jwiggler

joined 2 years ago
[–] jwiggler 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Can you recommend me a starting point? For someone who has no experience with these games, or any Japanese games besides Soulsgames and RE4 remake.

Feel free to roast me in the process.

[–] jwiggler 14 points 1 week ago

There's this guy, his name is Nathan. I think he could help you. He graduated from business school with really good grades.

[–] jwiggler 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I found this fact particularly fun. thanks for sending me down a lil rabbit hole.

[–] jwiggler 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I think totally. 100%. If Wikipedia is to be believed

An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people that perceives themselves to be different from other groups based on shared attributes. These attributes include having a common language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, religion, history, or social treatment.[1][2] The term ethnicity is sometimes used interchangeably with the term nation, particularly in cases of ethnic nationalism. It is also used interchangeably with race.

Then I think that your ethnicity could be based on the internet communities you exist in.

Its directly related to things like the slow ~~dissolution~~ dissolving of regional accents we see due to the internet and the general melting, appropriation, and reappropriation of cultural aspects we see facilitated by the internet.

[–] jwiggler 3 points 1 week ago

I think it worked great! I figured it was something like that. Cool project, I'm interested to see what else you can do with it

[–] jwiggler 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

This is sick. What is the thing in the foreground on the left? vegetation?

[–] jwiggler 1 points 1 week ago

I can explain what's going through my head for you. I downvoted you because your purely factual statement seems to completely miss and is entirely irrelevant to my point -- that coercing a child to declare themselves an adult in the eyes of a particular social group, to declare that they have the agency to consider such a thing that is supposed to be a LIFE LONG decision, is straight up wrong.

Doesn't matter if it has been in place for a century, if age 13 is an outlier, or if you think 16 is old enough because that's when you had to do it. It's whack, and your justification is whack. I downvoted you instead of engaging because most of the time it's not worth entertaining someone who justifies the cult I was indoctrinated into as a child, from which I had to spend many years deconstructing the hate for others -- often the lowliest groups of individuals -- that Catholicism had fomented in my child and adolescent heart. Forgive my harshness, but I'm not going to act like this thing that made me into a spiteful hateful kid -- towards the exact groups of people that Jesus tells us to love the most -- is a good thing.

[–] jwiggler 31 points 1 week ago (3 children)

It's a constant problem because its a cult that wants to protect its cult members. It finds no issue with indoctrinating kids, to the point where nobody batted an eye when they recently (like, in the past 10 years) decreased the age at which children go through the sacrament of Confirmation. The same sacrament that is meant to affirm your adulthood in the church, where you say, "I may have been told to practice this by my parents before, but now I'm an adult now and choose to practice it of my own volition."

They do this when children are thirteen years old. Thirteen.

When I was fifteen I did not have the capacity to make this decision for myself. Now I have to live with the fact I'm on a list somewhere as an adult in the church. The Catholic Church is an evil institution that uses trauma for the purpose of coercion.

[–] jwiggler 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Hey, no need to apologize! I totally get it.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, even with your cynicism :) I agree, any altruistic behavior fits within this context of evolutionary behavior and is ultimately driven by the need for individuals to survive long enough to reproductive age. To be honest, I'm actually not sure where we disagree. I think, maybe, we are interpreting Kropotkin differently. To continue with the idea about horses -- I think the problem with your posit (horses protecting their young) is that it isn't only the horses who have offspring who form the circle, but also horses who don't have offspring. This might sound like I'm saying, "See, since even the horses that do not have offspring join the protective ring, we see that altruism occurs in nature," but as you pointed out, this too is an evolutionarily driven behavior. It's not necessarily selfish in the eyes of the individual (I don't think), but it's an urge, driven by generations and generations of horses who exist on a spectrum from least social (do not participate in the circle) to most social (participate in the circle, and many more social activities), in which those horses that are more socially participative are more likely to reach adulthood and reproduction.

