There’s actually kind of a funny history behind the Eggplant emoji. Emoji are Japanese in origin and around the time they were taking off there was this Survivor like gameshow where one guy was confined to his apartment and he had to try and survive past the basics by applying for and winning sweepstakes items from various promotions from newspapers and magazines.
The participant’s shortened form name was Nasu - which means “eggplant” so since the guy started the challenge with literally nothing including clothes they put a little Eggplant over his junk in post. That became a Japanese cultural meme that translated over once emoji became more widely adopted.
You probably won’t see actual dick emoji in the actual set because emoji are an all ages access thing and exist on an international level. It’s actually kind of funny how different cultures use the same finite set. Like in China how the angel emoji is construed as “I’m going to end you”. One could see the things as becoming essentially a hieroglyphic set where they gain their own full individual linguistic meanings.
They are an all ages thing for some… But remember when I said international? I don’t particularly like puritanical prudishness but the conservative held belief as those things being inappropriate for all points of society is also pretty common.
I doubt those who keep the emoji want any hassle of the conservative European diaspora middle East, the Americas, facets of Africa and China getting their knickers in a twist.
In the world of stockholder retaliation some things people count as just above their pay grade.
They could include it. Give it a spot. But blank. And then it would be up to each OS if they want to include the icon on their device. That way we could at least let those less prudish nations and companies start with a common code point.
Like flags for example. They got codepoints, but Microsoft has decided to not take sides and have ignored country’s flags.
The problem with leaving it blank is that it harms communication if the other party doesn’t have that symbol. You may send it because it exists in your country but then they have no idea what you mean.
Maybe having a “tofu” missing character box is ok, but even then if a substantial amount of the world’s population isn’t going to have this character it maybe be best to leave it out.
Are there not already words to represent the same thing to anyone old enough to read a message? A different representation of something they are already potentially exposed to isn’t something that technology standards should be censoring.
Especially when the defacto replacement for this is a symbol of something that could very easily give young men a serious sense of inadequacy and insecurity.
I would countee that wouldn’t any single depiction of a penis set an unreasonable standard? Color, size, circumsized vs not etc? At least with a euphemism it is fairly abstract. I don’t think anyone looks at an eggplant as a goal.
U realise the unicode consortium only makes standards and describes the meaning the actuall image used is not up to them for instance a this🇹🇼 emoji wont show on most chinese devices if a country doesnt like a dick emoji then they can ban it.
Nope, did not realize… But tell me that even my nice progressive Canada wouldn’t have hordes of parents flipping the fuck out about little kids being exposed to cartoon porn and I wouldn’t believe you.
To be clear it’s not like I think there’s any moral issue with an emoji set of genitals. I just don’t think anybody wants to court that much bother for something already served by a cultural understanding about the eggplant emoji that already exists. In a vaccum of sex and penis innuendos an innuendo will always emerge. Even when we have the option to be explicit sometimes we opt for innuendo. I just don’t see there being a lot of value particularly in a cartoon penis. Like okay, you have a cartoon penis, there’s a moral outcry. Conservatives get mad and in the end… what exactly has been improved really?
I live to piss of all extremists and the extreme conservatives are right up there with the most entertaining to annoy. And hey there would be some dam fine jokes about the countries that ban it.
Yeah I don’t think upsetting those people who are fence sitting into opinions that make them more likely to further solidify their support for conservatives is worth it for cartoon penises personally.
They are hard enough to try and reach for serious mind changing heart to hearts without them feeling like the world is falling to general moral bankruptcy.
Is that the show where the contestant came out about how horribly abusive the production was? Like he was tricked/coerced into doing it and basically imprisoned the whole time?
Damn, after reading the first paragraph I really tought this was going to include masturbation by insertion of an eggplant. Now I'm a little disappointed to be honest.
I suppose there are worse things to insert but an eggplant, particularly the type being depicted in the emoji doesn’t seem like a particularly prime candidate. Seems like a good way to end up in hospital looking for a manual extraction.
A person I know used to work as a nurse in an operating room, stuff like this happens more often than you'd think. I haven't heard an eggplant mentioned by them though.
It’s up to the app/os how emoji are rendered. You can hack your os to display whatever you want instead of 🍆 , or add support for 👨🍆 with zero width space between, but it’s less likely to be used.
It’s not even at OS level (unless you’re thinking fonts are OS level). So basically you’d just need to define a font, with certain unicodes with images you want, and make sure it ranks higher than other fonts. So the application will search for any characters in that font, and then for those you didn’t define, it’ll search in other fonts.
That’s the entire point of the phrase, as far as how I’ve always interpreted it: don’t blame people for doing what’s best for them within a system they don’t control.
I can hate both. Morality is not subject to the whims of legislation. If you’re a billionaire, you’ve done something immoral. Playing “within the rules” does not absolve you of all morality.
If a game inevitably leads to billionaires unless you can count on all individuals being moral people, I take the liberty of hating the game that sets things up like that.
Any system can be abused. Amoral assholes will always exist. We have a system that rewards amoral assholes with wealth and power. Hate both the player and the game.
We have a system that rewards people for producing value. You can see the effects of this system all around you, in the absolutely massive wealth that surrounds and serves you every day.
“Producing value.” Nobody produces a billion dollars worth of value. It takes thousands of people to produce their value, and they keep most of it by fucking over the people that work for them.
The system is fundamentally exploitative and cruel, leveraging fear and violence to extract value from poor people for pennies on the dollar.
I understand the meaning, and you’re right that the system would just reward a different dipshit. But Elon is there, and he is a dipshit deserving of scorn. If it was someone else being a dipshit, then I’d hate them for being a dipshit.
