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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 8th, 2023

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  • To be fair, I’m a decent programmer: I spend a significant portion of my workdays programming all kinds of things. Writing a program to generate sudoku’s with a unique solution, without copy pasting a bunch of algorithms, but actually making it all up yourself definitely sounds non-trivial to me.

    (Read: That sounds like a really hard beginner project, and you should be proud for even trying, and you shouldn’t give up :) )


  • This may be old advice, and I can’t speak for music or languages (where I myself have the same issue) but for woodworking and programming this is my experience: Once I get some idea for something I want to build, that becomes the goal of the project, not learning the skill itself. It could be carving a small model boat, or writing a sudoku solver, but at least for my part, once I get caught up in some project, I have a hard time letting it go. That’s as opposed to if I sit down and try to systematically learn a skill.

    Some suggestions for projects off the top of my head:

    • Some kind of simple encryption/decryption method.
    • A nice wooden box to put something nice in (possibly without visible metal parts)
    • A sudoku solver
    • Model car (maybe with wheels and movable doors)
    • A little “river steamer” with a rubber-band driven “propeller” (don’t know what the wheel on the back of a river steamer is called)
    • A “peg solitaire” solver (because I was really frustrated at not being able to solve it)

    The point is just to find something else that interests you, that can motivate you to learn the skill you want :) good luck!


  • I think this response is great, because, while I’m on the other side of the fence (theoretical chemist that sucks at anything artistry related) I think it’s a common misconception that math/science/engineering isn’t creative.

    I find that misconception both with people struggling to learn it, and often with people teaching it. The reason I bring it up is that, in my experience, the “hard” sciences become both more fun and easy to learn, and more easy to teach, when creativity is encouraged. For my own part, I’m wildly chaotic in the way I solve problems, and my notes are typically a jumbled mess of drawings and scribbles. For my students part, I’ve seen stuff loosen for a lot of people when they’re encouraged to just let their thoughts flow out on their paper, rather than thinking everything through five times first.

    By all means: There’s a difference between math and art, but I think a lot of maths teachers and students could have a better time if they allowed themselves to think more artistically, especially those that are well inclined to it.



  • Cool! I didn’t know about the pelvic tilt either, and it’s interesting to hear that both mtf and ftm transitioners (is that the right term?) have similar experiences regarding emotional accessibility. And thanks for opening for questions, I’m going to fire off a couple right away:

    Have you experienced any change in sleep patterns?

    Any significant change in appetite? If yes, how? Both regarding amounts, and what kind of food you “crave”?

    I’m assuming you don’t menstruate, but do you have any kind of hormonal “cycle” that would be similar? If so, how is it?

    PS. It’s veery late in my time zone, so I have to sleep now, but I appreciate any answers I get, and I’m looking forward to reading them :)


  • I’ve also always thought it may have to do with social conditioning, but possibly on a non-sexual level. My thought is that guys are (generally) conditioned to be more quiet about intimate things, or things that are good, and more loud in “aggressive” situations. This fits well with the factual observation that men are less likely to talk about personal problems with a friend, and more likely to push the boundaries (be vocal) in an interview. In my head, it’s an extension of the “strong, silent” stereotype, which is often regarded as positive. Women, on the other hand, are (typically) socially conditioned to be more vocal about feelings in general. I wouldn’t be surprised if these conditionings bleed over into how vocal people are during sex.

    With that said: I’m a guy, and my gf likes it when I make noises. Once I got used to it, I also learned to enjoy grunting. Grunting is highly recommended.





  • “I can reuse this old function if I just monkey-patch this other class to work with it, no one will have any issues understanding what’s going on”

    Edit: Thought this was the programmerhumor community. For context: A monkey-patch is when you write code that changes the behaviour of some completely different code when it is running, thus making its inner workings completely incomprehensible to the poor programmer using or reading your code.



  • I have to admit, I’ve never touched the kind of issue where I need to load a bunch of binaries I can’t automatically trust as part of a build process, so I won’t speak on that.

    On the part about OS updates being a PITA, yes: I’ll admit that I offset updating the macOS major version for as long as possible. As long as my major version is maintained/get’s security updates, and the newer versions are backwards compatible enough that I can compile stuff for them without any hassle, I’ll stay on macOS 13. Judging by historical data, that means I have about two more years before I might need to spend an hour or two fixing up stuff that bugs out with the eventual major update.






  • I can agree that fighting apples UI’s can get frustrating (i.e. playing the “try to find the right button” game). What makes me think macs are great is that you get all the freedom you could wish for in a terminal that is unix-compliant, while also getting the reliability of a hugely widespread OS that a bunch of good developers are paid to maintain. With the new macs you also get the apple silicon hardware, which is great.

    I think most people that use macs indeed do need the safety rails, but at the same time they bother me. I know how to disable them within 15 mins of setting up my computer, but if I’m helping someone with an issue, I sometimes first need to spend some time disabling safety nets and installing the tools I need. Also: Shoving iCloud storage down my throat is shit. They should stop that.