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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Do you feel like elaborating any? I’d love to find more uses. So far I’ve mostly found it useful in areas where I’m very unfamiliar. Like I do very little web front end, so when I need to, the option paralysis is gnarly. I’ve found things like Perplexity helpful to allow me to select an approach and get moving quickly. I can spend hours agonizing over those kinds of decisions otherwise, and it’s really poorly spent time.

    I’ve also found it useful when trying to answer questions about best practices or comparing approaches. It sorta does the reading and summarizes the points (with links to source material), pretty perfect use case.

    So both of those are essentially “interactive text summarization” use cases - my third is as a syntax helper, again in things I don’t work with often. If I’m having a brain fart and just can’t quite remember the ternary operator syntax in that one language I never use…etc. That one’s a bit less impactful but can still be faster than manually inspecting docs, especially if the docs are bad or hard to use.

    With that said I use these things less than once a week on average. Possible that’s just down to my own pre-existing habits more than anything else though.


  • I wonder about that too. For context, I’ve done it, and I wouldn’t do it again without a harness and clipping in. It’s just such a trivially easy thing to do to protect yourself and the cables are not at all adequate for safety.

    For me, I didn’t use one because I didn’t realize I’d want it. I knew a ton of people do it daily, knew there wasn’t a lot of discussion or use of harnesses, and I assumed I’d agree with everyone else. And I think for a lot of others there’s that element, plus not even really knowing how easy it is to use one. You certainly are stuck with your decision once you finally make it to the cables, lol.


  • Not excusing the decision-making that led to this - but I’ve noticed myself that the scarcity of permits for some of these legendary hikes absolutely impacts decision-making. If this has been on your list for years, and you really don’t know when you’ll get another shot, you’ll be more willing to take risks you normally wouldn’t.

    The permits need to be limited of course, I’m not suggesting otherwise. The only real solution here is internal. One good idea for situations where you may have to make a decision while emotional is to establish the go/no-go criteria before the emotions hit.

    So for example, if pursuing hikes that have killed the unwary time and again, set some rules for when and why you ditch before you ever get the permit. Of course, then you have to stick with that pre-made decision for it to work.

    I think another factor about some of these is how many regular (as in, not-outdoor-athlete) people do them every day. It gives an illusion of safety. I’ve done this hike - I’m a former rock climber, very comfortable with heights and exposure, and the cables felt recklessly unsafe to me. I really can’t believe more people don’t fall, and I’d recommend everyone use a harness and clip themselves to the cables.

    Honestly between those two factors, the way our brains respond to scarcity / FOMO, and the illusion of safety caused by so much traffic…I think there are many people who believe they’d make a better call who would’ve actually done the same when it came down to it.









  • Great comment, sincerely - completely nails it. My only nitpick (and only delivered cuz you clearly care) is I don’t think it should be called terrorism.

    Terrorism, as hate-fueled and damaging as it is, at least has an ethos, an organizing principle, a (generally twisted, but coherent) morality. These monsters have nothing so human to stand behind. As you know, it’s nothing more complicated than “fuck every life on earth but mine, for no reason more compelling than that I want even more stuff”. Terrorists actually compare favorably against that.