NoSpotOfGround

@NoSpotOfGround@lemmy.world

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NoSpotOfGround , (edited )

Fun fact I read once: The most common last name in Hungary is not Magyar but actually Horvath. Which in Hungarian means "Croat".

And Croatia is not even a directly neighboring country anymore. So it'd be like the most common name in America being Johnny Guatemala.

NoSpotOfGround ,

Thank you for the kind presumption, but I actually fucked it up and scrambled up my geography, @bokster was right to correct me. I looked at a map before I wrote that, too, and I still read it wrong. I'm not even sure what i thought was between them...

NoSpotOfGround ,

Agonal breathing is when someone who is not getting enough oxygen is gasping for air. It is usually due to cardiac arrest or stroke. It's not true breathing. It's a natural reflex that happens when your brain is not getting the oxygen it needs to survive. Agonal breathing is a sign that a person is near death.

NoSpotOfGround ,

What's the link with Finnish?

NoSpotOfGround ,

Or a witch.

NoSpotOfGround ,

So the brown stuff left inside the ball is part of the explosive that had gone bad and didn't "pop" anymore? Is this what happens when ordnance expires?

NoSpotOfGround ,

400 milion worth.

NoSpotOfGround ,

Playing two classic schoolyard games can help us understand everything from sexism to the power of advertising.

There’s a word game we used to play at my school, or a sort of trick, and it works like this. You tell someone they have to answer some questions as quickly as possible, and then you rush at them the following:

“What’s one plus four?!”

“What’s five plus two?!”

“What’s seven take away three?!”

“Name a vegetable?!”

Nine times out of 10 people answer the last question with “Carrot”.

Now I don’t think the magic is in the maths questions. Probably they just warm your respondent up to answering questions rapidly. What is happening is that, for most people, most of the time, in all sorts of circumstances, carrot is simply the first vegetable that comes to mind.

This seemingly banal fact reveals something about how our minds organise information. There are dozens of vegetables, and depending on your love of fresh food you might recognise a good proportion. If you had to list them you’d probably forget a few you know, easily reaching a dozen and then slowing down. And when you’re pressured to name just one as quickly as possible, you forget even more and just reach for the most obvious vegetable you can think of – and often that’s a carrot.
Alamy Carrots are the "prototypical" vegetable (Credit: Alamy)Alamy
Carrots are the "prototypical" vegetable (Credit: Alamy)

In cognitive science, we say the carrot is “prototypical” – for our idea of a vegetable, it occupies the centre of the web of associations which defines the concept. You can test prototypicality directly by timing how long it takes someone to answer whether the object in question belongs to a particular category. We take longer to answer “yes” if asked “is a penguin a bird?” than if asked “is a robin a bird?”, for instance. Even when we know penguins are birds, the idea of penguins takes longer to connect to the category “bird” than more typical species.

So, something about our experience of school dinners, being told they’ll help us see in the dark, the 37 million tons of carrots the world consumes each year, and cartoon characters from Bugs Bunny to Olaf the Snowman, has helped carrots work their way into our minds as the prime example of a vegetable.

The benefit to this system of mental organisation is that the ideas which are most likely to be associated are also the ones which spring to mind when you need them. If I ask you to imagine a costumed superhero, you know they have a cape, can probably fly and there’s definitely a star-shaped bubble when they punch someone. Prototypes organise our experience of the world, telling us what to expect, whether it is a superhero or a job interview. Life would be impossible without them.
Alamy Answer quickly: what do cows drink? Your response shows just how our mind's associations can sometimes lead us astray (Credit: Alamy)Alamy
Answer quickly: what do cows drink? Your response shows just how our mind's associations can sometimes lead us astray (Credit: Alamy)

The drawback is that the things which connect together because of familiarity aren’t always the ones which should connect together because of logic. Another game we used to play proves this point. You ask someone to play along again and this time you ask them to say “Milk” 20 times as fast as they can. Then you challenge them to snap-respond to the question “What do cows drink?”. The fun is in seeing how many people answer “milk”. A surprising number do, allowing you to crow “Cows drink water, stupid!”. We drink milk, and the concept is closely connected to the idea of cows, so it is natural to accidentally pull out the answer “milk” when we’re fishing for the first thing that comes to mind in response to the ideas “drink” and “cow”.

Having a mind which supplies ready answers based on association is better than a mind which never supplies ready answers, but it can also produce blunders that are much more damaging than claiming cows drink milk. Every time we assume the doctor is a man and the nurse is woman, we’re falling victim to the ready answers of our mental prototypes of those professions. Such prototypes, however mistaken, may also underlie our readiness to assume a man will be a better CEO, or a philosophy professor won’t be a woman. If you let them guide how the world should be, rather than what it might be, you get into trouble pretty quickly.

