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The_Vampire

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The_Vampire ,

The biggest missed opportunity this century.

The_Vampire ,

I hope they’ve gone further towards the old combat style and stealth gameplay. I never liked the new one of just being an ‘assassin’ by openly running through a fort and stabbing each enemy with spastic animations until their arbitrary and chonky healthbar depletes.

The_Vampire ,

While true, it’s stupid that things are that way. They shouldn’t be able to hide behind the idea that “we’re not responsible for what our users publish, we’re more like a public forum” while also having total ownership over that content.

The_Vampire ,

This comment has no relevance to anything. If it was trying to imply that Americans don’t avoid healthcare due to cost, in effect denying Americans healthcare, it’s totally inaccurate. There are thousands of American citizens all over the USA that cannot afford healthcare, and Americans routinely avoid getting needed healthcare just to make ends meet.

Even Americans with higher incomes avoid healthcare, and here is a link that mentions that specifically: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/health-care-costs-rising-americans/

The_Vampire ,

Well, they said they would ‘discuss’ the crappy anticheat too, but so far nothing has been done about that either. I won’t hold my breath.

The_Vampire ,

Helldivers 2 uses nProtect GameGuard, which is a notorious kernel level anticheat. It is notorious for being problematic to uninstall and causing issues on systems it is installed in (such as straight up preventing some programs from running or causing them to crash and other terrible nonsense that should never happen). Combine that with the fact it’s ineffective and the game is PvE, and it’s nonsensical why it’s around.

'Vortex Cannon vs Drone' - Mark Rober shows off tech from a "defense technology company that specializes in advanced autonomous systems". That seems bad

I’ve enjoyed Mark Rober’s videos for a while now. They are fun, touch on accessible topics, and have decent production value. But this recent video isn’t sitting right with me...

The_Vampire ,

No?

There are crazies in every religion, and even agnostics and atheists have their fair share of crazies that go too far. It’s also not a great idea to just not expose kids to religious folk (even if that was conceivable, which it’s not given how many people are religious) and it’s not a great idea to demand they keep it private. Preaching is too far, but it’s perfectly acceptable for a teacher to tell their students what the teacher believes in and to wear iconography like a necklace of Jesus on the cross. In fact, I would much rather they be extremely public about what they believe in rather than be silent about it.

The_Vampire ,

I was not expecting this amount of hate over this video when I clicked on this post. The video is… normal? I don’t see issues? This whole thread seems oddly anti-military, anti-tech, and anti-Mark Rober. Like, what, is this tech going to be used to murder children more effectively than bombing a school? Even if it is, why is Mark Rober at fault and actually a phony who’s just shelling out for fame/cash? I’m genuinely curious what I’m missing here.

The_Vampire ,

I hope for your personal consistency that you then are also okay with a woman in a hijab creating educational videos for youtube.

Yeah. That’s exactly what I was saying. You are correct, I am completely okay with that.

It is absolutely not okay for a teacher to tell unasked, or to tell children about the belief system / cult they are a part of.

I disagree. It’s perfectly fine for someone to give a sort of disclaimer as to what they believe in and other things like that. The issue is when they start preaching what they believe in without warning while supposedly teaching a different subject.

The_Vampire ,

While it’s true that linear algebra and vectors are used in learning models, they’re not using the term correctly in a way that says they know something about the subject (at least, the modern subject). Concepts aren’t embedded as vectors. In older models (before the craze), concepts were manually embedded as numbers or a collection of numbers, which could be a vector (but could be something else as well), and the machine would learn by modifying weights. However, in current models (and by current, I mean at least more than a couple years), concepts are learnt by the machine (weights are still modified by the machine as well) and the machine makes its own connections between features presented to it.

