Grimpen @ Grimpen @lemmy.ca

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5

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398

Joined

2 yr. ago

Indeed, even if you were to consider the Quebecois as a distinct subculture, a non-white Francophone is more a member of that culture than a white Anglophone.

Not a sociologist or an anthropologist, but a culture is composed of various cultural trappings, which include customs around food, dress, and language. There's not really a lot of room for a meaningfully defined Canadian culture that somehow excludes people with the wrong shade of skin colour. Butter tarts, Nanaimo bars, the Canadian "Sorry", much of what could be considered Canadian cultural trappings aren't that race based. Except maybe for Residential schools, but some things are better left in the past.

I don't know. You're already getting pretty far into the concept of a subculture. Not an Anthropologist (and it's been a long time since I took Anthropology in University), nor a Sociologist, but as I recall a culture is already sort of a fuzzy concept. It comprises components such as beliefs, languages, behaviours, etc.

You are already starting to make some fine distinctions in order to define an American culture distinct from a broader English-speaking culture, I think. Obviously, there are difference between Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK and the USA, but you are already dealing with a largely common language. Although American's might not queue as well, or use the Canadian Sorry, there are some broad similarities that I wouldn't be surprised if some Anthropologists and Sociologists don't consider it a meaningful division between "cultures". At this level, there are plenty of non-white (for some definitions of white) that are a part of this culture. Arguably, predominantly non-white countries are equally a part of this larger global Anglosphere culture. Jamaica, Barbados, etc. Never mind the non-white people in the above mentioned countries. To get to a hypothetical "white" American culture, you are drilling down into some pretty specific territory.

I guess by definition, you could argue that there are "white" American subcultures. The KKK and alt-right would be two of them.

We're getting pretty far down the rabbit hole though. I don't really see a lot of room for a "whites only" North American cultural group that isn't pretty much just the KKK/alt-right/neo-Nazis/whatever. What would be the cultural trappings of this subculture?

I've now given this concept far too much thought.

Ironically there are what the poster above would consider "white" cultural organizations, organized around cultural lines. There's a Ukrainian Cultural Centre, a German Cultural Centre and an Italian cultural centre nearby. The concept of a "white" cultural centre the above poster suggests is something different though, and I don't really know how they would define it. I don't think they are complaining about the lack of an organization to put on Robbie Burns night festivities. Those exist.

The absence of a "white" cultural centre is a false dichotomy IMNSHO, based on the idea that there is some sort of pan-cultural white-only culture. In a Canadian context, I have trouble coming up with a cultural definition that would simultaneously encompass all the acceptable "white" cultures while also excluding non-whites. Everything truly Canadian isn't really whites-only, Canadian history encompasses multiple skin colours right from the beginning. I guess the English ex-pat clubs and the Robbie Burns Scottish clubs would come closest to that from a Canadian perspective, but those aren't strictly from Canada, and they do in fact exist. And no one complains.

The actual infrastructure was horribly inefficient, but that may have improved with ETH's move to proof of stake.

There's other issues, but the idea of using the digital receipt as an "investment" seems fundamentally flawed.

I think if you extrapolated from 2019 with a 2% inflation rate extended to 2025 or 2026, and managed to intersect with that, it would be kind of good, but I don't know if you can without some harm somewhere. You have a very real disruption in the pandemic, followed by a large land war in Europe.

However you cut it, there is some pain to be spread around. It just seems that the Billionaires won't be feeling any of it.

Still, a "soft landing" still might be kind of do-able, I wouldn't be adverse to a few years of 1% inflation in the CPI with 2% pay raises. But macroeconomics is hard at the best of times. Hey, how about those housing costs?

Got it on sale, earlier this year. It's in my backlog.

The release of 2.0 and the DLC might be the perfect time to actually play it.

Yeah, interest rates are blunt instrument, and aren't going to "fix" this.

I get that the BoC only really has the one tool, but this is bigger than the BoC.

They're just really concerned about the formation of Manitoba from the Northwest Territories.

Virtualization is the key. Multiple VMs, installing, uninstalling, reinstalling.

Pretty much. I went from a Commodore Vic-20 to a Tandy 1000TX in around a decade. I'm decommissioning a desktop that was cheap 10 years ago. It gets the job done, and you can play Minecraft on it. A game I played first about 13 years ago. I just got around to (mostly) finishing Fallout: New Vegas, a game over ten years old.

Even if the bleeding edge is improving, the quantitative improvement in the number of bits pushed through a graphic card is nothing like the qualitative change from CGA to EGA, or even to VGA. I remember around the time of SVGA and it's Amiga quality graphics (16 million colours!) thinking that even if processing power was improving, it would mostly go towards frame rates, on the fly rendering, and miniaturization.

Add in the slowing down of Moore's Law, you have to ask what would a Steam Deck 2 do that the existing Steam Deck doesn't do? Marginally better screen resolution, marginally better battery life? I'm playing No Man's Sky with the frame rate locked to 30fps. A hypothetical SD 2 that let me get 60 or even 120 fps might be nice, but that covers nowhere near being able to play NMS anywhere on the go.

