luciferofastora

@luciferofastora@feddit.org

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨i'm fucking devastated but there are no exception⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, I figured. I just found the contrast striking when my own church was the least segregated place I knew for most of my childhood.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨i'm fucking devastated but there are no exception⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  since the church is still the most racially segregated place in America

  Unrelated to the rest of your comment, I find this observation perplexing. In Germany, the church I went to had close ties to several African communities. I loved their joyful, passionate style of worship-parties, more than what I learned of other churches in Germany. The Africans I knew at that church (refugees) were some of the kindest, loveliest people I’ve known. I’d credit that as being one of the good things I took from my faith: Growing up in frequent contact with different cultures and in a spirit of appreciation, I wasn’t even conscious of the concept of racism.

  My mom once told me that, when she’d been babysitting a friendly couple’s son and pushing him in the stroller on a walk, she got evil looks from some people. For the longest time, I assumed that was just because it was apparent that we had come from different fathers and people thought we were both hers.

  In middle or high school, when I learned about it from history class, the concept seemed so alien to me, like a relic of the past… until I realised that my primary school had one black kid, who was bullied (and a bit violent at times, which I’d now attribute to trauma from fleeing an active warzone coupled with facing racism in a fairly conservative town) while my secondary school had none, mostly upperclass “white” with a few other “white”-adjacent (Italian, Russian) ethnicities.

  The idea that this childhood friend might have drawn evil looks because he was black hit me years later like a freight train of shattered childhood innocence.

  (As an aside, that friend once declared that he’s dark chocolate and I’m white chocolate and if that isn’t the sweetest thing, I don’t know what is.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Vibe management⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  My favourite quote about analytics:

  “A measure that becomes a target ceases to be a good measure.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, NaN implies there exists some value, it’s just not a numerical one. null days there is none at all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨An 82-year-old YouTuber grandma was raided by police and SWATs during her live stream last night where she plays Minecraft to raise money for her grandsons cancer. Authorities brought 20 police cars⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Of course, as soon as it is seen to be a false call, the person who did the call should be arrested as that’s illegal

  Proving that they weren’t genuinely concerned can be tough, and mistakenly calling the police (or emergency services in general) shouldn’t be punished or people will hesitate to call for help when they need it.

  But you’re right: there should be some recourse to abuse, if not criminal then civil. Of course, a lawsuit is a lot of work and possibly money you would pay up front, and there’s no guarantee that you’d actually see much money if the perpetrator is a basement-dwelling neet whose meagre pocket money is immediately spent on Gacha games, trading cards or those weird plastic figures with oversized heads that some people go crazy over.

  So maybe the state / police should instead pay compensation to the victim and, if it seems like a case of abuse, bring their own suit to potentially recover those damages from the caller. That would reduce the damage of mistakes, protect well-meaning callers from retribution and thus shift the cost for this security from the individual to the collective. It also allows an option to shift it back onto malicious individuals.

  Of course, the police response could be more measured too, and the whole thing is contingent on the justice of the judicial system, but the latter part is true of any system and the former applies to many things the police do anyway.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨history repeats itself once again⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  If he’s a demigod or otherwise high in the favour of some god or other, he might be less scared of particular gods. Hades wasn’t very popular among his brothers, so I could see Theseus being bolder with him.

  More significant is the human factor of who made up the respective stories and how they wanted to frame him: one as brave against Hades, the other as devout towards the god of parties. His legend won’t have been written by a single author trying to create a consistent character.

  Either way, he’s a cunt.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨history repeats itself once again⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Greek Gods and Demigods tend to be quite cruel and callous.

  But also, people in the past were generally very religious. They believed their stuff. Not necessarily the tales, but the general characterisation. Particularly if the powerful gods are “known” to be vindictive and vain, you probably don’t want to offend them by dismissing their commands.

  The whole origin of these superstitions was the desire to appease whatever anthropomorphised force was giving them trouble (weather, crop growth etc.), enticing it to treat them well and eventually expanded to trying to influence other things beyond (individual) human power (love, arts). If you genuinely believe that an angry god could make your life hell, it makes sense you would avoid angering them.

  Not that this makes Theseus less of a dick. It’s an indictment of their dickish religion as an extension of human dickery, and particularly with myths, there will have been a desire to defend wrongdoing and make up a convenient excuse why the hero in question had to do it and wasn’t actually that bad and it was really just the cruel gods.

  It’s not like the concept of “Deus Vult” has died out either. Still doesn’t excuse inventing some superhuman force to justify shit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨history repeats itself once again⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Can we justify creating a separate “Original Ship of Theseus” page for demonstration value?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨history repeats itself once again⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You brandish your ax. The guy takes a long look at the weapon with his squishy, rotting eyes and in a gargly voice he screams, “That’s the same ax that beheaded me!”

  Is he right?

  Does that grant it some additional symbolic power over him? Then, yes, I’ll gladly concede the point and chop him down again with “the same ax”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨what’s your best “nitric acid acts upon trousers” moment?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, with his house, he will have been very confident. With my current apartment, I’m glad at least three of the four light switches correspond to actual lights. No clue what the fourth one is supposed to toggle. No way in hell am I trusting the ground wire.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨what’s your best “nitric acid acts upon trousers” moment?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That “almost” is where the most interesting science happens.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨what’s your best “nitric acid acts upon trousers” moment?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think my grandpa once told me you could first touch ground, then load (or whatever it’s called in English) with the same hand and would be fine. Just make sure to let go of load first or you’ll ground it through your body and that would be no fun.

