TotallyHuman

@TotallyHuman@lemmy.ca

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Is it possible to receive an electric shock when you *stop* touching something?

I seem to remember as a young child being told that it is safe to touch a Van de Graff generator (for the hair demonstration), but that if you let go before it is safe you will get a nasty shock. I know a bit more about electricity now, and I'm a little skeptical now. Is it possible to get a shock from letting go of something?

TotallyHuman ,

It's actually counterproductive! People who want to screen stuff about abuse from their internet experience can set up filters. Those filters are broken when you censor the relevant words!

[Question] Why didn't infantry tanks work?

It seems to me that in the interwar period there were a lot of tanks designed with the idea that they would stay with groups of infantry, providing direct fire support while being a lot more durable than a field gun. My understanding is that this was generally abandoned in favour of faster tanks which operated somewhat...

TotallyHuman ,

Made an account with mailinator.

Lewis Harvey recalls the moment the internet realised he was a male of a certain age: he started being bombarded with ads for stuff it thinks Australian men are supposed to like.

Harvey noticed how algorithms seeking to capture young men chased him with unsolicited content, including information about drinking, gambling ads on high rotation, and clips by misogynist influencer Andrew Tate.

Harvey, 23, a screen production graduate, has placed a bet only once in his life and feels fortunate to have positive role models of manhood, including his soccer coach, in his life.

But harmful messages about men needing to be dominant, aggressive, have as much sex as possible, be in control in relationships with women – and use violence to get respect – still hold power over many Australian men, research has found.

The biggest Australian study of attitudes about what it means to “be a real man”, just released by The Men’s Project of Jesuit Social Services, has revealed 37 per cent of men aged 18 to 45 – nearly four in 10 – feel pressure to conform to rigid male norms, including that men must be tough, not show emotion, be in control, not do household chores and have the final word in relationships with women.

One-quarter of the representative sample of 3500 Australian men said they believe in these rules, which lead to a greater likelihood of them perpetrating violence and experiencing poorer mental health and wellbeing.

Harvey said he had noticed the internet trying to pigeonhole him, and how even when he actively dismissed clips popping up in his feed, the algorithm still “gives it a shot”.

“Every second advert I get on any social media platform is a gambling ad, to the point where I could recognise the guy from the Sportsbet ad sitting in a bar I was in. It was funny – like, ‘I can’t believe I can pick him out of the crowd’,” he said.

“I always noticed, and found it interesting, especially in about the last 10 years when the internet got big enough to kind of pigeonhole you; to see a lot of things that are being assumed – because I’m a bloke – I want to hear about.”

The Man Box 2024: Re-examining what it means to be a man in Australia report is the most recent such study by The Men’s Project. The data, collected by CloudResearch and analysed by Wallis Social Research, found Australian men who most strongly endorse rigid male norms are more likely to have sexually abused their partner, sexually harassed women, experienced poor mental health, and displayed problematic gambling behaviours.

Jesuit Social Services’ Matt Tyler said the research showed the negative impacts of believing in outdated ideas about masculinity: “[It] finds that when men believe these rules, the results can be devastating for people in their lives, particularly women, as well as for men themselves.”

Men who most strongly agreed with the rules were 31 times more likely to believe “domestic violence should be handled privately”, and 17 times more likely to have hit their partner. They were eight times more likely to have thoughts of suicide nearly every day, and six times more likely to have forced a partner to do something sexually degrading or humiliating.

“More than half of the men who most strongly agreed with Man Box rules met the criteria for problem gambling,” the research found.

Compared with the 2018 study, which looked at men aged 18-30, the data showed “some good news”, said Tyler, in that social pressure to conform to these standards had dropped by 12 percentage points – especially [regarding] thinking it was required of them to act tough.

“Where we’ve seen less of a change, and it is reason for concern, is related to ideas around the use of violence, and the expectations related to relationships with women,” he said.“For example, regarding the Man Box rules that men should use violence to get respect if necessary, and in heterosexual relationships, a man should always have the final say.”

The report found 44 per cent of men aged 18 to 45 thought a guy who doesn’t fight back when pushed around is weak.

Long-time gender and violence researcher Professor Michael Flood, a member of the study’s advisory group, said it was encouraging that in the latest survey, fewer respondents agreed that men should know where their female partner is all the time than in 2018 (though in 2024, 35 per cent of 18-35 year-olds, and 33 per cent of 31 to 35 year-olds agreed that they should).

Flood said it was positive that traditional models of how to be a man – “in which men are expected always to be tough, aggressive, risk-taking, stoic, heterosexual, homophobic and transphobic, emotionally inexpressive, hostile to femininity, and dominant” – did not receive majority support among young men, and most did not think society was imposing this on them.

“The messages young men receive about manhood have improved in some ways,” he said. “There has been some decline in the past five years in unhealthy and gender-inequitable forms of manhood.”

But Flood noted it was concerning that one-quarter to one-third of young men still endorse “dangerous and sexist models of manhood”.

“This endorsement is not declining fast,” he said. “Men’s levels of endorsement of traditional masculine ideology generally are steady.”

There was little change in attitudes towards male aggression, or in men always having the final say in relationships or marriages, but a shift away from men always knowing their intimate partner’s whereabouts was encouraging.

