queerlilhayseed
@queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone
- Comment on The end of civilization costs $5 6 days ago:
Mine turned into people. Oh, god :(
- Comment on What is your favourite gaming console you have played? 2 weeks ago:
I got the SNES Classic just for Donkey Kong Country. The other games were a nice bonus. I have some novelty electronics that I never use anymore but that one gets pulled out on the regular.
- Comment on What do you think about the dead internet theory? 2 weeks ago:
It’s very confusing when it happens to someone you know because they usually aren’t horrible people. Nor are they particularly stupid, at least not more or less than your average human.
I think people in left-of-center spaces like to say things like “The Republican party is a cult” as a sort of disparaging cliche without really appreciating what a cult is or how they operate in real life. They see things like “Donald Trump ate a live baby on camera today, also his support among Republicans is at 90%” and assume that 90% of Republicans are cool with infant cannibalism, when in reality those Republicans just don’t see the same news we do. They are actually in a cult, which means (among other things) that they are conditioned to believe the cult leader (Trump, at the moment) and his approved mouthpieces, and only them. They’re reminded, constantly, that the left is deranged and willing to say anything to make Trump look bad, so when Trump does something so heinous it actually does penetrate their media bubble, it gets brushed off as more evidence of the left’s lunacy. It’s a very resilient form of conditioning and it’s been going on way longer than the internet’s been around, and it’s… really hard. Because they aren’t horrible people, mostly. They’re mostly scared, and broke, and confused about the world, and they flock to people like Trump because they have been told by their handlers that he’s their best bet. Once he’s dead or too toxic even for the Republicans, they’ll be reoriented toward the next leader.
- Comment on What do you think about the dead internet theory? 2 weeks ago:
The problem of the dead internet isn’t that there are no human users, but that the human users are isolated from each other or herded into ideologically suitable echo chambers, where misinformation and lies can be harder to resist because they already have momentum. It’s also hard to prove because we’ve demonstrated the inclination to do it to ourselves even without malign orchestrating influences like giant corporations.
An indicator of a dead internet wouldn’t be that no one in your IRL experience uses the internet, but that either A) their experiences are extremely congruent with your own (you’re both in the same bubble) or B) their experience of the internet reality has no shared basis with your own (only one of you is in a bubble, or you’re both in separate bubbles). Which… does happen to me occasionally, especially with older folks. A lot of people are caught in the dead internet of facebook, and are being groomed and manipulated like cattle. The export products of the bot farming industry are influence, votes, hatred of minorities, etc. I suspect a lot of the MAGA elements of my family are deep into dead internet traps, though of course it’s hard to get an accurate picture of their media diet because they don’t trust me enough to share it.
Do I think this means the internet is now Certified Dead? No, but I think it’s a sliding scale of deadness and it’s somewhere between 0 and 100 percent. Where on that scale we are is difficult to pin down.
- Comment on Xbox Player Voice Quickly Reveals What Players Want Most 1 month ago:
I could have worded that more clearly. I’m not saying consoles are themselves profitable, but that shipping consoles is the first step in building the captive audience that buys the games, accessories, live services, etc. that make consoles profitable. That vendor lock-in allows console makers to then milk buyers for the entire lifetime of the console.
If consoles were more like PCs i.e. anyone could play any game from any studio that cared to publish for the platform, console makers would have to focus on making their hardware stand out on its own. Which is particularly funny because, at least back when I was buying console gear (xbox 360 / beginning of the xbone was about the era I fell away from consoles) Microsoft was actually making really good peripherals. I still have my 360 controllers and I break them out for PC games whenever I have a bunch of people in the same room. they’re nice to use.
Instead, we get profit-maximizing tactics like taking a game that people want and putting it behind a several-hundred-dollar paywall, forcing people to either pony up for another 99% redundant console, or not playing the fun game everyone else has. No judgement to those who choose the latter, I bought the original xbox because Halo looked fun and my friends were playing it and guess what? It is a really fun game. I still play it from time to time. I just like it a lot better now that I don’t have to buy another expensive hunk of proprietary hardware.
