memfree
@memfree@piefed.social
- Comment on Evolutionarily speaking, wouldn't premature ejaculation be considered the desired trait? 9 hours ago:
Several things to consider, but I'm not sure about the first:
- I half-remember something about the female response helping the sperm get to their destination, but someone else will need to figure out if I have that right. I'm more confident that there are claims that the head of the penis is shaped to pull any existing semen out such that repeated action would make it more likely that any previous encounter was at a disadvantage over the more recent mate. Since I didn't study this myself, I've no idea how valid those claims are, but I know research papers exist and include several other species as well as humans.
- Will premature ejaculation reduce pair-bonding? Will the female opt a different mate or no mate at all if she has no desire to repeat the encounter? The female might have one pregnancy with an unsatisfying partner and many offspring with someone else.
- Will the female keep the offspring? Historically and in many other mammals, a mother may reject her young. She might do this because she is alone and can't care for it, or has a different mate who rejects it.
- Will that offspring survive to reproductive age? If not, the initial preganancy doesn't matter because an abandoned/neglected baby or youth that fails to reach maturity is an evolutionary dead end. - Comment on How did Luke Skywalker learn to communicate with Astromech droids? How did he learn the language whilst living on Tatooine? 2 days ago:
You were right the first time. It dispenses meds, stimulants, intoxicants and so on from reservoirs within it.
- Comment on How did Luke Skywalker learn to communicate with Astromech droids? How did he learn the language whilst living on Tatooine? 2 days ago:
See the voice-activated 'joymaker' from The Age of The Pussyfoot , by Frederik Pohl, 1966: http://technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1026
If you can imagine a combination of telephone, credit card, alarm clock, pocket bar, reference library, and full-time secretary, you will have sketched some of the functions provided by your joymaker.
- Comment on Cory Doctorow New Book: Enshitification 1 week ago:
Doctorow doesn't allow DRM on his works (both print and audio) so he can;t distribute through sites lilke Amazon that require it. Instead he runs a kickstarter to pay actual talent to do the audio and distributes through smaller channels.
- Comment on Who are the "middle class" supposed to support in the class stuggle? 1 week ago:
You can't put ethics aside. All we have is ethics. Ideally, ethics get codified into laws against doing unethical things, but not forcing people to only and always do that which someone said is ethical (no drunk driving, but no banning on alcohol). Problems crop up when the laws are unethical -- like saying corporations are people or landmines aren't warcrimes.
- Comment on Humans can't consent to reading. 1 week ago:
Don't do this while driving, but if you are a passenger in a car, focus on the traffic, the car in front of you, but NOT the license plate. You generally can't read it. You get a sense that there's a 'G' in there, but can't figure it out until you focus on the plate. The brain is funny that way.
- Comment on what does it mean being nice to your coworkers to you? 1 week ago:
Humans are social animals, so while you might cut the 30 minutes down to 10 (depending on work environment), questions will continue. Questions are attempts to be friendly and general conversation will rarely end after just 2 minutes per day.
Perhaps you can think of those interactions as personality development training exercises. You'd be learning a new skill. Learn to smile and nod. Take a moment to weigh if a question truly is intrusive or just a conversation opener. Example: "So, did you grow up around here? Where are your folks from?" Conversational. Perhaps you have a deep trauma about escaping an abusive dad, but they didn't ask that and aren't ready to hear about it.
If a person has any interest in dating/marriage/pair-bonding, they should consider what they can offer a potential partner, and being able to socialize is one of the first things that will be on display.
- Comment on What are the bugs in Bugs Bunny 2 weeks ago:
I'd forgotten that Bugsy Malone was fictional version of Bugs Moran (and Al Capone and all).
- Comment on Research shows ‘compliment sandwich’ no longer effective 2 weeks ago:
“They’re waiting for the other shoe to drop,” MacMillan explained. “Regularly starting with a compliment to ease into a critique quickly teaches people to be on high alert. They end up ignoring the positive and resenting the negative.”
This sounds like too many people only offer compliments immediately before a complaint. Further down, the article lists alternate strategies, but never gets to the idea of giving intermittent positive reinforcement.
- Comment on Is the whole DC "cleanup" pointless? 2 weeks ago:
We used to lock up the mentally ill and disabled in state run institutions. They were generally horrible (see One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest). Reagan shut them down and homelessness on the streets surged. His government also cut federal assistance to local governments by 60%. The country never tried to find solutions and the issues never got better.
The police in D.C. are not there to fix homelessness or crime. They are there because fascists need brute troops to intimidate the populace and keep people from 'disorderly conduct' like protesting or demanding their rights.
- Comment on Why is the abusive parent always portrayed as being the father, why is the mother never portrayed as abusive? 4 weeks ago:
You hit some of the first that came to mind. I'd also include Terms of Endearment, I'll Cry Tomorrow, Postcards From the Edge... do Snow White and Cinderella count?
