English teacher here. Articles in English can be really confusing but essentially we use the definite article in this situation because:
Uniqueness: In most situations, there’s only one mirror in a room or a home that’s readily available for someone to look into.
Generality: Similar to “going to the bathroom,” “look in the mirror” refers to the general act of using a mirror to see oneself, not interacting with any specific mirror.
Ukrainian here. IMO, the first statement is half-stupid, the second one is half-overcomplicated :) no offense to you personally, of course. I understand the whole concept of articles in English and know (at least I thought I knew before this post) their correct usage, and in all use cases I can remember the article uses are logically acceptable for a foreigner, but this one with the mirror and the bathroom is messed up a bit :)
:) no, it’s not, because for people to understand you you don’t need to grasp 75% of the concepts of the English language, and IMO, this is the measure of “pain in the ass” of a language. so still not even half as complicated as Ukrainian and not even half a pain in the ass as Ukrainian :)
The second example is quite good imo. You would never say “I’m going to a bathroom.” Even if you were in a stadium with hundreds of bathrooms, you would still say you are going to the bathroom.
Same as you might say I’m taking the train. Not usually taking a train, though I’ve heard that too sometimes. Though oddly you usually say I’m taking a plane, not the plane. Also I’m taking the freeway, not a freeway. I’m usually going to the doctor, less often than a doctor.
The second example is quite good imo. You would never say “I’m going to a bathroom.” Even if you were in a stadium with hundreds of bathrooms, you would still say you are going to the bathroom.
you are justifying this statement “because of reasons” :) this is not a logical explanation. there are a bunch of bathrooms in the world. Am I going to the one specific that was mentioned before in the context? then it’s “to the bathroom”. is this bathroom just a random one that I will encounter on my way? then why not “to a bathroom”?
same with trains: even if you are speaking about a train route with a specific number, you are not talking about a specific train, then it should be “I’ll be taking a train”. if you are going to take the specific locomotive for a ride in a museum, then, obviously, you are going to take “the train”. this sounds logical for the usage of Articles in the English language, at least in my head.
same with doctors: if you are going to a specific doctor, and your opponent knows which one by the context, then it should be “to the doctor”, otherwise it would be a random doctor that will be assigned to you as soon as you arrive to the clinic, it cannot be “the doctor” by the same principle I always thought exists :)
I’m not even talking about the option of using a subject without an article, like in Ukrainian. “I’m going to bathroom”. if I wanted to say which one, I would have stated it, but as soon as I am going to pee in a random bathroom I find, why can’t it be just “I’m going to bathroom”? :D yeah, now it sounds like a verb :D
whoa, another meaningless “the” appeared. “The English Language” phrasing is used despite there are at least four? five? English languages.
so… it’s complicated :D but this does not prevent English from being The Language of the World, and I cannot name a language that could have been on its place.
Tell me you haven’t read Jonathan Strange without telling me you haven’t read Jonathan Strange 😏 obviously it’s because all mirrors are connected - as entrances to the King’s Way of old.
They put new AI controls on our traffic lights. Cost the city a fuck ton more money than fixing our dilapidated public pool. Now no one tries to turn left at a light. They don’t activate. We threw out a perfectly good timer no one was complaining about.
But no one from silicone valley is lobbing cities to buy pool equipment, I guess.
I’ve seen a video of at least one spa that does that. They mine bitcoin on rigs immersed in mineral oil, with a heat exchanger to the spa’s water system. I’m struggling to imagine that’s enough heat, especially piped a distance through the building, to run several hot tubs, and I’m kind of dubious about that particular load, but hey.
A large data centre can use over 100 MW at the high end. Certainly enough to power a swimming pool or three. In fact swimming pools are normally measured in kW not MW.
We are a small software company. We’re trying to find a useful use case. Currently we can’t. However, we’re watching closely. It has to come at the rate of improving.
Whilst it’s a shame this implementation sucks, I wish we would get intelligent traffic light controls that worked. Sitting at a light for 90 seconds in the dead of night without a car in sight is frustrating.
That was a solved problem 20 years ago lol. We made working systems for this in our lab at Uni, it was one of our course group projects. It used combinations of sensors and microcontrollers.
