palordrolap

@palordrolap@kbin.run

Some middle-aged guy on the Internet. Seen a lot of it, occasionally regurgitates it, trying to be amusing and informative.

Lurked Digg until v4. Commented on Reddit (same username) until it went full Musk.

Is on kbin.social but created this profile on kbin.run during a week-long outage.

Other Adjectives: Neurodivergent; Nerd; Broken; British; Ally; Leftish

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

Appeals court seems lost on how Internet Archive harms publishers ( arstechnica.com )

In an open letter to publishers, more than 30,000 readers, researchers, and authors begged for access to the books to be restored in the open library, claiming the takedowns dealt "a serious blow to lower-income families, people with disabilities, rural communities, and LGBTQ+ people, among many others," who may not have access...

palordrolap ,

The way things are going, libraries themselves will be outlawed.

palordrolap ,

"Homelessness is a direct political choice."

Talk about a quote that can be read both ways.

palordrolap ,

Unsure if sarcasm

palordrolap ,

It's complex I guess. There's a stereotype that doing a good deed in China usually ends up backfiring on the doer of the deed.

Here she died and was praised, but then, the backfire had already taken effect.

We could conclude from this that the only correct way for a Chinese citizen to do a good deed is to die in the process.

Then note that the praise could be not for doing the deed but for saving whatever other forces are at play from having to provide the backfire.

The hard part is determining the shades of truth of all the various aspects here.

palordrolap ,

Ah, an excuse to attack an organisation that worships something other than Mighty Xi and the CCP.

Using children as the pawns too. Masterful.

palordrolap ,

Because they're the ones that donate the most to political parties give the most back to society, therefore they should be exempt, obviously.

palordrolap ,

The real punishment ought to be an atomic wedgie. For everyone who was a C-level for more than a month at that company in the last 10 years.

This ought to be the punishment for a lot of unethical business practices. You can't delegate that to a customer's wallet.

palordrolap ,

anaemic* (Sorry, that bothered me for some reason.)

As for capture groups, you'll have to find another way. Perversely, perhaps BusyBox continues to be included on certain systems because they know that the extra space is required for the code that works around BB's shortcomings. That sounds asinine until you realise that "solving the problem properly" most likely leads to that one XKCD comic about the proliferation of competing standards.

At worst, multiple sizes of BusyBox itself.

palordrolap ,

If we tried this in the UK with someone like, say, the late David Coleman, I'm not entirely sure anyone who remembers him would be able to distinguish - other than, as I said, the knowledge that he's been gone for quite some time now.

Coleman, was considered a go-to commentator for decades despite being gaffe-prone even at the best of times. He was occasionally oblivious and apparently lacking any self-awareness too. (He did kind of learn to laugh at himself though and was a good, well, sport, about it all.)

Sounds very AI to me. Come to think of it, he may even have been kept around precisely because of the entertainment value.

I assume that Al Michaels is not of this bizarre calibre and it wouldn't take long for people to notice.

palordrolap ,

If they've heard of Lemmy then it's probably the Tankie connection that's putting them off. If.

Guessing Kbin/Mbin is also either unheard of or tainted by association.

Or it could just be: "But why male models not Reddit?"

palordrolap ,

For "academics" read "two guys we found in the cafeteria at a local university" unless otherwise specified.

palordrolap ,

In other news, Fred Bloggs from Bournemouth has been on the phone to the White House telling Joe Biden to stop using toilet paper.

palordrolap ,

I've said this before and I'll say it again: There are better things to attack Trump for than how he looks, what physical conditions he has or how he smells.

At face value, those sorts of things have little effect on the ability to run a country well.

Even his hair is a better target because how he wears it would appear to show vanity, a quality that might actually interfere with stable management. That's still a relatively big stretch without other evidence (of which there would appear to be plenty) though.

Attack his ideas, his intents, his politics. He makes this easy enough, right? Start there.

"LOL u smel" is something you expect in the playground. Something Trump himself might use, perhaps.

We have to be better than that.

palordrolap ,

He won't stop until every last potential Hamas member (read "Palestinian") is dead or out of Palestine.

He's been pretty clear on this.

palordrolap ,

Headline in three months: "Less work getting done than in five-day week."

Government and management will blame lazy workers. Workers will blame government, management and burnout. Truth will be closer to the latter, but a few actually lazy employees and some innocent scapegoats will be fired to preserve the bottom line. Burnout will increase.

But at least the bosses got their bonus this month.

palordrolap ,

Of all the comments to argue against the use of a mysterious "they", I think you've picked the wrong one.

It's pretty clear who the "they" is here: Conservative politicians in the pocket of corporations who would stand to lose from cheaper, cleaner energy sources.