The system should prevent people like Elon from amassing so much wealth and power. But even if it did, he would still be a dipshit.
Hate the game, hate the player, because both fucking suck.
No, but it was OP’s example. Use it in any ither context, and I’ll tell you why the player is also a shitty person, regardless of the game.
Is it a guy being emotionally manipulative to have relationships with multiple women? Yeah, he’s a shitbag.
Is it a business resorting to underhanded, but profitable, practices to corner the market and boost income? Shitbags.
Is it the kid cheesing that one move to win every battle? Shit. Bag.
I mean, there are degrees of being a shitty person. But anyone saying “don’t hate the player, hate the game,” knows they are doing something shitty and are doing it anyway because they can.
So if you could get away with it, would you kill your granny?!
Or is there something inside of you which makes you feel uncomfortable about just the idea, even though in purelly logical terms the old lady is probably just a useless consumer of resources well past her breeding age so serves no useful purpose?
If there is that something inside of you (i.e. you’re neither a psychopath nor a sociopath) that too is Moral.
I agree with your point about externally defined and imposed “Moral” (which is really Morality or Moralizing), it’s just that most people also have their own internal Right-Wrong Compass (I suspect derived from one’s empathy) and that too is Moral and it’s not under external control.
What you suppose is your “internal” morality compass is an “internalised” one.
I wouldn’t kill my grandma because I love her, not because it’s “wrong”. I won’t kill anyone, I guess, because I don’t like seeing living beings suffer. Not because it’s “wrong”.
Morality is always an internalised “system”. It can’t be “natural”, it’s always ideological.
But that doesn’t mean that being materialistic in analysis of our existence as humans would make you do “evil” things. If you try to analyse us as a species scientifically, we realise that we literally evolved to cooperate and be nice to each other. Our chemistry makes that necessary. We hate being alone and seeing those around us suffer, because those things produce “feel bad” chemicals. We love helping each other because that produces “feel good” chemicals. On average of course (as you mention psychopaths do exist).
In fact, a purely material analysis of us would show that greed, individualism, destroying the planet, killing all animals on it, making large portions of our species to suffer in poverty etc. are counterproductive. Those things all make us individually feel worse and have worse lives. We would have the best lives if everyone around us had access to all amazing developments of the past centuries freely, if the animals and ecosystems of the world were protected, if the people around us cared about us and lived with us, not despite us. And none of that is moral, or based on morality. Just science and materialism.
Then go ahead and figure out how “I don’t like seeing living beings suffer” is consistent with the idea that a moral compass is wholly “internalised”. Are you saying that your dislike of seeing suffering is “internalized”?
I’m exactly pointing out that how you feel about about harming and hurting others will be part of defining your moral compass (quite literally by leading you away from harming and hurting others because doing otherwise makes you feel bad).
Yeah, absolutelly, a lot of “Moral” is internalized, but a lot of it is just outsiders trying to claim as their invention that which is already human nature and the natural compass we have due to things like love and empathy.
Consider the possibility that societal Morality is really just a way to capture and subvert natural human “morality” (which is not at all a formal “Moral”) so as to get people to act outside that natural moral (for example, would Capitalism exist if people just followed a natural tendency to stop hurt when they see it and take from those who have much to give to those they see starving?).
Morality is the basis for social cohesion, which is necessary for the survival of the individual. Try to survive without the help of any other person, including parents, teachers, employees, …
That has nothing to do with morality. You don’t help people because it’s right. We help each other because we literally evolved to be social animals. Our biology in many ways depends on others. We feel individually sad and bad if we are isolated. And we feel good when we help others and see that people around us are doing well.
Morality has not been present throughout our evolutionary or even social history. Moralism only became an essential part of society after Christianity and other religions like it took over.
Things being “wrong” or “right” don’t help us really, materially. In fact, it’s mostly been used to control people and keep them in-line. After all, who decides what’s “moral”?
morality noun principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour. “the matter boiled down to simple morality: innocent prisoners ought to be freed”
There isn’t much of a distinction between ethics and morality. Ethics is mostly spoken of as a philosophical question, and morality as an ideological one. Ethics is usually associated with the ancient Greeks, and morality to Christianity.
What I mean is that if we allow external entities and “authorities” to dictate to us what is right or wrong (an ideology, the Pope, a philosopher we like etc.), we aren’t living materially and objectively, but ideologically. We are being controlled by externalities.
The difference between morality and ethics is commonly used as such:
morality: Distinction between right and wrong on a specific, or individual level
ethics: a system of moral principles. Usually invoked/developed by systems.
When you claim that
“We are being controlled by externalities”
then that is due to the ethics invoked by these externalities which try to impact your individual moral compass.
The christian church usually claims that morality is absolute, since it comes from god. If this was true and you consider that “there’s no salvation outside the church”, this makes the church the arbiter of ethics and by extension: morality. At least in their logical framework. Therefore, it is only natural for the church to talk about morality, when it actually is talking about their ethics.
I think the point is that Morality can very simply be an evolved human trait due to the massive second and third order effects that derive from it or the lack of it.
Let me put things this way: psychopathy is a condition people are born with, were they are unable to empathise with others so amongst other things they don’t feel the hurt of others and are thus capable of inflicting great hurt to others, lie and do all sorts of socially-reprehensible things without feeling a shred of guilt. In practice they will do what’s best for themselves with no consideration for others except for the purelly rational “can they punish me if I do this” (in simplifying all this a bit since psychopathy is actually a range rather than simply an Yes/No thing).
