OwenEverbinde

joined 1 year ago
[–] OwenEverbinde@lemmy.myserv.one 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I mean... look at the number of people who still, to this day, believe Joe Biden has dementia.

He's an elderly man with a speech impediment, and anyone with reasoning skills could tell he's still lucid. But the right's centuries-long war against education has paid off, and now reasoning skills are scarce.

Plus, ever since TikTok, there are now millions of people who get their "news" from five-second clips / soundbites. So if your "message" can't be summed up in what is essentially two pages of a picture book, in a way that can be digested without critical thinking, you are no longer a viable candidate.

Put differently, the winner from now on is whoever better pulls the gullible vote.

I see you use capital letters in your post, so you presumably used a modifier key (shift) - unless you do modal caps with CapsLock all the time. I don’t know why people find that normal and easy, but as soon as it’s Ctrl or Alt they get in a tizzy and start talking about RSI.

I know why: and are further from the home row than . is millimeters from the pinkie finger on either side. Your pinkie can reach that thing while the other three fingers stay put. is in a similarly easy position, (and, in fact, another bit of Emacs advice I ran across is "switch with ", which feels like it wouldn't be "often recommended" for Emacs users if default Emacs was conducive to the standard qwerty keyboard layout.)

The bottom row of the keyboard is just too far from the home row. strains my right hand so much that I rarely reach for it instinctively, and using my left? Gotta say, whoever chose (zap-to-char) and (scroll-down-command) as the punishments upon any failed attempt at reaching M-x really knew how to intimidate the newcomers and the slow-learners (like me) to these heavy-duty text editors.

The same story goes for . The Odyssey that stands between my right pinkie and is so easily blown off-course that said pinkie never volunteers to embark when I think "" for fear it will never see its wife Penelope again... which means I end up typing C-x (and all that follows) entirely with my left hand... which stretches my left hand off the home row and trashes my accuracy.

But I feel like I should note at this point: I have large hands and unusually broad shoulders, and if one of my hands is resting on the home row in a comfortable position (75-80 degrees), the other one is reaching the home row at a stark diagonal (50-60 degrees). Maybe I'm the unusual one. Maybe I'm a rare kind of person who needs to be using a rare keyboard to accommodate my stature. And maybe everyone else can use Emacs just fine (... though, again, I note: there are a few too many ergonomic hacks for Emacs available online for that to be the case).

Main point: for me -- and apparently a decent number of forum users giving each other Emacs advice online -- the bottom-row modifiers are hard to hit. And it should come as no surprise, considering how far those keys are from the home row.

[–] OwenEverbinde@lemmy.myserv.one 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

I did not know those existed. But I'm not surprised Emacs users would be seeking them out.

Nor am I surprised that an entire writeup on Emacs-triggered hand strain is one of the hyperlinks on the article you linked.

https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/RepeatedStrainInjury

 

image transcription: picture of a statue of the Hindu deity Durga. The statue has ten arms.

caption underneath the picture reads: in Hinduism, Durga is revered as the goddess of war, motherhood, and protection. But did you know she also wrote the default key bindings for Emacs?

[–] OwenEverbinde@lemmy.myserv.one 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The movie maybe. But that intro was basically divorced from the rest of the movie.

The intro suggested that stupid people having kids was the reason humanity started evolving backward. It invoked natural selection and "survival of the fittest."

The intro even labeled the low birth rate couple and high birthrate couple with IQ scores to illustrate this point.

You argue that that the movie attributes the stupidity of its world to societal shifts. It does. It does a great job laying out a progression from late stage capitalism to idiocracy.

But that just further highlights how unnecessary that intro was. The intro attributed the stupidity to something entirely different.

[–] OwenEverbinde@lemmy.myserv.one -1 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Agreed. As iconic as that eugenicist prologue might be, it harms humanity and doesn't really serve the plot.