I'd go one step further and erase "Conservative", because it doesn't matter your other politics if you're receiving bribes lobbying money from big business. It does at least seem to be skewed more towards politicians in Conservative parties though.

palordrolap ,

Better hope the IDF don't find out there's a humanitarian zone at Netanyahu's house.

palordrolap ,

"Briton" is generally used as the noun form of "British", so when "Brit" is used as a noun - which is most of the time - it's abbreviating "Briton".

As for who gets to be called "Briton": In the loosest sense, anyone with residence in Britain can be counted as British when they're here, whether or not they're considered ethnically British (by themselves or others).

Bear in mind that "Briton" originally mean "an inhabitant of the British Isles before any of the Romans, or various flavours of Germanics turned up". There's been quite a bit of admixture since then. It makes sense - to the chagrin of the Welsh, no doubt - that the term has mutated a bit over the centuries.

palordrolap ,

Pity the person of Scottish (or Welsh) ancestry born in England who has to choose what they are on some forms, especially legal ones.

But then, there are worse problems to have.

palordrolap ,

Maybe not in any legal sense, no. How people and even news media use it, there's plenty of wiggle room.

e.g. allowing the ambiguity of "British home owner" to go unclarified, that is as "home owner who is British" as opposed to "owner of a home in Britain", and any similarly loose interpretations that go along with or derive from that.

palordrolap ,

What sort of comedian is he? I feel like satirists and absurdists are good choices for political office.

Those who punch down, maybe not so much.

palordrolap ,

Would some variant of "snauk(t)" or "snaught" work for you? Your brain might be expecting ablaut in the style of "teach" / "taught" or "catch" / "caught" rather than that of "sing" / "sung".

How do you feel about "(p)reached"? "Snaked"?

A fun fact about "caught" is that it's a relative neologism. It uh, caught on after people decided they didn't like "catched" for whatever reason. (I guess it has something to do with tangibility / concreteness. Most other -atch words are used for objects.)

Coke—and Dozens of Others—Pledged to Quit Russia. They’re Still There. ( www.bloomberg.com )

After Vladimir Putin’s troops surged over the Ukrainian border in February 2022, the Coca-Cola Co. was among the first multinationals to pledge it would quit Russia in protest. Aiming to avoid the inevitable headaches of complying with expected Western sanctions on the Kremlin, Coke asked its partners there to pull its cans...

palordrolap ,

That's not strictly true. If it doesn't cause a dip in profits, or even might increase them, they'll sing truth like the purest angel.

Unfortunately, pulling out of Russia would lose them money so they lie. And hey, maybe that lie will make money if people believe them. 10/10 would lie again.

Number must go up. Down is bad. Only up.

palordrolap ,

"If you took all the DNA out of a person and laid it end to end, that person would die."

The distance to Jupiter from Earth is but a mere blip though. Even the galaxy is small compared to what's beyond.

Thanks to chaos theory, what we do here can have some effect on the far future of the Universe, at least, for those places within causal reach. How meaningful that effect can be remains to be seen.

But do bear in mind that even, say, a cow farting in a field in France last Tuesday might have as much effect as everything you ever do.

palordrolap ,

There's something troubling about his eyes. Every photo I see just screams "danger".

Yes, this is entirely subjective. I'm sure he's very nice to his pets, etc.

palordrolap ,

Conscription? You'll need more than that. You'd have to press-gang those kids into service, and then hope they don't revolt.

Other alternatives: 1) Becoming the enemy - telling them their families' lives are forfeit if they don't pass muster. 2) Some really top-notch propaganda.

I can think of at least one country that would do both of these, but would deny the first one.

Putin says Russia and North Korea will help each other if attacked, taking ties to a ‘new level’ ( www.cnn.com )

Vladimir Putin said Russia and North Korea have ramped up ties to a “new level,” pledging to help each other if either nation is attacked in a “breakthrough” new partnership announced during the Russian president’s rare visit to the reclusive state....

palordrolap ,

NK's narrative is that SK is separate from the one true Korea because it's occupied by, or at least heavily influenced by, the US. That means that if Russia were to, say, declare war on the US - however unlikely that might be - NK would theoretically be in favour.

Kim would almost certainly be interested in finally getting to lob a couple of bombs at an actual target.

Less seriously(?), you could also argue that Putin's pining for the glory days of the USSR with its empty stores and downtrodden, starving citizens fits right in with what's going on in NK, so perhaps Kim had better watch his back lest he become the former dictator of a new SSR.

palordrolap ,

Just gonna leave this here: https://imgur.com/C5nBQ9Q

palordrolap ,

It's the same handful of obnoxious individuals over and over making it look like it's a majority.

That said, this thread started about Tories, and about half the population lean that way even if they don't vote for 'em...

palordrolap ,

There are plenty of stupid and/or devious people who will see what's going on in some part of the world and believe a narrative or use that narrative as an excuse for their own ends.

If it wasn't her, it would have been someone else. The whole human race has a problem with human garbage who can't control their actions. Some of them end up running countries and turning a blind eye to war atrocities, if not asking for them outright.

