jwiggler

joined 2 years ago
[–] jwiggler 12 points 2 days ago

Sure dude but in this case your comment comes off as if you were a huge elitist asshole. I mean, maybe you're not. It's just that your comment sounds as if it could be written by one. As if you're just better than the OP because you can understand the complicated, intricate, dynamic mechanics of a game and OP is just not... whatever... enough to "get it", and that they should just go play this simpler, one-dimensional, easy game, that they don't even have to pay attention to.

It's like you went to see an indie art-house film with your friend, and upon hearing that they didn't like it as much as you did, you say "that's okay, you're probably just not smart enough to get it. Maybe you should just watch Marvel movies from now on."

Just major, major asshole vibes. And I'm saying this as a KCD stan.

[–] jwiggler 1 points 2 days ago

Oh yeah, these are fucking nice. Great shots.

[–] jwiggler 2 points 3 days ago

Yeah it really depends what you're talking about. Our politics are pretty whack. There's a small amount of that good libertarian socialist energy here that bleeds over from Vermont and Maine, and I do feel like that is intensifying as Trump wields his heavy hammer of federal government, but I think a good chunk of that energy gets stolen and redistributed by bigots. We've never really had someone like Bernie to channel it.

But outside of politics we've got mountains, we've got lakes, we've got beaches, we've got some small cities, and Boston's just a day trip away. I've always enjoyed that aspect. But yeah. New Hampshire. Live restrained and hike a little. See a loon. Then die.

[–] jwiggler 4 points 3 days ago (6 children)

As a lifelong NHer, I feel obligated to say fuck you buddy. Nobody calls NH shit but NHers.

As a person with a brain though you're pretty much right lol

But idk I mean I think I'd rather live here than like Connecticut or Rhode Island.

[–] jwiggler 27 points 3 days ago (9 children)

I agree with you but it's just difficult when you have groups like Libertarians of NH posting this shit

[–] jwiggler 11 points 1 week ago

Every few years I get the customization bug and trick out my desktop. Then things start breaking down slowly. Then I get frustrated and reinstall vanilla gnome, swear off customization forever, and feel better.

For gaming its Plasma.

Knowing the default DE's idiosyncrasies also helps with work -- I'm never surprised when I reinstall/install a new machine. Same goes for aliases. No for me, knowing the commands themselves, however cumbersome or verbose, helps me better deal with freshly installed machines.

[–] jwiggler 3 points 1 week ago

So I'm not expert, but did PPL for a while and had good results. I wasn't super strict, but essentially did 3 days on one day off. As long as I did my compound lift and a couple of my iso lifts, I felt satisfied.

Can I ask why you do Push+biceps and pull+triceps, instead of doing push (including triceps isos) and pull (including biceps isos)? For me, my triceps workouts occured after bench press, which helped me focus on squeezing the muscle after it had already been hit with heavy weights. And on my pull days, my biceps isometric would follow barbell rows in the same fashion.

The other thing I was thinking is are you eating enough? Feel like that's really the most important for muscle growth

[–] jwiggler 3 points 2 weeks ago

Great book. Debt is also a good one by Graeber

[–] jwiggler 4 points 2 weeks ago

Do you like my hat

[–] jwiggler 17 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I hear what you're saying, but an upper-class leftist is really just a right-wing neoliberal (perhaps socially left, but still pro capital/ pro worker exploitation). Leftism doesn't exist in the US outside of Bernie Sanders and maybe AOC.

I'm not sure we know enough about Luigi's politics to call him leftist. Didn't he praise silicon valley execs? Sure, he may have united leftists (anti capitalists) and the working class. But the working class, itself, is right wing in the US. They don't have class consciousness. There are hints that it remains, like how many Trumpies also voted for AOC, or how many like Bernie. But if they're voting along party lines, they often do so against their own interests.

