pjwestin
@pjwestin@lemmy.world
- Comment on Do you think that Edward Snowden is a hero? 2 weeks ago:
Sure, but you could say the same of Luigi Mangione and that isn’t slowing anyone down.
I mean, I would say you shouldn’t make him your hero either. Even if you think what he did was heroic, lone gunman assassins usually don’t turn out to be very stable, well adjusted people. Hell, Ted Kacynski has some good points about post-Industrial life, but that doesn’t mean he should be your hero.
I might suggest that if Glenn had ended up on MSNBC rather than the gutter for FOX News washouts, he’d be denouncing Snowden today rather than praising him.
Very possible, and nearly as disappointing. My point isn’t that he changed or became worse, just that I projected more of my ideals onto him than he actually shared.
I don’t think you can criticize Snowden because the guy who interviewed him ended up becoming a crank.
To be clear, I’m not. I’m saying that he has some views and beliefs that may lead him to disappoint you in the future. He mostly doesn’t comment much on politics outside of the surveillance state, but he has described himself as a libertarian, and said that he believes social security is a scam that needs to die. It seems clear that he is anti-authoritarian, but it’s very possible that, if he ever became more vocal about American politics, you’d learn a lot about him that would disappoint you.
- Comment on Do you think that Edward Snowden is a hero? 2 weeks ago:
What Snowden did was objectively good, and he did so at great personal cost, but you should be cautious about making any living person your hero. His politics seem to lean closer to libertarian nut-job than anything else, and it’s very possible he will disappoint you in the future. Case in point, Glen Greenwald broke the Snowden leaks, and I considered him one of my heros for a time,.but these days he sounds more like Tucker Carlson than anyone else. The point is, admire heroic actions, but don’t make people your heroes.
- Comment on In the US it's Father's Day weekend, so happy Father's Day not just to you American dads but to all you dads wherever you are. 3 weeks ago:
Honestly, Vader’s probably the best one up there, even before his face turn at the end of Jedi. When he finds out his son is alive, the first thing he does is seek him out and try to get him to join the family business. Sure, they have a tense conversation which doesn’t end…great, but at least he’s trying to reach out. Compare that to Worf, who seems to genuinely hate his kid and spends the better part of two shows pawning him off on other people, and it’s not even close.
- Comment on "If you can't afford to tip 40%, then don't eat out" 3 weeks ago:
Yeah, this is unfortunately why tipping culture can’t be phased out by individual restaurateurs trying to create change. Consumers would rather pay $20 for a meal and tip $4 than pay $22 upfront and not tip. I imagine it’s the same psychological principle that makes people think paying $99.99 is significantly better than $100. The only solution is eliminating the tipped minimum wage all together so that everyone gets the same minimum wage (also, increase the minimum wage at least 200% while you’re at it).
That being said, it’s not just the customers. Whenever a state is about to eliminate the tipped wage, the National Restaurant Association (yes, another evil NRA) spends millions trying to kill it. It happened here in MA a few years ago; they convinced both servers and customers to vote down a referendum to eliminate the tipped minimum wage, even though both of those groups were just subsidizing the restaurant owners.
- Comment on That's a no 5 weeks ago:
lol Good job imagining smoothly flowing traffic. You must not live near a major city, because lane closures on highways always devolve into the exact scenario you’re attempting to ignore.
Buddy, I live in fucking Boston. They shut down a land going into the Sumner every morning, and yeah, it’s slow, but it doesn’t get backed up unless some dipshit decides he doesn’t want to let anyone in.
I’ve been stop-and-go traffic probably literally hundreds of times and that’s EXACTLY how people merge: by blazing past the already stopped traffic and cram in right at the last second.
If someone is trying to merge into another lane while traveling 20 mph faster than the lane they’re merging into, sure, that’s unsafe. But doing that a mile before the lane ends is also unsafe. The problem you describing is just speeding.
The assholes rushing up to the end of a closed lane when traffic is already slow ARE NOT ZIPPER MERGING. They’re cutting in line.
This is what you fundamentally don’t understand about the situation; you two are not in the same line. You are in line to move forward. They are in line to enter your line. When traffic in the lane that’s closing is light, it might feel unfair they go in front of you, but that’s just how it works. The fastest way to resolve the situation is for everyone in the open lane to let one car from the closing lane go in front of them when the lane ends.