Flood agreed with Matt Tyler that “traditional masculine norms also constrain young men’s own health and wellbeing”, and said work to promote healthy or positive masculinities needed to be scaled up in Australia, including at workplaces, sports clubs, and in online platforms and communities.

Amanda Alford, acting chief executive of violence prevention agency Our Watch, said it was extremely concerning that men who accepted outdated views about manhood were more likely to have hit their partner.

“This research provides clear direction on what needs to be done to prevent this violence,” she said.

“We need to support boys and young men through the process of learning about who they are, particularly given the pressures they face from many areas of their lives, including friends, family, social media and pornography.

“We need to be having open and honest conversations about porn, sex and relationships and work together to make sure young men have role models that help them understand the healthier and more positive ways of being a man.”

Director of Monash University’s gender and family violence prevention centre, Professor Kate Fitz-Gibbon, said understanding harmful forms of masculinity was essential to helping prevent violence against women.

“This research is critical to understanding how we prevent men’s violence, and how men can be supported to challenge dangerous ideas about what it means to be a man,” said Fitz-Gibbon, who is chair of Respect Victoria, which supported the research.

“A strong focus on primary prevention efforts will continue to shift the dial on men’s attitudes towards themselves and others.”

TotallyHuman ,

Typically it does flow better, but I have a little mental stumble every time someone uses "woman" or "women" as an adjective. I know why they're doing it and I can't really fault them, it just... feels off.

TotallyHuman ,

Three options:

  1. Don't talk about issues unique to men
  2. Do so in feminist spaces, since this is ultimately a patriarchy / gender role issue
  3. Talk about them in a dedicated space

1 results in suicide and men going over to alt-right nonsense. 2 results in the womens' spaces being invaded. 3, run effectively, gives men a space to talk without either squashing feminist discourse or jumping into the 4chan/incel cesspool.

[System-agnostic] Running intelligent and informed adversaries that feel fair

So, I like stories where everyone is competent, and as a GM I try to run my villains as playing to win. My goal is for the players to have a good time, but the enemies will use every resource at their disposal to achieve their aims: they will retreat if continuing to give battle is a bad idea, they will go scorched earth if it's...

TotallyHuman OP ,

No, I've never run Shadowrun. I most often run 5e, GURPS, and VtM.

TotallyHuman ,

I tried to install Linux on my new laptop, trying multiple different distros.

  • Many of them did not work with my 3840x2400 screen, with unreadably tiny UI
  • The sound did not always work
  • When the sound did work, I either couldn't change the volume, or figure out how to disable the speakers when I plug in headphones
  • Sometimes screen brightness could not be changed

In short, driver problems. So many driver problems. I was sinking too much time into it, and I was basically unable to use my computer. So I gave up and switched back to Windows. Windows has its own annoyances, and I want to use Linux... but Windows mostly works, most of the time. Linux doesn't, and I have neither the time nor the technical skills to make it work.

TotallyHuman ,

That may be true, and I'm glad that improvements are being made, but it's not the display. It's not the sound. It's not my keyboard backlight (which got locked on maximum brightness). It's that with Linux, getting anything working requires hours of troubleshooting. Probably if I understood the system better it would only take minutes of troubleshooting, but developing those skills would take months to years. I don't want to invest that sort of effort just to write papers, check my email, take notes, do CAD, and play games.

TotallyHuman ,

Wesnoth's very fun too!

TotallyHuman ,

3 hours from whose perspective? Time limits are rather complicated when you have time travel.

TotallyHuman ,

(assuming the time traveller cooperates)

Then it depends on whether the future is mutable, or if we're forced into stable time loops. If time is stable, I'd get some friends. I would never speak to the time traveller directly, but I would text back-and-forth with my friends as they talk to the time traveller. When 3 hours are up, the traveller goes back in time to talk to a different friend in the same three-hour window. (If they're tired, they can travel back 12 hours and catch some sleep before the next meeting.) It would be an interestingly acausal conversation, but Objective 1 would be finding a more permanent way to bypass the three-hour limit, maybe setting up an AI that will ask good questions of the time traveller. (If they can bring a USB stick with some good AI on it, for instance). We'd also want the future version of Wikipedia, and detailed plans for whatever useful technology gets invented in the future. As well as enough almanac knowledge to get seed money for a future-tech company, and useful news items. I wouldn't ask about mounting crises like global warming, though, so that my company can do something about it -- if I base my actions on knowledge of the future, the future is set. I think.

If the future is truly mutable, though, I just resolve to send a detailed summary of our conversation back in time to a week before I schedule the traveller to come. I get a conversation summary, use it to make the conversation more productive, and then send the new summary back. Repeat until I can take over the world, build a time machine, send a large expedition back to 12,000 BC to do an industrial revolution, and then send an even larger expedition back to the early Universe. When entropy starts to become annoying, go another century before the previous expedition and just accept them as citizens. Repeat until godhood achieved.

TotallyHuman ,

We conclude that the sitting posture is the best position for men with urination problems, e.g. due to an enlarged prostate to urinate in, whereas no difference was found in healthy men

Buried near the bottom. Clickbait headline.

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