Rentlar

@Rentlar@lemmy.ca

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨An american on Reddit wrote: "I’m not sure it’s really a good idea to let legislation through on a 51-49 vote: making a change should really take more consensus than that"⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  On the other hand they only need a simple majority to confirm a Supreme Court majority of buffoons that don’t actually give a shit about the Constitution or even internally consistency, over their personal pet project to turn their country into an authoritarian state.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s too bad but

  No one is talking about the Piefed vote quotas anymore, so you’re welcome.

  More than once I brought this up as comparison on the difference between an unpopular default based on the main developer’s needs, that was announced and detailed in changelogs, that can be toggled and worked around, instead of a control-freak’s grudges manifesting as a hidden shadowban list. We lost a very friendly power user (PugJesus) from the Piefed change, but unfortunately sometimes that is the price of it.

  Wanting a less-toxic fediverse is a totally normal thing, users and admins have many of the tools already for that, and I respect devs for trying to do their part. But it is the dishonest way of implementing it that no one is a fan of, and that makes everyone question this dev’s character. If this person could at the very least own up to it, call it well-intentioned error, and respond to the problem with solutions rather than a crashout, then this wouldn’t need to be as big of a deal.

  harassing-anyone-who-doesn’t-fall-in-line

  Lemmy is bandwagony but in politics you have to live with a little bit of it. I’ve said anti- and pro-feminist stuff, made anti- and pro-trans arguments while trying to be empathetic as I can, made cold, warm and hot takes, toed the line and went against the grain, got lots of up and down votes. I try to pushback against gatekeeping and purity tests, play devil’s advocate, and when I’m not shitposting, try to steelman arguments I don’t agree with. People are imperfect, I try to avoid to assign guilt by association, people will think differently about things than I do, I respect their opinions while still disagree with, and I’ll take downvotes on the chin for defending different that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stay Away⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Thank you Mr. Paul Ruddman for the sage advice.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Just as Nolan intended⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Not good enough, he demands people watch this film on a 70mm screen. So get out your GBA SP.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it theoretically possible to construct a self reproducing mechanical device?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re absolutely correct on that. For the sake of the thought experiment and trying to keep to the spirit of the conditions, my dandelion ball device is a “purely mechanical” device driven by external resources of wind, and the chemical and biological related to growing dandelions also considered external.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it theoretically possible to construct a self reproducing mechanical device?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Because you say mechanical that does preclude chemical reactions…

  At least a basic level of a real world self-replicating “device” in an abstract sense, you can “grow” some crystals given sufficient substrate liquid.

  I think it is theoretically possible, and may be easier at to realize at a microscopic scale since you can get a sufficient amount of liquid that can be considered a ‘functionally-infinite’ space and the device can more freely float around without having to worry about needing complex dextrous parts to put things in the right place.

  My idea of a simple self-replicating device that operates mechanically, would be putting together a loose ball of dandelion seeds. It floats around in the area and if there are dandelion fields where it goes, it can pick up the seeds, and if it bumps into a random obstacle in the landscape it will break into parts that can pick up other seeds.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is this a rope hanging under a helicopter?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Got me good there.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"We're all in this together"⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The heck is Infantino doing in Edmonton and Middle-of-nowhere, Ontario?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Revealed: Farage’s £5m gift reported to UK crime agency over money laundering concerns⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I would like to see the Loony party come 2nd or 3rd in this race, or if I can dream, possibly unseat Farage???

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bill to raise minimum wage to $25 an hour will be introduced in Senate⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  We should go through the effort of writing bills to do all of those things too. Pieces of it could get picked up in other bills as amendments. The point is not to just give up because you think putting any one improvement together is useless until everything is already put together nicely.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This is Canadian Tire Jumpstart so it’s likely operated by a charity foundation run by a major hardware retailer. The app system seems kind of stupid, but I don’t believe at first glance the aim was to profit out of this scheme.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bill to raise minimum wage to $25 an hour will be introduced in Senate⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Congress, campaigns, non-profits and advocacy organizations.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bill to raise minimum wage to $25 an hour will be introduced in Senate⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Write the bills ahead of time, so that when a favourable Congress is formed you don’t have to spend more time putting it together from scratch.