[–] OwenEverbinde@lemmy.myserv.one 30 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

I voted for Harris, but I feel like it's pretty obvious why someone would vote third party instead.

One need only reject the premise that voting should be a strategic act of harm reduction. Mind you, I'm not saying "is" here. I'm saying "should be".

We may not take their approach, but you have to admit that there's value to it. They are embracing the world as it ought to be, whereas we are trying to work with the reality of the situation as we perceive it.

And we could be perceiving incorrectly. For all we know, Trump could loose-cannon his way into making Netanyahu's whole party lose their next election. It may not be likely, but nothing in this world is certain.

For all we know, the Heritage Foundation could destroy so much of the government and economy so rapidly that it weakens all of the property rights and FBI operations aimed against self-sufficient mutual aid, and communes start springing up all over the place. It's not likely without massive turmoil, starvation, and bloodshed. But however unlikely, we cannot predict the future!

Cyncism is costly in terms of mental health and well-being. In order to choose pragmatism over principles, we must accept a reality where no good choices exist. But that's not something we can do everywhere. We can't repeatedly choose the "least miserable option" and still be able to hold ourselves together and function. It's just not possible.

Humans need hope to survive. They need a hill they can hang onto. They need to be able to say, "on this ground, I fight for what should be rather than what is."

Some people's hill is their ballot.

[–] OwenEverbinde@lemmy.myserv.one 11 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

There is some quote about how free speech and military parades are, by necessity, inversely correlated.

Whenever this video crosses my feed, I'm reminded of what little I remember of that quote.

[–] OwenEverbinde@lemmy.myserv.one 7 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

There were times I felt pretty dirty doing what they asked of me in order to close more sales.

So many companies! Back when I worked Arclight, it was a small bit of subtle manipulation: "would you like to turn that to a large for only an additional 40¢?"

I hated it, because I knew the purpose was to pressure people into buying more than they wanted.

Thankfully, the place was run like the Trump Administration, so no one really knew how consistently the company's stupid mind games were being deployed against our guests.

But anyways! Yeah. Feeling dirty is pretty reasonable. The things we do for rent money...

This guy was a real asshole on top of it all, and he was trying to pull it off on my watch, so, no regrets on shutting him down.

What's with that, anyways? Why aren't real-life thieves more like charismatic, charitable Robin Hoods?

[–] OwenEverbinde@lemmy.myserv.one 37 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

I'm really glad someone out there is costing these companies money.

So many times it's AT&T and Verizon selling you an "insurance plan" for your phone that still requires you to pay $99-$300 if you actuality need your phone replaced. That's objectively worse than no "insurance".

Maybe I'd feel differently about it if I had that pro-capitalist "your loss is my gain" mindset... and also owned shares in AT&T. But being a human capable of empathy and humanity, AT&T and Verizon just disgust me.

[–] OwenEverbinde@lemmy.myserv.one 80 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

I realized in a reddit argument a while back that one huge difference between Trump supporters and the rest of us is: Trump supporters expect less from Trump. Hold him to a lower standard than they hold themselves or non-supporters to.

In the argument, I had a supporter tell me that "raking the leaves" was advocating wildfire management -- including controlled burns. And the person followed it up with remarks along the lines of, "you should have been smart enough to know that's what he was saying."

Which was crazy to me because:

  • they were measuring my intelligence by my ability to come up with numerous unique rephrasings and potential meanings to Trump's words
  • they were scoring higher than Trump by their own intelligence metric
    • Trump could only come up with "raking the leaves" and the commenter came up with "as a country, we should be putting more resources into wildfire management", a much more coherent and intelligent phrasing
  • in expecting me to be able to read multiple meanings into "raking the leaves", this person was ALSO expecting me to score higher on this measure of intelligence than Trump. And calling me stupid for not outscoring Trump.

Basically told me that if I wasn't smarter than Trump, I was stupid.

I pointed this out to them and never got a response.

