Another fun fact: the pictured orientation of that smaller version of Africa is the only one that you can use to produce that picture.

That does depend on who is making those memes. The bad faith propaganda meant to further divide the population targets all sides of all issues and it’s another very divisive issue. Any time I see someone making what should be a good point but in a way that will instead increase resistance, I suspect that’s what’s going on. It’s not a certain way to determine if that’s happening; anyone who has read How to Win Friends and Influence People knows that our instincts about persuasion are bad even before any bad faith is involved.

You cannot say that with statistical certainty. There’s about 8 billion people who haven’t eventually died yet and all it will take is one of them to break that 100%. You should include a disclaimer with an error range or you might get sued by someone who spikes someone’s drink with dihydrogen monoxide and then they don’t eventually die for botching their assassination.

That said, the statistics are pretty strong. 99.9% is basically 100% plus wiggle room so no one can sue me, so readers should be aware that this dangerous chemical can also go by the name of hydrogen hydroxide and some food manufacturers try to sneak it by with the name aqua in their ingredients list.

Yep, looks like it was fooled by the fake contour on her right cheek.

Yeah golden parachutes are such a joke in this society that likes to pretend to be a meritocracy.

Though on that note, I’d love to see a law that limits golden parachutes to the lowest paid position in the company. Hell, I’d be ok with that being scaled to full time. Not because disgraced executives deserve even that much but because it would give some incentive to increase pay rates across the company. I’ve also long thought that executive compensation should also be limited by some multiple of the lowest pay. And yeah, I’d include stock options and grants in that (for both employee and executive compensation).

IMO a fumbled and later recovered launch is different from the enshitification of video games like P2W, MTX in general, lootboxes, releasing what should be patches as paid DLC, invasive DRM and anti-cheat. I’d file all of those under bad design, while a bad launch is more of a bad execution. There can be overlap, like if they fully intended for early players to fill the role of beta testers.

The way I approach it is I try to avoid the bad design stuff entirely but just avoid buying new games at release and definitely never pre-order. I’ll also support games in early release if I really like the concept and want to give them a better chance at being able to pull it off, but I go into those with the understanding that it’s not complete right now and there’s a chance it never will be. But I don’t see any reason to hold anything against the games that have messy launches but later recover.

Though I’ve learned to not jump on the hype train and that makes it much easier to not take any of this stuff personally.

If they can’t keep their committed date (or fold entirely), then the source goes open. If every copy happens to get deleted during the bankruptcy, treat it as criminal fraud by the top levels of the company and go after everyone that could have decided to improve backups and other IT methods of avoiding that but didn’t. That’s assuming it was accidental, higher penalties if it can be proven to be deliberate.

I’ve also been avoiding playing games that involve some third party launcher or login. I’m not perfectly consistent with this and have bought some games before realizing they had this, but even steam games can be subject to a company deciding they don’t want to support their game anymore (which IMO is fair) and just killing the game off entirely, which isn’t fair. I’d like to see a requirement that other steps be taken to keep it going without their active support. Like opening the source and relinquishing all copyrights on that code. If they want to keep parts of it, then pull it out into a library that they continue to maintain.

I assume it’s like the new car smell. Pleasant or not, it’s from inhaling plastic and paint particles and other chemicals as the excesses evaporate and loose pieces come loose and become airborne.

Steam Deck is probably similar. Plastics, anti-corrosion coatings on heat sink fins, trace metals and solder, inks from the PCB, maybe the occasional ion leftover if there’s any micro-arcing.

I’d guess it lasts a long time because the cooling airflow continually erodes whatever is in its path, while new cars don’t have that continuous erosion so eventually all the particles that were going to escape do and the ones left over are more stable.

I read about a military AI that would put its objectives before anything else (like casualties) and do things like select nuclear strikes for all missions that involved destruction of targets. So they adjusted it to allow a human operator to veto strategies, in the simulation this was done via a communications tower. The AI apparently figured out that it could pick the strategy it wanted without veto if it just destroyed the communications tower before it made that selection.

Though take it with a grain of salt because the military denied the story was accurate. Which could mean it wasn’t true or it could mean they didn’t want the public to believe it was true. Though it does sound a bit too human-like for it to pass my sniff test (an AI wouldn’t really care that its strategies get vetoed), but it’s an amusing anecdote.

We should do a workshop for that, it sounds like my kind of week.

How does mid 2031 sound? You’re probably busy then. Yeah, I’m just going to assume you’re busy that mid-year and hope someone else reschedules and runs the workshop with a bunch of other people that aren’t me and that they figure out a great week so that I can one day read about sloth week having just passed and briefly consider trying to catch it next year because it sounds like my kind of week (assuming I can just passively experience it).

Or post about it and build a case for defederating from them or more users to block them individually.

Yeah, that other Homer who was in the “No Homers Allowed” club might still make a comeback.

I’ve noticed that there’s good BO and bad BO. I think it depends on which bacteria make up the skin fauna. I can’t stand the bad BO but I like the good BO, at least from someone I’m in a sexual relationship with (since you need to be really close to smell it, as it’s usually not a strong smell).

The bad BO smell I associate with clothing, towels, or equipment not drying out properly. It can require bleach to get rid of the smell entirely.

The good BO smell I can’t really describe.

And ever since I’ve started using pre- and pro-biotic soap/lotion, I’ve noticed that I’ve only had the good BO, even after not showering for a few days. This is an added bonus because I started using it in the first place to successfully clear out a recurring skin infection. And the pro-biotic lotion smells amazing, too.

I’ve also noticed I like the smell of my arms, which is a different smell entirely. Not sure if it’s the skin or the hair. I have to put my nose directly on my arm to smell it.

Just make sure you gear up before you go to HR. They are there to protect the company, not the employee, and you wouldn’t believe the size of the axe they use to do this.

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).

Yeah, I like the sweet spot that C++ is in. It can do anything C can but then you have classes and STL and all that on top of it.

So you’re saying that if he had lived longer, he would have regained full use of his body?

Oh so India is North of China in your home? Cool cool. Well, hot then cool.

Can you give more detail about why you don’t like duolingo and why you do like genki?