@rick@ricko.social
@rick@ricko.social avatar

rick

@rick@ricko.social

I write code, fiction, and educational material. Enhanced with autism superpowers.

Photos I post are mine, and copyright by me. They may be reused under the CC-BY-NC-SA license, but not in any kind of machine learning.

My avatar is a 4-color animation-style rendering of me making a goofy hand gesture, in front of a pride flag for demisexuality. My background header is a photo of an electric truck parked off the road, overlooking a cloudy sky above a rocky coastline obscured by mist.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

rick, to random
@rick@ricko.social avatar

Finally finished playing through Spider-Man 2. Eh. ๐Ÿคท

If what you want is an open world brawler, you'd probably enjoy it more than I did.

I was hoping for more from the story. Miles was great, as were his quests, but he was very much sidelined.

If you're into such games, maybe I just recommend you wait until it's on sale. Remember: its creators already got paid.

rick, to random
@rick@ricko.social avatar

It feels like my :autistic: hyperfocus on romance books is drawing to a close.

Over 26 months I got through 600 romances, mostly audiobooks, for 5500 hours of listening.

I enjoyed the activity, and am glad I chose this rabbit hole. But, I find it increasingly hard to enjoy new books: I've figured out my likes and dislikes, and the latter are increasingly frustrating.

The real loss here is that I have 140GB of digital audiobooks that I'm not legally allowed to give away, because capitalism.

rick, to random
@rick@ricko.social avatar

I am alive.

I have regrets, but I am alive.

rick, to random
@rick@ricko.social avatar

8 hours later, it ... looks like a lawn.

I didn't think to take a before pic, but imagine sparse waist-height grass in the foreground and thick chest-height grass at the back. Oh, and I'm probably taller than you, so imagine even higher.

rick, to random
@rick@ricko.social avatar

Well. I guess this is just my life now.

LEGOยฎ Horizon Adventures

https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/news/2024/june/lego-horizon-adventures

https://youtu.be/cKv41GP4tw0

rick, to random
@rick@ricko.social avatar

Anyway, the Ultra Hard gamer thing has me thinking about shame.

Shame is one of those things I know I've never understood.

As part of figuring out I was :autistic: (and :infinity_asexual:), I picked up at a pretty young age that people were going to keep trying to make me feel bad about stuff which I couldn't control, or wasn't objectively bad, or was just against their own agenda.

Young Rick thought "well, I don't want to feel bad at the whims of others", and just kindof ... let shame go.

rick, (edited )
@rick@ricko.social avatar

Corri finds this mystifying โ€” the idea that someone could just decide to not feel shame anymore.

And, of course, if you actually say out loud "I don't feel shame", words like "sociopath" get thrown around.

Which is, recursively, being shamed for not being shamed. Wild, eh?

rick, (edited )
@rick@ricko.social avatar

And to be clear: I can and do occasionally feel bad (badly?) about things I've done, or haven't done, or handled poorly.

But I feel regret for those things. Not shame.

I try to make the best choices I can, just like everyone else. I occasionally screw up, just like everyone else.

So if everyone stumbles on the regular ... why would we make each other feel bad about that?

And by extension, why would we allow ourselves to feel bad when other people disagree with our choices or stumbles?

rick,
@rick@ricko.social avatar

And :autistic: observation: shame as a societal construct is weird, right?

Like, we can and do actually derive punishments for the things we think are objectively hurting people. But then we don't derive punishments for the things we want to be able to get away with. Places where we want wiggle room, for whatever reason.

And to cover that gap of "bad but allowed", we invent shame: "you should feel bad that you didn't get away with the thing I might want to try later".

So weird.

rick, to random
@rick@ricko.social avatar

I have been watching a streamer play through a game on Ultra Hard.

But, the streamer doesn't really have the gaming skills (reaction time, situational awareness, adaptability to the game's controls, etc) to be successful on Ultra Hard.

Yet they refuse to turn down the difficulty because there is such a prevalent stigma against playing on Story difficulty. Instead, they just get frustrated and are not at all enjoying themselves.

This feels like such a metaphor for life in general right now.

rick,
@rick@ricko.social avatar

To be clear, I'm not shaming the gamer for playing on whatever difficulty they want.

But, like, if you're playing a game and not enjoying it ... why?

(And yeah, I know, streaming is a job. If the streamer thinks they will lose money by playing on anything but Ultra Hard, then, okay, that's a choice they make. Yet another example of how capitalism and misogyny hurt everyone.)

Personally, I only turn on Ultra Hard to get the achievements. Life's too short to be frustrated while gaming.

rick, to random
@rick@ricko.social avatar

Bunny!

Looking quite dapper and healthy. For scale, it's about the same size as the fawns right now. (Seriously.) Which is to say, a bit larger than a terrier.

I believe this is a black-tailed jackrabbit, common in northern California.

The same jackrabbit as the other photos, this time with all four paws on the ground, ready for action and looking slightly below the camera. This angle shows off how long its front legs are.
The same jackrabbit, this time in "classic bunny" pose, with its hind legs and weight flat against the ground and its front paws completing the triangle. From this angle the black trim around the ears is quite prominent. Similarly, a divot in the fur across the shoulders shows off black roots.

rick, to random
@rick@ricko.social avatar

Sitting in a work lunch-n-learn where a data scientist is summarizing the talks, papers, booths, etc, at a recent conference on ML in retinal imagery diagnostics.

