starman2112

@starman2112@sh.itjust.works

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Rocky rock rocking⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Ce n’est pas un rocher

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your Top 10 anime?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I hesitated to put Orb very high on my own list due to worries about recency bias, but it really was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. I started it because, I mean, look at my username. A show about astronomers studying heliocentrism in 15th century Poland sounds like it’s tailor made for me. But it’s even better, because it’s not actually about astronomy. It’s about the anonymous contributors to history, whose names and faces were never recorded, and yet were instrumental to building their era, and by extension every era afterward.

  Near the end of the show, a certain character makes reference to the fact that “when the people of the past or future gaze across the span of time, they’ll merely see us all as people from the fifteenth century.” Indeed, he feels that “we, who happened to live in this day and age, even if we hated one another enough to kill, are comrades who built an era together.” Even if your name won’t survive over the next five centuries, you still have laid a brick in the foundation of history.

  Idunno, I can write a three page essay about this show, and it still wouldn’t capture all of my thoughts and feelings. It’s the easiest 10/10 I’ve given a show since Standalone Complex. Truly the only valid criticism of it is that it is physically difficult to watch if your room isn’t pitch black. They gotta go back and turn the brightness up on some scenes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your Top 10 anime?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  1. Haibane Renmei, Gurren Lagann, and GitS: SAC share first place. Ghost in the Shell changed how I rate shows, because I can’t rate a show 10/10 if it doesn’t stand up to Ghost in the Shell. Haibane Renmei and Gurren Lagann may lack the technical perfection that earned GitS its place, but they affected me on an emotional level more than any others. The quiet melancholy and ultimately positive resolution of Haibane Renmei puts it in first place for me, and Gurren Lagann’s unabashed bombastic glorification of Humanity and complete denial of despair is irresistible to me.

  2. A Certain Scientific Railgun got me into anime, so it has to be up there. Since I started the show nearly four years ago, I’ve maintained a streak of watching anime every single day. The Sisters Arc remains my favorite individual portion of anime I’ve ever seen.

  3. Mushishi is one of a very few series I would call a flawless masterpiece.

  4. Shinsekai Yori led to a great many discussions with both myself and others about what constitutes a “human,” which is maybe my favorite philosophical topic

  5. Last Exile perfectly captures my favorite world building technique of just plopping the viewer in the world and not explaining anything, plus Range Murata’s character design is peak

  6. Orb: On the Movements of the Earth is a series focusing on astronomers studying heliocentrism in 14th century Poland. The basic concept was tailor made for me specifically. The actual show is less about astronomy, and more about the anonymous figures throughout history who never had their names or particular contributions recorded, but were nevertheless instrumental to building both the time they lived in and the future that came after it. It has the longest review I’ve ever written for a show—usually I struggle to come up with more words to say. Talking about Orb, I struggle to stop writing.

  7. ACCA: 13 Territory Inspection Department because I really like the deliberate denial of action. A show about a federal government auditor investigating a potential coup, and there isn’t a single action sequence

  8. Read or Die (OVA and The TV), because Yomiko Readman is my wife I like the story and all the characters. I’ve never missed characters after finishing a show like I missed the Paper Sisters

  9. Ergo Proxy, because it too raises questions about what is “human,” it too sparked a lot of writing from me, and it raises interesting discussions about theology. I struggle to think of any other shows with a decidedly antitheist vibe.

  10. Megalo Box, because the whiplash between the first and second seasons was incredible. Never seen a show go from shounen to seinen like that. I found both seasons compelling, but the second season shot it up to 10/10 for me

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Something Bizarre Is Happening to People Who Use ChatGPT a Lot⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Can, and opt not to. Big difference. Like, I’m sure it’s very convenient having your phone control your washing machine and your thermostat and your lightbulbs, but when somebody else’s computer turns off, I’d like to keep control over my things

  Same with AI. I’m sure I could ask chat GPT to write a better comment than this, but I value the human interaction involved with it, and the ability to perform these tasks on my own

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Something Bizarre Is Happening to People Who Use ChatGPT a Lot⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  This is a salient point that’s well worth discussing. We should not be training large language models on any supposedly factual information that people put out. It’s super easy to call out a bad research study and have it retracted. But you can’t just explain to an AI that that study was wrong, you have to completely retrain it every time. Exacerbating this issue is the way that people tend to view large language models as somehow objective describers of reality, because they’re synthetic and emotionless. In truth, an AI holds exactly the same biases as the people who put together the data it was trained on.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Something Bizarre Is Happening to People Who Use ChatGPT a Lot⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I am so happy God made me a Luddite

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨3's grip looks the most comfy⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Anyone saying anything but #7 is delulu. There’s a reason Bic won pens

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Israel publicly announces genocidal intent⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I didn’t make it about US politics, the post did when it brought up the US president

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Israel publicly announces genocidal intent⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I like how you saw me refer to “the thing you just posted,” which is about a genocide that Trump is helping to perpetrate, and you still can’t let go of the idea that this is all Genocide Joe’s fault

  And no, I don’t condone it. I just understand that the lesser of two evils is, in fact, preferable to the greater.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Israel publicly announces genocidal intent⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  We show up in every Palestine post because we got constant verbal abuse from you people throughout the election cycle because we wanted to avoid the thing you just posted