Anyways, different standards. According to Trump supporters:

  • if you're no smarter than Trump, you are an idiot;
  • if you're no kinder than Trump, you are sadistic and malicious;
  • if you are no more effective than Trump, you are useless,
  • But Trump is the smartest, kindest, most valuable person there is.

I'm glad I could help.

[–] OwenEverbinde@lemmy.myserv.one 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

Have you played Supreme Commander? It's basically a simplified Supreme Commander.

You gather credits by building extractors, and extractors can only be put on resource deposits, so your aim is to control those deposits.

But where SupCom 2 has mass, energy, and research, Rusted Warfare has only credits.

What I look for

When I play RTS games, it's almost-exclusively:

  • co-op against the AI
  • with teammates
    • ^^ teammates who don't spend time practicing RTS skills

So I'm looking for very specific things in a game. So far, of the games I've played, Rusted Warfare is top three when it comes to those things. (The other two in my top 3 are Age of Empires 3 and Nemesis of the Roman Empire (aka Celtic Kings 2)).

It got into my top three by being strong in the following areas:

Simplicity

Rusted Warfare is simple enough that my teammates can follow my requests without needing to train and practice on their own.

For instance, I can advise my teammates, "upgrade your extractors" and they can follow my advice without requiring a tutorial on resource management and energy shortages.

For comparison, in Supreme Commander (the franchise that was very clearly the inspiration for this game), trying to upgrade your extractor without sufficient knowledge on energy shortages can lead to choking out your entire economy.

Bull-headed AI

This is the most important thing I look for in casual co-op RTS.

In most RTS games, if the AI has 100 units? They are now attacking you on 100 different fronts. And focusing on any one front will deliver you losses at the other 99. It's a game of whack-a-mole where you are punished for every mole you miss.

I know I said Age of Empires 3 is in my top three, but Age of Empires 2? Exhausting, excrutiating, and infuriating. It's basically impossible to enjoy playing against the AI.

Same goes for Company of Heroes. I have broken a clavicle and wrist, and I can tell you without hesitation that playing against the AI in Company of Heroes is several times more painful than breaking bones.

Some people like that in a game. I do not.

Rusted Warfare, on the other hand, features an AI that mostly attacks you directly. Put a cluster of turrets between your base and theirs? You're now battling 80% of their incursions. They'll attack your flanks eventually, but you don't have to divide your attention evenly between all 100 different locations. It's almost like you and the AI are looking at the same place.

It's rare to find an RTS game where you are allowed to enjoy yourself. Most punish anyone who drops below 200 actions per minute.

But in Rusted Warfare, you can just... play.

Progression

I have extraordinarily heavy ADHD (first percentile on impulse control and sustained focus). But as long as a game has the bare minimum of progression (upgrades, building tree, etc) then I don't get bored and disengaged.

And Rusted Warfare has that. It's got at least the bare minimum.

There's always something for me to do: upgrade extractors, add turrets, build experimental factories, etc. And finishing this process does yield some pretty satisfying armadas... especially if I'm playing with mods.

In summary

I highly recommend it for casual co-op.

 

From an AskLemmy question by @SVcross@lemmy.world

Link to Lemmy World Post

 

EDIT: Submarine power transportation is indeed on the list

Not transoceanic, but there are two projects currently proposed that will -- when constructed -- break the current record for the "longest undersea power transmission cable" (a record currently held by the North Sea Link at 720 km, or 450 miles.)

One of these projects is the Xlinks Morocco-UK Power Project which aims to lay 3,800 km (2,400 miles) of cable and sell Morocco's solar power to England.

There is, as of yet, not enough cable in the world to even begin this project. The company proposing the project is building factories to produce this cable.

The other is the Australia-Asia Power Link, which aims to provide Australian solar power to Singapore using a 4,500 km (2,800 miles) undersea cable.

