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Balgair commented on Colleges see significant drop in international students as fall semester begins   text.npr.org/nx-s1-549866... · Posted by u/mooreds
psadri · 18 hours ago
Somewhat related data point - our local elementary school used to have 5 first grade classes a few years ago and now they are down to 3. It's a large % drop over just a few years. This is going to move like a wave through the rest of the years all the way through to university.
Balgair · 36 minutes ago
The 'kid crash' is a real thing. The demographics aren't going back up. We had peak child in the US in ~2002 I think.
Balgair commented on There Goes the American Muscle Car   thedispatch.com/article/d... · Posted by u/pluripote
RatchetWerks · 15 hours ago
As a die hard car enthusiast. This makes perfect sense.

We are going through a culture change in society.

Many younger kids don’t view cars as the gateway to freedom and coming of age experiences. (Which is fine)

Combined with the brutal performance of modern EV cars. Muscle cars seem like a waste of time/energy/money/complexity. Logically it makes no sense.

I’m currently going through an identity crisis (as a gearhead) as a result of this.

Balgair · 12 hours ago
As a former gear head there is also the perception issue.

Look, no way about it, most of the drivers of muscle cars today are grey headed old men. They're the only ones that can afford them.

The next big demo for muscle cars is via exorbitant leases that select for idiots. Which yeah, now we're talking younger men with testosterone, at least.

Being an old man now too, I'm fairly certain that dumb testosterone laden guys with a loud and fast car are still gonna get the girls, but I can't be 100 on that anymore.

Still thats the next demo down. It's mostly old farts on Harleys and in Mustangs (unless you're near Paris Island or San Diego, of course)

Balgair commented on Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States   post.japanpost.jp/int/inf... · Posted by u/Kye
Balgair · 4 days ago
Also true of vinyl records and pottery out of the UK and EU. The people I buy from are just not doing it. Some stuff I've already paid for and now I'm having to pay the difference.

Technically, it's not tariffs on the records. But DHL isn't caring about that at all. To just staff up essentially overnight, the records are going from ~$20 shipping to ~$80 shipping. 4x! And I have to pay them, not the company. No telling how long it's on the docks either.

The potter in the UK that I like is just plain not dealing with it as it's a 1 man shop. Can't get it no matter how much I want to pay.

Just so disappointed.

Balgair commented on Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam   chronicle.com/article/bri... · Posted by u/diodorus
Syzygies · 5 days ago
One can't have an informed opinion on this without witnessing how grading a college exam takes place, first hand.

Grading a stack of blue books is a "just kill me now" brutal experience. A majority of cognitive effort is just finding the page for the next problem to grade, with finding the answer another delay; any programming language with this kind of access latency would stay a "one bus" language. So of course professors rely on disinterested grad students to help grade. They'll make one pass through the stack, getting the hang of the problem and refining the point system about twenty blue books in, but never going back.

With stapled exams one problem per page one can instead sort into piles for scores 0-6 (if you think your workplace is petty, try to imagine a sincere conversation about whether an answer is worth 14 or 15 points out of 20), and it's easy to review piles.

When I had 200 linear algebra exams to grade at once, I'd scan everything, and use my own software to mark and bin one question at a time, making review passes a pleasure. I could grade a 10 question final in one intense sitting, with far more confidence in the results than team grading ever gave me.

Balgair · 4 days ago
You make a great point here. The quality of the grader may be higher with an AI than a stressed out grad student.

It's long been known that a longer essay answer is more likely to get a higher grade. And yeah, having been a student and a stressed out grad student, after about the 20th exam, only length is the real signal of grade.

Other comments point out that with the prices of tuition these days, students should be expecting a lot higher quality of feedback (grading) than what they are getting at any random R1.

It really does seem that the University system (as opposed to the college-esque system) is broken and that the additional AI fears are just another log on the already collapsed bridge. We're getting over the wrong thing.

Balgair commented on The ROI of Exercise   herman.bearblog.dev/exerc... · Posted by u/ingve
speedgoose · 6 days ago
You may want to find some activities you enjoy while doing them.

I don't know what you tried, but sometimes a small variation is enough to make it fun and rewarding during the exercise. For example, I find slow road running pretty boring. The only value is doing exercise and relaxing my brain. I gave up many times. But replace the roads by challenging technical single tracks, and I'm very happy and havn't gave up in years.

Balgair · 6 days ago
Yeah, I get this every time I talk about weight loss/exercise.

For reference, I've swum miles at once, run a marathon, played team sports, combat sports, pick up basketball, roughhousing with kiddos, etc. I've not done literally everything, but I feel like I've tried enough things to make a reasonable call.

Look, I just hate exercise. I don't feel energized or happy or fulfilled or whatever. I just feel exhausted and tired and sweaty and gross. There really isn't a second, throughout my life, where I've ever wanted to exercise for it's own sake.

I know, that seems like crazy talk to you probably. But, form what i know of myself and my life, it's just the way it is.

Like I said, when I was 'at weight' for my height and in a good BMI, then afterwards I would feel good and nice and that exercise was worth it. But when I am overweight, then exercise looses that feeling for me. I just feel bad.