I can't remember if Kropotkin addresses the violence that happens in the natural world, but I'm pretty sure he reconciles it. I don't think he outright denies competition in Mutual Aid, even though I can see how you come to that conclusion with that passage. I agree with you, it is easy to look at opposing examples of competition rather than cooperation in the natural world, even among the same species. Especially when it comes down to resource scarcity -- then you start seeing less cooperative behavior. I think Kropotkin's point is not to deny that competition exists, but to push against the idea that that is the only thing that exists. The way I understand it, he was writing in a post-Darwin time, when the scientific community was taking Darwin's ideas and applying them to society with Social Darwinism -- survival of the fittest not only in nature but in social life, as well. So instead of a "noble savage" kinda idea, where Kropotkin is saying "everything in nature is peaches and roses," he is more saying, "look at all this cooperation in nature that is being ignored by the 'survival of the fittest' camp." Anyways, that's how I read the book -- but it's not really captured in that single quote.

Funnily enough, your exact example with ants is one Kropotkin uses in Mutual Aid! He basically goes along the evolutionary ladder, from least complex organisms to most (although, beginning with insects I'm pretty sure) and shows the cooperation within various species, not to deny the existence of competition, but to show that it isn't the only, or even the most, important force in evolution.

I guess my one last point is illustrated like this: if competition for resources were the primary force driving evolution, wouldn't we see a continuing trend of individuals in a species with more and more physical strength, brutishness, competitive nature, and rejection of cooperation? In other words, wouldn't we see a phasing out of cooperative behavior in favor of individual antagonisms and competition for resources? Here I'm thinking of my house cats -- we're in the process of introducing them, at the moment, and managing their anxieties about the other. Even though Bella is very territorial, each day she is showing more and more signs of acceptance of Suzie -- through cat language of course -- slow blinking, flopping on her side, chirping when she walks up to her. If competition where the only, or the most important driver of evolution, I'm not sure we would see this kind of behavior from Bella -- I'm not even sure these cat-signs of flopping slow-blinking, chirping, would exist! Of course, they occur with more frequency as she slowly realizes resources are not scarce, that she can coexist with this other cat Suzie, and that she'll get treats each time she has a positive interaction ;)

Anyways, thank you for your thoughtful reply. I'm curious to hear what you think, it's been fun chatting. I think even if you're skeptical of Kropotkin from that passage, it's still worth reading the book in whole. You probably wouldn't find that you agree with everything, or even most, but at the very least, I think it'd be an interesting insight into how a person thought post-Darwin, pre-WW1.

[–] jwiggler 1 points 2 weeks ago

I came back to see if you were still making a fool of yourself on this topic, and lo-and-behold you're threatening to ban users for calling your comments dumb. You deserve to be called out on this one. Have a good day.

[–] jwiggler 1 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

givesome, I'm really disappointed with you in this comment section. Ban me if you want, but you really are embarrassing yourself here, not only with your dumb comments, but now threatening to ban someone for calling you out. It seems like you made this post just to get in a bunch of fights with users, only to threaten to ban them when they push back? Like cmon dude. Really, really not cool.

[–] jwiggler 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

I think you have some confusion with the word fork. You don't "fork away" from a lemmy instance -- instances are their own thing. You can defederate from them, but that's not forking. Forking is really only in the context of the code -- its when you copy a codebase and change it in whatever way you see fit, so a fork of Lemmy would not be lemmy.

That thread has a couple mentions of forks of Lemmy, like piefed and mbin, but there is so much non-technical conversation that its really not about creating forks of lemmy. I think what you're trying to say is that people want to decrease their reliance (don't want to donate to, really) the lemmy devs, who also are the lemmy.ml maintainers, who have pro-CCP views. I mean, you can correct me if I'm wrong there. Really most of that thread is discussion of politics.

But the thing is, you don't have to support them. You don't have to donate, and if you're really upset that they are adding a donate button, you can move to another activitypub platform like piefed or mbin or whatever. I mean, you probably should be doing that since you seem so invested in this issue. It'd definitely be more effective protest -- because the lemmy devs aren't going to be ousted or anything like that. Lemmy is their project. The best thing you can do is move to a fork of lemmy. That's the whole beauty of open source -- if you don't like it, there is a fork. If there's no fork, you can fork it yourself (but that's work).