Anyways, around 3% of people are born high in the psychopathy spectrum. Now, if psychopathy is “doing what’s best for yourself with no consideration for others, no guilt, no conscience to be weighted on” - on other words, no moral, just limitless personal upside maximization - which one would expect is the best possible survival and reproductive strategy there is, why doesn’t human evolution lead to 100% of people being born psychopaths?
My theory is that societies with too many psychopaths collapse, removing the psychopaths from the genetic pool, plus psychopaths have trouble cooperating (for the obvious reason they only care for themselves) and thus can’t survive the kind of danger that can only be defeated by a group of people.
How would that be. Well, they’re pure takers - why tire oneself by making if you can get away more easilly with taking - and they’re not good at cooperation (both because they only care about themselves and because when other people spot their character, they don’t trust them and don’t want to cooperate with them), so any society with too many psychopaths is less productive, has less resources available (too many takers too few makers), it stops evolving, can’t properly organise a collective defense system and eventually gets overwhelmed by some other society without such problems.
In other words, even whilst the 1st order effects of being entirelly amoral and purelly out for yourself are pretty positive for that individual, the 2nd order effects (such as others tending to shun that individual) and 3rd order (societies with too many such people end up collapsing or conquered) make being amoral a non viable strategy, except if they’re a small fraction and most people around are moral.
This last part is just my theory for why, but certainly the part that only 3% of people are born like that is a pretty good indication that for whatever reasons an amoral behaviour in humans is not a winning evolutionary strategy even though some might think at first sight that it would be.
Psychopaths can just as well have morality systems… they will just look very different from yours.
Morality is ideological definition of right or wrong. To you, scamming someone might be wrong. To a psychopath, getting money from a sucker who’s less smart/strong/awesome than you is right.
Might makes right is a moral system… it might be “imoral” to you, but it’s a moral system nonetheless.
As far as I understand they had prepared a pretty big warchest, and gas is still worth a lot and is being sold to countries that didn’t commit to sanctions (like China and India).
Pootin also launders oil money offshore, so… all means are good for him.
And yet, he is a “former” KGB officer, a bandit from St. Petersburg who has been involved in dubious schemes since the 90s, so what else could you expect from him…
Well, their warchest mostly consisted of assets in western countries. Most of these were immediately seized. That didn’t completely destroy Russia, but it put them in a far worse situation.
A few years ago, I wondered why that was and googled it. I came to an Advil site with an expandable FAQ, and one of the questions was “why does Advil taste sweet?”
So I expanded it out to reveal this shocking answer (or something similar): “Advil tastes sweet because it is lightly coated in sugar.”
Thanks, I guess. I just closed the tab in mild irritation and moved on with my day.
Problem with the candy coating is you can't enjoy it, unless you want to suddenly learn what pure poison tastes like. It's such a tease. Doesn't help that they look like scrumptious little caramel-y morsels.
There may be a difference in things like pill shape, texture, release mechanism / time to absorb (if it’s not very important for how the medication works)
So it’s ok to have a preference for one brand over the other when one of those points is relevant to your situation. I know some people also prefer the generic brand version over the regular (even if prices were the same)
Sugarcoating pills is fairly common, especially for pills which are frequently ingested or target older demographics. It’s because sugar coatings are much gentler on the esophagus (i.e.: less likely to cause esophagitis, “pill burn”). Advil (i.e.: ibuprofen) is a cheap, well tolerated, and non habit-forming pain reliever – it’s about as safe as such a thing could possibly be, so hopefully that helps to explain why a sugar coating might be warranted given the aforementioned upsides (for the love of all that is holy; always read the directions on the label, it’s still quite possible that Advil is not safe for you specifically). FWIW: the bottles also have childproofing mechanisms built into the caps (… at least in U.S. markets. Not sure about elsewhere?)
I think you have a wrong image of how this looks/works. It's not like there is a cany-shell or something. It's a regular, smooth pill. You usually do not notice this coating because you don't keep a pill in your mouth. If you were to, the pill would taste sweet.
If you ever have gotten a pill of some sort that dd not feel chalky on the outside but smooth and looked kinda shiny, that probably has been a sugarcoated pill.
Not exactly. Just a fun fact and disclaimer that I use generics if at all possible. But my pharmacology class taught that generics can have higher tolerance of error in % of active ingredient. Not usually a big deal unless the drug has a very narrow therapeutic range, meaning too little doesn’t work and too much will harm you. 99.9% of generics is fine. But if you ever wonder if one batch of your med doesn’t seem to work as well this it’s likely that batch was on the lower end of acceptable.
Also, a cheaper alternative is to eat less and eat healthier. I know we can’t all afford expensive healthy foods but just simply cutting out excess fats, sugar and empty carbs from your diet will add years to your life and also add better years to your life.
“vaccines will give you microchips” - nowhere does it say that the microchips will be given to me in a way that they end up in me. Maybe they’re just a nice side present that comes in the same box as the vaccine.
“I […] currently have […] microchips” - nowhere does it say I have them in me, just that I have them. I have them in my desktop computer, phone, and other electronical devices, and I’ve currently not shoved my smart dildo up my ass, so all outside me.
Don’t even need Steam deck. The Steam store has put an end to my pirate life over a decade ago.
On multiple occasions, I have found myself rather wait for sale and bought a game on Steam, than receive it for free on Epic store.
I put every single games that I have ever pirated in Steam’s wishlist (if it’s available). Then slowly buying them one by one when they goes on sale. I’m not rich by any means and it’s the least I can do.