Still, thank you for the encouragement and ideas, I do appreciate it.

Balgair commented on The ROI of Exercise   herman.bearblog.dev/exerc... · Posted by u/ingve
Bjartr · 6 days ago
Same. Still working on reducing body fat percentage (5'9", 230lbs, 32% body fat) but have been exercising twice a week with a personal trainer for over a year. Have put on quite a bit of muscle. Easily the strongest I've ever been and an in the best shape of my life.

Exercise still sucks. I hate it, it's an awful experience. The only thing I feel during and after exercise is tired and sore. There is no glow, no feeling of being refreshed, energized, satisfied, or accomplished. Just discomfort.

It doesn't matter the exercise, the intensity, cardio or strength, 15 minutes or an hour and a half. It also doesn't matter how long I consistently exercise. I'm at 13 months during this attempt and it's just as miserable an experience as it was day one. Despite assurance from multiple people it'll start feeling good after just a few months more than however long I'd been doing it.

In fact, I would say my actual day-to-day quality of life has gone down since I've started exercising regularly because now I'm sore from exercising most days of the week, whereas I was never sore like this before regular exercise. I deeply wish that exercise could be a positive experience.

I'm always worried I'll fumble and lose the habit because it would feel so, so much better to just stop exercising. (A personal trainer is quite expensive to boot, but there's no way I'd get to the gym and work out otherwise)

You at least have given me some hope that this might change if I get my weight down, so that's something I'll keep in mind.

At this point the only reason I put up with it is in 30 years I'll thank myself.

Balgair · 6 days ago
Keep the chin up!

It took me ~4 years before I finally got my act together. I had found an exercise routine I tolerated well enough (Deck of Pain), but it wasn't until I did a (frankly horrible) calorie focused diet that I started weight loss in earnest. 1k calories/day of dieting was awful for a year, but it did work.

It is very much worth it though. I have more energy for the family now and my friends too. I finally got the weight off and, like I said, that's when I finally felt the good feelings about exercise. I was pretty surprised by it too, felt that I was somehow genetically doomed to just hate exercise. Nope, the MDs are right here, being overweight is really bad for you. I just didn't think that it was a mental thing too, but in retrospect, it makes a lot of sense.

You got this, keep it up

Balgair commented on The ROI of Exercise   herman.bearblog.dev/exerc... · Posted by u/ingve
Balgair · 6 days ago
Anecdata:

I hated exercise. Still do. People talk about a glow or a good feeling after exercise. My SO does too. I never felt it.

Until I dieted down to being 'at weight' not overweight. Only then did it feel good to exercise, and only then after I exercised. The act itself is still a terrible experience.

I've put on weight again and, yep, I hate exercise now. But now I know there is a light at the end of the dieting and weightless tunnel. Without the experimental results, I would never have known.

So, its not that I don't trust the science here, I mean, how can I refute it? It's just that my lived experience says that I'm a freak and I'm sitting out on the end of some bell curve or whatever. I know that it got a high ROI, that's why I did these weight loss experiments in the first place. It's just that for some reason, my body and mind hate exercise until I get down to healthy levels.

Thanks for letting me share this.

Balgair commented on Mark Zuckerberg Shakes Up Meta's A.I. Efforts, Again   nytimes.com/2025/08/19/te... · Posted by u/voxadam
dmonitor · 9 days ago
So what's the goal? Summon a god?
Balgair · 9 days ago
There's this thing about lovecraftian ur gods.

You have to have these people that can speak these horrible languages, study for years unimpeded for likely no goal, can finance expeditions to the bottom of the ocean and fail again and again, sacrifice the right victims at the right times, etc. These people that will awaken Cthulhu have to be some of the most brilliant in human history (so says the lovecraftian mythos), and then they have to throw away all their brains and money and time to awaken the 'do not awaken under any circumstances' dark god of terror and soul consuming ambivalence.

Like, there isn't anyone out there that is that stupid. Totally breaks the immersion of the worldbuilding, right?

...right?

Balgair commented on Giving people money helped less than I thought it would   theargumentmag.com/p/givi... · Posted by u/tekla
srcreigh · 10 days ago
If they did a study about insulin where they give it to you for 1 year then take it away, the results wouldn’t be positive.
Balgair · 9 days ago
Oh no, they would very much be positive. You'd know that insulin would have saved every one of their lives. Even a very small does of insulin is just that good.

But these studies aren't like that. They aren't that good. UBI isn't that good. That's what I get out of these studies.

Balgair commented on Giving people money helped less than I thought it would   theargumentmag.com/p/givi... · Posted by u/tekla
srcreigh · 10 days ago
They all know the money is going to stop coming in.
Balgair · 10 days ago
Yeah, I've heard this critique too and I'm not sure how to address it.

Like, the whole point of a 'study' is to test things out. That's temporary by design.

But yes, it's a giant confound too.

I guess what the DBIS showed is that the results are not spectacular and automatic. They are slight-ish, grey, muddled.

Like, if UBI was a panacea like insulin was to diabetics, then we'd expect a huge result and difference. But it wasn't, and that a good result to report out too. I just wish there was a silver bullet.

u/Balgair

KarmaCake day15159April 25, 2013
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