But there's not much you can do to influence the direction of lemmy as a codebase, and if the devs wretched political opinions outweigh the usefulness of the platform for you, you should just switch platforms. It'd be a bummer to lose your comment history, your moderator status, or whatever, but why would you care about that stuff if it contributes to something that is owned by some tankies you hate?

Idk, maybe something to think about. There are just a lot of avenues built into open-source software, and into the decentralized nature of the fediverse, that allow you an off-ramp. But sounding the alarm on a yearly donate button won't influence the direction of lemmy because those two devs are in complete control of the codebase.

Hell, I'm looking at mbin now. kinda enticing...hmmmmmm..lol

Edit: Hmm hold on, it sounds like piefed and mbin are not forks, but were developed independently of lemmy

3
submitted 4 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by jwiggler to c/[email protected]
 

Edit: Read this first. The solution was to not try to do everything online and go to a local music/record/vintage audio equipment shop and chat with the folks there. They were super nice, showed me the gear they recommended, and now I've got a nice sounding vintage setup that may not be audiophile worthy but is super awesome to me.

Hi there all, beginner audiophile here. Trying to build out my first turntable setup.

I decided on a Fluance RT82 and Douk X1 for a preamp. Now, when selecting speakers, I decided I'd just buy a second pair of the studio monitors I was using on my computer, Kali LP-6.

Now I'm a bit confused on the connections. The RT82 comes with an RCA cable and ground cable I'll connect to the Douk preamp, so that is covered. But the preamp has 4 speaker outputs that are binding posts. There is only a single RCA input on each monitor, so I'm not sure how to connect the preamp to the monitors.

I did see someone online say "why would you connect a preamp to LP-6? They already have amplifiers in them" But I also saw another person who had a TT setup with the LP-6es, which included a pre amp.

Any advice would be appreciated!! Or reading materials. The douk manual isn't much help.

 

FULL TEXT:

In an unprecedented move, the National Institutes of Health is abruptly terminating millions of dollars in research awards to scientists in Massachusetts and around the country, citing the Trump administration’s new restrictions on funding anything related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, transgender issues, or research that could potentially benefit universities in China.

The sweeping actions would appear to violate court rulings from federal judges in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C., that block the Trump administration from freezing or ending billions of dollars in government spending, said David Super, a constitutional law expert at Georgetown Law, who reviewed some of the termination letters at the Globe’s request.

In a related case brought by an association of higher education officials that specifically challenged Trump’s various DEI executive orders, a federal judge in Maryland twice over the past month blocked the administration from terminating funding, saying in his most recent decision the restrictions “punish, or threaten to punish, individuals and institutions based on the content of their speech, and in doing so they specifically target viewpoints the government seems to disfavor.”

Super added that the termination letters are also “unlawful” because the NIH is imposing conditions on funding that did not exist at the time the grants were awarded.

The NIH did not respond to a request for comment.

Scientists say the letters began arriving last Friday and earlier this week, notifying them their funding was being canceled because it involved subjects that are “unscientific,” do “nothing to enhance the health of many Americans,” or do “not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness.”

Exactly how many NIH grants have been terminated is unclear.

With an annual budget of more than $45 billion, the NIH is the largest single public funder of biomedical research in the world, and Massachusetts is the nation’s top recipient on a per capita basis. Massachusetts researchers in the past fiscal year received more than $3.3 billion from the NIH.

Among those whose research funding was terminated is Nancy Krieger, a professor of social epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her letter said she would not be receiving the last installment, roughly $650,000, of a five-year, $4 million award for honing time-efficient ways of asking patients about the discrimination they experience, including racism, sexism, sexual orientation, and age or weight discrimination.

“These are really important groups of people to study to understand how their life experiences are affecting their health,” Krieger said.

The letter she received said her work ran afoul of the administration’s anti-DEI rules, although Krieger said the research itself was not related to DEI.