It’s not really the kind of problem that requires AI. You can do it with AI and image recognition or live traffic data but that’s more fitting for complex tasks like adjusting the entire grid live based on traffic conditions. It’s massively overkill for dead time switches.
Even for grid optimization you shouldn’t jump into AI head first. It’s much better long term to analyze the underlying causes of grid congestion and come up with holistic solutions that address those problems, which often translate into low-tech or zero-tech solutions. I’ve seen intersections massively improved by a couple of signs, some markings and a handful of plastic poles.
Throwing AI at problems is sort of a “spray and pray” approach that often goes about as badly as you can expect.
Throwing AI at problems is sort of a “spray and pray” approach that often goes about as badly as you can expect.
I can see the headlines now: “New social media trend where people are asking traffic light Ai to solve the traveling salesman problem is causing massive traffic jams and record electricity costs for the city.”
You need to really specify what is meant by “AI” here. Chances are it’s probably some form of smart traffic lights to improve traffic flow. Which is not all that special. It has nothing to do with LLMs
Honestly I’m not sure, we had circular sensors for a long time, about the size of a tall drinking glass, now there’s rectangular sensors they just put up about twice the size of a cell phone and they have a bend, arc, to them, I know they weren’t being used as cameras at all before, no one was getting tickets with pictures from them, it’s a small town. What exactly the new system is I’m not sure, our local news all went out of business, so its all word of mouth, or going to town hall meetings.
It’s funny because this is what I was afraid of with “AI” threatening humanity.
Not that we’d get super-intelligences running Terminators, but that we’d be using black-box “I dunno how it does it, we just trained it and let it go.” Tech in civilization-critical applications because it sounded cool to people with more dollars than brain cells.
When I started living by myself a while back, I realised how much random housework was being done by my parents. There’s the obvious ones like cooking, shopping and doing the dishes. But there’s also meal planning, cleaning, buying non-obvious essentials like toiletries, and more, which I wouldn’t normally think about.
I’ve got a kid who is nearly out of school. There’s a real sense that his idea of the future is eternal summer vacation at his parents’ house earning just enough money to hang out with friends. It’s a struggle to decide how to deter that pattern of behavior. As parents we want to be able to do anything for our kids, but we also need to do what’s best for them, not just what they want.
The kid is going to learn a lot about what we do to keep the house in reasonable order and stocked for life. We’ve been trying to teach that as we go, but it doesn’t always seem to sink in.
Will they be able to afford their own place and have access to healthcare? I’ve got siblings that have failed to launch even after several attempts. It’s possible this isn’t a failure of parenting.
But if it is fixable, you may want to check out William Glasser’s writings on the workless (I forget what books of his he writes about it in). Be warned that it’s not mainstream psychology and I don’t generally think that his views on medication and several other things are good, but the specific ideas about how to deal with a household member that doesn’t contribute or take care of themselves might have something useful for you. From what I can remember, it’s things like making ingredients available but not prepared foods so they get into the habit of doing things. (Naturally, this is a super bad idea if there’s a different issue like depression that should be dealt with first.) That may be difficult to do with apps and streaming services where there’s very little between a person and food/entertainment, but you might get some new ideas.
It’s still early days on them being in a position to afford a place, and in the US healthcare is a fucking abomination, so it’s going to take some real effort to reach a point of independence.
We’re in no hurry to move anyone out. It’s still early enough that we planet of time to wire in work on skills and such. I’m mostly worried about the general attitude more than individual skills though. His sense of what it takes to keep yourself afloat in the world and little open desire to achieve independence is just worrying at this point. Likely I’m being too worried at this stage, but I’d rather turn the ship in a positive direction earlier and easier rather than later and with more difficulty.
My parents kicked me out twice as a kid. One time was when I was 18, and I ended up homeless for almost 5 months on the other side of the country. The shit I went through fucked me up good. They said it was “tough love.”
Please please please don’t do something like that to your kid if you’re trying to teach them a lesson. Those 4+ months still haunt me a decade later and continue to cause me immense pain.
Oh hell no. My partner and I are in no way interested in just kicking anyone out. The reason we’re trying to work on the attitudes and trajectory now is to have time to set goals and work together to build up his skills & resources to enable independence, which is a far cry from a kick out.
