noisefree

@noisefree@lemmy.world

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

noisefree ,

I agree that polling has been off the last several cycles because it skews older and with that in mind I am asking out of sincere interest - what leads you to expect record turnout in the under-30 demographic?

noisefree ,

Oh yes, Senators Markey and Sanders, well known servants of Big Oil. /s

noisefree ,

I wish it was more widely known by the average person that coal ash is radioactive and contains heavy metals like lead and arsenic due to concentration of elements that were found in trace amounts in the coal and remain once the coal is burnt. It's horrible how poorly coal ash was handled (or purposefully used in construction) in the past and how contamination events still happen with little meaningful consequence to energy companies.

noisefree ,

Kolibri for the Sega 32x addon for the Genesis/Megadrive. Most of the reviewers that weren't down with the game either complained about the difficulty or lack of story/making sense, but it was a beautiful game for the time that took the space shooter concept and made it into a game that was somehow chill while also being difficult enough to sometimes momentarily make you want to rage quit. If you enjoy games like the Raiden series, you'll enjoy this.

Shout to Knuckles Chaotix (the most unique take on Sonic gameplay of the classic 2D era) and also Shadow Squadron (very Star Fox-esque), which are also slept on because 32x.

Exclusive to the Genesis/Megadrive, it's a crying shame that the Vectorman games never received a third iteration and have seemingly disappeared into the grey goo of IP purgatory. Vectorman and Vectorman 2 were amazing for the time: they were arguably the best 2D platformers of the era, graphically beautiful, oozing with charm, and with an amazing soundtrack to go along with it all. It's crazy that the developers were able to squeeze the performance they did out of the hardware and playing emulated versions of it now still doesn't compare to how it feels and looks playing it on the original hardware with a CRT and a nice sound system (but you should still check it out absent that setup).

noisefree ,

Very cool, I'll check that out. Thanks!

noisefree ,

Ahh, the final chapter in the trilogy that has thus far given us Mandy and Willy's Wonderland. I can't wait!

noisefree ,

Just my headcannon: The Janitor from Willy's Wonderland is just Red from Mandy years after consuming The Chemist's concoction silently wandering rural North America and destroying evil where he finds it.

noisefree ,

He explicitly says he agrees with what she says. I don't think it's worth being concerned over what a propaganda outlet is going to spin up because there isn't a scenario where they wouldn't spin up a defense of Alito. To each their own, though.

noisefree ,

He explicitly says he agrees with what she says. I don't think it's worth being concerned over what a propaganda outlet is going to spin up - there isn't a scenario where they wouldn't spin up a defense of Alito. Reality isn't a concern for propagandists; no adjustment of tact will change that fact. To each their own, though.

noisefree ,

This seems like the thing that could be accomplished with just a QR code or NFC tag. Sleep As Android (alarm app) allows you to set up alarms so that you must get up and scan a QR code or tap a NFC tag in order to stop an alarm - no brick needed. It's not a huge leap to expand that functionality to other use case scenarios (maybe this already exists, I haven't looked into it). It seems kind of silly to have a service and retail device for something that can be handled locally on-device with BYOH for the unlocking mechanism.

edit: others have pointed this out already

noisefree ,

This guy is still around in Congress?! I had no idea it was the same dude when the recent articles about the photobombing kid came out. Ew.

Lemmy.ml tankie censorship problem

I feel like we need to talk about Lemmy's massive tankie censorship problem. A lot of popular lemmy communities are hosted on lemmy.ml. It's been well known for a while that the admins/mods of that instance have, let's say, rather extremist and onesided political views. In short, they're what's colloquially referred to as...

noisefree ,

They will ban you for comments that are so inert it's impossible to even know what offended them, it's ridiculous.

noisefree ,

I got a temporary ban in memes for saying "OpenAI/MS media alliance goes brrrrr" lmao. "Rule 1." The OP was yet another post about Google's crappy AI suggestions and I was implying that the mass beating of that dead horse in article after article was because the media is friendlier to OpenAI and MS in the AI space (kinda the same way Apple gets a free pass in the phone space more often than not for shitty practices and taking credit for inventing features that have existed on Android for years prior). But, even in the absence of clarification (since my quip was just observational and not meant to spark conversation lol), I have no clue how that or a lot of the other things they cite "Rule 1" on could possibly be construed as bigoted - there aren't enough words to work with in the comment I used as an example, just a barely coherent bit of tongue-in-cheekness. Arbitrariness of enforcement is authoritarian af. I messaged a mod to ask what was up since I didn't realize modlog was a thing at the time and didn't hear back (which is fine really). It's more just the finding out when you go to interact and getting a connectivity error and having to sus out what happened that's annoying and doesn't feel conducive to a healthy community.

