PrinceWith999Enemies

@PrinceWith999Enemies@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sues Meta, citing chatbot’s reply as evidence of shadowban⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  No, because he’s actually quite mad and belongs nowhere near any kind of power. I can see his conspiracy theories appealing to the Q type, but most of them are going to go for Trump. He’s polling this highly because he’s an unknown. As more people start paying attention to who he actually is, he will be the Herman Cain of the race.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How would you decorate this room?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The Kids Who Lived.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Existential trolley problem⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  If he goes to the hotel, though, he will get to hear a great story from the owner of the hotel about a once beautiful but now decaying resort that includes a sweeping adventure involving a not-exactly-straight con man, an art theft that was not a theft, Willem Dafoe, and Tilda Swinton.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Saving the internet's first search engine from the brink of being lost forever: Archie⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Archie, gopher, wais, Usenet, Telnet, and ftp were the internet at that point. The www was basically a guy with a fan page for the hobbit and someone who gave a virtual tour of MIT.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jack Dorsey claims Bluesky is 'repeating all the mistakes' he made at Twitter⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  He went from looking like The Mandarin from Iron Man to wish.com late stage Tyrion.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Language⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Probabilistic curves are pretty much the opposite of what we normally mean when we say “free will.” Of the assumptions were correct, we’d tend to use the term “non-deterministic.”

  I tend to lean in the direction of Stanford neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky who believes that it is deterministic but not predictable due to the complexity of the parts and their interactions.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Language⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  This is known as the Whorfian Hypothesis, aka Sapir-Whorf theory. In generalized-to-the-point-of-inaccuracy terms, the idea is that language constrains thought. It’s one of those ideas that we can perceive as intuitively correct but that does not stand up to experiment.

  There are, for example, languages that don’t have words differentiating green and blue, and others whose counting numbers don’t include specific words for numbers larger than two. Some languages have no words for cardinal directions but use terms like “mountain-way” and “ocean-way.”

  Experiments do seem to support a weak version of Whorf - people from cultures with “missing” words can differentiate between green and blue for instance, but it seems to take a bit longer. There’s also a paper indicating that people who don’t use cardinal coordinates have a better innate sense of orientation when, eg, walking corridors in an enclosed building.

  I’d personally fall between the weak and strong position because I do not believe in free will and do believe that semantics are a significant driver of behavior, but that’s a step beyond where most of the current research is. There’s research into free will, but none that I’m aware of that pulls in cognitive semantics as a driver.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A YouTuber let the Cybertruck close on his finger to test the new sensor update. It didn't go well.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It strikes me as exactly the kind of engineering call that Elon has tended to make, time after time. With zero training in an area, he gets a solution in his head crufted up from some set of pre-existing notions or points of view and then pushes to have them implemented. He will also go on to fire anyone who disagrees with him. I spoke with an engineer who worked on the gull wing doors, which the team had objected to, and not only did he force them through, he burst in on one of the finalization meetings where they had finally reached a design consensus and insisted they change the hinge. Given similar reports on his behavior regarding other products (including especially twitter), I have no reason to disbelieve this person.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨God damn it⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  So if the water is holy, does that mean in addition that the evaporated water is also holy, or does the holy get left behind, making future batches even holier?

  If the former, does that make the air containing the water vapor holy? Is holiness a percentage thing - the more holy water humid it is, the more holy? Could you take out a nest of vampires simply by boiling a pot of holy water and letting the place steam up?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨arthropods⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think that peacock spiders and related species can help people get past arachnophobia. They’re cute, they’re intelligent, and they have entertaining behaviors. The fact that they have the two large forward facing eyes makes them look less alien.

  If you want to try exposure therapy for arachnophobia, they’re a great starting point imo.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨conservation⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This is how biologists reproduce.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨$70 titles are doomed to go “the way of the dodo” says Saber Interactive CEO⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think this is the same thing streaming media companies are realizing. When it was just pretty much Netflix, media companies would license them their content and Netflix would get their subscription fees. Then the media companies decided that they could earn more by cutting out the middleman and producing their own content.

  This created a headwind where companies established departments for producing content for streaming and funded them generously. However, the fragmentation on the consumer end ended up splitting the market such that it became unprofitable to run at those levels - everyone wanted $10 per month to subscribe to their dedicated service, and looked to in house productions to drive consumer loyalty. That, predictably, fell apart and now they’re increasing fees, cutting down on family accounts, and cutting productions.