I’ve been doing this exact thing!! and it’s refreshing to see this attitude on Lemmy, which generally seems to really really hate giving the creators of the content they consume any money. People here act like they’re entitled to free content and piracy is some moral obligation. Piracy is and should be just a little bit shameful. it’s not like it’s evil or whatever but you’re not supposed to be proud of doing it. I pay for the content i spend the most time with whenever I’m financially comfortable enough to do it.
The moral of piracy is hard to define imo. And there’s definitely no hard right or wrong.
In my case, in the past I pirate because I live in a 3rd world country and $60 is entire month’s salary.
Nowadays, some time games doesn’t offer demo or trial, and I can’t afford to buy something I wouldn’t enjoy after 30 minutes playthrough.
Some people say they pirate because fuck the devs or publishers. But then you But for me, if some devs or publishers are considered bad and not worth supporting in my eyes, I just doesn’t give a shit about anything they put out. It’s that simple, don’t look it up, don’t talk about it, don’t engage in its discussion online, fuck’em. Nintendo is one of those in my eyes because of their constant anti-consumer behavior.
It mostly stopped piracy for me, but occasionally I’ll want to try a game but not want to support the company, or try a game I know I’ll hate just to see what they did.
I also pirated Starfield, which I technically had access to through GamePass, but it couldn’t be modded. (I also ended up hating it too.) I’ll probably be canceling GamePass though since I’ve switched to 100% Linux since then, and Windows has made it impossible to use with Linux.
That’s one of the biggest things valve has contributed to for the Linux community, unshitifying gaming on Linux. Proton does an amazingly good job at working on most games. And steam does a great job of making it easier to use proton.
Now there are always a few problem games, mainly ones that use some crazy kernel level anti-cheat (that doesn’t work anyways). But if you’re curious look at www.protondb.com
edit: aww, my favorite racing game Dirt Rally 2.0 is not supported, windows only. But Dirt Rally (1) is supported by all 3 OS: windows, mac, and linux, plus support for VR. So somehow the sequel is worse. Is it just a case of lazy devs?
Not a dumb question if you haven’t been keeping up.
The Steam Deck runs Linux and not Windows by default. (It can be loaded by the user if desired.)
Given their desire for a nearly-console-like experience, they put in a bunch of effort into the Proton compatibility layer to get Windows games to work here. It’s not perfect, but it really is a very good experience at this point.
I personally do have a fairly powerful Windows desktop, but the vast majority of my gaming is on Linux on my Steam Deck now.
Yeah, so like everyone else has said, generally yes. There are occasionally issues, but the only issues I’ve had so far (that see actually issues with the game running and not anti-cheat that just blocks Linux) have been solved by fixes I found on ProtonDB.
Apparently, on average, games actually run even better on Linux. This is due to the combination of a less bloated OS, but also because proton is translating DirectX into Vulkan, and doing it a smart way such that it’s actually more efficient usually. So far, it’s only GamePass and those few multiplayer games that have fallen short.
Do you happen to know how well this works for old Windows games? We’re talking about random indie things that run in little windows and are native to like Win98. A good lotta old doujin games are like this.
I tried Commandos (released in 1998) the other day. It worked nearly flawlessly. I still needed to set my bottle (application for running wine/proton with presets) to run in an older version of Windows compatibility mode I think, but you need to do that in Windows probably too.
(You do need a fan patch to make it run at modern resolutions, but that’s not required, and it’s needed for windows too.)
Hmm, seems like this is really might be getting to a point where non-viable instances are the exception rather than the rule. At least, I hope that’s the case these days.
I’m too busy to switch to Linux at the moment but if I have to it’s definitely an option I’m making back-burner plans for.
I did the same thing as you until a few months ago. I had used Linux many years ago, but never fully switched, so I wasn’t too worried. Windows has been frustrating me for years now, and one day the search bar showed back up even though I’ve told it many times to not have it. At that point I decided I was done using an operating system that didn’t listen to me and I switched over. It’s been an amazing experience. There’s only one game that hasn’t worked for me so far. I don’t remember the name, but it was a beta for a BR style game, and it was only because the anti-cheat hadn’t been updated to accept Linux, not because it didn’t run.
one day the search bar showed back up even though I’ve told it many times to not have it.
This sort of behavior (and other nastier things, such as introducing advertising for Microsoft services) is why I don’t trust Windows Updates and am increasingly distrustful of Windows being a satisfactory operating system.
Also I’d like it to be less bloated. Sure, fancy bells and whistles are nice to look at, but if I could make things look like Win98 again I totally would. I don’t actually need things like transparency or 3D rotation/resizing effects.
Yes, because of Proton, which is a version of Wine optimized for Steam games. Some games have official compatibility. For the rest, you have to tick a box saying to use Proton even if it hasn’t been tested, and 90% of them just work.
When its for a discontinued console, or games that have been scalped to nuts prices because the owners cba to preserve it, it can barely be considered piracy imo. Its not sane to buy a used console and games for it if it doesent get support or even have online capabilities anymore. Nintendos the worst for it lmao
I can’t even remember the last time I pirated a game.
I do. 2008, Sims 2. I owned a legit copy, but the DRM was too much of a hassle, plus I didn’t want my kids to scratch the discs. So I pirated a playable, child-proof version.
I might have to pirate a game from the Wii U though they they won’t remake for the switch:(
I don’t remember Nintendo ever remaking a Wii U game for switch, and even if they port one over, the experience is only marginally better than it used to be
They said something about how it was written couldn’t be ported over and they’d essentially need to redo the whole game so it’ll never be brought over.