“This is an assault not on just one little group of researchers. This is saying certain knowledge is not to be supported by the government,” Krieger said. “It’s the proverbial, ‘If there’s no data, there’s no problem.’ It means one can’t document the harms.”

The letters sent to scientists said they had 30 days to appeal to the agency for reconsideration, which Krieger said she intends to do.

Krieger’s research enrolled roughly 700 patients at three Boston community health centers including Fenway Health.

Dr. Kenneth Mayer, who heads the study arm at Fenway Health and is a professor at Harvard Medical School, said the cancellation of the grant would not immediately harm patients participating in the study. But, “it could have an impact on patient health in the future,” he said. “The whole point is to learn about biases. Some people avoid health care because they think they are going to be judged.”

He said it’s possible the four years’ worth of data already collected may be used, such as to develop training programs for doctors or educational materials for patients. “This is just such an important kind of work,” he said.

An NIH official told the Globe that administrators who oversee grants were given barely an hour’s notice of the terminations late last Friday before the notifications were sent out.

The official, who declined to be identified because they are not authorized to speak publicly, said they were aware of 24 such notices from four NIH institutes and centers, but said there are likely to be hundreds more.

This official shared a spreadsheet that showed 76 notices of funding opportunities over the past two years that the agency “unpublished,” meaning they were effectively scrubbed from public databases, potentially eliminating the funding for them.

Brittany Charlton, associate professor and founding director of the LGBTQ Health Center of Excellence at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has not had any research funding terminated but has heard directly from several scientists who did lose their funding. She said many will appeal.

Charlton said researchers are also working to partner with civil rights organizations as they challenge the legality of these executive orders.

“This goes beyond research on LGBTQ health and includes studies seeking to understand and address health issues affecting a wide range of other vulnerable communities,” Charlton said in a statement. “Scientific inquiry is under siege and the public’s health hangs in the balance as crucial studies vanish.”

Sean Arayasirikul, a medical sociologist and an associate professor in-residence in the department of Health, Society, and Behavior at University of California Irvine, received a termination letter last Friday that stopped funding halfway through a five-year study involving roughly 900 participants.

Arayasirikul’s research studies how racism and discrimination affect people of color who are gay or transgender and need help with HIV prevention, substance use disorder, or mental health.

“That is one of the biggest priorities for HIV prevention today and not having these data and not having this knowledge hearkens back to a time when denialism around HIV was prevalent,” Arayasirikul said.

“I am starting to think now that I may lose my job and not exist in this field anymore and that’s one thing,” said Arayasirikul. “But to erase an entire generation of scholars who come from these communities, doing this work, the impact of that is immense.”

 

FULL TEXT:

In an unprecedented move, the National Institutes of Health is abruptly terminating millions of dollars in research awards to scientists in Massachusetts and around the country, citing the Trump administration’s new restrictions on funding anything related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, transgender issues, or research that could potentially benefit universities in China.

The sweeping actions would appear to violate court rulings from federal judges in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C., that block the Trump administration from freezing or ending billions of dollars in government spending, said David Super, a constitutional law expert at Georgetown Law, who reviewed some of the termination letters at the Globe’s request.

In a related case brought by an association of higher education officials that specifically challenged Trump’s various DEI executive orders, a federal judge in Maryland twice over the past month blocked the administration from terminating funding, saying in his most recent decision the restrictions “punish, or threaten to punish, individuals and institutions based on the content of their speech, and in doing so they specifically target viewpoints the government seems to disfavor.”

Super added that the termination letters are also “unlawful” because the NIH is imposing conditions on funding that did not exist at the time the grants were awarded.

The NIH did not respond to a request for comment.

Scientists say the letters began arriving last Friday and earlier this week, notifying them their funding was being canceled because it involved subjects that are “unscientific,” do “nothing to enhance the health of many Americans,” or do “not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness.”

Exactly how many NIH grants have been terminated is unclear.

With an annual budget of more than $45 billion, the NIH is the largest single public funder of biomedical research in the world, and Massachusetts is the nation’s top recipient on a per capita basis. Massachusetts researchers in the past fiscal year received more than $3.3 billion from the NIH.

