LMD Async Tutoring

[Elliot]

This is fine. I’m guessing it doesn’t look very perfect or flawless to you (if it does, let me know). I think it’s good enough for making progress and that you can probably see some flaws yourself, at least intuitively, and what you need is just a lot more practice.

Money is also useful for other things such as being a durable store of value. There’s another topic if you want.

Another thing you can do is imagine someone asked you a question, then try to answer it. You can just think of any questions you’d be comfortable answering. Or you can specifically think about followup questions people might have about something you wrote.

Also, btw, have you read Time Will Run Back? If so, could you write 3 paragraphs saying what the book is about? You could also say why to read it and do some writes that go into detail on specific parts of the book.

[Elliot]

Hey btw since you know about audio stuff, do you know how to make my voice sound better in videos?

AT2020USB+

I have this mic with a short stand on my desk with a shock mount with elastics. It’s a little to my side, not directly in front where my keyboard and display are. It’s more convenient this way than trying to get it right in front of me with an arm attached to a tripod or my desk.

In Audio Hijack, I just have the speech denoise filter and automatic removal of silences over 2s. I’ve tried some other stuff before which I have disabled to try to avoid/minimize unnecessary processing, e.g.

I’ve tried some post-processing plugins in Final Cut Pro but was sometimes unsure if they were better or worse than nothing. I don’t think I have a good ear for audio quality.

It’s hard to tell what things actually make a big difference, like whether buying a different mic or repositioning the mic would matter a lot, or doing any kind of voice training/practice to speak differently. A lot of online advice seems to say lots of things matter, and exaggerates how big a deal every little factor is, rather than giving clear information about conveniently getting good enough results. Maybe my mic setup is already fine but I’ve never really been sure.

[LMD]

@Elliot

An infinite:1 ratio means that the compressor wont let a signal cross the threshold.

This is the most confusing part FYI. I think it’s because you didn’t define what the first number means and what the second number means, and then you’re talking about a special case where people’s intuition will be less help.

@Elliot

PS Please include blank lines between paragraphs.

That text you quoted is actually from the brainstorm I did before I tried writing the explanation. I could’ve made that more obvious sorry! (That’s the general pattern I’ve been following when doing these. I go, Topic > Brainstorm > Explanation in block quote. I remembered to label the brainstorm section in my Money post).

You may find the same issue with the final explanation I did, however. But I haven’t a chance to look.

I’ll have to answer you questions tomorrow. I have a big day today and just thought I’d point this out before I run out the door!

[Elliot]

@LMD

@Elliot

PS Please include blank lines between paragraphs.

That text you quoted is actually from the brainstorm I did before I tried writing the explanation.

Oh yeah I think I read it as normal explanatory text.

If it’s meant as a bullet point list, not paragraphs, please format it that way. You can just select it then click the list button.

Also I don’t think block quoting your own new writing is needed in general. If it needs some visual indication, you can mark it with a header (type some # at the start of a line then the header text) or a horizontal rule (type 3 hyphens as a whole line).

[LMD]

@Elliot

Also suppose the compression will turn down the volume by 2x above a loudness of 10. A 9 stays a 9. A 12 gets reduced to a 6? Or to an 11? In other words, does it only reduce the excess volume past the threshold or the whole volume? I’m guessing it’s 11, not 6, just because that answer seems more useful.

Yes the volume in that case would be reduced from 12 to 11. In audio jargon the quantity there is called gain reduction i.e a gain reduction of 1.

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@Elliot

This is fine. I’m guessing it doesn’t look very perfect or flawless to you (if it does, let me know). I think it’s good enough for making progress and that you can probably see some flaws yourself, at least intuitively, and what you need is just a lot more practice.

Great! Yeah I totally can see some flaws in it. One explicit one I noticed was that I said money makes indirect exchange possible. I think indirect exchange is possible without money. Trading carrots for a goat because the shoemaker wants to trade for goats, not carrots, would be an indirect exchange. Money facilitates indirect exchange.