It’s ok for anyone except those who live in a unpopular country. Valve just doesn’t care about latin America and others. You legally can’t buy games, the prices are ridiculous.
Valve doesn’t care about you, doesn’t care about gaming and is only interested in money.
unfortunately every time pricing isnt close or worse than USD it gets abused by steam gift resellers which is why they have to crack down :( lots of people were abusing it - i know people who would set their country to countries with favorable steam conversion rates for cheaper games
Fuck those abusers. They’re the reason why Steam adjusted the regional pricing in my country to +50% (some games +100%). Before, $60 games in western countries are translated to $10 in my country, now they’re $15 - $20. And our minimum wage is <$1/hour.
Actually, Steam Regional Pricing is the only way I can afford to buy games legitimately. I live in a 3rd world country, and we’re poor compared to the majority of the world. Thanks to regional pricing, a full price USD$60 game is now $15 in my country. Believe it or not but minimum wage here is <$1/hour.
I have to admit that I’ve never bought a game “full price” of $15, not that I wanted to, just can’t afford it. I believe my most expensive game is ~$10.
This was the case for me, to some extent, for some time. But then, the more I used of Steam, the more I realized there are a variety of issues, ranging from minor inconveniences like having to deal with the Steam client (and its interface and footprint) to being at risk of losing access to all of my Steam games due to losing access to the account for a variety of possible reasons (some of which could happen even if I didn’t do anything wrong on my end).
These days, if I buy, I buy DRM-free. That’s an arrangement where publishers/developers properly respect customers. If it’s not available DRM-free, it’s ethically justifiable to pirate.
Maybe he was a redditor who watched as every subreddit became an r/AdviceAnimals and r/funny clone, where relevant discussion was buried under the same lame ass jokes on every post.
When morons posted r/funny material in r/nonononoyes, but were too ignorant to understand how that was a problem, this example was usually helpful:
Do you think it’s okay for r/wtf material to be posted in r/awww or r/EyeBleach? If r/TheOnion posts were posted in r/WorldNews?
There exist different communities for a reason. This is so obvious it’s painful to imagine how some people can’t grasp such a simple concept.
Why should the boundaries of the two different communities with different purposes errode? Because of laziness? Stupidity? What’s the point of even having communities if people just post the wrong content?
When you’re at a grocery store, are you one of the jackasses who decides “Actually, I don’t want this steak” and just set it on some random unrefriderated shelf in the wrong section?
This is the type of bad user behavior that turned reddit to shit.
When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
C.S. Lewis
Good on your sister for not losing track of what makes her happy. Not doing things just because they are “childish” is the most childish trait an adult can display.
Because quotes get cut wherever they benefit the person repeating them. You were shown the quote from people who don’t enjoy life and want others to suffer the same way.
Australian here. We had one really bad mass shooting and then our government (who was also one of the most conservative governments in the last 50 years) banned guns. Haven’t had one since. Guns just aren’t a thing here and we kind of think you’re a weird country for being so obsessed with guns. I also personally think it’s weird that guns are like the symbol of your freedom, yet you don’t have universal healthcare. Universal healthcare offers so much more freedom than guns do.
In saying that a lot of countries have guns and don’t have the same problem with mass shootings. What the US has is a cultural problem in terms of your relationship with guns and violence. Unfortunately, doing a mass shooting is now a normalised way to deal with your problems. Not all of you, obviously. But enough of you that it’s gotten completely out of control. In Australia I don’t think it was just the banning of guns that has reduced mass shootings. We have a culture in Australia of ‘don’t be a dickhead’. I think when we had our mass shooting we all collectively just said yeah nah mass shootings are next level dickhead behaviour.
We do have guns though, they are protected behind proper background checks and licences. And we dont fetishish them the same way many Yanks do. Definitely far fewer semi-auto and full auto guns though.
If you keep your eyes open, there are a number of gun shops around, often in quite unexpected locations. There is one near my local kebab shop, and its very subtle, so many people dont even notice it.
The Au and NZ experience with guns and pop culture vs the US is vastly different.
NZ is up there with gun ownership (in the top 20 per capita), but we have a very different culture around them, they are a hunting tool and not a misogynistic tool here. There was a bit of backlash with our last tightening of our laws - but to be frank, I got my licence after the law change with little difficulty, and who needs a semi auto AR style rifle other that those that can apply for for the appropriate licence?
Australian here, I’m literally less than ten metres away from 2 rifles and a shotgun. Used for pest control, which is mostly eaten cos rabbit and goat is delicious. Haven’t been bold enough to eat a fox yet. But yeah, they’re there. Have been visited by the cops a couple of times over the years to make sure they’re appropriately stored. Hell, you can even get a handgun here. The kicker is, you have to be a member of a gun club, regularly compete in competitions through said gun club, and the gun has to be stored at said gun club (although it can be transported from gun club to another venue for competition). So, yeah, they’re out there, but they’re heavily controlled. And we actually had an Olympic shotgun shooter get in shit a while back cos his gun was improperly stored in his car between competition and home. Nobody wants what happened in Port Arthur to happen ever again. Kids fucking died. That’s fucked. How America didn’t do something after Sandy Hook absolutely blows my mind…
I hear you, I have 5 rifles about the same distance, locked in a safe. The bolts and ammo are both in seperate lock boxes and not stored with the firearms; the keys to all are not store with any normal keys.
I think Australia has about 15-20 firearms pr 100 people and New Zealand about 25-30 (depending on where you get the stats from), compare that to the US where it’s above 150.