An upper class rightist might claim they're on the side of workers, but they do so while reaching into their pockets and stealing a chunk of the value that they create. Then they reassure those same workers that wealth will somehow trickle down to them.

Edit: There is only really truth to this meme if you treat "left vs right" in the American sense of the words, or just replace them with "democrats vs republicans" or "liberals vs conservatives," none of which are actually leftists in the classical sense.

[–] jwiggler 47 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Democrats vs Republicans would be more accurate imo. OP, it sounds like you're not using left and right in the classical politcal sense, but in the way these terms are thrown around nowadays, especially in the US -- leftism being neoliberalism, and the right being...whatever it is now. Neo-conservativism? Both are right wing ideologies.

quick wikipedia snippet

In modern politics, the term Left typically applies to ideologies and movements to the left of classical liberalism, supporting some degree of democracy in the economic sphere. Today, ideologies such as social liberalism and social democracy are considered to be centre-left, while the Left is typically reserved for movements more critical of capitalism,[9] including the labour movement, socialism, anarchism, communism, Marxism, and syndicalism, each of which rose to prominence in the 19th and 20th centuries.

 

FULL TEXT:

In an unprecedented move, the National Institutes of Health is abruptly terminating millions of dollars in research awards to scientists in Massachusetts and around the country, citing the Trump administration’s new restrictions on funding anything related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, transgender issues, or research that could potentially benefit universities in China.

The sweeping actions would appear to violate court rulings from federal judges in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C., that block the Trump administration from freezing or ending billions of dollars in government spending, said David Super, a constitutional law expert at Georgetown Law, who reviewed some of the termination letters at the Globe’s request.

In a related case brought by an association of higher education officials that specifically challenged Trump’s various DEI executive orders, a federal judge in Maryland twice over the past month blocked the administration from terminating funding, saying in his most recent decision the restrictions “punish, or threaten to punish, individuals and institutions based on the content of their speech, and in doing so they specifically target viewpoints the government seems to disfavor.”

Super added that the termination letters are also “unlawful” because the NIH is imposing conditions on funding that did not exist at the time the grants were awarded.

The NIH did not respond to a request for comment.

Scientists say the letters began arriving last Friday and earlier this week, notifying them their funding was being canceled because it involved subjects that are “unscientific,” do “nothing to enhance the health of many Americans,” or do “not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness.”

Exactly how many NIH grants have been terminated is unclear.

With an annual budget of more than $45 billion, the NIH is the largest single public funder of biomedical research in the world, and Massachusetts is the nation’s top recipient on a per capita basis. Massachusetts researchers in the past fiscal year received more than $3.3 billion from the NIH.

Among those whose research funding was terminated is Nancy Krieger, a professor of social epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her letter said she would not be receiving the last installment, roughly $650,000, of a five-year, $4 million award for honing time-efficient ways of asking patients about the discrimination they experience, including racism, sexism, sexual orientation, and age or weight discrimination.

“These are really important groups of people to study to understand how their life experiences are affecting their health,” Krieger said.

The letter she received said her work ran afoul of the administration’s anti-DEI rules, although Krieger said the research itself was not related to DEI.

“This is an assault not on just one little group of researchers. This is saying certain knowledge is not to be supported by the government,” Krieger said. “It’s the proverbial, ‘If there’s no data, there’s no problem.’ It means one can’t document the harms.”

The letters sent to scientists said they had 30 days to appeal to the agency for reconsideration, which Krieger said she intends to do.

Krieger’s research enrolled roughly 700 patients at three Boston community health centers including Fenway Health.

Dr. Kenneth Mayer, who heads the study arm at Fenway Health and is a professor at Harvard Medical School, said the cancellation of the grant would not immediately harm patients participating in the study. But, “it could have an impact on patient health in the future,” he said. “The whole point is to learn about biases. Some people avoid health care because they think they are going to be judged.”

He said it’s possible the four years’ worth of data already collected may be used, such as to develop training programs for doctors or educational materials for patients. “This is just such an important kind of work,” he said.