- Comment on A Tech Rule That Will ‘Future-Proof’ Your Kids 4 weeks ago:
- Comment on A Tech Rule That Will ‘Future-Proof’ Your Kids 4 weeks ago:
This is equivalent to your parents saying "you may only talk to people at school
You've got my point backwards. I'm saying kids would be better prepared for life if they talked to people, and particularly if they talked to people they don't particularly care about rather than only swapping phone memes with kids they already know. Also, no one is saying there should be a complete ban on phones. The article simply suggests keeping the bedroom screen-free (better for sleep, studying, etc.). I went further to point out that as we've become more 'social' on phones we're less social in society.
- Comment on A Tech Rule That Will ‘Future-Proof’ Your Kids 4 weeks ago:
First bit: Why do we as a country (speaking from the U.S.) allow police to assualt the citizenry? Why aren't we all in our town halls demanding the removal of any cops who handcuff kids, tackle people who don't speak English, or fire guns at anyone who isn't at that moment attacking someone? The police should be under our control by our consent. We elect their bosses if not the sheriffs themselves. Why aren't we showing up in numbers in person to demand better?
Second bit: I know there are still some communities where kids can ride their bikes without fear because the parents still know everyone on the block. They might not like all the neighbors, but they know them and aren't calling the cops on them. The bad part of that is a distrust of outsiders and unwillingness to accept anything different. Humans fall into us/them thinking too easily. As far as I have heard/read/seen, the best way to mitigate that is first-hand exposure to the 'other' because people tend to be better than whatever sterotype someone worries about. Reminiscing here: I remember visiting my grandparents and having them walk me into various houses on the block to chat with neighbors. It never occurred to me as a bored child that this was socially incorporating me into an insular community that might have been sucpsious of a strange kid biking around the same streets over and over if they didn't know I belonged there.
That said, I don't understand how the kids like me who grew up running wild wherever we wanted became parents who didn't allow any roaming, and who's kids then became adults that will call the cops before asking the neighbors. Maybe we move too often. Maybe we fear litigation. Mostly, I suspect, we work too many hours for not enough money such that adults don't have the energy to form old-style communities where people banded together (both for good and bad), and instead everyone only bitches online just as I am doing right now.
- Comment on A Tech Rule That Will ‘Future-Proof’ Your Kids 4 weeks ago:
I understand that it is harder to bond to someone who isn't immediately digitally available. I understand that " kids these days! " do their social stuff online, but at the same time, they seem to have largely lost all skill at interacting with real humans of slight or no aquaintence.
It is easy to make sarcastic comments on your phone about how stupid this or that is. The sterotypical basement dweller can snark all day. What takes social skill is actively engaging with people you don't care about and finding common ground.
I'm sure you track some of this on facebook and such, but in real life: in which community groups do you participate? Do you know what your neighbors do and what they like beyond snapshots of events? That is: yeah, you saw that pic of their cookout, but did you know that he volunteer teaches English as a second language Tuesday and Thursday at the library? When was the last time you went into a neighbor's home (or had one visit yours) to share a cup of coffee and complain about that road that needs fixing and who to push about it?
- Comment on A Tech Rule That Will ‘Future-Proof’ Your Kids 4 weeks ago:
As an old fart who witnessed social gatherings for decades, it looks like social stunting comes from smartphones rather than their absence.
- Comment on New executive order puts all grants under political control 5 weeks ago:
Somewhere in there, Ars should have noted that this does not mean literally ALL grants, but all federal grants as defined in 2 CFR 200.1 (which isn't to say they won't change that definition).
- Comment on now that i have a cat, i truly understand the the sentiment of mr wick 1 month ago:
The science folks document attacks that succeed and those where the prey escapes (possibly wounded, but still not a meal). Here's a PDF on some hawk rates -- it is just a few pages from a larger work. Excerpt:
Relatively high successrates of 89 and 82% have been documented for
the fish-eating Osprey (Pundion haliuetus)in Europe (Brown and Amadon
1968) and North America (Ueoka and Koplin 1973). Success rates of 33-
65% have been reported for the insectivorous and rodent-eating American
Kestrel (F. spurverius),depending upon season, prey type, and geography
(Jenkins 1970, Sparrowe 1972, Rudolph 1982, Collopy and Koplin 1983).
Various success rates have been reported for raptors that feed mostly
upon mammals, but supplement their diets with birds and reptiles. Mader
(1975) documented a rate of 16% for Harris’ Hawks (Purubuteo unicinc-
tus). Wakeley (1978) reported that Ferruginous Hawks (Buteo regulis)
were successful 17% of the time in Idaho. Orde and Harrell(l977) reported
a successrate of 79% for Red-tailed Hawks (Buteojumuicensis) in South
Dakota. Nesting Golden Eagles (Aquilu chrysuetos)in Idaho were suc-
cessful on 20% of their capture attempts (Collopy 1983). Clark (1975)
calculated a success rate of about 20% for the rodent-specializing Short-
eared Owl (Asioflammeus). - Comment on If you were reincarnated, wouldn't it be elsewhere in the universe? 1 month ago:
Maybe souls reincarnate anywhere into anything.
