adespoton
@adespoton@lemmy.ca
- Comment on In languages which use complex written characters (such as Chinese's logographs), is there an equivalent to English's "text speak" shorthand? 1 day ago:
Isn’t there also shorthand where you just write the base components and people understand what you mean because even though the radicals are missing, the core meaning of the glyph is still close enough?
The difference is that the shorthand isn’t based on phonetics but on the core meaning of the calligraphic strokes.
It’s why Japanese writers can communicate with Cantonese speakers through quick strokes on their palms. The radicals are all different but the base components are the same.
Similar to a German person stripping back words to core syllables.
- Comment on Those posts for little home gadgets that show up on social media, kinda like "as seen on tv" stuff but since it's tiktok/insta and other such sites, what would those be called? 2 days ago:
Tchotchkes?
- Comment on What is the "dip"? 2 days ago:
To protect them from parasites, yes.
- Comment on What is the "dip"? 2 days ago:
I always assumed it was sheep dip.
- Comment on I want to leave tech: what do I do? 4 days ago:
This isn’t leaving tech… it’s leaving corporate employment.
Still great options, but I was expecting something more like: pivot to a different role in your existing company and then find another non-corporate use for those skills, or get your apprenticeship in the trades, or become a bus driver.
- Comment on 32, f. Are there any dating sites that are actually free and don't suddenly force me to pay to actually use the site? 5 days ago:
What differentiates a dating site from something like Lemmy? The secret matching algorithm?
- Comment on Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? 5 days ago:
If asked in a vacuum, there’d be no audible answer.
Unless non-verbal communication was used and the participants could hold their breath long enough.
- Comment on US disrupts North Korean IT worker "laptop farm" scheme in 16 states 1 week ago:
These four North Koreans remain at large, and the ‘Rewards for Justice’ program has announced $5,000,0000 in rewards for credible information about their current location.
Wow… so PRK can make just as much by saying “here they are, at an office in Pyongyang!” as they made via this entire 5-year scheme.
- Comment on Is there something like a spreadsheet for hierarchical data structures? 1 week ago:
I’ll second the SQL database here. Especially since most people who use a spreadsheet actually treat it as a database in the first place, and not as a way to lay out data in a 2D table.
But if a hierarchical table is really what’s desired, any visual database interface should do the trick.
- Comment on Website containing a list of names of abilities, characters, locations, etc. from video games? 1 week ago:
Fandom.com?
- Comment on Is there a medieval equivalent of the youtube channel "Primative Technology" 2 weeks ago:
Bards. There were bards.
- Comment on Is there a medieval equivalent of the youtube channel "Primative Technology" 2 weeks ago:
It’s the answer that came to my mind when I saw the question. I was not disappointed to see someone had already written it 😃
- Comment on If one were so inclined, could you take your plot of land, parcel it up into 1-meter-squared (or smaller) sections, and sell each of those sections to different people/companies? 2 weeks ago:
Depends on your local laws. If there are no municipal or regional laws against it and the zoning allows for it, yes, you could do it.
You could also form a corporation that is owned by a lot of people and use that to buy a regular plot of land, and that would usually comply with local regulations. That’s how strata corporations work.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 weeks ago:
On the other side of this, I once had a co-worker who bought a keystroke recorder and attached it to his own computer.
The person who had been messing with his computer saw the mini camera he had set up but missed the keylogger. He was able to figure out who it was and what they were up to from that.
- Comment on Windows 11 user has 30 years of 'irreplaceable photos and work' locked away in OneDrive - and Microsoft's silence is deafening 2 weeks ago:
This is why I run my own NextCloud instance that backs up locally and via offsite rotation.
Sure, I could still lose it all, but it would be 100% my own fault if I did.
- Comment on Why is there such a negative connotation with the poos of horses, bulls, and bats? 3 weeks ago:
Horses, because they used to be everywhere. Step in the street, and you were likely to step in some.
Bull, because it’s very big and smelly and there was usually some around (steer manure is still prized for gardening).
Bats… because it rains from above and is really gross, and you’ve got a high likelihood of getting really sick from it.
Why we don’t go on about pigeon and seagull guano though? I have no idea.
- Comment on In this day and age is it possible to create a commune? With majority of vegetables coming from one acre and all put in to get wifi to our subdivision? So the bill is not that high? 3 weeks ago:
Usually in the US they call it a co-op instead of a commune, but yeah, things like that are already done.
