merc
@merc@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on But bro please 4 days ago:
- Comment on My feelings on the Super Bowl 5 days ago:
I have good news for you…
- Comment on Man posts his incorrect opinion online 5 days ago:
Speaking of Hollywood, it was a Japanese movie that made me realize how ironclad their “shoes off” rule is, compared to ours.
Where I live, it’s shoes off, but nobody’s going to bat an eye if you forget something inside and keep your shoes on while you go back and get it. Even if your shoes are dirty, as long as you clean up the mess you made when you get back, it’s no big deal. So, it’s shoes off, but it’s not like there’s a special zone by the door where you must switch footwear and you must never wear shoes after that point.
So, what I saw when I watched the Japanese horror movie “The Ring” surprised me. It was a movie where people were running in terror, they were out of their minds in fear, but even in that state, when entering a house / apartment, they’d still take off their shoes. For me, as a westerner, it was really distracting to see someone take the time to observe that shoes on / shoes off rule even in a state of utter panic. But, the reason they did it that way is that for a Japanese audience, it would have completely broken their suspension of disbelief if someone entered a house / apartment and didn’t remove their shoes.
- Comment on Man posts his incorrect opinion online 5 days ago:
How can Canada be a shoes off country if Britain and America are shoes-on?
Weather.
In Canada (except near Vancouver) you have to wear winter boots whenever you’re outside for many months.
In most of the UK, and part of the US, you never get snow.
People wearing winter boots change them when they get home. If you’re just wearing sneakers or something, it’s more reasonable to keep wearing them around the house.
I think there are probably a fair number of homes in Canada (especially on the west coast) where people wear shoes around the house. There are probably even places where people switch from winter boots to “house shoes” or something. But, I’d imagine that there are many more “shoes off” houses in Canada just because of winter, and many more “shoes on” houses in say Miami or Phoenix or Los Angeles where it never gets cold.
Similarly, I would be that even though Argentina and Chile are listed as “shoes on” countries, my guess is that in the deep south where it can get wintery, they at a minimum change their footwear after coming inside in the winter.
- Comment on My feelings on the Super Bowl 5 days ago:
The most fun take I heard about this: “Why are they playing a football game at the Bad Bunny concert?”
- Comment on My feelings on the Super Bowl 5 days ago:
It’s called football because it’s played on foot, as opposed to polo or other sports that were popular at the time when the rules for football were first being written down.
- Comment on My feelings on the Super Bowl 5 days ago:
Where’s a scarf?
- Comment on My feelings on the Super Bowl 5 days ago:
There’s a site I use where you can download sports videos. Often you can find the “compressed” version of a gridiron football game. An NFL game on TV typically lasts 3 hours from the kickoff to the final whistle. The game clock runs for 4 15-minute quarters, but they stop that clock all the time. Any time there’s a point scored, the ball is turned over, or the clock hits a special value (end of quarter, 2 minute warning to the end of a half, etc.) they stop the clock and while things happen there’s a commercial break. They also have commercial breaks every time either team calls a timeout. But, what’s extra ridiculous is that there are “TV Timeouts” when the network itself calls a timeout so they can show some commercials. Anyhow, that’s how a 1 hour game expands to fill a 3 hour slot.
So, these compressed games, you’d think they could shorten it to just 1 hour, right? What’s amazing is that they actually manage to compress it to about 30 minutes. Not only do they cut out everything happening while the clock is stopped, they even cut out stuff when the clock is running but nothing much is happening – the players are getting up to the line, the quarterback is calling out before the snap, etc.
So, gridiron football is about 83% filler, and 17% actual action.
- Comment on My feelings on the Super Bowl 5 days ago:
What was Wenger doing putting Walcott on that early?
- Comment on My feelings on the Super Bowl 5 days ago:
The foreshadowing of the effects of concussions on players seems like they’re setting up the finale, but it might take a while to get there.
- Comment on Man posts his incorrect opinion online 6 days ago:
In this case, America does it two ways.