For example, you give it a dataset of 10x10 pixel images (with text descriptions) and it reads that as 100 pixels split into 3 numbers (RGB) and then looks for connections between those numbers and in which pixels. It’s not identifying what a boob is, but knows that when an image has ‘boob’ in the text description then there’s a very high likelihood that there will be a circular collection of pixels with lots of red somewhere in the image that are also connected to other pixels that are often also lots of red. That’s me breaking down what a human would think given the same task/information, but the reality is the machine will come up with its own connections/concepts which are both often far better than humans (when the model works, at least) and far more ineffable to humans.

"Permission is Hereby Granted" -- MIT License text becomes viral “sad girl” piano ballad generated by AI (arstechnica.com)

On Wednesday, prompt engineer Riley Goodside tweeted an AI-generated song created with the prompt “sad girl with piano performs the text of the MIT License,” and it began to circulate widely in the AI community online.

The_Vampire ,

“sanitation engineer”

The_Vampire ,

No different than someone calling a janitor a “sanitation engineer”. Fancy titles make people happy.

Redditors Vent and Complain When People Mock Their "AI Art" (futurism.com)

Setting aside the usual arguments on the anti- and pro-AI art debate and the nature of creativity itself, perhaps the negative reaction that the Redditor encountered is part of a sea change in opinion among many people that think corporate AI platforms are exploitive and extractive in nature because their datasets rely on...

The_Vampire ,

Humans certainly don’t make new things out of nothing. They also take from different sources and combine them together to make something new, whether that’s direct inspiration or on a more abstract level through the brain.

Learning models aren’t generating art any more than GIMP or Photoshop is. It’s the person behind the tool that makes the art, not the tool. There’s certainly an art to prompt smithing.

I feel like a lot of people dismiss generated art simply because it’s new (and because as a byproduct is spits out dozens of junk pieces before getting anywhere good). I don’t see how it’s that different from someone using photo-editing software built with dozens of algorithms instead of a ‘pure’ drawing pad, or someone using a drawing pad instead of a pencil, or someone using a pencil instead of chalk. It’s a tool, and a great one at that in comparison to many digital tools for artists.

The_Vampire ,

People dismiss AI art because they (correctly) see that it requires zero skill to make compared to actual art, and it has all the novelty of a block of Velveeta.

I look at art because I find it pretty, not because someone toiled over it for hours on end. Sure, I respect the artist who made it and think their effort commendable, certainly worth a sum of money, but if something is made such that the art of the craft requires less skill and time surely that is a good thing?

Novelty of the tool doesn’t matter. What’s new changes daily, and the point of a tool is not to be new but to be useful.
If you mean the art itself that is generated being samey or problematic in that sense of non-uniqueness, I disagree wholeheartedly. You can do a lot with learning models, and the sameness people perceive is from inexperienced novices dipping their hands in and flooding the ecosystem with beginner works, in much the same way DeviantArt was once flooded with drawings on the level of stick figures and box people.

If AI is no more a tool than Photoshop, go and make something in GIMP, or photoshop, or any of the dozens of drawing/art programs, from scratch. I’ll wait.

A hammer is a tool, and so is an electric jackhammer. You don’t tell a construction worker to go use a hammer when an electric jackhammer gets the job done far better and far more efficiently, and not everyone is suited to using a hammer just as not everyone is suited to using an electric jackhammer. They also have different purposes, but certainly the electric jackhammer did replace some of the uses the hammer once had, but it doesn’t make the hammer obsolete. I view learning models that generate art in the same manner as an electric jackhammer. Useful and powerful, but ultimately lacking in refinement and the work will certainly need other tools to finish the job.

This phrase of yours just doesn’t mean much. I don’t see how making something in GIMP proves anything for anyone?

The_Vampire ,

It’s commendable to be good at something that requires a lot of effort. Making a hut with your bare hands is a lot more impressive than making a hut with all the construction tools of the modern day at your disposal. However, so what? I’d still rather have a house made with modern tools because it’s cheaper and more efficient for everybody involved.

