ToaKraka
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User ID: 108
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1yr ago
A recent patch for the video game Victoria 3 has added a mechanic for the creation of "power blocs" by countries that have achieved the rank of "major power". A power bloc can be focused on trade (customs union and open borders), hegemony (the British Empire), ideology (Austria's Metternich System), military (mutual defense), or religion.
In real life, we all know about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union. But did you know that there are many other international organizations of similar nature?
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The Southern Common Market and the Andean Community (two four-country customs unions, with basically-open borders all over)
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The Central American Integration System (four countries with open borders, plus four more with a customs union)
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The Eurasian Economic Union (five countries with customs union and open borders)
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The East African Community (eight countries with customs union and open borders, explicitly aiming for eventual unification into a single federation)
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The Economic Community of West African States (
fifteentwelve countries with customs union)
Et cetera.
In order to properly format lines in a poetic stanza, type two spaces at the end of each line, and don't type an extra carriage return between the lines. Use the "view source" button to compare these two examples:
'Twas brillig; and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
'Twas brillig; and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
The Internet Archive page also provides an OCR version of the same scan (labeled "PDF with text").
market
Don't forget that this document technically still is under copyright, so in theory you could be prosecuted for infringement, and charging money for the transcription presumably would expose you to even greater penalties.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
11mo ago
Not caring and keeping to myself at work is not an option.
Amateur.
if I stick with my field, I'll be looking at working alongside people like these for the next 30 years, give or take
You could just work for significantly less than thirty years, rather than committing suicide by three decades of torture. If you're in the US, the federal Consumer Expenditure Survey can serve as a guide for budgeting. Just use the "cross-tabulated: size of consumer unit by income before taxes: one person: less than $15,000" column, and adjust for inflation and your actual expenses.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
11mo ago
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
11mo ago
Reuters: Explainer: Why are Bangladesh students protesting against job quotas?
The demonstrations started last month after the High Court reinstated a quota system for government jobs, overturning a 2018 decision by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government to scrap it.
That move, which covered the 30% of jobs reserved for family members of freedom fighters in the 1971 war for independence from Pakistan, followed similar student protests.
But the Supreme Court suspended the high court order after the government's appeal, setting a date of Aug. 7 to hear the government's challenge.
However, the students stepped up their protest when Hasina refused to meet their demands, citing the court proceedings.
Introduced in 1972, Bangladesh's quota system has gone through several changes since. When it was abolished in 2018, 56% of government jobs were blocked under various quotas.
The bulk covered groups such as freedom fighters' families, with women and those from underdeveloped districts receiving a share of a tenth each, with 5% allotted to indigenous communities, and 1% for the disabled.
The protesting students want all categories abolished, except the last two.
Hasina is the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangladesh, who led its freedom movement. Protesters and critics say the 30% quota for families of freedom fighters favours Awami League supporters, which led the independence fight.
Experts also attribute the unrest to stagnant job growth in the private sector, making public sector jobs, with their accompanying regular wage hikes and privileges, very attractive.
The quotas shrink the number of government jobs open for all, hurting aspirants who want them filled on the basis of merit.
They have sparked anger among students grappling with high youth unemployment, as nearly 32 million young people are out of work or education from a population of 170 million.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
11mo ago
The Bangla-language version of Wikipedia's article on the quota system uses a word that Google translates as "tribal" rather than "indigenous".
Wikipedia's article on Bangladesh's demographics says:
Bangladesh's tribal population was enumerated at 897,828 [1.0 percent of the total] in the 1981 census. These tribes are concentrated in the Chittagong Hill Tracts and around Mymensingh, Sylhet, and Rajshahi. They are of Sino-Tibetan descent and differ markedly in their social customs, religion, language and level of development. They speak Tibeto-Burman languages and most are Buddhist or Hindu. The four largest tribes are Chakmas, Marmas, Tipperas, Tanchangya, and Mros. Smaller groups include the Santals in Rajshahi and Dinajpur, and Khasis, Garos, and Khajons in Mymensingh and Sylhet regions.
There's a separate Wikipedia article on the topic.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
11mo ago
Theodore Dreiser was one of the clumsiest writers to ever hold a pen
I enjoyed reading The Financier and The Titan, personally.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
11mo ago
there's no easy way to type the dashes on a standard keyboard
In Markdown, at least, you can use HTML named character references. "& ndash;" without the space after the ampersand → "–", and "& mdash;" without the space after the ampersand → "—".