This doesn't lessen what happened to this 12-year-old victim, and it doesn't lessen what's happening elsewhere in the world, nor the ramifications. My point is that the link, while there, is tenuous.

The perpetrators are human garbage who found a reason to stop pretending not to be, and now should be treated as such.

palordrolap ,

They used a current world event as an excuse for an atrocity that they might well have found a different excuse for otherwise.

They could have chosen any Jewish person and any "punishment" but they chose her, and that "punishment". That's because they wanted to mete out that "punishment" in particular. They're disgusting.

And yes, that's true of neo-Nazi violence too. The violent ones are usually nutters spoiling for a fight, or worse. The prejudices they hold are merely their excuse for it.

palordrolap ,

My gut says there's grudging admiration between the two blue-suited balding megalomaniacs, but of the two, only Putin talks to Xi often, and even then, only because he has to.

palordrolap ,

Kim inherited his mess. Putin made his own.

That's not to say that Kim isn't allowing things to continue mostly as they were, but it could be beyond his ability to change things even if he wanted to.

Putin, on the other hand, only needs to call off the "special military exercise" and most of his immediate problems will go away.

palordrolap ,

Forgive the tangent, but who in their right mind names a competition with a year-like four-digit number?

Or am I being whooshed and this whole article is an AI hallucination.

palordrolap ,

The second one is arguably not vigesimal but instead just an echo of the Germanic way of saying numbers that English has all but lost. You'd be surprised how long things will lurk around the fringes of a language despite not being the most popular way of saying things.

The fact it still makes sense probably helps too.

palordrolap ,

Maybe I should have left in the aside I had about artistic license.

palordrolap ,

Larger version: https://imgur.com/a/GHYTEy5

@JetpackJackson
@Crackhappy

palordrolap ,

Chances are that many large entities are in too deep. It's what Microsoft were counting on before the backlash, and now they're probably going to do it by stealth instead.

If I have to use Windows, I want the configuration of Windows that will run on the computers at a country's top intelligence agencies.

Because sure as hell those places will have it locked down and not sending one solitary thing back to Microsoft, whether they have to configure it themselves or put the fear of the unholy into Microsoft to get that to happen.

And if not that, the configuration that Bill Gates or Mark "I put tape over my webcam and deactivate my mic for no particular reason" Zuckerberg will use.

palordrolap ,

Born in 1988? Lots of folks born that year decided to have those two digits in their first Internet usernames as well. A few of those will still be in use, no doubt, so you're not alone. (Me? No, I'm older.)

In your shoes, I'd maybe think about changing things around, especially the easy ones, but you're not me, nor I you.

palordrolap ,

Somewhat relevant: I recently stopped using a plastic-bodied electric kettle to boil water for drinks because it was often making drinks taste "of plastic". I have to imagine that some of that would have been redistributed, well, in places implied by this article.

This makes me wonder what regular, close-to-source plastics the tested men were using around the time.

Of course, there's also that a lot of the water supply goes through plastic pipes these days. It would be interesting to know how much of that, specifically, ends up coming out in people's homes.

palordrolap ,

Better than a 200 JSON reply containing the 4xx. "Aay it worked!" "oh."

palordrolap ,

I'd say "first one, then the other" but then we'd argue about the order. Apparently heads are still conscious for a while, you see.

palordrolap ,

By that logic, this could be a place for literally anything, when clearly it isn't. It's for Fediverse-specific posts and commentary.

Climate change is important, yes, but it's not Fediverse-specific, is it?

palordrolap ,

I thought they already had Truth Social and considerable chunks of Xitter and Faceberk. What's new or different about this, specifically?

palordrolap ,

Thunderbird? It's pretty mid as a calendar app, but it works. That said, for an i3wm user the bloat would likely be a turn-off even if was amazing...

palordrolap ,

Reading about his going missing in the first place, I got the distinct impression he had underestimated the size of the island he was on and decided to plough on regardless, thinking that he'd reach his intended destination "any minute now".

And if it wasn't the distance, the extreme conditions were almost certainly not taken into account.

Literal misadventure.

palordrolap ,

"Bugs are disgusting." said the person tucking into crab pâté and lobster at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

"Too right." agreed the person chowing down on a well-boiled haggis.

palordrolap ,

No. The driver is still into women, but is realising that they prefer to present as mostly male, despite whatever their biology might be.

In oversimplified terms, you could say they're a straight man in a biologically female body.

The implication is that when they were dating and married, driver was presenting as more female or androgynous, and non-driver, presumably, has a preference for that.

However, it's not really that preference that's causing the real rift - if you love someone, you love someone - it's the desire for kids. Driver doesn't want them. Non-driver does.

They're both able to deal with this like adults. Win-win-win. (Third win is the eventual kid(s) who might get to have a cool uncle rather than a grumpy, distant dad. Assuming "uncle" and "dad" are terms driver would use anyway.)

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