partial_accumen
@partial_accumen@lemmy.world
- Comment on Buzz off 1 week ago:
I wasn’t prepared for those stings on my skin to still be hurting some a week later.
- Comment on Anon is given an ultimatum 1 week ago:
Please post the update from “Day 2 as a homeless person in SF”.
- Comment on Buzz off 1 week ago:
Yellow jackets on the other hand are complete assholes. We had a nest of them in the yard once and they would go way out of their way to sting people, just for the hell of it.
This was my experience too. I had thought that bees had moved into a bush in my yard. I was happy to have bees there. A week later I was mowing the grass and felt several stabs of pain on my back and wrist. I turn around and see the air is filled with them. I had swatted one in my escape and had a corpse to inspect later and found it was a Yellow jacket wasp. From a distance I could see they were entering and exiting a hole near the bottom of the bush. A quick internet search later I knew that they were nearly dormant at night, and that they need a special oil they produce on the outside of their body to breath. Dawn dish soap apparently strips that away and they die, and its not toxic to the ground or environment.
I put half a bottle of Dawn squirted into their hole at the bottom of the bush at night. I never saw another Yellowjack wasp.
- Comment on Anon plays World of Warcraft 2 weeks ago:
To me, there were two big issues with WoW. One was that people constantly wanted new buttons to push, so classes just kept getting more and more complicated to the point that while a MOBA might have 6 ability buttons you use regularly, WoW might have 15ish, with another 20 that are situational.
We disagree on this point. I liked 20 situational ones. It made for finding edge cases where a spell or ability was critical and a game changer. While I normally played on an RP server, I would frequenly run around with my PvP flag on allowing myself to be attacked by other players. On a Warlock class, one of the “most useless” summoned pets was the Felhound. However, because almost no one used a Felhound, no one knew how they fought. It was extremely satisfying to be out in world doing a PvE question only be jumped by a casting player that suddenly lost them abilty to cast when the Felhound activated, or when the theif is walking up to you in stealth only to be outted by the felhoud that could see through it.
Not having the many obscure options was what prevented me from really getting into Guild Wars that only had 2 actions at a time when I played it.
The other one is just that the story keeps collapsing under its own weight. Increasingly it’s a personal story – it’s not that you’re an adventurer and participated in an event that saved the planet. You’re the individual person who saved the planet (and so is everybody else in the game). And then, because this expansion is over, you, the individual who saved the planet, has to go kill 20 boars on this newly discovered island where apparently boars are as tough as gods. Nobody on this island recognizes you as the hero who saved the planet, so you need to build your reputation up again, and eventually you get to fight the newest god who is destroying the planet.
This didn’t bother me either. With the 20 and 40 person raids, you were one of many that accomplished the goal. For the individual quests, it made sense to me that new lands wouldn’t know you or your exploits. Its not like there is regular newspapers or internet in game the NPCs read.
It sounds like we had different things we wanted from the game. I’m glad that the things that annoyed me were things that others found value in.
- Comment on OSHA Approved Kittypillar 2 weeks ago:
OSHA inspector: “No PPE. I’m filing this as a violation.”
- Comment on Anon plays World of Warcraft 2 weeks ago:
Because you had so much fun in the game or because college was (or would in the future) serving you so poorly?
- Comment on Anon plays World of Warcraft 2 weeks ago:
I went looking for the book and couldn’t find it. I only found his novels. I’m on the fence about trying to find/read the book. I carry some personal shame from the time when I wasted so much time in WoW.
- Comment on Anon plays World of Warcraft 2 weeks ago:
In 2004 (the launch year) the original WoW was an amazing time I lost and entire year of professional growth and productivity to. When the first expansion (Burning Crusade) came out, I was equally excited as as the original launch, but after seeing Green gear fall of simple mobs that was better than the epic Purple gear I spent weeks getting in 40 person raids, I could instantly forecast how the entire rest of the game would be forever: and endless grind with your hard won efforts simply trivialized in the first month of the next expansion. I stopped playing WoW about a month after, went back to school instead, and finished the college degree I had started 8 years earlier. Quitting WoW lead to my actions which launched my career to new heights.
I credit WoW with teaching me an incredible life lesson in my 20s to never get drawn into something like that again.
- Comment on Anon plays World of Warcraft 2 weeks ago:
Is Barons chat still and endless spam of people asking for the location of Mankrik’s wife?
