• 102 Posts
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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: August 4th, 2023

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  • Can someone fill me in on what the charges were actually for? I can’t find any specific info, even on Wikipedia. Just says they were charged with negligent homicide, but I don’t understand what it is that they did (or didn’t do). The main dude was already in jail since 2013 for a similar disaster, so I don’t see how he could be held responsible for maintenance of the bridge in 2018 🤷‍

    Italy also prosecuted scientists for not predicting and warning about an earthquake, and then there’s the Amanda Knox case, so I’m automatically sceptical of anything the Italian courts do or say.



  • | and they’re also easier on the eyes

    This is my main reason for preferring to read on e-readers. A book is a long-ass journey, and to be staring at a regular screen for that long can be painful business.

    I also like that there’s at least the suggestion of old-school physical connection to the book. It’s a device that does just one thing (and is very good at it as a result), and you find yourself treating it the way you used to treat a paper book. I guess it’s the same sort of “positive friction” you get when you listen to vinyl or something like that. Makes the experience a bit nicer. Like, yeah, you could open notepad on a smartphone and read the complete works of Shakespeare for free in Courier New font, having to scroll every 2 paragraphs, but who the fuck wants to do that?

    The basic form factor of the book has been perfected over centuries, and e-readers emulate it to a fair degree.

    I think most e-readers are waterproof, too 🤔 One would hope so, at least! Reading in the tub or on a beach is one of the benefits of its portability.









  • Currently reading Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Caroline Fraser

    The thesis of the book is basically that environmental pollution, particularly lead, might be the thing that caused so many serial killers to pop up during the period of the late '60s to the late '70s. Only half way through it so far, and not quite convinced by the theory yet. Although it’s indisputable that such pollution can damage brains to a severe degree, I’m just not sure how you get from “damaged” to “I’d better serial kill some women”. Random violence and anger management issues, sure. But the highly specific and MO-driven criminality of serials killers seems like something else entirely. We’ll see what evidence comes in later chapters!

    EDIT: Finished. Yeah, sounds like complete bullshit to me. She was even attributing the existence of the Bloods and the Crips to smog, for fuck’s sake. It’s as though she’s genuinely unable to imagine any reason for any violence other than pollution-induced brain damage.



  • I think I blocked a couple of accounts years ago that were just reposting ancient memes from reddit in bot-like numbers. But it seems like the majority of content here falls under that category, so blocking seems futile. Can’t even use downvoting to correct the issue because our votes aren’t private/anonymous here and I don’t need a large account seeing that I downvote their content every time I come across it. It would have to feel personal at that point 😆

    I don’t mind big accounts in principle, I just don’t want to see memes from 2018 being reposted every day with the same titles, and for there to be no other content from those accounts.




  • Whatever replaces Tenor needs to allow for more specificity in searching. If I search “lemur” and I see 3 orangutans, a chimp and a 12 gibbons, and maybe 1 actual lemur, I’m still happy to have simians, but I really needed a lemur, man. I was quite fucking specific in my search term. Had I written “monkey” but it showed me a series of apes, I wouldn’t mind that so much.

    Also, “cat on skateboard” has fuck all to do with a poorly staged video of a dog playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater with a set of gaming bongos. Again, glad to see it, but where’s my skateboarding cat??