dejected_warp_core @ dejected_warp_core @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

They're literally incapable of imagining anything else. Otherwise, we'd have radically different outcomes from all this.

It also didn't take long for the aftermath to become racially charged, either.

As it turns out, the folks most impacted by hurricanes and other weather events (e.g. flooding) are people of color. So, sending FEMA late to these sorts of things just reeks of malicious compliance.

• https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pclm.0000026
• https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9574315/

This is why I'm mostly okay with hunting deer, here in the US. We displaced their predators so it's on us to make up the balance. I say "mostly" since, like others are saying in this thread about taking habitat away from kangaroos, the better answer is to give them an actual functional ecosystem to live in.

The trick is to find the right message and tone for the moment. I also think change like this is necessarily incremental. It's possible that with enough doom-and-gloom around a pending "market correcting event", that helping everyone reduce grocery bills by eating vegetarian a few nights a week, would be the right message.

I'm going to say that every layoff has a cover story. The goal, reduce the workforce make/save money, is really the only justification needed. Everything else is PR, and an attempt to stay out of legal hot water.

That's always worth considering. A phone app doesn't take a big operating budget to launch and maintain. Especially for state-actors.

That's easy. It's more dull here, and there's less lock-in.

No, really. Social media without the dopamine-pump-style algorithm behind it is far less stimulating. Meanwhile, the Federation model itself allows us to abandon nodes that are co-opted by bad actors. So there's always somewhere else to go with all your favorite stuff when things go sour.

The best take on Black Flag I ever read was something like: "It's a great game, except for all the Assassin's Creed parts."

Ah yes, that brief moment of cold panic where you sincerely contemplate being deathly ill but still able to do something about it... right before your memory kicks in.

Dry, salty, black olives. Best paired with a light beer and a blazing-hot summer day.

Pickled jalapenos are just fantastic. Hot, sour, flavorful, and just versatile at 'waking up' all kinds of food.

Capers are great on all kinds of savory dishes where you want a little salt and sourness, but other pickles would just be overkill.

Canned black olives belong on pizza, and the occasional loaded nacho plate. They're kind of awful in other applications.

As for the classic dill pickle, ever had one in Dr. Pepper?

Yup. Learned that one back in the 3rd grade. This stuff is hard if you're not experienced enough to know how people work.

On the upside, I learned that one cannot buy their way into other's good graces, especially if they're going to require you to modify your behavior to get there; they're lying and that was never the issue. On the downside: holy shit that hurts once it goes wrong the first time.

As an adult I can also appreciate that there are situations where you can "buy your way in" to a club or status of some sort. IMO, those situations are generally not worth it to begin with, requiring an never-ending stream of cash to keep up appearances. Plus, it surrounds you with other people that also believe, and are invested, in the program. It's a recipe for elitism at best, and a big 'ol grift at worst. Better friends and relationships can be had for $0 everywhere else.

I was introduced to flyweight RPGs a few years back and I absolutely love what they can do in the hands of a creative group.

Roll for Shoes is about as minimal as it gets. You will need one D6, and something to track player inventory. The game world is best started by the GM in the abstract, letting the players fill in the world's details through creative use of questions that prompt die rolls. This is fantastic for players that want to stretch their improv skills.

Lasers & Feelings has a tad more structure. Everyone has exactly one stat that sits on a spectrum of "lasers" to "feelings". The difficulty of challenges in the game sit on the same spectrum. Depending on the nature of the challenge and what the player's stat is, a single D6 roll decides the outcome. Everything else is role-playing in what is encouraged to be a Trek-like setting.

In my experience, Roll for Shoes usually turns into a cartoon-esque "let's see what else is in my backpack" affair, that usually ends with everything on fire (because of course it does). Lasers & Feelings typically devolves into Lower Decks. All of these are positives in my book - I'd play again in a heartbeat.

It's sister setting, Earthdawn, also had a lot going for it on top of the typical D&D formula. Weaving, instead of casting magic, was a much more involved process for the player/character which did a lot to ground such awesome power. At the same time, fighters of all stripes were also more or less magic users, which unified the whole rule system in a nice way. The setting itself was a fantasy post-apocalypse, troubled by evil horrors that dominated the landscape in the centuries before. In fact, much of the lore was intertwined with how people survived those times.

And like Shadowrun, there were lots of dice thanks to the "step table" system. It could be a huge PITA to sum all the rolls on high steps, but then when else do you get to roll entire fists full of dice all at once?

Whoa, you are not kidding. The toilet is powered (not so unusual for bidet toilets), but it looks like there's no mechanical override. Just a 'remote' control panel with a flush button (among many other features). That I'm sure is hygienic.

The video is about how to bluetooth pair the remote to the toilet. There are so many points of possible failure here, I can't even.

I know exactly why, but I'll say it anyway: Witcher 3 vibes. I bet the camping out there is incredible.

Exactly. The GOP is a big (circus) tent.

For a lot of people in suburbia, the entire concept of indoor "third spaces" is mostly "pay to play" at the end of a drive. A big exception to this is/were shopping malls, but those aren't always close by. To get to more a functional social fabric, we have to provide more convenient ways of interfacing with our neighbors that don't always require money to change hands.

Perhaps this is a predictably orange-pill response, but we need to change zoning in a big way. Each suburban development has the street plan and infrastructure to support small businesses and common spaces, walking-distance from everyone's front door. All it takes is to allow small-scale commercial development in corners of these collections of tract-homes and, just like that, you can have something like a functional village. Beyond that, encouraging more development of community recreation space, both indoor and outdoor, would go a long way to provide a place for people to mingle.

Edit: strip-malls don't count. They're often at the very edge of residential areas, and are tied up with way more capital than what I'm talking about. That's why they're made up of franchises, require ridiculous amounts of parking, and contribute to "stroads" and all the knock-on effects and hostile architecture that requires.

Watching people repair old electronics on Youtube has opened my eyes to the realities of real-world electrical engineering. In short: it's all about tolerances.

A power supply may have a nominal voltage of 5V, but anything from 4.8 to 5.2 is a-okay. Why? Because your TTL components downstream of that can tolerate that. Components that do 5V logic can define logic zero as anything between 0 and 0.8 volts, and logic one as low as 2 volts. That's important since the whole voltage rail can fluctuate a lot when devices use more power, or draw power simultaneously. While you can slap capacitors all over the place to smooth that out, there's still peaks and dips over time.

Meanwhile, some assembly lines have figured out how to aggressively cost-reduce goods by removing whole components from some circuits. Just watch some Big Clive videos. Here, the tendency is to lean heavily into those tolerances and just run parts hot, under/over powered, or just completely outside the published spec because the real-deal can take it (for a while). After all, everything is a resistor if you give it enough voltage, an inductor if the wire's long enough, a capacitor if the board layout is a mess, and a heatsink if it's touching the case.

I agree. Another smart move would be to rapidly write their names down all in one go. Make it look like the act of an angry god (because it kinda/sorta is), then sit back and watch the world's elite panic.

I mean, it wouldn't make much of a show, but still.

If only there was a better way...