heavywaternettipot
Token Midwit
No bio...
User ID: 1819
heavywaternettipot
Token Midwit
1yr ago
Probably should go 1st party for batteries, though
I'm almost certain this is the proximate cause of me needing a new laptop. Lesson learned.
heavywaternettipot
Token Midwit
1yr ago
I'm in need of a new laptop, any recommendations?
I use mine for officework, schoolwork, watching movies/TV, websurfing, and the occasional teleconference. I'll almost certainly wipe the OS and install Mint instead, and I don't really want to be a part of the Apple ecosystem.
heavywaternettipot
Token Midwit
1yr ago
Not sure if this counts but I find the Colonel Toad meme format amusing for no discernible reason.
heavywaternettipot
Token Midwit
1yr ago
Ah, I misunderstood. You'll have to ask Steff about that one.
heavywaternettipot
Token Midwit
1yr ago
I can't speak for Stefferi's characterization of them but I understand them to be more LaVeyan Satanist than theistic Satanist. They're anti-Judeo-Christian in their outlook.
heavywaternettipot
Token Midwit
1yr ago
Is single-issue posting really such a problem? If a user has a limited knowledge or interest range, what else are they supposed to do?
Answering as this forum's resident mid-wit, we lurk more. I rarely post top-level stuff and when I do, it's mostly to draw out viewpoints I'm not sharp enough to think of on my own.
heavywaternettipot
Token Midwit
1yr ago
Order of 9 Angles, a truly weird and disturbing nihilistic occultist group.
Ah, so more naturalist fallacies at work.
Some of the most ‘ultra processed’ foods are vegan foods
I do like the joke about Oreos being completely vegan and therefore a health food. Always gets a chuckle out of me.
heavywaternettipot
Token Midwit
1yr ago
What's your beef (rimshot) with seed oils?
heavywaternettipot
Token Midwit
1yr ago
There are probably more humane and effective ways of discouraging someone from being a scientist other than a live televised broadcast of their firing squad.
heavywaternettipot
Token Midwit
1yr ago
I think you've identified two keys flaws in Moldbug's writing. I'm not deeply familiar with everything he wrote but from what I've read, he strikes me as afflicted with Smart Person Syndrome. Because he's smart, he assumes everyone else is an idiot, especially anyone who disagrees with his viewpoints.
He writes like he was partially graded on word count, rather than solely substance, in college and never quite kicked the habit. I've noticed a lot of so-called "thought leaders" (I hate that term but I don't have a better one) have the same issue. 10 words when 5 will do, most of which are only tangentially related to the subject at hand. It's a sort of anti-Twitter where an idea is expanded on way past the point of coherency.
heavywaternettipot
Token Midwit
1yr ago
There are constitutionally recognized rights to watch videos, read works, and otherwise consume media.
True, and I fully support this, but that right doesn't neccesarily extend to minors, does it? Kids under a certain age still aren't permitted to watch R-rated films in theatres without a gaurdian so far as I'm aware. (I guess the distinction here is that this is enforced by the MPAA and the theaters, not the government.)
For the sake of discussion, let's say the technical issues you talked about are solved and age verification can be done. I'm not certain how forbidding minors from viewing porn impinges on the free speech rights of adults. The entertainers are still allowed to make and distribute their entertainment. Timothy and Susan can still consume said entertainment, even if Little Timmy and Suzy Jr can't. Is the argument that requiring proof of age has a chilling effect on consumption?