  Min wage should also be attached to inflation. Also, “bills going nowhere” didn’t stop Project 2025, Heritage Foundation fascists and Republican abortion ban projects from persistently marching forward.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Keep off the sofa⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Tucker Carlson is curious about this, as he is looking like he has been constipated for 3 days…

  Tucker Carlson with his typical scowl

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What do you think about the dead internet theory?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think there are dead networks, like Twitter, YouTube comment sections, facebook, TikTok etc.

  I just have to create my own networks or participate in different networks than the mainstream where there is sufficient human activity and limited bot activity, and wherw there is bot activity it is clearly delineated.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In current day tech, East Asian characters are taken from a combined set called “CJK unified ideographs”. When regional variants exist, the language it renders as depends on the font of the user’s device.

  There was a recent example that came up: 骨(bone) has the little square on the left in Simplified Chinese and on the right in Japanese. With Hiragana it’s more obvious because of all the curvier letters, but with kanji only phrases even smartphones tend to mix it up.

  I can’t tell between Hungarian, Romanian, Bosnian, Albanian, Czech or Slovak, because I haven’t really studied any of them or know any words. In the Cyrillic field, Belarusian, Russian, Ukranian (except for the existence of ï), Bulgarian, Serbian I probably couldn’t be able to tell you what faced with a random paragraph of text.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Was Alex Jones right about anything?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s a cabal of rich pedophiles pulling strings in society… except many of them are his friends and benefactors, and he’s been awfully quiet since the Epstein files got partially released…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨is it spelled "grey" or "gray"?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  A “Pint” of beer served commercially in Canada must be 20 imperial (UK) ounces (aka ~568 mL), with a 2.5% margin of error permitted within the law, unlike a US pint (16 US fl oz ~473mL).

  Just for fun, “Une pinte” of alcohol in French served commercially is “a quart” of alcohol in English which is double that value.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Welcome to Lemmy, glad you’re here!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I come across many users less than 3 months old, and they tend to introduce themselves occasionally on !reddit@lemmy.world.

  It’s fine if they come over a little at a time or in large waves or even if they don’t. I do worry about sometimes there are periods where discussion feels a little more toxic, bandwagoney and rigid, and others where people allow themselves to be a little more nuanced when discussing with each other. I like this site more when the latter is happening. Maybe new users need a little time settling down into a slightly different culture which is normal and expected.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Albanese, Taylor hit back at Trump tariff threat as US blasts 'unacceptable' failures⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  US blasts “unacceptable” failures makes up an excuse to circumvent domestic court rulings against capriciously levying tariffs on its own consumers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a way to view the comments on a deleted Lemmy post?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
  aramis 87's story part 3

  Various epilogues: The FBI confiscated the crystal ball and the Osiris statue, and re-confiscated the stand, for “forensics analysis”. But the staff at the Museum had thoroughly cleaned the stand before putting it into storage, the housekeeper took obsessively good care of the crystal ball, and the Osiris statue had been through too many locations under different conditions and entirely too many hands for anything useful to be found. Eventually, after many years of us asking, they returned the items to the Museum. There had been a reward offered for the successful return of the items - maybe $10k or something? The homeowner tried to claim it, but was turned down. I personally think it should have gone to Al the homeless junk guy: he explicitly saved the statue from the trash, his actions are the ones that triggered the whole recovery process, and he’s definitely the one who could have benefitted the most. But no :( Eventually they decided to give the money to Jes, who promptly turned around and donated it back to the Museum. While the theft shows clear signs of some insider knowledge - that there would likely be no Security response to alarms going off, and that the garage would be open and homeowner away - they never caught the thieves. I personally think the number of people who knew both things would be pretty small, but no one was ever charged. The FBI did a bunch of press conferences congratulating themselves on their diligent fieldwork and years-long persistence in recovering the objects - completely ignoring that they’d long since given up and that there would have been no discovery at all if Jes hadn’t wandered into that junk store. Years later, one of the FBI guys wrote a book and it turned out these were the guys from the FBI’s semi-newly-created Art Crimes Unit, and this was one of their first successful “investigations”. And, finally: the artifacts have been lovingly cleaned and returned to their display positions at University Museum. If you visit the Museum today and head to the Rotunda, you can see the Dowager Empress Cixi’s crystal ball sitting proudly on it’s solid silver stand, while the Osiris statue lives just a few yards away. Anyway, OP, that’s my answer to your question: a stolen, 2500 year old, 60 pound bronze statue of the Egyptian god Osiris. I can guarantee that it will cause much confusion over many years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a way to view the comments on a deleted Lemmy post?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
  aramis 87's story part 2