  I think that the massive layoffs we are seeing in the gaming industry is a similar reaction. Game budgets have become bloated to the point of being unsustainable. I feel badly for the devs and staff affected by the contraction, and I remain impressed by the size of the game market overall, but at some point, like streaming media companies, you have to realize there’s only so much pie to go around. The size of the pie does grow, but the expectation of demand has significantly outpaced demand.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ubuntu 24.04 Beta Delayed Due To XZ Nightmare⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  This is the most accurate summary this poor bot has ever written.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨NASA engineers discover why Voyager 1 is sending a stream of gibberish from outside our solar system⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve seen this before. It’s humpback whales. We need to find the nuclear wessels.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This New Dating App Is Only for People With a Credit Score of 675 and Above⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Those are already built into the process.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨gottem⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I am going to try this, but I’d really like to know why it works. Someone else suggested cold water on the knife. Do the irritant molecules from the onion react with the water on your hands/wrists/knife before getting up in your eyes?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨gottem⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I am especially sensitive to this. I’ve found that using a very, very sharp knife can help, but some onions are especially strong. At that point I’m breaking out the swimming goggles.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨California sheriff releases bodycam video of killing of boy, 15, holding gardening tool⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It was a hula hoe - basically a stick. It was not the kind of hoe with a blade. They killed a kid that they knew was in a mental health crisis for running at them with a stick.

  They could have tackled him. They could have tased him. They could have pepper sprayed him. They could have tried entering the home more gently and used de-escalation practices like most medical professionals use. If a patient in crisis picks up an IV pole and threatens hospital workers with it, their response is not to shoot the patient three times.

  This is an American cop problem, period.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨California sheriff releases bodycam video of killing of boy, 15, holding gardening tool⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Then why is the US the only country where this kind of thing happens so regularly that every time a story like this comes out, I have to wonder if it’s about a new one or the last one? Cops shot a guy in his backyard for holding a cell phone.

  American police are on a literal hair trigger for lethal violence, especially against minorities, and most especially against African Americans. They are taught that their lives are in constant danger, and their use of force regulations are ridiculously loose. There’s even an entire training course for law enforcement called “killology.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks!

  I have always loved the OED. As a kid I used to sit in the library and just read it. It was always a dream of mine to buy my own copy and just have it the way people used to have encyclopedias.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scottish lairds may be forced to break up estates during land sales⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m a Scottish laird because I bought a bottle of scotch that granted me land and a title.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  “Every customer should be greeted when they walk into the store.”

  The singular “they” is traditional in English - it is very much proper English and has been around (iirc) since the 17th century. It’s only a big deal now because conservatives want to make gender a factor in elections.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[What If?] Would a Submarine Work as a Spaceship?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I feel like the battleship Yamato in the documentary Star Blazers has already demonstrated that it is completely viable to launch a naval vessel into orbit and have it perform with excellence.

  Just as a note, though - nukes in space work completely differently than nukes in the atmosphere.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Social Security Benefits Futures⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You can get married and die first, after charging your spouse an appropriate amount based on the anticipated payout minus future discounting. Or die second, having made that kind of payout.

  The important thing is to negotiate hard with medical histories and historic rates of pay being brought as evidence. You’ll probably want to get lawyers involved.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Flipboard just brought over 1,000 of its social magazines to Mastodon and the fediverse⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s a bit of both, tbh. I use both it and Apple News for news curation. Flipboard is by far more ad-centric (and AN has more content) but Flipboard is pretty customizable for identifying topics so I keep it around. Flipping through it, every second or third page is an ad, but most of what they link to is available (at least for me) and they’re not overly swamped with clickbait (again, at least in my feed).

  I probably use it about 1/3 as much as AN.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨They hadn't even evolved into secretary birds yet smh⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re even more correct than you think. They’re also literally classified as dinosaurs, as per my other reply.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨They hadn't even evolved into secretary birds yet smh⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Biologist here.

  This is incorrect. Via Wikipedia:

  Birds are feathered theropod dinosaurs and constitute the only known living dinosaurs. Likewise, birds are considered reptiles in the modern cladistic sense of the term, and their closest living relatives are the crocodilians. Birds are descendants of the primitive avialans (whose members include Archaeopteryx) which first appeared during the Late Jurassic.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI Launches Nukes In ‘Worrying’ War Simulation: ‘I Just Want to Have Peace in the World’⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Iirc, that was actually a bug that they decided not to fix because it became such a signature of the game.

  It’s also why I’d always take out them first. As soon as I found them, I’d attack and put everything into wiping them out, then play the game as normal.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨They hadn't even evolved into secretary birds yet smh⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  They literally had a tyrant lizard king. Like a giant, evil, apex predator Jim Morrison. This implies some government structure, but obviously could have predated the rise of bureaucracy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"Cheaters never prosper" is a lie that a cheater probably came up with⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think that PD (or any of its variants) is a good proxy for cheating, because cheating involves deception or rule breaking, while “defect” is just a legal move.

  A better proxy might be something like nuptial gifts in some spider species. So in some species, the male will present a female with whom he wishes to mate a nuptial gift - an insect wrapped in webbing. But the “cheat” move is when either the insect has already been sucked dry or when it’s snatched back too quickly for the female to feed.

  We can estimate the degree to which cheaters prosper by looking at how common these and similar behaviors are in their respective populations - let evolution do the calculations. Animal behavior is replete with deceptive and manipulative communication, and because so much of it is genetically determined we can be reasonably confident that we have an objective metric.