What’s an indirect exchange and what isn’t depends on the purpose of the exchange, not on what goods are involved in the exchange. This means that since each party to the exchange can have different purposes for trading, what might be an indirect exchange for me can be a direct exchange for my trading partner.

Also, do you mean practise explaining things in general, practise explaining the topic (probably both)?

@Elliot

Money is also useful for other things such as being a durable store of value. There’s another topic if you want.

Thanks yes.

@Elliot

Also, btw, have you read Time Will Run Back?

I actually haven’t read it yet. Maybe I’ll read it next.

[Elliot]

@LMD

Also, do you mean practise explaining things in general, practise explaining the topic (probably both)?

I meant practice with many types of writing in general.

[LMD]

@Elliot

It’s hard to tell what things actually make a big difference, like whether buying a different mic or repositioning the mic would matter a lot, or doing any kind of voice training/practice to speak differently. A lot of online advice seems to say lots of things matter, and exaggerates how big a deal every little factor is, rather than giving clear information about conveniently getting good enough results. Maybe my mic setup is already fine but I’ve never really been sure.

I think the mic you’re using is overall fine, and it’s definitely not the first thing I’d change.

I think having the microphone closer will make the biggest difference. The main problem I hear is room ambience/environmental noise/rumble. Those things become less of a problem the closer you are to the mic. Basically the further away you are from the mic the less the difference in volume is between the direct voice sound and the ambient sounds in the resulting signal. If you get closer, you increase the difference. Getting closer will have the effect of making the ambient and background noises quieter, and your voice will sound more like it’s the focus.

Having less ambience/noise also means you can then apply things like compression in post and have an acceptable amount of ambience/noise brought up (remember a compressor will have the effect of bringing quieter sounds up). Applying compression on a voice in post is typical; it can help smooth it out and make it sound full and controlled. So not having a recording with lots of background noise means you have more scope to adjust compression/limiting before it sounds bad (btw a limiter is just a compressor with an infinite:1 ratio; it limits the signal to the threshold.)

Other things will change if you try getting closer to the mic too. There is something called the proximity effect that happens with mics of your style. That means that the low frequency response of the microphone changes (increases) as you get closer to it. That just means more bass frequencies in your voice. More bass for sure isn’t always good; you can get too close and overdo it; but part of that classic radio voice or podcast voice sound is that bassy full voice.

Another thing that’ll change with it closer is plosives (consonant sounds like ‘b’ and ‘p’ which expel air quickly) become a big problem. Your microphone doesn’t have a “pop” filter built in which would shield it from plosives, so you’d have to buy one. Having a quick look on amazon though you can get them pretty cheap. Here is an example: https://www.amazon.com.au/AT2020-Pop-Filter-Foam-Cover/dp/B08F9HCSMG (I’m not recommending that or not it’s just an example). I don’t think you really risk damaging the microphone with plosives (maybe in extreme cases) but the resulting audio will be not good. Alternatively just not speaking directly into the mic and just to the side will avoid plosives but it’s not ideal and your voice wont sound as good as with speaking directly into it.

I’d recommend some experiments with getting the mic closer somehow (ideally without you holding it) before considering buying an arm or something. For your mic, you’ll probably want to be between 6 and 12 inches away from it. You could use your hand span with your thumb at your face and your pinky at the mic to get started.

I don’t know much about other voice or audio-for-video post-processing methods like de-noising. I could learn more about it maybe. I mainly know about things related to music recording and live sound engineering which tends to focus more on getting the source sound, mic placement, mic selection, and room sound right at the beginning, and relying less on fixing things in post. Post processing I know about is like compression, eq, limiting, mixing. That stuff that has been around for decades in the analog world.

I just had a listen to your CR Introduction and noticed another thing. Your audio is sometimes clipping. That’s when the audio exceeds the maximum volume that the software can reproduce, and so those peaks in the audio wave get “clipped” off. It produces a nasty spitting sound.