Or maybe a soul only reincarnates into related beings. In the story of the The Goat Who Saved the Priest, the goat itself had been a priest in a past life. There was a relationship to its actions in past lives and the form it took. I've heard versions of that story that suggest the goat had been the very priest it 'saves' (because souls can reincarnate in the past or future?).
Perhaps if we had intergalactic flight and our actions impacted creatures on other planets, we'd reincarnate into those creatures. Then again, perhaps we already do.
- Comment on I need to tell you something unsatisfying: your personal consumption choices will not make a meaningful difference to the amount of enshittification you experience in your life 1 month ago:
This you?
you vote with your money in a more efficient way than any election
If you look, I was the person explaining that per Doctorow collective action is good. You're replying to a post where I said, "...or even vote Z, then together the difference will matter." Maybe you meant to reply to someon else, or maybe you're a sock puppet that forgot to change accounts.
- Comment on I need to tell you something unsatisfying: your personal consumption choices will not make a meaningful difference to the amount of enshittification you experience in your life 1 month ago:
If I may chime in, like Sundray, I am used to the author's style, which preempts critics by acknowledging the difficulty before getting to the positive. He's had enough people tell him 'recycling plastic is a joke!' to now start by saying, yes, I know, BUT you should still do it and then he'll get to the positive. He's not suggesting people are foolish for doing it, he's simply letting the reader know that it ought to work better than it does and the failure is NOT on the citizenry, but on the deep pockets trying to escape blame. He wants you to know how they profit off the backs of the working class and he wants us to fight back together (and to keep recycling).
- Comment on I need to tell you something unsatisfying: your personal consumption choices will not make a meaningful difference to the amount of enshittification you experience in your life 1 month ago:
Boycotts work because boycotts are collective . That's his point. If you get enough of society together to boycott X, or to call their government out on Y, or even vote Z, then together the difference will matter. What doesn't matter is a bunch of people buying an item, while you are making your own private 'boycott'. Personally, I 'boycott' youtube. Guess what? They don't care. They have enough eyeballs that they don't miss me at all.
P.S. I was happy that Paramount+ asks "why?" you cancel your subscription because I got to explain it was due to the 60 minutes settlement and firing Colbert... but I doubt they care that 1 person stopped giving them money over that.
- Comment on Researchers announce babies born from a trial of three-person IVF 1 month ago:
DNA from three people: the two biological parents plus a third person who supplies healthy mitochondrial DNA. The babies were born to mothers who carry genes for mitochondrial diseases and risked passing on severe disorders. The eight babies are healthy, say the researchers behind the trial.
That's gonna mess up how we trace ancestry.
- Comment on Who says dreams come true have to be good dreams? 1 month ago:
When we mean the bad ones, it'd be, "My nightmare has come true."
... seems like every news story evokes that thought these days.
- Comment on Against the Storm - Nightwatchers DLC Trailer 2 months ago:
I've played this game enough that I'm tired of it. New DLC won't change my mind.
The game got me to figure out that I don't want to play a game where the people are always going to be really unhappy no matter how far I advance. If I'm playing a city/world builder, I want a game where my advancment also means things are better for the NPCs. In this game, my advancement means I can start with some tiny different perks, but nost of those are wiped out by Prestige runs, so the NPCs have really brutal conditions all the time. And if things start going well? Poof! You're on to the next town before you can enjoy the last one.
- Comment on AI-Enabled Trash Trucks Will Scan Your Trash To Scold You About Recycling 2 months ago:
Step 3 is advertising. The AI has your address and sees what you're buying. This is going straight to marketers.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
Ah, yes, I remember those days with the text-only LYNX browser from the unix terminal and the joy of Netscape Navigator on machines that could handle windows. Searching was difficult until there was Alta Vista, which was AMAZING compared to the competition, but even it failed for D&D-style gamers who tried to search for "role playing games" and got back a list of a million sex sites and zero visible pen/paper/dice games. Happily, you could add boolean operator rules to get rid of some of that (NOT sex NOT babes NOT XXX) -- but you'd either be typing a lot of naughty words to skip or you'd have to remember the sites that catered to RPGs because searching could be very hit or miss.
- Comment on 10 Children Among at Least 17 Killed in Israeli Bombing of Gaza Charity Clinic Queue 2 months ago:
Here's a BBC article for comparison, with slightly different (initial) numbers : https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gd01g1gxro
At least 15 Palestinians, including eight children and two women, have been killed in an Israeli strike while queuing for nutritional supplements in front of a clinic in central Gaza, a hospital says.
The article does have video as well.
- Comment on The worst part of getting old is that you get less and less "first experiences" and are always comparing current with previous ones 2 months ago:
Oh there;s lots of new experiences in getting old: going through social security rigmarole, turning grey (or bald), finding yourself unable to do stuff you used to do, arthritis, gout, bone loss, needing a cane, getting up several times a night for the sake of your bladder...
- Comment on Once it's on the Internet, it stays forever, but only for the things you DON'T want. For the things you DO want, it will be wiped off the face of the Earth by tomorrow. 2 months ago:
No idea what tysto is. but I wanted to warn people that it is not secure.