The whole culture around firearms is screwed there - you have senators posing for Christmas card photos with the whole family posing with a small arsenal of military firearms, or a guy guys caught on camera (clearly carrying side arms) saying “I feel threatened”, in a power pose/alpha-male stance, while advancing on some other guy in a mall.
From here, on the outside, the whole US feels quite fucked; and it’s not just gun violence…
The weird one for me is archery equipment. No licence, no checks, no storage requirement. And sure, you cant go on much of a spree, it still seems a bit odd that anyone can buy one. Crossbows are restricted though.
Amazingly, there’s more than one state in Australia, and they all have variances… As it is, I’m too tired to look into it and I was told this 10yrs ago, and I know requirements have change in this time so I acquiesce.
I’m not an expert in this stuff but my whole life I have been told to avoid eating mammals that primarily eat meat. Eating a fox just seems wrong, especially when there are so many good to eat rabbits.
Curious here. Just moved to a large acreage and have some 5 bears and about 10 wolfs that pose a risk to my dogs mainly. I grew up with guns so comfortable around them but had not really used one in twenty years. Now the laws require them locked up at all times but I literally need access in seconds. Have a few times have had to scare of the bears but it is the wolves that are my biggest concerns.
I can’t really lock them up or more to the point is that they would have near zero value locked up. I can’t imagine most farmers lock them up. What is the general idea around this?
Well I am deploying other options but not working that well. Just more curious what the ranch type guy that is using a rifle weekly if not daily does. Seperate lock up are not practical when you need them rapidly and at random times. I personally am for heavy gun regulation. Hand guns seem completely unneeded except for certain jobs and having more than say three rifles does not seem necessary. But in a farm or ranch situation, having them easily accessible is pretty important.
They might not have 5 bears and 10 Coyotes in a small area. Not sure what you are getting at? I suspect some of them, particularly the ones with cattle and large area often travel around with rifles. They are a bit of a necessity but I don’t suspect your much of an expert in that field. Looking for those that actually have more dangerous animals around they are dealing with daily or weekly.
Australia has predators, you donkey. And let’s look at the rest of the world. They have farmers and bears and wolves too. Many of them lock away their guns. At the risk of repeating myself, there are other options besides guns for the very specific use case you provided. I know you just want to hear what you think is right, but you’re asking the wrong person if you think I’m gonna do that.
I thought about poison but too likely a dog might get into it. Live traps are next best bet then they can be taken somewhere and shot safely. For bears the live traps are quite large so not so easy. Mind you not so worried about the bears. They run from even if small dogs. I am more concerned in the event where you need immediate access such as an attack. The Coyotes will come right up to the house but lucky the dogs have not been around or inside. They are crafty buggers so you pretty much need to be ready right then if you want to shoot them. Might just have to hunt them. We live right next to town and I know they have killed a few pets to date.
I suspect many with real wild animal issues do not lock their guns away although they may tell people they do. Curious how many people don’t.
This may surprise you, but farmers, shepherds etc, all defended their animals just fine before the invention of guns. You’re also making a lot of assumptions about others. But I guess that’s okay in your mind cos it validates your fears. Maybe look into changing that.
And to be clear, I’m not anti gun. Like I said, I am near a handful of them. But your commenting on a 4 day old post the way you are just screams “please validate my tiny dick energy”…
To be sure there are ways to defend animals and large animals usually will protect their young. The majority of farmers with livestock have guns in Canada and few have any qualms of using them. We are not living in the stone age. Not sure what your problem is as I am curious what most are doing overall. I suspect most don’t lock up not do I see it as a significant safety issue surrounding gun culture like there is in the US. I have never heard of a rancher going postal. Nearly all the mass shootings I can recall are from gun happy people that having nothing to do with ranch or farm type lifestyles. So not sure what your problem is unless you just like to be silly or argumentative or just a dink. Whatever. I am more worried about my smaller dogs. If I can kill them will do so but might have to hunt them down I suspect. Was hoping I could just take it the ones that approach the main yard but if hunting them, likely will have to kill them all as won’t know who the nuisance ones are.
Well that is why I would rather just kill the ones that are aggressive and less fearful and would approach people houses. Now I understand why you were being goofy. Is not about gun safety as I was asking but think any killing of nuisance animals it’s unwarranted. Not what I was asking but thanks for your input.
If it comes to the death of one of my dogs or some coyote that hangs around, my dogs will always come first. Sorry if you think that is not normal.
At the risk of restarting a dead thread, you’re an idiot. We have issues with predators attacking livestock and pets here in Australia too. We still don’t just have guns sitting out ready to be used at a moment’s notice. Cos we’re sane. This was literally my job for 5yrs after I left university. We had a massive checklist of shit to get through before we even resorted to guns. Why? Because guns solve nothing and cause great harm to the community. There are so many management techniques you could employ before going all yippee kiyay with your guns. Guns should always be a last resort. Proper management not only protects you and your pets, it also helps the local ecosystem. I’m sorry you’re so narrow minded that you can’t see the forest for the trees. You’re all “I’ll protect mine at whatever cost”, which is the reason why America is so entrenched with guns and has the very real problems that they are facing every day with no reasonable resolution in sight.
American here. This is sadly very true and I find it unbelievably distressing. For me, after Sandy Hook happened (the mass shooting of over 20 elementary school aged children) and nothing changed, it became clear nothing would ever change. And I feel completely helpless about it. I used to be highly opposed to having a gun in my home but it’s gotten so bad that I’m starting to consider getting one for our safety…which pisses me the fuck off because then I feel like I’m forced to be part of the problem. I went to a big trick or treating Halloween event last weekend in a major part of town with lots of kids and adults, and in the back of my head I definitely had a little fear that this would be the kind of thing that would get shot up these days. It’s so far out of control, it’s so disgusting.
