doctordevice

Another laziness by the professors is using book questions instead of just writing their own.

When I taught I told my students that the book was a resource for studying the material from a different perspective than the one I gave in lectures. Not actually required for the course even though I didn't have control over it being listed as required on the course listing. And I told them if they wanted to get it, they should find the cheapest copy they could. I've heard you can sometimes find very cheap electronic copies (wink wink).

It is funny to see the questions you write end up on Chegg though.

Fun fact: the surface area of Pluto is only about 4% larger than Russia.

Good suggestions, and yeah if someone has an accent I'm trying to identify I'll usually ask about the accent and region I think it's from.

I still feel a slight ick from "originally." And usually I'm talking with people from my general region and I'm really just asking what local town they grew up in, so it's sometimes more "did you grow up in [current location, or area they're talking about]?"

IMO 59/60 should be about the max for a first term president. That would put them at retirement age if they serve two terms. I think Walz is a great choice to make the whole thing more palatable to progressives like me (who feel that now for a third time in a row we've been deprived of a fair primary). I do wish the VP were a little younger than the president to set them up for a run of their own afterwards. Not sure if Walz has any intention of running afterwards, but we'd be right back to a retirement age candidate if Kamala serves two terms.

Personally, I'd like to see more presidents in their 40s or early 50s. That's plenty of time to get "experience" while still in principle being able to understand the needs of the majority of people. Plus it helps that they'll still live for a while in the world they shape after their term.

I really hate that racists have ruined a perfectly good question. I often want to actually ask people where in the US they're from, but I can't ask the straightforward "where are you from?" if the person isn't white because I know it can easily be interpreted as the racist version.

Instead I now ask "are you from [city we're in]?" to try to make it clear I'm assuming they're from the US.

July 1, 2023 was the (known in advance) effective date of the reddit API change that killed 3rd party apps. Not really too surprising a bunch of apps for Lemmy started development leading up to that change in order to try to establish a userbase among the refugees. I was one of those refugees.

We had that light switch installed for you so you could turn the lights on and off. Not so you could throw light switch raves!

The same kind who have a separate variable for ignore-wordlist-regex that's just another list of users almost identical to the first one.

That's weird since I just got an email for a "payment due" on 8/15. It is so fucking exhausting to try to keep up with all the bajillion different "payment plans" and if you don't choose the right one based on all the misinformation out there then fuck you, you don't get the tasty breadcrumbs we're leaving in hidden corners.

I am so tired of my student loan payments changing or being threatened to change all the time. Just tell me how much I owe you each month and leave me the fuck alone. I need to focus on budgeting groceries.

It's one of my favorite games ever, but I wouldn't say it's the best game ever made. I would say it's one of the most unique gaming experiences I've ever had though, and that's valuable to me. Learning about this cute little star system one mystery at a time is an incredible experience IMO. But if you're bored by the gameplay loop, don't expect it to change much. It stays pretty constant. The point is learning one secret at a time and getting a full picture of what's happening.

Flying is definitely clunky, but to me it feels intentional (or at least fitting). As others have said, always use auto-pilot to go between planets and cancel to move your trajectory around anything that comes in between and then re-engage auto pilot. Usually that's either the sun or a moon (happens a lot if you book it straight to Brittle Hollow). When you're near other things, match velocity is very useful either to stop next to something or get nice and aligned with the planet you're about to land on.

When flying manually, less is more. There's no friction to slow you down but there is gravity to speed you up.

Sheesh, now I feel actually attacked a little. I was being mostly hyperbolic, but you can do really useful things with complex figures in presentations. For example: revealing elements sequentially to build up to the final figure or altering opacity of different elements to bring the audience's attention to specific parts of the figure.

This sequencing can sometimes very subtly alter the size of the figure as you change elements, so the default positioning will slightly change from one slide to the next. Most people won't care or notice when a figure slightly drifts by a pixel or two during these sequences, but it bothers me tremendously so I add adjustments to keep every variation of the figure aligned on the slides.

I feel personally attacked. Brb, making presentation slides in beamer and compiling 1000 times to get the figure to the exact right pixel.

I definitely won't make any changes to the figure later that will make me have to adjust the position again. Why yes, this is better than PowerPoint, why do you ask?