merc
@merc@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on The #1 trick Furries dont want you to know! 19 hours ago:
Marinading is for meats that are too tough to cook with minimal preparation. If your hunk of meat needs to be marinated before you eat it, it’s not a steak.
- Comment on What next, power supply shortages? 5 days ago:
The interesting thing about this is that people are now stuck with whatever PC they had when the prices suddenly shot up. In the past there was always a hardware adoption curve, where some people had the newest stuff, other people waited for it to get cheaper before they bought it.
In the past, if a game company was developing a game that was scheduled to be released in 2 years, they could look at what hardware people were using now, and estimate what people would be using in 2 years. Graphics and gameplay that was possible on game studio machines running the latest hardware would be too much for home PCs when development at the studio started. But, by the time the game was ready, home machines would have caught up and people could experience these amazing graphics at home. Now, I assume game studios are going to have to re-think things and assume that most people at home will still be playing on the old gaming PC they built before the AI price apocalypse.
- Comment on What next, power supply shortages? 6 days ago:
- Comment on Tips 6 days ago:
Exactly, and it’s a cycle. They buy things on credit, carry a balance on their credit cards, owe a lot of money, and the stress gets to them. Eventually they buy things as a way to feel better and relieve the stress.
Trying to “not look poor” or “keep up with the Joneses” can lead to real misery. But, if instead you make a budget and save just a little bit every month it can be liberating.
Fundamentally, the problem is unequal wealth distribution. But, we should also try to help people live within their means while we attempt to fix that societal issue.
- Comment on It's easy 1 week ago:
The reason they don’t admit that they got a head start is that they actually don’t believe it.
The daughter of a family friend of mine grew up middle class. Her mom was a social worker, her did had an office job. She managed to marry a man who’s the son that’s inheriting his dad’s oil business, worth tens of millions. She is now a housewife / stay at home mom. She now has a city home, a cottage (which is fully a house, just in a more rural location) and a summer home. One of her daughters competes in sailing races (and anybody who knows sailing knows just how expensive that hobby can be), the other is into horse riding.
I’ve asked her what it’s like for her kids to grow up rich, and she doesn’t get it. She doesn’t think she’s rich. She says that there are houses around where she lives that are even bigger than hers, and that her husband works hard. I’m sure that’s true, but she’s still in the top 0.1%. And this is someone who grew up middle class, and should remember what it was like.
I guarantee that most of the kids that come from rich families have no idea what it’s like not to be rich. As a result, they don’t ever consider that it might not be normal to be able to have your dad’s lawyer look over the contracts for your new company free of charge. They never think of how easy they had it to find investors for their company, and how forgiving those investors were. It never occurred to them that during those lean months at the beginning when their company hadn’t yet started generating real revenue, that it was unusual to be able to live in their parents’ spare apartment in the city, and to have dad pay off their credit card.
- Comment on Wokeness ended, check mate leftists 1 week ago:
Meanwhile, the ad companies do not care.
The right wants to claim these companies are on their side. The companies aren’t on their side, they’re not on anybody’s side. If they think they can generate more sales with a fat, black model in a bikini, they’ll do it. If it’s a thin trans model, they’ll do that. If it’s a slim blonde with big tits and a swastika tattoo, they’ll do that instead. Whatever moves product.
- Comment on Being Trans Isn't Normal or Part of Nature...or is it...? 1 week ago:
go to Scotland and there it is masculine.
I wouldn’t say that. In Scotland wearing a skirt is still seen as feminine. Wearing a very special kind of skirt is seen as masculine in certain contexts. If you’re wearing a kilt, a sporran (the purse thing), knee length socks, the right kind of shoes, etc. it’s definitely a masculine style of dress. But, without all the accessories it’s more ambiguous whether it’s male or female. And if it’s not a tartan at all – say a miniskirt, that’s definitely still feminine in Scotland.
- Comment on Being Trans Isn't Normal or Part of Nature...or is it...? 1 week ago:
Right, that’s my point. Since we don’t know anything about the thoughts of seahorses or about seahorse society, we can’t apply labels like “trans” to seahorses, the only thing we know about is their biology, so sex, not gender.
- Comment on Being Trans Isn't Normal or Part of Nature...or is it...? 1 week ago:
Not if you go to a church where they still do the Latin Mass.
- Comment on Being Trans Isn't Normal or Part of Nature...or is it...? 1 week ago:
Isn’t this confusing sex and gender?
- Comment on And that's final 1 week ago:
Shouldn’t it be:
My plathtic vampire fangth thtay ON during thekth.
- Comment on Valheim player keeps building Dollar Generals despite friend begging them to stop: 'I do not want to play Valheim with Greg anymore' 1 week ago:
Whoosh.
- Comment on Valheim player keeps building Dollar Generals despite friend begging them to stop: 'I do not want to play Valheim with Greg anymore' 1 week ago:
If there’s more than one, is the plural Dollars General?
- Comment on Huh? 1 week ago:
One of my personal gripes with TV and movies is when the main characters go to a dance club, or a strip club, and have a conversation at a normal volume level. You can always tell from the look of the places that they’re the kind where you have to shout into the ear of the person next to you to have a hope at being understood.
- Comment on Huh? 1 week ago:
It’s interesting that the first pubs were just that – people’s homes where a certain room was open to guests.
