I think I would be, too!

Me too. My wife is much better with insects and spiders than I am haha

And I’m not particularly skittish. I just prefer my insects to be under 3 cm or so. Send the rest to Australia or into the sun

Great that one of you are 😄

It's good that they have exoskeletons, setting a limit to how big they can get on earth.

oh yeah

Are you saying the big spider in The Wizard of Oz is fake?

Kansas is on earth, so, yes.

damn another childhood fantasy destroyed

I will say that they didn't stumble across that spider in Kansas though

but it likely was on earth, so yeah

Ah, long time ago since I watched it.

Doesn’t Dorothy specifically say to Toto that they’re not in Kansas anymore? 😄

Pez might have missed the first episode ;)

Haha! It's complicated. I got scared to panic the first time I saw it, and the next time(s) I saw it I was scared about getting scared. 😃

ya troubleshooting networking problems is hard… esp. since it is not that composable

Well, joke's on them, if they didn't really want you to tell them about your life, they shouldn't have asked! :man-shrugging:

I can’t tell which case it is actually… and he does nod along and smile nicely, maybe giving some sharp/relevant comments… but even then, I can’t tell what he actually thinks of me :face_in_clouds:

I don't get "how are you" either. I'm kind of forced to do it because "it's rude not to say it" but then you're also expected not to follow up with an honest answer? That's what's weird!

Right, yeah, of course. People say stuff they don't mean. It can be confusing.

😄

I wonder how many people who experience this as weird are unknowingly on the autistic spectrum.

Maybe most people, spectrum or not, unknowingly agree that it’s kind of dumb, but everyone’s going along with it.

Who knows! It's not really as bad I make it to be but I do think about it sometimes and ask myself why people do it. 😂 Re: autism, I haven't been diagnosed (yet) but I'm pretty sure I am on the spectrum 🙂 > Maybe most people, spectrum or not, unknowingly agree that it’s kind of dumb, but everyone’s going along with it. That's probably it

I think, sadly, that’s the way for a lot of things. We don’t have the capacity to care about every aspect of our lives, so for many aspects, we just go along with the norm. I feel like we should be way more caring, critical and discerning about anything in our lives, really.

Great that you’re aware of it!

I keep feeling like I’m missing a diagnosis or two to help me better fit into my skin and the world.

I was told to have been diagnosed as borderline autistic when (before?) I was in kindergarten… not sure if that’s a formal one though…

ya, if we consider that one major aspect of the spectrum is not having that automatic grasp of “social cue”, this explains a lot

by “automatic” I mean some sort of subconscious processing by the brain

i.e. “How are you” is not “How are you”. Think of it like gensym in common lisp etc

it is a symbolic placeholder, a prompt, for “the socially appropriate response” - which is “a pleasant, positive ethos” projected to smooth over social interaction

yeah

I feel like I have some sort of linguistics processing problem. For me, it's not grasping the concepts, but rather, grasping them in real time, or maybe rather, at the pace that others do. I always feel like I'm lagging behind in understanding what other people say, like there's a buffer that all verbal language has to go through before it reaches my cognition. Trying to keep up with others means I say odd stuff at times 🙂

I don't think this is the same as what spectrum people describe.

not exactly the same, but probably related. People on the spectrum generally have problem with cognitive empathy, but not affective empathy. So it’s like if someone point out the exact chain of reasoning used, you can follow and understand it alright - just not in real time.

oh, and a third aspect is “theory of mind”

Both seem fine to me, interchangeable in terms of how generic they are. But generally, I try to remember to not make any conversation one-sided, which I can do at times by only answering questions and not asking them 😓

what is it? hur mår du or something like that?

or tjena or whatever

”Läget?”

”Hur mår du?” (”How are you feeling?” for non-Swedish speakers) is different, I think. It would be asked out of concern rather than as part of some protocol.

aha 🙂

It sometimes seems weird to me that I don’t know Swedish better, given that we are so closely related (I guess?)

I don’t think I had anything in particular about Sweden in school, actually.

We had some few lessons in 7th or so grade where we were taught some Danish. I guess it can be easily fixed if the need arises. Usually when I speak with a Dane we can quickly agree to switch to English. 😃

haha

well, when the objective is to get work done, I do the same…

Which feels silly!

We’re so close, but just far enough apart to be less than easily comprehensible

at least without exercise

I think Danes were taught Norwegian and Swedish in the past? dno

Agree it feels silly. We often spend some weeks in the summer in Denmark. To me it is like a better Sweden. 😃 But on vacation like that I don't get to speak all that much and train my ears. Also, my wife understands Danish perfectly.

