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Heartiste once said, "To seduce hot girls, it helps to know the mind of a hot girl. And that means getting in her peep toes and taking a look at the sexual market through her eyes. Hot girls don’t get hit on as often as merely cute girls, but that doesn’t mean they don’t notice the head...

Gated communities, those without a guard standing at the gate, are security theater. The image of security is more important than actually doing anything to protect residents. I once lived in a gated community which had a gate at one entrance but did not have a gate at the other entrance. The...

Four experiments show thinking in a foreign language reduces the framing effect and two experiments show it reduces loss aversion, while in the foreign language. A pair of experiments show it reduces causality bias. It's not clear why, but it has been suggested a possible explanation is that the...

People like to praise the value of tutorials. "There's so much you can learn on Youtube!" Tutorials are helpful for simple topics, for sure, but not so helpful for complex topics like computer programming and VFX. People get stuck in "Tutorial Hell" where they watch tutorials for years but make...

The pernicious danger of automation from AI is atrophy of human skills. There are people who think there's "no point" in learning a skill, for a career, if AI is "just" going to take it over. When automation fails, people have no idea what to do. In 1997, American Airlines captain Warren...

About a year from now, I will be moving to inside of the Washington DC Beltway, to be closer to family. It's a great area but the one big sticking point which made me pause for a few months before making the decision is the loss of friends. Making friends in middle age life is not the same...

I’ve recently started hardcore learning of Houdini (after two small attempts of dabbling with it.) SideFX Houdini is a 3D animation/simulation software package. Everything and anything is possible in Houdini. If you can dream it, you can do it. It's primarily used for VFX in...

We all know about the concept of a snob, "a person with an exaggerated respect for high social position or wealth who seeks to associate with social superiors and looks down on those regarded as socially inferior." Snobbery isn't really a thing. That's not to say it doesn't exist, but it...

I recently learned about a theory of platform decay. It applies to social media, but also Amazon, Spotify, and ride sharing apps. First, a platform is good to users, to draw people in. Then, once enough people are locked in, they will screw over users to cater to business users. Once...

Stable Diffusion is the best AI image generator. I've been using Stable Diffusion for six months, looking into how I can use AI within my art pipeline. In support for my assertion of it being the best, Stable Diffusion is free and open source, runs locally on your own computer, has thousands of...

In general, you should do you, and live an honest life. But there are two times when accents are useful -- when you're learning a foreign language, and when your native accent causes you problems. Your accent does affect how people treat you and having a disfavored accent can open you up to...

In my studies, about a year ago, I found a website called Old Maps of Paris. This map was drawn in the 1700’s of how Paris may have looked in 360 AD. I spent hours trying to cross-reference the map with Google Earth and verified three things as true. 1) There were four islands in the Seine...

The French have a reputation for being rude. In the theatrical play "Picasso at the Lapin Agile," written by Steve Martin, there's the funny line, "You can’t just insult somebody out of the blue," to which someone replies, "But I'm French!" There was a restaurant waiter in Vancouver who...

Environment modeling and texturing, with an aim towards architectural visualization, is my niche field of expertise. I’ve spoken to many guys in real-life over the years about 3D modeling, so I know some of you reading this are interested in this topic. Scale Centimeters are the most stable...

At least, I hope not. I could be wrong. The release of Midjourney, DALL-E 2, Stable Diffusion, and other similar programs, have made a big splash in the art community, with some artists reasonably concerned that it signifies the end of commercial art careers. As someone on Twitter said, “If...

For the past 19 months, I’ve been learning French. It’s not the first time I’ve tried to learn French, and French is not the first language that I’ve tried to learn, but it’s the first time with real progress being made. Just thought I would share some things which I've learned... Learning vs...

[edit: never mind]

This post has been in my head for a very long time. There are four core skills to being a 3D artist: photography, drawing, painting, and coding/mathematics. You learn so much from photography, from composition to the science of light. Understanding camera settings and lenses is necessary when...

Caption to the video: “Please don't tell me that this will be limited to married men, you clearly don't understand how precedent works. The court clearly established that a woman's desire to get pregnant outweighs the man's desire to not be a father, and establishes forced paternity AND forced...

Married men work 400 more hours a year than single men. They also are more likely to make sure they have lined up a new job before quitting a job. This does NOT mean they are more ambitious or smarter. It does mean they are a slave to the demands and obligations of their wives. The burden of...