When I ate a lot of carbohydrates, no matter how thoroughly I brushed and floshed my teeth every day, my dentist would be like, “eh you could do better.”
When I sharply reduced my carbohydrates, even when I was a bit less thorough in brushing, my dentist would be like, “it all looks great, good job.”
Just my multi-year experience. I don’t claim to say it’s universal.
In case you want random dental advice from Lyn.
It’s been a big issue of mine for decades, and so far the solution has been to eat fewer carbs but also eat a decent amount of calcium. And vitamin A and K2.
All my solutions have been dietary. My brushing and flossing was pretty consistent but as I changed diet, cavities or lack thereof would change radically.
I showed the first three chapters of my hobby sci fi manuscript to my husband as an alpha reader.
He's a really thorough film critic, and I told him to be brutal with his feedback.
He really liked them. He highlighted a few things to tweak for improvement, but otherwise loved it. Pretty genuinely I think. He particularly liked the first glimpse of one of the antagonists. There was a balance there between them being horrible but also kind of likable and intriguing, and so that delicate balance seems to have struck correctly.
So I'm going to show him the first 15 chapters that, in the current draft, make up Act 1 of the story, and get his further thoughts.
For context, my draft is up to chapter 38, reaching into 80% draft completion, and the third act is the hardest. I’m moving forward but this is some tough shit.
This might be a dumb question since I haven't been following NIPs lately, but wouldn't it be cool if there was an edit feature to tell clients to replace an old note with a new note on their user interface?
It wouldn't *actually* delete or edit the original note of course but if many clients listen to that then at least in terms of what most users will see, the note will have been edited. Or, clients could show the edited version and then also have a small "show original" button to see the original version.
Can anyone chime in and say why this wouldn't work or why it's way more complicated than this description to do in practice? I'm curious.
It has become so weird that the US Right supports Israel’s war on Palestine while the US Left supports Ukraine’s defense against Russia.
Political sides dig in. The wars become associated with culture.
There is so little voice today from those who oppose aggression. Those who support Jews but are not onboard with Israel’s actions against Palestinians. Those who support Ukrainian independence but don’t want to commit unlimited troops for border regions that literally speak Russian amid a complicated history.
More people die in Sudan and Cambodia than Israel/Palestine, but we are all focused on Israel/Palestine because it’s a conflict of cultures. Religious cultures but also western imperialism vs the global south. The focus of it all. That occupies our attention even as bigger massacres occur elsewhere that aren’t directly across these massive fault lines.
I refuse to engage in attention whoring. I support peace in most instances globally, other than total war against someone’s existence where it becomes right to fight back. People have a right to self-defense. And those who have power over others have a responsibility to hold back on using it fully.
Keep in mind that at any moment, tons of violence is occurring globally. The media directs you to a subset of it that is geographically, economically, or culturally relevant for their purposes. You ignore or are unaware of the rest, and get emotional about what is fed to you. That’s how most people act, anyway.
I have a mixed view on the whole Mission Impossible franchise (depends on the movie, etc) but one of my absolute favorite scenes in the series is the bathroom fight scene in Mission Impossible: Fallout.
The main protagonist Ethan Hunt, along with a badass guy played by Henry Cavill, try to capture a guy to scan his face. This guy isn't some big bad final villain; he's just a random mid-tier bad guy. Scanning his face is meant to be a fairly straightforward part of their bigger plan.
But what they didn't account for was that this random guy is like a god-tier fighter. He just absolutely rekts them 2v1 no matter how hard they try.
One of the aspects of unbelievability of the broader series is like, "how many times is Ethan Hunt going to save the world?" And there are some movies where they're literally like, "We need to send in Ethan Hunt for this; he's the *only* one who can do it."
So this scene helps in kind of humbling the abilities of the otherwise OP protagonist.
