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I have my EP mixed and “mastered”, and I thought maybe I could get it out today. But I’d have to stay up late to get the cover, and I have an early meeting tomorrow.Comments
Tomorrow and the next few days I have to work, then we go on a trip, so I guess it’s not going to happen for a while.
I guess I should take a broader perspective. If D&D weren’t canceled this week, I wouldn’t have gotten this far along anyway, so this is more progress. And from a negative, but differently negative viewpoint: Sometimes releasing things is a bummer. You don’t like it as much as you thought; sometimes you don’t actually feel as resolved or accomplished as you thought you would. -
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PT back and abs stuff done.Comments
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Well, it seemed as if we had found a good OCD therapist, but it turns out her office will not take patients with our kind of insurance — even if we don’t plan to use it and pay out of pocket!Comments
I wish I had more juice. I mean, obviously, we’re going to keep looking, but I used to view things like this a just a challenge. Now that I’ve used my optimism, life hurdles like this just seem like punishment. -
I still marvel at Trent Reznor’s childhood.Comments
At Mercer Area Junior/Senior High School, he learned to play the tenor saxophone and tuba, and was a member of both the jazz band and marching band. The school's former band director remembered him as "very upbeat and friendly".[16] He became involved in theater while in high school, being awarded the "Best in Drama" accolade by his classmates for his roles as Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar and Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man.
In some ways, it reminds me of Ice Cube’s. O’Shea Jackson did live in Compton, but he came from a two-parent high school where he did well, then he got a degree in architectural drafting. -
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Golf was cancelled last night, which was unfortunate. I’m not enthusiastic about golf, but it’s the one physical activity the guy said “OK” to besides swimming. He doesn’t even like walking.Comments
But by going out to the park where golf was supposed to be, we discovered a new pool — Tufts Pool. Which, confusingly, is not on any Tufts campus. It’s just in Tufts Park, which I think is named that because it’s near Tufts.
But Tufts Pool is deeper than Dilboy Pool — 4’-12’ deep. I think it’s better for kids at this stage of swim learning to be forced to not be walking in the pool, but to be able to stand on their toes to get their heads above water if they need to.
The guy can more reliably tread, back float, and Mario swim for 10’ now.
As for me, I’ve gotten worse and can somehow no longer back float unless I use my legs to kick a little. If I stay still, my feet inevitably sink. Maybe my feet have gotten more dense? Or my head has gotten more sparse? Either way, if I land in the middle of the ocean someday, I’ve lost my zero-energy flotation option. -
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The Long Reach of China’s Demographic DestinyComments
Part of why China needs to export so much:Because all parents want the best for their offspring, children’s consumption naturally supports a massive industrial value chain. Embodying economic hope for the future, children boost consumer confidence as well as many forms of investment. But when they come to account for a smaller share of the population, insufficient consumption, labor shortages, and many other problems result. The data show that the proportion of children aged 0-14 is positively correlated with household consumption, whereas the opposite is true for the labor force aged 15-64.
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Ah, nothing like noticing bits of mold on chunks of mango that you and your son just ate.Comments
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"In 2012, when I moved over to social/mobile gaming, there was no VIP in existence within social gaming, and what I was trying to do was take my learnings from real-money gaming and translate them into the world of social/mobile gaming." – Doyle recounts the origins of the Zynga VIP program.
They’re able to do this because video games aren’t regulated like gambling, even though they target the same psychological loop.
"We've done so much experimenting at Zynga with VIP. We know what's the frequency of contact. We know what call types work. We know what times to call. We know exactly who to call and when. We know who has a higher propensity to be more susceptible to our call."
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"If we take the slots genre for example, there's a lot of proven [methodology] that says in order to bring a slots player back to a slots game, an email sent to them should include the bells and the whistles and the feeling they get when they've just won and it ignites in them, 'I want to get back in the game'…
It’s not just mobile F2P games that use this. FIFA 23 does it via loot boxes.
There’s no doubt random treasures are fun. Loot boxes, or pay per random roll, definitely cross the line into addiction exploitation. This does make me think about the extra lives slot machines in Super Mario Bros. 2 and 3, though. They are a rush that hits the pleasure/pain brain circuits. You can’t just hit them up all day, though. They come up at the end of levels, so there’s quite a lot of time between hits. I think access may be one of the squishy boundaries between “addictive pleasure” and “regular pleasure”.
I do also wonder how much “normal” surprise delight is part of this same thing. When you seek landscape variety while walking around, are you rolling dice? -
I spent almost the whole day composing. Sometimes, there's composing in which you're moving things around in some editor to iterate on a few seconds of music at a time. There is also the kind where you do a lot of coding. Both of those aspects of composing feel like you're doing stuff.Comments
Today, I listened to a seven-minute piece, changed one or two things, then listened again. It's fun, but whoa is it time-consuming. And I feel like maybe I should be busier? But there is no way you can avoid this, if you feel that the way the piece sounds as a whole is important (which you may not, and that is sometimes legit). - Comments
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Huh, I shouldn't be paying attention to work today, but I just noticed my changes got force-pushed out. That seems bad.Comments
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Earlier today, the guy asked me, "Do you have enough energy to check this out?"Comments
I think that's a bad sign about have much energy I appear to have! And maybe about how much energy I actually have. -
I put on Bring Da Ruckus right after dropping the guy off at camp. Besides being good music, it feel hilarious.Comments
The other day when I pulled away from camp, I put on Scarface's No Tears. -
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Making bamboo flutes.Comments
Around 1:20, the flute maker straightens the bamboo with clamps. I didn’t know you could do that. Clamps rule!
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