I’m sorry to hear that I happened to you even once. We’ve had some friends of our kids end up being treated that way, so the kids ended up at our place briefly while they found their feet.
The gradual increase in responsibility. They have to pay board. A roster for dinners, a bill out into their name (one that you can deal with being cut off for a little bit (!!!).
But ultimately, it is also out habit of just getting it done that means we just do it.
I expect that it is a conversation and agreement of shared tasks and responsibilities.
Cutoff access to wifi and don’t pay phone bills, plenty of ways to get started, but it always starts with a chat.
Yeah, we’re working out how to have that chat and to put some agreed upon goals into place so that no one is suddenly surprised by unspoken expectations. It’s hard, though. We’ll get through it.
But also like your economy was golden compared to the current, at even fairly reasonable housing prices its still gonna be far out of most budgets for the foreseeable feature.
How bout you try and be a good parent and give your kid their best life regardless of things out of their control?
I’m well aware of how hard it is to get to anything resembling a healthy independent living situation in the US these days. It’s completely stacked against everyone not already in wealthy starting positions. We have other kids working to build more than a hardscrabble financial situation and we’re more than happy to help as we can.
We’ll help this kid too. What I’m not interested in doing is providing them a roof, food, clothes, doing their dishes, and paying for their hobbies for the rest of my life. This is an intelligent, capable, and healthy young man. The issue is the attitude we’re seeing that he doesn’t seem to see what it takes to be an independent adult, even if he’s still relying on some help while he builds up the resources to get by in this incredibly shitty society we’ve allowed to accrete over generations.
Yes, the economy was way better when I was a young adult. I also had some fortunate happenings (bought a house in a stable local market going into the 2008 banks fraud crash) and unfortunate ones (graduated college right into the Dot Com Bubble burst. 3 months of work, then layoffs into years of dead job markets, yay!). I am extremely scared for my childrens’ futures because of how anti-humanist the US has become. Letting this kid in question fuck around for a few years while I take care of everything for him and hope my next heart attack (that’s one of the unfortunate issues) doesn’t kill me before he figures out how to be an independent and self sufficient adult isn’t something that I feel will serve either one of us in a positive way.
You can say that to genX, but the bulk of genX’s kids are adults now (at least genX women aren’t having many more). We did have it easy. We got houses at prices that had only doubled in price in the time it took to raise a deposit. I bought my place for about $150k including the upgrades in 2001. The same place in worse condition now is worth 500k. The person I bought it off paid 67K in 1997
I dropped out of uni and stepped straight into an IT job
I met a partner through social contacts, a friend paired up with someone in their dancing club.
But Millennials (probably your parents if they’re under 45) had it just as bad as you, but they didn’t have iPads as babies
They had it bad for sure but has the rate of decline really slowed?
Like sure buying a house is impossible, but shit that was a recession or 3 ago - and every single one has just pulled homeownership higher.
As easy as it is to say ‘back in my day’, I think its important to look at it numerically to avoid the mistakes of our ancestor’s (since at least baby boomers, but realistically probably even longer)
I have heard it’s good to have a small house, so they move out for more room. I didn’t get the chance to find out (or maybe it worked really well) as mine left home aged 16 for the sort of reasons 16 year olds have
Interesting strategy, and likely one that has some merit. Though, I’d point to similar problems in Japan where it’s not rare to have incredibly tiny homes/apartments, but a very high rate of youths staying at their parents’ places well into adulthood.
The US has reached around 50% of young adults continuing to stay with their parents beyond school. It’s up to a similar rate as the Great Depression era. We’ve priced our kids out of independence to try to satisfy a few billionaires’ desire to be ever richer.
We’re moving to more of this for the whole household (there’s a couple kids at home still). They’re all able to generate meals and do chores. The requirements are being ratcheted up across the board. My wife and I are busier than ever trying to make ends meet, so the work is trickling down to the whole household one way or another.
that’s really fucked up. don’t get me wrong, i’m not judging you, our culture has probably fucked me up the same way as you, i just dont happen to have kids. but not preparing kids for the real actual world is fucked up, and there is a serious disconnect with reality being instilled by our culture in them, and also in you to make that happen. my point is that it is a serious dysfunction in modem culture required to make happen.
God you don’t realize how many tiny things you need to buy until you don’t have them.