I have a scene in my hobby manuscript where someone gets into what should be an easy fight and is surprised to see that it's harder than they expected, and I think this Fallout scene kind of inspired it. Because when you have that scenario, there's a potential mix of 1) truly good tension as the stakes are high but also 2) some minor level of comedy and 3) the sense of surprise that this really isn't going as expected.
https://youtu.be/rUr3Pi-YLsc
I forget 90% of that movie and yet remember that scene in detail. I think it was worth it. If someone asks me “is Mission Impossible good?” then that’s one of the top ten scenes in the franchise that come to mind from a positive perspective.
101 on how gold was confiscated:
You had to turn it in for dollars by a deadline prior to dollar devaluation, and there were massive prison consequences for not turning it in, but little resources in terms of investigating who didn’t turn it in. That would be expensive. So it was fear based. Focusing on illegality and tail risks on edge cases more than enforcement on average.
Institutions had to comply immediately, since it’s all visible. So the government broke liquidity in the domestic gold market, which was enough for their purposes. Gold became a hard-to-trade illegal relic for those that held it.
If a small family hodled some extra bars for 40 years until it became legal again, they did okay.
But can the government track bitcoin in the 2020s better or worse than gold in 1930s for enforcement purposes? That’s the right question.
And don’t just think of confiscation. Think of 70% selective taxes and things like that. Far more within the current rule of law. That’s the sophisticated approach. Don’t take it. Selectively tax it by a lot.
Those are the politics to push against from a bitcoin perspective.
I’m strongly introvert, but there are limits to it.
While I’m separated from my husband for a few months (he’s held up working on a construction project on another continent), and while I’m working from home, I’ve gone kind of stir crazy.
Living alone back when I went to work each day with friends wasn’t a problem. Working from home when my husband is around isn’t a problem. But working from home while my husband is away is a monk-like existence that is even too introverted for me after a while.
Since we travel a lot we don’t even have a cat, so it’s like I’m trying out being a cat lady without even the cat.
Gm.
I had trouble sleeping last night, so instead I reached 100k words in my hobby sci fi manuscript. Full length will be ballpark 120k.
I’m going to take a break from adding new words to it, and will spend some time editing the first 100k.
The reason I was able to write most of the first draft quickly (two months, as a side project) is because I had a bunch of plot outlines and character details bouncing around in my head for a long time. But the last part is less fleshed out, even though I know the outline of the ending. So I need to let it sit for a bit and collect some more thoughts on it, rather than rush to get it on paper. Sometimes a random shower thought driving while listening to music helps you think of that detail that completes a scene or ties scenes together.
Mostly side passion. Bitcoin and signed messages transmitted by relays have appearances, tho. Not just to stick them in there, but because it’s the near future and they are relevant.
I read a book called How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying.
There is a woman from Earth named Davi who is the chosen one and she is stuck in a time loop in a fantasy world. Every time she dies, she wakes up in a forest pond and an old wizard finds her and says the prophecy is for her to save the world.
She has lived 237 of these lifetimes, totaling over 1,000 years, and can never win. The dark lord and his horde always wins, no matter what she tries. She has understandably become quite cynical. Her personality is like Deadpool now; she takes nothing seriously, constantly jokes about things, and breaks the fourth wall.
So as she is getting tortured in the dungeon of the dark lord on life #237 after yet another multi-year attempt that failed, she decides she is fed up with this. Instead of trying to defeat the dark lord and save the kingdom, she will instead join the bad side and become the dark lord.
So after finally finding a way to kill herself and end the torture, she wakes up in the forest pond again. When the wizard comes to find her, she kills him and then heads into the forest to start her journey to work up the bad guys ladder. Kind of like Groundhog Day she has so much accumulated experience (fighting, magic, combat tactics, knowledge of what events will happen when) and she can iterate when she fails, so she sets off on this new journey to become Dark Lord Davi.
So the story follows her as she builds a bigger and bigger army (she insists on calling it a horde, since dark lords have hordes) and adventures across the world accumulating power.
Funny stuff.
This chart is kind of shocking actually. A society completely flipped the mechanism for how it deals with people who are problematic for themselves and others.
https://m.primal.net/Lazc.jpg
It's been 24 years now, and I've heard a lot of rock songs and watched their videos, but I'm not sure that any of them hit me harder than Kryptonite by 3 Doors Down in 2000 when I was 12 years old.
https://youtu.be/xPU8OAjjS4k?
