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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: August 14th, 2023

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  • Yeah, timestamps should always be stored in UTC, but actual planning of anything needs to be conscious of local time zones, including daylight savings. Coming up with a description of when a place is open in local time might be simple when described in local time but clunkier in UTC when accounting for daylight savings, local holidays, etc.




  • I’d say the real world doesn’t reward being actually gifted.

    More accurately, the real world punishes being below average at any one of like a dozen skillets. You can’t min/max your stats because being 99th percentile at something won’t make up for being 30th percentile at something else. Better to be 75th percentile at both.

    The real world requires cross-disciplinary coordination, which means thriving requires both soft skills and multiple hard skills.



  • The first Paw Patrol movie is about a corrupt and incompetent mayor who accumulates too much power, wrongfully imprisons dogs, and must be stopped, for the good of the public. At least, that’s how it’s presented at first glance.

    But if you peel back the layers, it’s really about the elected leader in a two-party system, from the cat party, being overthrown by the dog party (note that all first responders seem to be from the same political party), for daring to put the dogs in obedience school (that is, requiring first responders to actually abide by the rules of their society). Worst part is that the mayor isn’t even mayor of the same town - the dogs go to the next city over to overthrow that political leader, akin to some kind of cold war era foreign-orchestrated coup.


  • Human V Horse race in Wales

    When it’s hot out, the human wins. When it’s cold/cool, humans can’t stand a chance against the horses. Similarly, wolves and dogs can easily outrun humans in the cold, but lose to humans when it’s hot.

    That’s because the biggest comparative advantage that humans have is actually thermal management while running, not the act of running itself.

    Humans sweat. This means we can actually perform intense exercise even in heat, without overheating as easily as most other animals. Most quadruped mammals pant to cool, and have their breaths tied to their steps while running, so they can’t cool themselves efficiently while on the move. Persistence hunting doesn’t tire out prey, but actually overheats the prey to where they can’t run any further.

    Throw in the fact that we can throw, handle weapons while running, climb shit, talk, invent things, etc., and we really have been a deadly species for long before industrialization.