chonglibloodsport
@chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
- Comment on mercy merci 1 day ago:
Ahhh okay. I live in Canada and I frequently see spiders roaming my house when it’s well below freezing outside. I’m pretty confident they will not survive out in the snow.
- Comment on mercy merci 1 day ago:
House-dwelling spiders are usually adapted to life inside the house (likely cave-dwelling species). Their survival rate outside is not very good.
- Comment on 1 day ago:
Conservatives like Star Trek because it promotes the values of meritocracy, hierarchy, authority, and military discipline. None of these are commonly held by people in the American left (especially not the academic left, which tend to be pretty anti-hierarchical, anti-authoritarian).
The people usually referred to as Republicans these days are right-wing populists. They have very little in common with the types of conservatives who loved the franchise in the 20th century. Those older conservatives are almost extinct in the Republican Party today.
- Comment on Any advice for me a guy turning 18 yo old?? 1 week ago:
Stay away from gambling sites. If you’ve got extra money and want to watch it grow, invest in Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) with a low/no fee trading account. Stay away from meme stocks as well.
If you do invest, diversify your portfolio. SPY is very exciting but it’s heavily tied up in the AI bubble. Try to more international markets, clean energy, minerals, heavy industry. No matter what happens to the AI companies, we still need energy and resources to build stuff and keep our economy going.
Read about taxable and non taxable trading accounts in your country. Try to use those to avoid having your savings eroded by taxes. You will pay plenty of taxes on your income, so don’t worry about that!
- Comment on Australian Government gets a taste of what everyday people have to deal with in terms of data breaches as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's mobile phone number released online 1 week ago:
Sure you can have a unique identifier. That’s not the issue. The issue is that anyone can contact you via your phone number! This is not a problem with chat apps where people need permission to add you to their contact list. Why not have a system like that?
Same goes for credit cards. They should need to ask for permission to charge your credit card. Merely knowing your credit card info should not be enough.
- Comment on It's interesting that we have multiple appliances in the kitchen who's sole job is to turn electricity into heat. 2 weeks ago:
Oh yeah! Like soup! Love soup!
- Comment on It's interesting that we have multiple appliances in the kitchen who's sole job is to turn electricity into heat. 2 weeks ago:
They’re really moving refrigerant. It’s just that the refrigerant keeps changing temperature (heating up at one end of the journey and cooling down at the other end).
- Comment on It's interesting that we have multiple appliances in the kitchen who's sole job is to turn electricity into heat. 2 weeks ago:
And taking water out!
- Comment on One iPhone led police to gang who sent 40,000 snatched phones to China 2 weeks ago:
I wouldn’t be surprised if they had guards armed with SMGs and full body armour guarding the shipments as they leave the factory.
Since Apple shrunk the packaging they could probably fit a million iPhones in one shipping container. Think how much that’d be worth!
- Comment on [Technology Connections] Catalytic converters are simple, but getting them to work is not [41:46] 3 weeks ago:
This video is fantastic! Alec went all out with it!
- Comment on "Valve must stop making excuses": Steam under fire for "significant price disparity for PC games," causing regional pricing that's "often 20% to 30% higher than the dollar equivalent" 3 weeks ago:
You a can also buy common university textbooks from India at a fraction of the price they sell for in the US. I say take your deals where you can get them!
- Comment on 3 weeks ago:
I have that book. It has an absolute ton of practice problems. They were not very helpful for my electricity & magnetism final!
- Comment on Record breaker Starmer is the 'most unpopular PM since polling began' 3 weeks ago:
The rich aren’t paying the inheritance tax because they don’t own farming capital, just a homestead on cheap land. This is an inefficient tax if it’s meant to target the rich. It’s catching family farmers (working class people) in the crossfire and driving the process of farm consolidation (corporations that own many farms and don’t pay inheritance taxes because corporations never die).
- Comment on Record breaker Starmer is the 'most unpopular PM since polling began' 3 weeks ago:
Because farming is notoriously capital-intensive (the equipment costs millions of dollars) and low margin (the supplies you put into each year’s crop cost a fortune as well). This means a farmer has very little liquidity because most of their wealth is tied up on equipment and seeds and fertilizers and everything else. On top of that, there’s a huge element of climate and weather risk where an entire year’s profits can be wiped out by a few days (or sometimes a single day) of bad weather at the wrong time. Many farmers go out of business after one bad crop causes a huge loss and they can no longer afford to buy more seeds or they miss a payment on their tractor or their mortgage or whatever.