This can be solved by using a limiter on the audio in final cut pro (put it last in the chain of effects you use). Using a limiter in this case is about setting a maximum volume ceiling so your audio doesn’t clip. I haven’t used final cut pro personally, but it shares some audio features with Logic Pro which I use. Here is a video on using a limiter in final cut https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSKKLn7N8w0&ab_channel=SamWalter. There seemed to be some good info here too https://youtu.be/0GxYpxtyuoY?si=qQxAeqx2WzscVszh but I haven’t looked very hard. Seems enough to get a good result quickly. This might be way more confusing for a beginner than I’m anticipating because I’m unaware of my background knowledge.

[Elliot]

Thanks for the comments. Moving my mic closer would be an issue for anything where I’m both using the computer and talking, but for script reading I guess I should try just putting the mic where my keyboard normally goes.

@LMD

I just had a listen to your CR Introduction and noticed another thing. Your audio is sometimes clipping. That’s when the audio exceeds the maximum volume that the software can reproduce, and so those peaks in the audio wave get “clipped” off. It produces a nasty spitting sound.

This can be solved by using a limiter on the audio in final cut pro (put it last in the chain of effects you use). Using a limiter in this case is about setting a maximum volume ceiling so your audio doesn’t clip.

Why isn’t a limiter automatically applied to everything on computers? Why would computers play a bad sound instead of just using a tiny bit lower sound that works better? What’s the downside?

I’ll watch your links later so if they answer this I’ll find out then.

[LMD]

A book I’ve read is Gun’s, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. I read it maybe 10 years ago now, but I seem to remember a lot of it still. I found it really interesting and it basically got me into regular non-fiction reading which I’ve done since then. I never re-read the book but I talked about it with friends some. I now no longer agree with Diamond’s central thesis. I think Deutsch’s criticisms of this book in BOI are great. And having learnt more about how central the role of ideas are in human affairs its flaws are quite pronounced.

Topic: Gun’s, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond

Explanation:

Guns, Germs, and Steel is a book by Jared Diamond that tries to explain the differential success of some societies over others in history. He points to the Columbian exchange, the meeting in the late 1400s of the previously separate civilisations of Europe and America, as an example of this problem. He asks, why was it that it was the Europeans that were able to so easily overthrow the native American civilisations, and not the other way around? Why did the Europeans have Guns, Germs, and Steel, and not the Americans?

Diamond’s thesis is that the qualities of the local climates, the availability of local animal and plant species that could be domesticated (apparently it’s only possible to domesticate certain species), and the physical geography of different areas of the world are the things that determine how quickly a civilisation will advance. To Diamond, the greater success of European civilisation over the rest of the world is due to the eurasian continent scoring better on these things compared to the Americas, Africa, Asian and Australia.

His reasoning is that the since European societies were better poised to domesticate a larger variety of things, they did, and so began to do lots of agriculture. This caused their populations to climb, so their societies became denser. This increased the proximity people lived to each other and their animals. This in turn meant that diseases could more easily spread and jump from animals to people. This meant that over time European societies became more resistant to their diseases. This close proximity also meant more fighting between societies, and this caused them to develop more sophisticated weaponry and tools for making weapons out of.

On the other hand, Diamond says, people arrived in the Americas later, and there were less of them, and there were less animals and plants to domesticate by the time societies became agricultural (some of the larger native animals had been hunted to extinction by early American hunter gatherers). So while American civilisations did develop agriculture, these societies were behind Europe’s progress and developing in isolation from them. When the societies met, the more advanced one won.

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I basically wrote this all in one go with very minimal editing. It’s kinda okay I think but not great. It didn’t feel too hard but I got a bit bored near the end.

[LMD]

Ah I forgot to state an audience at the beginning. Hmm. I think implicitly I was writing for a smart teen/adult who knew some broad history.

[LMD]

@Elliot

Why isn’t a limiter automatically applied to everything on computers? Why would computers play a bad sound instead of just using a tiny bit lower sound that works better? What’s the downside?