I have no idea what the difference in usage between em dash and en dash is supposed to be
Wikipedia's Manual of Style includes a handy guide—though, of course, Wikipedia is not necessarily trustworthy.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
11mo ago
The Amazon Visa (from Chase) offers zero-interest financing for six months on Amazon purchases of at least 50 dollars, and for 12 months on Amazon purchases of at least 250 dollars. (There used to be an 18-month, 500-dollar offer as well, but it seems to have been discontinued.) This isn't quite free money: if you take a financing offer, you do not get the 3-percent cash back (5-percent with Prime) that you would get normally.
The Amazon Visa is not the same as the Amazon Store Card (from Synchrony) and the Amazon Secured Card (ditto). The Store Card and Secured Card offer zero-interest financing for six months on Amazon purchases of at least 50 dollars, for 12 months on Amazon purchases of at least 600 dollars, and for 24 months on "select purchases" at Amazon. The same caveat regarding lost cash back applies to the Store Card.
All information presented above is from this page (except for the 18-month parenthetical, which is from personal experience).
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
11mo ago
Isn't sexist or racist either
"Cackling" carries connotations of femininity (it generally is not used to describe a man's laughter), so it could be considered sexist. (I can't think of a masculine counterpart word.)
At the time of writing, a /pol/ thread claims that this passage, in which Vance admits to masturbating with the lubed interior of a rubber glove held between two couch cushions, was in the first edition of his book, but was deleted from later editions.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
11mo ago
A quick Google search indicates that "theft" has for many centuries been a generic word that covers larceny of physical items, embezzlement of entrusted funds, and taking of money through false pretenses. Is larceny the central example of theft, so that calling an embezzler or a fraudster a thief is misleading? I'm not sure.
But "killing" someone by consensually selling to him drugs on which he happens to overdose definitely is not a central example of murder.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
11mo ago
Is there an overview of Gamergate anywhere, from the pro-Gamergate side?
The sidebar and wiki of /r/kotakuinaction appear to contain links to several summaries.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
11mo ago
I can't speak for the denizens of this forum, but /pol/ offers this collage of clickbait YouTube thumbnails suggesting that Zeihan's forecasting of the imminent collapse of China has been highly inaccurate.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
11mo ago
Apparently, brothels are legal in (most of) Australia—and they are, not equivalent to the paltry brothels of rural Nevada, but a real competitive market. In theory they aren't permitted to advertise, but in practice enforcement is lax, and the establishments think nothing of touting their zillions of jade-like beauties online.
"J.D. Vance" or "JD Vance"? We all know about preferred pronouns, but should a person be able to pick his preferred punctuation? The Wall Street Journal discusses the issue.
See also "Donald Trump, Jr.", vs. "Donald Trump Jr.".
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
11mo ago
Yes, government is bad. But, as I understand it, Accursed Farms does not want to force the publisher to maintain the servers forever. Rather, he wants to force the publisher to make it possible for players to set up their own servers after the publisher's servers are shut down.
Quote from the petition:
An increasing number of publishers are selling videogames that are required to connect through the internet to the game publisher, or "phone home" to function. While this is not a problem in itself, when support ends for these types of games, very often publishers simply sever the connection necessary for the game to function, proceed to destroy all working copies of the game, and implement extensive measures to prevent the customer from repairing the game in any way.
"Repairing the game" includes setting up non-publisher-controlled servers.
The standard recommendation for website archiving is wget (with the options for recursive and archival downloading enabled). I don't know whether it works on Substack's Javascript-heavy archive pages, but you can just manually scroll down to load the entire archive page, then download that manually and tell wget to download everything linked from the downloaded page.
Alternatively, you can use SingleFile to download individual pages manually.
A game developer has delivered an interesting rebuttal video.
Why shouldn't we have the right to the server binaries so we can keep playing these games?
Are you going to allow monetization of these servers or not?
If we don't allow monetization - Who would be the party that enforces non-monetization of that server?
If it's the government I feel like we're making an insane amount of red tape.
If it's the original company then this doesn't work if they shut down.
If we don't allow monetization - Who is going to pay for the hosting if the servers cannot be monetized?
If they cannot be monetized then these servers will also eventually shut down due to cost.
We don't up preserving games like this we just shift their death down the road.
If we do allow monetization - This leads to a really weird attack potential if people can monetize the servers.
- You make an awesome game that has a small community.
- I want to monetize that game and run my own servers.
- I create a shitload of bots and constant exploits to erode the game and your business.
- Your business closes and now I can monetize your work without anyone stopping me.
This isn't unlikely as we've seen mass attacks such as with TF2.
We actually see echoes of this in the mobile market already as well.
The only defense right now is DMCA or other takedown measures.
Devs legitimately have very little protections as-is and this would erode that further.
This creates an incentive for abuse where the abuser is protected as they are within their legal right to operate said "abandoned" games servers.
Link (from 2013, not "about a year or two ago")
Editor's justification for publishing the article
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