- Comment on Spicy food never affects my gut and everyone thinks it's really weird. How unusual is this and what could be happening to explain why spicy food doesn't affect me? 3 weeks ago:
Most people have taste receptors in their gut as well as on their tongue. It helps regulate how quickly your muscles contract to move stuff along through your intestine.
Some people don’t have as many, and some people build up a tolerance to capsaicin (in both their mouth and gut).
- Comment on How would I pop a bag of popcorn on the microwave? 3 weeks ago:
Dump it out and use it like any other popcorn. It’s pre-salted and the bag contains the oil you’d otherwise need to add.
But don’t put it in an air popper; the oil is likely to catch fire or just cause the kernels to burn.
- Comment on What water bottles are completely free from the problem of weird chipping/shavings of the material which could put material in the water, even when dropping it or when using Bottle Bright tablets? 3 weeks ago:
Been using them for 15 years; the bottles get a few dents in them, but I’ve even been able to hammer most of those out.
Haven’t used a plastic water bottle since the early 90s.
- Comment on If we replace most plastic with a non plastic alternative and would that really be better? 4 weeks ago:
The solution isn’t so much to replace plastic as it is to eliminate “single use” from our way of life, except as needed for emergencies (eg, situations where the only way to be sanitary is by destroying the object after use).
If you eliminate the majority of non-reusable stuff from your life, the rest becomes much easier. The volumes of plastics would be much lower such that much of it could actually be recycled at least once.
The second bit is to always incorporate end of life into a product’s lifecycle. Shrink what’s allowed to go in landfills. Provide a system to reclaim and often re-use damaged or worn out materials. Design things so they can be easily parted (broken up into parts) so that if a battery dies, you take the old ones in for servicing and either get them replaced or refreshed, instead of tossing the entire device.
Groceries? I no longer use bags; I get the store to give me the flats it gets its stuff in, and I fill those up with my groceries. General shopping? I have a set of cloth bags that stay in my car and another I can shove in my pocket when I’m walking.
I’ve got a metal water bottle I take with me when I go places.
Rejecting single use will get us much further than rejecting plastic.
- Comment on Is there a more convenient way to do this? 5 weeks ago:
If you have an iPhone, it has a built in translation app too, that does voice to voice with written summaries.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
It’s like switching from cigarettes to chickory.
- Comment on Has the use of a comma instead of the word "and" in English news headlines always been a thing? 1 month ago:
Eats Shoots and Leaves
- Comment on will i fit in more with china/japan or russia or their communities in terms of acceptance/blending in? 1 month ago:
East Asian people tend to be more racist than Russians; the Rus themselves tend to feel superior to other Russians, but aside from that superiority, they’re likely to not care much about race.
Chinese and Japanese? Very insular.
Of course, if you’re living outside China/Japan/Russia, you’re going to have different interactions with people from there, many of whom will have left because they rejected the culture.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
No lol about it. That’s either a thinly veiled death threat, or someone saying that they will keep bullying and harassing until the person goes away.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
The content is open to interpretation based on context, but the «» indicates that English is likely not the quoter’s primary language.
So based on that, I have to ask: are you asking specifically about the nested idioms in the sentence?
- Comment on (i feel really stupid asking, but what the hell!) could i be of french descent? 1 month ago:
Most likely you have ancestors who lived in what is now France. Either that, or you have ancestors whose descendants moved around, and some of them settled in what is now France.
This could have happened before or after France became a nation.
Then again, it’s pretty likely that you have ancestors who lived in Africa.
- Comment on How are roundabouts made? 1 month ago:
Where I live, it’s all planned out in CAD, and then the inner concrete curb is calculated and broken up into sections, according to the plan.
Then the intersection being replaced (because that’s almost always the case) is dug up in the center and the concrete forms put in place and the center backfilled with gravel and dirt.
After the concrete has set, the asphalt machines re-level and pave the surrounding area. After this, brick is often added inside the concrete to provide an extra driving surface for large vehicles. Then plants or statues are added to the centre.
After all this, the lines and markings go on, and they’re just offset from the concrete curb, so nothing fancy needs to be done; the paint truck just has a little arm that stays over the concrete.
- Comment on Why do we tolerate it that Luigi Mangione is being held in prison. We know its absolutely the least safe place he can be? 2 months ago:
The guards and administration want him alive.
People like Epstein die in prison because showing up in court runs the risk of taking down powerful people. People like Luigi always have their day to be dragged through the mud in court before they rot away forever in jail, with random reminders that they’re still alive and suffering.