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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)J
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159
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2 yr. ago

  • I think I can forgive someone using the language of their past self when reflecting upon that past. In the context of the paragraph, I think it's fair to say that "which worked" means something more along the lines of "and things did get better." Maybe he could have improved his word choice in that instance, but I don't think that negates everything else said.

    I can already hear you saying "but that's not what he said, and that was his choice of words." And to that, I point to one of the key lessons I learned in college philosophy: questions of meaning come before questions of truth. In this case where one short two word sentence does not fit the rest of what he is saying, I think it's best to ask what they could mean that would fit.

  • No, over text they might sound similar, but in person it's easier to see that the difference is between being performative in his niceness as a means to have friends/a girlfriend versus being nice as a means toward being his better self, with friends following naturally from that.

  • Right, but I’m having some trouble connecting that summation of supply and demand to your implied disconnect between productivity increases and supply. Were you specifically talking about scenarios where there is no space for output to grow, only input to shrink?

    For instance, four people extract 1 ton of raw material in a day. A new machine means it only takes two people to extract that same 1 ton, but the size of the material patch stays the same so you can still only operate the one machine rather than using all four people to operate two machines. Thus increasing productivity without increasing “supply?”

  • How would that not be part of supply? If productivity doubles and is rolled out across the board, wouldn’t supply double as well? I mean, the total work being done would probably drop such that the supply isn’t actually doubled, but if supply was the constraint before then wouldn’t it settle somewhere between that doubled amount and the original, directly translating that increased productivity into increased supply?

  • Yeah, just like the U stands for oonderwater in SCUBA, or the P stands for potographics in JPG!

  • Based on my experience playing Railway Empire, passenger cars with people and their luggage is significantly lighter than a freight car of the same size loaded with cargo. This means it takes a lot more energy to get the freight moving at a higher speed, and maybe more importantly a lot more to stop (I think it takes 3-4 football fields for a loaded freight train to stop from 30mph). So just having passengers allows the train to travel at much higher speeds. Speed is something more valuable for passengers because they want to get where they are going sooner. Freight is more about total throughput volume so it may be better to have one heavier train carrying twice much at a slower speed than two trains have the size each moving faster. So while you could have a mixed train it's not going to be as fast as the passengers want due to the heavy freight cars slowing the train down and won't carry as large a volume as the freight customers want because some cars are being taken up by passengers.

  • I’ve been wanting to for a few years now as the service gets worse (where is my playlist radio?) but have been complacent. This is the last thing to push me over my limit. I’ll be transferring my decade-worth of playlists this weekend.

  • Having seen the movie, I think it’s actually a decent setup for the plot. The crux of the conflict is that programs can only exist in the real world for 29 minutes before dissolving, and the good mega corporation and bad mega corporation want the “permanence code.”

    This time limit adds tension to the real world scenes in a pretty compelling way, because the good guys only need to escape capture for that half hour before gaining some respite. This is reinforced by the moments of viewing the world through the programs’ eyes, which always include the countdown to how much longer they have. There were times I thought “oh they only have a couple minutes” without stretching my suspension of disbelief beyond what’s required to watch a movie where flesh and blood can be digitized by a laser.

    It also allows more interplay between the real and digital world that I felt was lacking in the older movies. Those ones call the digitized humans “users,” but it never feels like they are that different when they are in the console rather than at it. This movie has a lot of scenes that cut between the bad guy sitting at his desk typing in commands and the programs in the grid of his computer hearing them as orders and treating him with reverence appropriate to a machine. There’s a hacking scene where you see the programs from one server grid break through the literal firewalls and cut through antivirus programs that does a good job feeling like an abstraction of what is happening in the real world scenes.

    All that said, I went to this movie for the soundtrack and pretty visuals, and while the light bikes and such in the real world did look cool, they would have looked a lot cooler in the digital world. There’s one action scene that is, and it is the coolest part of the movie.

  • Well, add one to the tally, what are those?

  • Ater freshman year of college I learned there was a local brand of chocolate milk that is the bees knees. I started drinking a gallon or two a week, it was a problem, but I was also experimenting with weed for the first time and it was so good.

