• 5 Posts
  • 57 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • kevin@mander.xyztoScience Memes@mander.xyzTo deter predators...
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    24 hours ago

    Species don’t evolve to solve a problem, they evolve randomly and sometimes that solves a problem for them.

    Eh… they mutate randomly, and then selection acts. If there is variation that solves a problem, selection will promote that variation.

    Evolution is very much not random, it is a direct consequence of variation and selection. This does not mean that they evolve to solve problems, but problems often drive evolution.









  • kevin@mander.xyztoLinux*Permanently Deleted*
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    1 year ago

    I don’t have any particular allegiance to rust, though once it’s set up, being able to install through cargo rather than being to figure out whatever package manager or build system is nice, especially on various HPC environments where I don’t have sudo.

    Btop does look cool though


  • kevin@mander.xyztoLinux*Permanently Deleted*
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    1 year ago

    What I mean is that many of them have basically the same functionality with the same arguments. I don’t mean I have pristine memory for the differences, but things like alias ls="eza" is basically a drop in replacement with some added features. So when I’m on a server without it, everything is basically the same, just less fancy.

    Helix and fd are an example of the other pattern - they are huge improvements over existing tools, to the point that when I’m forced to use the basic ones, I’m actively crippled. But as an argument not to use the better tool day-to-day, this doesn’t make sense to me. Why would I force myself to suffer 95% of the time to save myself from suffering 5% of the time?

    I mean, for helix/vi it’s even clearer. Vanilla vi is basically unusable for me anyway, and I needed a huge number of plugins to be serviceable - on a basic cluster environment, I’m going to be crippled anyway, so…


  • kevin@mander.xyztoLinux*Permanently Deleted*
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    1 year ago

    they either don’t improve upon or add functionality that’s not available, or simply add eye candy. Gaining pretty colors is nice, but not worth losing familiarity with ubiquitous tools.

    The thing I like about a lot of these is that I don’t lose familiarity with existing tools. When I end up on a cluster that doesn’t have them, I’m a bit annoyed, but I can still operate just fine.

    The principle exception to this is actually fd - I now find find (har!) almost unusable without having a man page open in a separate terminal. But that’s because fd is so much more ergonomic and powerful, I would never give it up unless forced.


  • kevin@mander.xyztoLinux*Permanently Deleted*
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    1 year ago

    Yes. The only things I use regularly that aren’t aliased to or replaced by a rust-built tool are mkdir, ln, and rsync.

    • cd: zoxide
    • ls: eza
    • cat: bat
    • grep: ripgrep
    • find: fd
    • sed: sd
    • du: dust
    • top/htop: btm
    • vi: helix
    • tmux: zellij (or wezterm mux)
    • diff: delta
    • ps: procs

    Probably some others I’m forgetting



  • You agree that if you stop eating or eat less, you will lose weight. Great. We’ll have to disagree on the definition of a solution

    Cutting off someone’s leg will also cause them to lose weight. This is pretty simple. Is it a solution to obesity?

    A large nuke dropped on Gaza would end the fighting there. Also simple. Is it a solution?

    No, no, I hear you saying, these actions would lead to other problems, don’t solve the underlying complexities etc etc.

    I’m having trouble believing that you can write in complete sentences but are too thick to understand how “just eat less” suffers from the same problems. So you must be trolling me - congrats! I’m ashamed it took me so long to recognize you’re just playing dumb.

    I’ve cited a bunch of scientific papers showing why just eating less isn’t a solution. It may lead to temporary weight loss, but doesn’t solve the issue long term, and causes other harms. If you want to provide any evidence for your claims or to dispute mine, go for it. Otherwise, cheers! The solution to your ignorance is you just need to learn more. Simple!


  • If you stop eating or eat less, you will lose weight.

    Of course you will. This does not mean it’s a solution to obesity.

    Inarguably, eating less solves obesity and is simple to do.

    Except it’s not. It’s not sustainable. Even with medical intervention, the vast majority of weight is regained.

    It is within most people’s personal power to control their appetite

    Except it’s not. The long term success rate of dieting (again, in the context ofa medical study) is 15%

    Next, you just have to wrap your head around how simple eating less food is

    Except it’s not. And the repeated weight loss and regain experienced by most dieters is arguably worse for health than just being overweight.

    You can keep simplistically stating that it’s easy, despite all the evidence, and you will continue to sound as idiotic as a rich person floating on their inheritance and saying that poverty would be solved if people just weren’t so lazy.


  • Eating less will solve obesity.

    Not fighting would solve war. Wouldn’t it?

    You’re wrong in equating war with someone carrying extra weight, they are not the same situation at all.

    War is often a very complex problem without a simple solution.

    Right. Exactly! And obesity is a complex problem without a simple solution. Eating less is a trivially correct solution to obesity just as not fighting is a trivially correct solution to war. Please see https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasoning-analogy/

    What obese people understand and whether they get admonished is immaterial to solving their obesity.

    My point is that if it were actually so easy, it wouldn’t actually be a problem, would it?

    If you’re aware that you’re making facetious arguments, then stop being facetious and implying false equivalents

    I’m not implying anything, I’m offering analogies. And the sarcasm is a rhetorical device that seems to have flown right over your head. I’m sorry about that. I didn’t think you would actually believe I thought that the solution to war and poverty and depression was easy. They’re not. I’m trying to get you to see (argument by analogy, check the link again) that the solution to obesity is not either.

    If your response is just “yes it is,” if you think that the trivial solution hasn’t been tried over and over again by millions of people who have desperately wanted to lose weight and keep it off, but have failed, you’re being willfully ignorant.

    Hunger is a primal urge. It’s governed by a complex series of hormonal and neurological feedback loops. It’s influenced by sociological and psychological factors as well as the non-caloric nutritive content of available and tolerated foods. Those factors are shaped by culture and economics and history etc etc

    When I say all this and you say “eating less is the solution”, it sounds just as silly and naive as when you talk about war being the result of historical factors, religious animosity, geopolitics etc, and I say the solution is not fighting. Which is to say, very silly and naive.


  • Misattributing your own false arguments to others doesn’t prove you any less wrong.

    And continuing to push your facile argument doesn’t make you any more right.

    War?

    Fight less.

    The facetious solutions you’re proposing to stopping a war or ending clinical depression are not as simple as you imagine,

    Of course not! That’s what makes them facetious! But “fight less” is as useful a solution to war as “eat less” is a solution to obesity. Which is to say it’s trivially right, but not actually a solution at all.

    are actually impractical and will not work

    Right. It’s the same with obesity. Do you honestly think that obese people don’t understand the link between eating and weight gain? Do you think that they don’t spend their entire lives with people admonishing them for their weight?


  • Wait, you’re saying that there are nuances and subtleties that my simple solutions don’t take into consideration?!?

    /s (I didn’t think this was necessary, but given your response…)

    Clinical depressionObesity, on the other hand, is caused by various complex chemical imbalances influenced by various environmental and social factors, so you can’t simply disentangle yourself from those chemicals and circumstances

    Yep, exactly!

    Do you seriously think that eating - arguably one of the most fundamental and instinctual things that living things do - is not subject to complex chemical, environmental, and social factors? Really?

    The solution “don’t eat so much” really is as naive as telling a clinically depressed person “just be happier” or telling a poor person “just go earn more” or telling Israelis and Palestinians “just don’t fight do much”.

    Yes, the solutions really are that simple, at one level, but pretending like the knowledge of this solution gets us anywhere in terms of actually addressing the problem is just silly.