The_Vampire ,

It’s to keep design space open and to minimize developer work.

Let’s say we decide to keep an overperforming gun. It does all the things. It has all the ammo, all the damage, all fire rate, all the reload speed. Now, all future weapons have to be made with that as a consideration. Why would players choose this new weapon, when there’s the old overperformer? The design space is being controlled and minimized by the overperformer. Players will complain if new weapons aren’t on the level of the overperformer.

Now, let’s say we have ten weapons with one clear overperformer. Now, we can either nerf a single weapon to bring it in line with the others, or buff nine weapons to attempt to bring them up to the level of the overperformer. Assuming the balance adjustments of each weapon are the same amount of work, that’s 9x the effort. However, if we assume we do this extra work to satisfy players, now we have ten overperforming guns and players find the game too easy, so now we also have to buff enemies to match. However, the game isn’t designed to handle these increase in difficulty. Players complain if we just add more health to enemies, so we have to do other things like increase enemy count, but adding more enemies increases performance issues. It’s a cascading problem.

I consider nerfs a necessary evil. It’s absurd to ask developers to always buff weapons and give them so much work when they could be developing actual additions to the game. Sometimes, a weapon really does need a nerf.

The_Vampire ,

Yeah, this is just people misapplying the AI tools we are given. They’re not close to General AI, you certainly can’t expect them to do all the work for you yet.

The_Vampire ,

Yeah, the title of this post, the meme’s upper text, and the rest are all at odds and I’m just confused as to what OP is going for.

Is the point that consoles are the AAA industry and services normal people with normal needs? How does this mean we should boycott it?

Are we being tongue-in-cheek? Are we not supposed to boycott the AAA industry?

Why does this meme single out ‘console peasants’ as normal people? Is normal bad? Is irregular bad? Is PC bad? But PC gamers also care about gameplay and are regular people? How much sarcasm is supposed to be here?

OP, WHAT DO YOU MEAN?

The_Vampire ,

This is a classic slippery slope fallacy. Millions of religious people exist from all sorts of ideological spectrums. The vast, vast majority are not evil and don’t do bad things.

The extremism present in religious people is also apparent and present in atheists, agnostics, or whatever generic belief system you can think of. Religion by itself doesn’t cause extremism: ad hominems, whataboutisms, and disinformation causes extremism. Constantly comparing yourself to an enemy and convincing yourself you are in the absolute right causes extremism. Sure, you see some ‘religious’ people going crazy and shooting up places. They also have manifestos that are completely detached from reality in a way that reeks of far-right propaganda and disinformation, and never any real coherence or thought given to the religious teachings they supposedly follow (if they mention their religious texts at all, it’s often cherry-picking or outright incorrect).

We should not try to fix the issues of mental health that plague a lot of countries by going after religion. If anything, that would only backfire by virtue of validating any persecution complex religious people might have. We should instead focus on providing affordable mental healthcare that is easily, immediately accessible and normalized for the wider population, as well as providing clear sources of valid information and having any questionable sources that construe facts and claim to not be news sources in lawsuits or elsewhere be forced to clearly denote themselves as not news regularly.

"Korea Is the World's Most Depressing Country"…an honest travelogue of a famous American writer (www.mk.co.kr)

Mark Manson, an American bestselling author and famous YouTuber, has made headlines by posting a video that he “traveled to the world’s most depressing country” after visiting Korea. Manson, a best-selling author who has written famous self-development books such as “The Art of Turning Off Nervousness,” is a YouTube...

The_Vampire ,

You’re thinking of collectivism, the actual opposite of individualism. Confucianism isn’t really related and is about finding meaning and cultivating the self, it’s a form of civil religion.

In fact, Confucianism is about self-cultivation and actualization, though in the context of society.

The_Vampire ,

I don’t see why they can’t own the property and pay a property manager of sorts.

