palordrolap

They either can’t see it or they see it perfectly well and they like what they see.

You may find either or both of these disgusting.

This logic can also be applied to elections.

I can only speak to the topics I followed on another account, but it provided plenty of reading for those topics. Whether it covered all possible posts and whether it works well for all topics, I couldn’t say.

It does kind of rely on people tagging things properly, which people might not do if they’re on a Mastodon instance specific to that topic. But then, they ought to know that those posts wouldn’t Federate well, and indeed, might not want them to.

Mastodon is microblogging. As others have said, it’s similar to Twitter. Lemmy is a link aggregator with a comments/conversation section per link, like Slashdot, Digg or Reddit.

I think the thing that people forget to do with Mastodon is to follow hashtags. The feature wasn’t there early on but it’s been there for probably a year or more now. Then you block or mute the accounts you don’t want to see that post under those tags.

It’s a useful substitute for following accounts when you have no idea which accounts to follow. You can then curate and actually follow accounts whose content outside those hashtags also catches your eye.

On the link aggregators there are the groups which don’t exist on Mastodon, but that’s what hashtags are for, right? Marking the topic.

The only hard part about it for me is feeling bad about blocking innocent accounts.

Also worth mentioning is that Mbin instances exist, and that software is basically both Lemmy and Mastodon rolled into one site. The posts aren’t fully integrated though. You have to click something to view the microblog side of things and click something to go back.

Indeed. We should be suspicious of this doctor’s diagnostic ability, if that’s not another leap of logic too far.

There’s a famous quote attributed to Charles Babbage with regard to his difference engine (or some other calculation machine of his invention) which goes: “On two occasions I have been asked, ‘Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?’ I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.”

Apprehension is right, Mr. Babbage. You were lucky to find yourself talking to those who, in some unconscious way, suspected that something might be wrong in their thinking, leading them to at least enquire. There are those whose ideas are so confused, or even so completely lacking, that they will assume that no matter what is put into the machine, the right answers will come out.

It might be relevant to point out that what constitutes a Mars bar differs depending on country. The US and UK are different, for example: Simple picture demonstration

The picture doesn’t show what’s in a US Mars bar, but apparently it has almonds in it, as though it’s a Snickers just with a different kind of nut(?).

I’d never heard of it either, but a web search finds a Wikipedia article, a few pictures and the implication that it’s not sold in the UK.

Also, calling Cadbury “British” these days is a bit of a stretch. Yes, they were founded here and are still headquartered here, but they’re now a multinational corporation owned by an American corporation.

And despite that American corporation being run by a Belgian, the quality has definitely gone in the American direction.

At first I thought that this would be a great opportunity to pit the water companies who own water meters against the smart-toilet companies who accidentally reduce water usage, eating into water company profits, but then I realised that that battle would inevitably result in them working together to make smart toilets that full flush every 30 minutes unless expressly told not to.

Minecraft Bedrock is written in and compiled from C++ and is completely closed-source.

The original Java version is technically also closed-source, but Java bytecode is relatively easy to decompile to a high level and Mojang (and surprisingly, even Microsoft*) tend to look the other way when people do that.

It seems like this was written for the Java version, but I’m not completely sure whether it’s simply a protocol conversion, in which case, the protocols are already well known, and converting it to work with Bedrock might not be too difficult.

Yes, there are open-source alternatives, but nowhere near as many people play those as play Minecraft, which is probably why that was the target platform and not one of the others.

*For now.

The true nirvana is death.

You could call it, or limit it to death of ego if you want to remain alive, but remaining alive for a Buddhist reduces to a craving, nonetheless. For nirvana.

There are also biological cravings that cannot be ignored no matter how enlightened you become because of the fundamental nature of the creatures we are.

Food must be consumed. Breath taken. Waste excreted. Sleep slept. One might even argue that the search for any meaning is but the evolved desire to survive, only interpreted differently.

The only reason I remain on this deity-forsaken rock is that I believe that ending my own suffering would only amplify the suffering of those who - for their own reasons - care about me.

If I take attachments in the meantime, it’s merely for my own amusement as I await the opportunity for true nirvana. Shedding them would make the wait less bearable.

Bear in mind that this is my path. Yours may differ.

He’d want it back.

But seriously, that’s not practical for a number of reasons, one being I don’t have money. Another kind of major one is the kind of mental health problems that could make me push the stick forward at 1000 ft and hold it until things went dark. Like this comment.

One of the reasons I rarely took myself off to other places in the world for a holiday* is because the thing I need a break from is being me and I don’t even know if that’s possible.

Initial past tense because I can’t afford to go anywhere now. The couple of times I could afford to go away and did so, I didn’t really enjoy myself. Took a lot of photos that I never look at.

Literally the best part of my last holiday was the short runway take-off of the aeroplane on the way there. First time I’d ever flown. Massive acceleration and into the air. Total rush.

Spent a lot of my time looking forward to the flight home as a result, but the runway turned out to be longer and it was a disappointment.

There’s a meaning in that somewhere. Maybe.

* British for “vacation”.

My least favourite technical support calls were with people who didn’t know their own interface and I was having to direct them, blind, to get the information and do the diagnostics I needed.

There were at least a couple of times where I had to ask the customer to describe literally everything they saw on the screen starting at the top left and working their way down.

I sometimes pretend to be one of those people when I get tech support scammers on the phone because I know how tortuous it is.

Back at the turn of the millennium I remember enjoying 1/0 by Tailsteak. I’m glad to see that it’s still available.

The strange thing is, it’s vaguely possible that “learn” in the sense of “teach” might have been hanging around in dialects of English since the similarly sounding word “leren” was still in use. “Leren” sounds an awful lot like “learn” but is completely unrelated and actually does mean “(to) teach”.

Modern Dutch still uses “leren” this way. It’s even spelled the same which is kind of rare.

I’ᴍ ʜᴇʀᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴄʀᴇᴀᴛᴇ ᴠᴀʟᴜᴇ ꜰᴏʀ ᴩᴇᴏᴩʟᴇ ᴡʜᴏ ᴀʀᴇɴ’ᴛ ꜱʜᴀʀᴇʜᴏʟᴅᴇʀꜱ. Tʜᴇʀᴇ ᴀʀᴇ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴏꜱᴇ.

So, a couple of unlikely things will have to happen for this, but if 1) Britain ever returns to the EU and 2) as a joining condition is forced to adopt the Euro, I can all but guarantee that most people will put the Euro symbol in front where the pound sign used to be, even if expressly told not to. Even those in favour of being in the EU.

Retailers would do whatever they felt like on labels and shelves unless it was enshrined law.

And the penchant for using imperial weights and measures would continue unabated across the lands.

It’s far more likely to make them avoid comics in case they see another one like it and then withdraw further into their hobby.

The comic takes place at midday on the winter solstice, so it’s like a beautiful spring day, just as it shouldn’t be.

(I’ll leave it up to someone more motivated to figure out what the shadow length and mountains indicate about what this means for latitude and longitude, but I’m pretty sure it’s not impossible.)

Valve is that perfect example of being just shitty enough to be annoying without stepping over the line into complete enshittification. But this too will happen. I reckon there’d be good odds of it happening not long after Gabe retires.