Compare with something like the restaurant business where the equipment is vastly cheaper (hundred dollar frying pan vs million dollar harvester) and so are the supplies (hundreds of dollars worth of food vs tens of thousands worth of seeds and chemicals). Restaurants are also much shorter in turnaround, as you’re generally aiming to sell out all your food the same day it arrives, whereas a farmer is waiting for their crop to grow all summer long.
And it’s really not wealth hoarding. The capital equipment (tractors, harvesters etc) costs a ton of money but depreciates in value rapidly over time and costs huge amounts in maintenance as well. Furthermore, the maintenance element for equipment can add another risk factor to your crops, as an equipment failure at the wrong time can result in a total crop loss if you’re not able to get it fixed right away.
That harvester can be sitting in the shed all year in perfectly working condition and then break down 2 minutes into harvesting this year’s crop. Unfortunately, all the other farmers are harvesting at the same time and so the harvester mechanics are overloaded with work and can’t get to yours in time to save the crop. Too bad!
Anyway, the other reason farming is different than other businesses is because farming produces the food supply that feeds everyone. Governments are acutely aware of the importance of food security and so they provide subsidies and other support programs for farmers. However, these programs can often be a double edged sword because they make it even harder or more capital intensive to get into the business (for example, by requiring new farmers to purchase quota to be allowed access to the market).
Lastly, I should point out that none of these issues matter if you’re just a rich person who wants to retire to the countryside. You can buy agricultural land cheap (far cheaper than land in the city) and you don’t need to buy any fancy equipment or quota, you just move into the farmhouse. When you pass on your inheritance to your children, the lack of capital equipment means they pay a lot less in taxes than a farmer would.
- Comment on Record breaker Starmer is the 'most unpopular PM since polling began' 3 weeks ago:
Inheritance taxes for real farmers (as opposed to people who just buy farmland to live in the country) are much higher because they include capital expenditures. Modern tractors, harvesters, ploughs, seed drills, sprayers, barns, equipment sheds, silos, fences, irrigation systems… all of this can add up to millions of pounds. Having to suddenly pay a large inheritance tax for a cash-strapped (high leverage) working farmer because their parent died could absolutely force the sale of everything.
- Comment on Record breaker Starmer is the 'most unpopular PM since polling began' 3 weeks ago:
Providing for one’s own children, passing on family traditions and ways of working, preserving the spaces where childhood memories are created; these are among the most fundamental of human desires. Take those away and your society gives way to nihilism. You make an enemy of every parent in the country.
On the other hand, a strong society understands this at a cultural level and the preservation of family traditions is deeply rooted in the society. This is where you get family farms, family restaurants, family workshops and small businesses that last for hundreds of years and produce some of the best products life has to offer. Japan, France, Italy, and Spain are some examples of countries where this is the case.
As for arbitrary restrictions on corporations: ad-hoc solutions like that rarely work. People find ways of circumventing and undermining such efforts. Instead of one corporation, people will have hundreds, each with its 10 hectares of land.
The more regulations you create, the more you reward people with the money to hire accountants and lawyers to navigate them. On the other hand, traditional farmers and other small family businesses will simply give up trying to navigate the red tape and bail out.
- Comment on Record breaker Starmer is the 'most unpopular PM since polling began' 4 weeks ago:
If the inheritance taxes are the reason his parents had to sell then it stands to reason that the people who introduced the inheritance taxes in parliament are to blame, no?
- Comment on Record breaker Starmer is the 'most unpopular PM since polling began' 4 weeks ago:
No, I’m pro-actual-farmer keeping their family farm in the family. People dodging taxes need to be taxed but catching real farmers in the crossfire is not good. It’s very bad.
- Comment on Record breaker Starmer is the 'most unpopular PM since polling began' 4 weeks ago:
Right, because if (guy I don’t like) supports something, I’m obliged to hate it and fight against it!
This really tells me all I need to know about your politics. You’re not interested in making life better for anyone. You’re filled with bitterness and resentment and you just want to watch the world burn.
- Comment on Record breaker Starmer is the 'most unpopular PM since polling began' 4 weeks ago:
So you support the consolidation of small family farms into large corporate farming operations. Interesting take.
- Comment on Record breaker Starmer is the 'most unpopular PM since polling began' 4 weeks ago:
I’m not even British (I’m Canadian) and I don’t like him. Why’d he go after family farmers with aggressive inheritance taxes? That seems like a political dead end. Absolute foolishness.