  Then one day, Jes Canby (one of our Museum workers) happens to visit a junk store a few blocks off campus - Jes loves junk stores! As she’s wandering around looking at stuff, several aisles over, she sees something and thinks to herself, “Hunh. That kinda looks like the Osiris statue that was stolen from the Museum a few years ago.” She gets a couple aisles closer and thinks, “Wow, that really does look like the Osiris statue that got stolen!” She goes over to get a closer look and discovers the Museum accession numbers still on the side of the statue. She calls the police. The police show up. The FBI shows up (again). The shop owner is interrogated: Where did you get this statue?! Why, from Al the homeless junk guy, of course. Al wanders around on trash day and pulls out stuff, and the junk store guy buys it from him. Just last week, he paid Al $25 combined for the Osiris statue and an old side table. Does the FBI want the old side table, too? After much examination and consultation, the FBI does not want the old side table. And where, they ask, might the FBI find Al the homeless junk guy? I dunno, says the store owner, he’s homeless. So the FBI starts searching West Philly for Al. Eventually they find him. Where did you get the statue? they ask. “From the curb in front of some house a couple miles away; sometimes they throw away some nice stuff in that neighborhood.” They put him in the car and drive around a whole lot until they eventually find the right house (things look different from a car). They question the homeowner: Where and how did he get the Osiris statue? “I didn’t,” he says. "I have a large garage and my family and friends sometimes store things there. I was on vacation in Europe a few years ago, and when I got back, this statue was there. I asked my family and and friends about it and no one knew anything about it. “I started clearing out my garage a month or so ago, and asked again and no one still knew anything about the statue, so I gave it to my brother-in-law; he wanted it for a lawn ornament. Except his wife thought it was ugly and made him bring it back. I didn’t have any use for it, so I put it out with the trash.” Oh? asks the FBI real casually. Did anything else happen to show up around the same time? A pause while the homeowner thinks. “Oh yeah - there was a crystal ball, too. I gave it to my housekeeper - she’s really into all that New Age-y stuff. Where does she live? Oh, somewhere across the river - maybe Trenton, I think?” So the FBI gets the housekeeper’s info and drives across the river to Trenton and knocks on her door. She truly does have a bunch of New Age-y stuff in her place. They ask her about the crystal ball the homeowner gave her. “Oh yes,” she says. “You know, I used to keep it in my bedroom, but the light in there was just too strong - it burned a hole in my arm!” And where, they ask patiently, is it now? “Oh, it’s right over there.” She points. It’s on the coffee table; she’s using it as a hatstand. [continued]

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a way to view the comments on a deleted Lemmy post?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
  aramis 87's story part 1