An NIH official told the Globe that administrators who oversee grants were given barely an hour’s notice of the terminations late last Friday before the notifications were sent out.

The official, who declined to be identified because they are not authorized to speak publicly, said they were aware of 24 such notices from four NIH institutes and centers, but said there are likely to be hundreds more.

This official shared a spreadsheet that showed 76 notices of funding opportunities over the past two years that the agency “unpublished,” meaning they were effectively scrubbed from public databases, potentially eliminating the funding for them.

Brittany Charlton, associate professor and founding director of the LGBTQ Health Center of Excellence at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has not had any research funding terminated but has heard directly from several scientists who did lose their funding. She said many will appeal.

Charlton said researchers are also working to partner with civil rights organizations as they challenge the legality of these executive orders.

“This goes beyond research on LGBTQ health and includes studies seeking to understand and address health issues affecting a wide range of other vulnerable communities,” Charlton said in a statement. “Scientific inquiry is under siege and the public’s health hangs in the balance as crucial studies vanish.”

Sean Arayasirikul, a medical sociologist and an associate professor in-residence in the department of Health, Society, and Behavior at University of California Irvine, received a termination letter last Friday that stopped funding halfway through a five-year study involving roughly 900 participants.

Arayasirikul’s research studies how racism and discrimination affect people of color who are gay or transgender and need help with HIV prevention, substance use disorder, or mental health.

“That is one of the biggest priorities for HIV prevention today and not having these data and not having this knowledge hearkens back to a time when denialism around HIV was prevalent,” Arayasirikul said.

“I am starting to think now that I may lose my job and not exist in this field anymore and that’s one thing,” said Arayasirikul. “But to erase an entire generation of scholars who come from these communities, doing this work, the impact of that is immense.”

 

FULL TEXT:

In an unprecedented move, the National Institutes of Health is abruptly terminating millions of dollars in research awards to scientists in Massachusetts and around the country, citing the Trump administration’s new restrictions on funding anything related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, transgender issues, or research that could potentially benefit universities in China.

The sweeping actions would appear to violate court rulings from federal judges in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C., that block the Trump administration from freezing or ending billions of dollars in government spending, said David Super, a constitutional law expert at Georgetown Law, who reviewed some of the termination letters at the Globe’s request.

In a related case brought by an association of higher education officials that specifically challenged Trump’s various DEI executive orders, a federal judge in Maryland twice over the past month blocked the administration from terminating funding, saying in his most recent decision the restrictions “punish, or threaten to punish, individuals and institutions based on the content of their speech, and in doing so they specifically target viewpoints the government seems to disfavor.”

Super added that the termination letters are also “unlawful” because the NIH is imposing conditions on funding that did not exist at the time the grants were awarded.

The NIH did not respond to a request for comment.

Scientists say the letters began arriving last Friday and earlier this week, notifying them their funding was being canceled because it involved subjects that are “unscientific,” do “nothing to enhance the health of many Americans,” or do “not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness.”

Exactly how many NIH grants have been terminated is unclear.

With an annual budget of more than $45 billion, the NIH is the largest single public funder of biomedical research in the world, and Massachusetts is the nation’s top recipient on a per capita basis. Massachusetts researchers in the past fiscal year received more than $3.3 billion from the NIH.

Among those whose research funding was terminated is Nancy Krieger, a professor of social epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her letter said she would not be receiving the last installment, roughly $650,000, of a five-year, $4 million award for honing time-efficient ways of asking patients about the discrimination they experience, including racism, sexism, sexual orientation, and age or weight discrimination.

“These are really important groups of people to study to understand how their life experiences are affecting their health,” Krieger said.

The letter she received said her work ran afoul of the administration’s anti-DEI rules, although Krieger said the research itself was not related to DEI.