It doesn't even touch most of my favorite sub-tropes, but it touches on the broadest tropes of heroism and valor, and very well done.
I was reminded of it due to coming across a cover from several years ago:
https://youtu.be/Aulqs579QRE
If I have to pick an all-time favorite band, I'd say Linkin Park.
If I have to pick an all-time favorite song and video, back when music videos were more of a thing, I might have to say Kryptonite. Something about it hits really deep. It's about like, undesired heroism. The most raw form of heroism. It's probably the key song that got me into rock when I was 12 and it's still great.
-Kryptonite by 3 Doors Down.
-What I've Done by Linkin Park, or before that basically the entire Meteora album
-Unforgiven 3 by Metallica
-Lose Yourself by Eminem
-Bring Me to Life by Evanescence
I can't help it, but I'm a musical product of my era. We're often defined by songs we hear in our teens and early twenties.
Roya is one of my favorite accounts on Nostr.
She was an early adopter, and from the start I somehow found her posts and enjoyed them. One of the most genuine accounts here. I know little about her but after more than a year of following her I'm a fan. Her posts make my Nostr experience unique and positive.
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Masculinity is under attack lately. But I like masculinity actually.
I know, shocker.
The fact that so few U.S. presidential or vice presidential candidates have had beards in modern history is funny to me. I think men usually look better with facial hair, and the older they get the more likely that is. 20-somthing or 30-something strong jaw dudes often look great without facial hair. But when men are 50 or 60 or whatever, that salt-and-pepper beard is so rad and almost always beats the no-beard weak-chin look. I actually think it's weird that neither Biden nor Trump have a beard. JD Vance looks like shit without a beard. Growing a beard is the best move he ever made, imo. And yet the media is like, "A vice president candidate with a beard?"
Masculinity can be rough around the edges, but that's what we need sometimes. It's usually balanced by other societal aspects. In some societies it gets extreme and needs to be pushed back on. My husband has a temper, but his temper is part of his power and why he impacts the world to the extent that he does. So when I interact with his temper, it's not about eliminating it, but rather it's about appreciating it but making sure it's directed in the right direction.
Masculinity and femininity are good. They don't need to be forced. Nature is diverse but society tries to categorize nature into narrower categories. Feminine men and masculine women are cool too. But that doesn't change the fact that masculine men and feminine women are also cool.
I grew up kickboxing and submission grappling. I'm a tomboy. I'm a feminist in terms of promoting equal gender rights. But at the end of the day, I appreciate masculine men. I was never attracted to men who were weaker than me in any capacity, but rather was always attracted to men with gravitas.
The easiest approach to life is to 1) respect biology as it is but then 2) also appreciate the divergences that inherently exist within it.
Trying to equalize nature is to fight against it. And yet trying to eliminate the diversify of nature is also to fight against it.
Nature is fascinating, and I do my best to appreciate it.
GM.
I'm bullish on bitcoin, and I think a lot of people overthink it.
One of my favorite metrics is the market value vs realized value ratio. The realized value is basically just the on-chain cost basis. The value of UTXOs at the dollar price during which they last moved between wallets, which often means the time people pulled them from exchanges or deposited them to exchanges.
https://m.primal.net/LXov.png
A relatively small amount of marginal buying can push up the market value by a lot. Like how if you buy one house on a street, it can boost the estimated price of all houses on that street even though only one of them traded hands. But when market value becomes stretched relative to cost basis, it means that part of the market value is kind of illusory. We don't *really* know what houses on that street are worth if only one of them traded hands recently and thus liquidity was low. Over time, as more houses on that street trade hands and we have more price points, the estimated value of the street becomes more real. The same thing for bitcoin; as more bitcoin trades hands at certain levels, it starts to make that level "real" compared to how real we should consider it when it just touches a certain level for a little while with limited volume.
Right now, bitcoin is at an all-time high in its realized price, i.e. cost basis.