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it possible to eat a toxic amount of culinary herbs/spices?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean yeah that’s their point, the dose needed to OD on THC is bonkers, so it’s pretty much perfectly safe

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Every few months, “Nicole” mass spams a bunch of PMs inviting people to click on various suspicious links

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Undocumented 'Backdoor' Found In Chinese Bluetooth Chip Used By a Billion Devices.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  From what I understand, the only way to mitigate the risks relating to IME or AMD PSP is to simply not have a computer in the first place. Like I’ve said elsewhere twice now, it’s worth mitigating some risks even if we can’t mitigate all of them, and given the fact that the entire internet hasn’t collapsed, I’m going to assume IME isn’t as big of a security vulnerability as it looks.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Undocumented 'Backdoor' Found In Chinese Bluetooth Chip Used By a Billion Devices.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Like I said 6 hours ago, just because I can’t mitigate all of the risk doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t mitigate as much as I reasonably can.

  My 3d printer is a fire hazard, but that’s no reason to leave a bunch of candles unattended.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Undocumented 'Backdoor' Found In Chinese Bluetooth Chip Used By a Billion Devices.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You are correct, and it doesn’t change my stance at all. It’s still worth it to mitigate risk even if you can’t mitigate all risk.

  Like, the fact that my 3d printer is already a fire hazard does not justify leaving a bunch of candles unattended

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Undocumented 'Backdoor' Found In Chinese Bluetooth Chip Used By a Billion Devices.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Obviously not, but I trust my laptop a hell of a lot better than my aunt’s XIPPLG branded wifi cat feeder that she bought off Amazon

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Undocumented 'Backdoor' Found In Chinese Bluetooth Chip Used By a Billion Devices.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  None of them, that’s why the only things in my house that connect to the internet are my computers, game consoles, and cell phone

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Some of them are, you just have to scroll way way way down

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do tell!!!⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  A lot of people think that to get to orbit, you just go up. That’s partially true, but in reality you go up to get out of the atmosphere, and then go sideways really, really fast.

  Imagine throwing a ball in the air. If you throw it straight up, then no matter how high you throw it, it just comes back down. Now imagine throwing it across the room. It falls in a curved arc, right? Now imagine throwing it so fast that it goes past the horizon. That curved arc is still there, and it’s much longer now.

  Now imagine throwing it so hard that it not only goes past the horizon, it actually never hits the earth in the first place. That’s an orbit! Of course, the earth has an atmosphere, so it would slow down because of aerodynamic drag. That’s why we send rockets way upward—to get out of the air.

  So a satellite in orbit is literally just falling constantly, but because it’s going so fast, it’s always missing the earth.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨nets⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The average person cannot make the connection between the food they eat and the animal it was. People act so appalled by the torturous conditions in animal farms, and then stop at McDonald’s on their lunch break to pick up some chicken nuggets, totally unaware of the irony

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sun God⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  My turn to post the Technology Connections link

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sun God⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  My favorite fun astronomy fact is that a transit like this (Venus, but still) is how we managed to figure out our distance to the Sun in the 1700s

  The accuracy is incredible. They determined it to be 93,726,900 miles. This is within the bounds of our perihelion (≈91,000,000 miles) and aphelion (≈95,000,000 miles). Even more precise than Eratosthenes’ estimation of the size of the Earth

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Observer⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I feel like calling it an “observer” is the worst thing since Ben Franklin decided to name positive and negative electrical charges. “Observer” implies that it’s someone watching the thing, when really it’s just the light interacting with something.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘The tyranny of apps’: those without smartphones are unfairly penalised, say campaigners⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  fintech that handles direct money services

  Even more succinct and accurate than how I would have described it lol

  Cashapp is also sort of an entirely online pseudo bank. There are places that let you deposit and withdraw cash, but they’re like two steps above Bitcoin ATMs

  I do know people who have these fully online banks though. It’s so much worse than just using a credit union. Imagine having to pay to pull cash out of your bank account

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘The tyranny of apps’: those without smartphones are unfairly penalised, say campaigners⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean I use Cashapp, but I could also not use it and my life wouldn’t be much harder

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘The tyranny of apps’: those without smartphones are unfairly penalised, say campaigners⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Can’t your purchases be tied to you via credit/debit card number? I mean obviously you can use cash, but I don’t see a lot of people using cash

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨place yer bets⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I find the XCOM comparisons funny because the game actually tilts the RNG in the player’s favor and people still think it’s unfair

  www.giantbomb.com/…/xcom-2-is-un-fair-1792143/

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"A Certain Scientific Railgun" 4th Season Announced with New PV⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s an interesting take. Personally, the Sisters Arc is when I got really enthralled by the show

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How does this pic show that Elon Musk doesnt know SQL?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean you can check my math, I just added up all the births per year in this article

  www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/…/111928356/

  Rounding to one significant figure, it’s 311.9 million people born in the US since 1933. Adding an average of 4 million births per year since then, it’s 335.9. I rounded up to 350 to bring it to a nice round number

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How does this pic show that Elon Musk doesnt know SQL?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think we’ve gone through 999 million options yet. Only about 300 million people have been born since 1933, so even if we add all 127 million US citizens alive in 1935, that’s still less than half of the possible social security numbers.

  The reason we’ve likely reused numbers is because they weren’t randomly assigned until like 2011. Knowing that I was born in 1995 in Wichita, KS, you could make an educated guess at the first three digits of my SSN