“This is an assault not on just one little group of researchers. This is saying certain knowledge is not to be supported by the government,” Krieger said. “It’s the proverbial, ‘If there’s no data, there’s no problem.’ It means one can’t document the harms.”

The letters sent to scientists said they had 30 days to appeal to the agency for reconsideration, which Krieger said she intends to do.

Krieger’s research enrolled roughly 700 patients at three Boston community health centers including Fenway Health.

Dr. Kenneth Mayer, who heads the study arm at Fenway Health and is a professor at Harvard Medical School, said the cancellation of the grant would not immediately harm patients participating in the study. But, “it could have an impact on patient health in the future,” he said. “The whole point is to learn about biases. Some people avoid health care because they think they are going to be judged.”

He said it’s possible the four years’ worth of data already collected may be used, such as to develop training programs for doctors or educational materials for patients. “This is just such an important kind of work,” he said.

An NIH official told the Globe that administrators who oversee grants were given barely an hour’s notice of the terminations late last Friday before the notifications were sent out.

The official, who declined to be identified because they are not authorized to speak publicly, said they were aware of 24 such notices from four NIH institutes and centers, but said there are likely to be hundreds more.

This official shared a spreadsheet that showed 76 notices of funding opportunities over the past two years that the agency “unpublished,” meaning they were effectively scrubbed from public databases, potentially eliminating the funding for them.

Brittany Charlton, associate professor and founding director of the LGBTQ Health Center of Excellence at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has not had any research funding terminated but has heard directly from several scientists who did lose their funding. She said many will appeal.

Charlton said researchers are also working to partner with civil rights organizations as they challenge the legality of these executive orders.

“This goes beyond research on LGBTQ health and includes studies seeking to understand and address health issues affecting a wide range of other vulnerable communities,” Charlton said in a statement. “Scientific inquiry is under siege and the public’s health hangs in the balance as crucial studies vanish.”

Sean Arayasirikul, a medical sociologist and an associate professor in-residence in the department of Health, Society, and Behavior at University of California Irvine, received a termination letter last Friday that stopped funding halfway through a five-year study involving roughly 900 participants.

Arayasirikul’s research studies how racism and discrimination affect people of color who are gay or transgender and need help with HIV prevention, substance use disorder, or mental health.

“That is one of the biggest priorities for HIV prevention today and not having these data and not having this knowledge hearkens back to a time when denialism around HIV was prevalent,” Arayasirikul said.

“I am starting to think now that I may lose my job and not exist in this field anymore and that’s one thing,” said Arayasirikul. “But to erase an entire generation of scholars who come from these communities, doing this work, the impact of that is immense.”

 

Honestly the original title is appropriately boring but the real headline should be

A new memo from the U.S. Department of Transportation indicates that it will direct more funding to states with higher birth and marriage rates

Here's the article

CONCORD, N.H. —

A New Hampshire executive councilor is raising concerns about new language tied to federal highway funding.

Executive Councilor Karen Liot Hill said a new memo from the U.S. Department of Transportation indicates that it will direct more funding to states with higher birth and marriage rates.

"New Hampshire is one of the oldest states in the nation, and we have one of the lowest birth rates in the country," she said. "And so, I'm very concerned if all of a sudden, there's going to be new strings attached to federal funds."

State Department of Transportation officials said the prior administration also had its own initiatives, and New Hampshire still got its highway money.

We don't anticipate that this will cause any problems," said DOT deputy commissioner Andre Briere. "In the last Justice40 (Initiative), we're also a state that doesn't have a lot of communities that meet those criteria, but we were nonetheless granted discretionary grants."

Briere was referring to a program under President Joe Biden that prioritized programs related to climate change, clean energy, pollution reduction and other categories.

As the Trump administration's freeze on federal grants gets litigated in the courts, nonprofit organizations and other initiatives that receive federal funding are watching and waiting.

Executive Councilor John Stephen said he's all for cutting government spending, but he said that allocated funds New Hampshire organizations are counting on should be delivered.