    After a few months my buddy told me he had this stuff called DMT that you smoke through a meth pipe he had acquired for the purpose. So I sat down and as I leaned back from the hit and reality morphed I shut my eyes.

    The world was technicolor, composed of rings and rectangles moving toward and past me. There he was, the figure, a cross between Slender Man and Truth from Full Metal Alchemist, a blank white face except for the big grin. He radiated pure love, and as we looked at each other a cascade of similar figures swirled round the periphery, filling me with a sense of love, acceptance, and belonging like I had never experienced.

    It was during this time that the voice came close to my ear and spoke to me, clear and purposeful: “Hey, lay off the chocolate milk.”

    It was so obvious that I immediately responded back with a thought, “Oh yeah, thanks!”

    I continued to float through bliss for another minute or so before fading back to reality, and just like that my chocolate milk intake dropped to once every month or two.

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  • The flash drive I used to install it finally died several months ago and I haven’t bothered to get a new one yet.

  • It’s not super creative but I named my mom’s network “The Internet” so when she asks for help with getting online I can ask if she’s tried connecting to The Internet.

  • I played the demo a year ago or so and it seemed promising. Would you say it’s more Skyrim or Oblivion in terms of character stats/skills and “crunchiness?” Is there a dedicated speed stat?

  • “Most people think ___.” No, unless you’re citing a statistic or roughly quantifying how many anecdotes you’ve heard agreeing with you to support that statement (both of which rarely happen), that’s just your opinion wrapped up in language to avoid actually justifying it.

    Additionally, even if most people think something, I don’t care what most people think. In my experience what most people think vs what the best thing to think is are often not aligned.

  • If I cared any less I’d have to start thinking about how little I care, and I don’t care enough for that.

  • When I consider changes to language, I try to start from a prescriptivist position rather than a descriptivist, which to me means assuming language should stay static to ensure a common understanding rather than fragmented meanings that lead to misunderstandings. If there is a change in language, it should justify itself through simplifying terms or adding a new meaning that other words lack, while avoiding harming the meanings of pre-existing words.

    I use they/them pronouns for non-binary people as an example of this mindset in action because I think the benefits far outweigh any cons. With a greater understanding that non-binary people new language was needed, and they/them seems to me a very natural fit as I would already think to use it when asking about a stranger even before I knew of non-binary as a concept (“oh your friend is coming? What’s their name, are they a boy or a girl?). In my experience having a very close non-binary friend I have found that context tells whether I’m using they as a singular/plural pronoun ~90% of the time, and when it fails it adds maybe 20 seconds of clarification to explain I was referring to person’s name.

    I think what you’re saying should be taken as inspiration for further evolving how we use those terms to better separate between singular and plural use rather than try backtracking on how it has already evolved in common use, and I think the answer (for me at least) lies in your very comment. Much like “you” vs “you all”, going forward I’ll put a little effort into using they/them in a singular context and use “them all” or “they all” as a plural. Maybe it will catch on and 30 years from now we’ll be saying “theyal” and “theyal’ll” as shorthand for “they all” and “they all will.”

  • Tots and pears, sounds like thoughts and prayers.

  • I’ve never heard that the initial investment has to come from a third party for it to be considered capitalism. Does that mean if a person had a business, sold it, then took the capital from that sale to start a new business that couldn’t be considered capitalism since a third party wasn’t the one investing?

  • Corporatists? Are you looking for the word corpocrats or corporatocrats?

    Edit: corporatocracy is a government ran by corporate business interests, such as we see in the US.

    Corporatism is a governance principle that government is a meeting ground for “corporate groups” to make decisions. Corporate groups represent a group of people, typically business leaders but also unions.

    In a fascist corporatist state like Mussolini’s Italy this meant keeping business and union leaders close to keep a close eye on them for greater control. In a social corporatist state like Sweden, this means those same leaders have a legally mandated place in the government to get the benefits of capitalist growth tempered by the demands of common workers to receive a fair share of that growth and ensure safe working/living conditions.

    I don’t think the powers that be in the US want unions anywhere close to the government, so I don’t think corporatist is the right term.