Hmm I’m actually not sure. I’m also not actually very sure of the details of how audio works in the digital realm. (There are ways that digital audio is processed that prevents clipping which I don’t understand, but I don’t think it’s to do with limiting in the compression sense). I understand clipping and limiting better conceptually it in the analog realm or from an analog perspective.

I’m not actually even sure though that the OS doesn’t do some form of limiting, but that since I’m using an external dedicated audio interface which doesn’t I can see it clipping. Not sure. I need to read more about his actually

Sometimes software has a ‘normalise’ function for exporting audio. This looks at the audio waveform you’re going to process e.g when you’re exporting a video, checks what that file’s maximum peak volume is, and exports it at a volume such that it doesn’t exceed the reproducible maximum. I looked to see if final cut pro had a normalise feature, but it seems that it doesn’t (?), and people achieve a similar thing by using limiters in final cut pro. That’s how I found those videos. I don’t know why Final Cut doesn’t have a normalise function.

[Elliot]

@LMD

I don’t know why Final Cut doesn’t have a normalise function.

It has a magic wand button which can analyze audio then set things like loudness amount and uniformity. However, clicking the wand on my CR intro video audio didn’t result in any changes. Changes can still be manually applied.

FCP also has audio effects from FCP, Logic, MacOS and third party plugins. E.g.:

I also have access to similar effects in Audio Hijack, which is what I normally record in (for audio only without screen recording).

I do also have a voice leveler and a voice AutoEQ effect, and more, available in FCP or AH. The ERA 6 stuff was briefly free back when Meta bought Accusonus, before Meta sunset all their products and removed their stuff from the web. I found it a while back and it seemed potentially useful.

[Elliot]

@LMD

I never re-read the book but I talked about it with friends some. I now no longer agree with Diamond’s central thesis. I think Deutsch’s criticisms of this book in BOI are great. And having learnt more about how central the role of ideas are in human affairs its flaws are quite pronounced.

FYI, I think Deutsch is making mistakes in that area. While I think ideas are very important, I think Deutsch is incorrectly dismissive of the importance of various other stuff (e.g. diet, toxins, genetics). I think geography does matter and explanations about it can be interesting (but treating it as the only important factor is even worse than treating ideas as the only important factor). However, Reddit historians dislike Diamond too. I haven’t read his book.

@LMD

His reasoning is that the since European societies were better poised to domesticate a larger variety of things, they did, and so began to do lots of agriculture. This caused their populations to climb, so their societies became denser. This increased the proximity people lived to each other and their animals. This in turn meant that diseases could more easily spread and jump from animals to people. This meant that over time European societies became more resistant to their diseases.

I’m skeptical of this because I thought Africa had some of the most and worst diseases, and I thought the basic reason was that humans had lived there longer and given the germs and parasites more time to evolutionarily adapt to target us (time to adapt to target our pre-human ancestors is also relevant).

@LMD

So while American civilisations did develop agriculture, these societies were behind Europe’s progress and developing in isolation from them. When the societies met, the more advanced one won.

BTW, I’m skeptical that European-style agriculture is as great as commonly believed. I think it has significant downsides. I’ve heard the Europeans came to America and thought that it had natural abundance, not realizing that they were seeing a form of more subtle agriculture that works more in harmony with nature with less effort than tilling fields (it wasn’t natural or lucky abundance; some of the land that didn’t look like farms had been tended with a light touch for many generations). But I’m not an expert.

@LMD

I basically wrote this all in one go with very minimal editing. It’s kinda okay I think but not great. It didn’t feel too hard but I got a bit bored near the end.

I haven’t read the book so can’t confirm your comments about it are accurate, but they look fine to me. I found the writing pretty easy to read and understand. I think writing more like this will help. If you keep getting bored frequently while writing then that may need to be addressed, but if just happens for a few topics then it’s no problem.

[LMD]

Here is another explanation I tried. I recently taught someone how to drive a manual car and I enjoyed thinking about it conceptually and explaining it to them.

I remember that when I was taught by my parents there was less emphasis on conceptual explanation. It was more like: do x, then do y, then do z, etc. I struggled until I figured out what was happening conceptually myself.