Getting an automated message in your inbox telling you you're banned, the length of the ban, and why would be a little more user friendly (though public modlogs are nice) if the goals of the developers are trying to build an inclusive platform. A lot of users aren't necessarily the type to get a persistent itch when something curious happens, so "figure it out yourself" isn't a great system. But, if what's going on over at .ml really is indicative of what the goals of the developers are, it does give me pause about Lemmy as a project and where it will go in the future. As has been mentioned elsewhere, the situation is ripe for the project to be compromised if a dev is compromised and people shouldn't be sleeping on that. Bad actors injecting seemingly inert exploits into code reviewed by others can happen with any software and fly under the radar, even popular and well trusted FOSS (for reference, see "that time the CIA snuck a backdoor into Notepad++"), so it's alarming if a group of developers appear to be sympathizers for nationstates that are notoriously privacy hostile.

noisefree ,

You're operating under the delusion that they're moderating in good faith.

Believe it or not, also Rule 1, straight to the banhaus you go. /s

noisefree ,

Setting aside (but stating) my stance that Israel's policy of collective punishment against innocent Palestinian civilians is completely wrong and thus unconditional support from the US government for Israeli actions is also wrong - South Africa isn't a good faith actor here.

What was South Africa's official position last summer, as a signatory to the Rome Statute that established the ICC and thus a nation obligated to arrest those with an ICC arrest warrant that step foot in their territory, about honoring their obligation to execute an arrest on the ICC warrant issued for Putin for war crimes should he step foot in their territory? It almost seems like they're trying to distract from something or are maybe working towards mutual goals with some other entity (or entities) behind the scenes... Hmm.

noisefree ,

I'm aware of how it turned out, but, for the sake of clarity, I was speaking about a month prior to that outcome where the President of South Africa made it clear that he would now allow Putin to be arrested in the event that Putin chose to attend in person. Assuming his statements were straight forward, I even get the logical underpinnings of what he was saying here - it just seems an odd contrast for the SA government to turn around and champion the ICC months later. It's hard to take a country that recently publicly pragmatized away the need to uphold the legitimacy of ICC authority seriously when they're now using the ICC as a threat. Another country would be better to lead the charge here on behalf of the ICC.

noisefree ,

I mean, it's disgusting that the guy is either narcissistic enough to think that he will win or is purposefully trying to be a spoiler, but isn't his son Rob Menendez running for reelection to one of the NJ seats in the House of Representatives?

noisefree ,

Here excerpt from a mostly overlooked 20 Feb, 2016 piece that chronicled his death the night before (Harper Lee's passing, also on the 19th, received more coverage by most English news orgs that day):

It was a solemn scene in Umberto Eco's Milan home the night of 19 February, 2016 as the renowned philosopher and novelist lay gasping on his deathbed. His family surrounded him, grasping the elderly intellectual's withered hands.
Lying mostly comatose for the better part of the past day, the renowned professor, philosopher, and novelist's eyes suddenly fluttered open. In a hoarse, rattling whisper, he addressed those around him. "Devo... avvertirvi tutti..."
They all leaned in closer, tears welling up in their eyes. "Sí?."
Mustering his last ounce of strength, Eco raised a trembling finger skyward. "MA LE SUE EMAIL!!!" he suddenly boomed with surprising force. "Ho scritto Ur-Fascismo per mettervi in guardia da tutto questo! State attenti!!!"
Everyone recoiled in shock and confusion as Eco's arm went limp, crashing back onto the bed. The brilliant mind had left this world with one final proclamation.
The room fell into a bewildered silence, the haunting words still hanging in the air. "Papà?" one of his children finally uttered meekly. But Umberto Eco had already passed, leaving his dumbfounded family to grapple with those jarring final words (roughly translating to): "BUT HER EMAILS!!! I wrote Ur-Fascism to warn you all of this! Beware!!!"
One by one the confused members of the family said their goodbyes and opened the door, got on the floor, everybody walk the dinosaur! open the door, get on the floor, everbody walk the dinosaur!