heavywaternettipot
Token Midwit
1yr ago
A federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction against at Texas bill aimed at curbing porn access by minors. According to the text TX House Bill 1181 requires porn websites employ "reasonable age verifications methods" and display a series of notices about the alleged side effects of porn consumption (page 4 of the pdf). (I say alleged because I haven't read enough of the research to have made up my mind on the subject.) I went into this thinking the judge was issuing the injunction based on compelled speech grounds, the health warnings. However, as I read along, there are some head scratching lines. For example from page 26-27, under the heading "The Statute is Not Narrowly Tailored:
Although the state defends H.B. 1181 as protecting minors, it is not tailored to this purpose. Rather, the law is severely underinclusive. When a statute is dramatically underinclusive, that is a red flag that it pursues forbidden viewpoint discrimination under false auspices, or at a minimum simply does not serve its purported purpose. See City of Ladue v. Gilleo, 512 U.S. 43, 52 (1994). H.B. 1181 will regulate adult video companies that post sexual material to their website. But it will do little else to prevent children from accessing pornography. Search engines, for example, do not need to implement age verification, even when they are aware that someone is using their services to view pornography. H.B. 1181 § 129B.005(b). Defendant argues that the Act still protects children because they will be directed to links that require age verification. (Def.’s Resp., Dkt. # 27, at 12). This argument ignores visual search, much of which is sexually explicit or pornographic, and can be extracted from Plaintiffs’ websites regardless of age verification...
...In addition, social media companies are de facto exempted, because they likely do not distribute at least one-third sexual material. This means that certain social media sites, such as Reddit, can maintain entire communities and forums (i.e., subreddits), dedicated to posting online pornography with no regulation under H.B. 1181. (Sonnier Decl., Dkt. # 31-1, at 5). The same is true for blogs posted to Tumblr, including subdomains that only display sexually explicit content. (Id.) Likewise, Instagram and Facebook pages can show material which is sexually explicit for minors without compelled age verification. (Cole Decl., Dkt. # 5-1, at 37–40). The problem, in short, is that the law targets websites as a whole, rather than at the level of the individual page or subdomain. The result is that the law will likely have a greatly diminished effect because it fails to reduce the online pornography that is most readily available to minors.
I can't put my finger on why, but this feels Kafkaesque in its logic here to me. "Your law isn't doing enough so it's an overreach." I'm almost certain if Texas had put in requirements about social media or search engines, the court would have struck that down as being overreaching. Lawyers, help me understand why I'm wrong here.
Outside the legal logic and jurisprudence at play here, I'm a little unsure of where I fall on the ethical issues at play here. I don't have anything against porn as long as everything going on is consensual, legal, and not, for lack of a better term, too weird. (I don't really know where that line is and I don't think it's terribly germane to the discussion.) I don't really think age restrictions are unethical. I certainly don't buy that they're too difficult to implement, since gambling sites require age verification and have been able to pull that off. (Web devs, help me understand why I'm wrong.) Nor am I really sure I buy the privacy arguments either here. I guess people just paid cash for their porn back in the day but there was still someone behind the counter who knew that you bought it and, in theory, could be compelled to testify that they saw you buying Naughty Nurses 7. (No idea what kind of court case would hinge on that information, but it's theoretically possible AFAIK.)
As far as the health warnings go, I'm not sure where I fall on that. On the one hand, I don't generally favored compelled speech, whether it's my coworkers asking for me to give my pronouns, trigger warnings, the government telling me I have to say the pledge of allegiance, people telling me I have to stand or kneel for the national anthem. On the other hand, I'm very much in favor of strict consumer labeling laws, since customers can best express their market preferences when they have the most information about their competing choices.
My friends in the military will talk, disparagingly, of we-be's: we be here when you got here, we be here when you gone. They're the civil servants that just loiter in a position or a department for years and know how to slow-roll or be maliciously compliant with any policy change they don't like (or that threatens their own job security). Since firing a civil servant in the federal government requires the same amount of work as a full time job (at least the way the people I know describe it) a we-be is nearly immune to anything beyond a slap on the wrist. The we-be's then shape policy and culture to suit their own ends rather than the ends of the organization / society they're allegedly in service to.
