zlatiah

Dang you guys are crazy (in a good way). Oldest thing in my wallet is only a bit over 2 years old, and it is an arcade card I still use semi-regularly wherever it is accepted... I do have older cards too but they are all sitting at home in a binder

A lot of travel-related ones. Still haven't gone to even every country in Europe yet, and I've never had a chance to even set foot in South America, Africa, and Australia
Getting really, really good at something. I've gotten quite good at some video games before, but I want to be close to a pro (and I don't mean it lightly) at at least one thing

That's probably it

Went to a somewhat work-tangent offline meetup on Tuesday... Supposed to be not related to research, but some professors showed up anyways & I was presenting so I got quite nervous. My old nemesis where I get sick whenever I'm too stressed flared up again and I was sick the entirety of yesterday and now today, just when I was recovering from something else 🥲

Talked with a psychologist again in a long time. Apparently I no longer have issues with depression, but my work-induced anxiety from 2025 never went away. Currently trying to adjust my schedule to help reduce anxiety. hoping that things improve within 2 weeks

Also fun story, one of the guys at the meetup somehow found my old blog that I did not update since 2024. I never had my name attached to that blog and I'm pretty sure I wrote in my robots.txt for it to not be indexed. I guess either make it an open secret or I have to really up my opsec game, leaning towards the former

No clue, but... maybe they are easy to catch?? From the video it seems like the bats kinda just sit there and do nothing

Eating one is a terrible idea though, bats host way too many pathogens... which I guess is what makes this research interesting and disturbing

I'd like to think I would stand by my principles... but realistically, in this economy?? My degree is too specialized & the job market is pretty tight. I'm pretty sure most people in my field would go to a job at Nestle or Palantir without a second thought for something as simple as 10-20k above market rate and/or visa sponsorship 😭

If I have options, probably at least a net $50k/yr premium for a dubious company, and a net $150k/yr or more (which I will bail quickly) for a company that is straight-up evil

BMS (Be-Music Source), which is technically a file format, not a game. Started off as a Beatmania (now Beatmania IIDX) simulator in 1998, and evolved into its own thing due to some alleged copyright beef with Konami. Someone has made a 20-min video essay about this that is better than anything I could explain

Every song in BMS is original & is fully key-sounded, so the community ended up gathering a lot of (overwhelmingly Japan and Korea-based) music creators. Some of them are... quite experimental. The entire ArtCore genre (which is almost nonexistent outside of rhythm games, but extremely prevalent within) was invented and pioneered by BMS creators. Recent ones... I'm pretty sure I've never seen a "Hi-Tech Full On" or a "Poetry reading" genre song outside of BMS, but there are at least several songs that fall within these two respectively

Just a heads up... BMS as a game is brutally difficult even by rhythm game standards, which is already a very demanding video game genre to get into

I used to be quite picky & only really listened to J-core and high-energy EDM. Last few months I've been getting into a new rhythm game that is known for being... adventurous with its music genre, & even invented some new genres, which has done a number to my music diversity. I think I'm much, much more adventurous with music now

Fun fact, these are genres of some of the charts I've played recently. They are... varied, and I think these are only within the past week:

A lot of trance
A lot of J-core. Some are "hybridized" which are J-core mashed with other genres
Artcore, often referred to just "rhythm game music" because they don't exist outside
Hi-tech
All kinds of pop. Including J-pop, K-pop, C-pop(?), pop française (??), ...
Techno & rave music, of all kinds
Breakcore
House, also of all kinds
Ethnic music. I think I've heard an Arabic EDM chart yesterday
Classical
Experimental things: "poetry" (does this genre even exist?), Buddhism chants, whatever ppl like 立秋 and 大前司 make, shitposts/memes but in music form, ...

I tried it once before and liked it! Certainly helps that I'm also lactose intolerant

Although, I prefer to just drink black usually. With good beans (locally roasted) and a good grinder the coffee itself provides a lot of flavor so... other additions are a bit unnecessary

Couldn't believe it has been... what, 4-5 weeks that I have not been feeling well. Last few days I had noticeably worse cold symptoms & really struggled to do much outside of work. Allegedly a few ppl at work reported having a cold 1-2 weeks ago too, so it could just be a really nasty virus floating around. No idea what caused the extended sickness... either my immune system got impaired after getting COVID, or some type of Autism burnout, hopefully nothing worse

On the plus side, the cherry blossoms and the bluebell flower blooms are happening, so I'll be keeping my weekends flexible for that

That's actually really interesting. My understanding is that colorblindness is one of the better accommodated deficiencies...? A colleague called me out once when I used a data visualization that wasn't particularly colorblind friendly, so it's something I try to accommodate as well. Would love to hear if he has experienced any other difficulties (or a lack of)

On this topic... I think the funniest way I saw was someone on Reddit asking why a video game dialogue refers to an anime girl as being green when her hair color is "gray"

Everything about fecal transplant. Or maybe just the fact that it is even a legitimate medical procedure

