The issue I find with Chinese cooking is that it often requires very high heat and so (probably due to bad technique on my part) I get a house full of smoke or at least very high VOCs. Any tips to avoid that?
An appropriate oil (canola/peanut) and having everything that's going to go in the pan prepped before you even get the heat going are the main things to minimize smoke, but if you're cooking something that really calls for max heat you'll get smoke periodically as the oil returns to that temp unless your burner can't get the pan up to the smoke point of the oil. Prep is very important since adding ingredients absorbs a lot of heat so if you're cooking something that needs smoking hot oil you can immediately add ingredients in when the oil hits temp and that will absorb energy to bring the temp back down. It also helps you get it done asap. If you have to fumble around for stuff or prep ingredient 4 on the side while the pan is already in use for ingredient 1/2/3 it's very easy to loose track of things and end up with a pan that just sits there smoking. Also add the oil just before you start cooking, don't let it heat up with the pan.
Practically speaking in a home kitchen you also don't have to cook with heat that high, even if you're using a wok. There are plenty of recipes that call for lower temps, and you can often even make things that do call for high temps on a lower one instead. If you're dedicating to cooking that way you could also look into improving your vent hood if that's an option in your housing setup.
Get a real ventilation for the stove, not just a microwave that recirculates air. Most Chinese in China have separate kitchens with doors and window ventilation, it’s harder in the way Americans design open kitchens with the living room.
You can do lots of Chinese cooking on lower heat using non stick pans, fried rice isn’t that healthy for you anyways. We might trigger the smoke detector once or twice a month, some food (like fish) has a higher chance of triggering than others even if we don’t go full boast on temp.
Use a gas wok burner out on the kitchen porch. These will get you closer to restaurant power levels anyway. They use what amounts to a broken off gas main with a foot pedal.
Mike Acton talks about deliberate practice in programming exactly this way. Every day start with a blank sheet and try to build something for an hour (his example is Astroids). Next day, start again and get a little further. Eventually you'll be able to build the whole thing in an hour.
I am not a programmer, so I did not know the name.
But I just looked him up, and I can see why he is a legend.
His philosophy—stripping away the unnecessary to focus on the reality (data/hardware)—resonates deeply with me.
The practice you described (building from scratch daily) is exactly the "Tea Ceremony" of the digital age.
It is not about the tea (the result), but about the procedure (the internalization).
Multiplying two 100 digit numbers requires the application of a fixed algorithm which can be learned. If you don't know the algorithm it's challenging, if you do it's not.
But that is not true of painting. Painting requires choosing a subject (for its subjective qualities) and then translating what you _want_ to capture about that subject and how you want to represent it in paint on some medium. You will also be applying a theory of mind and perception about the audience of the painting since you probably want it to appeal to them. All of these choices and the skill to combine them into a painting that achieves what you want is vastly more challenging than multiplication.
Multiplication is akin to paint by numbers.
EDIT: it actually strikes me that this conversation gets to the crux of why AI art is so polarizing. It depends whether you view art predominantly as being about the thing that is created or the process of creation.
I read Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist a few years ago, and I was impressed by the breadth and depth of the great physicist. Later in life, he became a geologist, working with his son.
Those physicists worked hard: he writes in the book that 60 hours of work per week — and there were no phones back in the day to blur the lines between work and non-work — were routine in Berkeley. Those were dedicated people.
I compiled the code with minor changes on my M3 Macbook Air and it found the 19186 unique solutions in about 3hrs 15min, so ~9.2X speedup (over the 30hrs stated in the post). Would indeed be interesting to see how fast you can go with some optimization.
EDIT: I forgot to add -O3 the first time, with that the time to 19186 drops to under and hour, so over 30X speedup.
I just bought a Switch 2 having not really played games much for decades. I'm finding that occasional breaks for "mindless" gaming noticeably relaxes my always on, work obsessed brain. The challenge is overcoming the feeling that it's an unproductive use of time and I should be reading, coding, exercising etc. But in balance I think it's just the break my mind needs right now.
I do this too, but it bothers me a little bit to think that my mind needs to be doing something all the time in order to feel relaxed. Video games are fun but the ones I play are not really that restful; ditto web browsing. I've been exploring breathing exercises, mindfulness, journaling, just listening to music by itself more but it's tough not to just get bored with it. Maybe that means I need to do it more.
FWIW I've had a meditation practice for over a decade and do use things like box breathing and journaling too. But sometimes my brain just needs stimulation and this has never gone away. I've learned that the thing I need to avoid is engaging with my monkey mind in spiraling thoughts, so video games are ideal as they require enough attention to prevent me getting distracted but I can also zone out and just play.
People can be snobby about reading to the point of being too judgmental. Don’t feel guilty about your free time. There isn’t a hierarchy of pastimes with one better than another.
I hear this more and more as I age. This isn't what original comment was doing, but when discussing recent readings or hobbies with my friends or community I often must prod for the actual object of their pass-time or sit through a winded preface devaluing their enjoyment. It saddens me that people can so easily betray their own experiences.
I find that the feeling for me isn't about unproductive time but rather unfulfilling time.
A game can be fulfilling in some ways. Maybe it's a really good game. Or it's a way to socialize with friends or family.
It can also turn into a compulsion. That's why I avoid solo queue competitive multiplayer gaming. I try to only queue up with a friend, else I should go do something else.
> Within an hour, Koishi Chan gave an alternate proof deriving the required bound {c(k^2) \geq 1/k} from the original Erdős-Szekeres theorem by a standard “blow-up” argument which we can give here in the Alice-Bob formulation.
Is this an example of the 4 minute mile phenomenon or did the AI proof provide key insights that Chan was able to use in their proof?
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