The Octonaut @ TheOctonaut @mander.xyz

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2 yr. ago

Look, that's honestly quite sad and very telling of the way things are, but I audibly snorted at the idea of Jeff Bezos noticing his income slightly lower this week, panicking, scrambling to find The Borbendorfs' payment. A single tear wells up, but he wipes it away frantically. Never let them see. Never let them know how it hurts.

One point to disagree on: less teens than ever are having sex, and with no actual experience, their imaginations are based on porn. No wonder they're terrified of it, if their first impression is what comes up when you Google "boy girl have sex".

One of the good things about living in Ireland is that I'm 99% our government is neither competent enough to perpetrate elaborate crimes against its people without being exposed almost instantly, nor powerful enough that even fascists getting into government would have a meaningful impact bar providing a colourful humorous segment of the inevitable documentary on Europe's second fall to the Axis.

I work for a telecom. In my country there is well regulated legislation that specifies how and when the police can ask the telecoms for cell location data, usually used for missing people.

They also provide large scale, anonymised data for crowd movement analysis. For example it was used to demonstrate how 60,000 people moved into and out of a stadium located for historical reasons in an old-fashioned, dense residential area, in preparation for the arrival of English football fans.

I think there's some useful context, if not a good defence of this story.

It's one of the original stories told by Reverend Awdry told to his 2 year old, measles-ridden child in 1942 war-era England (Wait, is this making it worse?).

Awdry would sing/recite old poems to Christopher, who then pressed him for further details that turned into a story.

For example, the opening of that episode of Thomas features the Limerick that prompted the story, which was around at least since 1902:

In the original story by Awdry, there is only a single tunnel, and the train is completely blocking the line and essentially ruining a business. So stubborn is the engine, that they have to dig a new tunnel beside the old one. The rails are removed and "a wall" are placed in front of the tunnel, for safety - to prevent trains literally running into the wrong tunnel and crashing. The Fat Director/Controller is also pretty unsympathetic deliberately - he commands people to push and pull the train out without success, but doesn't himself help - "My doctor has forbidden me to push". However the original books follow the realities of steam engine and railway operation far more closely than the TV series did (and as a result, the original series, closer to the books, were far more realistic than the later ones).

As portrayed in the TV show it definitely comes off more villainous. But in the original telling we have to take away 70 years of Thomas trains having faces, personalities, relationships and familiarity. When originally told, the Henry story didn't even take place in the same "universe" - there was just 3 abstract stories about trains, loosely based on old rhymes and news stories.

You are correct. In my defence:

In Old English, ⟨ð⟩ (called ðæt) was used interchangeably with ⟨þ⟩ to represent the Old English dental fricative phoneme /θ/ or its allophone /ð/, which exist in modern English phonology as the voiceless and voiced dental fricatives both now spelled ⟨th⟩.

So your version of compassion towards this woman is "I hope she's part of an elaborate election lie"?

They're using Thorn Edd, the single character that represented the Th sound in old English (still used in Icelandic).

It's a harmless little quirk in their own writing, although editing the title of a book to include it seems pretty silly.

I think he deserved it, don't you?

Yes you are. But that's not how school credit works?

Is that a school subject in America?

Which subject did "show up on time" give you credit towards?

Um.

Does Ev have an Iron Cross on his hand?

Edit: questions bad?

Well yes, the only way to erase a nation or culture's hatred of your violence is with enough violence to literally genocide them.

But there really aren't that many. You just put it down for a generation until it comes back, usually with a different name.

Stop making violence the only thing you'll react to in any way? Or indeed, stop responding to peaceful resistance with violence (eg the civil rights marches in Northern Ireland).

It might seem like Palestine has been a hopeless mire forever, but there was a point in the 90s where the last reasonable leaders of both sides were coming together for a peaceful solution. Hamas and the Israeli right wing - the "both sides" of today - were on the fringe.

Then Yitzhak Rabin was killed by an Israeli right-winger, Israel inexplicably responded by killing a Hamas leader, Arab civilians were massacred at the Cave of Patriarchs by an American Israeli, and Hamas responded with more bombings, Yassar Arafat died under siege by the IDF, Hamas took control of Gaza, and well, here we are.

The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin is probably as impactful to history of that of Archduke Ferdinand, but seems to be being forgotten.

As an Irish person, you can't end terrorism with violence. You just create martyrs to a cause, a cause which looks more and more legitimate the more civilians suffer and die because of said violence. "Kill the rebels" every 20 years did nothing for peace on Ireland for 800 years.

Agile is explicitly a way for a team to be self-organising. What benefit do you get from it as a solo developer?

I live in a country that hasn't used cheques in a couple of decades. Being reminded of their existence and spelling it "check" was beyond my aging 40 year old brain.

We call them current accounts, apparently.

What the fuck is a checking account