cynar
@cynar@lemmy.world
- Comment on they come 3 days ago:
I’ve not tried tin foil. The insulation seems to be more robust, and it wants to lie flat. It’s also optimised for IR reflection, tin foil isn’t.
Downside, it’s a near perfect blackout material. I only put them up when it’s going to be ridiculously hot, and only on the sun facing side of the house.
- Comment on they come 3 days ago:
You can get wall insulation that is, effectively a stiff bubble wrap made of milar foil. It’s not even that expensive I cut it to match windows, then used suction cuts to fix it in place.
It’s amazingly effective at keeping heat out. During the 45 degree weather, I barely had to use my air conditioner, to have a comfortable temperature.
- Comment on people trashing the self-service section of the post office 2 weeks ago:
That’s common in the UK as well, though mostly in the cheaper supermarkets. A lot of places rely on the honour system, and convenient drop off places.
I’m of the mindset that you can judge a society quite well by how they deal with shopping trollies.
- Comment on people trashing the self-service section of the post office 2 weeks ago:
I’ve noticed that people often put in near minimum acceptable effort to go optional tasks. The trick seems to be to make the easiest “acceptable” solution, to be an acceptable one.
Shopping carts are another example. The perfect solution is for people to return them to the front of the store. But that’s too much effort for many. They leave them wherever they can dump it. An acceptable one is to return them to collection points. It’s not optimal, but it’s better, and most people will actually do it.
- Comment on Morpheus Actor Laurence Fishburne Reveals He Was Turned Down for The Matrix Resurrections — So He Might Not Be Back for Matrix 5 Either - IGN 5 weeks ago:
Resurrections is an excellent protest movie, in the punk vein.
It was protesting exactly the type of exploitation that Warner brothers did with the matrix.
The film is akin to a new lassie film. Only the film ends with lassie being staked out in the sun and flayed alive by a teenage sociopath, whimpering the entire time. It’s a massive fuck you, intended to kill the franchise. There was just enough plausible deniability to get away, and avoid being sued for it.
- Comment on Well, that's no ordinary rabbit! 5 weeks ago:
I’ve also come across these. There’s a lot we don’t know, all of these could be entirely wrong.
- Comment on Well, that's no ordinary rabbit! 5 weeks ago:
A 15’ chicken with teeth would be terrifying.
- Comment on Anon is worried about men 1 month ago:
I fully agree. A lot of entertainment options have moved from self organising to a fire hose model. It used to be you just gave youngsters a place to go, and let them work out what to do with it. Now it’s hyper-commercialised. Everyone sits/stands there and absorbs entertainment from a central source.
It’s also not just young adults and teenagers. Pre teens and early teens have nowhere to really interact organically. Without that solid foundation of peer socialising, they are trying to build on soft sand.
- Comment on Anon is worried about men 1 month ago:
Social changes have caused chaos. A lot of the “traditional” dating methods existed to give structure to finding a partner. Unfortunately, those structures got trashed by the general update to gender roles. While these changes are great in many ways, it left young people in limbo. It was eventually replaced with online dating, for many. Unfortunately, that, in turn has been trashed by corporate takeover.
You’ve also got the outlier problem. The problematic men and women make up a small proportion of the population, but do a disproportionate amount of dating. A lot of the complaints are aimed at the problematic groups. Unfortunately, they don’t care. It’s mostly the non-problematic people who get the wrong message.
- Comment on Cathy, do the math. 2 months ago:
Because statistics is a relative unknown to many people. Until people have a good grounding in statistics then they often have to rely on an appeal to authority.
- Comment on Cathy, do the math. 2 months ago:
In reality, statistics should be trusted based on source, method and importance.
A survey of preferred ice-cream flavours by an ice-cream company can be trusted easily, even if the wording and method are a bit loose. An analysis of a potentially billion dollar drug requires FAR more scrutiny, even from multiple reliable sources. Between these 2 extremes is a spectrum of trust.
Unfortunately, most people don’t do well with shades of grey. If some statistics can’t be trusted, then none can. It’s all false news (until it happens to agree with their preconceived views).
- Comment on Cathy, do the math. 2 months ago:
Even a small amount of statistic abuse will break blind trust in them. Once that trust is gone, some people will reject all of them, rather than try and differentiate.
Low grade abuse of statistics and related methods is rampant in low grade media.
- Comment on Cathy, do the math. 2 months ago:
There are levels of abuse, some blatant, some subtle. Leading questions are obvious, when you have the question asked. Publishing bias is difficult to spot, even for trained scientists looking for it.
Learning about statistical methods isn’t enough. People need to be taught how to weigh the data presented against the value of misleading them.
It’s a subsection of logical reasoning, and needs to be taught as part of an integrated whole.
- Comment on Cathy, do the math. 2 months ago:
Part of the problem is that statistics can be abused. It takes a reasonable amount of training to be able to differentiate between reliable statistics and potentially dodgy. Even worse, we are often presented with them, striped or context.
The best solution is to teach people how to both spot problems and seek reliable data. The proper meaning of “do your own research”. Unfortunately, a significant chunk just give up with them and only trust their gut.