Topic: Taking off in a manual (stick shift) car.

Audience: smart adult/teen that has at least some intuitions about momentum/inertia

The central problem with taking off in a manual car is getting the car moving without stalling the engine. This requires correctly coordinating a few controls of the car.

Aside from the normal expected features of a car, you can usefully think of a manual car as containing 3 parts: the engine, the transmission, and the clutch.

The engine is where the power to move the car comes from. Basically, the engine spins and that spinning can be used to ultimately spin the wheels of the car, causing it to move.

The transmission of the car is connected directly to the wheels of the car. The transmission has different gears which, in a manual car, you choose manually with the gear stick. (In an automatic, the transmission is automatic and you don’t have to think about the transmission or stalling at all). The gears allow the engine and the wheels to spin at different speeds. In other words, they set the ratio of engine spin to wheel spin.

The engine and the transmission are connected or disconnected via the clutch. The clutch is a clever way of connecting or disconnecting things while they’re moving. Instead of being a hard, fixed connection, a clutch can vary the amount of connectedness between two spinning things, from all the way connected/disconnected, through various partial or ‘slipping’ connections. In a manual car, the clutch is a pedal used for connecting and disconnecting the engine and the transmission when gears are being changed, or for slowly connecting the transmission and the engine on take off.

Why might the engine stall when taking off?

A combustion engine’s speed needs to be kept above a certain minimum speed for its motion to be self sustaining. If it falls below that speed the engine will stall and will need to be restarted. Before take off the car is stationary and has no momentum; its wheels aren’t moving but the engine is spinning (if it’s on). If you were to instantly connect the transmission and the engine, the engine would stall because it couldn’t instantly start moving the car; the engine is not that powerful. So the engines speed would drop very quickly and stall.

Taking off without stalling requires slowly bringing the transmission and the engine into contact via the clutch so that the car can slowly gain momentum, and so the engine can maintain enough speed to keep running. Once the car has sufficient momentum the transmission and the engine can be fully connected together, and the car has taken off.

The physical coordination needed to take off in a manual car can take a lot of practise, and a beginner should expect to stall the car a lot before they can get it smooth. But it eventually becomes second nature. Having some conceptual understanding of how the a manual car works can help you learn it more easily.

[Elliot]

@LMD

The gears allow the engine and the wheels to spin at different speeds. In other words, they set the ratio of engine spin to wheel spin.

This is like bicycles. The gears change the ratio of how many times the wheels spin per spin of the pedals.

@LMD

Topic: Taking off in a manual (stick shift) car.

You did fine. Just doing this a bunch more will lead to improvement. Do you want to do more writing or something else (or both)?

[LMD]

@Elliot

This is like bicycles. The gears change the ratio of how many times the wheels spin per spin of the pedals.

Yeah same concept.

@Elliot

Do you want to do more writing or something else (or both)?

I think I want to keep doing more writing, or something writing/reading adjacent. Do you have any ideas? An idea I just had is that I really liked doing the logic/idea analysis of the D. Friedman quote. Doing assignments like that would be fun, but they might be hard to just come up with off-hand.

But I feel like we’re already in the ballpark of skills that I’d really like to improve at. Noticing myself getting a bit better at writing, or at least finding out that I’m fine at some writing things has been pretty cool. It’s cool how it’s related to reading too. I’m okay with continuing trying to explain things. Maybe there is a way we could slightly change what I’m currently doing?

An idea I just had is that I realised after seeing your post in Eternity’s thread that practising breaking ideas down into sub-ideas could be helpful. I recognised having to do some version of that while I’ve been doing my practise explanations recently. When trying to explain something to a target audience, you have to consider what is reasonable set of sub ideas that you can use to explain it. Using too many sub ideas can make your explanation confusing and like, incomplete? More advanced explanations tend to use use more high-level sub ideas which in turn often need sub explanation. But simpler ones can sometimes be harder, because you have to explain things in ways that are true but that use much more basic concepts.

