I teach programmers to say “Oops” when they make a mistake, rather than apologize. It’s epidemic.

If “close enough” works, then it’s nice to have the skill. Having the skill requires occasionally using it.

Where accuracy is important, since we almost always have a calculator with us now, that’s a no-brainer.

Maybe more to the point, though, understanding how percentages work is wise. It’s one of the few arithmetic topics that we encounter regularly in life.

In this case, 23% of 53 and 53% of 23 each have their own little trick, depending whether you’d rather overestimate a little with 1/4 of 52 or underestimate a little with half of 24. I find it handy to be able to think that way, especially for example when trying to get out of a taxi and paying cash.

Pretty close to 1/4 of 52, so like 13-ish, but maybe closer to 12.

(13 + 0.25 - 0.53 - 0.53, really. If I had to, I might be able to keep that in my head.)

You’ve already had several good suggestions here.

I learned that when rest no longer leads to recovery, that is burnout and maybe even depression. Pay attention to this feeling and take it seriously. Good luck.

If you’re thinking about what you could be doing, you might have some unhelpful conditioning related to “being productive” and other such myths of how to live “correctly”. You might be able to think your way out of that way of being and you might need to talk to someone to do this, such as a therapist.

If you’re worried about forgetting something that you need to do later or about some deadline sneaking up on you, then writing things down and setting reminders could help. I did a lot of this and it trained me to literally forget things that I didn’t yet need to start working on without risking missing deadlines. I found it very freeing. Something like that might help you.

I hope you find some peace from something in these replies.

I like our local shared ownership model: neighborhood cat visits, we chill on the deck, I offer him water, he doesn’t seem to need it, he wanders off. Every so often, there’s just this cat at the back door checking in.

It’s much more likely that we sound like children than we sound like an LLM.

Underrated or not widely known?

I love lazygit and I’m still surprised at how many people are shocked when they see it for the first time. Not exactly a command, but a very handy text UI tool.

For more elementary tools, I can’t believe how many people know about ! and ctrl+r who don’t also know about fc and edit-and-execute-command.

Yes! I raise you atuin.

I was going to suggest turning their phone, but that’s much better.

This is one piece of software that has an update almost every time I open it and I’m never ever worried about updating it. 💪

“Nothing like” seems to overstate things, at least to me.

Certainly, the sound in Japanese doesn’t sound aspirated the way English speakers do and expect to hear, but in listening to all the recordings at Forvo for this word, an initial “ts” seems like an entirely reasonable and fairly faithful approximation of the Japanese sound.

Granted, I would expect someone who has listened to significant amounts of Japanese to hear differences that an outsider like me wouldn’t notice, and consequently to judge differences as more pronounced than I would. Even with that in mind, “nothing like” seems like quite the exaggeration.

Moreover, and back to the original point, the pronouciation with an initial “ts” in English seems pretty obvious, just as dropping the “t” to conform to typical English phonotactics does. I wouldn’t see any reason to rule either pronunciation choice out.

You’re not responsible for meeting this man’s needs. You don’t need to trick him. “Please leave me alone.” If he does not do this simple thing, then you have not committed any offence and you can train yourself not to feel bad about it. You already meditate, so you might make your tendency to feel bad about this into an object of meditation.

Unfortunately, you can’t control his behavior. He might still try to sit down next to you and talk to you about things that don’t interest you. I don’t know what more you can do than ask him to stop doing this and hope he complies. “Please stop doing this. I’m just not interested. I prefer to be alone.” It is compassionate to say nothing more than this.

As for why you’re like this, that’s very likely because someone taught to you to care about other people’s feelings and didn’t teach you that their feelings are not your fault. This seems pretty common.

The stories you tell yourself about why he does this and the stories you tell yourself to explain your own behavior… they probably don’t help you much, do they?

Peace.

How strange. I never pronounced it any other way. I don’t think of it as a regionalism. I grew up near Toronto.

Strange conceptions?

Yes. That’s humor.

Tsunami doesn’t start with a T sound, It’s just a strange artifact of the romanization of the Japanese sounds.

Yes, and English speakers have an established collective inconsistency regarding whether to pronounce loanwords anywhere on the spectrum from (somewhat) faithfully to the original language to transliterated to entirely reinterpreted with English pronouciation norms. To declare that the “t” in that word is silent (as Ken has done, at least once) overstates the situation. At most, it’s optional.

I pronounce those cities as two syllables, although it doesn’t bother me when others don’t. I also pronounce “Mangione” as three, even though I don’t overdo it on the Italian vowels.

Typically, yes. Pronunciation mistakes are not ruled incorrect unless they change the spelling of the name or word, such as adding consonants. Ken corrects the pronunciation without calling the mistake out, usually, although he labors under strange conceptions, such as insisting in not pronouncing the initial “t” in “tsunami” and “tsar”.

Would it be good enough for you if you heard the conspiracy theories around you, but you could mostly not be affected by what they’re saying?

When I have the option, I am always the cat.

A Clockwork With One Brain Cell

I have used it as a nicer version of web search, mostly for “How do I write code using this library I’m not yet familiar with?” It provides passable tutorials when the library’s documentation is sparse (I get it) or poorly written (they tried 🤷‍♂️).

“My solution is faster than yours.”

“If the code doesn’t have to work…”