Farmers usually have a lot of money invested in capital equipment but their lifestyles are anything but lavish. They live a working class life but get taxed (on inheritance) like millionaires, preventing them from handing down the family farm through generations (and allowing wealthy corporate farming operations to consolidate them).
- Comment on Should Neutron Stars be Added to the Periodic Table? 4 weeks ago:
Neutron stars do contain protons and electrons. It’s a misconception that they’re 100% pure neutrons.
A well-known type of neutron star is a pulsar. These rotating objects have extremely powerful magnetic fields which can only be produced by the movement of electric charges. If they were purely made of neutrons there could be no electric charges to move, and thus no magnetic fields.
- Comment on 4 weeks ago:
Here’s the key thing to realize with deck builders: every card you take reduces the number of times you’ll see every other card in your deck by a small amount. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of “this looks useful, I’ll take it” over and over again.
The best decks in Slay the Spire have 5 or fewer cards and they go infinite in on turn 1. Of course in most runs you don’t have the opportunity to create a deck like that. Instead, you want to think about what the core of your deck is right now. Think “if I could remove as many cards as I want right now, what sort of broken thing could I do with the rest?” If your deck can’t do anything broken even after all those removals, then see if adding a card would change that.
If your deck can do something broken after removing all those other cards, and none of the reward cards on offer would change that, why take them?
There are many opportunities to remove cards throughout a run. Take them as much as you can. Try to get rid of as many filler cards as possible. Strikes and defends, for example, have no business being in your deck at the end of the game.
Ironclad, being the first character you can play in StS, is meant to teach you this concept (he also teaches you other concepts, such as health being a resource). He has a number of cards that exhaust other cards and he can frequently build into a deck that’s capable of exhausting down to a winning core. Try playing an exhaust based ironclad and see what you can do with an eye towards creating a broken core.
- Comment on Everyone thinks the Deus Ex remaster looks awful and they're right: 'They really turned those 1999 graphics into 2003 graphics' 4 weeks ago:
I played some of Human Revolution but I didn’t like the grind-factor (nor did I like the weird forced boss fights).
The original Deus Ex was so beautiful for the way you gained exploration and progress experience for finding secrets and accomplishing goals. Replacing that with a more “RPG-like” system that rewards hacking every single computer and doing non-lethal takedowns on every single enemy totally ruined it for me.
- Comment on Everyone thinks the Deus Ex remaster looks awful and they're right: 'They really turned those 1999 graphics into 2003 graphics' 4 weeks ago:
Oh you don’t need quick reactions for Deus Ex. It can be played in a very slow and methodical way. It’s just that you need precision to get the most out of the sniper scopes (which can be used on multiple weapons).
- Comment on Everyone thinks the Deus Ex remaster looks awful and they're right: 'They really turned those 1999 graphics into 2003 graphics' 4 weeks ago:
The original game has plenty of characters who are true believers in the government lie: the UNATCO soldiers, the mech agents, and even multiple civilians who either work for or support the government.
The main resistance force, the NSF (Northwest Sessionist Forces), is pretty controversial among the public. People seem to be split between viewing them as terrorists or heroes. Not unlike the way people view antifa in real life!
- Comment on Everyone thinks the Deus Ex remaster looks awful and they're right: 'They really turned those 1999 graphics into 2003 graphics' 4 weeks ago:
The original Deus Ex is perfectly playable today as long as you follow a guide to get it patched up and configured for a modern system. Plus it runs at a rock steady frame rate on any PC today, whereas it didn’t at the time of release (it was very laggy, buggy, and crashed a lot).
The game is definitely meant for mouse and keyboard though. You need some very high precision aiming and a steady hand to cope with the scope wobble (unless you train to master level).
- Comment on Everyone thinks the Deus Ex remaster looks awful and they're right: 'They really turned those 1999 graphics into 2003 graphics' 4 weeks ago:
I’m honestly quite tired of remasters. Why can’t we see some new original games?
The original Deus Ex is this bizarre mixture of jank, camp, and sheer brilliance. So much of what made the game amazing was unintentional and contingent with the era. A remaster is never going to be able to recapture that lightning in a bottle. It’s always going to be soulless.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
Git is not very efficient for handling a lot of binary files. Your best bet would be for hosting fanfic and erotic lit.
- Comment on How Chrono Trigger Taught Me The Word ‘Epoch’ 4 weeks ago:
Phoenix Quill? Down feathers are the small, soft feathers close to a bird’s body. The long flight feathers are called quills.