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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • Putting all the eggs in the solar basket has risks, too. Like a large volcano eruption that reduces the amount of light that reaches the surface for a few years would be a double whammy, affecting food production as well as electricity production (which we’d need to rely on to try to offset the food losses). If we’re instead facing brownouts or full blackouts, that’s a recipe for a complete loss of stability. I suspect less solar energy reaching the surface would also reduce total wind energy (less localized heating would mean lower pressure differentials, but I could be missing other significant parts of this equation).

    I’d be most comfortable with a nice mix of energy sources combined with mothballing instead of decommissioning some capacity as renewables are able to take over more and more of the day to day energy needs so that we’re prepared to deal with an emergency like that.

    I’d also like to see more food production moved to vertical farms that can be powered by electricity rather than relying entirely on the sun and weather. But I do understand that the scale of food production would make doing that with a significant portion of the food supply very difficult. But with climate change (plus nutrient depletion of the soil), keeping so many eggs in the “just keep farming” basket also doesn’t seem like a great idea.


  • I wonder if people will soon realize that that rage they have for scalpers is just directed at the amateurs and that the upper class is full of people doing pretty much the same thing just in less obvious ways.

    Your employer (if you work for a private for-profit company) pays you x for your labour and then takes the proceeds of the labour and sells it for y where y is (generally) much higher than x. A business is profitable when the sum of all y is higher than the sum of all x.

    If it’s a non-profit, then the difference between y and x must be put back into the business in some way, which could be an investment into an expansion of its scope or it could be a raise for some or all of the workers (payroll is not profit, it’s an expense). And that could mean just the CEO gets a raise, because some of the leeching is via different pay levels for different people that isn’t based on just the difference they are directly making to the income.

    Public services can vary. If the service is profitable, then the profit goes into the budget of the government entity(s) that run it, as determined by legislature. So everyone is acting as the middleman there. If it’s not profitable, then it’s covered by taxes, at cost. There’s still varying salaries but it’s subject to government oversight, so things shouldn’t get as unbalanced as they would in the private sector, at least in theory. Though even in the public sector, there’s this assumption that promotions should come with big raises, regardless of how the workload changes, so you can still have people at the top making orders of magnitude more than people at the bottom.




  • I’d modify the 2nd one from “don’t do it” to “understand that doing this might burn bridges if they care more about the hierarchy than competence, so have at least one option that doesn’t rely on them before you do this”. That’s with the mindset that I wouldn’t want to stay long at a job like that unless this could be resolved and am willing to burn bridges in situations like that.


  • Yeah, I enjoy the 4chan highlights. Some of them really know how to entertain. But those communities have like a couple posts per day out of probably a higher volume of posts than Lemmy sees on its entire network.

    Just like Reddit or here. The memorable threads are rare, you’ll go through hundreds of average ones for each one that gets adopted into the lore.


  • Yeah, I wish C++ had function/scope epilogs and labeled loops/breaks, too. Those are the cases where the “never use goto” rule can be broken to make better code than adding all of the code that would be required to handle it the “right” way (setting up early exit flags and if statements after each level of nested loop to check the flag).


  • That’s the core of neo liberalism. Liberalism has a “my rights end where yours begin” component but neo liberalism drops that and expects the free market to solve such conflicts.

    And by “collective public elements”, I meant public organizations like the postal service, police departments, etc. The government itself is supposed to be one of those. Liberalism is neutral on what is and isn’t collectivized. Neo liberalism likes privatization but appreciates that some functions are better handled by the public, like law enforcement and road maintenance. Libertarianism believes it should all be private.

    In the last comment I said neo liberalism and libertarianism are pretty much the same, but it’s more accurate to say libertarianism is an extreme version of neo liberalism.






  • They might mean neo libs.

    It’s fucking annoying when capitalists keep coming up with capitalist positions and naming them so that they sound like they are something else. Like neo liberalism or libertarianism, which are pretty close to the same thing (all about a deregulated, private, free market), only libertarians like to emphasize how they are ok with sex and drugs.