Advertisers know the power of prototypes too, of course, which is why so much advertising appears to be style over substance. Their job isn’t to deliver a persuasive message, as such. They don’t want you to actively believe anything about their product being provably fun, tasty or healthy. Instead, they just want fun, taste or health to spring to mind when you think of their product (and the reverse). Worming their way into our mental associations is worth billions of dollars to the advertising industry, and it is based on a principle no more complicated than a childhood game which tries to trick you into saying “carrots”.

NoSpotOfGround ,

The last graph: how in the world is Russia spending more than twice as much as the whole of Europe on research?

NoSpotOfGround ,

Fantastic article, well worth the read.

NoSpotOfGround ,

Reprobable?

NoSpotOfGround ,

From the announcement:

The capabilities in this announcement, which totals up to $6 billion, include:

Additional munitions for Patriot air defense systems;
Additional munitions for National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS);
Equipment to integrate Western air defense launchers, missiles, and radars with Ukraine's air defense systems;
Counter-UAS equipment and systems;
Munitions for laser-guided rocket systems;
Multi-mission radars;
Counter-artillery radars;
Additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS);
155mm and 152mm artillery rounds;
Precision aerial munitions;
Switchblade and Puma Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS);
Tactical vehicles to tow weapons and equipment;
Demolition munitions;
Components to support Ukrainian production of UAS and other capabilities;
Small arms and additional small arms ammunition; and
Ancillary items and support for training, maintenance, and sustainment activities.
NoSpotOfGround ,

Well, it'd be great fun for you and your (sometimes imaginary) friends, but it'd make you an awful parent that completely sells off the trust relationship with your child for a few giggles. Ask me how I know. Don't take Calvin and Hobbes as actual parenting advice.

NoSpotOfGround ,

I bet they develop something close to a .22 recoilless rifle for drone use. I.e. a rifle that shoots both ways at once so it doesn't have any recoil. And I bet it's effective beyond anyone's wildest nightmares.

NoSpotOfGround ,

The NSA officer standing behind Biden: "Did Mr. President stutter?"

NoSpotOfGround ,

A two-track mind.

Is there any medicine that can give me happy hormones and does not need a doctor's prescription?

Things are becoming more depressing every day and I can't afford for professionals and don't want to jump to the last resort or drugs. Is there a medicine that can make me happy if I take it in proper doses and does not require a doctor's prescription?

NoSpotOfGround ,

Whenever cognitive behavioral therapy is mentioned with an initialism there's this risk of losing it to immature giggling when you substitute that other meaning for "CBT"...

NoSpotOfGround ,

Out of anger at someone roundabout predicting you will kill them.

NoSpotOfGround ,

I'm missing this one. What's the joke here?

NoSpotOfGround ,

Why do the drone boats weave and loop around so much? Seems like they're lingering in the "shoot me" zone.

Edit: could it be that they want to draw fire to themselves so other boats can move in instead?

NoSpotOfGround ,

Outstanding!

NoSpotOfGround ,

Shaped charge copper cone (looks more like a flat disc though, strange) and pre-formed fragment sides.

NoSpotOfGround ,

The new package of military aid consists of 10 combat boats and 20 group boats, as well as underwater armament such as mines and torpedoes, totaling 1.1 billion Swedish kronor. The package also includes artillery ammunition compatible with the Archer system previously sent by Sweden.

Additionally, the Robot 70 anti-aircraft defense system, already in Ukraine's arsenal, is part of the package. Also included are anti-tank missiles, Carl Gustaf grenade launchers, and military equipment such as hand grenades, medical equipment, and medical vehicles.

NoSpotOfGround ,

They are ordered according to the midpoint position, it seems.

NoSpotOfGround ,

I met someone named McCool once. I thought that was pretty cool.

NoSpotOfGround ,

"Selection by drawing lots."

NoSpotOfGround , (edited )

I think it's this one. Attacked twice, probably partially sunk in port.

The insert b&w photo is of another ship sunk a couple of days ago by drone boats, with great footage (https://sopuli.xyz/post/8635610). It's the small one in the row above the circled ship.

NoSpotOfGround ,

The small "Ivanovets" in the center, the row above the circled one, I believe: https://sopuli.xyz/post/8635610.

NoSpotOfGround , (edited )

It might have started with a lowered barrel and there might be a hidden girder under the barrel which raised the whole tank up as the barrel slid forward over that girder. The tank does look like it's leaning back on its suspension.

NoSpotOfGround ,

I imagine it would be quite difficult to tie knots with frozen limbs and fingers, in the dark. And trying to get a second person on the door would have required the already freezing girl to dip into the water. I can see why they wouldn't try it.

NoSpotOfGround ,

I'm kinda glad stainless steel corrodes in the end. Else it would become a micro-fragment polluter like plastic.

NoSpotOfGround ,

The girls seem to be waving to the neighbor down the street...

NoSpotOfGround ,

Just the way I likes it.

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