Fiction I think is much more important than non-fiction. It explores the human condition and the nature of reality. It’s been shown that people who read fiction more are more empathetic. The reason is clear - reading puts you in the mind of another. It allows you to visualize their perspective.

This is not only good generally because empathy makes the world a better place, it’s even good in a machiavellian sense because the better you understand humans the better you can manipulate them.

There’s a quote by Twain I believe where he says something like “Fiction is much more real than non-fiction. Reality doesn’t have to make sense, but fiction does”

Conversations are more about listening than talking. I suggest reading “How to Win Friends and Influence People” for a more in depth overview. Essentially, become genuinely interested in the person you are talking to.

Try to understand them. Try to figure out what is important to them and ask questions with these interests in mind. By being interested and asking questions that the other person wants to answer, they will do a majority of the talking and will feel like you are a great conversationalist.

Of course, sometimes this is easier said than done… and it must be done genuinely. You must be genuinely interested. There are subconscious cues you communicate when you are interested in someone, and everybody loves being the focus of someone else’s deep and genuine attention.

Once you’ve done this and built up rapport, then you can give personal anecdotes or get to your sales pitch or what have you.

Some other general tips are - speak slowly! Don’t go overboard obviously but slower is more confident and puts people at ease. Say the other person’s name when appropriate. Everybody loves the sound of their own name. Compliment people on things you genuinely appreciate. Nobody likes flattery but everyone likes being appreciated.

What sort of things do you use BTT for? I use it too on my MacBook with Apple silicon. Although I view it as a consolation prize. Most everything I use it for I can do with a bash script + hotkey in Linux on my desktop.

Then again, maybe I’m just not creative enough. I understand BTT has a wide range of options to allow for complex shortcuts. But practically speaking, I don’t know if I can use 95% of those options.

Well, you should get roughly 7~8 hours of sleep so you go to bed around 11pm. Thankfully I don’t have any issues falling asleep.

If you slept in a lot and have a few extra hours in the bank, you could push that 11pm to like 1am or so. Just try to return to a normal sleep schedule ASAP.

I wake up at the same time every day. I usually go to bed around 11pm and wake up at 6am. Even if I go to bed a little later, like 1am or go to bed sooner like 10pm… I still wake up at exactly 6am. Once you do it long enough, your body just wakes up naturally. I always wake up a couple minutes before the alarm.

People really shouldn’t sleep in excessively on the weekend. If you have a healthy sleep schedule Mon-Fri and then go to bed at 5am Friday and Saturday night… you’re essentially undoing all the healthy sleep habit you build during the work week. Sleeping in a little is OK… so instead of 6am wake up 7:30am or something.

If the problem is you can’t fall asleep, there are the common tips. No screentime an hour before. Try reading a book in bed, that always puts me to sleep within 30 minutes. It’s easier to sleep if you’re eating healthy and exercising. Increase your A/C so that it’s around 70 degrees F and get under the blanket. And if you just desperately need to sleep because tomorrow’s an important day then I don’t see a harm in taking a benadryl. Just can’t make a habit out of it.

Yeah I think you’re right and it’s sort of the result of a long game of telephone. Soy is a complete protein but it’s a lower quality protein. For example whey protein, which comes from milk and therefore an animal product, is much easier for your body to process and use.

Studies have shown that while both are complete proteins, whey’s amino acid profile for example is superior for muscle growth. A few of the amino acids in soy your body can’t really use that well.

This simple fact slowly becomes “soy is dangerous” as one person tells another and shares a link on Facebook and so on.

People really need to learn to just search up research articles and read a few studies. It’s not that hard to do and it’s generally the most reliable way to learn about something.

I’ve just been here since the API change. I’ve been more or less happy with it. Some things are dissapointing, like there being just as much of a hive-mind mentality as reddit. But I guess that’s probably just inherent to online vote-based communities.

I also wish there were an easier way to find new communities - and good ones. I don’t want to browse shitty memes. I want stuff where people are participating in good faith genuine discussion about meaningful topics.

I’ve found some of that here so far.

At the end of the day though, this is open source and decentralized. It’s everything a social media should be. To me, anything less than that is a waste of time. There is zero reason to spend your personal time creating content for a company to profit off of.

The offtopic part is the prostelyzing. You sound like a Jehovah’s Witness. I get it - you’re enthusiastic about this but you’re not the only one that’s ever heard of ChatGPT. Everybody knows already.

I’m just telling you why you’re being downvoted.

And again- would you like me to give you a simple script request that breaks ChatGPT? Maybe it’ll help you take off the rose-colored glasses.

