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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • Part of my work is to evaluate proposals for research topics and their funding, and as soon as “AI” is mentioned, I’m already annoyed. In the vast majority of cases, justifiably so. It’s a buzzword to make things sound cutting edge and very rarely carries any meaning or actually adds anything to the research proposal. A few years ago the buzzword was “machine learning”, and before that “big data”, same story. Those however quickly either went away, or people started to use those properly. With AI, I’m unfortunately not seeing that.




  • Because if I spend 50k on an ICE car, I get a really manly truck which makes me feel important and not like a wimp driving a car that makes me look poor!

    I am so surprised that this stone age reasoning still works so well with cars.

    “But I need the space! … once every two years…”

    Same with fuel efficiency: “My big ass penis enlargement SUV gets the same mileage like my tiny sedan did 30 years ago, so it’s not worse for the environment!” - “But a car the size of your tiny sedan 30 years ago would now be twice as efficient?” - “Does not matter, I will use up the transportatin CO2 footprint that has been allotted to me, why should I give something up for the benefit of everyone , especially something important like a antiquated status symbol?”





  • Homeowners insurance: “Since you don’t have some certificate or whatever, your proper solution is something we won’t cover. If you want it covered, get someone with a certificate to do a hackjob.”

    At least in Germany, you’re not allowed to touch anything “important” like water, electric, plumbing, or gas. Even if you would do a much better job, quicker, and cheaper, than any contractor who’d be allowed to do that work. Every single contractor I hired remodeling our house did something which was clearly not up to code (DIN or EN), and almost every time they put up a fight explaining it away, even when I read them the exact wording of the norm. “Well, if I’d do it that way, I would never finish work!” “This would be too much work, nobody does it that way” “I am always doing it this way and never had any complaints”

    Discussion was always over when I asked whether I should get an inspector to settle it. They begrudgingly fixed the issue, and without fail tried to bill me for it (additionally).

    I am so done with contractors, those are the original gatekeepers.




  • It’s completely wild to me that the default for buying a car comes up to a monthly payment, why not pay cash? Save those 800 for three months, buy a beater for 2400. While driving this into the ground, continue saving the 800, even if that beater craps out after six months, you can upgrade to a 4800 not-so-crappy beater, rinse and repeat, and at some point you saved up the 48000 to get that new car. Financing something that depreciates in value quickly and exponentially at anything above the inflation rate is, financially speaking, complete and utter nonsense to me.



  • I started with a Santoku brought from a business trip to Japan, don’t think it was a special brand. It was 50 EUR (that was almost 15 years ago), but for me that’s how I got into it. Now I am lucky enough to have a friend who’s a blacksmith to get custom made knives.

    I usually recommend the Haiku Chroma series as entry level, or if you are looking for a western style chef’s knife, I’d go with a Wusthoff classic. Both are a bit more than 100 EUR, so I’d always recommend to go to a shop and get a feel for them and what works best for you. Important thing is western or Japanese style handle (shaped vs. round), and a length and weight you feel comfortable with.