Like 95% of the "science" boils down to "our ML models aren't great, but instead of paying humans to get more ground truth (having experts collect and classify images) we did a capitalism and bought medical records so we could charge more for a multi-modal model which isn't any better", and similar.

Just ... why are capitalists?

rick,
@rick@ricko.social avatar

But also, and I know you will find this shocking, it turns out when you train a model on retinal imagery from a bunch of white folks who grew up on McDonalds, that model is basically useless when used for non-white patients. ๐Ÿคฏ

And yet!

When talking about "model equity", the answer is somehow "add a layer to classify the race of the patient first" instead of, I dunno, actually collecting a representative sample of humanity.

Because that would mean actually talking to non-white folks. ๐Ÿ™„

WTAF?

rick, to random
@rick@ricko.social avatar

I'm at 40% of playing through of , but I just can't maintain any enthusiasm for it.

I think my problem is the main game loop:

  1. A billion quests show up at once.
  2. You stumble into a fight which goes on far, far too long.
  3. Controls switch between fighting, cinematics, and too many mini-games and quicktime events.
  4. You finish, and are forced to switch to another character.
  5. Repeat.

As soon as I get into it, I get ripped back out. Over and over.

There's no flow state.

rick, (edited )
@rick@ricko.social avatar

Also, I just do not care about the Kraven story, especially given the absurd number of endless magically-appearing minions.

Then you've got Miles trying to actually interact with the community, and having these little personal interactions with each of his quest chains. And then the game forces you to switch over to watch Peter and Harry being rich, entitled tech bros pretending at philanthropy.

Just ... ugh.

rick,
@rick@ricko.social avatar

Typing that out makes me realize another thing: I am (over-) sensitive to UX which tries to steal my focus.

Watching soccer last night, the score indicator kept doing a thing where it would flash, spin, and show an ad for beer or whatever. I kept getting madder and more dysregulated that I couldn't crop/mask out the visual noise.

(Which is exactly what advertisers want. I know.)

Spider-Man 2 does it, too: constant interruptions with phone calls, radio drama, news alerts, etc. It's awful.

rick, to soccer
@rick@ricko.social avatar

I have all the sympathetic feels for Morgan in this USA vs KOR match.

"What do you mean off-sides? I have one job: โšฝ goes ๐Ÿ‘‰ that way. If the other team can't keep up, how's that my problem?"

(I'm paraphrasing and interpreting, of course.)

rick, to random
@rick@ricko.social avatar

A few days later, how am I feeling about my switch from stock Android to ?

Mixed bag. Overall glad I did it, but it also shows me how much more degoogling I need to do.

I think locking down RethinkDNS to "deny by default" and only unblocking specific apps to specific domains is working out well for me. I expected more problems, and I still occasionally need to go adjust the safelists, but it mostly works.

But at the same time ...

๐Ÿงต 1/

rick,
@rick@ricko.social avatar

@aiken I haven't needed Maps yet, as the navi in my truck is pretty solid. I did see a few offerings on F-droid, but I admit I have not tried them yet.

rick,
@rick@ricko.social avatar

@hk I have not tried. Could go either way, though, as while I don't have any of the usual rooting artifacts (su, supersu, etc), I do currently prevent GSF from talking to the device attestation cloud endpoints. So any apps using modern hardware attestation would likely fail, but anything older trying to just sniff around would likely still work. (And if you're not doing HTTP filtering, it seems like you would probably be fine.)

twipped, to random
@twipped@twipped.social avatar

It's interesting that after over a century of innovation in automotive design, still today the best way we've found to slow down a vehicle is to rub two pieces of metal together, and just understand that we will have to replace them eventually.

rick,
@rick@ricko.social avatar

@twipped I do appreciate that we eventually figured out "hey, you know that high school physics trick where you slow down a falling magnet by passing it through an induced field? I bet we could totally use that here to not only stop this 2-ton truck, but to also maybe get a bit of that power back and save on both gas/electricity and brake pads".

rick,
@rick@ricko.social avatar

@twipped Yeah, sorry, didn't mean to come across as nitpicky - I am just truly in awe at the out-of-the-box thinking that leap must have taken.

Magnets!

willaful, to RomanceBooks
@willaful@romancelandia.club avatar

? I found Level Up by Cathy Yardley a bit of a slog. She's reworked some of the same themes (career vs love, introversion vs isolation) in later books more successfully, and the geeky elements feel more authentic in her later books too, IMO. (Though perhaps that's just because game design isn't my thing.) Also needed some editing. Not sure I'll continue this series.

@romancebooks

rick,
@rick@ricko.social avatar

@willaful Lately, I've finished:

"Lavash at First Sight" by Taleen Voskuni โ€” I appreciated that the tension was (mostly) between the parents and not the MCs, though it relied more heavily on communication tropes than I prefer.

"Second Night Stand" by Karelia Stetz-Waters โ€” I like KSW, but I DNFed this one at 75%. I just couldn't get past the reality TV BS combined with the MC's dismissive swagger.

"Can't Spell Treason Without Tea" by Rebecca Thorne โ€” I wanted more, but it was ... fine.

rick,
@rick@ricko.social avatar

@willaful I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for more from Taleen Voskuni. I also enjoyed her other book, "Sorry, Bro", which had similar themes of trying to figure out how to respect one's heritage without getting mired in the past.

(And I think other people might really enjoy "Second Night Stand", as it's actually a solid story about the knife's edge between being true to yourself and putting food on the table. My reasons for giving up on it had nothing to do with the writing itself.)

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