I agree GPT is great. I use it for all sorts of stuff, not just coding. But when I post on a human board, I want to talk to a human.

Also if you want I can give you an idea for a “simple script” a human could easily do that ChatGPT simply cannot do. It’s a text-prediction algorithm. It doesn’t think like me or you.

I love it a lot. I talk to it every day. It’s like a super-google and helps while coding too. To me it’s like a starting point research thing or help when stuck on something.

But yeah people are downvoting you because you’re going offtopic by making this into a ChatGPT thing instead of what OP is actually asking.

For what it’s worth i didn’t downvote you because I don’t generally downvote people. I only mention because it seems like the points bother you

I love ChatGPT and pay for the $20 so I get the upgraded version. However guy is asking for advice from humans, otherwise he’d just be asking on ChatGPT.

In my experience GPT can write simple scripts for you, but it quickly falls apart once you reach a certain complexity.

However, I’m quite concerned about firearms being used for their primary purpose: killing people

Killing someone is not immediately against the law, though. It depends on your state laws and the context of the killing. In most states you can kill someone to defend yourself from a reasonable threat to your life.

The “primary purpose” is not murder. It’s to kill someone. I would perhaps agree with you depending on the weapon. Like if a company was selling a grenade that explodes with cyanide gas or something. I think they should be held liable for that.

we’re just hairless apes that are both too smart for our own good

By that same logic the Earth is just a rock floating through space with self replicating molecules on it. What makes it any more or less important than us? It’s all rather meaningless, no?

We’re a virus on Earth, but just like viruses don’t care about invading and killing the host - why should we care about killing the Earth? Don’t misunderstand me - I think we should try and stop climate change from getting out of control from a practical standpoint. We’re stuck here so rising temperatures will have serious long term impacts on our global society. But I think this idolization of nature argument falls flat - feels almost religious.

Main reason for me is that we are just as part of nature as anything else. To assume otherwise is arrogance.

If I remember correctly, this is an element of the three body problem series. Essentially some type of warp drive would leave long term effects on the surrounding space-time.

Sort of like nuclear fallout, but at the solar system level. Basically to use it safely, you would need to travel at normal lower than light speed to some empty place and then from there use the FTL warp drive.

That’s why psychological torture is preferred by a lot of “advanced interrogators”.

Keep someone locked in the same uncomfortable position for days while you’re blasting aggressive disorienting sounds and randomly flashing blinding lights in a room with mirrors.

Once in a while, take them and do a few hours of water boarding. Make sure they’re constantly sleep deprived and can never get more than a few minutes of sleep.

Then when you do want to inflict physical pain, focus on the feet very slowly. Feet is one of the most sensitive areas. Slowly start peeling the skin or stick nails through the toes, or practice some electroshock therapy.

Honestly torture is terrifying. I recently read a long form article about it. Worst part is, our “civilized” governments still do this with some amount of regularity. Would be more civilized to put a bullet in the head.

Then think about near future where we can read thoughts (like 1984 where the “advanced interrogator” reads the protagonists mind to figure out what his greatest fear is) or even worse implant thoughts. They could implant images of you murdering your family or something. There’s a lot of potential for some horrifying stuff.

I thought these were popular for pulling out the little stick to pack a joint with. Never seen anyone open a beer with them.

I’ve seen people open beers in a lot of different ways though. I had an alcoholic friend in my early 20s who could do it with anything. Even his teeth. He chipped his tooth once and stopped doing it with his teeth though, lol.

I feel like swimming lessons are a bit of a scam anyways. Me and my brother grew up poor. We both can swim perfectly fine. We went to lakes / public pools often while growing up.

Never took any swimming lessons. My parents never did swimming lessons and neither did their parents. Just throw the kid in and let him figure it out while he’s still young. It’s an instinct sort of like dogs.

I’ve been at the bottom doing manual labor all the way to the top and everything in between. When I was in manual labor at 19, I thought that it was stressful. Truly. I thought I was swamped with work and was always running around with my head off like a chicken.

But now that I’m older I realize the job was dead simple. I know that because I have more experience with both life and work. If I were put in that same position today, it would feel like a vacation.

Imagine a waitress. Their job can be stressful, sure. But imagine they really fuck up and fall and break a few wine bottles. What’s the potential damages? $100? $200? Let’s say $1,000.

A CEO of even a small company can fuck up and lose millions. The problems are on a whole different scale. You will see as you move up. People think it’s easy to be the boss because they only see from the outside. There’s a price you pay in sanity.

Ya and if we all lived in the forest the world wouldn’t be heating up. If we all gave our money to charity there wouldn’t be any homeless. If we all didn’t go to work the capitalist system would collapse.

