• 2 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: November 13th, 2023

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  • TL;DR: viable last-ditch option would resemble Highlander 2 in terms of putting one corporation in charge of “protecting” the planet.

    Okay, so I was keeping the idea of using deliberate “global dimming” in my back-pocket just so it wouldn’t worm it’s way through the zeitgeist. It’s a viable last-ditch option, but it comes with steep drawbacks. But since we’re here now, fuck it.

    We already know that, thanks to requiring shipping vessels to use low-sulfur fuel, cloud seeding can actually reduce solar gain. The problem is that it also blocks out a lot of the light needed for photosynthesis. So this approach punches down on the environment in a completely different way. As for people, while global warming will absolutely impact agriculture, so would less sunlight.

    https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-low-sulphur-shipping-rules-are-affecting-global-warming/

    So we could just use airplanes and cloud-seeding. Or we could increase particulates in the atmosphere. Or, as Elon suggests, fly satellites to do the job. The tradeoffs here are awful: disrupt where rain happens, raise lung cancer risks globally, or catapult one man into multi-trilliionaire status while they charge every government on earth for the privilege. Plus, each of those options are more or less forever if we never get around to carbon sequestration that actually works.

    We should seriously considering doing anything else first.

    Edit: I know I didn’t invent this idea. Rather, I just didn’t want to add to any consensus around it.



  • It’s entirely possible. If we consider that much of what the GOP has accomplished has been through propaganda, it suggests that things wouldn’t have gone their way if they played this game honestly. Personally, I see the last 30 years of federal politics as a wild pendulum swing, between battling ideologies in multiple directions, only becoming more energetic. I’m hopeful that this will eventually break down the brittle, false, manufactured narratives out there because it will take ever more effort to keep all that going. I have hope too.


  • When I used to watch commercials1, this shit would just register itself in my brain, lurking silently for when/if it comes up. I’m not even a “car guy” by any stretch of the imagination, and credit this mostly to the insidious and brain-worm-like quality of car advertising. For a while there, I could identify most cars just by seeing the shape and position of the headlamps at night. It is/was the most useless superpower, and I’m still a little spooked that one can be low-key programmed like this.

    I suppose it’s possible to come by this while racking up commuter hours, since the make/model is usually right there on the back of most cars, but that doesn’t explain the headlamp thing.

    1 - I will leave it as an exercise to the reader as to how one might dispose of most advertising when watching shows.




  • NGL, writing pure functions in Rust is fantastic. Writing responsible code that handles all the error conditions turns the “happy path” into hamburger. Even with the ergonomics of Result, Option, and even ?, code just sprawls and becomes a readability tradeoff. I’m only a few months into Rust at this point, and I have a lot to learn, but it’s tempting to just .unwrap() and .expect() where I think it’s unlikely to fail.





  • Maybe?

    I don’t have the time or energy to dive into the methodology to figure out if any poll is conducted scientifically. What I do know is that it’s way easier to build a bad poll, and easier still to hit the bricks and generate heaps of bad data.

    What I really wish these would ask are things like: “if you had the only vote and could write-in anyone that is eligable, even if they’re not on the ballot, who would you choose?”… or: “Who is your favorite person in politics right now?” Disregarding of all the nonsense answers, you’d probably find out a lot more about hearts and minds versus whatever controlled choices major parties are propping up.


  • I know that’s probably the right answer. But it’s also… something-something… optics and feels, or something else in the headspace of those in charge?

    Why? As tenants they’re still paying for electricity, A/C, heat, insurance, security, and office staff. And all that gets replaced with a beefier VPN and Zoom/Teams/Slack subscription, which a lot of businesses already had back in 2019. So, paying the remainder of the lease and having everyone work from home would still save money. Plus, I bet it would be possible to pay a reduced amount up-front in order to break the lease (say 75% of the remaining months), just so the building owner could (potentially) rent the space to someone else and double-dip. The fact that this isn’t the math everyone is doing, just plain stinks.







  • Eh, not really. This is not an admission of support. Here’s why.

    I’ve seen firsthand what it looks like when these creeps invade tolerant spaces. We’re talking clubs packed full of goths, punks, metal-heads, very gay people, and the occasional furry. First, it’s just one or two. Then their friends show up. You may not even realize it until it’s too late. And there they are, happily mixing it up with everyone else. Their bigotry is usually only evident when put to the test, and there aren’t a lot of situations where that’s called for. But provoke their sense of ‘correct’ social hierarchy and things get bad, fast. Then the bouncers get called in to handle the really stupid/violent ones.

    And that’s where the problem lies with this statement. Nazis have zero issues standing side-by-side with the people they hate. Just as long as they know they can seize control or maintain the upper-hand whenever they want, is enough. In this situation, we have someone running for public office, versus someone who’s just a voter. They’d be holding all the power in this situation, and didn’t admit to lending that power to a trans person in any way; something that would divorce him from Nazis support. So, the assertion of “stand by your side” isn’t even worth the electricity it took to get it to our screens.