  I never did try it. His confidence in some things bordered on recklessness, much to his wife’s horror at times. He was fairly healthy up until a stroke at 85, so maybe he knew what he was doing. Or maybe he just got lucky so often it becomes indistinguishable from skill.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨what’s your best “nitric acid acts upon trousers” moment?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  TIL. Thanks for the explanation (and your stories)!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨what’s your best “nitric acid acts upon trousers” moment?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I melted lead and poured sulphur on it, and instead of getting galena I got a whiff of Hell on my face.

  Was it supposed to form Galena and you messed up the process, or did you think it should but were wrong from the outset?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨what’s your best “nitric acid acts upon trousers” moment?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Brilliant writing, funny story told well, 10/10, would set my experiment on fire for.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When traffic comes to a standstill, drivers instantly shift left and right to create a Rettungsgasse, an emergency corridor right down the middle, so ambulances⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Unless they’re my MIL, who was confused by the sight and, upon getting it explained to her, loudly exclaimed she’d never done that.

  But I’m not sure if that was just an early spell of Dementia. I can’t fathom that she’s never seen it in fifty years of driving.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  🫂

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Put tha lime in tha coconut⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Hi, I’m here to remind anyone who knows that song from back then that I am nearly thirty, born in the late nineties and that kids turning 18 this year were born in 2008. Just in case you forgot your age.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How worried should we be about hantavirus right now?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  journalists are notoriously bad at interpreting WHO communications

  Or particularly good at making a sensational mountain that’ll get clicks out of a molehill. Gotta sell your stories, after all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Floyd Artifact⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s clearly some distance above the moon, judging by the curvature, so it might be capturing both the dark side and the earth.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Electricity explained⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  …the Spocker?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Teenis⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Just because Americans bastardise our pronunciation or spelling doesn’t make “Weiner” the correct spelling for that pronunciation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Teenis⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It doesn’t keep you free from all judgement, just meme judgement.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's already running⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I think you missed the part where the common user won’t activate the scary feature that allows them to run arbitrary apps. You, as a dev, are in the minority. The point is that you could make a great app almost nobody would (be able to) use because you didn’t pay Apple to let them run it.

  And push messages being an advanced feature is wild.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If I got in a collision with a car from the 70s with a car today, would not the 70s car win out since it would primarily be metal? If so why don't people buy more 70's cars?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I think that’s implied by “hose it out”: Your dad’s gone, all you can do is wash out the blood.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Real⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  A lot of choices in game making are mainly artistic freedom which at first people with a Science or Engineering background tend to shy away from “because it’s not how things are”.

  This is a chorus I like to repeat: Entertainment doesn’t need to be realistic to be fun, and I wish publishers / marketers / reviewers / players would acknowledge that more often and stop slapping the label “realistic” and the like on things that aren’t.

  There are sims that are grounded in careful study and attempt to model some part of reality as accurately as possible, but even they need to compromise, both to run on contemporary hardware and to balance it against playability. But they’re often complex, by virtue of modeling a complex reality, and not everyone’s cup of tea.

  But then you have things like Assassin’s Creed that regularly and heavily fudge history, not always in a bad way, but convey an impression of past societies that seems accurate, but glosses over things like the Spartan inequality and slavery or Viking brutality, painting a more “noble” and “heroic” picture than they each deserve.

  Again, there’s nothing wrong with making up interesting stuff, but people should be honest about it (as you are). Pointing out those artistic choices is an opportunity for learning things. Though the scale of an atmosphere is probably less significant than the scale of Viking slave trade, I still find it curious just how thin it actually is.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨No like really bro I’m just here for the silly shoes⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Karaoke is kinda like improv comedy: You need an easy, quick setup, then a punchline that’s also easily understood, but not too crude. High-brow comedy has a place, but a club generally isn’t it.

  For Karaoke, the song is the setup, so ideally you’ll pick a well-known one, while the punchline is the mediocre singing. Singing well is like telling an anecdote: interesting, for the right audience, but not what people go to Karaoke for. Take too long to get to the funny part and the anticipation is gone. Sing too poorly and it becomes unpleasant rather than funny.

  You can be good at Karaoke as a form of entertainment without strictly being an actual good singer, if you nail that balance and deliver it well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Struggle⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Pissing is its own reward

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon reads the ink blot⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not a mom, just someone who spent their afternoons after school daydreaming, dissociating, escaping to some place where I was important and could change things.

  hug

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"CEO said a thing!" journalism involves parroting the claims of a business leader or executive with absolutely no context, correction, or challenge whatsoever, no matter how elaborate the delusion⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  CEOs are lauded as visionary and it’s just not as engaging to read about crushed visions. Even if we disregard the whole “corporate talking pieces” and “journalists often stem from the social elite” parts, just the drive for engagement and clicks would explain a slant towards writing about great ideas rather than disappointing realism. How many people enjoy SciFi? How many love pedantic analyses why they’re absolutely unrealistic?

  I mean, I love pedantry (as well as the genre itself), but I’m a minority and fine with it – stories can be fun without being realistic and disbelief can be suspended in favour of entertainment.

  CEOs spouting bullshit shouldn’t be taken as stories for entertainment though, and much less printed in a serious manner. For them, critical disassembly should be the norm, mandatory even.