j_bum

I’m sorry to hear that.

I know that there absolutely are people who shouldn’t take it based on their mindset and underplaying predispositions.

There is certainly a point to be made about psychoactive (and other) drugs inducing episodes of psychosis. This is something on the uptick with marijuana legalization in the US [0].

And I think am plainly wrong about my understanding of these effects not being “permanent”. I suppose I was thinking about this too much from a “neurotypical” angle, and not from the angle of how substances can alter the neurological trajectory of people with predisposed sensitivity.

[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/mental-health/marijuana-induc...

You had me up until your last clause…

If you understand that LSD doesn’t permanently alter the brain, why do you think PY “permanently” alters the brain? It does alter the brain (like LSD; see the plethora of research on PY altering neurogenesis and functional connectivity [0]), I’m unsure of what you mean by “permanent”.

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07624-5

Ugh now I am extremely curious. This is a lead at least lol.

Yep. I have a deep love/hate relationship with R.

This is one of those decisions that I just do not understand. In your mind, why do you imagine a set of improvements won’t be made?

Otherwise, for now, working with Python and R using the reticulate package in Quarto is perfect for my needs.

If the Positron IDE could get in-line plot visualization in Quarto documents like the RStudio IDE has, I’d be the happiest camper.

I strongly prefer `dplyr` and the R stack for table processing and visualization.

But, recently I’ve been working with much larger scale data than R can handle (thanks to R’s base int32 limitation) and have been needing to use Python instead.

Polars feels much more intuitive and similar to `dplyr` to me for table processing than Pandas does.

I often ask my LLM of choice to “translate this dplyr call to Polars” as I’ve been learning the Polars syntax.

In addition to stats, R is widely used in computational biology and bioinformatics domains. It’s also widely used in the biopharma industry for a variety of other purposes.

I’ve used it for several years now, and can’t recommend it enough. It does feel like magic :)

Looks interesting, I’m excited to give it a try.

Is there any plan to have it create a manifest (like renv.lock) that can be used directly with the posit publishing system?

Yep, I had the same exact thoughts.

Would like to see the partial residuals plotted...

Are they over fitting their model? I cannot understand how we can look at a set of data like that, see that there are, perhaps, *maybe* some associations, and then make such serious conclusions from the stats.

I want to steal this as a copypasta

Thanks for the detailed overview and the channel recommendation, I’ll definitely check it out!

Thanks for sharing. It’s very nice to hear from others with similar experiences. I agree about the mindfulness component too.

I’m curious how you capture pics. I use my iPhone. Over the past few years, I’ve also started taking short videos, as the iPhone video processing is just unbelievably good. The videos capture nice audio context, and really help me remember the “being” of the memory. iPhone pics are good too, but of course the sensor size is the main limitation. I have been thinking about looking for a dedicated small digital camera.

Curious to hear what you use!

That’s neat that you used the word “feel”… it’s the exact word I use when I try to describe my experience.

For example, I have a great spatial memory, which is obviously not due to my ability to “see” things in my mind. Instead, when asked how I can remember spatial things (e.g., “which way did we come from on our hike?”), all I can say is that I simply “feel” the path.

If you’re curious, this is because different parts of our brain are responsible for visual spatial processing vs. visual object processing. The dorsal visual pathway is responsible for spatial processing, and the ventral visual pathway is responsible for object processing, like faces. This is all “bottom up” visual processing.

Bottom up visual processing is independent from internal cognitive activation of these pathways, which can arise from frontoparietal engagement of the same “endpoints” as the dorsal/central visual pathways. This is “top down” processing.

My ability to “feel a spatial cognitive map without images” argues that there are some miswirings between my frontoparietal cortex and my temporal cortex. This is why I can still recognize faces, objects, etc., but can’t see them in my mind.

Visual imagery during dreaming adds an entire other layer onto the topic :)

Here are some good reviews and articles on the topic:

[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10538...

[1] https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S136...

[2] https://academic.oup.com/cercorcomms/article/2/2/tgab035/626...

Awesome!

When I explain it to people, I always ask them to close their eyes and picture an apple on a table. I then ask them what color the apple is. Everyone I’ve ever done this with (except a sibling) answers a color.

I then say, “to me, there is no color, no apple, no table, no outline; nothing.” Always a leads to fun discussion :)

I struggle to relate to this. I have aphantasia, which means I can’t see anything in my mind’s eye.

This is most painful when I try to “imagine” my wife’s face, my family, friends, favorite parts of nature, etc, but am left with nothing.

For me, this means that I struggle to remember things from my past beyond major life events. Even major events can be fuzzy for me.

As a result, I’ve always tried to snap quick pictures of what I’m doing, even if it means I have to “step away” from enjoying the moment for a brief second.

A few months ago, I loaded my 30k+ pics (across ~10 yrs) stored on a hard drive into an Immich instance. I can now easily look at those pictures and remember my past in a way that I simply couldn’t beforehand.

This has been an unbelievable improvement in QoL through an improved self-identity, remembrance of my past, and reconnection with memories of lost loved ones.

I can agree with the author on the disruptive nature of picture taking. But for me, none of what I listed above would be possible without capturing my memories in moderation and with pointed intent.

I want one so badly, some of that footage is just unreal

My first guess was that it’s a clean $30k. Now I’m going to add a digit and guess $100k.

And add the twist: what if the cup is made from a highly conductive material?

Any resources you’d recommend?

I haven’t used Duolingo in over a decade, but recently I’ve become interested in learning conversational Spanish.

Oops - thanks for correcting my typo

According to a Firebase video [0], the outdated and exploited package was called GhostScript.

[0] https://youtu.be/XNratwOrSiY?si=dxfD8Y7-wfOi0XcJ

Because there are some nuggets of gold to be found, many of which make their way onto this site.

> shifting underneath me

I love that language. This is something that’s constantly bothered me from the get go. Maybe I’m just wearing a tinfoil hat, but I swear I’ve noticed variations in behavior and performance within models across time.

This has been super annoying to me.

I always use the chat interfaces (mostly Claude atm), so I guess that just puts me at the whim of which sub-version of model Anthropic is serving for the day.

Or again, maybe I’m just hallucinating.

Probably safety behaviors, e.g,, “let’s look both ways before we cross the street, regardless of whether you want to”

The redistribution of “child free” & “not yet parent” from 2017-2023 is massive… a shift of over 10%.

I see this anecdotally in my Gen Z/Millenial friend groups, but the numbers backing the observation up is wild.

But frankly, I understand it. One of our main pain points for not having kids yet is the cost of childcare (US). That’s not getting better anytime soon, either, from what I can tell.

They feel magical to me as well, but I can enjoy that feeling while understanding that it’s just a prediction machine.

I don’t think the latter part can be explained to someone who doesn’t care all that much.

Another +1 for FreeTaxUSA. This is my second year using it, and I think they do a great job. It’s more “hands on”, but I think they offer a strong value.

Destin from Smarter Every Day (YouTube) has a wonderful video demonstrating this effect [0]. I’d recommend watching the whole thing, but you can see how much of an effect it has starting around the 6:00 mark.

[0] https://youtu.be/kUfF2MTnqAw?si=LRDtSJSy7jiTIpzy

This was honestly an extremely tough read for me. Very well written, and beautiful nonetheless. Some of this only can come from someone who’s walked in that world before.

I have a lot of PTSD from my doctoral work with mice. My gut reaction to the FDA starting to move away from animal models is, “thank god.”

Awesome!

I miss it too.

I think by the end I was far more invested in the characters rather than the plot though.