They’re further increasing traffic density,
No they aren’t. Traffic density is increasing because the number of cars is remaining the same while the volume of road is reducing. Density is going to increase no matter what, but if you handle that increased density in an organized manner, like having all the cars merge at the same time (AKA a fucking zipper merge), you can reduce the slowdowns the increased density causes.
That is why rolling stops happen
Traffic waves (I assume thats what you mean, since rolling stops make no sense in this context) happen when someone experiences an unexpected traffic pattern and has to stop short, causing the person behind them to stop short, and so on. If you want to reduce rolling stops, the best thing you can do is behave as predictably as possible. Having everyone merge at a predictable time, (like, for example, at the end of a lane) is one of the best things you can do to prevent traffic waves.
people WILL slow down once density reaches a certain point, and cramming a closed lane full is INCREASING DENSITY.
Literally the opposite is true; the same number of cars spread over two lanes have a lower density than those cars spread over one lane. That’s what density means; a rock has a higher density than air because it has more matter crammed into the same volume. The density of the traffic will eventually increase no matter what when the second lane ends, you’re just advocating for that to happen sooner and in a more chaotic manner because you feel like you’re getting cut in line.
This isn’t rocket science, yet a lot of you fuckwits are clearly still playing with crayons.
Let ye who understands the concept of density cast the first stone.
- Comment on That's a no 5 weeks ago:
I don’t know what to tell you, I’d literally never heard of," blocking the box," until you said it. Meanwhile, Gridlock is so ubiquitous and well understood that, as your quote points out, it’s a universal metaphor for a blockage or impass.
Also, if we just accept this vague use of gridlock, (I’ve never heard anyone is it for anything other than actual gridlock, but whatever) you realize that this quote explicitly states that some people use, “gridlock,” and, “traffic congestion,” interchangeably, meaning your claim thar, “gridlock,” means “stop and go traffic,” not, “contested traffic,” is flat out wrong, right?
- Comment on That's a no 5 weeks ago:
No, that’s definitely gridlock, blocking the box is just another name for it.
- Comment on That's a no 5 weeks ago:
If you’re talking about someone exiting their lane to enter a lane that’s about to close in order to get ahead, sure,.that’s kinda a dick move, but if you’re saying that someone should leave their lane early because the lane that’s ending isn’t very busy, no, that’s wrong. Even if the closing lane is going much faster, when that lane ends, the driver will have to slow down to match the speed of the other lane and wait to be let in. The driver behind him will catch up, and a zipper merge will develop. They’re not doing anything wrong, you just mad that they’re passing you.
Also, a lane can never be, “full,” just busy. You think they’re at fault because they’re trying to get into a lane that’ doesn’t have room for them, but actually you’re at fault because you’re not making room for them.
- Comment on Be The Sunshine ☀️ 5 weeks ago:
Depends. If traffic is light, they’re not going significantly faster than the speed of traffic in the other lane, or they’re going significantly slower than the car in front of them, yes, they’re an asshole. If traffic is relatively dense, they’re passing the right lane at a good speed, and they’re matching the speed of the car in front of them, no, everyone shouldn’t change lanes just because you think, “passing,” lane means, “drive as fast as I want regardless of traffic patterns,” lane.
Making everyone in front of you change lanes because you’ve decided the passing lane isn’t passing as fast as you’d like is just goint to create slowdowns behind you as you continually cause other cars to change lanes. Also, no matter what, if you’re following someone that closely at highway speeds, your an asshole. Flash your high beams if you wanna pass.
- Comment on That's a no 5 weeks ago:
I think you mean congestion. Gridlock is when cars attempt to cross an intersection during a green light even though there is too much traffic to pass completely, leaving them stranded mid-intersection when the light turns red, thereby blocking the perpendicular traffic from crossing the intersection when their light turns green (literally locking the grid).
- Comment on That's a no 5 weeks ago:
Not really. The traffic has to squeeze through the same number of lanes at some point.
Yeah, and the most efficient way to do that is for everyone to zipper merge at the same point. You can’t just have everyone decide over the course of two miles when they think it’s appropriate to start a zipper merge; that’s not a zipper merge, that’s just changing lanes, and it creates unpredictable traffic patterns that lead to congestion. The end of the lane is obviously the best fixed point for everyone to merge because A) you utilize both lanes as long as possible for optimal efficiency and B) even the most oblivious dumb-ass knows they need to change lanes when they run out of lane.
