I don’t see the connection between the “Disney adults” described by this article and the wider “kidult culture” that’s supposedly characterized by playing Stardew Valley and watching K-Pop Demon Hunters.

On the one hand, this article points to people spending huge sums of money to permanently live in a constructed escapist fantasy, and on the other hand you have (relatively) cheap media where someone might spend a few hours engaging with in their free time each day.

Calling out “cozy games” where you “tend vegetable gardens” is especially odd: The clearest connection to escapism in those games is about living in a community where everyone is connected on a personal level. You know, the very thing capitalist society abolishes for profit every day. I don’t see where enjoyment of that media connects to living a Disney-themed life, basically the complete opposite.

Aww, kinda sad about AX.25

I think my packet radio setup might be fucked by that.

Instead of Patrick McGoohan driving his Lotus Super 7 in the title sequence, it’s Patrick Stewart in that dune buggy from Nemesis

I started joking to a few friends that AI software development will turn me into a slop-jockey. I started using AI tools at work to keep my boss happy, and I could immediately feel my own indifference to the code. But then, when did I every really care about the code? Another CRUD service, another data processing pipeline, another web app that’s a glorified redis cache… it’s all the same anyway.

So I decided that work can force me to use whatever tools they want on their dime, but my time is for me. I started new hobbies where the goal is to learn by creating: Learn the fundamentals, work, identify a problem, research how people solve it, work again, etc. It’s been slow, but I find I have stuck with these projects for much longer than I would have in the past. It feels like, if I’m going to spend all this time learning, I want something to show for it. To be able to take what I create, share it with people who care, and talk intelligently about what decisions I made and why.

A result of this is I’m (mostly) able to let go of my concern on where the profession is headed.

The wiki does not contradict their advice: Forcing a pawn to read does not immediately discover the location, but it does guarantee that someone is making progress towards the discovery.

It’s a vague memory, but I think selecting a book/map tells you if there’s anything left to learn from it.

For sure the rightmost image is AI:

• Zero correlation between the painted lines and where cars are parked (yes, more so than IRL)
• Shopping cart on left side is melding with car, shopping cart on right side doesn’t match the angle of the guy pushing
• No texture variation on the road paint or asphalt, despite being a parking lot in a place that presumably gets snow/ice.

why do you even want to drink something that tastes like a tree in the first place?

Fragrant herbal/woody flavors can be very refreshing. One of my favorite drinks on a hot day is spruce flavored sparkling water.

I re-watched the Exorcist recently. I found it scary, but in a different way from how people try to sell it.

The head turning, the vomit, the spider walking, that was all shocking (and cool) but not scary.

What I did find scary was all the science/medicine stuff. Doctors telling the mother that Reagan is faking it, or keeping her under sedation, or subjecting her to endless invasive tests. The real horror is the mother’s realization that the material world cannot save her daughter. The horror of putting Reagan’s life in the hands of faith.

So I’d say that it works on several levels, where for some people, scary is “OMG, a monster face!” and for others scary is the incomprehensible.

Thanks for explaining. I appreciate that this is a proactive plan of action with clear goals and trigger events.

I vote aye.

What is the practical definition of this blockade? I’m assuming that because the word “defederate” only appears once, in the context of Lemmy.world’s actions, that this blockade is separate from defederation. If so, what does it actually mean?

Sleeping at work aside, I do really like the concept. As someone who sleeps face-down, that looks pretty cozy. If an airline ever replaced seats with something like that, I’d have no qualms about flying across the world and back.

If serious: The breeding thing and this being SF suggests some strange subgroup from lesswrong/rationalism/TESCREAL or whatever they go by now.

My personal take: If I’m synthesizing historical information and recounting it in the current day, I would use their current name and pronouns. The person they are today (or died as) still did those things. It also gives space to recognize that, although they might not gave had the opportunity to be out as a trans person during those achievements, doesn’t mean they didn’t feel trans back then.

Oh cool.

And can I also get a refund on the ~$17 tariff inspection fee charged by the shipping company? That fucking handout to a billion-dollar corporation who held my package hostage, just so they would fill out some paperwork? I’m getting it all back, right?

I’ve had my TinyMight for 6 years now, and the only thing I’d replace it with is a newer model where you can more easily unscrew the battery door.

I see the G pen elite selling for $200 USD. I’d recommend to check out fuckcombustion.com to see what user reviews there are. There are plenty of vapes at that price point which look cool, but really aren’t worth the money when compared to other options. And if you can’t find many reviews on fuckcombustion, chances are it’s really not worth your money.

My personal recommendation: Get a vape which can be combined with a bong adapter. DHV through a bong is a sublime experience, even my friend who only eats edibles will make an exception when I pass him the TinyMight + Bong.

how do you learn new things

There is more to learning than just school.

When you start a job, there are all kinds of things you will learn: New tools, how to work in a professional environment, new processes and techniques. Don’t feel bad if you come back from work each day and don’t feel like opening a book or some tutorial. You are absolutely still learning, even if you come home and can’t stand the thought of touching a keyboard. I used to beat myself up about not coding in my free time or not studying new books, but starting a career involves so many more life changes than just “I get a paycheck now”. It can take years before you feel motivated to learn again, and that’s OK.

I don’t know what the work culture in Nepal is like, but if you’re not running a 996 rat race, you’ll eventually have the time (and money) for hobbies. I can’t really stay motivated to learn something just for the sake of knowing, but I can keep with it if I care about the end goal. That’s where hobbies help.

Different states have different laws, but many have faithless elector protections.

A faithless elector is someone who, after being chosen for the electoral college, does not vote for the candidate that everyone expected. Since states have a wide latitude to select or reject electoral college representatives, they can pas laws saying “If you change your vote, we will cancel your vote and replace you”. I would expect that this popular vote compact requires such protection.

I’ve had success with wayvnc, but that’s because I use wlroots based wayland compositors. It doesn’t work for GNOME or KDE.

I suppose there’s nothing to stop someone from having multiple compositors installed to the same host. One for meatspace interaction, and a wlroots based compositor for remote access.

Both revolutions came about in no small part due to terrible winter conditions.

France had a terrible harvest in 1788 followed by a brutal winter where starving families had to choose between buying expensive bread or firewood.

St Petersburg in winter of 1917 was miserably cold, and city dwellers queued for hours in outdoor bread lines while much of the available food was sent to war.

It’s not enough that people hate a government. If they still have faith that the system can work for them (“Just one new finance minister, and France will be saved”, “If we can get rid of that damned Rasputin, the Tsar will wake up and hear our cries”) they will give it a chance. Mass starvation has a way of breaking such faith, but it’s obviously not the only thing that can.

In the US, there’s very much a mood among the anti-MAGA crowd that an election can still fix things.

For me, step 0 would be to travel to the Americas ~400CE and introduce various diseases that Europeans will bring. Maybe it would make me a bioterrorist time criminal, but the hope is that indigenous societies would have more immunity by the 1500s and not get destroyed by smallpox. Then they can mount a more effective and sutained resistance against European expeditions.