‘Front page of the internet’: how social media’s biggest user protest rocked Reddit (www.theguardian.com)

‘Front page of the internet’: how social media’s biggest user protest rocked Reddit::A mass user protest six months ago over technical tweaks had big downstream effects, and now the ‘front page of the internet’ is changed for ever

The_Vampire ,

On the note of traffic, I still browse Reddit because it has niche communities that I want to interact with. However, I don’t comment, post, or even up/downvote anymore. My interaction is now purely browsing, and I imagine it may be similar for other once-power users.

The_Vampire ,

Hard to pick. I would say my favorite new game is Slay the Princess. My favorite game I’ve returned to, and I returned to a lot this year, is Deep Rock Galactic. Rock and stone, brother.

I might move again. (Or not) (lemy.lol)

I moved from Lemmy.ml because I liked the name of Lemmy.world and it ran a newer Lemmy version which meant I could make communities. I moved from Lemmy.world because they defederated from piracy communities they didn’t even host (but for some reason still kept the small piracy community they DID host) From thelemmy.club...

The_Vampire ,

The whole point of the Reddit-style was that subreddits could be controlled by moderators and prevented from slipping into the same old tired town square-esque mess that arrives with popularity. I guarantee a mechanism to remove moderators would result in niche communities that get a surge in popularity winding up with the original moderators ousted because all the newcomers don’t understand the community.

If you don’t like how a community is run, you can start your own for completely free. That’s how this works, you shouldn’t be able to commandeer a community from the people who started it. If there’s a truly problematic moderator, the new community will grow quickly.

The_Vampire ,

That’s not how American courts work? The upper court can find issue with practically anything it likes.

The_Vampire ,

But here’s the thing: they could easily say the method that led to the finding is wrong. It’s not a fact.

God of War Creator Is Unhappy With New Games and Kratos' Story (comicbook.com)

Despite being nominated for numerous awards and even winning Game of the Year in 2018, the creator of God of War, David Jaffe, is not a huge fan of the new direction the series has gone in. Jaffe himself hasn't worked on these new God of War games, but thinks that they're not staying true to the spirit of the character and the...

The_Vampire ,

Went and watched the original.

Seems like he just doesn’t like the direction and it’s a ‘different strokes for different folks’ kind of thing. I think his point about Ragnarok is fair, the writing is a bit all over the place and that can make characterization suffer.

The_Vampire ,

Sure. That doesn’t mean it’s right to do.

The_Vampire ,

Having read your article, I contend it should be:
P(arentheses)
E(xponents)
M(ultiplication)D(ivision)
A(ddition)S(ubtraction)
and strong juxtaposition should be thrown out the window.

Why? Well, to be clear, I would prefer one of them die so we can get past this argument that pops up every few years so weak or strong doesn’t matter much to me, and I think weak juxtaposition is more easily taught and more easily supported by PEMDAS. I’m not saying it receives direct support, but rather the lack of instruction has us fall back on what we know as an overarching rule (multiplication and division are equal). Strong juxtaposition has an additional ruling to PEMDAS that specifies this specific case, whereas weak juxtaposition doesn’t need an additional ruling (and I would argue anyone who says otherwise isn’t logically extrapolating from the PEMDAS ruleset). I don’t think the sides are as equal as people pose.

To note, yes, PEMDAS is a teaching tool and yes there are obviously other ways of thinking of math. But do those matter? The mathematical system we currently use will work for any usecase it does currently regardless of the juxtaposition we pick, brackets/parentheses (as well as better ordering of operations when writing them down) can pick up any slack. Weak juxtaposition provides better benefits because it has less rules (and is thusly simpler).

But again, I really don’t care. Just let one die. Kill it, if you have to.

The_Vampire ,

Except it breaks the rules which already are taught.

It isn’t, because the ‘currently taught rules’ are on a case-by-case basis and each teacher defines this area themselves. Strong juxtaposition isn’t already taught, and neither is weak juxtaposition. That’s the whole point of the argument.

