Folstar

@Folstar@lemmus.org

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is leadership valued so much over expertise?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s a lot easier, more reliable to promote your son to VP than Senior [blank] Engineer. Also, for some weird reason we could never have predicted if we wanted to create a more efficient and equitable system, the people who decide salary decided they should have the biggest salary by a lot.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What do you do if you lose an argument, but it turns out that you were actually right?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Avoid arguments as 9/10 they mean nothing.

  If you find yourself in an argument, or what you think is an argument, caring about winning/losing is the wrong mindset. This isn’t Debate Camp and there isn’t a trophy waiting for you. Listening, testing your knowledge and convictions, and maintaining your integrity are all much, much more important than “winning”.

  If you “lose” an argument, especially if you “lost” to style, tactics, rhetorical devices, etc… then see Rule 1 above.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fafo⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Sadly, no. It probably will actually cost around $1B to drive screwworms back to the Darien Gap again and that’s assuming the people in charge are planning that (they’re probably not- why help poor countries?!) and capable of following a plan that already worked once (they’re not). This number will balloon out of control and their nonsense plan to hold the line at Texas will be a disaster IF it ever even comes online as it’s planned for late 2027. A preview of the planning genius.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fafo⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  That success is part of what caused the problem. Complacency set in, and capacity eroded.

  This part is sort of glossed over. There was a report in 2018 that the Panama facility was in dire need of updates. We were talking about a one time $50M investment and an extra $10-15M a year to hold screwworms at the Darien Gap as they had been for decades. Trump did nothing. It’s easy to blame COVID, but there is a very, very avoidable problem and yes, the blame lies squarely with Trump.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨most perverted men are actually very vanilla and run away when faced with a perverted woman⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I would agree that kink is a spectrum, or axis. Specifically, it’s the Z-axis to the masculine/feminine attraction (“gay-straight” but generalized) X-axis and sexual intensity (aka, horniness level) Y-axis. That’s right, we’re going 3D.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The 1996 experience⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Me in 2026 to myself: Be careful about burn in.

  Also me in 2026 back to myself: Engineers solved that with hardware and software a long time ago. Burn in is incredibly rare now.

  Me again: Remember how mad dad got about the Cartoon Network logo in the corner?

  Me, frustrated: Dude, we haven’t watched network TV in 20 years.

  My final stand: Dad was really mad, bro.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨WOMEN.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  In Kasparov’s eventual defense, he did say this after losing to Polgar:

  “I was wrong about women playing chess. I gave an opinion a long time ago that I no longer believe.”

  and later in his book wrote:

  ‘I won’t hide from the fact that I did make regrettably sexist remarks about women in chess around this time. In that 1989 Playboy interview I said men were better at chess because “women are weaker fighters” and that “probably the answer is in the genes”. The possibility of gender brain differences aside, I find it almost hard to believe I said this considering that my mother is the toughest fighter I know.’

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨WOMEN.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Wait until you learn about “generations”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It really is the roaring 20s all over again! Hell yes! Even have Republicans in charge of everything again! Party like it’s 1928!!! /s

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I still can't get over Skyrim. Are there any games that can replace it?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You never know when you might need them.

  Have you considered going meta and hoarding games you might play about hoarding consumables in perpetuity?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I still can't get over Skyrim. Are there any games that can replace it?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Sorry, nothing can match the glory of Post Mudcrabs, especially when paired with samuel L jackson mudcrabs in SKYRIM.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I still can't get over Skyrim. Are there any games that can replace it?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Telling people what in particular you like about Skyrim is going to get you much better feedback as there are many, many games that are similar in some ways but not others.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Rather than go cold turkey you can quit smoking by restricting the times that you can have a cigarette⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  People focus entirely too much on method instead of motive. There’s lots of methods to quit that have worked for some and failed for legions more.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I look forward to playing 5 years after release once ANET has changed their mind about core design choices a few times, fluctuated between unique classes and homogenization, and exhaust their thesaurus to be different than other MMOs. I know that sounds sarcastic, but I really do like GW2. I actually have it open on the other monitor right now- I’m in Mistlock smelting mithril ingots. I’m not sure why ANET has such a difficult time sticking to design choices, but eventually it seems to work out.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨DOGE cut 20% of APHIS the agency that protects U.S. agriculture and now the screwworm parasite that wipes out livestock has returned to the U.S⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Also incorrect. USDA has a great deal of discretionary funding. The new $750M facility being build in Texas (several thousand km from the Darian Gap = great plan!) was approved internally at USDA. There was nothing stopping the funding in '21 other than not recognizing how dire the problem could become in just a few years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨DOGE cut 20% of APHIS the agency that protects U.S. agriculture and now the screwworm parasite that wipes out livestock has returned to the U.S⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sadly, no. That response in 2018-2021 would have been urgent, appropriate. By waiting until 2023 when reports were coming out in '21 that the Darian Gap was failing and '22 that it had failed, Biden did in fact drop the ball. The administration chose to try to work with/through Central American governments who, frankly, hadn’t dealt with screwworms in over a generation and were poorly equipped or completely clueless. Also, it’s worth noting, this facility was relatively inexpensive to operate at less than $20M/year. We had a beautiful system in place but Republican ignorance and Democrat pussyfooting has put us in a terrible position. The sunbelt population boom of the last 50 years was not just about AC.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨DOGE cut 20% of APHIS the agency that protects U.S. agriculture and now the screwworm parasite that wipes out livestock has returned to the U.S⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  At no point did the eradication program end. In 23-24 Biden’s USDA quadrupled funding to the Panama facility producing sterile flies. The facility had been underfunded for years (/wave Trump1) and at some point during Covid lost contain of the Darian Gap, officially reaching “we fucked up” thresholds in 2022.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Be The Sunshine ☀️⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Putting a sign for the car infront of you to read on the back of your vehicle is incredibly on brand for Pavement Princesses.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Flipper!!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Wildly better list. One of the failings of liberal/left minded people in recent decades has been to become list makers. “We will stand up for the rights of women [pause for applause], blacks [pause for applause], the elderly [pause for applause], etc…” sounds real nice until someone listening says “what about me?” It’s a losing political strategy in a world where the words “All Americans” and “everyone” exist. At the absolute least, tag those words on the end.