- Comment on Huh? 1 week ago:
In one place I worked, the ambient sound was so loud that not only did everyone wear headphones, but the best way to chat with someone who was 3-4 desks away was to type to them while continuing to listen to whatever you had on your headphones. Of course, the place was so absurdly loud because the management insisted on an open office plan with everyone in the office so that we’d more easily be able to chat informally to foster new ideas.
- Comment on u WoT m8 1 week ago:
I suspect that for a 5th grade teacher, something written by OpenAI will be one of the best papers they’ve ever read. Not insightful in any way, but correct spelling, punctuation, paragraphs, vocabulary, etc.
- Comment on Doom 2016 forces you to accept 4 agreements before playing. 2 weeks ago:
They’re not going to patch the game with an update that removes the TOS, privacy policy and code of conduct now that the multiplayer elements are no longer relevant.
- Comment on Doom 2016 forces you to accept 4 agreements before playing. 2 weeks ago:
OP says it’s a single-player game, but it looks like that’s not the case. If it is multiplayer, a code of conduct is 100% necessary. The rest seems pretty standard for something online: privacy policy, EULA and TOS.
I wish EULAs would go away, or at least be heavily restricted in what they can force you to agree with, but they’re standard.
TOS is useful to define what you can expect out of their online service.
I also wish there were privacy laws, so the Privacy Policy didn’t force you to agree to absurd terms, but here we are.
- Comment on Internet picture of a monkey 3 weeks ago:
NFTs were bought with crypto, which had various hidden costs, scams and thefts, so it’s basically the same.
- Comment on Internet picture of a monkey 3 weeks ago:
True, but while you’re still paying those timeshare fees, you still have access to the place.
The real difference is that a time share is never thought of as an investment where you buy low and sell high. It’s thought of as getting a good deal on something you plan to use. For it to be similar to an NFT it would have to be something like a dude in Nebraska buys a time share in Australia and then tries to make money from Australians or something. AFAIK almost everybody who buys time shares does it because they plan to use the place as a vacation property and actually do use it that way, at least for a while.
- Comment on Internet picture of a monkey 3 weeks ago:
Gambling / FOMO. The more informed people at least realized they were gambling. The less informed thought they were missing out on a big money-making scheme and that everybody else was getting rich except them.
- Comment on Internet picture of a monkey 3 weeks ago:
The two aren’t even remotely comparable. A timeshare may not be as valuable as you thought it was, but it exists and you can use it. An NFT is basically an entry in a star registry, but the people think (or at least thought) they actually own the stars.
- Comment on Ska ftw 3 weeks ago:
Pop: I have a crush on a boy. World broken? Sorry, um… I don’t follow the news.
Gangsta Rap: I’m the king of this 'hood, and don’t give a shit about anything happening outside of it.
Country: My truck is my whole world, and the world is broken.
Classical: I will describe the great forces at play that are breaking the world using music.
- Comment on you're doing ReSeArCh rong!! 3 weeks ago:
we should teach them these things directly, instead of relying on science classes
Ok, so by “these things” you mean logic, argument analysis, media literacy, critical thinking, etc.
Yes, I had classes like that, and I think they’re much more important than science and math classes. You can learn science and math on your own from YouTube videos, but you need the media literacy to know which YouTube videos you can trust.
- Comment on Anon tries to understand credit scores 4 weeks ago:
Also worth mentioning: what’s the alternative?
If there are no credit scores but there are still loans, the banks / entities making the loans have no real way to know if their loan is going to be paid back. Because of that, the loans are a lot more risky. What happens when a loan is riskier? The interest rate is higher, or people are just outright rejected.
- Comment on I hacked mars! 4 weeks ago:
They work, but there are no humans inside them.
- Comment on I hacked mars! 4 weeks ago:
It’s amazing how complicated just the O2 cycle is. Basically, we don’t yet how to do it without a whole planet being involved.
Like, plants do release O2 sometimes, but they also use O2 as fuel when they grow. Growing a plant requires light. On the earth that’s easy, just put it in the sun. On Mars there’s no atmosphere and no magnetic field, so if you just put a plant on the surface they’ll die. So, you need to grow them underground in a mostly earth-like atmosphere at mostly earth-like pressure lit by artificial lights.
So, you plant a lot of plants deep underground lit by bright artificial lights. Then you need to supply the plants with a lot of water. Some of that water will be released into the air, but some of it will be incorporated into the plant’s body. There’s a whole water cycle that isn’t yet fully understood.
What about the soil? On earth worms and other bugs break down leaf litter and other things into usable soil and bees pollinate many of the plants. So, do you ship up a bunch of bugs? You’d have to supply a whole ecosystem of them so they live in balance. You could go with hydroponics instead, but then you’d need a constant supply of nutrients for the plants, and given the amount of plant matter needed for just one human, that would be a huge supply of nutrients.
I’d love to see another honest, scientifically rigorous attempt at a biosphere project. Building a closed ecosystem on Earth is easy-mode compared to doing it anywhere else, but so far all the Biospheres have been failures. IMO until we can easily do it on Earth, we’re nowhere near ready to do it in space, on the moon, or on another planet.
- Comment on My culture also loves music, dancing and telling stories 5 weeks ago:
Just a little.
- Comment on My culture also loves music, dancing and telling stories 5 weeks ago:
English has a rote greeting in “How are you doing?” But, you can respond with anything from “great!” to “oh, okay”. It would be a big faux pas to take that as an opportunity to launch into all your medical issues. Maybe in Chinese it’s ok to respond honestly, but just not to assume someone is actually asking you if you want to eat something.