ricecake

joined 2 years ago
[–] ricecake 6 points 4 weeks ago (8 children)

“This reads to me as coming from people who desperately want the world to be simple — for sex to be a simple binary and for us to return to some imagined time when this was more broadly accepted,” [Dr. Josh Snodgrass] said. “The problem is that it’s not only science that shows us that human biological variation is more complicated, but other cultures do and have also appreciated this for thousands of years.”

Snodgrass added that there is one more thing missing from the executive order that belongs in all conversations about sex and gender: empathy.

“The authors of this executive order seem like they are trying to twist science to fit their worldview, but that this worldview is painfully out of step with reality,” he said.

If you read through an article with multiple doctors saying something, and then your conclusion is to be confused and wonder how they could be wrong like that, I have news for you.

Also, you contradicted yourself pretty quickly. First you said there's only two sexes, then you said there's male, female and "neuter". That's three. Do you think that infertile people should be prevented from listing a sex on their drivers license? Should they get to pick one? What bathroom do you want them to use? What if they're infertile and they have genitalia you didn't expect? What if they're infertile and they modified their genitals, which bathroom should they use?

[–] ricecake 2 points 4 weeks ago

True! I tend to power off if I use the software button, and suspend if I close the lid. I think it's the difference between "packing up" and pausing for a minute.

[–] ricecake 4 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Typically, yes. I have a tendency to use sleep when I'm coming back in some set period of time, and power off when I'm "going".
If I'm walking to a different room I'll close the lid and stick in under my arm which makes it sleep, or going to the bathroom or cooking dinner or something. If I'm leaving and sticking it in my bag, I tend to power it off.

It's a combination of not wanting the battery to die in sleep mode, and not wanting to put a heat generating device in my bag even if it's greatly reduced.

Thinking about it, powering down also drops the drive encryption keys from memory so it's arguably more secure. Not in the least why I do it that way, but it's an advantage now that I think about it.

Since I'm more likely to use the laptop like a super-phone, I appreciate it when it becomes usable fast regardless of what state I left it in.

[–] ricecake 4 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

That's brutal. Is it clustered data storage of some sort? All the most offensive startup and shutdown sequence I've seen are giant storage systems.

[–] ricecake 25 points 4 weeks ago (8 children)

For a server? Absolutely doesn't matter as long as it's not preposterous. Turning a server on can be done entirely linearly for almost every server and the slowdown is irrelevant.

For a desktop? Almost irrelevant, but it should be fast enough so you don't get bored enough to actually start doing something else.

Laptop? I actually like those to boot fast. I'm much more likely to pull one out to do something real quick, and so my laptop booting in a few seconds makes standing with my laptop on my arm to send a file real quick as I'm going somewhere feasible.

[–] ricecake 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Oh shit man, I didn't know you were infallible! My bad; fuck that genie believing motherfucker.

[–] ricecake 5 points 1 month ago

There are a lot of appearances of them in stories dating back to pre-islamic middle eastern times, so there are a lot of stories.
In one, a man finds a lamp in the sand and rubs it to wipe the dust off. This wakes the genie who is pissed to be woken up, and decided to kill the man and his entire family. The man freaks out, on account of getting himself and family killed, and in a moment of desperation asks the genie how someone as great and powerful as they are could fit in such a small lamp. Genie scoffs at the mans ignorance, says he can turn into smoke, like this, and just zip in, like ^so. The man stuffs a cork in the lamp, trapping the genie. The genie demands to be let out, and the man agrees on the condition that the genie swears to spare him and his family. Genie agrees, and the man lets him out.
In another, a man sitting under a tree throws a fruit pit over his shoulder, and then a genie appears saying he's gonna kill him because the fruit hit his invisible son and instantly killed him. The man is rightfully 'wtf' about this, but the genie is very serious, throws the man to the ground and pulls out his sword. As he's about to be killed, the man exclaims that he has a family, children, people he's responsible for, and that if the genie lets him go and arrange his affairs so that they're taken care of and don't suffer he swears he'll come back and let the genie do as he wills. The genie says that's fair, and tells the man to return on the first day of the new year.
Man goes home, settles his affairs, spends time with his family and generally does what one would do knowing you're gonna die in a specific day. Day comes around, everything is prepared and ready, the man loads his burial clothes in his backpack and heads out. Gets to the tree and is sitting there crying when a scholar comes along leading a gazelle on a leash, and he asks the man's story. Hearing it, the scholar swears to stay with him until the end. Another scholar comes past as they wait, this one with two majestic dogs. He too swears to wait with the man. A third shows up with a mule, same story.
Finally, as the man is almost crazed with fear and grief, the genie shows up and demands the man stand to be killed. He does, and as the genie prepares to strike, one of the scholars asks the genie if he'll give him 1/3 of the man's life debt if, upon hearing the story of him and the gazelle, he's amazed and delighted. Story told, it's amazing, and the genie continues to collect his 2/3 life debt when the same happens with the scholar with the majestic dogs, and then again with the scholar with the mule until the man's life debt has been satisfied. Genie leaves, man profusely thanks the scholars who explain that it's all in a days work for three old scholars wandering around with an eclectic collection of animals.
In large part, it's intended to serve as a framing story for the scholars.