I actually don’t blame you because I would feel the same way if I lived in America. I hate guns, but would feel the need to have a gun if I lived there. It seems like such a cycle of mutually assured destruction that just keeps escalating out of control.
My reaction was, instead of feeling hopeless, I’ve started to call for abolishing the Second Amendment. I’m done trying to compromise with people that care more about guns than children.
So, do you have a hunting or an sporting shoot license for your guns? France laws are the same as the rest of the EU, guns are very controlled, people in Europe don’t talk about guns as a means of revolution against the government. Unless you meant you’re french in the way 'Muricas say they’re Italian or Irish, i.e. they have a great grandfather that once passed through that country.
It’s not something we discuss often, and none of us have guns. But we all feel extremely weak against the government which we all hate, and that openly violates the core principles enonciated when we created the republic. People are getting angry, but it’s something that’s still very new
Well, if it counts, we have a homemade potato grating machine from the Soviet times my grandfather has made because he was a genius and partly because of Soviet Union. It draws a lot of energy, emits a lot of noise (seriously). To turn on, it has two buttons, one for capacitor or something, another for the motor itself and, nowadays, I have no clue which one I should turn on first, left or right… It stands on three legs and weighs around 10 kg (old transformers were heavy). It produces good results, though, despite looking odd.
I wonder how their opa figured this out. Did he try it out and encountered problems when starting the motor? Then maybe got suggestion to add a capacitor?
Engineers are needed in all modern societies, capitalist or socialist.
Engineering education was really good. I read some Physics and some Math textbooks, and they are amazing. Same goes with Chemistry.
On the other hand, History education was all about how kings and grand dukes were bad, and how Lenin was great. Same goes with Arts, Literature and Philosophy (I once stumbled upon a book that says how class warfare was among the Greek elite, Plato was bad idealist and Democrites and Aristotle were good because they comply with the Marxist Materialism. And that was in a Math history schoolbook!) Plus a lot of discrimination, children of Party members were given good grades, even if one looks for Japan in the Africa (a real case). Ethnical discrimination (Russian chauvinism) also existed, the idea that “everything was made by Russians” and silencing the other USSR and foreign nations’ achievements. We see a war in Ukraine as a continuation of this idea.
But, going back, yes, people knew knew how electricity, space travel, nuclear power and particle accelerators worked.
If you’re on single phase power, you almost always need something like a start capacitor, at least for large-ish motors. It doesn’t really have anything to do with the reliability of the grid, and moreso how single-phase AC motors work.
If that is a start capacitor, OP might actually want to shut it off once the motor is running, as they’re typically not meant to run continuously. Usually, there’s a mechanism that disconnects the start capacitor once the motor is up to speed, but it’s not strictly necessary
Pretty much all decent sized electric motors have a start up capacitor. They need an extra bit of energy to build up the magnetic fields, overcome static friction and accelerate the motor up to the operating speed.
I think this is bad for Lemmy as a whole, as a community but only due to misunderstanding and generalizations… People are going to equate the “censorship” on the server lemmy.ml as censorship on Lemmy, the platform/software. That is just NOT THE CASE. Please, whenever someone mentions lemmy.ml and its censorship or the likes, be fast to mention that that is a specific lemmy server and the beauty of lemmy is its decentralization and the fact that it is open source. There are plenty of other servers.
I fear that this kind of thing drives people away from Lemmy, when it should not.
I have replied to someone else further down with my opinion on this topic. I think it also fits in a reply to you, so I will just copy paste it here:
Yes, it might sound worrisome, but I dont think you are pushing authoritarian ideology by using Lemmy. The code itself is fine. The code is not authoritarian. The server which hosts your account is also not authoritarian.
Lemmy is, right now, the best alternative for a reddit-like platform. It is something created for the users, by the users. By using lemmy, you are not enriching the wallets of the shareholders. By using something like reddit, you provide content and a select few get to buy a new yacht.
Also, plenty of people are contributing code to lemmy. It is no longer just these 2. The code is also Open-Source. Anyone can fork it and create a new version of lemmy, with compatibility with the current version of lemmy. By using lemmy, you are allowing the possibility that, at any time in the future, someone else comes and says “I have some ideas to improve lemmy, let’s do this on my own terms”, forks it and continues the work without massively spliting the community.
You have many good points here. Still, I have a feeling that Lemmy as a platform and as a software is still very coupled with its creators.
Yes, there are other contributors as well. But these guys currently own the official repo and make key decisions. And if you donate to Lemmy you pay a salary to these two guys (afaik, Lemmy is their full-time work these days).
I don’t see a problem about their work, just because of their political orientation. And frankly, neither should you.
They develop good software, which is open source and everyone can inspect it. There is nothing wrong about them getting paid for it. Not giving donations to them because of what they believe would be the same as an employer running you through a political evaluation before actually employing you.
Don’t get me wrong: there is nothing wrong about not donating (i did not). But not donating, solely because of some ideology a developer of open source Software has (which does not reflect in the code), seems quite stuck up to me.
What are you asking about? I don’t support extremist ideology - be it left or right. Extremism and violence was never beneficial to the political discourse or greater public. So i disagree with those ideologies. I vote on laws and elect people which i believe will keep extremism out of our system.
If it comes to the quality of someones work, private conviction does not matter. Sure, they might let personal beliefs bleed into their work. But there the beauty of Open Source comes into play: I can check it myself and if i don’t have the capability to do so, many others do.