Depression, Prozac. Approximately 2-3 weeks when the initial benefits kick in, which is also how long it roughly took for me to feel depressed again when I once accidentally stopped the medication

Realistically? Something like "BIOL/STAT 451, Intro to Bioinformatics"

Department head will probably force me to teach "COMP 271 Intro to Generative AI" instead 💀

I'm sorry I can't answer this, not experienced enough with current dating culture. I am just really curious where people are even finding dates around the BeNeLux area, especially as a guy. Things are... a bit dire for me

Good luck BTW! That's a lot of dates, hope you can find the one soon

Not technically an American but lived in America for a long time, also not eligible to claim citizenship anywhere. I hope I'd be somewhat qualified to speak on this

There really aren't that many countries which are a step up for an American IMO. Probably a good number of the EU/EEA countries, places like Canada/Australia/NZ, and mayyybe places like Singapore and a few more... Fewer if you have a strict limit on English, in that case maybe only places like UK & the Nordic countries; maybe also the Netherlands, but I've heard mixed information about language requirements there. This is a pretty short list, so I think you could probably have a passing knowledge of all of their basic immigration processes without spending that much time on it. But yeah you are right, for any expat/immigrant wannabe it usually goes like this:

Winning the "life lottery" (ancestry, asylum, or a literal lottery like the US) -> "Buying" your way in via Golden visa -> Love knows no borders so marriage -> Workers visa, aka getting sponsored to work

The first three obviously don't apply to you or me TBH, so work sponsorship it is: either international transfer via a large international company (does that happen often for trades people?), or finding a job in your target country. I think others have mentioned this, but since you will likely be immigrating via work, secure a job first. Don't even think about anything else without a solid job offer. I didn't follow this advice myself and literally got screwed; I spent several hours learning German everyday during a really busy time of my life, wrecked my mental health along the way due to stress, and never ended up finding a job in Germany in the end... Don't be like past me

tradesman with a lot of technical skills with some specialized skills in short supply

Probably your biggest asset. Some countries like Canada and Australia/NZ publish their skill shortages, so if your skills are on them you'd be in very good luck. There are subreddits and discussion groups on these topics so I'd look into them

Note that in Australia, allegedly the real job shortage can be quite different from the published list. This doesn't hurt your chances of moving there per-se, but can make your life difficult after moving in, especially if you don't have a large amount of savings

Also, I'm not sure exactly what trades you are in (for the sake of privacy I prefer not to ask), but different countries may have different regulations. It is possible that you may not be allowed to work in the EU without local certifications for example. I don't think it is an impasse per-se, but I'd definitely investigate this beforehand

But anyways, if you are interested why not try and apply for a few jobs first? You never know :D

Neither of us is very good at picking up a new language (lord how I’ve tried)

To be honest... that doesn't sound very good. Comes without saying that most places expect workers to speak fluently or at least B1 in their native language (which is also required for immigration purposes for most countries), and the English-friendly places (such as Ireland) can have extremely high demand, which can cause other societal complications

I am taking what you said at face value, since I have seen first-hand how much my boss (German) struggled with learning French and had to settle for learning Dutch instead lol. Nevertheless, for most people it isn't that hard to at least get a passing conversation skill level in a target language in a few years especially with full immersion & government/employer-sponsored language classes, so I wouldn't completely rule it out just yet! If you're able to deal with other languages, there are lots of EU countries that have plenty of opportunities; maybe even some more developed parts of Africa would do as well

Usually 7.5 hours, +-20 minutes. I literally can't properly function at my day job if I do less. On rare occasions when I do sleep less I usually end up making up for it over the weekend so

During college I also did way less, only 4-6 hrs/day... but then I'd fall asleep during classes

Honestly really surprised to find everyone here all do their taxes so quickly. I also did all of mine as early as I could (mid-Feb) but...

The only few American friends whom I'm close enough to talk about this, they all ignore it until the very last minute. So either late March/April, or not at all

I'm back in cancer research for my current job again. But not in prostate... and more importantly, I'm on the computational side of things instead of experimental now

Also as to the topic... there were a few people in my undergrad lab who were actively studying JQ1 (back in 2017-18), but I've never heard much about the drug after I left. Thanks to you I finally found out why I never heard about it again (neurological side effects) so

Not sure if CC BY 4.0 counts? There's an incredibly based Japanese producer 森田交一 (often goes by the alias 魔王魂) who released a lot of their music as CC BY 4.0. Hence a lot of them end up in all kinds of small projects, RPGMaker games, etc...

The website is https://maou.audio/, but the guy is also active on YouTube. 12345 is a bop; I was genuinely positively surprised by Burning Heart the first time I heard it, although J-pop may not be up everyone's alley so

Bruh the cancer lab (prostate cancer out of all things) I worked in as an undergrad was studying JQ1. Couldn't believe I'd ever hear this drug name again. Really hope this can go somewhere, reversible contraceptive sounds exciting