Where the Xlinks project ran into a "not enough cable in the world" problem, Sun Cable's AAPL has apparently been running into a "not enough money in the world" problem, as it has repeatedly gotten into trouble with its investors.

EDIT: But also, storage is scaling up

@ProfessorGumby@midwest.social provided a fantastic link to a lot of energy storage mediums that are already in use in various grids across the world. These include (and the link the professor provided gives an excellent short summary on each)

  • Pumped hydroelectric
  • Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES)
  • Flywheels
  • Supercapacitors
  • And just plain batteries

Also, this wasn't in the Gumby's answer, but Finland's Vatajankoski power plant uses a hot sand battery during its high-demand, low-production hours.

Hydrogen is projected to grow

@Hypx@kbin.social noted that hydrogen has advantages no other energy storage medium possesses: duration of storage and ease of piping/shipping. This is probably why numerous governments are investing in hydrogen production, and why Wood Mackenzie projects what looks like a 200-fold increase in production by the year 2050. (It's a graph. I'm looking at a graph, so I am only estimating.)

 

I have questions about this event.

First of all,

Democratically Elected

As the first-ever democratically elected leader of the UAW, Fain, a long-time union member himself, has taken a more confrontational approach to negotiations than his predecessors — including filming himself throwing Big Three automaker proposals in the trash.

What was the process before? Was it worse?

Has UAW been a sleeping giant this whole time on account of its leadership selection process?

Stand Up Strikes

But the strike won't involve all of the nearly 150,000 union members who work at the three automakers walking off their jobs en masse.

Instead, workers at three Midwest auto plants — a General Motors assembly plant in Wentzville, Missouri, a Stellantis assembly plant in Toledo, Ohio, and part of a Ford plant in Wayne, Mich. -- were the first to walk off the job under UAW president Shawn Fain's "stand up strike" strategy.

Are stand up strikes common? Do they win concessions?

 

I want get myself an official diagnosis on ADHD and an answer regarding whether I'm autistic.

Typically, a "10 minute test" takes me several hours. I spend a great deal of time contemplating the questions, filled with indecision. So I want to fill out the test before I even get to the psychologist's office.

Which is why I plugged "official ADHD test" into a search engine, and got overwhelmed by the choices. And my main questions are:

  • do some websites offer a test they inaccurately describe as the official test? (If so, do those show up high on search results?)
  • do some websites offer the official test... and also augment the test with extra resources that help a cripplingly indecisive person answer more efficiently? (That would save me time.)
 

From an AskLemmy post [link here] by @TehBamski@lemmy.world

 

Posted September 21st, 2018 on blog.reedsy.com

 

Another prompt from the reedsy list. From September 21st, 2018.

 

From blog.reedsy.com, September 21st, 2018.

 

One of the prompts on this list here is

"Describe an everyday item as if it's magic."

is vaguely similar to my cyberpunk prompt.

Which makes me feel like I'm kinda reinventing the wheel here.

Plus, the lists I am talking about are enormous! It would take years for us to run out of prompts from them. Definitely a good way to keep the community's pulse going until the prompt posting process starts to happen more organically.

I'll be sure to hyperlink the source of the prompt in the body, (or in the case of reedsy, possibly the URL field.)

So what do you say? Shall we borrow prompts until we've gathered some steam?

 

Example:

Darren operated the mouse and keyboard, aware of them only as mundane extensions of himself, told his computer's web browser to establish a connection with the address called "Amazon." As if an online "marketplace" (powered by an ever evolving, manipulative artificial intelligence) bore any resemblance to the wilderness that used to cover the earth.

Especially when said stretch of wilderness was already a fraction of itself, eaten up for strip farming or land speculation by dozens of corporations driven by the same profit-seeking mindset that motivated Amazon itself: infinite growth.

Millions of microscopic lights flashed to show images of "products you might be interested in." Darren, like any other person, had to constantly relearn how to push past and ignore the suggestions. A subtle arms race between humans and the AI built by the rich to control the poor.

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