- Comment on Ultimate Chicken Horse - 10th Annifursary Update (and sale) 1 month ago:
This may be my favorite party game of all time. Exceptional concept, exceptional execution. Really solid balancing mechanics that don’t feel artificial because they’re (mostly) not. Really well designed graphics that still read pretty well when the screen is overcrowded, which happens often in this game (by design). Also, super cute graphics, I think. I main raccoon but I love all of them.
It’s set the standard of “casual couch / voicechat multiplayer” for me.
- Comment on Xbox Player Voice Quickly Reveals What Players Want Most 1 month ago:
Because console makers make money by selling consoles, and exclusive titles are bait meant to entice players to buy into the platform? It seems like it lines up really well with how Xbox makes its money, but I don’t see how players benefit at all.
I’m not saying every comment is fake; I’m sure some people on that forum genuinely feel strongly about Halo or whatever remaining an Xbox exclusive, but that can’t possibly be their number one most important thing they want Xbox to do. I don’t have any evidence but my gut says there’s some skullduggery going on. I don’t think it would be too hard for Microsoft to manipulate a forum they control either, and the incentives seem pretty clearly aligned with Microsoft. It’s just very convenient for them that this article exists.
- Comment on Xbox Player Voice Quickly Reveals What Players Want Most 1 month ago:
This reeks of manipulation. Console makers have an interest in making exclusives look attractive to studios. Players are interested in exclusives because… why? If you already have an Xbox why do you care if a title is exclusive or not? I don’t
- Comment on Is there anything still on comparable to Steven Colbert? 1 month ago:
I think people underrate the other hosts on that show. Desi Lydic, Jordan Klepper, and Josh Johnson are all outstanding. Store brand Rob Riggle guy is OK.
- Comment on Is there anything still on comparable to Steven Colbert? 1 month ago:
Seth Meyers. I actually think he’s a better late-night host than Colbert, though I like them both. Seth is much more willing to let his staff take risks and do silly experiments that may or may not work. I think landing the Late Show gig infected Colbert with “Smart White Guy Whose Success Renders Him Unable to Smell His Own Farts” syndrome. Not that he’s not a talented comedian, he is, but after the show found its footing it started to feel pretty same-y to me.
- Comment on What character is the king of plot armor? 1 month ago:
Been a while since I’ve watched Archer but didn’t he die several times? At least once I think.
- Comment on What character is the king of plot armor? 1 month ago:
I think HP is a strong contender. Plot armor as a concept exists because character-centric stories need their characters to stay alive in order to keep telling the story, so the character survives against unbelievable odds because the character has to live to advance the plot, even if it doesn’t make for a credible story.
That’s your everyday, ignoble, garden-variety plot armor. HP is on another level because his plot armor isn’t just in service to the plot, his inevitable survival and triumph over Voldemort is also a central component of the actual plot of the series*. If that doesn’t make him the king of plot armor, it at least merits some title of plot armor nobility.
* I’m like 80% sure. It’s been a few years and IIRC, the reasons Potter survived and triumphed were hard to tease out. Rowling is many things, but one thing she ain’t is good at articulating the metaphysics of magic. Her theory of magic is inconsistent and contradictory and left me with the impression that she didn’t actually care all that much about the worldbuilding of the series. So I think there’s plenty of room to argue Potter isn’t the king of plot armor just by dint of plot confusingness. I think he’s an honorable mention at least.
- Comment on what’s your best “nitric acid acts upon trousers” moment? 1 month ago:
I am no expert but this feels like a fun and useful bookmark:
Something I learned / remembered from reading that:
Though tear gas was classified as a chemical weapon in 1993 and banned from use in international warfare, law enforcement officers are still allowed to use it on civilians in the United States.That’s fun.
- Comment on ???? 1 month ago:
wow, TIL. Poor guy.
That whole wikipedia page reads like a tall tale.
- Comment on what’s your best “nitric acid acts upon trousers” moment? 1 month ago:
It’s a remarkable material. one of my favorites. Gonna go watch videos about it on youtube right now, now that I think of it. it’s been a while, there might be some new ones.
I feel like it would make a good 3d printer material for certain applications, and there are formulations that are highly recyclable. I would love to be able to print prototypes without wasting tons of plastic. But I need to learn a lot more about materials science and a little more about robotics before I can really reason about how a working cyanoacrylate printer would behave. It would be a fun project to try if I had tons of money.
