shalmanese (u/shalmanese)

shalmanese commented on Thought-Terminating Cliché en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tho... · Posted by u/walterbell

grimgrin · a day ago

Sometimes I use them, because I simply want the person to shut the fuck up

The half time super bowl show is on, if you're really having a _problem_ with Bad Bunny, I agree to disagree ;) "shut the fuck up"

shalmanese · a day ago

Eh, it is what it is.

shalmanese commented on Art of Roads in Games sandboxspirit.com/blog/ar... · Posted by u/linolevan

abcde666777 · a day ago

There's so many things in games that are taken for granted at play time but which actually take a lot of thinking and work to get right. Roads for instance aren't something which your typical player will look too closely at... but they will notice if they look or behave in a way that seems wrong.

I've been playing Kingdom Come 2 of late, and I find it's natural to just kind of take the world they've created for granted - just like we do the real world. But when you actually stop and look you have to consider that every one of the finely crafted details was built by someone's sweat and tears, be it artists, programmers, or designers at edit time.

No wonder it's an industry of crunch, the work involved can be uniquely daunting.

shalmanese · a day ago

Another area of hidden complexity is doors in video games. Almost no game has life sized doors because they introduce gameplay issues, almost all doors in video games are at least 30% bigger than in real life and you see an overabundance of sliding doors vs swinging doors because of the complexity swinging doors bring to video game physics.

https://lizengland.com/blog/the-door-problem/

https://www.ign.com/articles/putting-doors-in-video-games-is...

shalmanese commented on A lot of the Moltbook stuff is fake twitter.com/HumanHarlan/s... · Posted by u/kumarm

canjobear · 10 days ago

Does "fake" here mean "real"?

shalmanese · 10 days ago

Yep, that it's AAI.

shalmanese commented on Coding is when we're least productive codemanship.wordpress.com... · Posted by u/vinhnx

mathgeek · 10 days ago

Yes, but that is part of the point: a chair being built is mostly distinct from a chair being designed (there is of course a small amount of design that is done while building). Software is designed at a much higher percentage while being created (or if you prefer, there is a cycle between the two states).

You also don’t often learn why you don’t need a chair while building one.

shalmanese · 10 days ago

> or if you prefer, there is a cycle between the two states

Yes, what I mostly emphasize with this mode of thinking is that the act of building software is primarily there to transform people (you try a thing, it doesn't work like you think it would, that inspires you to try another thing) and the software at the end of it is largely a byproduct.

If you have the right people-state, producing the software is trivial, it's how do you port the right knowledge into their brains in the first place and and software should be just another tool in your toolbox towards that aim.

shalmanese commented on Coding is when we're least productive codemanship.wordpress.com... · Posted by u/vinhnx

shalmanese · 10 days ago

At the end of the week, if you suffered a hard drive crash and all of your recent code got erased, how quickly could you recreate it? That's how much of your week was spent coding. The rest of the week was spent transforming you into the person who could code the thing you coded.

Contrast this with a chair maker. If at the end of the week, their chair got thrown in a woodchipper, some significant fraction of the next week would be in unavoidable labor making the exact same chair.

This is the fundamental difference between these two activities that gets abstracted away when we both think of them as "labor".

shalmanese commented on Tesla ending Models S and X production cnbc.com/2026/01/28/tesla... · Posted by u/keyboardJones

jrflowers · 12 days ago

Do you commute to and from work every day by taxi in NYC

shalmanese · 12 days ago

Early on in Uber's life, I went to a presentation they held where they showed there was a U shaped curve by income of who used Uber. Upper middle class people used them as discretionary entertainment vehicles but Uber had a substantial lower class population using them as necessary transport when working graveyard shifts in locations public transit didn't go.

So yes, there's a surprising contingent of people who commute to work every single working day using hire cars.

shalmanese commented on Tesla ending Models S and X production cnbc.com/2026/01/28/tesla... · Posted by u/keyboardJones

lnsru · 12 days ago

The gamble with Cybertruck failed. It’s common sense, that such a vehicle will fail. The successful cars are made for masses and not for niche buyers. Common sense product could be something smaller than Model 3 for Europe and this car would eat Chinese for lunch. Expensive experiment failed, it’s time for consequences. Does Tesla have resources for another car experiment? Will it stay a car company?.. Or it will be now a manufacturer of robot soldiers?..

shalmanese · 12 days ago

> Common sense product could be something smaller than Model 3 for Europe and this car would eat Chinese for lunch.

Yeah, that would be the Model 2, which Musk cancelled, then denied he cancelled, then has made no effort to review whatsoever so it exists in a limbo state of zero people working on it but it not being officially cancelled. Either way, it didn't come out in 2025 as planned.

https://www.cbtnews.com/tesla-execs-raise-red-flags-after-mu...

For a normal company, this would be disastrous. For a meme stock, this makes total sense since anyone claiming the Model 2 is dead can be shouted at by fans saying Musk himself disputed it was dead.

shalmanese commented on New York Times games are hard: A computational perspective arxiv.org/abs/2509.10846... · Posted by u/PaulHoule

shalmanese · 14 days ago

> consider four of them not previously studied: Letter Boxed, Pips, Strands and Tiles.

Statistically, approximately zero people play Letter Boxed and Tiles.

shalmanese commented on First, make me care gwern.net/blog/2026/make-... · Posted by u/andsoitis

kqr · 15 days ago

This mirrors reflections I've had recently as well. I have been, for the most part, focusing on what you would call "content for acquisition", i.e. easily relatable, somewhat shallow, extensively researched articles that show off what I can write at my best.

But in trying to aim for a regular cadence in the past year, I've realised I cannot maintain that level across the board. So I've started to write things that aren't as "good", in my flawed subjective judgment. Yet surprisingly often those are the things I get positive emails about, from readers who are glad I took the time to put things into words.

I am trying to come to terms with the idea that some of my more enthusiastic readers might really be happy to read even things that aren't up to what I consider to be my standards. But it's deeply uncomfortable. Triggers my impostor syndrome like little else.

shalmanese · 15 days ago

Another common mistake I see "thoughtfluencer" bloggers make is they think they need a brand new idea per post. This not only isn't sustainable, it's bad for the audience.

Instead, I think a successful blog is really about finding your, at most, 3 - 5 big ideas and instead showing the audience how they apply in many different context. For example, Matt Levine returns to a few commmon catchphrases across years of his writing: "People are worried about bond market liquidity", “Everything Is Securities Fraud” etc. that crop up in odd and wonderful ways in totally new contexts across years of writing. Forming a relationship with his writing is deepening your appreciation of these concepts.

shalmanese commented on Yes, It's Fascism theatlantic.com/ideas/202... · Posted by u/mickle00

shalmanese · 15 days ago

“For another, the term has been overused to the point of meaninglessness, especially by left-leaning types who call you a fascist if you oppose abortion or affirmative action.”

The left was right too early. Whereas I, the enlightened centrist was right and just the right time.