Back when bitcoin was poking over $60k in April 2021, the cost basis for the network was only about $350 billion. Now, at the same market price, the cost basis approaches $650 billion, or more than twice as high. The marginal bitcoin has traded hands and moved between wallets at much higher prices than years ago, even though the market price is about the same. In other words, these levels have been truly liquid and been consummated by the market more than they were back in 2021, and thus the price is more robust at this level than back then.
The launch of the spot ETFs pulled forward some excitement this year, and so we've been in this big consolidation since March. But even in that time period from March to the present, the on-chain cost basis increased from like $520 billion to $640 billion, and so price discovery and progress is being made despite the ongoing price chop.
As the network builds a bigger and more solid base like it has been doing, it can set the stage for the next major breakout. The network looks healthy to me.
https://m.primal.net/LXpf.png
I talked to an author a lot this weekend, and an amusing thing she said was that romance authors tend to be kind of mean, and people who write horror or violent thrillers tend to be nice.
If there's truth to that, I guess the theme would be that people like to write about what they're not. It's a way to explore or express something that they don't otherwise explore or express in their real life.
The Jackal was a movie from 1997 that followed the villain (Bruce Willis) as much as the hero (Richard Gere).
While the movie had some flaws, especially Gere’s fake accent, I do really like that concept of following a villain as much as a hero. It can work well in a lot of contexts. Has to be the right type of villain though. Complex and interesting, or entertaining.
Arcane did that too, which is part of why I liked it.
There are some forms of age censorship or ratings that, when you examine them, are kind of backwards.
An example is the Yugioh dub. When Yugioh was dubbed into English and played on western cartoon networks, they didn’t want to show as much death as in the original Japanese version, even though they were for the same age group. Just different cultural standards. So for the dub they created the concept of the Shadow Realm, and so instead of getting killed by a death trap, someone will instead have their soul sent to an eternity of darkness. Hell, basically. This was considered more suitable for children as a concept: eternal darkness and unhappiness rather than physical death.
A lot of Brandon Sanderson books are kind of PG-13. There is a lot of action and death, but usually not a lot of blood or gore, curse words are in fantasy language and thus mostly don’t count. But like, some characters get magically tortured in agony for centuries. Just not in a bloody way.
My novel draft is basically a rated R book. Violence, blood, curses from characters that would curse, etc. But ironically far scarier things happen in Sanderson novels than mine! Nobody gets a century of agony in mine. Just good old fashion normal temporary agony. But because it’s more explicit, that makes it equivalent to R.
Update: I think I've picked the main potential path for the first half of Act 3, which was the least-outlined part between sections I had more firmly mapped out.
I need to flesh it out more, but there's progress here.
And a minor spoiler is that I had a more action path and a more emotional path for this portion, I decided on the emotional path. There's no shortage of action before and after, and this emotion is worth it to flesh out here.
85k words in.
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Western animation is ethically weak lately.
This is a post that analyzes one of the most heartbreaking moments in children’s television history, and one that has stuck with me almost two decades later.
But the broader theme is that I find it interesting partially because these types of instances measure what a society considers its maturity level to be. It’s like a sensor gage on a given generation.
It’s about the death of Ace in the finale of Justice League Unlimited, which is a bigger deal than it sounds like. A child died in the final episode of a 14-year kids' series, which is unheard of.
It ended one of the biggest animated epics ever, and was the biggest gut punch I ever had as a kid watching a show vs what kids watch now. And it’s about how it relates to modern animation.
But as a preamble, I’ll first highlight the social importance of the Marvel Cinematic Universe which most readers will recognize in more recent terms. Its main story line from Iron Man in 2008 until Avengers Endgame in 2019 was an epic run, in terms of social awareness and revenue. There are movies in the universe after that, and there are more planned out to at least 2027, but that core 11-year period was the key story arc from beginning to end focusing on its original hero and its major villain.
And it wasn’t easy to copy: Warner Bros tried to do it for the DC superheroes but couldn’t build that same scope due to their shitty bureaucracy and entering it secondarily. The MCU was known for cool action, but also its frequent use of humor. It was exceptionally well-played even as it was criticized sometimes.