"It's important that the nonprofits and the organizations that have been pretty much guaranteed current funding for their operations, that we continue, and we're fiscally responsible in everything we do at the state level," Stephen said. "What I'd like to see going forward, though, is that we're looking, working closely, collaboratively with the federal government to make sure that New Hampshire is not adversely impacted."

Gov. Kelly Ayotte said she hopes the Trump administration takes a closer look at where the resources being targeted by the freeze are actually going.

"Because they could be going to public safety issues," she said. "They could be going to drug prevention, interdiction – all those things are critical."

 

CONCORD, N.H. —

A New Hampshire executive councilor is raising concerns about new language tied to federal highway funding.

Executive Councilor Karen Liot Hill said a new memo from the U.S. Department of Transportation indicates that it will direct more funding to states with higher birth and marriage rates.

"New Hampshire is one of the oldest states in the nation, and we have one of the lowest birth rates in the country," she said. "And so, I'm very concerned if all of a sudden, there's going to be new strings attached to federal funds."

State Department of Transportation officials said the prior administration also had its own initiatives, and New Hampshire still got its highway money.

We don't anticipate that this will cause any problems," said DOT deputy commissioner Andre Briere. "In the last Justice40 (Initiative), we're also a state that doesn't have a lot of communities that meet those criteria, but we were nonetheless granted discretionary grants."

Briere was referring to a program under President Joe Biden that prioritized programs related to climate change, clean energy, pollution reduction and other categories.

As the Trump administration's freeze on federal grants gets litigated in the courts, nonprofit organizations and other initiatives that receive federal funding are watching and waiting.

Executive Councilor John Stephen said he's all for cutting government spending, but he said that allocated funds New Hampshire organizations are counting on should be delivered.

"It's important that the nonprofits and the organizations that have been pretty much guaranteed current funding for their operations, that we continue, and we're fiscally responsible in everything we do at the state level," Stephen said. "What I'd like to see going forward, though, is that we're looking, working closely, collaboratively with the federal government to make sure that New Hampshire is not adversely impacted."

Gov. Kelly Ayotte said she hopes the Trump administration takes a closer look at where the resources being targeted by the freeze are actually going.

"Because they could be going to public safety issues," she said. "They could be going to drug prevention, interdiction – all those things are critical."

 

I've got 32GB RAM and an RTX 3080 I'm borrowing long term. Normally I just play Rocket League, some Deadlock, and good single player games (ie not formulaic yearly-released).

Any recommendations?

 

I recently got a Steamdeck and was wondering if anyone had any recommendations of games that take almost 0 brainpower to play so that I can focus on listening to audiobooks.

For me that means no dialogue and no text to read. Games that have worked for me so far are:

  • Rocket League (difficult to play on Steamdeck)
  • Vampire Survivors (once I learned what each item does)
  • Peggle

Games that I've had trouble with include

  • Sifu
  • Brotato (gotta read to learn the items)
  • Factorio
  • Baba is You

Games I have yet to really try:

  • Elite Dangerous
  • Elden Ring
  • Dorf Romantik (this is promising)
  • Powerwash Simulator (also promising)
  • RollerDrome
  • Halo: MCC online (is Halo 3 online viable on steamdeck?)
  • Risk of Rain 2
  • Hades

Anyone have any suggestions? I'm running out of ideas and may end up just forgoing this hole idea in favor of keeping gaming and books separate

46
sleepy suzie (sh.itjust.works)
 
 

I don't really know much about socialism, but I want to learn more. I also don't really know what kind of book I'm looking for, but I'm not really looking to read Marx at this point and I also don't want to read a pop economy book like Freakonomics. I want something a little more legit, or academic, I guess. I'm cool with classics, too, if there is a story out there that explores these themes.

Sorry if that's not much to go by, I'm having trouble articulating what it is I want to read

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