^^^^/s ^^^^I'm ^^^^sorrrry

noisefree ,

Interestingly Michael Godwin, the creator of Godwin's Law (which OP's attached meme more or less references), had the following to say about Trump in 2023:

“Trump’s opening himself up to the Hitler comparison,” Godwin said in an interview. And in his view, Trump is actively seeking to evoke the parallel.

...

“You could say the ‘vermin’ remark or the ‘poisoning the blood’ remark, maybe one of them would be a coincidence,” Godwin said. “But both of them pretty much make it clear that there’s something thematic going on, and I can’t believe it’s accidental.”

I personally think Eco's 14 points pretty perfectly align with Trump/Trumpism, though I imagine those around him would tell me I'm confusing their embrace of 14 words to mean they meet the criteria laid out in the aforementioned 14 points.

noisefree ,

"Biden's a feeble, senile old man who has absolutely lost control of everything and he is the mastermind bringing to bear all of the levers of power against us!"

noisefree ,

While I personally think Trump is surrounded by a bunch of dangerous people that see his dark triad characteristics as a vehicle that can carry them into wielding power (a point they're not wrong about), thus making the point of his personal intelligence/executive function a null issue. For example , it's objectively funny that someone is narcissistic enough to need to Sharpie a hurricane forecast, but completely useless to point out and laugh at when the person also represents a real threat to the world, and yet, there are there are definitely people in opposition to him that are guilty of doing the cognitive dissonance thing you point out and making it their entire focal point. I don't think what amounts to neoliberalist head burying in verbal sand to make themselves feel better while refusing to look at Trump seriously is the same as what Trump and his followers are doing though. The difference being that third way cognitive dissonance is self-assuaging when the subject is threats to democracy (because on the individual level they can "got mine!" themselves into thinking they won't be affected and still convince themselves that lame snark and "concerns" counts as doing something, that broadcasting a vibe of business as usual as an assured thing is the message we need) and the cognitive dissonance spewed by Trump is designed for consumption by others in order to short circuit any dependency they may have upon objective reality in favor of fear and the willingness to accept what he says over anything else. Neither thing is good, but one is way more nefarious. A masturbatory Jon Stewart rally is useless in preventing a fascist takeover, but a Trump rally is actively working towards a fascist takeover.

That said, the "Donald DRUMPF hurr hurr hurr!" crowd are more than useless - it's bad enough that they're getting high off of their own flatulence, everyone around to witness it has to smell it too. Some people might even decide they should do it too, since maybe they prefer their own stench to overwhelm what they're smelling. It's definitely not productive. Still, Trump is a guy smearing his excrement on his followers until they can barely see anymore and telling them it's simultaneously a great thing and that the only way to get clean is to hold is to find anyone that didn't line up to be covered willingly and shove the filth down their throats. Both behaviors are shitty, but one is objectively worse.

noisefree ,

The best I can come up with is that this new theory suggests that what we perceive as time is just our observation that things change state in a way that seems like a linear progression but the state change observed is due to particles being entangled/interconnected (?) and not as a consequence of time as some sort of force. Then and now are illusory mechanisms of coping with non-illusory change of our surroundings but that coping mechanism/perception isn't a physical thing that is an underlying cause of the change we observe (because it's being caused by subatomic particles being instantly affected by their entangled partner particles elsewhere in physical space)?