- Comment on How come Mark Wahlberg got a pass for being the crap out of a Vietnamese guy. But Kevin Spacey, Bill Cosby, Weinstein, do not get a pass? Beside the sexual aspect what is the difference? 2 weeks ago:
When Wahlberg assaulted people when he as 15 and 16 years old. That doesn’t excuse the behavior, but 15/16 year olds aren’t adults. Wahlberg also went to the police and claimed responsibility for the attack. He then plead guilty in court and served time. It still bothers me how racially motivated it was and for that I would personally always have disdain for Wahlberg.
Cosby was 28 years old for his first time of rape allegations. There would be more than a dozen other women that came forward with reports. The most recent was Feb of 2000 when Cosby was then 63 years old.
Spacy and Weinstein also did their horrible acts as fully formed adults and had a repeated pattern of doing them again and again to people they had power over.
- Comment on heater 3 weeks ago:
You’re going to be even more angry to learn that your apartment neighbor is using the shared building power to run an industrial aluminum smelter on his balcony as his side hustle.
- Comment on Where it stops, nobody knows 4 weeks ago:
Careful, you mind end up like this:
- Comment on Iran claims US exploited networking equipment backdoors during strikes — says devices from Cisco and others failed despite blackout in attack that 'indicates deep sabotage' 1 month ago:
Iran has been on the sanctioned blacklist for Cisco (and other enterprise level tech in government use) sales for decades. The only way Iran could get the gear into the country is by using unauthorized channels. Knowing there were no authorized sales, this would be very easy way for state level espionage organization to build compromised devices to flow into Iran.
If you buy a stolen computer, and there is a virus on it, you don’t really have any claim against the computer manufacturer.
- Comment on Not a good sign 1 month ago:
You seem to be absolutely convinced the lens you see reality with is not a lens but reality itself and you are wrong.
You are misinterpreting the amount of confidence I’m portraying in this discussion, but that aside I don’t see this conversation continuing productively for either of us. I’m also not nearly as invested in it as I am gathering you maybe, and there’s nothing wrong with you being passionate about your position. I’m going to break from this conversation here so we stay on good terms with one another. Thank you for taking the time to share your views with me. I appreciate it.
- Comment on Not a good sign 1 month ago:
The only systems I can think of that function under the axiom that you suggest, which is that scarcity is a necessary obstacle to tackle before systems can resist destroying shared resources, are ecosystems dominated by invasive species and cancer. In both cases, it is the inability to tolerate abundance in a system because of an endless growth mechanism that causes the destruction of a dynamic encompassing stability.
Well, that sounds like an accurate description humanity in the last 1000 years at least.
In other words, every society that experienced periods not entirely ruled by an oppressive, authoritarian regime and that had/have some shared wealth whether it be in public spaces, public knowledge, public utilities, public education or other forms of public shared resource.
I think that statement is more supports my current position. You’re pointing out a temporary state, not an enduring condition. I could probably argue that even many of those temporary states of a successful shared commons were potentially built on the exploitation of others outside of those benefiting from the commons, but lets ignore that for now. None of those endured. Every single one has ended, or in some possible isolated cases that may exist today, have not shown they could endure with changing social or geopolitical conditions. These examples don’t live in a vacuum either. Unless the whole of humanity is onboard, a segment could pillage the shared commons of another society if they did not have adequate defense as has been shown in humanities history an uncounted amount of times. So what, in your approach, would change one of these temporary states to a permanent one that humanity would actually implement?
The way you understand how scarcity MUST impact systems cannot explain this blatant inefficiency in a natural ecosystem, individuals in nature are supposed to use EVERYTHING they can right?
Not right. There is no scarcity of resources for the bears because here bears use a form of violent authoritarianism to ensure resource (salmon in your example) availability for themselves. A dominate bear will kill weaker bears to ensure food, mates, and territory are established. In that sense, it mirrors the human reaction. Again, that points away from a non-violent benevolent society of a workable shared commons.
Except it didn’t because it turns out the Grizzly Bears discarding the Salmon ends up transferring a massive amount of nutrients from the Ocean to the Forest. The system benefits from slack, from a giving up of an individual boon for no perceivable immediate collective gain…
The only way I can see your example apply to humanity is if you’re suggesting humanity should enforce a class hierarchy where apex predators (small segment of high class humans) get first dibs of the prime resources, and lesser creatures (the middle class) and plants (those in poverty) benefit by what the bears leave behind. Isn’t this the premise of Regan’s much hated “trickle down economics”? I don’t believe you’re suggesting that, but I’m not seeing an alternate interpretation. I’m open to hearing your alternate explanation.
- Comment on Not a good sign 1 month ago:
Provide evidence for this claim.
I can provide zero evidence. I’m trying to imagine a world where your proposal works. Scarcity elimination the best possible way I could come up with.
