⚜︎ arscyni.cc: a sentient stack of stardust pondering nothing and everything.

  • 7 Posts
  • 72 Comments
Joined 18 天前
Cake day: 2025年12月3日
  • arsCynic@piefed.socialtoPhotography@lemmy.world•Misty solitudeEnglish
    4·
    16 小时前

    “We shouldn’t try to achieve purity as an ideal; it doesn’t really exist.”

    Not disagreeing with this, I simply dislike photography that distorts reality to such an extent where it no longer reflects how anyone would experience the scenery. E.g., editing a photo were a 1% fog during the golden hour is being photoshopped into the fires of Mount Doom. Sure, professional photo editing or concept art is beautiful, but that is not photography anymore.

  • arsCynic@piefed.socialOPMtoSkateboarding@piefed.social•Inverted kingpins, yay or nay?English
    4·
    2 天前

    I used to love Grind Kings with their inverted kingpin back in the day. They would inevitably loosen after skating a while, but I’ve heard they worked that out.

    Ace worked that out as well with their new click-lock mechanism. They also sell these baseplates individually.

    What makes me hesitant is that Ace doesn’t seem to sell spare kingpins for these, or any other for that matter. Perhaps they never break, I don’t know.

    Another thought I had is, doesn’t the kingpin add another point of stability/lock during smiths/feebles? Whereas if only the hanger touches the rail it’s more prone to slide out of it?

  • arsCynic@piefed.socialtoFuck AI@lemmy.world•this is some sad shitEnglish
    9·
    6 天前

    it explains so much of these people’s behavior

    Indeed. For me, realizing the cause of problems continues to be instrumental to keep things in perspective when solutions are often too complex to contemplate. However, in this case the conclusion is clear: a wealth/power cap has to become normalized. The inverse of vaccinations, you take money away so the indefinite growth mind virus doesn’t grab hold to infect or impact society.

    Thank you for having invested time and thought into my essay, it makes it all worthwhile, truly.

  • arsCynic@piefed.socialtoScience@beehaw.org•Meet Sabrina GonzalesEnglish
    51·
    6 天前

    To those who sometimes feel bad by comparing themselves to “more accomplished” peers, the one-page CV on her website is clickable, it’s actually six pages. Then realize your peers or you will never match Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski, so be kind to yourself. You do matter too, firefly: https://ncase.me/fireflies/.

    She’s a one-in-a-century human such as Leonhard Euler: brilliant scientifically, ethically, and most importantly, still kind.

    Quote from her talk Exploring Many Worlds at 35:31:

    Q: “Graduate school is hard. I was once told by my dissertation advisor that it’s not how smart you are, it’s really how disciplined you are. And I was wondering if you could give us your reflections about persistence and tenacity in the context of advancing in your field.”

    Sabrina: “I think the craziest thing is that you actually get advice like that. You get told things that no one should be telling you, that you’re doomed or whatever. So if I wasn’t happy doing this more mathematical research, that I should leave, and not that there’s, maybe, ways to change it. So I think that persistence is a tricky thing because, again, it’s like this cost-benefit analysis of where do you want your future to be, who do you have to deal with in the meantime to get there and whatnot. I think that maybe the sociology needs to change in that it shouldn’t be like “this is the way things are”, kind of that tough advice [tough love] type of thing. I don’t like it because it sucks, it gets rid of diversity of thought.”

    PS Sabrina didn’t actually say “no” to Jeff “the unethical” Bezos, because she wanted to work for Blue Origin and held an internship there. Choosing theoretical physics instead doesn’t mean she flipped him off—however nice that would’ve been indeed.

  • arsCynic@piefed.socialtoFuck AI@lemmy.world•this is some sad shitEnglish
    1342·
    6 天前

    It actually does cause brain damage. I mentioned it in an essay (What if I paid for all my free software?):

    For one, power causes brain damage which renders rich people literally incapable of knowing what is best for others:

    “Subjects under the influence of power, he found in studies spanning two decades, acted as if they had suffered a traumatic brain injury—becoming more impulsive, less risk-aware, and, crucially, less adept at seeing things from other people’s point of view.”

    “And when he put the heads of the powerful and the not-so-powerful under a transcranial-magnetic-stimulation machine, he found that power, in fact, impairs a specific neural process, “mirroring,” that may be a cornerstone of empathy.” ―Power Causes Brain Damage, by Jerry Useem for The Atlantic.‍[16]

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