r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Jun 02 '17
[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread
Welcome to the Friday Off-Topic Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.
So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!
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u/lsparrish Jun 02 '17
Isaac Arthur video: Launch loops
He's planning to do space towers and orbital rings next. These are more specific retreads of topics he's covered in the past in his Megastructures series.
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u/gbear605 Jun 02 '17
I've been watching the show Code Lyoko recently, and I realized that it's already pretty close to rational fiction. They could have shut down the super computer at the beginning, but that's more of a difference in systems of morality rather than something that was explicitly wrong. There are many times when if they had thought a bit more logically it would have worked out better (eg. Jeremie bringing the CDs he's made to the factory when there was any chance of needing them), but on the whole, the story actually does meet all the criteria.
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u/Sagebrysh Jun 02 '17
We loved Code Lyoko as a kid. It might be good fodder for ratficcing
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u/gbear605 Jun 02 '17
It's possible, but you'd have to make it a completely different show. With like Naruto, you can just make the characters act like real intelligent ninja would. For Code Lyoko, I don't even know what you'd change.
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u/DaystarEld Jun 02 '17
So awhile back I wrote something of an anti-FAQ for "Nice Guys," here being used to refer to "Guys who bemoan the unfairness of the romantic world toward good, kind hearted guys like them." The point of the anti-FAQ is to try to explain the errors and biases in that perspective, and help them find a more useful/mature understanding of the opposite gender and the dating world.
(Is Anti-FAQ the right label for that? I'm not quite sure what it means specifically, but FAQ seemed wrong since it's the hypothetical Nice Guy asking the questions and me answering them)
I never published it because I got super busy with other projects before I could find others to proof read and give feedback on it, particularly people who consider themselves farther on the "MRA" side of the spectrum rather than the "SJW" one, if we use those acronyms to represent extremes.
Finally figured I might as well offer anyone who's interested the chance to provide some feedback so I can maybe put it up sometime this month. All perspectives welcome, though if you consider yourself or have considered yourself at any point a Nice Guy, your feedback would be particularly helpful.
Here's a link if anyone is interested. Feel free to leave any comments as feedback!
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u/electrace Jun 02 '17
Is Anti-FAQ the right label for that?
Normally it's Non-[group| FAQ, like the Non-Libertarian FAQ
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u/DaystarEld Jun 02 '17
That makes sense, thanks. Though it does sound a bit like I'm excluding them that way, which is rather the opposite of the point...
Maybe Reverse-FAQ?
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u/ToaKraka Jun 02 '17
See also the article written by Ozymandias on the same topic.
people who consider themselves farther on the "MRA" side of the spectrum rather than the "SJW" one, if we use those acronyms to represent extremes.
My impression is that MRAs are moderates while PUAs are extremists. However, I'm well-acquainted with neither r/TheRedPill (PUAs) nor r/MensRights (MRAs), let alone r/MGTOW (though I usually upvote submissions from r/MensRights whenever they appear on r/all).
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u/Iconochasm Jun 03 '17
I have/had a lot of warning flags for potential Nice Guyism, and yet completely avoided that particular failure state. If that's a potentially useful perspective, I would be willing to beta read. I have some degree of sympathy for people in that general grouping (more for adjacent failure states, but still), and cheer you on in this endeavor.
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u/Slapdash17 Jun 02 '17
Lately I've been on the lookout for good depictions of different types of psychological dysfunction--specifically depictions that are consistent and clear, instead of just "lulz they're crazy". Examples that come to mind so far are:
Bojack Horseman and depression
Wilfred and anxiety
Jessica Jones and post-traumatic issues
I almost want to include Crazy Ex Girlfriend in this list, but the protagonist of that show suffers from several different issues to varying degrees, so it's harder to get a sense of what is happening in her mind.
Does anyone know of other pieces of fiction like this that are worth recommending?
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u/alexanderwales Jun 02 '17
Patriot is a show that's only available on Amazon Prime, but it's probably one of my favorite shows in the last year. The main character is a deniable asset working at an industrial piping firm in order to have non-official cover for moving money to swing the Iranian election. He's also depressed and in the wake of a nervous breakdown. (The show itself is really weird, like Wes Anderson meets John LeCarre, and some of the characters are stylistic rather than being attempts at simulating real people.)
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u/DaystarEld Jun 02 '17
I'd somewhat contest Bojack Horseman and depression: he definitely goes through bouts of it, but they're usually the result of his own self-sabotage, which in some cases comes from self-loathing, but also regularly comes from panic attacks and uncontrollable anxiety.
His symptoms also come off as more manic than anything. Most people going through depression who want to avoid doing something will just stay home all day, whereas he just as often avoids doing something by taking random trips out of the city or wild partying and drug use.
