hraegsvelmir
@hraegsvelmir@ani.social
- Comment on How do trains save fuel when they literally park on the tracks and block multiple intersections, with over a hundred vehicles steady burning gas all around waiting for the train to fucking move? 9 hours ago:
Pretty sure their point is that, in aggregate, trains are a much more fuel efficient and cost effective than transporting the same goods a comparable distance in trucks. The amount that some people burn idling is insignificant in comparison to these savings over longer distances and higher volumes of goods transported. Given this, the transportation companies are unlikely to switch away from rail transport any time soon.
Honestly, your problem is just shitty planning by your local community if you can get trapped without means of escape while freight moves through, and they are suggesting you guys might want to invest in building a way around this with some of that fancy bridge, overpass or tunnel technology we have these days. Why would anyone else involved inconvenience themselves and others that rely on the rail to do business, just because your locality refuses to address an issue that just impacts you and the folks that live around you?
This is like arguing against having an electric grid anywhere, just because you frequently lose power in hurricanes when trees knock down the power lines, while ignoring the fact your town could literally just bury them, as they do to address this problem in many other places.
- Comment on Do YOU consider Kanji difficult? 10 hours ago:
You can do this to an extent with kanji, as well, it’s just something that really only gets easier the more you study Japanese, though. When you start getting more proficient, you can usually have a pretty good shot at guessing the pronunciation and something of the meaning in context, but the difficulty is certainly really front-loaded.
Of course, then you have some kanji that just have 100 different readings and you just have to go memorize those, so there’s certainly room for improvement.
- Comment on Why don;t most of us Americans only need like one foreign language to pass high school? Why not make it mandatory for like 3 or 4 languages?Would that not give us the upper hand when traveling? 1 day ago:
3 seems pretty reasonable to me, assuming you start the lessons much earlier in schooling than we currently do now. Perhaps not mandatory, but I think requiring 2 and having the option for more is reasonable enough. There are plenty of countries that begin English lessons in what would be elementary schools, then add a second European language in middle school alongside continued English classes, and have the option to do a 3 language for students who are interested/would need them for their academic plans.
Of course, if it was just two years of four different languages, that would be a waste of money, IMO. If kids started doing Spanish in 4th grade and were expected to keep that up through high school graduation, and could add German or Russian or something in middle school, it seems reasonable enough to me. You won’t be cranking out kids fluent in several languages that way, but I would expect you could get much better results than we currently do in the first foreign language, plus give them a decent foundation in the second, should they need it/decide to continue learning after 6 years of classes.
- Comment on Why don;t most of us Americans only need like one foreign language to pass high school? Why not make it mandatory for like 3 or 4 languages?Would that not give us the upper hand when traveling? 1 day ago:
Honestly, it probably comes down to taxes. Many Americans are rabidly opposed to any proposal that will increase their taxes by any amount, regardless of the reason, and a lot of school district funding is based on local property taxes. Coincidentally, home- and business-owners who would have to pay that increased property tax are able to have an outsized influence on local politics. No politician is going to raise that proposal for funding foreign language classes.
As sad as it is, learning to speak another language just isn’t seen as that important by many. They don’t need to use anything other than English in their daily lives, and many citizens don’t even have a passport, much less travel abroad.
In addition, aside from Spanish, many areas just lack the resources you would need to be able to develop your language skills from “I get good grades in my highschool German class” to “I can actually use the language in normal interactions with native speakers.”
Think of your local bookstore and libraries. How many if them have a section of books you can just browse in a language other than English or Spanish? For anything beyond Spanish, how often do you see or hear another foreign language? Would you be confident you could find enough conversation partners to use that language even semi-frequently?
Yes, the internet opens up a lot of doors in terms of resources, but you need to be personally invested in learning the language to make them work. Unless there’s a community with great reading lists at various levels for your target language, just searching and browsing bookstore websites aimed at native speakers is kind of tough for being able to just browse and find something that catches your eye and seems on your level, especially compared to just browsing the shelves in a brick and mortar shop. Also, those books are generally much more expensive than English books, for obvious reasons.