So if they are on the far spectrum of something i disagree and i am very greatfull for good quality of work they provide for free, i might still give a small donation. If they are actually extremist, i prefer to let the authorities deal with it. Where i come from the police actually cracks down on this kind of people and they probably are better at doing so than me myself.
Just because there will be people who ask about freedom of speech… Someone way smarter than I said something like: “Your freedom ends where someone else’s freedom begins”. This should be the base rule to identify extremism. So to stay with NAZIs: A far right person who doesn’t want Jewish people owning a store infringes on someone else’s freedom. Therefore that person is an extremist, should not be protected by his freedom and authorities should deal with them.
Yes yes, the authorities should deal with them but would you support them? Would you recommend their software if it was good, would you use their products?
Right now I am using their software - so are you. Even though there was again a post about one of the devs. In the very best case those where some rather controversial statements about how the Chinese government treats Uyghurs. I strongly disagree with those statements and am still using lemmy and suggest it to friends. IMO the technical solutions is sound and much better than reddit.
Hint: the moderation tools they are choosing to develop are none.
They are intentionally refusing to develop any moderation tools despite current moderation tools not working and it being the biggest issue instance admins are facing.
Another one that gets me: buying things but not actually owning them. You buy a game but you don't actually own the game, you own a license to play a game on a service that might shut down sometime in the future or change their mind about the license they sold you. You buy an e-book but the storefront you bought it from might change or remove it, and then forcibly update or remove any copies you have on e-readers. Most people don't even buy movies or TV shows, they just subscribe to some streaming service, and if they do "buy" an electronic copy it's the same issue as e-books.
At least physical copies of movies and tv shows and books are still a thing, but even then we're heading towards a future where physical media may require phoning in before it'll play.
It needs to be made illegal for any store to call a lease a purchase. If what you’re buying is a temporary, revokable license to download and play a game or watch a movie, the store you buy it from should be forced to make that perfectly clear.
Noise pollution and how comfortable people feel contributing to it. I’m mostly talking about people playing videos and listening to music in public (bars, restaurants, etc), but also the new “stereos” on motorcycles that are essentially just PA systems. Sometimes it feels like nowhere’s quiet anymore.
It seems like people are scared of silence after being raised on constant stimulation. They go everywhere with airpods and then blast the music when those aren’t enough. Even nature trails aren’t enough anymore because there’s always some asshole blasting their music.
Tangentially related, light pollution. Not just the damn city preventing me from seeing Nishimura, but also inside your own home. How many electronics do you have that put out constant light? I should not be able to cast a shadow on my wall while my TV is off.
Does anyone know where I can get a large, dim, red alarm clock? It always seems like I have to choose one of those, two if I’m lucky.
Some people get downright feral when their noise machines are even brought up. It’s competitive aggression against other competitive aggressors and it’s supposed to go without criticism, or else. frothingfash
This is precisely why I don’t say anything when it happens. It doesn’t seem to bother others — for some odd reason — and I don’t want to get my ass beat if they end up being unreasonable.
That’s also why I just have to put up with the floorboards shaking at 3 in the morning because a very divorced grillman needs to tell the neighborhood about his divorce while doing figure eights in the nearby parking lot.
also the new “stereos” on motorcycles that are essentially just PA systems
God I was walking to the store on Saturday and some douche was driving around blasting one of the SHITTIEST red hot chili pepper songs ever and he fucking circled the block a couple times so me and everyone walking down the sidewalks had to endure this fucking god awful song at full fucking volume.
yeah the whole dang teenagers and their bluetooth boxes always struck me as odd. I mean not that it’s not dick behaviour but considering we allow sports cars to annoy everyone in like a 1 mile radius when the owner decides to compensate for whatever it feels odd that there’s this focus on people listening to music
If you introduce a new rail type into your rail network you can’t use your existing fleet of trains on that section reducing the ROI on that train engine or carriage. Also, any train you purchase for the new rail type will only ever work on that system lowering their profitability in the long term.
A million times this. Mag-lev only works for either super dense routes where the added cost as you describe can be displaced by the immense value add of shorter and generally more comfortable travel. Or in nations that can force through decisions from the top down, such that cost becomes almost a non-factor like China. Rail in general across the western world is a weird mix of nationalized and privately owned companies and operators, such that introducing mag-lev with the intent to replace conventional rail would require compensation to the private companies who have invested billions in the current infrastructure else they simply won’t be part of the new one, with all the issues that entail.
From an environmental standpoint it’s also really hard to see an ROI in scrapping something that works in favor of mining, constructing and spending intense amounts of energy in all forms to build something better but only moderately so. The biggest improvement is moving from trucks to (electric) train for freight, going from electric train to mag-lev is only slightly better so the ROI just won’t be there.
I would suspect it would be complex to design mag-lev for all the various types of loads trains for be subject to. Wheels are fairly versatile and have a wide range of loads.
Also the fact that ‘less moving parts’ doesn’t mean lower complexity or maintenance cost. Train wheels are a very robust and efficienct mechanism and most train designs are not being limited by them.
Very robust because they have 300 years of research, innovation, materials science and manufacturing in them. Making them incredibly stellar, well understood, damn near perfect technology for what they do.
There are some concepts for hybrid maglev-rail tracks that would at least solve the first point, similar to how rail was electrified over time. It would still be very expensive though.
maglevs need classical wheel systems anyway because there might be a power outage, so simply having wheels that are compatible with the local rail system is a brilliant idea.
add in a tiny propulsion system so they can use the normal tracks at low speed without the help of the maglev tracks and you can sort of blend the two systems together in critical locations like switches and train stations.
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