5434a
16hr ago
I was wondering if it was just me. I updated Windows and Firefox a couple of days ago and have been battling a bunch of weird browser behaviour since.
5434a
1d ago
Nazi = bad.
Nazi apologia = bad.
Nazi apologist =/= Nazi.
The problem with applying the label of Nazi to connote badness is that the charge is so easy to reject on account of the labelled not actually being an actual Nazi (I assume SS isn't a WW2 veteran living in a German care home). It's intellectually lazy. Nazi apologia is bad on its own merits, it doesn't need the laziest boo-light in the world to fortify any criticisms.
Hyperbole and false equivalence are a cancer on discourse, and getting away from that cancer is why I came to TheMotte.
["But isn't 'laziest boo-light in the world' also hyperbole?". No, because I can't think of a lazier one other than maybe "eww, you're smelly".]
5434a
2d ago
Ever looked at The Listener crossword in The Times? It makes a cryptic look like a child's word search.
I tried to find an example but I can only find pictures of finished puzzles without the clues. Looks like there are some follow-alongs on YouTube.
Finished Nancy McWilliams Psychoanalytic Diagosis. Interesting and understandable for a layman. Provided me with a good deal of clarification to the terminology, the development and the current practice of psychoanalysis, which in turn reveals that the way that terminology is used in the public sphere is even worse than I already suspected.
Now starting Do Travel Writers Go To Hell? by Thomas Kohnstamm. I found this after reading a comment at Reddit that described the 2010s as "the golden age of travelling". That struck me as wrong, I'm not keen on travelling but I would imagine the golden age of travelling to be somewhere around the time that the Lonely Planet books were being written, and maybe the first generation of travellers who were inspired by those books, ie. before everyone went to the same places via the same routes to do the same things with the same people who'd all got the same ideas from the same books (at this point even I've heard about Khao San Road and I've never entertained any thoughts of going there). People used to drive or even hitchhike across the continents to reach Aghanistan and Nepal where they would meet and interact with Afghanis and Nepalese. Then they'd travel back with a van stuffed full of trade goods (and contraband). Now they stack discounts they heard about online to get a cheap flight direct to BackpackerVille and come back with credit card debt, and still call it "travelling" when it seems to me more like a hipster variety of basic tourism. That got me looking into the history of the Lonely Planets books and I came across DTWGTH. The blurb for the book bills it as a behind-the-scenes expose of the production of the kind of travel writing that contributed to the Loney Planet series, albeit it was written in 2007.
5434a
14d ago
Right, I hadn't considered how old the xb360 is. My last console was a PS1, after that I tuned out of the console scene entirely and largely out of PC gaming too until I picked this up around 2017. And my wifi dongle benefits from over a decade of improvements to wifi tech in an era when almost everything including the kitchen sink gained wifi, so not a fair comparison. Makes sense.
That's reassuring about the new fuse. I did match the original spec (250mA) despite some commenters on the fix-it page I was following suggesting using a higher rating. Better safe albeit with another blown fuse than sorry with a fried receiver.
5434a
14d ago
Appreciate your sharing some details of the manufacturing trade-offs. It's more the size of the thing that baffles me, although it did make it much easier to work on. Okay there's a large antenna in there, but that just raises the question of why the antenna is larger than the antenna in a wifi dongle? And why add a 2m cable for a wireless dongle? Anyone who needs the extension could use an extension lead.
I'd also be interested in any speculation for why the fuse failed. As you say I had left it plugged in when I wasn't using it (I don't anymore), and even though I now have 9 extra spare fuses on hand I'd prefer to avoid any need to repeat that type of soldering. Other than loose connections I've never had any other USB devices fail whether they're high draw like charging a battery or low draw like a USB stick, or a wired controller.
5434a
14d ago
I have a Microsoft wireless Xbox360 controller I bought to use with emulators on my PC. I very rarely game so it sat around for a couple of years, and when I came to use it again the dongle was dead. The giant dongle. The giant dongle with the ~2m wire (why?!). I have a wifi dongle that is barely larger than the USB port it plugs into and that can handle bi-directional network speed data transmitted to the other end of the house, but a receiver for what amounts to little more than single key presses sent from the chair towards the screen has to be the size of a 240V wall plug for some reason.
Anyway after a little reading around I prised open the giant dongle's case and replaced the microscopic fuse component (why use such a small component when there's so much space?) and restored it to working order. Apparently this is a common fault. Imagine how many people have resorted to just binning it and buying another. Probably not many at the price they charge, the size they make it, and the frequency with which it breaks.
5434a
17d ago
Naming it Really Simple Syndication was a disaster by emphasising publishing instead of consuming. Meanwhile semi-nonsense names like Digg, Tumblr and D.e.Lic....iO.u..s ate its lunch.
If they'd just named it Really Simple Subscription instead...
5434a
18d ago
White fish + white flour + white potatoes, all cooked in neutral flavour vegetable oil. If anything warrants the reputation for bland beige British food it's fish and chips. It's not even cheap, it's practically the same price as a takeaway chicken curry with rice.
5434a
18d ago
It's been a while since I re-read it but I think it was in Robert Pirsig's Lila (good book, not too long. I think you'd like it) that floated an idea along the lines that when progress becomes unstable the pursuit of progress will in faltering fall back to the last stable/secure state.
Do you foresee your fictional world of Minecraft Tidus slipping back to and re-stabilising at the level (if not the same location) of the last stable state upon its slopes, or as you seem to hint see it tipping over into ruinous decline back into the ocean?