Yes, I would be hyped to learn my local school district was going to start teaching the kids 4 languages from elementary through high school, but it’s just going to be wasted money if you don’t have the auxiliary elements outside the classroom in place, or a plan to at least put them in place while rolling out these classes. Otherwise, you’re just going to get a bunch of yokels coming out of the woodwork to say “My boy don’t need to speak nothing but 'American!” And complaining because little Billy ordered 4 books off Amazon.de and it ran them 120€, only to show up and have Billy realize these books are way harder than he thought they would be and he actually needs to order more books with simpler language to get started.
Yes, little Billy could pirate the shit out of the books and stuff he needs and find a discord chat or forum to get in free practice with speaking and writing, but not all students will be motivated enough and tech savvy enough for us to assume this will be a viable method to get results in general.
- Comment on Breaking: BAD 2 weeks ago:
I don’t hate it, I just never got into it. I watched a few episodes which didn’t really do it for me, and I just didn’t really feel any need to continue it.
- Comment on She's not wrong 3 weeks ago:
Mainline SMT games are a rather different beast. They don’t have any of the social sim elements of the Persona games, and tend to be old-school first-person dungeon crawlers, with an emphasis on exploration, the acquisition and fusing of demons, and developing a balanced team of demons to face off against the enemies and bosses you encounter in the dungeons. They also frequently feature a good/neutral/evil alignments that offers different endings, including different final bosses, depending on which alignment you wind up with as a result of the choices you make throughout the game. They’re a lot of fun if you’re into those sort of things.
- Comment on Anon reads Into the Wild 3 weeks ago:
Yeah, I haven’t read his book and have no strong opinions on him one way or another, but when the book came out, I remember him being presented to us as if he were some sort of spiritual or philosophical luminary to emulate, and it’s always rubbed me the wrong way.
- Comment on Make sure you know what your kid is getting themselves into 4 weeks ago:
A few months ago, the local dispensary was out of the vape I would normally buy, so I tried a new one instead. Took a hit, thought “Well, guess I’m going to bed right now, then,” and laid in bed. That thing hit me so hard, at one point I had to check the news on my phone to confirm whether there’d been another earthquake, or if I’d just ripped a massive fart and not realized.
- Comment on me btw 4 weeks ago:
Because you can improve and refine your technique. For example, I no longer need to open up duckduckgo to figure out what that one command was that worked for me 6 months ago. Now, I just type away. ctrl-r, ffmpeg, and bam, right there in my shell history, all I need to do is change the inputs and outputs.
- Comment on How come in American classrooms they make another language an elective. Why not teach our kids as many languages possible that way if we go somewhere we will kind of have uper hand? 4 weeks ago:
I don’t think it’s an impossible task to get students quality language instruction that gets them on track to proficiency in a given foreign language. It’s doable, and people manage to do so all the time. The issue is more that people often don’t see the benefits of it in their daily lives where English suffices for everything, and they most certainly don’t see enough of a benefit that they wouldn’t collectively lose their shit over a proposed property tax hike intended to adequately fund foreign language instruction in the local school district. They’ll gladly fork over a few million dollars in tax money to trick out the football field, but to enough new teachers to have kids start learning French in 3rd grade and continue until graduation? Not a chance in hell. Ditto for French-language media purchases for the school library, or any other auxiliary purchases that would facilitate a genuine attempt at teaching and learning a foreign language.
- Comment on How come in American classrooms they make another language an elective. Why not teach our kids as many languages possible that way if we go somewhere we will kind of have uper hand? 4 weeks ago:
Even for a wealthier state like New York, often thought of as more progressive on stuff like this, the actual requirements are a joke. You can just take a year of a language in 8th grade, pass the local test that meets the curriculum’s criteria, and never touch it again all the way to graduation from high school. At least when I was in school, they would at least try to dissuade you from not continuing it at least one more year to get on track for some sort of special diploma, but you could just opt out if your parents gave the okay to your guidance counselor.
- Comment on Hopefully, he will be 6 underground by that time. 5 weeks ago:
How did has that big picture thinking worked out for them? Considering they couldn’t take the presidency or either chamber of Congress, it doesn’t look like it’s worked so swell. Egads, could it be that the holy DNC has screwed up and it’s their fault? Heavens, no, it must be the ignorant peasants, too feeble of mind to understand the profound strategems of the DNC.