- Comment on Wild Ones 2 months ago:
I don’t think i could eat a whole house.
- Comment on Wild Ones 2 months ago:
Roaches infest your home and spread diseases. Butterflies live outside and spread pollen.
- Comment on American workers are tired of waiting. 2 months ago:
The best solution would be for Charlie Brown to kid Lucy and run the ball himself. (This is a metaphor for primarying sitting Democrats.)
- Comment on Your grammar lesson for today 2 months ago:
It is definitely not a grammatical issue, but it a good rule of thumb for writing, particularly academic writing. One of the first things that was drilled into me as an English major was to drop, “very,” and find a better adjective.
Also, yeah, a lot of these are very poor matches, especially without context, but one of my favorite things about the English language is that it is a very large, redundant language, but none of our words have the exact same connotation. Big, large, huge, enormous, gigantic, tremendous, mammoth, gargantuan, and humongous are all technically synonyms, but all conjure different images in the reader.
But yeah, telling someone to say, “fragile,” instead of, “very weak,” is dumb, given they could mean, “delicate,” or, “feeble.” And if you’re not writing a term paper, just say, “very.”
- Comment on pegging order 2 months ago:
Can’t tell if the title typo is an intentional joke or your autocorrect’s, “learned words,” are telling on you.
- Comment on The Future is Now! 2 months ago:
Well, Boston Dynamics has some pretty incredible robot dogs, but they’re probably going to use them on us if we ever demand a living wage or Medicare for All, so we’re still screwed.
- Comment on Who?¿ 2 months ago:
Blond Jesus has a way more toxic following than Historically Accurate Jesus.
- Comment on cool cool cool 2 months ago:
I don’t remember what being 6 months old was like either, but I’m told I screamed and shit myself the entire time, so maybe the experience actually wasn’t great.
- Comment on North America contains some of the longest continuous decididous forest records on the planet. 2 months ago:
Damn, it’s crazy that we let one guy decide these things. Seems like the kind of thing that should be determined by a large legislative body that holds the power over our nation’s budget and the ability to write laws. Weird we don’t have one of those.
- Comment on Hopefully, he will be 6 underground by that time. 4 months ago:
I did vote for her. I live in a comfortably Blue state, but I agreed to vote for her in solidarity with some of my swing-state friends that didn’t want to vote for her.
As for strategy, well, Kamala’s entire strategy was, “our base is already going to vote for us, so we’re going to instead pursue disaffected Republicans by campaigning with Lize Cheney and Barbara Bush.” That choice depressed the turnout of her own base and cost her the election. Motivating Democratic voters instead of chasing imaginary moderate Republicans would have been a better strategy, and it probably had a bigger impact than the Gaza protest votes.
Anyway, let’s just say you’re right, and the electorate is full of childish leftist dummies that won’t vote for Harris because they’re idiots that can’t see the big picture. Well, then what? You can piss and moan about these voters all you want, but you seem to think they were the deciding factor in 2024, so what are the Democrats gonna do to win them over? It seems unlikely that all of these people you think are idiots that can’t reason or forecast will be radically different in the next two years, so are the Democrats going to do something different in 2028, or have you just resigned to losing now?
- Comment on Hopefully, he will be 6 underground by that time. 4 months ago:
It’s getting hard to tell if they even want to win. Even a year ago it might be plausible to argue that centrism is a smart strategy, but at this point, with victories like Mamdani and Mejia, it’s just demonstrably wrong. Hell, Platner is still leading Mills in Maine even after the whole, “having a Nazi tattoo,” thing. If the Democrats are still pursuing centrism going into 2028, then they have to admit they would prefer losing to fascists than adding progressives to their tent.
- Comment on Hopefully, he will be 6 underground by that time. 4 months ago:
Honestly, I’m not even sure that’s the right term for it. She was to the right of most centrist liberals on Gaza, immigration, and even guns.