But they’re not rules - it’s a mnemonic to help you remember the actual order of operations rules.

See this part of my comment: “To note, yes, PEMDAS is a teaching tool and yes there are obviously other ways of thinking of math. But do those matter? The mathematical system we currently use will work for any usecase it does currently regardless of the juxtaposition we pick, brackets/parentheses (as well as better ordering of operations when writing them down) can pick up any slack. Weak juxtaposition provides better benefits because it has less rules (and is thusly simpler).”

Juxtaposition - in either case - isn’t a rule to begin with (the 2 appropriate rules here are The Distributive Law and Terms), yet it refuses to die because of incorrect posts like this one (which fails to quote any Maths textbooks at all, which is because it’s not in any textbooks, which is because it’s wrong).

You’re claiming the post is wrong and saying it doesn’t have any textbook citation (which is erroneous in and of itself because textbooks are not the only valid source) but you yourself don’t put down a citation for your own claim so… citation needed.

In addition, this issue isn’t a mathematical one, but a grammatical one. It’s about how we write math, not how math is (and thus the rules you’re referring to such as the Distributive Law don’t apply, as they are mathematical rules and remain constant regardless of how we write math).

The_Vampire ,

Nope. Teachers can decide how they teach. They cannot decide what they teach. The have to teach whatever is in the curriculum for their region.

Yes, teachers have certain things they need to teach. That doesn’t prohibit them from teaching additional material.

That’s because neither of those is a rule of Maths. The Distributive Law and Terms are, and they are already taught (they are both forms of what you call “strong juxtaposition”, but note that they are 2 different rules, so you can’t cover them both with a single rule like “strong juxtaposition”. That’s where the people who say “implicit multiplication” are going astray - trying to cover 2 rules with one).

Yep, saw it, and weak juxtaposition would break the existing rules of Maths, such as The Distributive Law and Terms. (Re)learn the existing rules, that is the point of the argument.

Well that part’s easy - I guess you missed the other links I posted. Order of operations thread index Text book references, proofs, the works.

You argue about sources and then cite yourself as a source with a single reference that isn’t you buried in the thread on the Distributive Law? That single reference doesn’t even really touch the topic. Your only evidence in the entire thread relevant to the discussion is self-sourced. Citation still needed.

Maths isn’t a language. It’s a group of notation and rules. It has syntax, not grammar. The equation in question has used all the correct notation, and so when solving it you have to follow all the relevant rules.

You can argue semantics all you like. I would put forth that since you want sources so much, according to Merriam-Webster, grammar’s definitions include “the principles or rules of an art, science, or technique”, of which I think the syntax of mathematics qualifies, as it is a set of rules and mathematics is a science.

The_Vampire ,

Correct, but it can’t be something which would contradict what they do have to teach, which is what “weak juxtaposition” would do.

Citation needed.

I see you didn’t read the whole thread then. Keep going if you want more. Literally every Year 7-8 Maths textbook says the same thing. I’ve quoted multiple textbooks (and haven’t even covered all the ones I own).

If I have to search your ‘source’ for the actual source you’re trying to reference, it’s a very poor source. This is the thread I searched. Your comments only reference ‘math textbooks’, not anything specific, outside of this link which you reference twice in separate comments but again, it’s not evidence for your side, or against it, or even relevant. It gets real close to almost talking about what we want, but it never gets there.

But fine, you reference ‘multiple textbooks’ so after a bit of searching I find the only other reference you’ve made. In the very same comment you yourself state “he says that Stokes PROPOSED that /b+c be interpreted as /(b+c). He says nothing further about it, however it’s certainly not the way we interpret it now”, which is kind of what we want. We’re talking about x/y(b+c) and whether that should be x/(yb+yc) or x/y * 1/(b+c). However, there’s just one little issue. Your last part of that statement is entirely self-supported, meaning you have an uncited refutation of the side you’re arguing against, which funnily enough you did cite.

