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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: December 12th, 2023

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  • Thanks! I’ve done office work too but retail always has this appeal where you get to work directly with the random public and provide an actual, immediate service of value. I really wish it paid better but its frankly incredible to get such a broad view of your regional community if you can figure out how to get people to open up. Having good coworkers that support one another in an active environment is so great too.

    Of course, many complaints and concerns about how the industry is changing currently, with AI and election time anxiety, corporate weirdness etc but the site I’m at runs well and has it’s own community that serves the larger area. Amazing stuff, I hope I find a job with a thriving wage that has at least some of those qualities someday.


  • I’ve worked retail where clothes were a component and the most frequent returns are for clothes too small, like a large exchanged for an XL or an XXL or the largest available size returned for store credit. There are a lot more of the very small sizes than there are very small people, anyone who fits into an S or M has a lot of options and not much competition. This is also more true of women’s clothes than men’s.

    Also, clothes aimed more at an older, like 60s 70s years old consumer will have more reasonable size distribution in my experience, but the clothes will be extremely frumpy and odd.

    Also, shop the clearance rack, especially when it’s been recently filled with new stuff, there is so much decent cheap clothing out there for like a couple bucks a piece.

    I worked doing returns frequently and a lot of women doing returns clearly had the idea they would get clothes that would be fun and racy and it didn’t work out the way they saw it in their mind’s eye, which makes me happy they at least tried. Chase that dream!

    I feel like I should mention something about fast fashion and slave labor producing so much clothing today. Also, quite a bit of what is produced doesn’t sell and where does it go? They have to make room for the new stuff.

    I dont know if any of that is what you are looking for OP but those are my thoughts on the matter.



  • Googled it and:

    Gut microbiota: PAs can improve the diversity of gut microbes, and can increase the abundance of beneficial bacteria while decreasing the abundance of harmful bacteria.

    Fecal odor: PAs can reduce the level of putrefactive substances in the feces, which can reduce fecal odor.

    Fecal pH: PAs can decrease fecal pH.

    Antimicrobial activity: PAs can have an antimicrobial effect on potentially pathogenic bacteria.

    Prebiotic effect: PAs can have a prebiotic effect on beneficial bacteria.

    Looks like I’m buying some seeded grapes for science!











  • Good points, I’m reevaluating my perspective on quantum computing.

    From the article you posted, it says that “certain chemistry, quantum materials, and materials science applications” are suitable for quantum computing but that “accelerating incompressible computational fluid dynamics” aren’t suitable with current understanding of how the algorithms could work.

    My takeaway as someone with a couple years of CS education from years ago is that the qcomputers are good at gradient descent/simulated annealing or something like that but that advantage disappears with more complex problems. Also that we’ll need a few more orders of magnitude qubits to make the output “interesting.” Still though, helpful to see that something worthwhile is stirring under all that research , I appreciate the insight!



  • Okay, I was being somewhat flippant. I don’t discount there seems to be progress in some areas but slow and in low-visibility ways. I could even believe much more powerful quantum computers exist in state facilities around the world. Have they been shown to be useful though or there some bottleneck that prevents them from outcompeting digital computers?

    An additional concern of mine is what they are useful for is in rapidly breaking vital digital algorithms like elliptical curve cryptography, and can’t be allowed in public hands for that reason. Someone elsewhere said there were computers with 1100 qubits, why is it taking so long to exploit these machines to do useful work? Or am I mistaken and there is evidence, I would love to see it.

    Would a savvy investor put their money in quantum computing now, was the Wright Company a good buy when it first started? This actually has me on a deep dive about historical stock market graphs…


  • From your article,

    What everyone should know, however, is that quantum computing is not yet a practical reality. No company has developed a device that can beat classical supercomputers at anything more than obscure research problems that have no real use.

    Until quantum computing has its Alan Turing moment it will remain a curiosity. The power of qubits needs to be yoked as a beast of burden for computation and actual useful problem solving the way that digital computing was with the Turing machine. It’s not a certainty that this will ever happen.

    Sometimes I think that believers in quantum computing’s superiority to digital computing are as silly as those who think we’ve almost proven P=NP. But who knows, both might be valid.