I understand this has been established as our cultural intuition but it is a near axiomatic assumption that upon examination has very little evidence to support it, whether we look to the natural world or to human societies.
If your proposal doesn’t need to eliminate scarcity, I’m even more interested in how it is done. Whats the secret sauce society-at-large has been missing?
- Comment on Not a good sign 1 month ago:
I would imagine a system you’re suggesting would first have to eliminate scarcity of resources. We certainly have the ability to do that with our technology today but choose not to do so. Wouldn’t it require a turn to benevolence by all involved in the society to achieve that? If so, that doesn’t sound like a likely outcome. What, in your opinion, would it take to escape the Tragedy of Commons that is likely to actually occur?
- Comment on C.D.C. Cancels Publication of Study Showing Benefits of Covid Vaccines 1 month ago:
My guess is an ongoing effort to attempt to diminish the value of all vaccines so the ACA mandate to cover vaccines can be gutted. Or rather thats what I’d think if they followed any logic. I think RFK is killing vaccines because it hurts his feelings.
- Comment on Not deviled eggs, but still satanic 1 month ago:
Looks like shakshuka, Eggs in Purgatory, and Eggs in Hell are all names of the same dish.
TIL!
- Comment on Not deviled eggs, but still satanic 1 month ago:
Looks like shakshuka, Eggs in Purgatory, and Eggs in Hell are all names of the same dish.
TIL!
- Comment on Not deviled eggs, but still satanic 1 month ago:
Is this possibly a slight mis-translation of “Eggs in Purgatory”?
- Comment on Servers go Brrrrrr 1 month ago:
But my electric company has some dumbass arbitrary limit on the amount panels the professional installers have to follow and I’m pretty sure I’m close to it
This is what I faced too. The power company only allowed to install solar generation capacity 110% of my power consumption over the last 12 months. So we had to spent a year being very wasteful of electricity. That allowed me to put up panels covering the entire roof.
- Comment on Servers go Brrrrrr 1 month ago:
I have a modern house with modern a heat pump, and I agree this winter was pretty brutal, but nothing close to yours. Can I ask what you pay per KWh?
- Comment on Fuck yeah democracy 2 months ago:
I wonder how quickly he’ll flee to Minsk or Moscow as soon as the details of his deeds in office are uncovered by the new administration.
- Comment on how things become science 2 months ago:
They are shitting out what you feed them. If you feed them garbage, you get garbage in return.
This is the missing conceptual understanding that probably 90% of LLM users lack. They really don’t know how LLMs work, and great them like AGI. Sadly this includes adult policy makers in our society too. Efforts like those of these these researchers act to educate the public.
- Comment on how things become science 2 months ago:
That’s a serious breach of ethics and morals. Feeding false information to an LLM is no different that a magazine.
Hang on. Are you suggesting its unethical/immoral to lie to a machine?
Additionally, the authors didn’t submit the article to a magazine. They posted the articles as preprints which can be very questionable anyway as there is no peer review. The machine chose to ignore rigor and treat them as fact.
- Comment on how things become science 2 months ago:
I give you… “The Grant Money Printing machine!”
Need a grant? Create a disease and submit a paper. Then write a grant asking for money to solve your invented disease.
- Comment on Moon Mommy Milkers 2 months ago:
You mean like the NASA continuous livestream showing the outside of Orion ?
- Comment on Why is us rail travel so expensive? 2 months ago:
That just isn’t true.
If you want a well researched and referenced argument. Here is a good one.
It takes far more people to build, maintain, and service airplanes and the infrastructure to support them than to do the same for trains, and even when traveling a train requires fewer personnel per passenger-kilometer.
If you’re moving the goalposts to include all the infrastructure of air travel, then you must also include the infrastructure costs of long haul rail travel. Building out new rail travel for hundreds of miles of long haul service (which is what I think OP is looking at, and what I specifically replied to) is monstrously expensive.
Airplanes and cars are massively subsidized
Can you point me at examples unsubsidized financially self sustaining (profitable) long haul rail anywhere in the world?
and their uncovered externalities are much more costly to society too.
We’ve to enough moving parts in this conversation. Lets table this one to include actual costs paid and ticket prices please.
- Comment on Why is us rail travel so expensive? 2 months ago:
Even the hassle of flying is worth the time and money saved.
You’ve touched on the answer here. The answer is duration of travel. The same labor that is required to move one trainload of passengers on a long haul route can move many many times that number of passengers on an aircraft simply because the aircraft spends less time traveling. So the cost of the tickets must rise to cover the costs and eek out some profit.