But you know as well as I do that it isn’t going to happen. Like I said, this individualistic approach to “changing things” is used as a deliberate distraction.

It’s meant to take advantage of people’s sense of responsibility. Nothing will ever change. If people stopped using Amazon then Walmart would step in to fill the void. It’s a Medusa’s head. The only way to ensure worker’s rights is to write it into the law. Anything else is moral grandstanding. Which I think is even more distasteful when done to working class people.

Not the case with some, for sure, but it’s definitely more than some people realize

I’d even say it’s virtually everything. I can’t think of anything personally. let me give some examples

Fast food worker? You start as a burger flipper or cashier and become interested in the management of the fast food place. You take on more responsibility just because you find it interesting - the logistics of making sure the basic ingredients are prepared and how many fries to have ready at specific times of the day, measuring how fast the average person makes a burger and seeing if you can optimize it, how to greet and talk to customers, how to resolve conflicts, how often do you need to clean, what is the best way of cleaning, etc.

This can even be a career. There are regional managers and consultants for these fast food chains that go around to audit and optimize different chains. See how we start with something basic that 99% of people treat as a dead end job but you can go deeper?

The same skills that help you manage a fast food place will inevitably transfer over to other management. You could be useful at a warehouse, factory, hospital, etc.

Let’s say you dig holes for an underground construction company. You stick around long enough and they’ll have you pull some coaxial or fiber through the pipe you’re digging a hole for. After a while, you become good at it and that’s your main job because it requires more skill than just digging holes. You start to understand how neighborhoods are wired, with the vaults spread every 150ft and how the hubs feed all of the houses in a neighborhood or businesses in a commercial area. you get assigned to a big project that requires splicing.

all of a sudden you’re a fiber optic specialist and you have the skills to maintain large networks. you could be a repairman or an auditor or even a project coordinator for large projects

I’ll give you an example that happened to me. When I was 19 and just got out of high school, I got a job at a warehouse. It was a cosmetic company that produced all sorts of different shampoos and conditioners and make ups and female hygiene cleansers, eyelash growth serums… all sorts of stuff.

I started off as general labor for the shipping department. I would sit around and wait for a big order to come in from a distributor and then go around the warehouse getting boxes and putting them on pallets. I would then wrap up the pallets and load them into a truck with a pallet jack.

Well, each pallet needed to have some paperwork done and then each overall order needed to have some paperwork done. this included the total weight of the pallet, the total units of product (different boxes have different qty of items. one box may have 24 shampoos but a box of eyelash serum may have 60), and then all of this needed to be put on an invoice and packing slip that gets taped to the pallet.

when I got there, I was trained that we would write this down onto a piece of paper with pen and then tape it onto the pallet. there were frequent errors (if the weight was wrong, we would get charged extra by the shipping companies or if we’re shipping internationally it could get stuck in customs if you didn’t have the correct paperwork). I was good with computers and knew how to use Excel. I was interested in how I could make the process more efficient (less work for me). I suggested a spreadsheet to my boss that had a table saved into a hidden sheet that had all the weights for each different box, as well as the total # of items per box. he said sure, why not. I weighed every single box and then also weighed an average of the pallets we had.

I created a spreadsheet template that would essentially fill everything in automatically, while also looking clean and professional - i put the company’s logo in there. This would also pump out a packing slip and invoice automatically filled in from the data inputted.

my boss was elated. his department was more accurate and looked more professional, meanwhile we were doing less work. basically every day i walked around that warehouse i paid attention and looked to see what we could be doing better. how could we optimize?

very quickly they pulled me off of labor and I started working in the office. when I left that job, 4 years later, I was the manager of the inventory department - responsible for over $100 million worth of raw materials. i had 8 people under me. i was 23, didn’t know wtf i was doing, but really i was just curious and interested in making things move more smoothly

Do you see what I mean? Anything is interesting if you’re a curious enough person. There’s stuff to learn everywhere. There are processes to optimize, there are intricacies and subtleties to everything.

the problem with police is that

• the people who should work as a police officer don’t want to be a police officer

• the people that shouldn’t work as a police want to be a police officer

I don’t think police is inherently a bad thing. It just happens to be because people who want power over others should not have power over others.

similar story with politicians. I’d prefer an honest politician. but the process of picking them selects for those who are dishonest.

hell, I don’t even like what I do all that much but I like talking about it, lol. It’s interesting even though it’s not my “dream” job.

the older I get, the more I realize there’s depth to anything. whether you’re a hair dresser, an engineer, or a physical therapist. you can read and learn and get deeper and deeper into the study of that thing. anything is interesting if you’re curious about it.