We've been going to Malmö for some years while we lived in CPH. Cozy place!

Funny, sometimes Sweden feels like a better Denmark... Same goes for Norway.

They have fjords, so of course it is better. 😃

😄

+ mountains. The mountains are beautiful, and have some utilities, but I think I’d be annoyed living there, having to travel up and down to do anything.

oh… the rains?

Heh, "How are you?" can often lead to long complaints about the weather, yes, it's true...

rainy everyday = no mood :rain_cloud:

"Ooh, the rain's playing havoc with my gout!" 🙂

“..there were 135 of us and 80,000 Manchester United fans…..“, I can recite that sketch/story pretty much line for line. ❤️

Ah, another Carrott fan! 🙂 It's been a long time since I last listened to the sketch and my ol' memory ain't what it was. Loved his humor, back in the day.

that’s… mean

I’m curious though… are you a gifted student back then?

In the first class of high school I tried and got good grades, but my investment in school work suffered from other interests and getting out of bed way too late

still I managed to get through it and end up at university, I think I always just did everything just in time

oh… did you sleep late at night? That’s the real question

I mean back in high school, not now

yeah, I stayed up way too late listening to radio

there was this rock show with all kinds of new progressive rock and metal bands I wanted to listen to

just-in-time… something about JVM…:face_with_monocle:

or “just-in-time procrastinator”

My teachers were surprised what I could accomplish in just one weekend of pulling all-nighters

I think I also didn't know how sensitive I was to caffeine and my parents were evening coffee drinkers, a habit which I took over together with smoking

which screwed up my biorhythm pretty badly

ya, youth is powerful. That’s not good study hygiene though - applying the same habits to college level and beyond are probably going to backfire eventually

I almost never made it to school before noon

oh… (I think I mentioned before about the relatively long metabolic half life of caffeine)

(and yes, caffeine makes my heart pound like crazy)

it probably wasn't like that all the time, but this is how I remember it. The biorhythm thing became even worse when I moved out of the house to live on my own with other students. I had two weeks in winter in which I didn't see any daylight. I have never felt more depressed than that

(so if I have to drink coffee now, probably the decaffeinated version)

(jokes about disgruntled former employee exacting stealth revenge on company by secretly replacing the coffee in the machine with decaff version notwithstanding)

but when I lived on my own I felt more responsible for my own work, and at the university they left you pretty much to your own, that system worked way better for me than the authority-driven atmosphere at high school

(to be fair, if a software company is so reliant on overworking that it completely collapse upon withdrawing coffee, then it might just deserve that)

anyway, to summarize: I was an ok high school student who did just enough to pass everything ;)

that’s my own personal ethics in college: be relaxed and laid back, just not that laid back when exam’s there

yeah indeed

(context: that ethics is a counter-culture to the prevailing culture in the other two major college/university in my region, though that’d be a story for another day)

Feel free to elaborate if you want

(about giftedness and study habit: a common pattern for the gifted is that they zone out during class, doesnt care to put in hard work etc, and can still pass at the end…

… and depending on how gifted you are, may then get a shock lesson when they progress to harder classes later and their methods suddenly aren’t working anymore

oh, I certainly had a shock lesson like that near the end of high school when mathematics/calculus became harder than what I could get away with

and the dean told me, if I wanted to go to university, I should work on that

another common issue is that egos can get in the way and hinder socio/emotional development

that's when I started really working on math and started to love it

when I got to university, my favorite subjects were maths while most fellow CS students hated it

finally, the proofs for the theorems that were just a given at high school

I was very lucky in that I got understanding/loving teachers/peer group who gave me a liberal environment all the way back to high school

like, the usual “acceleration vs enrichment” dilemma in gifted education

I’m blessed to be able to get both

At high school I found out that if I put enough work into math (which was mostly calculus, it was called Math B), I could derive most of the other analytical courses from that: physics, Math A (which also contained probability, etc), economy I and II, ...