- Comment on what’s your best “nitric acid acts upon trousers” moment? 1 month ago:
When I was a kid I discovered that cyanoacrylate acts upon human skin. It also acts upon all the change in my parents’ giant change jar.
- Comment on what’s your best “nitric acid acts upon trousers” moment? 1 month ago:
I was not prepared for
spoiler
FOOF - Comment on ???? 1 month ago:
I would love to find out but the man keeps denying my grant applications.
- Comment on ???? 1 month ago:
That is way more impressive. Any idiot can eat a baby.
- Comment on Why do people claim when they buy lets say an M16 Fully Automatic Assault Rifle it is for hunting or self protection? Could you just bow and arrow during a hunt for more of a challenge? 1 month ago:
I know a few people in the south who bow hunt, but I think they all also have guns. From what I can tell, it’s unusual about the same way someone having an antique car is unusual. Most people don’t and it’s a talking point, but not unheard of.
- Comment on Why do people claim when they buy lets say an M16 Fully Automatic Assault Rifle it is for hunting or self protection? Could you just bow and arrow during a hunt for more of a challenge? 1 month ago:
Buy the gun for the job you want, not the job you have.
- Comment on They're somehow always baffled that their cakes are melting 1 month ago:
Didn’t even think about all that heat. I bet fire safety is a significant factor too.
- Comment on It's about the *option* 1 month ago:
I don’t wear a black hoodie to indicate that I know computer stuff, but it is remarkable how much more receptive non-techies are when I wear one. It’s like a lab coat for computer doctors.
- Comment on Oh. 1 month ago:
It surely does, though I don’t think self-harming mental patterns are exclusive to neurodivergent folk.
- Comment on Oh. 1 month ago:
Wounds don’t really heal if they’re being constantly reopened / irritated. Once the source of the injury is removed, some wounds will heal with time, and others require more specialized treatment. For that latter type, the lack of constant reinjury can feel a lot like healing, but it’s not quite the same, and old injuries can flare up and/or have secondary issues down the line. Finding and healing them is a long and inconstant process that only really starts after escaping the cause of the damage. An analogy might be pulling someone out of a collapsed building, then treating them for the effects of asbestos exposure.
- Comment on ISSPissTracker 1 month ago:
Jupiter you tricky minx
- Comment on ISSPissTracker 1 month ago:
God Jupiter, get your shit together.
- Comment on ISSPissTracker 1 month ago:
I have a vague recollection from the past that Jupiter is a “failed star” in that it is “close” to the mass required to begin fusion, so I was confused about how an exoplanet could have several times its mass and not be a star.
Turns out, the threshold for deuterium fusion is about 13x the mass of Jupiter, so I guess it’s “close” in that it’s closer than anything else in the solar system (other than the sun), but less close than I assumed. Still, Epsilon Indi Ab is even closer to becoming a brown star. Or perhaps a golden star? Because of the pee smell?
And lest you think this planet is dorky, according to science:
with a temperature of about 275 K (2 °C; 35 °F), [Epsilon Indi Ab is] the coolest exoplanet to be directly imaged.
- Comment on They got us by the balls 1 month ago:
I am somewhat familar with ERIC’s CLARIN (or ERIC CLARIN? or just CLARIN? I’m not sure how the two names are supposed to be used together). from the linked site:
CLARIN stands for Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure and ERIC stands for European Research Infrastructure Consortium.
I don’t fully understand how to operate it because it’s complicated but it does seem like a distributed scientific repository. It seems to focus on language but it’s not clear to me why it can’t, or doesn’t (or maybe it does IDK) function as a general datashare. I’m not sure if it’s a model for a full replacement of for-profit publishing houses but it seems like a promising direction for research to go.
- Comment on They got us by the balls 1 month ago:
Why do academic journals still exist? I’m not trying to be “journals bad” glib here, even though they are awful and have been as long as I can remember. What technical or academic hurdles are preventing researchers from publishing their work to free outlets like, say, a university’s public website? I genuinely don’t understand why they haven’t collapsed with the rise of the internet. Is it really all street cred?