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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • It’s not simply a reading comprehension thing with bullet points. If your questions require research on my end having them already structured in bullets does a few things to help with that process.

    The asker’s bullet structure gives something to mimic. You can even put your answers directly below the question, so the asker can be reminded of their own questions.

    The bullets also help skimming, if I need to see which item id is needed next it’s easier to do so without losing my place.

    Bullet grammar structure also allows for much terser sentences. If I need to reread your question it’s easier if I don’t have to ignore a bunch of words that don’t substantively alter the meaning.

    Do I need any of these? No. Could I put the questions into bullets myself for the reply? Sure. But it’s easier to spend more time and effort on answering your questions if you save me a few steps.




  • At the same time it’s the map’s job to describe the world. Even for something like nation states where there’s an official name, the map uses the common name. Our maps say France, not French Republic.

    Changing the displayed name for a body of water shared by several nations doesn’t make much sense, especially when the common name has yet to follow.

    At least that’s from the perspective of one of the goals the map ostensibly wants to serve.







  • Consider a spring loaded drawer divider. Keeping everything from sloshing around can make a surprising amount of space.

    Drawer with dividers

    My drawer in the image used to be a nightmare. Everything used to move around and it would jam when opening sometimes. Adding dividers got it organized enough to leave a third of it free, which is now the rightmost section that’s filled with tea.

    It’s been over a year and I still feel a small sense of joy when I open it sometimes. There’s still messes of junk in the back left and right, but they stay put.


  • On top of the definition provided by the other commenter, it’s vaguely analogous to shopping for something, and opening a new tab for everything that looks vaguely good. Then doing a pass to winnow down and close items.

    There’s also structure for organizing things that are related. So if you weren’t sure if you wanted a toaster or a toaster oven, you could spatially have two separate groups.

    It only clicked for me once I saw someone else use it. I’m used to it just being hostile to search traffic.