MentalEdge @ MentalEdge @sopuli.xyz

Eskating cyclist, gamer and enjoyer of anime. Probably an artist. Also I co

---

Read more

Posts

75

Comments

2,905

Joined

2 yr. ago

While Cixian Liu coined the words "dark forest" to describe this particular solution to the fermi paradox, he did not invent it.

Having also read the series, I find myself always having to mention that while the books do some of the best exploration of more complex sci-fi concepts, they are WEIRD about gender.

The whole thing with men becoming "feminized" by an age of peace, reeks. The author goes out of his way to equate competence, decisiveness and conviction with the male gender, and tries to very akwardly make the point that without strife, these things become unnecessary, and even abhorred. To the point that "masculinity" as a social construct disappears from society. Then replaced entirely by "femininity" which the author VERY explicitly equates with "beauty", naivete, indecision and weakness.

As if women choose to be with men only out of necessity, and if given a easy life and therefore the choice, they would pair off with other women. Which is effectively what happens because according to the author such a society would pressure men into becoming indistinguishable from women in order to remain appealing.

If I had to boil the trilogy down to a message about gender, it would be "men are ugly but useful, women are beautiful but useless". That's not exactly progressive...

A major female characters entire character is that she is the "perfect" woman, and she is literally given as payment to the main-character, by the government. And no-one in the story bats an eye at this! Including the woman herself!

I kept expecting her to be disingenuous. You know, because she was literally treated like an object, given as a prize. But then it time-skips to her having the dudes kid! So apparently shes's fine with it?

Execept then when the government says so, she's perfectly down with up and leaving the guy, this time to force him into action by withholding her. Again she's a mere plot device, treated like a thing that can not only be given, by also taken. She barely exists as anything more than the concept "perfect woman". But you can't just have a human character without there being a person in there. Yet Liu goes ahead anyway.

The subtext about gender in the writing isn't subtle, and it really fucking bothered me when reading the series. I tuned out a lot when listening to the audiobooks.

The sci-fi concepts are some of the best! Only one example is the way the books explained FTL travel, and it is some of the most compelling I've seen!

But I really can't imagine recommending the series without a disclaimer about it containing some of the most sexist writing I've ever come across.

It's almost like militaries invest in various different types of hardware in order to be able to deal with a variety of combat scenarios.

You do know a free expansions DLC has been in the works this whole time, and still is?

Homeworld

Pretty sure the internet archive is dealing with Petabytes, if not Exabytes.

If you like the combat and the quarry, the Jukebox lets you play a bunch of challenge levels in locations from the same dimension as the quarry is in.

Russia?

Yes.

If you think crypto is utrackable, you haven't been paying attention.

The entire ledger of every transaction ever made, is 100% public.

The only reason it's kind of anonymous, is that the wallet ids are random strings of characters.

But the second you know whose a wallet is, you can go back and see every place their money has ever been, as well as transparently watch every place it will ever go.

HUGE numbers of wallets have already been deanonymized, and that's a process that can't be undone. Sure you can make a new wallet, but if you move your money into it from your old one, it'll be pretty obvius who you are.

If bank accounts were replaced by crypto wallets, everyones transaction history would effectively reveal who they are, since the ids of hospitals, shops, websites and services would have to be public.

Matching that transaction data with even a little bit of personal info about someone would be beyond easy.

No one could anonymously move money ever again.

I honestly couldn't care less about the actual rocks.

But pretty colors are pretty colors.

...

That's literally my point.

I'm saying you can't tell the difference between two materials unless they are cut the same.

If they are cut differently to achieve the results you are seeing, you can't tell whether the difference is because of the cut, or because of the material.

Yes, but a clear crystal is a clear crystal.

If you want to split light you can do what regardless of refractive index (as long as it isn't zero), you'd just need to cut different angles and/or project the light onto a surface that's closer/farther to get the same effect using a different material.

That's what I was immediately thinking.

Getting pretty colors out of a clear crystal is more about how it was cut, than what it's made of.

Unless it's something like opal that produces lightshows through completely different optical effects.

I'm asking about the light. The lightshow produced by a crystal is down to both the optical properties of the material, but also the geometry of how it was cut.

The image is really cool, but it only demonstrates a difference if the moissanite was cut into the exact same shape as the diamonds.

A prism doesn't split light because of the material its made of, but because of its shape.

Is that a difference in the material, or is the Moissanite cut differently?

If Moissanaite just does that, then damn, that's pretty.

Using a domain for your handle means it entirely replaces the original bsky handle you signed up with.

I could go from being mentaledge.bsky.social to mentaledge.com, for example. (And they don't need to be the same "username" so to speak, I could have registered therealmental.bsky.social, but then become mentaledge.com, provided I own the domain.)

The main difference is that the orignal handle is a subdomain of bsky, while you can be the root domain if you use your own.

Before, you'd lose your original handle, meaning someone else could grab it once you did this, and then pretend to be you. Now they can't.

I don't share your view.

Company doing good thing without simultaneously promising it won't do bad thing doesnt automatically mean BAD THING WILL ABSOLUTELY SUPER DUPER CERTAINLY HAPPEN NEXT.

The opposite, actually.

When corpos are specific about bad thing definitely not being planned, that's when it is DEFINITELY the next step.

Ok. But again, this isn't that.

No part of this particular change, is even step one of what you're talking about.

This is literally only stopping new users from registering accounts under handles someone used before, but switched away from.

It's straight up a "correct " solution.

I don't think the name part of the bsky handle comes from the domain you use.

You just no longer lose the handle you picked when you registered, when you switch to using your own domain as your handle.

Before, once you switched, someone else could grab that original handle you registered with and pretend to be you.

So they shouldn't address actual concerns?

This change is tiny. Bluesky currently allows people who own domains to use those domains for their handle. (Anyone can buy domains, not just companies, I own two) Before, doing so would "release" the default name.bsky.social handle, allowing someone else to use it.

This literally doesn't take away any handles from anyone, except people who grabbed handles that were "released" by their original owners. It DOES NOT allow someone who shows up with a new spechul domain to take away the handle of a user that already exists.

Maybe, but this isn't about that.