Between the ROG Ally, the Legion, and Aya and GPD, I think there is lots of competition emerging in this form factor, but I think Steam is on the right track. Support the SD1 for a few years at least.

Just got a new Sansa Clip to replace my dad's old Sansa Clip. Solid device.

I think you'll need a "real computer" to act as host device. Having said that, you could use a Raspberry Pi to be your "real computer". You might be able to fake something out, but an MP3 player will usually act as a storage device, and another device will have to act as host to load it with files. You might find an MP3 player that can connect to some cloud service, but that undermines the whole point.

I've currently got 2 functioning MP3 devices. Well, technically 1, since I gave one to my dad.

The one I gave to my dad is this guy, a Sandisk Sansa Clip. It connects as an MTP device via USB cable. Copy files into it's storage, disconnect, and go. Any computer capable of acting as an MTP host should work.

The one still in my possession is an earlier version of this one, the Mixxtape. They are regularly on sale for around $60 USD IIRC, so not the cheapest, but it can also play back via a tape deck, like my very first MP3 player, the Digisette Duo Aria MP3 player, with a whopping 32MB of storage! I guess my first MP3 player wasn't the most capable, but the Mixxtape evokes that nostalgia for me, plus is far more capable. Again, it mounts as an MTP storage device, so any other device capable of hosting an MTP connection should work.

As to your comment on OS, I've been using Linux primarily for well over a decade, and it supports MTP just fine. The only problem you'll run into is older MP3 players from before USB Mass Storage Class (MSC), Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP) and Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) were widespread. I think some early models had custom file transfer schemes. That hasn't been a thing for well over a decade. Except maybe for iDevices. Apple (as always) is special. From my experience, plugging any MSC/PTP/ or MTP device into just about any Linux computer will "just work". It should "just work" for Windows as well.

Finally, a "real computer". Something like a Raspberry Pi 400 kit should work fine, but there are also lots of perfectly fine ex-office computers for sale refurbished at similar prices. Best Buy also has refurbs. An old laptop would work as well. You might be able to use the Pixel to host. I know the Pixel supports USB-OTG or whatever the successor protocol is, allowing it to act as a USB host for limited power devices. Only way to find out is to try.

Give me some STV! MMP seems to work well for NZ¹. Electoral reform won't fix everything, but it will allow a path for more adaptability in politics at the very least.

¹ I'm also okay with AV (instant runoff). Is it perfect? No, but let not the perfect be the enemy of the good. AV at least overcomes the spoiler effect, and would allow more diversity of parties. AV does tend to encourage coalitions formed around a centrist party with broad support (probably the Liberals in Canadian federal politics) as they will tend to be the 2nd or 3rd pick, but the balance of other parties in any resulting coalition would tend to drive things. Plus, without the spoiler effect of FPTP there can always be a competitor for the centre. Basically. FPTP is the worst, and although I have my preferences, less bad is still improvement. Also, AV can always serve as a palate cleanser for full STV.

Pretty much. They're complaining about housing prices and inflation just as much or more in New Zealand, Germany and the UK.

Canada probably is a B- but has the advantage of being next door to the largest economy in the world. Canada is also vast with abundant resources. We were always going to be a prosperous country as long as we can avoid too much corruption (Russia is a more vast country with more abundant resources, but…)

I still think it's useful to look at other countries that may even be beneath us (according to this list) and borrow liberally from where they exceed us. We are doing about as well as anyone else, but we can do better.

Pretty much. Most of the best Universities in the world. That most of it's citizens could never afford to attend. Many of the best Hospitals and specialty clinics in the world. That again most of it's people can't use.

Most American's are somewhere in the middle, and I'm sure the median household has more disposable income than most other first world countries, it's just that the prosperity is so unevenly spread.

Granted, some would speculate that it is because of the unevenness that the US is so prosperous, but I would dispute that. I think the US could go a long long ways towards helping it's less fortunate without compromising it's prosperity.

I'd agree. In theory, there are many legitimate reasons to "sell" FOSS software. If I was putting it on a DVD, labelling, and mailing FOSS software my time and materials certainly deserve to be rewarded. Likewise, listing it on closed store like the MS store but keeping it updated from sources might make it easier for people embedded in the MS ecosystem to keep up to date.

I would expect legitimate repackagers/redistributors to be open that the software itself is freely available though. Besides I fear the well is poisoned by hustlers trying to sell something free for cheap to make a quick buck.

What's that? The honking is drowning everything out. I hope Lich gets to have a few weeks of loud honking outside her cell.

I've been coming back to Minecraft ever since the days of Alpha. Played it with my friends, now I play it with my kids.

When did you play it last? They seem to have a major update every few months. It's still NMS, just with more stuff every 3-6 months.

I just watched The House Hippo 2.0 and I think it's totally woke because...

You know, I can't even keep up with the "x and y is woke!!1!" crowd. I'll have to do a frame by frame comparison. Maybe it's some of the production crew or voice actors or something? Maybe the VFX were done by a "woke" company? I don't know. I can't be bothered.