maininformer

Jonathan Haidt is if the same opinion

maybe it is

I went into freetaxusa this year from turbotax expecting clunky ui, but I was surprised how nicely it looked and worked. Moreover, there is this sense of they want you to succeed in filing and understanding your taxes versus bying the next tier.

"As you know from teaching introductory statistics, 30 is infinity." -Gelman

6. chips o mast ;)

But I disagree with the tea.

I thought about this and I think the way the persian drink tea might be a sign of economic hardship: we put a handful of dried tea leaves in a pot and brew it ad infinitum on the samavar. This causes the tea to over brew and let out a very bitter taste, but also allows for a longer lasting supply. Then to counter the bitterness we add rock candy or sugar to it.

I prefer to brew the black tea in hot water but not too much; I still like saffron rock candy in it some times; but at this point my ancestral guilt is ablaze cause its a luxury to throw away tea for a cup when u can squeeze a pot out of it.

I fully agree with you mother, may she rest in peace.

I have been thinking as well, what if after passing away of a family member we plant their favorite fruit tree with them. After generations there will be a beautiful garden.

People usually laugh at this idea; maybe rightfully so, but there is something profound in it about feeding the plants and by proxy animals and fellow people who fed us.

There should be a database of oopsies where we can share our oopsies and upvote the most epic ones.

... already exhausted about thinking what can pass as an oopsie, what is the appropriate human suffering threshold we can laugh about and keep it light?

...y'all did this to me.

or as the stoics say, what if this was the last time you are doing X? ;)

Amen

Because non-white people do not have classical music? I agree with the parent, you see racism where it doesn't exist. Why would your mind go to only "white" classical music?

PS I'm Iranian-Armenian; both have rich "classical" music history. I have myself enjoyed Celtic, Chinese and Japanese folk music. Music and rhythm is so ingrained in us that I don't need to do research to know all other nations had music in all eras too.

Don't.

Piracy has its awesome use-cases if not abused.

I grew up in Iran where we have access to very little. Had it not been for piratebay, I could not educate myself on so, so many topics. Even Udacity was blocked there cause their videos are hosted on Youtube!

So if someone reads HN and they need to pirate it, I'm pretty sure McWhorter would be okay, he's a chill dude.

I believe the problem lies with people who can buy it but decide to not; in which case it becomes abusive.

So I wouldn't express dismay just at the suggestion of piracy. It's more nuanced imho.

This reminds me of a couple of cute Yahoo! answers story.

In a past life I was misplaced by the high schools sorting-hat counselor into the house of civil engineering. I was motivated and so our Hydrology professor made me the TA for his Hydraulics class.

He would give me questions with no answers to go through in my sections. The questions were damn hard and I would sometimes ask them on Yahoo! answers and this particular guy from India would always come and answer them meticulously and write integrals using unholy script like: int(a,b)Sin x dx and such and I would happily decode them for half an hour before trying to understand the solution. Fun times.

A similar guy helped me a lot when I was learning C. Hey Manjunath! if you're reading this thanks I'm a software engineer now.

Yo! Same! I started playing boardgames with my partner a 2 years ago. I was such a noob that I lost to everyone in every game. He is really good and after I learned all his tricks the only two that I think are remaining that makes me consistently second is a) more risk taking and b) being first player.

Which makes sense the higher the risk the higher the reward; when he wins its by quite a bit and when he "loses" its either a couple of points behind me or ahead of me

I am Iranian, and I have to admit, taarof has been an interesting subject in my social interactions.

With other Iranians, I have no problem reading and sending social cues; with non-Iranians taarof makes me come off as super nice and kind. But what happened, when people repeatedly took me on on my taarofs, I grew silently very spiteful and distanced myself from them. If a guest is staying late we never ask them to leave, we ask them to stay for dinner and that is a cue that I am about to inconvenience myself and you have to leave, but more often than not, in situations like this, I ended up having a guest over for hours and then overnight lol.

It took me a while to rewire my brain to set the boundaries explicitly, and I have to admit it is still excruciatingly painful for me to reject someone; makes me feel very rude. Nonetheless this approach works great, I dare say a more straightforward culture allows for a better mental state by allowing explicit and clear boundaries for oneself.