Now, maybe that latter textbook citation I found has some supporting evidence for yourself somewhere, but an additional point is that when providing evidence and a source to support your argument you should probably make it easy to find the evidence you speak of. I’m certainly not going to spend a great amount of effort trying to disprove myself over an anonymous internet argument, and I believe I’ve already done my due diligence.

The_Vampire ,

So you think it’s ok to teach contradictory stuff to them in Maths? 🤣 Ok sure, fine, go ahead and find me a Maths textbook which has “weak juxtaposition” in it. I’ll wait.

You haven’t provided a textbook that has strong juxtaposition.

So you’re telling me you can’t see the Maths textbook screenshots/photo’s?

That’s not a source, that’s a screenshot. You can’t look up the screenshot, you can’t identify authors, you can’t check for bias. At best I can search the title of the file you’re in that you also happened to screenshot and hope that I find the right text. The fact that you think this is somehow sufficient makes me question your claims of an academic background, but that’s neither here nor there. What does matter is that I shouldn’t have to go treasure hunting for your sources.

And, to blatantly examine the photo, this specific text appears to be signifying brackets as their own syntactic item with differing rules. However, I want to note that the whole issue is that people don’t agree so you will find cases on both sides, textbook or no.

Lennes was complaining that literally no textbooks he mentioned were following “weak juxtaposition”, and you think that’s not relevant to establishing that no textbooks used “weak juxtaposition” 100 years ago?

You are welcome to cite the specific wording he uses to state this. As far as I can tell, at least in the excerpt linked, there is no such complaint.

The_Vampire ,

I told you, in my thread - multiple ones. You haven’t provided any textbooks at all that have “weak juxtaposition”. i.e. you keep asking me for more evidence whilst never producing any of your own.

You seem to have missed the point. I’m holding you to your own standard, as you are the one that used evidence as an excuse for dismissal first without providing evidence for your own position.

I didn’t “just happen” to include the name of the textbook and page number - that was quite deliberate. Not sure why you don’t want to believe a screenshot, especially since you can’t quote any that have “weak juxtaposition” in the first place. BTW I just tried Googling it and it was the first hit. You’re welcome.

You seem to have missed the point. You’re providing a bad source and expecting the person you’re arguing against to do legwork. I never said I couldn’t find the source. I’m saying I shouldn’t have to go looking.

You don’t - the screenshots of the relevant pages are right there. You’re the one choosing not to believe what is there in black and white, in multiple textbooks.

You’ve provided a single textbook, first of all. Second of all, the argument is that both sides are valid and accepted depending on who you ask, even amongst educated echelons. The fact there exists textbooks that support strong juxtaposition does nothing to that argument.

But you want some evidence, so here’s an article from someone who writes textbooks speaking on the ambiguity. Again, the ambiguity exists and your claim that it doesn’t according to educated professors is unsubstantiated. There are of course professors who support strong juxtaposition, but there are also professors who support weak juxtaposition and professors that merely acknowledge the ambiguity exist. The rules of mathematics you claim are set in stone aren’t relevant (and aren’t as set in stone as you imagine) but that’s not entirely relevant. What is relevant is there is an argument and it’s not just uneducated folk mistaking the ‘truth’.

People who aren’t high school Maths teachers (the ones who actually teach this topic). Did you notice that neither The Distributive Law nor Terms are mentioned at any point whatsoever? That’s like saying “I don’t remember what I did at Xmas, so therefore it’s ambiguous whether Xmas ever happened at all, and anyone who says it definitely did is wrong”.

You are correct, I suppose a mathematics professor from Harvard (see my previous link for the relevant discussion of the ambiguity) isn’t at the high school level.

But wait, there’s more. Here’s another source from another mathematics professor. This one ‘supports’ weak juxtaposition but really mostly just points at the ambiguity. Which again, is what I’m going for, that the ambiguity exists and one side is not immediately justified/‘correct’.