- Comment on Hopefully, he will be 6 underground by that time. 5 weeks ago:
Eh, I’m sure they’ll be back to have this same conversation again in a couple years when the DNC pushes another candidate to drag the party further right and then blames leftists not voting for the candidate who delivers none of what the democratic base asks for for their lose that go of it, too. Clearly, years out from a primary is not the time to criticize the party either, I must just want Trump or his appointed successor to run away with it, again.
- Comment on Hopefully, he will be 6 underground by that time. 5 weeks ago:
I’m sorry to learn your inability to parse meaning from text extends to even text you yourself has written. Maybe you should seek treatment.
The text you quoted essentially absolves the Democrats and DNC of all responsibility, placing the onus on leftists to either put together someone with enough money and backing to displace the entrenched political parties who dominate our politics, or shut up and take whatever is offered by the DNC lest they become the new whipping boy, yet again. You’re already gearing up to blame leftists for the DNC tossing the next election, and you don’t even know who their candidates will be, or what platform they will run on. 2028 could be the corpse of Nancy Pelosi running on how mean people are to Israel, and shouldn’t we let them just massacre a bit more to vent some stress, and you’ve already laid the groundwork to blame leftists if they don’t fall in line to vote for the DNC with your asinine “flip” or the original image, which conveniently absolves the DNC of any responsibility for their own repeated failures to win elections.
- Comment on Hopefully, he will be 6 underground by that time. 5 weeks ago:
No, you want to play this dumb game of Schröndinger’s leftists, where we are simultaneously a group too small to merit making any concessions to, yet also such a massive force that our not voting for Dems apparently decides elections all on their own, thus fair grounds to single out for extra scolding this go around of it. I’m just pointing out the DNC leadership is suspiciously holding pistols of the same caliber as the weapons that put those nice holes in their feet. We got here with them insisting they know what their constituents really want better than even the constituents themselves do, and it worked out swimmingly for them the last go of it.
I’m calling you out specifically for engaging in such stupid and disingenuous activity with your nonsensical flip. The DNC are not the last bastion of political genius in this country, and managing to lose the last election should be an indictment of their strategies and platforms employed. Going to the right to become the GOP-lite didn’t work, so obviously, the solution is to browbeat leftists and whip out some non sequitur about them raising their own candidate with the funds to beat the entrenched political establishment, rather than maybe considering for even a fraction of a second that the DNC’s own strategies and their tendency to cave and give the GOP everything they want on a platter while also gaslighting constituents about key factors like how well the economy is doing might have a tiny bit to do with their inability to win elections or get policy pushed through.
But yes, it’s the leftist who have ruined everything by not voting for Kamala last go of it. Just a thought, but if any single group is so powerful as to singlehandedly decide the outcome of national elections like the blue MAGA brigade has been whining about leftists doing on here since the elections finished, wouldn’t it make a bit more sense to actually listen to those people and throw them a bone on occasion? But no, it’s clearly the leftists fault for not waiting their turn when Kamala had seniority in the party, and they need to be punished and ridiculed further, even if it costs the Democrats more elections.
- Comment on Hopefully, he will be 6 underground by that time. 5 weeks ago:
Ah, yes, the DNC, famous for having worked out so well in steering the party away from being nigh-indistinguishable from their main opposition. An excellent position from which to mock those dissatisfied with, let me check my notes, ah yes, how the DNC itself shat the bed in the last elections.
- Comment on Young gamers in Japan may not be forming the same attachment to Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest because modern dev cycles are as long as their childhood, users theorize - AUTOMATON WEST 1 month ago:
It could also have something to do with the fact that, for a 20 year old person, none of the games in the series that have come out during their lifetime have been the fan favorites. Even amongst die-hard Final Fantasy fans, you don’t get people losing their minds over FF XIII the way they do for VI, VII, IX, or X. For most of the recent games, the most effusive praise I’ll hear for them is that they aren’t that bad once you get used to the systems and figure out how the game works.
