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piazzon DHH: The HEY stack Vanilla Ruby on Rails, MySQL, redis, stimulus, elastic search

Sure, a fairly best in class example would probably be Notion. Switch between pages, move some elements around, etc. There's a level of interactivity and responsiveness that I just don't see with Hey.

piazzon DHH: The HEY stack Vanilla Ruby on Rails, MySQL, redis, stimulus, elastic search

Noteworthy how they tout the success of their "magic" frontend stack made with vanilla JS, lack of a trendy framework, etc. But if you use the app, the UX is fairly laggy, requires frequent refreshes, all the animations and interactions are off - the list goes on and on. It's noticeably subpar (and I like Hey).

Seems to me that the proof is in the pudding wrt their stack, but it's probably not what they wanted to prove. I would take a well tuned React SPA over this any day of the week.

piazzon Announcing TypeScript 3.9

Can you give a concrete example of the kind of code you'd like to write that you can't write in Typescript?

Types absolutely are a first class citizen in TypeScript. Especially coming from Go, which doesn't even support generics, Typescript is really quite powerful. It even has support for ADTs via discriminated unions, which gives you the same power of enums with associated types that you'd get in Rust/Swift.

Is it possible the reason you feel like Typescript doesn't have Types as a first class citizen is because it leverages structural typing rather than nominal typing?

piazzon Tokyo’s Lion Cafe in Audio Magazine

Shibuya's Lion Cafe is the absolute best place in the world to work off your hangover on a Sunday morning. It feels sacred, an altar to caffeine and hifi audio.

God I miss this place, and miss Tokyo. Can't wait to go back when the world opens again after Covid.

piazzon If you're busy, you're doing something wrong (2011)

It does indeed seem like the arrow of causality may be backwards here. Many people I know who are truly naturally talented are relaxed because their work does not subjectively feel difficult to them.

Yes, they push themselves hard and strive constantly to improve. But when the nature of your work matches the contours of your mind perfectly, it's not really work – it's purpose. In this zone you can feel yourself excelling and striving with a sort of effortless ease. You needn't force yourself to study - on some level you want to sit down and practice. The feeling of being truly excellent is addicting and propels a virtuous cycle of growth and achievement. So yeah, of course you're relaxed. Winning feels great.

piazzon The Science Behind Why Some Are Shy

Are you me?

Maybe this is an ambivert + social anxiety thing?

It is so odd. I like to be alone, but I like to know that I have a social interaction planned for later in the day, etc, so that I’m not guaranteed to be alone for the WHOLE day. And then once I’m there, I’m eager to get back to being by myself.

piazzon How to increase serotonin in the human brain without drugs (2007)

Can you elaborate? This would be mindblowing. I have fructose malabsorption, and have had sleeping issues most of my life. Never occurred to me they could be related. Please say more.

piazzon The Der Spiegel journalist who messed with the wrong small town

“It attenuates all feedback loops that our bodies require to form empathy”

Care to elaborate?

Also, what do you mean by “L7”?

piazzon The Next Billion Dollar Disruption, Real Time Animation

Yeah I don’t think this author has any idea what he’s talking about. His argument basically is that real-time animation and motion capture will, what, replace what Disney and Pixar are doing?

What people like this don’t realize is the degree to which every iota of detail in a Disney (Pixar, Dreamworks, Sony, etc) production is art directed and stylized. Every shot is cheated to camera (meaning the poses don’t necessarily read well in 3D, but look spectacular/have clear posing to the locked camera), at least to some degree. That’s why these movies are so fun to watch. Even something like Rick and Morty has stylized animation and it’s own particular motion language. To think you could replicate this with generic asset libraries and motion capture is beyond ignorant.

It’s particularly frustrating as somebody who once was a professional animator to hear this guy talking about how this technology will revolutionize the field, casually mention that he was “considering becoming a professional animator” - and then you look at his work and he has such limited knowledge of the craft. It belittles those who have devoted their lives into mastering this deep skill.

piazzon Mummy of paraplegic child shows how Peru’s Nasca culture treated disability

This was a weirdly emotional read.

piazzon People Like You More Than You Know

I transferred into my university as a junior. I was older than my peers, having trod a somewhat unconventional life path before transferring. My first year at the new university, I felt felt alienated and invisible. While I made a few close friends, I couldn't seem to really integrate into the larger social fabric of the place. People just didn't seem to care about me.