So what do you think he is complaining about?

That’s a leading question and is completely unhelpful to the discussion. I asked you to point out where exactly, and with what wording, your position is supported in the provided text. Please do that.

The_Vampire ,

You didn’t have to go looking - you could’ve just accepted it at face-value like other people do.

I could also walk off a cliff, doesn’t mean I should. Sources are important not just for what they say but how they say it, where they say it, and why they say it.

But they’re not. The other side is contradicting the rules of Maths. In a Maths test it would be marked as wrong. You can’t go into a Maths test and write “this is ambiguous” as an answer to a question.

…amongst people who have forgotten the rules of Maths. The Maths itself is never ambiguous (which is the claim many of them are making - that the Maths expression itself is ambiguous. In fact the article under discussion here makes that exact claim - that it’s written in an ambiguous way. No it isn’t! It’s written in the standard mathematical way, as per what is taught from textbooks). It’s like saying “I’ve forgotten the combination to my safe, and I’ve been unable to work it out, therefore the combination must be ambiguous”.

The side which obeys the rules of Maths is correct and the side which disobeys the rules of Maths is incorrect. That’s why the rules of Maths exist in the first place - only 1 answer can be correct (“ambiguity” people also keep claiming “both answers are correct”. Nope, one is correct and one is wrong).

Yes, that is your claim which you have yet to prove. You keep reiterating your point as if it is established fact, but you haven’t established it. That’s the whole argument.

Twice I said things about it and you said you didn’t believe my interpretation is correct, so I asked you what you think he’s saying. I’m not going to go round in circles with you just disagreeing with everything I say about it - just say what YOU think he says.

Literally just give me a direct quote. If you’re using it as supporting evidence, tell me how it supports you. If you can’t even do that, it’s not supporting evidence. I don’t know why you want me to analyze it, you’re the one who presented it as evidence. My analysis is irrelevant.

Thank you. I just commented to someone else last night, who had noticed the same thing, I am so tired of people quoting University people - this topic is NOT TAUGHT at university! It’s taught by high school teachers (I’ve taught this topic many times - I’m tutoring a student in it right now). Paradoxically, the first Youtube I saw to get it correct (in fact still the only one I’ve seen get it correct) was by a gamer! 😂 He took the algebra approach. i.e. rewrite this as 6/2a where a=1+2 (which I’ve also used before too. In fact I did an algebraic proof of it).

I was being sarcastic. If you truly think highschool teachers who require almost no training in comparison to a Phd are more qualified… I have no interest in continuing this discussion. That’s simply absurd, professors study every part of mathematics (in aggregate), including the ‘highschool’ math, and are far more qualified than any highschool teacher who is not a Phd. This is true of any discipline taught in highschool, a physics professor is much better at understanding and detailing the minutiae of physics than a highschool physics teacher. To say a teacher knows more than someone who has literally spent years of their life studying and expanding the field when all the teacher has to do is teach the same (or similar) curriculum each and every year is… insane–especially when you’ve been holding up math textbooks as the ultimate solution and so, so many of them are written by professors.

I want to point out that your only two sources, both a screenshot of a textbook, (yes, those are your only sources. You’ve given 4, but one I’ve repeatedly asked about and you’ve refused to point out a direct quote that provides support for your argument, another I dismissed earlier and I assume you accepted that seeing as you did not respond to that point) does not state the reasoning behind its conclusion. To me that’s far worse than a professor who at least says why they’ve done something.

I’ve given 3 sources, all of which you dismiss simply because they’re not highschool textbooks… y’know, textbooks notorious for over-simplifying things and not giving the logic behind the answer. I could probably find some highschool textbooks that support weak juxtaposition if I searched, but again that’s a waste of money and time. You don’t seem keen on acknowledging any sort of ambiguity here and constantly state it goes against the rules of math, without ever providing a source that explains these rules and how they work so as to prove only strong juxtaposition makes sense/works. If you’re really so confident in strong juxtaposition being the only way mathematically, I expect you to have a mathematical proof for why weak juxtaposition would never work, one that has no flaws. Otherwise, at best you have a hypothesis.