I’ll do a recap of where I am (for myself, mainly):

So I started with trying to write about what I was reading about conflicting ideas. I was going through your Resolving Conflicting Ideas and making notes basically. Then I encountered a problem where I was being avoidant and it was taking a while. I thought I was understanding the ideas in the articles but wasn’t sure. We tried a different approach where I read an article and wait a few days and then do a draft explanation of some things from the article. I did a few explanation of the Avoiding Coercion article but they were more like notes on your article and were imitating things you’d said in the article too much. You suggested going simpler. I ended up doing a dialog-y thing that wasn’t so simple. We then focused on trying to explain more basic things like you did with Max in Max tutoring. I had fun doing these, and still do have fun. The hard part is actually thinking of something that I understand well enough to not get stuck explaining it.

I notice that I didn’t do a lot of explanations that I couldn’t finish. I was trying to make sure I could explain things before I tried writing explanations for them. Maybe I could get more done and learn more if I was more willing to just try explaining things and maybe failing? Like abandoning explanations. That seems like a good way to find weak points in your understanding of things too.

[Elliot]

@LMD

I think I want to keep doing more writing, or something writing/reading adjacent. Do you have any ideas? An idea I just had is that I really liked doing the logic/idea analysis of the D. Friedman quote. Doing assignments like that would be fun, but they might be hard to just come up with off-hand.

You could comment on something else from Friedman’s article or revisit the topic about his father Milton Friedman and Maximizing Profits - #90 by Elliot

[Elliot]

@LMD

An idea I just had is that I really liked doing the logic/idea analysis of the D. Friedman quote. Doing assignments like that would be fun, but they might be hard to just come up with off-hand.

I think you could find more writing prompts to try by searching the forum. I think I’ve posted a bunch in the past (some with no replies and some that other people replied to but you could still do it too).

There are a lot where I just posted a link I thought was interesting, like an article or TikTok video, which you could try to analyze and comment on. There are tons of those.

There are also some where I asked a question or said something about there being an error you could look for. Those are less common but definitely exist.

@LMD

An idea I just had is that I realised after seeing your post in Eternity’s thread that practising breaking ideas down into sub-ideas could be helpful.

Yeah that’d be good too. And you can find example trees I’ve made in the past where I broke something down.

@LMD

I notice that I didn’t do a lot of explanations that I couldn’t finish. I was trying to make sure I could explain things before I tried writing explanations for them. Maybe I could get more done and learn more if I was more willing to just try explaining things and maybe failing? Like abandoning explanations. That seems like a good way to find weak points in your understanding of things too.

Yeah sure, you can just try stuff. You could do a lot of 10 minute explanations. If it doesn’t work, you’ll figure that out in 10 minutes or less.

Another relevant skill is brainstorming. If you have trouble brainstorming some topics you could try to quickly explain, then other types of brainstorming practice could be worthwhile.

[LMD]

I’ve been running into some problems with doing tutoring work. I have been doing some work; I did a number of short explanations over the last few days, and some personal writing, but I’ve been feeling avoidant and guilty about not doing more, and it hasn’t all been fun. It has felt like a chore. I’ve been letting myself be distracted by some of my other interests. I’m not sure what the problems are.

One thing I’m struggling with being self-directed. I can do work more easily when I have a clear idea of what to do, like when I’m given a more explicit assignment. But when I’m to look through the forum for things to try to analyse, I feel discouraged. I think I want assignments to be more handed to me or curated for me. And I feel conflicted about that because becoming a better self-directed learner is one of the goals I had for tutoring.

Figuring out myself what to practise, and having that be some undetermined amount of time before I can get to work feels bad. I worry about my energy being spent on just thinking of what to do.

I have been thinking about whether I am getting the most value I can out of my tutoring time with you. Recently I’ve been feeling like I am letting myself down, and have been considering whether it’d be wiser to take a break or not. I think I want to proceed for now, even though I’m having some problems. I just wanted to communicate about that.

I don’t have all my thoughts together. I just wanted to share something.