You’d expect to find something like a ruler, some tape, a pen, sticky notes, ect. but realize you gotta buy them first instead of just searching your clutter drawers.
@ericbomb Don’t get one now to make up for what you skipped back then, get one now as a checkup for what you might need to fix and for what you need to keep an eye on.
And don’t be surprised at the prices on actual fixes not just shitty band-aids. They’re crazy expensive.
Ex. My home builder didn’t put a sump pump in our new build (and honestly, they should’ve forced us to have a few) and we didn’t know this would be an issue. In the monsoon season we got flooding, yay. A permanent fix with a lifetime warranty of 3 sumps was $25K. If we had put it in during building it would’ve been a few thousand. Peace of mind is typically gonna cost you.
If you have a basement I’d recommend they check the foundation. Have a plumber check your system (PRV, expansion tank, water heater, valves, toilets, drain lines). If it’s an older house have them check the electrical panel and wiring. They don’t last forever and can cause fires. How is the roof doing? HVAC system? Etc. Find an inspector that can do a thorough inspection because they’re are some lazy ones out there or people who just don’t know what to really look for. Ideally you contact each trade to give you an in depth diagnosis.
If they weren’t such weasels and actually agrued back rather than just ban people like the spineless dimwit twats they are, I’d say the argument that they are easily filtered holds. But given they are just looking to propagate their shilling for Russia, trump (and they definitely do this) etc… fuck em!
Even outside of their space, when they “argue” it had generally been posting giant, random images that had little to no context followed by walls of emojis. Which is why my blocklist is mostly Hexbear users.
I really can’t be bothered going and finding all the pretty fucking obvious examples of you shitheads either apologising or glorifying putin, or coming out with pure incel stuff, or platforming trump. Which makes sense given it seems to be the same campaign as before, and its pretty fucking obvious at this point, very sloppy… I’ve clearly hit a nerve lol. It’d be great if you all could change track at this point and stop platforming that odious cunt, don’t worry I know there is unfortunately no option to stop shilling putin…
Assuming you’re not paid or being forced to do this, you must know you’re being used as a tool for the fascists you claim to despise. Platforming trump is support and I see there is no mention of the direct relationship to Putin in all the very loud refuting of this support…
I thought the Mueller report exonerated him. anyway it’s not as though anybody’s supporting Russia or Putin or Trump in these comments. we just know the Democrats are bad and aren’t afraid to say it.
You’re right, I’m so dumb cause I can’t find any examples of what you’re talking about on hexbear. Could you please link a single example? Just one? Just one fucking example you coward?
I’m asking you for a specific example because what you think is there doesn’t exist. You could humiliate me right now by providing a specific example, literally just a single one. Why not do it? Why look this impotent?
Some kid embarrassing themselves by demanding proof of something they’re just going to shit all over, then having a temper tantrum when they’re denied is amazing?
Because the entire thing stance serves as an example. There’s been plenty of people here in the comments that have provided examples and screenshots that illustrate my exact point.
That you felt the need to create a new account to antagonize with bad faith questions only serves to prove the trolling nature of that cesspool. You clearly some want anyone looking at your comment history because you probably exemplify the purpose of this entire post
I’m done entertain your nonsense now.
Walk away.
PS- learn what impotent means, then stop using it incorrectly.
Are they mirroring trump rhetoric. Or is trump regurgitating talking points from his fascist idol. And ML are just so cultish, indoctrinated, anti West that they couldn’t not attack the west. Even if Russia is more clearly in the wrong on this issue.
It’s more likely than them actually supporting trump. Honestly I think the only possible way you could say they support trump. Is that they understand that trump would destroy Western society and they approve of that. No matter who gets hurt in the process. Well actually when it comes to leninists it’s all about hurting people in the process really.
This wasn’t supposed to be hard. They said “and they definitely do this”, so I was hoping they would share a post or comment that lead them to that conclusion.
Totally agree. I'm not sure why everyone focuses so hard on determining how many letters there are in their alphabet. 5 years from now it might be totally diff. It would be so refreshing if people simply said "Here's what floats my boat today"
Converting to Judaism isn’t as simple as it is to convert to Christianity.
It will take years of study and effort.
