BillyClark

@BillyClark@piefed.social

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The new Voyager game was pretty bad.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Sounds like the Voyager game is worse than the Voyager show.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stubborn, maybe, but if it ain't broke⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  My impression is that carnivores need teeth that pierce and rip, so they can’t do much ruminating.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Under the most ideal circumstances, how 'clean' is drinkable tap water by the time it reaches our taps?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Also, whatever few microorganisms there are won’t generally do very well because there’s not much for them to consume.

  But there are some, which is why you should always use distilled water instead of tap water when it’s important to avoid microorganisms such as with nasal irrigation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Forgive me, Doctor, for I have sinned: I haven't watched anything Trek in almost 2 months⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I think a lot of people are reluctant to prop up Paramount these days.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Webb’s Infrared Vision Reveals Planetary Nebula that Looks Strikingly Like Celestial Brain⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I guess now we know what Marvin was talking about.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fat labrador topilogy⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I think a dog’s nose has two separate nostrils that connect somewhere along the way on the inside. That’s not a sphere. It’s a torus.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨3D Printer Reviewers: Being honest in this industry will put you out of a job.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  China is a shitshow, legally speaking. The Chinese government basically encourages Chinese companies to steal international IP. If you sell any products to China, you can expect them to steal any novel ideas inside. There’s no recourse even for big companies.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Xbox Co-founder Says Microsoft is Quietly Sunsetting the Platform⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  They’re still scamming the shit out of businesses with their corporate software. Oh and they have Azure which I’m guessing makes money.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tulsa police pepper sprayed children for walking out/protesting⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Dear Parents,

  In order to keep your children from getting injured, we injured them with chemical weapons. One of them was injured so badly that they had to seek medical treatment for the injuries we caused.

  You are welcome.

  Sincerely,

  A bunch of violent psychopaths who are looking for any reason to hurt people.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'Disgusting': Republicans Applaud as Trump Brags About Taking Food Aid From Millions | Common Dreams⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Hmm. I usually use the term “ultra wealthy”. Not sure why I used the word “elite”. I didn’t really think about it. I’ll try to avoid it in the future.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'Disgusting': Republicans Applaud as Trump Brags About Taking Food Aid From Millions | Common Dreams⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Food aid programs are a proven, effective way to lift people out of poverty.

  And I’ve got news for you. If AI and robotics keeps replacing jobs, more and more people will end up jobless and require aid. It’s looking almost inevitable at this point that either capitalism will collapse, or there will be huge famines and people will be forced into slavery to pointlessly serve the wealthy elite.

  On the other hand, the wealthy elite add nothing. No value. Not even from the point of capitalism. Not from any informed perspective.

  It’s obvious which way this would go if you put competent people in charge. But instead of competence, our system favors the most corrupt.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3211: Amperage⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The comic is talking about the cords that come out of the outlet into the room melting and starting fires. The guy you responded to is talking about wires in the walls starting fires.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK: 'It turned out to be a tougher one': Trump says he was wrong about ending war in Ukraine⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Uhh that was Trump’s original solution that he publicly proposed. The problem is that he wasn’t actually able to do it because it was impossible.

  He might as well have come up with the solution to make the sun rise in the west instead of the east so that Ukraine could make a surprise attack on the morning when the light was in the Russians’ eyes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nomenclature⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That would surprise me, also. But it takes all kinds. Maybe the average ornithologist tends to think that birds are “cute”, while the average herpetologist tends to think that reptiles are “cool”? I’m sure that whatever the group as a whole tends to think, there will be many counterexamples.

  I was just thinking about chess, and how one of the most famous chess players, Hikaru Nakamura often refers to chess pieces as “juicers”, for whatever reason… maybe the shape? Lots of people have nicknames for different pieces, like “ops” for “bishops”, etcetera. But then there are some who take themselves entirely seriously, and never joke around.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Texas Republican Primary having a normal one⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  “NO religious freedom,” so let’s ban that religion? Every religion believes theirs is correct.

  “Women brutalized” “Slavery allowed” “Child marriage & rape” These things are already illegal from our other laws.

  “Girl genital mutilation” I think this one is already illegal, as well.

  “No pet dogs allowed” First of all, wut? But second of all, I’d love to see some Texas politician try to pass a law that outlawed pet dogs. They’d probably get shot to death by the other politicians before they left the chamber.

  “BAN SHARIA NOW!” BAN MARTIANS NOW! BAN FISH RIDING BICYCLES NOW! BAN ADULTS FROM SEEING WHY KIDS LOVE CINNAMON TOAST CRUNCH NOW! BAN LICKING UNTIL YOU GET TO THE TOOTSIE ROLL CENTER OF A TOOTSIE POP NOW!

  BAN POLITICIANS WHO WASTE OUR TIME WITH MEANINGLESS LAWS AND CULTURE WARS NOW!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Texas Republican Primary having a normal one⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I live in Texas and so I occasionally see ads from our current Senator John Cornyn saying that the reason we need to vote for him is that he’ll save us from sharia law. So he thinks this complete non-issue is so important that it needs to be central to his campaign. For my money, that alone should disqualify him from being Senator.

  If he’s going to waste money during his campaign on a non-issue, there’s no way that he can be trusted to sign laws as a Senator.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ask AI: I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Even if it’s not entirely faked, you can instruct an AI to give you wrong answers to your questions. So unless you can see the entire conversation history, you can’t make any conclusions about a single response.

  I imagine if somebody started a thread here that asked the same question, but said, “Wrong answers only,” people would find a lot of evidence that humans aren’t capable of figuring this out, either.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google criticizes Europe's plan to adopt free software⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You were using the phrase correctly.

