LovableSidekick
@LovableSidekick@lemmy.world
- Comment on How would a consecutive 2nd term trump differ from the current non-consecutive 2nd term trump? 48 minutes ago:
It would require time travel.
- Comment on Why is deportation done instead of imprisonment or making people become documented? In other words, why does deportation exist? 51 minutes ago:
For one thing, sending people away is cheaper than feeding, housing and guarding them for who knows how long.
- Comment on Is it possible to learn new things with no external stimuli at all? 52 minutes ago:
Thanks! Longtime Asimov fan but this is the first time I’ve ever read this story. Good one.
- Comment on Is it possible to learn new things with no external stimuli at all? 1 hour ago:
- Comment on Why do some laws exist if everyone is expected to just break them? 4 hours ago:
Whatever, it’s not important.
- Comment on Why do some laws exist if everyone is expected to just break them? 20 hours ago:
Thanks, deleted. I read it wrong - it says “almost never”.
- Comment on In the dark, does anyone else sense things but not see them? 20 hours ago:
Do you mean just sensing things that are really there, or also, other things?
- Comment on Does anyone here speak Portuguese? 20 hours ago:
My mother in law, who was a California kindergarten teacher, spoke Portuguese from having lived in Brazil for several years. She’s dead now.
- Comment on Why do smokers specifically seem to be disproportionally bad for littering? 2 days ago:
Ron Popeil died before he could invent a pocket ashtray.
- Comment on Is anyone planning on doing anything about trump creating a concentration camp at guantanamo bay? 2 days ago:
I dunno, what’s your plan?
- Comment on It's coming 4 days ago:
Would anybody like some toast?
- Comment on Aardwoof 1 week ago:
Basically an 80s punk dog.
- Comment on Video Game History Foundation's long-awaited digital library will be available online next week 1 week ago:
This organization fared much better than the Software Preservation Network, which the US Copyright Office recently barred from lending out copies of retro games themselves. It’s a lot easier to access material about games than the games themselves.
- Comment on I feel stupid asking this. But cities and countries who have smog and a major amount of air pollution. Why doesn't the wind blow it away or move it overtime? Is there that much pollution? 1 week ago:
Wind blows smog away and disperses it to where it isn’t noticeable, but sometimes the air gets polluted faster than the local winds can carry it away.
- Comment on Wobble Wobble 1 week ago:
I liked the image of the Titanic nosing down into the water, and people up on the stern end saying, “If we’re “sinking” how come we/re up so high?”
- Comment on Does the US really have no instruments in case a newly elected president immediatelly and openly exposes he's a nazi? 1 week ago:
I think the US is beyond fucked already. The fact that Bonespurs could get elected president not once but twice is a clear sign that America’s collective intelligence has dropped below Idiocracy level. A complex society can withstand a lot of stupidity as long as there are enough people who can keep the opportunists in their place, but that’s not true anymore. I’m not just talking about people who voted for him, I’m including the several million people who voted for Biden in 2020 but refused to vote for Harris in 2024. They were the safety net that decided to fold itself up and go home. We’re done.
- Comment on Does the US really have no instruments in case a newly elected president immediatelly and openly exposes he's a nazi? 1 week ago:
- Comment on Does the US really have no instruments in case a newly elected president immediatelly and openly exposes he's a nazi? 1 week ago:
He’s just a symptom of the real problem, which is that he exposed himself as a nazi a long time ago and still got reelected.
- Comment on Does the US really have no instruments in case a newly elected president immediatelly and openly exposes he's a nazi? 1 week ago:
Yes, impeachment by Congress. In the opposite direction a President can veto laws passed by Congress, which takes a bigger part of Congress to override. The problem is when Congress also goes nazi at the same time. In that case we’re fucked. In fact I think Article 97 sub-paragraph E13/W even says, “In such instance, we shall be Fuckt.”
- Comment on Is there anything my girlfriend and I have to consider when traveling to America based on our skin differences? 1 week ago:
America is a big place, and how people will react to you depends entirely on where you go. Racial incidents increased after Trump took office in 2016 and they probably will again now, but in general you’re totally safe.
- Comment on If AI spits out stuff it's been trained on 1 week ago:
“All your ideas are ours and you owe us money for thinking them” is actually a good summary of anti-AI sentiment.