Among those whose research funding was terminated is Nancy Krieger, a professor of social epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her letter said she would not be receiving the last installment, roughly $650,000, of a five-year, $4 million award for honing time-efficient ways of asking patients about the discrimination they experience, including racism, sexism, sexual orientation, and age or weight discrimination.

“These are really important groups of people to study to understand how their life experiences are affecting their health,” Krieger said.

The letter she received said her work ran afoul of the administration’s anti-DEI rules, although Krieger said the research itself was not related to DEI.

“This is an assault not on just one little group of researchers. This is saying certain knowledge is not to be supported by the government,” Krieger said. “It’s the proverbial, ‘If there’s no data, there’s no problem.’ It means one can’t document the harms.”

The letters sent to scientists said they had 30 days to appeal to the agency for reconsideration, which Krieger said she intends to do.

Krieger’s research enrolled roughly 700 patients at three Boston community health centers including Fenway Health.

Dr. Kenneth Mayer, who heads the study arm at Fenway Health and is a professor at Harvard Medical School, said the cancellation of the grant would not immediately harm patients participating in the study. But, “it could have an impact on patient health in the future,” he said. “The whole point is to learn about biases. Some people avoid health care because they think they are going to be judged.”

He said it’s possible the four years’ worth of data already collected may be used, such as to develop training programs for doctors or educational materials for patients. “This is just such an important kind of work,” he said.

An NIH official told the Globe that administrators who oversee grants were given barely an hour’s notice of the terminations late last Friday before the notifications were sent out.

The official, who declined to be identified because they are not authorized to speak publicly, said they were aware of 24 such notices from four NIH institutes and centers, but said there are likely to be hundreds more.

This official shared a spreadsheet that showed 76 notices of funding opportunities over the past two years that the agency “unpublished,” meaning they were effectively scrubbed from public databases, potentially eliminating the funding for them.

Brittany Charlton, associate professor and founding director of the LGBTQ Health Center of Excellence at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has not had any research funding terminated but has heard directly from several scientists who did lose their funding. She said many will appeal.

Charlton said researchers are also working to partner with civil rights organizations as they challenge the legality of these executive orders.

“This goes beyond research on LGBTQ health and includes studies seeking to understand and address health issues affecting a wide range of other vulnerable communities,” Charlton said in a statement. “Scientific inquiry is under siege and the public’s health hangs in the balance as crucial studies vanish.”

Sean Arayasirikul, a medical sociologist and an associate professor in-residence in the department of Health, Society, and Behavior at University of California Irvine, received a termination letter last Friday that stopped funding halfway through a five-year study involving roughly 900 participants.

Arayasirikul’s research studies how racism and discrimination affect people of color who are gay or transgender and need help with HIV prevention, substance use disorder, or mental health.

“That is one of the biggest priorities for HIV prevention today and not having these data and not having this knowledge hearkens back to a time when denialism around HIV was prevalent,” Arayasirikul said.

“I am starting to think now that I may lose my job and not exist in this field anymore and that’s one thing,” said Arayasirikul. “But to erase an entire generation of scholars who come from these communities, doing this work, the impact of that is immense.”

 

Honestly the original title is appropriately boring but the real headline should be

A new memo from the U.S. Department of Transportation indicates that it will direct more funding to states with higher birth and marriage rates

Here's the article

CONCORD, N.H. —

A New Hampshire executive councilor is raising concerns about new language tied to federal highway funding.

Executive Councilor Karen Liot Hill said a new memo from the U.S. Department of Transportation indicates that it will direct more funding to states with higher birth and marriage rates.

"New Hampshire is one of the oldest states in the nation, and we have one of the lowest birth rates in the country," she said. "And so, I'm very concerned if all of a sudden, there's going to be new strings attached to federal funds."

State Department of Transportation officials said the prior administration also had its own initiatives, and New Hampshire still got its highway money.