But many older Millennials and younger GenX’ers know that DC had a prior strong run: The DC Animated Universe, or DCAU. Marvel had good animated content back then, but it was DC that won market share in that era.
That was the golden age of DC comics animated shows. And for animation, it was *super* serious. It started with Batman the Animated Series in 1992, and ended with Justice League Unlimited in 2006, 14 years later. It included the Batman series, the Superman series, the Batman Beyond series, Justice League, and Justice League Unlimited. It was a shared universe where continuity between shows mattered, and it was all under the same executive production of Bruce Timm. So, it’s sometimes called the Timmverse.
If you ask me who my favorite Batman is, I’ll say Kevin Conroy, the guy who voiced Batman in that universe. My default base version of Batman is the Bruce Timm and Kevin Conroy version. Absolutely legendary in terms of quality and quantity. Everything else relative to that is a smaller adaption from my perspective. It was generation-defining.
It’s a generation-defining set of stories. In my mid-thirties, this series still affects my aesthetics of storytelling and fiction. When I’m seventy I’ll still remember this series. For many kids at the time, this series of shows was absolutely defining. The core of western animation at the time. It was super serious, and explored all sorts of moral themes.
And notably, unlike Avatar (2005-2008) and other shows that came at similar times and later, the DCAU was a series of kids’ shows that featured almost all adults. We, as kids at the time, watched adults solve adult problems in this universe, because realistically adults solve adult problems. Not a fun-group of kids on an adventure. I liked kid-based Avatar the Last Airbender and similar kid franchises like Teen Titans, Legend of Korra, and the more recent She-Ra, but kids and teens solving world-ending issues inherently brings unbelievability. Even as a kid, I was like, “nah it’s unrealistic that people my age would solve this shit” and wanted to see adults like Batman and Hawk Girl Shayera solve adult problems. And that’s what the DCAU did for 14 years from 1992 to 2006. A show featuring mostly adults, but for teens.
But to bring this post to a point, I’ll just describe the ending of this 14-year shared universe. Because it’s what someone like Bruce Timm does when he runs all of it.
Batman Beyond, which was set in the future with a super-old Bruce Wayne and his young protégé was a well-received show from 1999 to 2001 but never had a solid climax. They instead put their focus into Justice League and Justice League Unlimited instead, which was also amazing and ran from 2001 to 2006.
So, when it came time to end Justice League Unlimited, and their overall universe, how did they do it?
The penultimate episode of Justice League Unlimited involved fighting their final external villain as would be expected. Darkseid acquired Brainiac technology, and became a god-tier threat for the climax. Superman finally dropped all of his social safeguards, admitting that he always holds back because the world feels like cardboard for him and he wants to be safe around it, but that he has to unleash it all now, and decided to absolutely fucking rekt him despite all external consequences it might cause. Even then, he also needed Lex Luthor to help take this threat out. It was a big external situation.
But because this 14-year universe was well-written, they didn’t end on just that action stuff. After that climax, they resolved it on character depth. They started their story with Batman in 1992, and they never got an actual Batman Beyond finale, and so they decided to end their 2006 Justice League series with a Batman Beyond true finale set deep in the future to finish the Batman arc as the core of the multi-series. That’s the benefit of having an executive producer that oversees all of this. Continuity and conclusion.
In that finale episode, which closes both Justice League and Batman Beyond, Bruce Wayne’s 30-ish protégé Terry McGinness is having an existential crisis while Bruce Wayne is like 90 or 100+ years old and dying, and Terry talks to Amanda Waller, who was historically a mostly well-meaning villain but is now very old. And she is like, “if you want to know who Bruce Wayne is and who your legacy is, know this story.”
And she tells the story that ends Justice League, back when Bruce’s Batman was still active. It serves as the ending for both Justice League and Batman Beyond.
There was a young psychic girl named Ace, raised by Amanda Waller’s division. She could manipulate peoples’ minds to an absurd degree, and was a major threat in an episode several seasons ago that viewers were familiar with that Batman dealt with in the middle of the Justice League show. She was a young super-villain that didn’t want to be. The Joker gained control of her, and used her to do a major attack, which Batman had to deal with as the rest of the Justice League dealt with her weaker colleagues. And he dealt with her via kindness to appeal to Ace rather than hurting her as a child. She wasn’t malevolent; she was just manipulated by the Joker. And it worked. Amazing dialogue writing.