Physics was more or less just applied calculus

the teachers made some accommodation in that the class is interspersed with short tidbit/segment directed at my abilities

so if you understood Math B, and squinted, you got that course for free

ah you are lucky then, I never got this special treatment

and tolerate me going hyped pulling off stuff like printing notes that change/extend what’s said in the math textbooks, and sharing it with classmates

I was also mostly interested in just hanging out with friends, drinking beers, smoking, mid high school.

yes, I observed this too: if you fully grasp pure math early on, it can be a powerful tool for the other required subjects at school too

so it’s like “economy of scale”

aka “how to study less by studying more”

I was loving math so much that I started a second major in the second year at university, but after three months I almost burned out trying to do it all

so then I took it easy again

yes exactly

oh, you’re in US system?

where you’d pick a major in 2nd yr

oh major is probably the wrong word. I meant 5 year study program

this was before the European system was introduced of bachelor/master

I'm based in The Netherlands where I also attended uni

where I did the degree, major is fixed when you enroll. (With some exception)

yes, same here. but I enrolled into another one

a bit unrealistic but I wanted to try it

(note: I actually is in a double degree right at the start, plus - I’m doing early admission)

ah nice. what is early admission?

and where are you based?

(which means lots more required courses. They do give you an extra year. However, the operation of “extra year” is idempotent…

based in HK. Early admission is when you can skip your last year in high school and also skip the admission test (kind of)

(I was in the old system where to enter university, you need to go through 2 public exams)

further down my degree the program was pretty flexible so I could take a lot of philosophy, logic and maths courses to fulfil my interests

(if you completely aced the 1st one, then you earned the right to skip the 2nd and just enter)

HK = Hong Kong?

yup

ah cool, so yo are in your first year now?

no… done with it a decade ago approximately lol

ah with two degrees? which ones

though if you mean that I’m still young, well, I’d take that as a compliment 😆

I also got into a progressive rock band during my degree which ended up taking a lot of time, lol

I can't tell from your handle and without any further info ;)

double degree means that you do both concurrently

yes, got that

and it’s different from double major in that it counts as separate degree even though some courses are shared

that's what I did for a while, but I felt that if I would pursue with that, I couldn't enjoy my social life anymore

so did you do double major or double degree?

and if so, which ones?

double degree, math + information engineering

(don’t ask me what that mean exactly… I dunno either >_<)

information engineering was like the bonus degree, right? ;)

officially, both have the same weight

though most ppl slant towards one or the other somewhat in terms of personal interest

yeah, here too, but some things just take more time and energy than others

I’d say math took more of my time (but only because I love it so much I go extracirriculum all the way - reading graduate textbooks in the classroom lol)

it also varies per university, but the program I was in you had computer science (informatica) and information engineering (which was like the easier version)

ya it’s CS adjacent but not CS - I didn’t take OS course for instance.

the program I was in took 5 years, but now they split it into bachelor (3) and master (2)

ar I see… I’m only a bachelor

so you could for example do a CS bachelor and then do something totally different

some people would very much need that flexibility as a lifeline

if they picked a wrong major for bachelor, or the job market change, or anything and they want to move forward in their career

yeah, it's probably easier to complete a shorter program than a monolithic longer one

soooo… you finished that monolithic one?

yeah

and the burn out thing refers to taking on both CS + math that, if it pans out, will be at master level for both?

right

ic. That’d totally make sense

even if you don’t burn out right away

math at master level is no joke

and CS also takes lots of labor

yeah, and following two times the classes is a bit much, if you also want to relax sometimes

probably the only combo that’s comparably/more deadly is sth like math + physics, or philosophy, or law, or medics etc

unrelated anecdote

I remember having the flu in the second year of my studies so I couldn't attend the algebra classes (about groups theory, etc)

there’s a joke of a trilemma of school life: “party + good grades + sleep. Pick any two”

so I went on IRC in the #math channel and asked them to explain "Given X, prove Y" type of assignments to me. And this is how I ended up passing the exam

(hint: you may sacrifice sleep when you’re young. But it is actually a hidden debt with interest. Eventually you’ll have to repay it)

(this was around 2000, the internet wasn't that old)

is broadband prevalent by then? or still 56k/modem? :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing:

we had a cable modem

ar, forgot telecomm system can be completely different in Europe… nvm

(here, if you use 56k, you are sharing the same frequency band with landline. So no telephone when browsing the internet and vice versa)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_modem

yes, we had that too, but this was a bit before 2000

cable modem was already a lot faster

Coaxial 😮

yeah that one

I thought it’s all in museum already

we also had access to the university network to which the whole campus was connected. it was one of the biggest pirate software networks at the time

with high speed downloads

and if you were on the campus, also high speed uploads (glass fiber already at that time)

we lived outside of the campus though

https://www.utoday.nl/news/48914/ut_also_responsible_for_software_piracy

Copyright… ask the copyleft crowd :thinking_face:

all in all… college life is lots of nostalgia

(things change a lot once out there though)

yes, agreed, it's fun to remember those times

and… wrapping up today! gotta rest/sleep…

ok, cya!