We don't anticipate that this will cause any problems," said DOT deputy commissioner Andre Briere. "In the last Justice40 (Initiative), we're also a state that doesn't have a lot of communities that meet those criteria, but we were nonetheless granted discretionary grants."

Briere was referring to a program under President Joe Biden that prioritized programs related to climate change, clean energy, pollution reduction and other categories.

As the Trump administration's freeze on federal grants gets litigated in the courts, nonprofit organizations and other initiatives that receive federal funding are watching and waiting.

Executive Councilor John Stephen said he's all for cutting government spending, but he said that allocated funds New Hampshire organizations are counting on should be delivered.

"It's important that the nonprofits and the organizations that have been pretty much guaranteed current funding for their operations, that we continue, and we're fiscally responsible in everything we do at the state level," Stephen said. "What I'd like to see going forward, though, is that we're looking, working closely, collaboratively with the federal government to make sure that New Hampshire is not adversely impacted."

Gov. Kelly Ayotte said she hopes the Trump administration takes a closer look at where the resources being targeted by the freeze are actually going.

"Because they could be going to public safety issues," she said. "They could be going to drug prevention, interdiction – all those things are critical."

 

CONCORD, N.H. —

A New Hampshire executive councilor is raising concerns about new language tied to federal highway funding.

Executive Councilor Karen Liot Hill said a new memo from the U.S. Department of Transportation indicates that it will direct more funding to states with higher birth and marriage rates.

"New Hampshire is one of the oldest states in the nation, and we have one of the lowest birth rates in the country," she said. "And so, I'm very concerned if all of a sudden, there's going to be new strings attached to federal funds."

State Department of Transportation officials said the prior administration also had its own initiatives, and New Hampshire still got its highway money.

We don't anticipate that this will cause any problems," said DOT deputy commissioner Andre Briere. "In the last Justice40 (Initiative), we're also a state that doesn't have a lot of communities that meet those criteria, but we were nonetheless granted discretionary grants."

Briere was referring to a program under President Joe Biden that prioritized programs related to climate change, clean energy, pollution reduction and other categories.

As the Trump administration's freeze on federal grants gets litigated in the courts, nonprofit organizations and other initiatives that receive federal funding are watching and waiting.

Executive Councilor John Stephen said he's all for cutting government spending, but he said that allocated funds New Hampshire organizations are counting on should be delivered.

"It's important that the nonprofits and the organizations that have been pretty much guaranteed current funding for their operations, that we continue, and we're fiscally responsible in everything we do at the state level," Stephen said. "What I'd like to see going forward, though, is that we're looking, working closely, collaboratively with the federal government to make sure that New Hampshire is not adversely impacted."

Gov. Kelly Ayotte said she hopes the Trump administration takes a closer look at where the resources being targeted by the freeze are actually going.

"Because they could be going to public safety issues," she said. "They could be going to drug prevention, interdiction – all those things are critical."

 

I've got 32GB RAM and an RTX 3080 I'm borrowing long term. Normally I just play Rocket League, some Deadlock, and good single player games (ie not formulaic yearly-released).

Any recommendations?

 

I recently got a Steamdeck and was wondering if anyone had any recommendations of games that take almost 0 brainpower to play so that I can focus on listening to audiobooks.

For me that means no dialogue and no text to read. Games that have worked for me so far are:

  • Rocket League (difficult to play on Steamdeck)
  • Vampire Survivors (once I learned what each item does)
  • Peggle

Games that I've had trouble with include

  • Sifu
  • Brotato (gotta read to learn the items)
  • Factorio
  • Baba is You

Games I have yet to really try:

  • Elite Dangerous
  • Elden Ring
  • Dorf Romantik (this is promising)
  • Powerwash Simulator (also promising)
  • RollerDrome
  • Halo: MCC online (is Halo 3 online viable on steamdeck?)
  • Risk of Rain 2
  • Hades

Anyone have any suggestions? I'm running out of ideas and may end up just forgoing this hole idea in favor of keeping gaming and books separate

46
sleepy suzie (sh.itjust.works)
 
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