Edit: typos
heavywaternettipot
Token Midwit
1yr ago
Sure, make hay while the sun shines, but expecting me to give anything more than a token thumbs up to someone profiting off of a situation that reamed me is a long wait for a train that ain't coming.
heavywaternettipot
Token Midwit
1yr ago
Like TheDag said, I'm happy for you but I find myself still resentful about the whole pandemic situation. I was considered an essential worker at the time and saw an overall drop in my lifestyle quality. Wages were stagnant with no bonuses, even though supposedly I was too fucking valuable to stay home. No one was hiring in my specific field so I couldn't jump to another employer until right about the time partial re-openings were happening. My commute got a little shorter but all the amenities/services at and near my worksite were shuttered.
I didn't get the benefits of WFH. No binging Netflix, no experimenting with kombucha/sourdough/mead-making. No working on classes during my downtime. (If anything my workload went up.) Vacations I had planned for months got scrapped, including some not-easy-to-get backcountry backpacking permits in a few national parks. All of my social outlets were closed "out of abundance of caution" (which went right out the window when the media decided protestors somehow can't spread covid). I just got dry-railed for 18 months.
And like TheDag said, people definitely got hit worse than I did, some I know personally. Hell, whole nations got wrecked by this. Maybe I should just grin and bear it. But goddamn I am tempted to backhand anyone talking about how cozy and great the pandemic was into next Tuesday.
heavywaternettipot
Token Midwit
1yr ago
Finally got it to work on the gnolls nearby the Risen Road. Then got TPKs 4 times in a row because fuck gnolls and their goddamn multiattack bullshit.
heavywaternettipot
Token Midwit
1yr ago
You ain't lying. She took her first run at my character and yikes, she is thirsty. I was genuinely uncomfortable.
heavywaternettipot
Token Midwit
1yr ago
Maybe I'm not just quick enough on the mouse, but I can't seem to get my party to attack simultaneously even from stealth/hiding. The closest I've been able to achieve was
Edit to fix spoiler tags.
heavywaternettipot
Token Midwit
1yr ago
Fighting my way through a dungeon and it's really irritating not being able to coordinate your characters to attack all at as a surprise round. In BG1 & BG2 you could pause the game, queue up an action for each party member, and unpause, and let 'er rip. But I can't do that here since BG3 doesn't have an actual pause function. Nor, weirdly, is there the ability to delay / ready an action.
Best work-arounds I've found are putting my entire party in stealth, having one character attack, and the introduce the rest of the party character by character. You're still at the mercy of the initiative rolls here though so focused-fire efforts are a crapshoot. I've tried putting it into turn-based mode but that also seems to be a crap-shoot for turn order. Anyone having better luck on bring down a world-of-hurt all at once?
heavywaternettipot
Token Midwit
1yr ago
He was at the Russia-Africa summit last month, which he wouldn't have gone anywhere near if he didn't think he was back in Putin's good graces. Putin really did pull off a Hadingus here.
There's also a chance this was someone in the MOD, rather than direct orders from Putin. I don't know terribly much about aviation but the description of the crash seems more like mechanical issues (sabotage) rather than AA missiles.
heavywaternettipot
Token Midwit
1yr ago
Beginning the battle with a sneak attack and coming in with the proper spells prepared can turn fights from "impossible" to "trivial" very regularly.
In fairness, this has happened to just about every DM who's ever tried creating a hard encounter that wasn't just a straight-up curbstomp.
heavywaternettipot
Token Midwit
1yr ago
Given that the filmmaker is Greta Garberg, I'm quite certain she went in with the framework of feminist agenda first, toy commercial second.
heavywaternettipot
Token Midwit
1yr ago
Outdoorsman-type novels aren't an enormous segment of the adult market but you might try Westerns. Try Louis L'Amour. He was known for having walked most of the terrain he talked about; if he said there was a drinkable spring somewhere, he almost certainly had drunk there himself.
I'm currently meandering my way through Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry and enjoying it a bit.
For those who care, about whether or not we're living in a simulation, why do you care? From your perspective, what does this change about your relationship to existence and creation?
More options
Context Copy link