- Comment on i mean 1 month ago:
The N64 beat the PS1 to the joystick by two years, a
It came out about a year and half after the N64. The N64 June 23rd 1996, and all other markets saw a later release. The first DualShock was released in November 1997. and I would say the extra time to reflect and refine the design was well worth it, and something Nintendo should have considered as well.
Being first to the market with a new concept isn’t always great if it means you rush a subpar product out the door to try and beat the competition to it.
- Comment on i mean 1 month ago:
It’s not just Zoomers, I grew up when the big systems were PSX and N64. I thought it then, and it still strikes me as valid, that controller looks as though it were designed by some entity entirely unfamiliar with human anatomy. The fact that you could figure out what they intended is ultimately irrelevant as to whether or not it was a good design. The dual shock came out a year after the N64, with a much more comfortable to use anh intuitive design, and I think it’s telling that pretty much every major console since has used a controller that takes far more after the Dual Shock design in terms of placement and orientation of the joysticks in respect to other buttons.
- Comment on in all fairness italian cuisine is a relatively recent invention 2 months ago:
In fairness, a lot of people will only experience or know what’s brought out as quintessential English for at holidays or other special occasions, which isn’t always the best thing there is to offer from the cuisine. It’s something else entirely if you actually go there for a couple of weeks and pay attention to all the delicious stuff you’ll eat while there.
Plus, you get plenty of weirdos from every country who seem to have Stockholm syndrome with the most bland/boring aspects of their cuisine and will wholeheartedly recommend their absolute most terrible dish as the pinnacle of their country’s cuisine. I have a coworker from Ireland who won’t touch a spice bag if his life depended on it, but will tell anyone who listens how wonderful beans on buttered brown bread is and that it should be more common everywhere.
- Comment on What challenge from a game isn't worth completing and what challenge from a game is worth completing? 2 months ago:
I draw the line at whether it’s something that can be done naturally, as a result of playing the game and enjoying it enough to put in that much time. I’ll entertain trying to 100% a game that has an achievement to farm 1000 of some herb, if it’s something that I’ll just come across in due time by making full use of all the game mechanics, and presumably see some form of in-game payoff for my efforts. I’ll instantly become content with just seeing the credits if an achievement to get a similar quantity of something is just an excuse to pad play time by making me grind some monster drops just for the sake of getting that last achievement.
- Comment on Fake moo 2 months ago:
Well, clearly, you grind up beef chuck to make burgers, Chuck is a diminutive form of Charlie, ergo the libs at McDonald’s have been supplementing their burgers with the cultivated remains of Charlie Kirk. The fake moo is all a plan to make everyone go woke by tricking them into cannibalism. Where’s my poster board and red string?
- Comment on E gjithë bota është shqiptare 2 months ago:
From all the Albanians that live in my neighborhood, I would sum them up saying if depressing brutalist buildings were to be personified, they’d probably be Albanian. Aside from the guys sitting outside the Albanian coffee shop that seem to be loving the life of drinking espresso and chain smoking, they seem kind of perpetually miserable. They do have some really good food, though, and the country itself looks like it has some pretty spots.
Honestly, the language itself seems pretty cool, too. Despite being a natural language, it manages to look like someone’s fantasy conlang when you see it written down.
Their beer has been terrible, from what I’ve tried of it. Tasted like musty bread and always seems to have free-floating goop in the bottle that should have been filtered out.
- Comment on How to reduce the crime rate to 0 2 months ago:
At least they haven’t started incorporating Judge Dredd side stories into their politics. Only a matter of time before one of them reads the Dark Judges stories and decides being tough on crime means killing everyone.
- Comment on 3 months ago:
It’s a standard letter in Icelandic, so there are probably plenty of fonts incorporating thorn, even if not everyone uses them. Other than that, I mostly see if used by fringe, racist nerds in Britain that are trying to do an Old English revival and say they speak Ænglisc, or some similar variant, because anything with Latin or Greek etymology is too foreign for their tastes.
Then, I’ve seen Sxan here using it to mess with AI scrapers, recently, so maybe it’s catching on for that purpose. Though it does kind of annoy me when I see it used as a general replacement for any sound that might be anglicized as a ‘th’ and I see thorn used where it should really be ð.