  To be clear since this keeps coming up from people who like to put words in other people’s mouths then tell them those words are wrong, I am not saying laws can’t protect/benefit marginalized groups. This is about communication.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨He's an arborist⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Often times two.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Music just isn't good anymore⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sauce: www.jstor.org/stable/48812575

  This study builds on decades of work that makes less and less sense every minute of the digital age. Each year we’re further from a semi-homogenous group listening to Casey Kasem’s Top 40 (or whatever). Most people have a fairly clear, shared concept of 60s/70s/80s/90s music, but ask ten people about the 10s/20s and you’ll probably get eleven different answers.

  In addition to changing mass listening habits, the digital age untethers us from time and wildly diversifies “new” music. You can hop on Youtube/Spotify/etc and listen to the Glenn Miller Orchesta as easily as the newest Drake singles, which with radio/MTV/etc was historically not the case. Those platforms also have allowed a world of music diversity and access that completely changes the paradigm. For example, some of the best “80s Music” was released in the past few years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Conservative values⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I like that if you start at “Sanctity of marriage”, something the radical right clearly does not actually value, and work counterclockwise the terms get increasingly vague and meaningless until they completely phone it in with “Etc”. What values.

  “If robosexual marriage becomes legal, imagine the horrible things that will happen to our children, then imagine we said those things, since we couldn’t think of any. As a mother, those things worry me.” -Futurama

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Matrix⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, humans would never destroy natural resources in favor of some tech fix or just kinda assume that the planet would fix itself… /s

  My headcannon on the human battery thing is that the machines have core programming to make reasonable efforts to preserve human life. Designing power reactors (look how thick the cores are on the towers) with humans slapped to the side technically aligns with the core programming while allowing them to stick it to us apes. It’s also why the attack on Zion was one tentacle abductor machine for each human instead of dumping super plague down the hole and calling it a day.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Unknown Worlds Earns $250M Performance Bonus After Stellar Subnautica 2 Launch⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Good summary. What’s wild to me is reading through this and pondering the frequency of these events. “Someone made an arrogant/stupid business decision” multiple times a day every day. “Someone tried to weasel out and was told that was stupid” also every day. “Went ahead with the plan anyway” - very frequent. “Tried to burn it all down” - all too often. Then we get to the turn where the wronged actually got a fair day in court- far, far less often. Then the villain of our story with $250M on the line somehow didn’t lawyer up enough to get the best justice money can buy - almost seems like fiction at this point and beyond.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The rich convinced us that taxing them is too complicated but everyday people can be taxed pretty easily⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Pretending businesses exist in a vacuum is a very weird take. The government spends a considerable amount of time and cost in maintaining business interests. Maintaining the legal framework for business to operate so we’re not Mad Maxxing for more petrol is, on it’s own, justification. Then there’s the intellectual property side of things. Law enforcement. Military action. Foreign relations. The SEC and similar agencies that exist solely to facilitate business.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨We produce more resources than we could ever consume in the least sustainable ways possible.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Our rapidly depleting aquifers being used to produce those resources would suggest there are too many people.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Vibe management⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Good stuff. One small note: I’m not sure how useful the distinction of “Chinese state-sponsored companies” is in recent history when comparing to the US, let alone now. The US has retooled much of federal research engine toward promoting US AI. Even fired the NSB (among many other long standing, expert driven advisory boards) to replace it with a bunch of tech baron stooges. States are offering unprecedented payouts to data centers. The AI hyperscalers already have a bailout all but guaranteed when the bubble pops. It’s all state-sponsored, just with extra steps.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cultural impact⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not a big Avatar fan, but you make a compelling case. Extra points for a B5 reference.

  The morally-gray stories CAN be good, but not in the hands of most modern movie/streaming writers who somehow all seem to have gone to the school of “Trust me bro, I’m somehow better than the internationally acclaimed author who wrote the IP I’ve been handed” with a major in “mystery boxes” and minor in “identity IS character”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Moving to the USA could be the Most Expensive Mistake of your Life⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Missing in this, both for being broke and the diabetes, is car monoculture. I’ve known several immigrants who thought they were going to get around (in Texas no less!) without a car or be a one car household. A few months later they were all angry at how much they were spending on cars. And fatter, angrier from traffic.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Moving to the USA could be the Most Expensive Mistake of your Life⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Living in the past? Hating people just like them? Immigrants really can assimilate!