That aside, the govt of Israel will not “offer” you a chance for a Birthright trip. You have to apply for it and demonstrate you meet the requirements. I don’t see why you wouldn’t qualify, but the Israeli govt is rather close minded about these things. (EDIT: Someone else in the thread has said Birthright Israel accepts converts explicitly, so you should be good here)
THAT aside, don’t go to Israel, don’t give them any money. What they’re doing right now is absolutely monstrous and it’s morally inexcusable to support them.
It is mostly a myth (and scare tactic invented by copyright trolls and encouraged by overzealous virus scanners) that pirated games are always riddled with viruses. They certainly can be, if you download them from untrustworthy sources, but if you’re familiar with the actual piracy scene, you have to understand that trust is and always will be a huge part of it, ways to build trust are built into the community, that’s why trust and reputation are valued higher than even the software itself. Those names embedded into the torrent names, the people and the release groups they come from, the sources where they’re distributed, have meaning to the community, and this is why. Nobody’s going to blow 20 years of reputation to try to sneak a virus into their keygen. All the virus scans that say “Virus detected! ALARM! ALARM!” on every keygen you download? If you look at the actual detection information about what it actually detected, and you dig deep enough through their obfuscated scary-severity-risks-wall-of-text, you’ll find that in almost all cases, it’s actually just a generic, non-specific detection of “tools associated with piracy or hacking” or something along those lines. They all have their own ways of spinning it, but in every case it’s literally detecting the fact that it’s a keygen, and saying “that’s scary! you won’t want pirated illegal software on your computer right?! Don’t worry, I, your noble antivirus program will helpfully delete it for you!”
It’s not as scary as you think, they just want you to think it is, because it helps drive people back to paying for their software. It’s classic FUD tactics and they’re all part of it. Antivirus companies are part of the same racket, they want you paying for their software too.
Downloaded a game which Windows Defender flagged as high-threat for containing “Cracked game content” the other day. Why yes, my cracked copy of this game IS cracked, thank you for noticing.
It’s funny that would be a thing when it’s been found that even the companies, themselves, like Nintendo, have been caught using pirated versions of their own games for redistribution.
Wonder if those games would get detected for the same reason.
Unless you inspect every line of code and/or monitor your computer activity to a super human level then you’ll never know.
Viruses don’t behave like a neanderthal like they used to 20 years ago, so just because you don’t notice a virus doesn’t mean you don’t have one. Let’s be honest, viruses are still a thing and botnets have become a thing. These don’t magically appear from nothing.
You shouldn’t be blindly trusting anyone on the internet, especially those not abiding by the laws. People and entities can be impersonated. They can behave differently at any moment.
Personally i would do one of three things, run pirated content, in a VM, on a separate drive, or on a dedicated computer - because why take the risk when you don’t have to.
I think corporations are doing quite well if your example is from 19 years ago.
In the same era, we had things like LimeWire where files were frequently viruses, CP, or similar masquerading as innocent files like the latest song from your favorite artist.
I’ve never tried closed trackers, so I can’t speak on that side of pirate life but I think it’s naive to trust pirates on public trackers.
It’s kinda trivial to limit their ability to do anything in Linux though. It’s not as if virus authors are gonna waste their time trying to exploit a demographic that is both small and extremely fragmentary when they can just write for windows.
Never mind the fact that almost all are Windows games. If there is any malware in there it’s directed at Windows.In all honesty, I find this to be a very silly concern.
Maybe times have changed but when I was in the warez scene 25+ years ago and essentially pirated every game I played, I saved all those games and the keygen.exe files and when they get scanned by modern AV they all come back infected. If anything it’s different because viruses are pointless now with the internet and there are much broader malware injection points nowadays than the minimal game pirating scene. But yeah I don’t know what I’m talking about, just my historical POV.
After reflecting from the comments, you are right. I need therapy, Thank you. I know that is easier said then done. As I work full time with kids. The comments help, so thank you to all giving me advice as I take it to heart.
Virtual therapy sessions are a big thing now. I’m sure there’s added benefit to in-person sessions, but if time and life are constraints, the option is there.
I’ve done both and it’s possible my virtual therapy sessions were an outlier but I’d strongly recommend at least starting with in-person. I just didn’t find virtual anywhere near as effective as face to face with another person.