  Oh. Oh god. Okay, so bear with me. Many years ago, some friends and I worked at the University Museum of Archeology and Anthropology at University of Pennsylvania. At the time of this story, the museum was undergoing a bunch of renovations. The renovation dust would intermittently get kicked up by the ventilation system or would fall in a clump or whatever, and the movement would set of the security alarms. After a couple months of this, Security became somewhat lax in responding to alarms, because every night there were a number of false alarms. So, one early morning, a student is walking to the university and spots something weird sitting in the middle of the pedestrian walkway on the South Street bridge. As they get closer, it starts to look familiar. They get up close and recognize it as the solid silver stand that usually supports the Dowager Empress’ crystal ball in the Rotundra of the Museum. This is the first indication that anyone has that the museum was burgled the night before. The police are called, the stand goes through evidence collection, everyone traipses over to the Museum, Security (and the museum administration) is shocked. Everyone starts looking around for whatever else might have been taken. Eventually we conclude that only three items are missing: the Dowager Empress’ crystal ball, the solid silver stand the ball usually rests on, and a 2500 year old bronze statue of the Egyptian god Osiris. [The ball is gorgeous: it’s like the third largest crystal ball in the world, it’s absolutely flawless, and John Wanamaker bought it for like $50,000 back in 1920.] All three items were taken from either the Rotundra itself or just nearby. This is somewhat confusing, as the Rotundra is all the way toward the back of the Museum, and up a couple staircases. Why wouldn’t the thieves grab stuff from a more accessible area instead of crossing almost the entire Museum? Also, the objects are heavy or difficult to carry - why wouldn’t they take something smaller, more easily portable, and more valuable - for example, the Tang dynasty horses that are also in the Rotundra and much more valuable? Even more confusing is why the thieves decided to ditch the stand for the crystal ball. Presumably they were having problems carrying all three items and decided to leave one behind. Did they drop the four-foot tall 60-pound statue of Osiris? No. Did they leave the 50-pound crystal ball which is very round and can be hard to hold safely? No. They decided to leave behind the 20-pound stand, which has lots of easy finger-holds, is made of solid silver, and is easily meltable into easily-sold unidentifiable metal. It’s all just … very weird. Anyway, the police show up. Because of some University association with the state that I can no longer remember, the FBI shows up. There’s lots of chaos. And … nothing happens. The FBI takes the stand into custody for forensic examination, but they can’t find any clues. They keep the stand in custody for a couple years in case “something else turns up” but the case goes cold. Eventually they return the stand to the Museum. We clean it carefully and, heartbroken, put it into storage. And for a couple more years, nothing happens. [continued]

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a way to view the comments on a deleted Lemmy post?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Ok I sleuthed and found it using Lemmy’s searchbar for the mention of “museum” in asklemmy community, sorted by new, good thing you asked quickly enough.

  You can read it in @aramis87@fedia.io 's profile. I’ll post a reproduction of it under this comment. (DM me aramis if you want me to take my copy of your story down)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I am propane and propane accessories⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  They looked at you and said “That boi ain’t right”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Vibe management⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You know that wouldn’t happen. Which AI company wants to be the one that says, “we’re happy with where the model is at right now” and stops throwing cash into the boiler of the investor hype train and let their competitors exceed them in real or imagined metrics? Clearly firms like Anthropic have to rely on circus marketing tricks like “This model is too dangerous for the general public to see! Ooooh scary! Coming Soon!”, and they can’t do that without continuous training.

  For you and I, the offline models aren’t too bad for getting little side projects started, but for major AI firms, the ongoing training cost for the next model and the one after that has become ingrained into the operating model.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨David Lammy promises 25% cut in number of children jailed while they await trial⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Better than Lammy promising to cut children in jail awaiting trial by 25%.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨60% of PC gamers have no plans to build a new PC in the next two years — AI pricing crunch on RAM and other components paralyze enthusiast market⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Perhaps some of them are betting on the AI bubble crashing in the next two years, bringing prices down, maybe, hopefully?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is it like traveling with two passports at the same time?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You should enter and leave the country with the same passport (important if your country checks passports on exit), but you can switch it up en route. Generally if you need help with something in one of the countries of your nationality you go to that embassy, for example if a disaster hits and you need to be evacuated, whichever embassy would attempt at assisting you to get to that nation.