-making.

    This might mean creating forecasts. Automating data analysis with reports. Building data sources (gathering and manipulating data from different places and compiling it). Building interactive software or excel sheets for non-technical users. Creating white papers or presentations on analysis I’ve done. Etc.

    I use excel, google sheets, google app script (basically javascript), tableau, python, and SQL.







  • Was travelling with some friends in Istanbul. They were pretty inexperienced abroad, so I figured out public transit there, told them what tickets to buy, and we all walked to the ticket machine. There was a big line/crowd, and a guy up front was taking cash and giving people tickets, which he got by scanning a card at the machine. I went first hoping to show my friends what to do - bought my ticket for like €5 or so and ignored the scammer. They all gave the scammer guy like €20 for him to scan his pass and buy them a €5 ticket. Their reasons were “he seemed official” and “I knew it was a scam, but I figured it was just easier to go along with it”.

    I did fall for a taxi scam in Peru though and ended up staying at a hotel run by some mafia types. They were cool, though, so it turned out OK - just cost me a little extra money for an interesting story.