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Here is some work from the last few days

Topic: How a speaker works

Audience: A smart kid

Sound is vibrations in air. When we hear something making a sound, like when you tap your foot on the floor, you can hear the tapping because the tapping is causing the air to vibrate. A speaker works by vibrating the air. The speaker cone moves back and forth quickly, moving the air in front of it.

Topic: how to change the oil in your car

Audience: A young driver

Idea tree:

• How to change the oil in your car
  • why to change the oil in your car
    • what does oil do in the car?
  • where is the oil kept?
  • how do i get the old oil out, and the new oil in?
  • what tools do I need?
  • how do I prepare the car to have its oil changed?
  • what safety precautions should I take?
  • how much oil should I put in?
    • how to find out your cars oil capacity
  • what oil should I get?
    • how to find out which oil is right for your car

Your car’s engine contains a significant amount of oil which is used to lubricate all of its internal moving parts. Over time, this oil become dirty, and needs to be changed. Changing the oil involves draining the oil from the engine, and then replacing it with fresh oil.

Tools you will need: a wrench set, a jack, some rags, a funnel, and a drain pan. You will also need enough of the correct oil for your car. You can find this out by searching the internet or checking the manual for your car. There you will find the oil capacity of your engine and the oil type that your engine needs.

The oil drains out of the bottom of the engine. There is a sump where the oil collects when the engine is off.

First, ensure the car is parked at a roughly level location and the car is NOT running. It’s very important that it isn’t running. Also, it’s a good idea to wait until the car hasn’t been driven for a few hours, so that the oil that comes out isn’t hot and so that you aren’t dealing with a hot engine.

Open the bonnet of the car.

Jack the front of the car up so that you can get the drain pan under the sump. You don’t want to jack it up too high or it’ll become unstable and dangerous. You don’t need to get your body under there and it would be dangerous to do so.

Remove the oil cap from from the top of the engine. (That’s the cap where you put oil in)

Then using your wrench, carefully unscrew the sump screw for the oil pan under the car, and try to remove the sump screw without getting oil on you. The oil should then drain into the pan. It might take 15-20mins for it to drain down to a tiny drip.

When it seems the oil has been drained enough, put the sump screw back in the pan, and screw it all the way back in so it fits snugly. Clean around it with a rag so that you can notice any leaks forming in the near future.

Carefully pour the new oil in to the engine. Don’t pour too quickly or it will overflow onto the engine. Pour the correct amount in for your engine. It’s important that you err on the side of less oil, because you can’t partially drain the oil if you overfill it.

Let the oil settle in the engine for a few minutes and then inspect the sump screw for leaks.

Remove the drain pan from under the car, then lower and remove the car jack.

Check the dipstick and see if there is the right amount of oil in car. Top up if you require a little more.

Replace the oil cap and the dipstick.

Start the car and let it run for a minute or so. Then turn off and look for leaks in the sump screw and also check the dipstick again.

If everything looks good you’re done. Dispose of the oil appropriately (you can often funnel the used oil into the now empty new-oil container to store before taking to the tip).

Topic: how to send a package at the post office

Audience: Young adult

Gather what it is you need to post. Make sure you have the address of the recipient before leaving the house.

When you get to the post office, find a bag/box that’s the right size for your item, and then write on the box the recipients address and details. Post office’s generally have that stuff there.

Then carefully pack the item in the back/box. If you’re selling something online, it can be a good idea to take some photos with your phone of the item in the box in the condition it left in. That can help with any future disputes.

Take it to the counter and pay for it. Ensure you get tracking so you can prove it arrived. Get a copy of the tracking number and update the recipient with it asap.

Topic: how to intonate a guitar

Guitars, like almost all instruments, are imperfect. They are all built a little differently, and they can shift and change with the weather and temperature. So they need to be calibrated to play as in tune as they can.

Tuning the guitar’s open strings is fairly easy. Using a digital tuner, you play the open string, and tune it to the pitch that it should be in standard tuning. But there is a further adjustment that needs to be made for it to play in tune across the fretboard.