It’s better than saying “listen to my dumbassed, drive-by, uniformed opinion on the matter”. But here’s mine anyway. There’s no time for shit people in life, with no exception for blood. Actually, they should be held to higher standards than strangers. Bye, Grandpa!
Random people on the internet giving them advice on something that should be handled by a therapist is what is unhelpful. Sometimes people need to be told in unambiguous terms that the situation they are in is above our paygrade.
It's not unhelpful at all. This kind of stuff is exactly what therapy is for. As others have said, it'll do far more help than advice from random internet strangers.
That does not make it a lazy comment. If someone asks what to do about being hungry the correc anwser is to eat. The fact that they cannot afford to buy food does not change anything about the fundamental truth that the only way to still hunger is to eat.
OP made it clear, that this has followed him for decades. It is highly unlikely, that someone can just offer him some silver bullet advice here, that solves his problem without doing the emotional work. And doing the emotional work in such a situation is best done with a professional person that has no personal stakes in the whole situation.
If OP will not find a therapist within a month it will not get better by waiting another year on trying random advice from the internet. The sooner he looks for a therapist the sooner help becomes available.
The solution to hunger remains to eat. The question how to procure food is then the follow up. But OP didnt ask that. He asked how to still the hunger.
I told my pharmacist that I had been feeling low energy and lethargic ever since starting adderall and asked if she had any suggestions. She said I needed to eat more food, and suggested I use MyFitnessPal to track my calories and make sure I was getting enough.
OP hasn't indicated that therapy is out of the question or unobtainable. Given that, the suggestion is still valid.
Also, when it comes to issues that are firmly in therapist territory, bad advice from online strangers can absolutely make things worse than if they didn't ask at all.
Letting someone know that this is therapy territory is at least a good indication to maybe take other comments here with a fine heap of salt
Buying an SD card full of Roms is piracy, that’s why you have to buy it from Chinese companies and not walk down to the Walmart.
YouTube has agreements with the record companies to pay them for money generated through music uploaded to YouTube. For music where they don’t have an agreement the DMCA means that the uploaded need to verify they have the copyright to thing they upload. Otherwise no social media or file hosting sites could exist.
With the SD what you’re talking about is reality but I meant it in terms of normies perceptions. I watched some retro handheld reviews on YouTube and it started surfacing videos about SD cards of retro roms you can buy. There’s always people pointing out that you can just download the same rompack from archive.org, and there are people replying who say that’s piracy. I couldn’t make something like that up if I tried. Here’s another one specifically about YouTube. If you torrent a song, that’s bad. But if you use a YouTube to mp3 website that’s different. My family sees it that way.
Is pirating old snes and genesis roms really piracy if there’s no other way to get it?
Roms are the reason half those games are still around and not dead media. The popularity of roms is why Nintendo made the throw back, video game companies roll up all the time, very few have longevity and even if those most would’ve been fine just letting the old games die in obscurity.
In the eyes of the law it’s piracy. But to me if something is not being sold, it might as well be public domain. And there’s literally no difference between buying a second hand mario 3 cartridge and pirating the rom in terms of money the creators get. That’s way more ridiculous to me than the youtube thing.
Oh doncha know manufacturers are already working on that.
The whole subscription economy grift. They’re gonna say you own the basic version arguing against the ‘if you can’t modify it you never really own it’ crowd, until they’ve spent enough money to bribe those in power to fashion their win for them, then they’re gonna turn around and say we never really own anything and make reselling illegal.
Reselling takes care of itself if you simply stop offering physical media…which, idk…seems to be the trend of the last 15 years, don’t cha think?
"These aren't windows, they're just sophisticated high resolution 3D monitors. NASA has had this tech for decades, they've just never let the secret out. You're not seeing the Earth, you're seeing a video. Why can't we go see it with our own eyes outside? Exactly. Seems very convenient we're being asked to wear suits with image projection helmets."
You will never win with people this fucking stupid.
I think they have this paranoia that the entire humanity turned against their religious belief. Like what benefit is there to changing the world’s shape for nasa, or anyone?
Literally every flat earther is outright retarded.
Hell, I’ll even accept the ones without a mountain of evidence against them as possible.
The shape of the Earth was determined by evidence noticed in the ancient Greek time, if not sooner. That includes a rough calculation of the diameter of the planet.
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