- Comment on If AI spits out stuff it's been trained on 1 week ago:
But a living human artist also learned to draw dancing cows and roombas on the moon that way. It just didn’t take thousands.
- Comment on If AI spits out stuff it's been trained on 1 week ago:
My question is why this logic doesn’t apply to anybody who learns about anything and goes on to use it in their work without explicit permission.
- Comment on Sand Boa 1 week ago:
Needs a tattoo that says “Real snake, do not touch!”
- Comment on WTF 1 week ago:
Uh-oh, this is the big one. I’m comin’ to join ya Elizabeth!
- Comment on David Lynch, visionary filmmaker behind 'Twin Peaks' and 'Mulholland Drive,' dies at 78 2 weeks ago:
In tribute I’m gonna have a slice of cherry pie and a cup of piping hot coffee. Who’s with me?
- Comment on U.S. Employee engagement sinks to 10-year low 2 weeks ago:
Headhunters are always looking for software devs. After talking to a contractor I worked with about the ins and outs of it, I just called up an agency and they immediately had me come in for an interview. Nowadays I imagine it’s mostly done online. Over the years I got gigs from multiple agencies. Eventually they started calling me up to ask if I was available or would be soon, which made finding a new job very simple. They do like to keep you going if you’re good, but when I finished a contract and moved to a different agency for the next one there never seemed to be any hard feelings. To some extent some of them try to do the we’re a family routine - and I think the local ones genuinely mean well - just don’t expect anything more than a paycheck from them.
One piece of advice I would give is finish every job - don’t duck out of a contract because somebody calls you with another offer. Consider yourself unavailable. In fact, personally I found I was happier not even looking for another job until I actually finished my current one. The couple times when I got a new gig say a month in advance, I had a really hard time slogging through those last few weeks because the thought of starting the new thing was way more interesting. Contract work pays so well a few weeks of time off between gigs doesn’t matter. Just plan on some unpaid time so you don’t overspend. Anyway, I think it’s a great way to go and I wish you the best!
- Comment on U.S. Employee engagement sinks to 10-year low 2 weeks ago:
I’ve never been able to understand “employee engagement”. I became disengaged only a few years into my career, when it became very obvious that the whole corporate “we’re like family” pitch was pure bullshit. Yeah, like a family that kicks kids out the door when it has a couple bad quarters - a family that you’re supposed to love and go the extra mile for but not the other way around. As a software dev I became a contractor as soon as I learned about that way to make a living, and the few times I did accept full-time jobs it was with no expectation of anything but a paycheck. I don’t know how people actually believes the company sees them as anything more than a tool and a liability they don’t want. I figured out how much benefits are actually worth and how much more I could make hourly as a contractor, pay for my own insurance and afford unpaid time off. It’s really pretty simple math. “But you have no job security!” LOL neither do you. Getting new contract jobs routinely took 2-3 weeks, no big deal. Clearly this is just one niche in the whole working world, and I consider myself lucky to have gone into a field where I could live that way. But honestly. believing the go-team-go bullshit really doesn’t make sense.
- Comment on What is currently holding us back from mining in space? 3 weeks ago:
Hard to call any of the various reasons the biggest. Space travel is an evolving discipline requiring vast amounts of money, step-by-step engineering progress, learning through practical experience which takes time, political commitment, and constantly changing public opinion. In theory we already know how to do it but in practice we don’t know all the challenges we’ll run into, and therefore have not solved yet. The long-term ROI is unquestionably huge but unknown. For example, platinum is currently worth almost $1000 USD/oz, while aluminum is about 8 cents. If platinum became as available as aluminum this would radically change, and we would discover new uses for platinum that haven’t been imagined yet because it’s so expensive - nobody would think of making pie pans or window frames out of it, but physically it might be far superior. Its properties haven’t been explored nearly as fully as the properties of aluminum, but they would be, and nobody knows the result. Maybe there’s an easy way to do antigravity using platinum. Whatever - the point is we don’t know, but that’s just one specific metal. Opening up whole new sets of possibilities always creates progress.
- Comment on Is it wrong to not have a disabled child solely to avoid forcing the child to suffer their whole life? 3 weeks ago:
If “not have” means abort, I don’t think it’s ever wrong not to have a baby. People should only have kids if they want them and can commit to being good parents for the long haul. “Maybe it will save our marriage” and “God says so” are equally shitty reasons to have kids.