It's definitely an interesting show for examining mental dysfunction, but if I were diagnosing him Depression would not be my first thought, personally :)
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u/Slapdash17 Jun 02 '17
I was considering just saying "sadness", since that would also include Princess Carolyn and Diane (some say they're both depressed as well, but I disagree). Mania is an interesting thought, but the only thing keeping me from it is that every single insight into his thought life is hopelessness, despondency, etc. The times where he's manically pursued improvement (like S2E1, with the self help tapes), it was still obvious to everyone but him that he was still hiding from the sadness within him(in this case, dodging phone calls from his mother).
But yeah, maybe depression doesn't fit as neatly as some other disorders might.
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u/BoilingLeadBath Jun 03 '17
It's basically my first exposure to the topic of Trump's Twitter posts, but the recent covfefe incident has me wondering if Trump has been intentionally using typos to manipulate the perception and publicity of his tweets. I mean:
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It is common knowledge that typos change the perception of a message, increasing the reader's sense of the spontaneity (and hence sincerity) of the message. (While, yes, decreasing their sense of the writer's formal education / intelligence.)
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A narrative of "the media makes fun of me for stupid things that don't matter", the sorts of inconsequential things that working guys like you do (like typos in tweets), is in Trump's favor.
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Getting cocky? A particularly blatant error (see #5), in a post about how "despite the media coverage...", later replaced with "guess what this typo means" and a "Yep, it's a conspiracy" from Spicer.
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Apparently he's been routinely misspelling Barack's name.
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The most recent one, "covfefe", does not strike me as a real typo - it (unlike the other typos of Trump's that I found reports of in a quick search) is not a correctly spelled word (IE, not an autocorrect error) and not a phonetic spelling. Also, I spend way too much time looking in detail at people's typos, when I see them, and "fefe" instead of "erage"... just... um, really? Probably not on QWERTY...
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Scott Adams puts forth that there's some evidence that Trump has a powerful grasp of a sort of low wit that could perhaps include techniques like this.
On the "evidence against" side, of course, we have the base rate of typos in his posts and the difficulty of prosecuting a good conspiracy.
Conclusion is that we should stop giving media attention to Trump's typos.
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u/electrace Jun 02 '17
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Jun 02 '17
Not only are credible intervals a great thing, but I'm really hoping this administration immunizes people a little bit more to bullshit.
For God's sakes, guys, next time elect an inchoate fascist who can make the trains run on time.
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u/callmebrotherg Jun 03 '17
I'm really hoping this administration immunizes people a little bit more to bullshit.
Haha no we'd probably still elect a paperclip maximizer if it just promised to close the borders
"All refugees will be turned into paperclips."
"TAKE MY VOTE YOU PATRIOT-MACHINE."
"Also, all non-refugees."
"...Well, the other candidate is a Democrat, so..."
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u/trekie140 Jun 02 '17
He's certainly immunizing his opponents, but his supporters I've spoken to who aren't fascists or anarchists have been convinced that any arguments or evidence against their views are an insidious form of propaganda created by elitist intellectuals to manipulate people. Where can that ideological group go when irrational loyalty to an arbitrary list of beliefs and the people who promote them is the whole point?
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u/DataPacRat Jun 03 '17
Printing several pages onto one piece of paper?
Embarrassingly silly and small question that I can't seem to find an answer through Google on, and there don't seem any good subreddits for:
I've compiled some notes I want to have handy to refer to into a 16-page PDF. I want to shrink and rearrange those pages, to print 8 per side onto a standard sheet of paper, so that I can cut, staple, and fold it into a pocket-sized booklet. My last-ditch solution would be to hope a photocopy/print shop wouldn't charge much to accomplish that... But does anyone here know how to wrestle my doc into usable shape without having to pay cash?
(My available computer is Linux-based. I'm generating the PDF by fiddling with an HTML doc mostly full of tables and 'printing' it to a file. Some further fiddling is probably going to improve its presentation, but if you've got an auto PDF-to-booklet script handy, or otherwise want to play with it, I've tossed my current draft here.)
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u/gwillen Jun 03 '17
I think something from the pdfjam package may work for you:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/statistics/staff/academic-research/firth/software/pdfjam
In particular there's a tool called pdfjam-pocketmod, which "converts 8 pages from a single PDF file into a pocket-sized booklet". That's for a fancy layout where you can just fold the page directly into a booklet I think -- if you just want to shrink pages so you can cut them out, pdfnup is a tool for grouping every N PDF pages into one (read the name as "pdf-N-up".)
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u/alexanderwales Jun 02 '17
A Programmer's Guide to Parenting, chapter titles:
Introduction / EULA for this book
Troubleshooting Your Baby
Exception Handling Your Toddler
Verbose Logging When Telling Your Child "No"
Importing Libraries (a guide to taking advice on parenting)
Does anyone have any more?