- Comment on Banana 5 months ago:
The taste isn’t that bad, but on its own, I’d give the common yellow bananas a “Meh, but not worth that texture” for taste. I’m actually fine with them in other foods, like, I can eat illness-inducing quantities of banana bread. It’s just that the most commonly sold bananas have a texture that in other fruits would probably indicate it’s rotten. I’ve tried giving them another chance several times, but as soon as I take a bite, it makes me start gagging.
I’ve found the odd variety here and there that were actually better in both regards, though. I remember the grocery store briefly had these little red bananas, about half the size of a yellow one, and I tried it on a whim. Those actually tasted good, and the fruit was firm enough to seem like it was something a person was actually meant to eat.
I assume the common, yellow bananas are just bred to be big, produce lots of fruit and have a consistent flavor, even if it’s not a very good one compared to other bananas.
- Comment on Manic Stew 5 months ago:
Gastrointestinal Distress Nuggets seems like an unfortunate name for a horse, but here I am.
- Comment on do what you love 7 months ago:
Going to college purely for a career is a hell of a gamble
Sure, but it’s a gamble that everyone tries to tell you is a sure thing in your youth, and they pile immense pressure on you to do. Maybe things have changed recently, but it hasn’t been all that long since I was in high school, in the grand scheme of things, and I remember how you were basically treated like the world’s biggest idiot if you didn’t plan on going on to get a university degree. Maybe the only exception was if you were going to join the military, with the understanding you were doing so in order to get a degree on the cheap when you finished.
I think everyone who wants to do so, and who has put in the work to be at the appropriate level academically, should have the opportunity go and study at university, but I also believe that the vast majority of people have no need to do so, and ultimately will not benefit from it. Unfortunately, modern society treats universities not as institutes of education and monuments to the pursuit of knowledge, but as glorified vocational schools. It seems largely to be at the impetus of companies who have decided to externalize any training costs onto potential hires, substituting any sort of on the job training for “Did they check the box that says they have a degree?”
In the past 30 years, I’ve seen massive changes in how companies operate just by watching the sort of jobs my father could get. When I was a kid, he could get hired on with nothing more than “I like computers, I’ll actually read the whole manual for the system I’m working on, and I understand there’s a 6 month probation period to see if I actually do that.” for jobs that he would be summarily screened out for today, despite having successfully done in the past.
Like, don’t get me wrong, he’s dumb as hell in a lot of ways, but I’ve still seen extra stupid stuff in his career trajectory that reflects this. I recall him being fired because he got an IT job at Ernst & Young that he’d been successfully doing for years, because they suddenly said “Everyone doing this job needs to have a degree and the following certifications, and if you don’t have them and do this job now, you need to get them ASAP and reinterview for your role.”
- Comment on Would you rather stop playing a game than lower the difficulty? The First Berserker: Khazan devs reckon you would | Eurogamer 7 months ago:
I don’t play too much in the way of action RPGs, but it’s definitely an annoying thing that tends to pop up in JRPGs, though less so nowadays. Still, I do appreciate being able to dial the difficulty down as an option if I’m enjoying a game, get 30 hours in, and run into one of those two issues. If it’s not an option, I’d just drop the game, but it gets annoying when you’ve sank in a month or so of free time, only for a game to pull that on you.
- Comment on Would you rather stop playing a game than lower the difficulty? The First Berserker: Khazan devs reckon you would | Eurogamer 7 months ago:
I think that comes down to the genre and game. I’ve definitely played games where I was enjoying the story and wanted to see its conclusion, but couldn’t be bothered with a boss rush in the middle of the game. In a similar vein, games with sudden difficulty spikes in the mid- to endgame portion might benefit from it.
At the end of the day, I’m a working adult, trying to fit in having some fun with all the other crap I need to do. I don’t have time for games that need me to treat them as a second job to get good enough to make any progress in them, but games with random difficulty spikes or boss rushes that just serve to pad out play time by making you grind for levels or the ideal equipment or skills/summons out of nowhere feel like an annoying bait and switch to me.
