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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • Zoom is better than what it used to be and not outright a lie. I still have a dual camera phone (pixel 7, standard camera and superwide), and the picture is reasonable at 2.5x. It’s a 50mp sensor that, by default, only takes ~16mp pictures by only using certain sensor cells. Zooming uses a tighter group of those cells while still making a 16mp picture. But yes, zoomed pictures absolutely lose quality as the cropping starts hitting the limits of a tiny piece of do-all glass. My phone goes to 8x. Meanwhile, the flagship phones with an additional mild-zoom cameras bump up the baseline further. Still, only equivalent to like 40-50mm on a DSLR full frame sensor. Not enough for me, not for the price, so I still lug my DSLR around occasionally, as my eye tends to prefer framing with my phone above 3x - or about 50-85mm on a crop sensor.



  • A huge part of lifting things as a normal human is finger strength. 100lbs is fairly casual to support with your body if you bypass the need for fingers and don’t have to maneuver it. I have these furniture lifting straps that go over the base of your forearm (near elbow), go under the furniture like a wardrobe, then up to another person’s forearms. The was at which your forearms can lift feels like magic once you take the pain out of your fingers. I’ve used these with several people and all give the same response. I highly recommend getting them.

    So while I’m not saying an arm could lift a car, many objects in our lives are movable because, at the upper limit, they’re kind of movable by humans already. I know you picked that weight at random, but the need for more of a brace than just the arm is more for the device’s own support rather than a limit of an average human body. And of course the size and shape of the object matters a lot too. But if it’s something where the weight can be supported well by your legs and core in some configuration, that’s not a lot of weight. Something like a pair of arms for equal support and a brace that extends to the waist would be manageable







  • The people that’d pay a premium for vanity just don’t get solar panels. The only people I could see going for this are tech bros. There’s lots of huge houses in my area that have regular solar panels. There’s lots of homebuyers here that don’t want to see panels or don’t want panels at all. And then there’s desparate people signing predatory solar panel leases. These tiles don’t fit it anywhere near me. I guess an alternate category would be people who must use a visible roof panel to get decent solar production, but plan to sell in a relatively short term. But still, their best option is inaction, not expensive solar. Especially if your electric supplier caps your output.





  • Yes, but it took time to get there. Two things shifted: I opened up and I lowered the bar to be called “friend”.

    Opening up: geek out. Find the people that share your interests. I know, it’s hard to do. But if you can find some people with a common thread, you’ll likely find people with a few common threads and several tangential threads. Obviously, it’s hard to find people, but chances are if you find one, they’ll bring you more similar-minded people. Secondly obviously, you have to throttle yourself to not overdo the geeking until you know it’s someone that has similar levels of interest. Most people geek out about something, but your local societal norms tend to direct you on what’s normal. Watching every sports game of a particular team, knowing their stats? Geek. Cars? Geek. Guns? American Geek. Weight lifting min/maxing? Geekmaxing. These are just the normal masculine hobbies. Weather, space, physics, electronics, gardening, cooking, reading, so many other things to geek about. Try going to events that are part of or are tangential to your interests. Even if you dont grab anyone’s contact info, enjoy vibing with your kind. Depending on the gig, you might even start seeing the same people.

    Lowering the bar: I spent souch time feeling like I had no real friends. I had work friends. I lost school friends. I left home city friends. I lost prior work friends. Then I threw a big party and invited people from across my life. They showed up (mostly) and it literally felt like I was just catching up with old friends. The party itself wasn’t important (to this topic), but the realization was. I always heard this notion of “fair-weathered friends” and “friends of proximity” and thought it applied to all of mine. Now I know: they’re all friends of proximity because everyone is. Even your own family. If you lose the proximity, the friendship fades if you don’t make the time for them. But it doesn’t mean it’s gone. It doesn’t mean it needs a formal restart. I have summer friends, winter friends, work friends, concert friends, and so on. No, they’re not all deep friendships, but they’re people I can message on mutual topics and get together for mutual interests. But, among the ~30 people I can think of off the top of my head, there’s maybe 5 I can talk about anything to. Doesn’t mean I do. But they’re people that i can spontaneously have deep conversations with.

    Opening up can be as a simple as “I’m having a bad time with [blank]”. If you’re surrounded by masculinity, you might just get some dumb curt answers like “fix it” or “so don’t do it”. But you might find people with relevant experiences. I know I have selection bias, but most of the people in my life now would lend an ear and try to help. Humans like solving problems.

    Similarly, when I was younger, I had more female friends than male. I’m sure being horny was an underlying factor, but I have little interest in most male interests here. By 25, I felt like I had no one. By 35, I was surrounded by 20 men and 20 tangential women, all friends, all open emotionally, all with just a seemingly small amount of common interest. But all about the same vibe.

    And yet I can go a week and only talk to my spouse. And I’m happy with that. My spouse is my best friend, but I’m in the orbit of all these other people to share hobbies and interests with, both with and without my spouse.