I am in a car driving 100km at an average of 50km/h and get to my destination having experienced 2 hours of time. I am in a car driving the same 100km in the opposite direction at a average of 100km/h and get to my destination having experienced 1 hour of time. The same trip driving slower means my experience is more time passing across the same distance (time passes at an accelerated rate for me, comparatively), and driving faster means I experience less time passing across the same distance (time passes at a decelerated rate for me, comparatively) - given that both things are taking place in the same place, obviously it isn't time that is changing to cause my differing experiences of how much time passes, it's my physical actions that explain my differing experiences of how much time passes. I think they're saying that this holds true for entangled particles anywhere - what is perceived as relative time differences is actually just an observation of things behaving comparatively differently in the physical sense?

I'm probably hilariously off about all of this.

noisefree ,

*Random mods on some instances, however...

noisefree ,

Yeah, you would think that it would be pretty simple and straightforward for most people to grasp, yet, the need to condition being pro-not-killing-innocent-Palestinian/any civilians with a disclaimer of not supporting Hamas and not being antisemitic within the same breath exists in conversations with most folks. It's absurd. It's like being against both what was done to innocents by Hamas on October 7 and what Israel is currently doing to innocents is impossible for many people to wrap their minds around (or at least, that's how the national conversation is framed in the US). Neither action is an acceptable means of achieving goals (stated or otherwise), but Hamas and Netanyahu have long been in a toxic codependent relationship. My favorite is the look on "pro-Israel" peoples' faces in instances where they're informed that the person they just called an antisemite for daring to be against the bombing of innocent children and others is Jewish (whether by religious practice or genetics). It's bullshit.

noisefree ,

Biden's red line just so happens to be an infinitely elastic rubberband.

noisefree ,

Thanks for the levity/chuckle.

noisefree ,

Pete Buttigeg For All Who Want Him 2028

noisefree ,

Don't do Virginia Foxx dirty like that...

noisefree ,

Australia has had mandatory voting for eligible voters (18+) for a long time. It works like this:

Prior to elections, the Australian Electoral Commission updates the electoral roll of all eligible voters. On election day, voters have their names crossed off the roll at whichever polling place they attend.

After the election, the electoral roll is cross-checked against voter records. Anyone who didn't vote and can't provide a valid reason (for example - illness, living remotely, religious beliefs) is issued a $20 fine by the AEC. If not paid, this can escalate to further fines of around $180 plus court costs if convicted.

Over 180,000 penalty notices were issued after the 2022 federal election to enforce the compulsory voting laws. While controversial to some, the system has maintained over 90% voter turnout in Australia for nearly a century.

A similar system would probably moderate political extremes in the US. I think any fine that is used as a means of enforcement needs to be scaled to the means of the individual being fined in order to not disproportionately target lower wealth individuals (but an elimination of the enforcement fine completely for the lower end of the wealth scale would maybe ironically result in less from that group voting and thus give them disproportionately lower representation in outcomes).

noisefree , (edited )

Can you explain what you mean by this?

Collateral for loan is realized gain

Functionally how would that work? Maybe I'm being obtuse here, but it sounds like a Catch-22.

noisefree ,

Perfect, thanks, the additional context of this applying to billionaires living off of loans based on assets held in the form of unrealized gains makes it make sense. I just wanted to make sure the quoted line wasn't implying something like lenders being required to accept realized gains being made from said loan in the future as collateral when granting the loan in the first place.

noisefree ,

Lol, the documents are either marked classified or not - he's not being prosecuted for having "dangerous" (whatever that means) files, he's being prosecuted for possessing and improperly handling classified files and trying to hide evidence of this and refusing to turn them over when asked to do so.

The core of the alleged crime deals with documents that are classified, not the contents of the classified documents, it does not matter why the documents were classified, only that they are classified. Whether the documents should be classified or where to mundane to be classified in the first place is not something for the jury to consider and not what the prosecution is about; any suggestions to the contrary are smoke and mirrors meant to muddy public discourse.

All the jury needs to be able to verify about the documents possessed by Trump is whether they were marked classified or not, which is a matter of record and is generally denoted by the documents being marked as such.

The judge is being absolutely unreasonable here and the only benefit of the doubt she can be granted is that maybe she just doesn't understand the law (which would be pretty much just as bad).

This AP timeline of the events leading up to the indictment is a neutral recounting of the facts surrounding the case that should help provide a better understanding, assuming you're posting in good faith.

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