I don’t have an account there but my guess is that “create” link in the top right

The problem is in parks everyone is too spread out to talk to strangers. There needs to be a park with a bar to bring everyone together.

If you have a retirement account, it’s probably in some sort of stocks. Be aware of what those are. Consider including some non-American index funds that are not particularly tech heavy. S&P index funds are significantly exposed to AI-related tech companies, and their usual safety is currently questionable.

Not sure what you mean by Michael Burry levels of ethical investment, but he has a fund and apparently its most recent disclosed holdings are here. You could just buy (or rather sell, in most cases) those. As you can see 6 out of 7 positions are short - meaning he’s betting the stock price will decline - and if you would rather bet against every corporation shorting is an option. But be aware, it’s very hard to make money shorting because you’re fighting inflation and losses are unlimited. Great way to go bankrupt, especially if you’re new to investing.

Beyond that, if you want minimal exposure to some asshole CEO, you can invest in commodities like Gold (e.g. GLD, which is a gold ETF that just holds gold bars, and generally goes up over time) and a billion other things. Bond etfs are another option (but pose some risk of losing money at the moment due to inflation/interest rate fears), and if you wanna be a sort of landlord you can do a REIT. Many of these pay dividends which probably lowers your risk of loss to some degree. The markets are a little nutty right now and I can’t think of a single thing that’s easy to predict at the moment.

Finally, there’s simpler options like high interest savings and CDs, which aren’t as terrible of an option as usual because interest rates are higher than inflation in the US for the time being.

To be fair, the question is “Write a function that simultaneously determines if the number is even and works as a timer”

There’s so much to explore. Not just physical locations, but our own minds and each other’s too. Learning about the laws of the universe, history, and seeing what’s to come. Even pain is a thing to be experienced that the dead don’t get to.

Is all that meaningless? All of us contain our own universe within us. Sure, it would be nice to care about all the other people (if there are other people) and what impact I have on them. But if in the long run nothing I do matters to them, fuck it. I’m mainly concerned with what’s going on in here.

I swiped almost everything right

Don’t do this, if this is an input into your app’s algorithm at all it’ll assume you’re ugly and desperate and not show you to anyone. Only swipe on people you’d be at least potentially excited to meet and that could actually work out (e.g. don’t swipe right on someone who’s profile says “I want a man of god” if you’re a hardcore atheist). I shifted to this strategy on hinge and it made a noticeable difference in the number and quality of matches.

Think about it - if you only swipe right on good matches (for both of you), they’ll see you and be more likely to swipe right on you, improving your match rate. And don’t worry about how their level of attractiveness plays into this, because it’ll be weighted for that.

As a massive introvert it’s pretty much the only way I meet anybody. I could write a multi-volume treatise on why people hate online dating and how it points to them doing it wrong in some way. But I’ll spare you other than to say remember that you’re asking a computer to match you with someone. It has no feelings for you and will just do what makes sense for the system as a whole, not for you in particular.

Just have low expectations - a lot of people treat those they meet on the app as relatively disposable compared to someone they met in real life. So if someone ghosts you or just disappears from the app without a word, it’s definitely impolite but not uncommon. Don’t take it personally (even though my friends tend to take it personally when it happens to them).

A lot of people are saying cut them off, but I have a family member who was into the anti-vax conspiracy theories and kinda still is, but it’s much less of a focus now and is pretty obviously just being carried forward by cognitive dissonance at this point. There will never be total victory, but there can be a reasonable truce.

What I’d suggest is the most counter-intuitive strategy - show genuine interest. Say “Ok, I want to know more, but I need you to be specific. Tell me what your theory is and what the evidence is, I’ll take my time looking at it, and respond in detail.”

Keep in mind, they probably won’t pay attention to whatever your respond with. That’s ok. The response isn’t the point, pinning them down on what they think is. So often these things are purely emotional, and forcing them into a logical framework will make them do the work for you. As for the response, odds are it’s some combination of cherry-picked data and spurious correlations, if not outright made up facts. Think of alternate explanations for what they’re showing you that are more plausible than a vaccine killing people. And remember that if the vaccine really was killing people, it would be really obvious, not something we need look deep into the matrix to find.

I guess I’ve never had much trouble with the initial recruiter screen, usually it’s just them saying what the job is and if I say if it’s a good fit, they go ahead with the test or whatever the next step is. What kinds of things do they ask?

I can definitely give you feedback on your resume if you send it over.

Has anyone else made a successful pivot from software engineering to another field?

No, but I’ve done the complete opposite.

I’ve sent out 400+ applications

First rule of doing anything: if you hear grinding, you’re doing something wrong and need to rethink your approach.

I’ve found it to be much easier to get my foot in the door with the help of a recruiter. There’s a ton of them on linkedin, all you really need to do is start looking for jobs and they’ll appear in your messages. Interact with them, even if it’s just to say you’re not interested - I think somehow this helps you show up in whatever algo linkedin uses. I’ve only very rarely gotten anywhere with applications. Recruiters help because they usually already have a relationship with the hiring manager.

