stephendedalus · HackerTrans

stephendedalus

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vor 8 Jahrendiscuss

I'm currently withdrawing from a psychiatric medication. In my cohort people take their lives frequently, the pain is so bad. Many of us are finding relief in CBD oil and medical marijuana. To say that the nomination of Sessions to AG (and his subsequent withdrawing of the Cole memo) has made our lives worse, is an understatement. We just want to live normal lives. As much as possible. CBD has allowed me to stay productive, to work, to rescue my career. Take it away and I don't know if I'm here. I wish Rick the best and hope he can make change and, honestly, save some lives.

vor 9 Jahrendiscuss

In 2017 I returned to America from living overseas. My mom passed away early in the year and I wanted nothing to do with shopping for a car, much less driving a car. So I just took Lyft to my new job until I had my feet under me and felt up to driving again.

In the end I never felt up to driving full time. I now share my wife's car (we did get her a car eventually), but we only purchased the 1 car. We either ride in together, take mass transit, or one of us takes a Lyft. Sometimes we use Lyft to bridge to mass transit.

Either way, "ride sharing" has definitely taken one more full time car off the road. I know it's not that simple and I know it's an economically dubious arrangement in the first place, but I think there's something to this idea if we could figure out the economics of it (how much drivers should be paid, etc.).

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

I think you're right. If they would have kept MagSafe they could have kept the HDMI port on the other side. But then the MBP wouldn't have been symmetrical. That seems to be the current obsession with Ive. The iPhone 7 is symmetrical as well, even if the new speaker is fake.

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

Truly in its infancy. The phrase I always use when in a grocery store is whether I'm purchasing things that are "recognizably food". Vegetables, fruits, meat all remind you of their original source or are identical to the original thing. Where food rates on this "eye test" degrades considerably as you move into more and more processed food. It's one of those things that feels common sense and the further along we get the more it appears that it's true. That eating an egg is worse for you than fat-free protein bars seems preposterous now, but there was a time when that was the orthodoxy.

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

You're absolutely correct. I participated in the above conversation because it's interesting, but you're right that it's missing the point. The original blog post is really thoughtful. I enjoyed it.

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

There are people out there who are either going back to flip phones or getting rid of their phones entirely. I chose to go to a Nexus 5X instead, but I feel people wanting to simplify their lives and focus on things that matter to them more with fewer distractions.

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

I went through something similar recently. I moved to another country and in the process I had to buy something to replace my Note 4. I initially bought a Note 3 to replace my iPhone because I wanted to stop carrying a tablet. The Note was a "solution" to be able to read on the go at all times, play games, etc. all in one handy device. Upon moving I was really frustrated at first at the lack of options with large amounts of storage (my Note has a 128GB SD card) and a giant screen that were available from my new company's carrier.

The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized I was solving for a problem that no longer existed. I've felt recently like I spend too much time on my phone. I don't want to play games and watch movies on my commute any longer. I don't want to read books on my phone. I want to read an actual book or, at worst, on a Kindle where all I can do is read. I want to work my brain more, basically and the phone has become antithetical to that.

So I purchased a Nexus 5X. Low storage, barely enough space for my music, etc. I saw it as going as far down the phone food chain as I was willing to go without going to a flip phone. I've been really happy with it. I talk to human beings. I look at the world. And my phone really only has enough space for a few smartphone things like maps and music. It's perfect for what I want now. Fairly simple and limited. In this case limited is good.

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

And then we've also accelerated the idea that the one thing worth spending your time on is performing for the sake of society at large. We increased testing of children in America. Many schools spend a lot of time teaching to the test. The lesson there is that your time is most valuable when it's helping the state prove your productivity. Why learn a musical instrument when society will most value you when you're sitting at a desk?

I would argue, regarding the value of learning a musical instrument, that it's worth children sampling many things to even figure out what they will like spending their time on. How will they know they will care about music without exposure to it?

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

When I started using Android I subscribed to Google Play Music. It allowed me to upload my music collection, including songs that we're on Google Play. It's not matching, like Apple. It's literally just taking my music and allowing me to store it in the cloud and download it onto mobile devices. It's really handy so far and makes much more sense compared to iTunes. Plus there's no "sync" concept once you're there. You just download music out of your collection or you don't.

vor 11 Jahrendiscuss

Does this mean I can get a proper programming-centric Stack Overflow app for my phone now? I installed the Stack Exchange app thinking it would be a fun way to see random programming questions now and then. Instead, 99% of the time it's questions like, "Was the Emperor always a Sith".

vor 11 Jahrendiscuss

Agreed. Even for those of us on Hacker News who know how to deal with this, what's our incentive for staying on Android? I really love the user experience of Android, but all this makes me think about is the next exploit and whether iPhone or even Windows Phone are more secure. At the very least they get patches in a timely fashion.

vor 11 Jahrendiscuss

I feel for you so much. I've gone through this for the last 14 years. On and off. Mostly off since I've been on medication, but it's debilitating. When you don't go places or do things because you're afraid of simply being there for a panic attack. Always sitting on aisles (when you finally get to the point where you can go to a movie) so you have an easy escape.

And yeah, often you don't look at people, wear headphones or do other things like that. That's when you're doing "well" and not having panic attacks. When you've learned how to manage it.

vor 11 Jahrendiscuss

Yeah. That was basically the entire point of the article. That the roads didn't always belong to motorists. That the idea of the roads being car-centric is a fairly recent development in human history. One of my favorite examples is Las Vegas and Moscow, Russia. In the case of Las Vegas they've built entire elevated sidewalks with escalators and elevators. Cars rule in a city where people could, in theory, walk between casinos, restaurants, etc. In Moscow there are many many large sections of the city where the only way to cross the street is to go through the subway. On the upside that city has a pretty great subway system, so it makes some sense.

Either way the point of the article (which a shocking number of people in the comments here and on the article missed) is that it's this chicken and the egg problem that needs to be addressed.

vor 11 Jahrendiscuss

> I have no complaints about the claim that drivers should more often be charged with reckless driving, but that's very different than suggesting that a significant portion of these incidents are purposeful collisions initiated by the automobile driver.

I don't believe the author was saying that. He said...

> We’re already at the point where every car-on-bike “accident” (police always assume it’s an accident; drivers are allowed unlimited “oopsies”)

I believe what the author meant is that there's an accident and then there's something far less than accident that's more the result of reckless driving, poor driving or aggressive driving. And yet the law always errs on the side of it being an unavoidable accident.

vor 11 Jahrendiscuss

> Is he implying that some significant portion of alleged car-on-bike accidents are actually purposeful assault from the automobile driver? I find that very difficult to believe.

No, he's not. He's implying that instead of motorists being charged with reckless driving or other similar charges, they're most often not even charged. I once had a car make a left turn across 4 lanes of traffic and a turn lane and t-bone me while I was cycling. He couldn't be bothered to make his way safely to the turn lane, pause, then turn left. He just swung across the entire road and hit me. He didn't even get a ticket because he told the officer the sun was in his eyes. I left the scene of the accident in an ambulance and was unable to function normally for over a year. It's not equal.

vor 11 Jahrendiscuss

The other reason cyclists choose the road is because sidewalks are frequently filled with turn-ins and turn-outs. So riding on a sidewalk, even if there were no pedestrians, would be an act of putting yourself in exactly the place motorists rush to get to/from most frequently.

vor 11 Jahrendiscuss

I agree. When would you like to exchange your car for a bicycle when the roads are turned back over to pedestrians and cyclists? Road bike or mountain bike?