The_Vampire ,

At this point you’re just ignoring whatever I say and I see no point in continuing this discussion. You haven’t responded to what I’ve said, you’ve just stated I’m wrong and to trust you on that because somewhere prior you said so. Good luck with convincing anyone that way.

The_Vampire ,

Actual Ex-Mormon who attended BYU here: Soaking was never a thing, I have only ever heard about it on the internet or literally in the context of Mormons laughing about non-Mormons believing in Mormons doing such things (yeah, they’re meta about it).

What is an actual thing is Mormons getting married super early (for a multitude of reasons, one being the horny). Easily over 70% of the students I knew were married by the time they were seniors in college.

The_Vampire ,

Good. Don’t ever invite me.

The_Vampire ,

A singleplayer open-world sandbox RPG in the vein of Skyrim, but you have powerful abilities on cooldowns like in MOBAs/Overwatch, command troops like in Mount & Blade/Blood of Steel/Conqueror’s Blade, and can go around conquering cities/developing your own nation culturally/socially/technologically/economically/etc. like Civilization but more open-ended where you can do things like decide actual religious doctrine and encourage specific aesthetics/music/social norms.

Obviously, though, such a game is incredibly ambitious and I don’t think it’ll ever be made, as it takes the most unique and hardest-to-make parts of several other games and then combines them. Still, I’d love to play it.

The_Vampire ,

Let’s be real. A lot of people in the comments are saying “it’s just a job”, but that’s irrelevant. Prostitution and stripping are both jobs, and I guarantee those who work in either have a vastly more difficult time finding people okay with that.

Is it impossible for the significant other to be okay with it? No. Will it be harder to have a relationship? Definitely.

The_Vampire ,

Yeah, I think some forums had the right idea with reactions of sorts (funny/helpful/informative/etc.) and being able to sort and sift through comments via those reactions.

The_Vampire ,

“Hey man, this bad thing that X group does isn’t actually bad because their main competition, Y group, does something different that is also bad.”

The_Vampire ,
  1. The video’s comment section on its native site is… interesting.
  2. I don’t trust this guy. It feels like he’s just slinging things at the wall that most people could intuit without any research. Yes, sometimes things backfire when you try to stifle them. Sometimes, however, the stifling works (otherwise dictators would have a much harder time ruling). That’s just the way things go.
  3. I’ma need some actual data to back up Youtube’s anti-adblocker experiment succeeding/failing. People are so quick to jump on the ‘it failed’ or ‘it succeeded’ bandwagon but the truth is we simply don’t know the result yet, and may not for a long while.
  4. This could’ve been an email. This guy’s delivery is sprawling and lacks conciseness.
The_Vampire ,

Well, the rate passwords can be tested at now may not always be the rate passwords can be tested at later. Computers were, at one point, growing exponentially faster in terms of processing power. There are still several emerging technologies out there that could cause significant speed-ups.

It’s certainly better to future-proof your passwords.

The_Vampire ,

Youtube had a space devoid of competition. The next guy doesn’t. If the next guy wants to compete, they have to have all the features of Youtube or people will complain. Many of Youtube’s current features cost money and weren’t present when Youtube started.

The space is also more regulated now that Youtube exists, meaning the new guy has to follow regulations which normally costs money. When Youtube started, those regulations didn’t exist, because Youtube didn’t exist.

Youtube got big by building a city in an open field surrounded by nothing but open fields. The next guy has to build a city directly next to Youtube, follow all the same laws as Youtube, and ask you not to drive into Youtube.

The_Vampire ,

There’s a very high chance Musk still has the rights to that trademark, unfortunately.

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