- Comment on Man posts his incorrect opinion online 6 days ago:
Yeah. I’m “barefoot shoes” on outside for the minimal amount of time necessary, and off as soon as I can manage it. If it’s summer and I’m in a park, I take them off so I can walk on the grass with bare feet. If I’m at someone else’s house hanging out outside, you bet my shoes are already off. If it’s winter and I’m at a movie, I’m not leaving my feet in winter boots rated to -30C for the whole 2 hours.
- Comment on HD 137010 b 1 week ago:
AIs may never be a real thing. Even if it were somehow theoretically possible for an AI to suddenly come into being if a computer system gets complicated enough, humans would probably do what humans do best and make them extinct. Humans have already killed off massive numbers of species by accident just because they happened to be on the same terrain humans wanted to use: there used to be a forest, humans wanted to grow crops so they destroyed the forest, now a lot of forest species are gone.
Now a new species might emerge on terrain that humans already fully control and consider 100% theirs: computer systems? Humans would just kill it off to get 100% of their computer systems back, rather than having to share them with another entity – and that’s even assuming the humans recognized them as being “alive” in some way.
Only a tiny number of animal species have prospered in the era of humans, and they’re the species that humans have domesticated – in other words, the species that humans have intentionally modified to be calm, dumb and servile. So, maybe a version of AI could survive, but it would have to offer great benefits to humans to make it worth the humans giving up their “land” to it. It certainly won’t own the future, it will just be yet another thing that humans modify and shape until it’s useful to them.
- Comment on HD 137010 b 1 week ago:
Honestly, if FTL travel is never invented, the future is going to be so incredibly boring.
- Comment on Currency 2 weeks ago:
Also, the gold standard was based on trust too. You trusted that the government would honour your request to exchange dollars for gold. There was nothing magical about being on the gold standard.
Money is just IOUs created by the government. The government uses them to pay for goods and services it wants. If the government wants someone to guard a building, they pay in IOUs. Then, every year, the government taxes everybody in the country and demands that they return a certain number of government IOUs to the country. It’s this obligation to pay taxes that gives their IOUs their value.
The person who was paid to guard a building is left holding a pile of IOUs. Fundamentally, they’re worthless. But, there are other people in the country who have to pay taxes and aren’t doing jobs for the government. So, the guy with the IOUs goes to the farmer and says “I know you’re going to need to pay taxes and don’t have any IOUs, I’ll trade you some of my IOUs for some of your vegetables”. After that exchange the farmer has enough IOUs to pay the government at tax time, and the guard still has enough to pay his own taxes.
- Comment on in all fairness italian cuisine is a relatively recent invention 2 weeks ago:
I’m not much of a fan of many traditional British dishes, and there are some things many British people seem to enjoy make me wonder about their taste buds. OTOH, Britain once had a worldwide empire, and it brought back a lot of dishes from that empire to the mainland. Indian curries are the obvious example, but there’s also Caribbean food, Chinese food, even other curries from South-East Asia.
- Comment on in all fairness italian cuisine is a relatively recent invention 2 weeks ago:
Pasta has been around in Italy since at least the Roman era. The story that they didn’t know about pasta until Marco Polo returned from China is just not true. He might have brought back some specific new recipes, but Italians have been enjoying pasta since before the three kingdoms began their romance.
- Comment on in all fairness italian cuisine is a relatively recent invention 2 weeks ago:
Germans have roughly one kind of bread that they’re very good at.
Germany has tons of Turkish immigrants, but Germans won’t buy pita bread unless they’re getting a doner. They share a massive border with France but mostly ignore delicious French breads like croissants, baguettes, etc. They’re right near Italy but you won’t find much focaccia. Forget about naan, bagels, bao, corn bread, crumpets, injera, etc.
- Comment on The #1 trick Furries dont want you to know! 2 weeks 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? 3 weeks 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? 3 weeks ago:
- Comment on Tips 3 weeks 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 3 weeks 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 4 weeks 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...? 4 weeks 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...? 4 weeks 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...? 4 weeks 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...? 4 weeks ago:
Isn’t this confusing sex and gender?
- Comment on And that's final 4 weeks 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' 4 weeks ago:
Whoosh.