  I was playing off of the normal meaning of your statement to make a turn of phrase. In other words, I am intentionally using weird phrasing, and placing it next to your normal phrasing for humor and impact.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elon Musk's xAI loses second cofounder in 48 hours⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It says that xAI lost their second cofounder, but then it turns out that he just left the company.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google criticizes Europe's plan to adopt free software⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I never worked for Google, so I can’t say for sure, but I have this weird suspicion that they use a shitload of open source software, and I’m not just talking about their Android OS or Chromebooks, but for their most core businesses.

  It wouldn’t be odd to think that Google might not exist except for their being able to use the open-source software that people had made before they founded their company.

  The alternative is that they were complete idiots who paid for all sorts of retail software.

  Of course Google hates open-source. They can’t compete with it.

  Again, it’s all just supposition, but I’d bet that they can’t compete without it, either.

  For any major tech company, apart from ones that are absolutely dedicated to proprietary software starting from firmware up through the OS and on to applications, like Microsoft and Apple, it’s going to be deeply hypocritical to hate open-source.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In a blind test, audiophiles couldn't tell the difference between audio signals sent through copper wire, a banana, or wet mud⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I noticed something similar with video. Like, if I am paying attention, the difference between the highest quality encoding and the next level is usually visible.

  However, I have a harder time telling the difference if I don’t do a side by side comparison.

  And even when I can easily tell the difference, once I’m watching the thing, I get into the story and I don’t care anyways.

  Obviously a slightly different criteria compared to music, but people do make a big deal out of stuff that even they don’t actually care about.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a culture/country that doesn't have sarcasm in its language?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve done a little bit of language studying and one thing I heard about repeatedly is that people tend to mistakenly believe in their own exceptionalism.

  Like, their own native language has idioms, and they just assumed that other languages didn’t have idioms.

  But we are all humans and languages are all going to exist in support of human communication. Therefore, you should assume that all languages have all major features of expression, including idioms and sarcasm.

  Similarly, cultures are made from humans and to facilitate human interaction, so you should expect that things like sarcasm will exist in every culture.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Epstein details scrubbed from Mandelson’s Wikipedia page by shady paid editor— As the then-ambassador came under fire, an anonymous user tried to downplay his history of support for Jeffrey Epstein⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I have wondered the same about scammers. Like, if their mother knew they were going to do that with their life, she’d probably regret all of that wasted effort raising them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why didn't the mother just use her private doctor on her yacht?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Similarly, if you’re accused of a crime and you’re poor, you might not be able to afford bail money, so you’ll be stuck in jail and you’ll inevitably lose your job, ruining your life, regardless of whether you’re guilty or innocent.

  Meanwhile if you’re rich and an Epstein co-conspirator pedophile who raped and sex trafficked children, the government won’t even arrest you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[Episode] Easygoing Territory Defense by the Optimistic Lord • Okiraku Ryoushu no Tanoshii Ryouchi Bouei - Episode 6 discussion⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Was Van lecherous in previous episodes? When he started talking to himself about that lady’s tits, it felt out of character, but maybe I just forgot.

  I also wonder about episodes like this, in general. I’m sure it costs extra money to animate a dragon fight, but it still wasn’t animated very well. And they did that old bullshit where the characters are like, “We’re in mortal danger and have mere seconds to act, so let’s sit here and talk about it for a few minutes before we do anything.”

  The armored lizard defense wasn’t perfect, but it was far better than this dragon nonsense. It feels like you shouldn’t spend extra money on fight animation if the result is going to be worse than normal.

  Man, I have a few anime that I watch on Wednesdays, and all of the episodes were respectively the worst episodes of their seasons this week.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Chatbots Make Terrible Doctors, New Study Finds⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  it’s important to have verifiable studies to cite in arguments for policy, law, etc.

  It’s also important to have for its own merit. Sometimes, people have strong intuitions about “obvious” things, and they’re completely wrong. Without science studying things, it’s “obvious” that the sun goes around the Earth, for example.

  I don’t need a formal study to tell me that drinking 12 cans of soda a day is bad for my health.

  Without those studies, you cannot know whether it’s bad for your health. You can assume it’s bad for your health. You can believe it’s bad for your health. But you cannot know. These aren’t bad assumptions or harmful beliefs, by the way. But the thing is, you simply cannot know without testing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Exiled Cheating Magician Enjoys an Unrestrained Second Life | Anime Announced (Teaser Visual)⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  From the title, it seems like this won’t be very original, but I usually enjoy these types of anime.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨US gave Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to reach agreement to end war, Zelenskyy says⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Putin’s replacement might be crazier than he is… But I still think they’d take the chance to blame Putin for the ill-conceived war and cut their losses.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Silver linings?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  One of the things that’s generally effective when I feel nausea is to wipe my face with a cool cloth. I imagine that spraying water on your face might do similar.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Onii-Chan is watching you 😩⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Although I speak some Japanese, I am not an expert in Japanese. I have never heard anybody say nii-kun. It’s a common failing of people in my situation to think that because they personally haven’t heard it, that it doesn’t exist, so I’m not going to say that, but even if it does exist, I don’t think -kun would be used.

  “-kun” like you said indicates closeness and familiarity, but it also is commonly used for a business subordinate. Like, if you were at work, your boss might refer to you as “pivot-kun”, even if you weren’t that close. I don’t think Big Brother could ever be seen as a subordinate.

  With my limited knowledge, if they wanted to use a Japanese word and not an English loanword, I think they’d use aniki or maybe ani-ue (although I’ve only heard these words in anime, I think people might actually still use aniki? It sounds like a Yakuza sort of word to me). These convey a respect that I think would be necessary for the mental image of Big Brother.