- Comment on Hopefully, he will be 6 underground by that time. 4 months ago:
This continues to be the stupidest, least productive way to think about elections. The lesser of two evils argument may be true, but it failed to motivate people to vote for Kamala in 2024 (or Hillary in 2016, for that matter). You can bitch about protest votes or an apathetic electorate all you want, but at the end of the day, you don’t win elections if you don’t get votes, and, “yEaH, bUt TrUmP iS wOrSe,” didn’t get votes. If the Democrats once again run a candidate who doesn’t reflect their base and once again lose the election, it will once again be their fault for repeating a losing strategy that produces losing candidates.
- Comment on Hopefully, he will be 6 underground by that time. 4 months ago:
however, enough of the protest votes would have swung the election in her favor.
I have never seen a single piece of data to back up a claim like that. If you have, I’d love to see it
they didn’t all protest the vote. I would say most of them just didn’t vote because they couldn’t be bothered.
I would guess this is true, but this is a failure of the candidate, not the electorate. In a country without mandatory voting or a national holiday for elections, motivating your base is extremely important, especially when you base is working class people who are less likely to be able to take time off to vote. Even ignoring her centrist economic platform and genocide support, her strategy was explicitly to target disaffected Republicans instead of energizing her own base, and that strategy failed. Kamala and the incompetent consultants she surrounded herself with own this loss, and whining about the voters won’t change that.
- Comment on Annon punches a Nazi 4 months ago:
I keep thinking about how much this kid rules. He warns the other kid instead of suckering punching him, understands and accepts the consequences of his actions before he takes them, then acts without hesitation. Not only does he punch fascists, he does it with principles.
- Comment on i mean 4 months ago:
Yeah, I played the N64 version of Rainbow 6, and that game seemed to want me to regularly switch between joystick and D-pad, so I guess some 3rd party developers didn’t get the memo, but you’re not supposed to design games that way. Technically the Sega Saturn had a joystick on one of it’s controllers, but you could also get a D-pad only controller. My friend had that Mario party glove, but we wouldn’t let him use it, since it was an unfair advantage. He had to rip the skin off his hands just like the rest of us.
- Comment on i mean 4 months ago:
I just left two long comments about this, but tl;dr, there’s no DualShock without Nintendo inventing this derpy thing first. DualShock was an industry defining design, but they were refining the functionality Nintendo created.
- Comment on i mean 4 months ago:
The N64 invented 3D platforming with this controller, which is why Mario 64 puts things like Crash Bandicoot and Laura Croft to shame; they’re creation of the C-buttons allowed for a free moving camera that could be used simultaneously with the joystick, which no one else could do at the time. Here’s an old promotional video for the DualShock where a developer even says, “What I’m really excited about is that we can do this on Sony, we don’t have to go do it on Nintendo.”
Nintendo invented an entirely novel system of inputs to give unprecedented control over a 3D environment. Sony looked at what Nintendo was doing and found a way to simplify those controls, and it was a great design; it’s the template for every modern controller. But criticizing Nintendo for not taking the time to, “reflect or refine,” the design, even though the design was a groundbreaking achievement in game development at a time when there was literally a new dimension being added to games, is ridiculous.
- Comment on i mean 4 months ago:
It wasn’t impossible, it just hadn’t been done yet. 3D games were a new concept, and no one was really sure how to implement them. A joystick made the most sense for moving a character through a 3D world, but the D-pad would work better for pretty much every game that had been developed up until that point. The Sega Saturn and the Playstation both prioritized the D-pad; they both launched with D-pad controllers (the Saturn had a joystick-optional controller, but it’s games could be played with the D-pad). The drawback to their designs was camera controls; their games either needed a fixed camera (like Crash Bandicoot) or camera switching (like Laura Croft), where you alternate using the D-pad to, “look,” or, “walk.”
The N64 controller’s design was basically a, “best of both worlds,” senerio. Hold it one way and it was a standard D-pad with 6 buttons. Hold it the other and it’s a joystick controller with a small D-pad (the c-buttons) and three regular buttons (A, B, and the Z-Trigger). That design made Mario 64 the industry standard for 3D platforming; the c-buttons could control a fluid, free moving camera without giving up access to the joystick. It was revolutionary and set a new standard for 3D gaming…for about a year. Then Sony invented the Duelshock controller, which pretty much every modern controller is based on. But for a while, the N64 controller was the only controller capable of fully utilizing the joystick and the D-pad, and years later, it gets ridiculed for being first.