- Comment on i somsone who isn’t dyslexic lexic? 2 months ago:
The dys effectively means disorder of. Lexic reading and writing ability. It’s a disorder of reading.
In the same family you have some others. Dyscalcula is a disorder of maths ability. Dyspraxia is a disorder of motor control.
Science likes Latin based words. Because it’s a dead language, the meanings don’t change/drift. Most scientific language can be deconstructed this way.
- Comment on Sony, which is making a Helldivers 2 movie, is also making a new Starship Troopers movie, but it's not based on the Starship Troopers movie we already have 2 months ago:
His various books explored the pros and cons of various government styles in a fairly honest way. Unfortunately, modern films don’t do well with nuances. It’s fascism on the surface, but there are echoes of the deep cracks that make it so terrifying and self destructive.
- Comment on Sony, which is making a Helldivers 2 movie, is also making a new Starship Troopers movie, but it's not based on the Starship Troopers movie we already have 2 months ago:
I viewed the movie as a play on the propaganda within the universe of the book (roughly the equivalent of films like “black hawk down”).
A movie playing it straight could be interesting. My only concern is how it will resonate with the current political situation. The original book was far more subtle in its view on fascism. It could easily turn into a fascist call to arms.
- Comment on How can a military buy fighter jets that the seller has kill switches for? 2 months ago:
The game changer will be swarm capable drones.
A few smart drones can be used to guide a swarm of cheaper drones on target. Additional sensor drones can feed back info to improve this.
Currently, defensive systems can cope with a drone attack. However, if you have 20 coming in from all directions, in perfect coordination, they will be overwhelmed. You don’t even need all of them to be armed, just a couple, protected by the rest.
Current drone usage is akin to the first tanks in WWI. The WWII equivalent will be terrifying.
- Comment on What is the point of the Nicole spam? 2 months ago:
More than I see very few of them anymore. I see more of them when I look in the junk mail, but even hotmail has gotten good a filtering out all the crap.
- Comment on What is the point of the Nicole spam? 2 months ago:
Does it however? I’m not up to speed on modern anti spam, but a huge number of spelling mistakes screams spam to me. I would be extremely surprised if it wasn’t the case. The best way to deliver spam is to make it indistinguishable from legit messages.
Also, the existence of spear fishing implies it’s a choice.
- Comment on What is the point of the Nicole spam? 2 months ago:
No evidence that we have. The spammers obviously think it’s worth doing however, and they are the ones that would have the statistics.
- Comment on What is the point of the Nicole spam? 2 months ago:
The initial fishing is a low effort, wide net. What follows actually takes the investment of man hours and/or other resources. They would rather get 1 catch they can take all the way, than 500 where 495 will figure it out later and bail.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
The film hot fuzz has an amazing take on this. They need to talk to a farmer, but end up bringing the dog handler along. It turns out it’s not for the dog. It takes 2 accent translations to make sense of what he is saying!
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
I had a Welsh work colleague years ago. A few times he was on the phone and spoke Welsh. None of the mental markers on what language he was speaking seemed to change. It sounded like English, spoken with a Welsh accent. Until my brain tried to interpret it. It was like I had had a stroke. It parsed as English, but wouldn’t make sense. It took a conscious effort to remind myself that he wasn’t speaking English.
- Comment on Observer 2 months ago:
What is a particle, what is a wave? QM entities are neither. They are a 3rd thing. A quantised wave is the term my university professor used as a short hand. The nature of that wave is described by the Schroeder equation + its constraints. Certain interactions will bound it heavily, and so make it look particle like, others emphasise the wavelike properties.
You require the maths to actually do anything useful with it, but not to get the basic concepts. It’s no different to the rest of physics, in that. E.g. you can understand the concepts of orbital mechanics, without being able to calculate them.
- Comment on Observer 2 months ago:
While I’m rusty as hell, my physics degree was actually focused quite a lot into QM.
It’s perfectly possible to get a reasonable understanding of what’s going on without going head first into the maths. There are definitely areas however that we don’t have a good conceptual model of yet. For those, the maths definitely leads the way. 90% of QM is comprehendible with relatively little maths. You only need the maths when you start to get predictive.
- Comment on Observer 2 months ago:
QM entities are quantised waves. You can make a wave look very close to a particle quite easily, a particle can never behave like a wave.
Dumping the mental short hand of particle interactions is one of the main reasons most people can’t get their heads around it.
- Comment on Observer 2 months ago:
So why are you so upset with us trying to fix it?
I personally find the anti science, anti learning crowd has gone from amusing, to annoying, to terrifying.
- Comment on Observer 2 months ago:
I disagree with it being hard to comprehend. The maths is an absolute bitch, but the basic premise is fairly simple. Everything is (quantised) waves. The rest clicks, once you get your brain to accept this. Everything else is a consequence. Those consequences can lead you down deep dark tunnels, filled with evil maths and mind bending results, but the basic idea is simple.
I have a bit of an issue with memes that are actively misleading.
- Comment on Observer 2 months ago:
That is part of what bugs me.
Quantum mechanics isn’t magical or unknowable. It’s just an area of physics where some of our base assumptions/approximations break down. It’s not even that hard to wrap your head around, it just seems most people don’t want to try.