A guitar works by fretting strings against a fretboard. This changes the length of the portion of the string allowed to resonate, thus changing the pitch and allowing you play different notes.

Each string is anchored at both ends. The strings on a guitar have roughly the same distance between their anchor points, but the exact length between the anchor points on each string can be adjusted. Because the frets in the fretboard are in fixed positions, the strings lengths need to be calibrated so that the musical intervals of the string align with those fixed positions, otherwise it will play out of tune across the fretboard. Since each string is a different thickness and is at a different tension, each string needs a slightly different distance between its anchor point.

You calibrate these points in a similar way to tuning the open string of the guitar. First, you tune the open string. Then you fret the string at the half way point (the 12th fret). This should give you the octave above the open string note. Using you tuner, if this fretted note reads higher or lower than the octave, the anchor points must be adjusted further apart (if too high) or closer together (if too low). Then retune the open string and check the 12th fret again. With a few tries, you should have the 12th fret tuned to a perfect octave of the open string. Then you can move on with the other 5 strings.

Once complete, you have intonated the guitar.

Topic: How a lightbulb works

Brainstorm:

How is the light produced?
a current is passed through a filament causing the filament to heat up enough that it glows
Why is it in a bulb?
the bulb is a vacuum
the filament would burn up in air because it would react with oxygen

Explanation:

Lightbulbs are used to produce light from electricity. They consist of two main parts, the filament, and the bulb.

When the light switch is turned on, an electrical current is passed through the filament of the lightbulb. This causes the filament to heat up so much that it glows brightly.

The filament is suspended in a vacuum inside the bulb. This is important because were the filament exposed to air, it would quickly burn up, and you’d have no more light. Inside the vacuum of the bulb however, the filament can glow for much much longer.

[Elliot]

@LMD

Figuring out myself what to practise, and having that be some undetermined amount of time before I can get to work feels bad. I worry about my energy being spent on just thinking of what to do.

I think you have some sort of misconception here where you conceive of some steps as non-work that’s in the way. Figuring out what activities to do on what topics is real work, not a different category of thing. It’s something I spend philosophy time on myself.

@LMD

I think I want assignments to be more handed to me or curated for me. And I feel conflicted about that because becoming a better self-directed learner is one of the goals I had for tutoring.

We can do more curated assignments. It’s a way of breaking projects down into smaller parts. You can’t work on all skills at once. Curation reduces the size and/or number of parts for you to worry about.

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Related issue: Why don’t you comment on more new forum threads? Are you not interested in participating in those kinds of discussions? Would you like to but think it’s too advanced and you’re not ready, even to try some experimentally? Would you be happy to try it if I assigned it? Is it too freeform/unstructured so you get lost not being sure what to say or how to approach it (my partial answer would be generally quick, casual comments)? Are there too many things people say that you don’t think you understand enough about to even ask a question? Are you worried it’s not the most efficient thing to practice/learn? Do you get stopped by some sort of perfectionism where you want your comments to be good and smart?

There’s no need to answer all these questions individually, though you can if you want to, but just one overall answer is fine.

@LMD

Topic: how to change the oil in your car

@LMD

Topic: how to send a package at the post office

@LMD

Topic: how to intonate a guitar

This one mostly made sense to me and I think I learned a little but as someone who knows very little about guitars I think a bit of information was missing (which partly can mean the level of detail wasn’t consistent the whole way through):

@LMD

Guitars, like almost all instruments, are imperfect.

Why almost all, not all? (This is a minor/side issue, I think.)

@LMD

With a few tries, you should have the 12th fret tuned to a perfect octave of the open string. Then you can move on with the other 5 strings.

Doing this won’t affect the tuning of the open string, and there’s no need to go back and double check it? How come? I think maybe I don’t have a clear enough model of what’s being adjusted. If the open string tuning part was adjusting something independent of the second tuning then it’d make sense that you won’t need to go back to it. But it just said to tune it to the right pitch in the first part; it didn’t say physically what to do or what you’re changing.

@LMD

Topic: How a lightbulb works