james1

joined 1 year ago
[–] james1@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Unless you're a raw milk TB-chaser type the milk you drink is probably processed too. Being processed doesn't make something inherently worse, and "no nutritional value" is a daft claim. OK if you consume milk as your only source of protein or fat, you probably want to choose your milk substitute tailored to whichever the rest of your diet is deficient in, but better or worse for us is a fairly arbitrary concept.

Livestock for dairy production are unarguably bad for the planet though.

[–] james1@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Most people don't vote

About 70% of the electorate vote nowadays, it has varied higher or lower but never been as low as 50% of eligible voters to even say "half of eligible people don't vote" let alone "most"

https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8060/CBP-8060.pdf

So assuming you have say 20 old people on your fictional bus, even assuming that all of your voter info is correct and everyone is on the register, the chances of all of them being able to cast a second vote without any of them being caught are billions to one.

The idea that millions of people will risk a significant chance of a lengthy prison sentence for their individually tiny extra votes is absurd when any actual attack on election integrity would not happen at the point of "turning up at the polling station and hoping for the best."

Even if one in a million voters did try and get away with this - which again is a hugely inflated number from anything we get an indication of - if to do so you stop tens of thousands of people from being able to vote at all that still makes the election less democratic overall.

[–] james1@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why would you need a passport if you aren't leaving the country?

It's a piece of paper you buy every ten years if you want to travel across national borders, it's not like some intrinsic part of your being.

At the point that the new voter ID legislation was introduced, about 8% of the electorate - ~3.5m people - did not have a passport or a driving licence.

[–] james1@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

It is a very good book. I have some more by the same author on my shelf but haven't got to them yet.

Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming is a history of industrial use of fossil fuels; in particular I believe it discusses how fossil fuels became so prevalent because they are a method of power generation which can be privatised more easily than things like water power.

I also have White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Dangers of Fossil Fascism by Malm and the Zetkin Collective but I don't know much about that one yet, I mostly picked it up because of the Black Skin, White Masks reference in the title.

[–] james1@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Some states do use their own definitions of terrorism to explain why it's bad when other people do it but OK when they do it, but that's definitely not a uniform definition.

the calculated use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective.

- Britannica

The use of violence or the threat of violence, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political goals.

- American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

the use of intentional violence and fear to achieve political or ideological aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war against non-combatants.

- Wiki

(Government, Politics & Diplomacy) systematic use of violence and intimidation to achieve some goal

- Collins English Dictionary

the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes... government or resistance to government by means of terror.

- Webster's

 

This is the reading challenge organised on the Discord in the community sidebar here. Here's the link to the Storygraph challenge: https://app.thestorygraph.com/reading_challenges/12c988c6-8fd4-4343-81d6-d6c43f8a722e

[–] james1@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

While stuff like Tomb Raider is the quintessential example, for a five year old you would probably be better with something more colourful and fun, even if you are the one playing it.

With that in mind my first thought was A Hat in Time although I've not played it through to verify end to end appropriateness.

You could also try Mirror's Edge because bright colours and dynamic movement, I don't remember it being that violent but maybe on second thoughts consider the safety aspect of introducing a child to the concept of jumping between buildings and maybe I'm talking myself out of this.

Celeste is colourful and fun and honestly at that age I don't know that she would pick up that much on the heavier aspects of the story which are allegories for anxiety/depression/gender dysphoria. A five year old is basically going to see it as a story with an evil twin I think.

I haven't played Child of Light but that might be appropriate?

The main character in Crypt of the Necrodancer is a girl called Cadence, although that is one you would really have to enjoy to make it worth it imo. I'm mostly thinking rhythm and bright colours are child friendly again to be honest, but you still have to play what is basically a roguelike mixed with a rhythm game and if that's not your jam it will be a waste of money.

You can always play a game with selectable skins too, like Spelunky 2 has a few characters you could pick between which all play the same but has a variety of designs you can play as.

[–] james1@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't normally plan my reading much ahead of time but August is an exception on a few counts.

Firstly, Whalefall by Daniel Kraus comes out on August 8th. It's such a goofy idea for a story (think Jonah and the Whale meets The Martian) and I have been so pumped, I've been talking people's ear off about it for months. It's like scientifically accurate Pinocchio.

Secondly, one of the bookclub picks for the Discord server affiliated with !bookclub@lemmy.world is The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K LeGuin

And then it's Tropeical Readathon (a semiannual reading challenge thing) again so I have a couple dozen books picked out to cover that, but the only other sci-fi one apart from the above is Under This Forgetful Sky by Lauren Yero.

[–] james1@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I made a kind of "if you like PHM you might like these other books" rec chart thing when I first read PHM; if you've finished reading it you might enjoy some of these (although it does mention a few key elements of the book so if you're going in completely blind and aren't far in yet then don't look at this yet).

[–] james1@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
 

This year for the first time the crew over on the Discord are doing a reading challenge. If you've done a reading challenge before you'll know the gist - a bunch of prompts for which you choose books that fulfil the criteria and try and read them over the course of the year.

The link here is to the Storygraph version of the challenge, although you can of course track it however you prefer. There are some template graphics and things in a thread on the Discord which might help if you like making summary graphics when you complete a challenge like this.

It's more than half way through the year now but the challenge counts anything you've read this year (as long as it fits the other criteria) so you can do the thing where you sign up and instantly mark a tonne of prompts as completed, which I always find kinda satisfying.

Anyway, I just thought I'd post about it over here as well as I'm always looking for reading challenges and things to add a fun sense of completion to reading.

 

I'm not sure exactly when it is scheduled to open, I was expecting it to be about now but I can't see a date so I presume it's behind schedule.

[–] james1@lemmy.world 64 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

It's a machine learning chat bot, not a calculator, and especially not "AI."

Its primary focus is trying to look like something a human might say. It isn't trying to actually learn maths at all. This is like complaining that your satnav has no grasp of the cinematic impact of Alfred Hitchcock.

It doesn't need to understand the question, or give an accurate answer, it just needs to say a sentence that sounds like a human might say it.

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