Emphasis on usually, because you need to only work with recruiters that actually have that relationship. First clue is that they are physically located near the employer, and if they’re actually an internal recruiter, all the better.

Second thing I’m guessing you’re doing wrong is your resume. Remember that anyone filtering out through resumes is probably not a technical person and is just looking for keywords. So make sure every technology you’ve worked with is mentioned by its official name on your resume.

E.g.:

worked for 1.5 years at a major financial firm building data pipelines, working with financial datasets, and using technologies like Python, SQL, and AWS

Then make sure your resume includes “Python”, “SQL”, and “AWS”, as well as the specific SQL you’re using and the names of the specific AWS services, and whatever other cool keywords you can throw in about the financial systems you were working on. Even basic things like Git should be mentioned, because you never know when a HR person might have that on a list of qualifications.

I can say I’ve been looking at switching jobs within tech and I’ve been getting plenty of interest from recruiters. Now I do have a lot more experience, but I don’t think that’s the only factor as I’m also looking at more high-level jobs. The difference in approach is probably the key.

The correct response is to consider what the correct way to synthesize the positions is, and go with that. There’s nothing wrong with adapting your position to handle possible inconsistencies. The goal is not to win but to be the most correct.

Typically, the assumption is that this is an argument that transgender is invalid. Perhaps there’s another way of looking at it. Perhaps a way people aren’t ready for, which is why your opponent went in that direction.

Alternatively, it can be pointed out that this is changing the topic, because it technically is.

I just want to point out something that I’ve not seen others mention - sometimes girls are just way too paranoid about what their families will think. I know one girl who keeps insisting that her parents wouldn’t let her date a black guy, but then she also admits that she dated a hispanic guy before and thought the same thing but her parents loved him. Honestly I think like 70% of girls imagine that their parents wouldn’t accept some huge swath of men due to some superficial characteristic, but probably in reality only maybe 20% of parents would actually be against their daughter dating a guy who treats her well, even if he’s of a type they dislike.

Yup I was going to treat it like eating cubes of tofu

In most cases, it’s wrong to violate the social contract, especially while benefiting from it. However: the harm done by violating the social contract should be weighed against the harm of not violating it.

In this case, the harm of violating the social contract is pretty minimal, as copyright law is not a fundamental part of the fabric of society. One can even argue it’s kind of dubious, as something that moneyed interests favor very heavily with no similar moneyed interests favoring a strong public domain.

The harm of not violating it is not only do you give money to a holocaust denier, you’re giving it to him for denying the holocaust. Even worse, you’re giving him money for being wrong, and so effective at deception that you are compelled to spend money disproving him.

The whole point of copyright is to encourage useful works and spreading of knowledge and art. In this case the work is not spreading knowledge, but un-knowledge. Irving is exploiting a loophole in copyright law that allows him to work against its very purpose.

Thus I’d say violating the law is ethical as the benefits far outweigh the costs.

Consciousness

Let alone neurones in my brains experiencing quantum effects.

But that’s zeroing in on the idea that quantum mechanics directly affects neurons, which affect free will. Which is only one way one could conceivably argue free will exists. But I’m saying I don’t need to come up with a specific way, because I observe free will more directly than anything else. So there’s basically infinite ways it could happen, including for example:

• Some undiscovered conscious force behind quantum mechanics that has yet to be discovered that is able to affect the brain via microtubules
• Some undiscovered conscious force that exists entirely outside of known physics and is able to affect some part of the brain via a totally novel mechanism not related to quantum mechanics
• The whole world being a simulation which for unknown reasons is set up to hide our own free will from us
• Everyone having the wrong perspective about causality in general, such as the external world being governed and dictated by the self rather than the other way around, much the same way dreams can be controlled by the free will of lucid dreamers. Or being wrong about some other fundamental reality of the universe in such a way that consciousness would make more sense.

Yes.

I observe free will directly. Watch: I will choose of my own free will to type a tilde at the end of this sentence instead of a period~ Behold free will.

Everything that says we don’t have free will depends on indirect observations that blatantly make faulty assumptions. Do our senses accurately tell us about the state of the universe, and ourselves within it? Are our interpretations of this infallible?

Most egregious is the assumption that classical mechanics governs the mind, when we know that at a deep level, classical mechanics governs nothing. Quantum mechanics is the best guess we have at the moment about how objects work at a fundamental level. Many will say neurons are too big for the quantum level. But everything is at the quantum level. We just don’t typically observe the effects because most things are too big to see quantum effects from the outside. But we don’t only look at the brain from the outside.

Nor can we say that the brain is the seat of consciousness. Who can say what the nature of reality is? Does space even exist at a fundamental level? What does it mean for consciousness to be in a particular place? What’s to say it can only affect and be affected by certain things in certain locations? Especially when we can’t pinpoint what those things are?

So yeah I believe in free will. It’s direct observation vs. blatantly faulty reasoning.