Despite all my rage I’m still a rat refreshing this page.

I use arch btw.

Credibly accused of being a fascist, liberal, commie, anarchist, child, boomer, pointlessly pedantic, a Russian psychological warfare operative, and db0’s sockpuppet.

Pronouns are she/her.

Vegan for the iron deficiency.

  • 10 Posts
  • 104 Comments
Joined 3 months ago
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Cake day: June 27th, 2024

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  • 2 or 3 sessions a week. Not longer than 2 hours. Habits are easier to form earlier in the day.

    Take the time you have, take 2 weeks off the end, in the remainder of time divide each session according to how far along it is and spend the elapsed time % on revision. Obviously don’t be pathological, one minute of revision is useless. Like at 3 months in 50% new stuff 50% revision.

    Don’t revise by just rereading stuff, pick problems to do in samples of topics already selected, or practice exams etc. Old uni profs might send you some practice exams and stuff if asked.




  • you usually work up grits. In general for edges that should end shaving sharp (e.g. kitchen, whirling) below 1k is rough work, profiling work, 1k or so is basic small chip repair etc, 3k is standard sharpen, and higher is polishing wank. You get what you pay for in general: cheap stones need soaking, the wear out fast (needing truing). Shapton makes some great splash and go stones.

    However, there is one cheap 2 sided diamond stone that is actually quality. The sharpal one. Be aware diamond cuts extremely fast (good and bad), it doesn’t need truing or soaking. I recommend if you’re getting one stone get that. Learn proper bur minimisation technique and that’ll cover chip repair and get your knives sharp enough to cut seethrough sheets of tomato.

    If you feel fancy add 1 micron stropping compound and a sheet of balsa wood to strop on.




  • Do you exam well? Like are you calm sitting them, do you know how to keep track of time and avoid sunk costing on questions you can’t answer etc?

    If no you’ll want to address that.

    Otherwise work through textbooks of the appropriate material. Find some and work through, I mean work through. Not speed read and nod along. Write notes and do the practice problems. Do it regularly, to learn how to do a skill you have to regularly practice. You’ll need a schedule that has you setting aside time at least a couple of times a week.

    You have to regularly practice things in short sessions to learn well, and once learned repeat less frequently to maintain that knowledge. So you might spend 1 hour on the current topic, and close with 15 minutes of some practice questions on topics you already covered.

    Keep notes of what you’ve done, by hand! it activates more brain shit. Talking aloud through problems can help too, or pretending you’re explaining what you just learned to a nearby prop or very patient person. If you’re struggling with a topic in your revision questions do more of it till it’s easy again.

    Also I don’t exactly recommend this but amusingly prompting an llm to be an inquisitive listener and trying to explain topics and answer its “questions” might be helpful? NEVER try to learn from one though, they lie really convincingly.




  • Sharpening stones.

    you need an edge so many times in your life. When you’re using scissors, slicing veggies, pruning trees, harvesting mushrooms, posting online, mowing grass, carving wood, cutting roots, trimming nails, scraping stoves/ovens, shaving, digging, trimming, pealing whatever.

    There are so many dumb fancy arse awful tools that butcher edges and work in one specific case. No! For millenia people have been grinding edges, it is not difficult to learn it just takes practice.

    Modern manufacturing means we can enjoy extremely consistent stones in well characterised grades. Go use some, and enjoy how much less effort life requires when everything that cuts, cuts easily.







  • Everyone seems to use the words differently but in general sentience is accepted as the ability to feel and respond to one’s environment. That implies a thing which is able to feel/be aware often synonymous with consciousness although some people say consciousness is sentience + imagination etc.

    I mean it as there being a thing which feels like something to be.

    If you mean it otherwise could you please define it? Or if you’re happy to proceed with that definition of consciousness and sentience (which requires consciousness as defined) could you proceed with answering my questions?


  • This sounds like Penrose’s stuff which is umm not widely accepted.


    Being alive is not a clearly defined state, it’s a classification we impose on the world. Assuming life is conscious is pretty close to panpsychism, especially when we get to organisms like fungi or plants without centralised structures. That’s not saying it’s wrong, as you say we can’t exactly go and measure it. At this stage it is not an empirical question.

    But uncertainty doesn’t mean anything is equally likely. toy example: radioactive decay timing probabilities.

    Most people tend to come down on assuming brains have something to do with consciousness because humans describe consciousness being modified by stuff happening to their brains and not the rest of them. If you come down on all life being conscious to some degree or another why? and where do you differ from the pan psychics who say all stuff is conscious to some degree or another?