    Liberals want governments and collective public elements to protect the rights and freedoms of individuals (from other individuals, organizations, and governments).

    Neo liberals want governments and collective public elements to stay out of their affairs and let them manage their own interests.


  • Oblivion holds a special place in my heart as the first elder scrolls game I played and as one of the few games that rewarded players that jumped everywhere they went. My mind was kinda blown the first time I saw athleticism or acrobatics level up just from jumping from one place to another.

    And I have fond memories of getting into the mage’s guild and making a custom spell that increased acrobatics to a crazy level and then jumping around the roofs of that section of the town. That was the last time I played the game, actually. It came out early in my WoW addiction and interrupted the addiction for a month or so, but then I got pulled back into WoW and ended up going pretty hardcore with the character I rolled on my return and didn’t have time for… well, anything else lol.


    • Subnautica (original and Sub Zero, plus a nod to Planet Crafter which captures some of that same vibe)
    • Metroid Prime (and all the other Metroids)
    • StarCraft (1 and 2, though fuck Blizzard today)
    • Diablo (2 and 3, though to a lesser extent for 3, and still fuck Blizzard)
    • WoW (I’m done with it now but there was a reason I was addicted for those years, but fuck Blizzard)
    • Oblivion (and Skyrim)
    • Factorio (and Dyson Sphere Project)
    • Beat Saber (and a nod to the rhythm games that predated it, like Rock Band, Guitar Hero, and Frequency I believe it was called)
    • Paradox games (HOI4, CK3, Europa (uh current?), Stellaris)
    • Hades

    Many others could have been listed here instead. Oxygen not included, smash Bros, DBZ kakarot, xenosaga 2, transport fever, city skylines, risk of Rain 2, King’s quest series, civ, Halo, Mario games, Zelda games, Mario Kart, Lego games, Minecraft… And I’m sure I’m missing many more that I have tried and others that I haven’t.



  • It’s amusing seeing some of the ones that were only even really plausible (and I use the term loosely) for a brief time hold traction after that time has passed. Like the 5G ones where even if you ignore the whole technical side of it, it was a possibility before it was deployed but now it’s out there. If it was turning people into zombies or whatever, it would be doing that right now. Or if not, then what are they waiting for?

    Or covid vaccines. Yeah, when they were first being sent out, there were potential unknowns and it was possible that they were RNA coded to do who knows what instead of just giving improved immunity to covid. I have no idea how I’d even check on something like that other than seeing what happens when someone is injected with it. But lots of people were injected with each of the vaccines. And though some issues popped up, I don’t think there was an evil plan to give like less than 1 in 100 generally minor and temporary heart issues that the actual virus also gave (but generally worse). But I still see profiles on tinder that say they prefer someone unjabbed. What timeline do they think this conspiracy is operating on? “Get a covid vaccine and you’ll likely be dead within 100 years!”

    And the funniest (saddest?) part is that there are real conspiracies. Like there’s clearly a push to turn the world fascist happening right now as the billionaire class positions itself to control how society transitions into a world where not nearly the same amount of labour is required. There’s been a group aiming to suppress information about climate change and our way of life’s role in it. Russia and China both aim to no longer be 2nd fiddles to the western world, which itself isn’t the benevolent ruler it likes to pretend to be. Science closes in on solving aging but the amount of people who read this message and will have access to it are likely under 1% (unless some kind of eternal servitude setup is developed). Almost everything about our society is set up to funnel wealth to the privileged few and conservatives almost openly sabotage public services whenever they are in power. Police brutality won’t get fixed because the ruling class benefits from the enforcer class being hated by the general public–otherwise they might band together and then the rulers would be fucked. Oh, and as much as conservatives like to bitch about immigrants (illegal or not), you never them suggest going after those who employ them unless it’s the tech companies who follow the legal route. All the illegal immigration talk isn’t about stopping it but about gaining more control over them while continuing to exploit them.

    You don’t need lizard people or aliens for a good vs evil kind of narrative. Elon Musk being human doesn’t make him a good human or anyone’s friend.