5434a
26d ago
Avant garde art is all about the meta. It's not about painting an object, it's about exploring the idea of what a painting can be (by making a painting). Ditto music, sculpture, dance, photography, cinema, fashion, design etc etc etc.
The problem in my eyes is that it's experimental and by their nature a lot of experiments fail, but people laud them for their sheer experimental-ness and stop short of judging quality. The number one thing is to do something that nobody has done before and worry about if it's any good later if at all. People neglect that at this point being challenging and shocking is ironically nearly as boring and stale as the sacred cows it once aimed at. We've had an entire century of this. We've even meta'd the meta and had silence-as-music, blank canvas-as-painting, and empty room-as-sculpture. The navel has been well and truly plumbed.
It's funny that you bring up beer because I think that cooking is one area where there's a natural limit on how far the boundaries can be pushed before people literally won't swallow it ("It's rat poison on rusty screws. Go on, try it!"). It's where taste runs up against physiology and not mere cerebral semantics.
5434a
26d ago
The aerial photos looked like a lot of people, but then consider that Glastonbury Festival is supposed to be 100-200,000 attendees. Using that as a comparison I'd say ~100k is a lot more credible than 1 million, and 3 million (Glastonbury x >10) is total bollocks. Even the anti Iraq war march only claims 1 million.
Re political discourse, there seems to be an ongoing process of the window shifting to encompass more right leaning views and less left leaning/woke views. I'd say it started with the BBC dropping Stonewall in 2021 and the ruling on Maya Forstater's case in the same period. Now it's moving beyond trans scepticism to include anti immigration and the sort of birth rate discourse I've been reading here for years.
5434a
30d ago
To me everything looks like crap or scam. So I wonder - who buys it, for them to make any money
There's a world of people out there with more money than brains. And to avoid uncharitability some of those people have a lot of brains but they have even more money, and so they don't see a problem with spending money to try something out quickly and easily instead of spending brain power to get there slowly.
5434a
1mo ago
Very nice. Are you a cross-stretchers-for-legs sceptic? I have no position, just curious.
I finished my headphones, they turned out surprisingly okay. Not great, could certainly make a better and quicker job if I did it again, but more than serviceable enough to not want to do a better job and better than I had any reason to expect given it was my first attempt at an experiment made with leftovers. Unfortunately I've lost all my photos after my phone decided that booting up was no longer to its tastes.
5434a
1mo ago
I've heard people recommend Citymapper here in UK/Europe. Their website says they're partnered with Via in the US.
5434a
1mo ago
For practical purposes, lower middle. My family background spans doctors and engineers at the upper end to car mechanics and carpenters at the lower end.
5434a
1mo ago
If we're both using broadly the same kind of bio-neurological substrate (ie not colour-blind, no drugs, no pathologic photosensitivity, etc) I don't see why we would have a grossly different experience. I think there are subtle differences in processing and interpretation (some people might have visual snow, some cultures don't clearly distinguish blue from green) but nothing so different as experiencing the other person's blue qualia.
It's an interesting idea and I used to ponder it myself when I was a kid, but now I'm older I take the other side and ask why wouldn't we share similar qualia.
5434a
1mo ago
Could try having a look at the pinned threads and top scoring posts from the last year in /r/beermoney. Seems like people are claiming anything from $50 to $1000 per month, and I imagine it all entails grinding your way through endless hoops.
5434a
1mo ago
Just finished James Clavell's King Rat. Have read enough Clavell now that I can pick out his personal writing tropes.
Now skipping through Nancy McWilliams' Psychoanalytic Diagnosis after seeing it repeatedly mentioned around the SSC-sphere.
5434a
1mo ago
If X and Y are not meaningful then what would it mean for X to become Y? Nothing, it's empty semantics. X can have none of the qualities of Y and be Y regardless because X and Y no longer have any qualities that meaningfully separate them. The only thing that's changed is the referent. Some Xs are now called Ys, no other changes required.
Sorting X from Y, whether correctly or incorrectly, requires a coherent method to discern X from Y. That's what imparts meaning to the labels.
To wit, if a woman can have a penis then why can't a woman have a male name, male pronouns, wear trousers and use the men's locker room? [Transmen: "Yeah! Why not!" Transwomen: "...Hang on, that's my card you're palming!"] The rest of the women do and you don't hear us complaining.
It's too late. The Nazi label has been stretched from warmongering fascistic Jew-killing Fuhrer worshippers to anonymous posters on the internet making the okay sign. It's too late to roll it back to "does all the things the Nazis did" after so many decades of "does none of the things the Nazis did".
If I tell you my teacher at school was a Nazi what do you think it means? Bear in mind I was in school at a time before the WW2 generation were all retired. What kind of person was my teacher? A good teacher who was maligned by immature students? A poor teacher who was over-eager to use harsh punishments to maintain classroom discipline? Or an unremarkable teacher approaching retirement with a distinctly German accent, a stiff way of walking suggesting lasting physical trauma, and would shudder whenever a heavy book was slammed on a desk?
If people want to corral their opponents into internment camps that's not a Nazi problem, it's a political oppression problem. That's a serious enough problem when it's stated plainly, it doesn't need to borrow from anyone else's historical political oppression to point it out.
That's what many of the posters here are implying: If they had to choose between someone who makes crass and ill-judged comments in a chatroom, or someone with a meaningful degree of social power who uses the politically correct language to cast them as irredeemable threats to social stability and a barrier to progress on account of their majority identity markers, they'd choose the chatroom troll.
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