Joined the Mayqueeze.

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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Are we moving towards an AI jihad? A jihaid, if you will.

    Hormuz doesn’t fit in the Dune: Planet Earth narrative for me. We should stop using oil for the sake of the climate yet we don’t. We don’t have to go through that strait with so much trade. We just don’t want to take the detour and price increases. The Dune universe depends on the spice for navigation and I think there isn’t another source. We are still so dependent on oil out of habit and/or stupidity. The mullahs really aren’t the freemen. They are more of a side arm of the Harkonen clan that was provoked by the thoughtless action of the emperor’s real estate developer triggering their typical c@![ish behaviour.



  • I stopped watching Marvel movies because I found the plots virtually nonexistent. And don’t get mad at me, dear reader, if you love them. That’s okay, I’m not taking that away from you. I’m just saying how I felt.

    So I don’t know if I would sign on to your theory. I did enjoy a lot of the characters but it didn’t carry an ironman or Thor movie for me.

    I would like a sequel of Hail Mary though.

    spoiler

    My guess is that Grace’s life on Erid is just not interesting enough. In that he will probably just die there. The gravity, the nutritional problems - he is so worn out he probably wouldn’t survive his trip back, coma or not. I would like a story set in the same universe where humans deal with the multiple crises while Grace and Rocky are getting the Taomeba, how they infect Venus with it once the Beatles came home, how Strat deals with her predicted abuse of power lawsuits, and how later the Eridians show up with Grace’s body encased in Xenonite, bringing their saviour home, to a chaotic Earth that’s just recovered and thinks it’s Independence Day. The problem is just that we need to find a way to tell this story through the lens of a lone male wolf character because that’s what the author does best.


  • These systems vary by country and you’ll find fault with most of them. They are more often than not rating systems that were introduced to appease a loud group in society, possibly the pious folks were one of those. Society’s natural inclination “to think of the children!” makes these rating systems more about age appropriateness than about clearly labelled content. I can see the logic in your approach to the subject. Logic probably wasn’t the driving force behind introducing labels such as “parental guidance” or “restricted.”

    I think it might be easier as a committee to be compelled to come up with an age of people, for whom the content is appropriate, and not argue over labels until they’re blue in the face. Is vaping drug use? How much blood (if any) is required to be labelled violent? Etc. Can this committee agree with a majority vote that 12 year olds probably shouldn’t see this? That’s probably easier.


  • A fan on a boat would work. There are these fan boats people ride through the Everglades. There are propeller sea planes. The difference to a sailboat is the profile of the vessel under water. A sea plane has two or three smaller areas that are submerged. The everglade ones are just breaking the surface of the water and are very flat so they can glide over water and plants. A sailboat has a big, often deep profile under water, the whole length of the boat, possibly a keel underneath. And that’s moving through water, which is thicker than air. So you need possibly more than one propeller and the engine may need to give you more horsepower to move the boat through water with the force of the air above deck. That’s inefficient so boats tend to move their propellers under water.

    A few container ships have a spinnaker sail they can deploy. If the wind is favourable they can reduce the engine output and save diesel. Just in case you’re wondering about the reverse situation.





  • It’s a Tuvix level decision I’m glad I didn’t have to make. I think reuniting a child with their biological parent is a general, understandable guideline. And if you look at this clusterfuck in sequence, the first crime in this case - the illegal invasion of Bajor notwithstanding - is Rugal’s abduction by Dukat’s aide and his subsequent depositing in an orphanage. If it hadn’t been for that, Rugal would not have had Bajoran foster parents. Who were understandably not very nuanced about the Cardassians. (There must have been a way to raise him not hating his “kind” unconditionally as he does. So they carry a small dose of guilt for this mess in my opinion.) Which led to Rugal biting Garak.

    The biological dad makes a convincing case that he was fucked over. Rugal is fucked no matter what. Sisko went back to where this train was sent on the wrong track and corrected that. I can kind of see the logic of that decision. He had to weigh different factors and decided to give less weight to Rugal’s wishes over the crimes that preceded him ever being in a position to express them this way.

    Tough call but he (somehow, there doesn’t appear to be a legal system with a metal sphere gavel and the social worker from Mrs Doubtfire presiding just yet) had to make one. And there probably isn’t a right decision.


  • Dass Holmirmalneflaschebier Gasherd fest im Putinschen Rektum steckt, ist doch nun wahrlich keine Überraschung mehr. Er hat sich gerade noch in den Aufsichtsrat eines russischen Supermarkts berufen lassen.

    Der Mann ist über 80. Den kriegen wir nicht mehr hin.

    Meine Oma wollte nicht aus ihrer Wohnung ausziehen. Obwohl sie auf den Rollstuhl angewiesen war und es keinen Fahrstuhl gab. Wie viele alte Leute fahren mit 80 noch Auto und sollten das nicht mehr? Und Gerd fährt halt nach Moskau.

    Streicht dem Mann die Bezüge. Wenn er über den Jordan geht, das kleinste aller Staatsbegräbnisse oder besser noch gar keins. Und dann können wir auch aufhören, uns jedes Mal so laut über Opa zu ärgern.

    Am Ende bringt diese Abgrenzungsempörung auch nix. Es ändert nix an der Tatsache, dass er mal Kanzler war. Und leider seinerzeit besser darin als Fritze heute!





  • The index of content available online, which they built and updated themselves. A policy of constantly tweaking the algorithm to make it understand what us monkeys want. No ads on the first search page. And then absolutely dominating the online ads market, which kept financing the continuous improvement to the service. Until they realised this was to their own detriment and made it ask Jeeves level competent again. They won the initial war but lost the peace.




  • Most of these countries have local news organisations offering news in English. I would also suggest next time you group some of these questions in separate posts. You’ll get more people reading a few shorter threads than one loooong one.

    If the UK had proportional voting and not first past the post for parliament seats, they’d have a greater problem with far right politics. Burnham just started and is the first PM to point out very publicly that Brexit was a mistake. That won’t solve any of the most pressing problems the people are feeling right now because rejoining would, like leaving did, take bloody ages. But it would probably be a net plus for the UK economy. I have a suspicion that the guilty verdict of criminal financial shenanigans for Manchester City Football Club, the city where he used to be mayor, and the ensuing scandal will spill some shit on him as well. So there is every chance the revolving door at Downing Street will keep spinning. Too early to tell.

    The AfD in Germany has already risen. They are the party with the second most seats in this Bundestag. In the state of Saxony-Anhalt we now may get the first AfD minister-president (governor). While his election isn’t guaranteed at this point, he’s a handful of votes short of a majority, the election, on whose result this state parliament will constitute itself, has already happened. The damage a single Trumpian minister-president can cause is significant but not irreversible. The other parties don’t have a clue how to stem the tide. However, there are still enough people who would stand up for German democracy right now so we aren’t quite back in Weimar yet. The situation is shit but not hopeless.


  • I appreciate their thinking to the point that it means there is an office suite of software available that doesn’t currently contain any “American Intelligence” features.

    LibreOffice said that there is currently “no integration” that meets all of its requirements, such as ensuring that the users’ data stays on their device and that there is no reliance on a single AI provider, among other considerations.

    As soon as there is a version of it that can be run entirely locally, they are not averse to adding it though. They’re not on team never-AI.