Or, so I thought. One day at a party, after enduring this perceived ostracization for two semesters, a very drunk close friend pulled me aside to tell me that everybody thought I was this "mysterious transfer who thought he was too cool to talk to anybody". Everybody wanted to talk to me.

Most everybody knew of me, a number of girls had crushes (!!!), and a few flattering (though unfortunately, untrue) rumors even circulated about my exciting life before coming to school. Everybody wanted to get to know me but I apparently exuded some aura of elitism that kept people at bay.

I was stunned, to say the least.

So yeah, we never know what others think of us. I never quite recouped my squandered social capital, but it was a huge wakeup call that I'll carry with me through life. We can rarely trust our internal critics when it comes to evaluating what people think of us, and sadly, we miss opportunities because of it.

piazzon It’s Now Possible to Telepathically Communicate with a Drone Swarm

cowering at the feet of scrum master goons, boot-licking their rituals like a servile worm

Truly cinematic imagery, bravo

piazzon Benzodiazepines: Our Other Prescription Drug Problem

It’s your life, and your call, but one compelling reason to ween off these drugs is simply that you’ll feel better (most likely) when you’re off of them. I felt like I got my old brain back when I got off Lorazepam. While we take these drugs to initially treat acute anxiety, they have a tendency to create chronic anxiety in the user. This of course requires more of the drug to combat, and you have a positive feedback cycle that makes them so difficult to get off of. But, at least in my experience, there was light at the end of the tunnel. And, FWIW, my doctor was extremely fallible despite his years of education, as you noted.

piazzon Benzodiazepines: Our Other Prescription Drug Problem

I was taking 3mg Lorazepam nightly for almost three years. Weening off of it safely took almost an entire year of miserable work, and the final stages I had to do while I had no other significant life responsibilities because of the incredible rebound insomnia and background anxiety you experience withdrawing off benzodiazepines. The only upshot is that when you finally do manage to get yourself off of a drug like this, you sort of feel like you can tackle most other challenges life throws your way.

So yeah, this stuff is serious. And of course, my Lorazepam was prescribed legally, by a responsible, well regarded psychiatrist, with very little warning regarding how quickly one builds both tolerance and physiological dependence on this chemical.

piazzon What It’s Like Living As a Diagnosed Psychopath

Looks fascinating - I’ve added it to the list. Thanks for the recommendation.

piazzon What It’s Like Living As a Diagnosed Psychopath

It’s a direct observation I made from being in a relationship with an individual diagnosed with severe ADHD for ~2 years. It’s not a superficial observation extrapolated from a few encounters. I’m not drawing the conclusion that individuals with ASD feel no fear, either.

I was constantly struck by how she didn’t seem to fear any sort of physical risk. It may well be the stimulus/risk seeking nature of ADHD, or just her personality - I’m honestly not sure.

piazzon What It’s Like Living As a Diagnosed Psychopath

The bits of the transcript about having to wear a mask in order to function, having to internalize algorithms of human behavior that are totally unintuitive, and realizing that one’s deepest interpersonal instincts are out of sync with the rest of your kin remind me strongly of some individuals I’ve known with Aspergers/severe ADHD.

Additionally, her descriptions of not feeling fear, processing emotions at a lower intensity level than others, needing constant stimulation, and having a cognitive, but not truly emotional, understanding of romantic love and empathy ring true to my experience knowing these people.

I wonder if there is a legitimate grey zone at which these disorders overlap.

Or, alternatively, maybe my friend is just a psychopath.

piazzon In Praise of Karel Capek

"War with the Newts" is simply amazing.

I read this book as part of a University course in "Russian & Eastern European Sci-Fi literature", and reading this book was just about the only time I wasn't slightly bitter about having signed up for the course. Like the NYT article states, it paints a vivid picture of how our very human, not-quite-good-but-just-OK intentions frequently lead to utter catastrophe, despite their seeming relatively innocuous at the onset.

It's a damn fun read, too.