They serve a lot of purposes that are also often filled by fairy, leprechauns, or demons, so twisted wishes are just another iteration of careful wording being required when talking to strange powerful beings who offer you something being fun to think about. Over time, it twisted from needing to think through what you wish for and you'll be fine, to Amelia Bedilia style hyper literal interpretation, and then to downright malicious compliance bb b

[–] ricecake 3 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I think they meant "fairy tale" as opposed to "religious" or "mythological" accounts. More contemporary or western stories involving them being less canon than traditional stories.

[–] ricecake 1 points 1 month ago

It can be, but it's not typical. I've actually used the barter system more often than I've even heard of people actually using crypto for routine business transactions. And I live in an area where barter is not a standard arrangement.

It's not just the cost of the transaction, which can vary depending on demand (lack of predicability is another issue), it's also how long the transactions can take. For any retail establishment, taking an hour to process a transaction is entirely unfit for purpose. A minute is too long.

In your use case, you're using Bitcoin more like a payment processor than as a currency. Something like PayPal would work just as well if your bank played ball, and would work faster and have more predictable costs.

[–] ricecake 5 points 1 month ago

I thought it was because the guy who invented them called glucose "grape sugar" because cereal people in that era were entirely detached from reality, and he thought they tasted nutty. And that baking the cereal released glucose.

[–] ricecake 20 points 1 month ago (12 children)

Yes and no.

It's a collection of numbers with properties related to how they're found that make them difficult to counterfeit, and the way they're recorded makes it difficult to steal. This, as well as a handful of other properties, give digital currencies behavior not entirely unlike the things that make cash useful.

Unlike money, it's not backed by a government. This means that it's much more volatile in terms of value. Say what you will about the state of the US, it's unlikely that the dollar will significantly change value over the next year. It's essentially guaranteed that the price of every cryptocurrency will be wildly different a year from today.
Put them together and you've got a wonderful vehicle for laundering money or bribery, which is what this all is.
The other key aspect of money that it's missing is being generally useful outside of speculation. I can reliably use my dollars to pay for goods and services, and most significantly to pay taxes and satisfy debts in the eyes of the law. Cryptocurrency is inevitably either instantly converted to money once someone gets it, or it's held onto under the assumption it'll be worth more later.
Money has value because it gets you "stuff". Cryptocurrency has value because it gets you money.

It's fake money, but it's a very complicated and realistic fake money.

[–] ricecake 7 points 1 month ago

I have not read the book, but from reading some summaries and commentaries, I got the impression that other people took the message as being different from "marriage makes your life measurably less happy" as the chart implied.

The figure takes on a different meaning, however, when we remember that “How satisfied are you with your life?” is not a simple question. When answering it, people think of significant events in the recent past or near future. People who are recently married or expecting to marry are likely to retrieve that fact, which affects their answer. But those who are not do not think of marriage when answering. The graph could be read as the likelihood that people will think of their marriage when asked about their lives. This demonstrates once again how we are “blind to our blindness”—how we are unaware of the heuristic mistakes that we make. In evaluating this graph, people do not understand that respondents have substituted their answer to how satisfied they are with their life with how easily they can think of happy events in their lives.

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