Years later, there was the end-scene of Justice League, as recounted by Amanda Waller. Ace returned to Gotham. As a young teen girl now, she was dying. And as she died, due to her sheer power, the world around her became chaotic. Her powers were exceptional; she was almost omnipotent in like a 5-mile radius. Multiple superheroes tried to reach her, but couldn’t. Amanda Waller noted that she would have a fatal aneurysm in hours or days, and as she went through this process, it kept getting worse. When she died, she would likely take out the entire city of Gotham due to her own fear and chaos.
Amanda had a device that could target Ace’s brain and kill her, but nobody could get close enough to activate it due to Ace’s crazy powers. Batman offered to do it. Amanda Waller was like, “nobody else can get close, and to be clear this will kill her,” and Batman was like, “I know. She met me before. She might let me get close. I’ll do it.”
So, they sent Batman in. Nobody else could get close to Ace, but he alone could just walk through her defenses.
As he reached her, she was like, “They’re afraid of me, aren’t they?”
And he was likes, “Yes, they are.”
She was like, “They trained me in a lab, robbed me of my childhood. And now I’m dying, aren’t I?”
And he was like, “Yes, you are going to die. I’m sorry.”
She was like, “I read your mind as you came to me. You never meant to use Amanda’s device to kill me. That’s why I let you get close.”
And he was like, “No, of course not, Ace.” And he threw it away.
And she cried and said she was afraid of dying, and asked if he would stay with her as she did. And he said of course he would. So Batman just sat on the swings next to this child and comforted her and was there for her for the rest of the day, until she died of her brain aneurysm.
And because he calmed her down and made her peaceful, none of the devastating effects of her death happened. She didn’t die in a lethal explosion to the city as Amanda Waller feared; she died in a peaceful removal of her environmental effects thanks to Batman. And Batman carried her body out, sadly.
https://m.primal.net/LQeA.png
After 14 years of action; that’s how the entire DCAU shared universe decided to end things. With Batman’s character in terms of how he deals with a dying child. Kindness over action. A sadness from multiple parties that can't be fixed, but can be met with kindness.
Few western sub-18 shows today would touch something like that, let alone make it their moral resolution for a 14-year arc.
This is my Batman.
Absolutely rekt.
But two decades later it's the one I write about.
And it's partially because they had 14 years of build-up. They ran a full generational arc well, which is really hard.
If you’re that far in, definitely finish Unlimited with the kids. I don’t even consider Unlimited a separate show; I just view it as the rest of the Justice League show.
This is kind of the dichotomy, since we are so self-aware of it now. Some people grind their whole life and on their deathbed wish they grinded less. But to reach peak impact, it takes unfathomable grinding. The best grinders are often not the best parents, friends, or lovers.
I grinded through college and then for like 15 years, always doing three things at a time. Achieved a lot of professional success, and more then I thought. Right now I’m purposely like, “I’m going to grind less for a bit, and pay attention to some of those old folks who die saying to grind less”.
The hardest part of my random crappy sci-fi novel hobby project, is going to be the first half of the third act.
The first two acts were very well outlined ahead of time. This story idea has been bouncing around in my head for a long time, and so when it became time to write it, most of it flowed easily.
And the climax of the third act has also been pretty well figured out for just as long.
It's that late-middle part that's still kind of a black box. The first half of the third act. It's not that I have nothing planned there, but rather it's like I have three potential paths to choose from, and various combinations between those paths.
Going to have to put a lot of thought into that section to tie the whole piece together.
Update: I think I've picked the main potential path for the first half of Act 3, which was the least-outlined part between sections I had more firmly mapped out.
I need to flesh it out more, but there's progress here.
And a minor spoiler is that I had a more action path and a more emotional path for this portion, I decided on the emotional path. There's no shortage of action before and after, and this emotion is worth it to flesh out here.
85k words in.
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