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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 22nd, 2023

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  • that’s not the point. the point is that there are people who can’t afford to save money in the long run. not like metaphorically can’t afford, like literally mathematically cannot afford.

    they are trapped by their existing financial burdens which they already cannot meet and which are getting larger every month thanks to compound interest.

    inflation, which normally has the effect of reducing the value of debts over time, is instead making their financial burdens effectively larger too. as inflation drives up the cost of living, wages stay the same and they have ever less of their income available to make debt payments as a result.




  • if you ever feel so inclined, all you need to make your own tortillas at home is:

    1. masa flour aka specially treated corn flour

    2. a stovetop and a pan for cooking

    3. a plastic food storage bag

    4. something with a flat bottom, ideally transparent

    5. water

    the bag of flour typically has instructions for how much flour and water to mix. you can mix it by hand and form it into balls by hand. the size of the balls only matters if you care about the tortillas being “the right size”.

    From there, you press a ball flat, toss it on an already hot pan over medium heat, flip it after a couple of minutes, and remove it after a minute more. to press the ball flat, place it under your flat-bottomed transparent thing and mash on it until it looks tortilla-shaped enough for you.

    the plastic food storage bag is optional/recommended to stop the tortilla balls sticking when you press them. cut the food storage bag open along its seams and remove its zipper if it has one. what you have left is a single sheet of plastic with a seam/hinge in the middle.

    it might be sounding like a lot but it’s really just:

    • mix flour into wet balls

    • mash flour in your “press” made of random flat dishes and a plastic bag

    • cook the thing a little

    • eat

    if you iterate on those 4 steps a dozen times, you’ll be out like 50 cents of flour and you’ll have produced at least one satisfactory tortilla. and it’ll be so, so much better than store bought, you’ll think about it every time you have store bought tortillas therafter.





  • So tl;dr he/his team did two things:

    1. argue the way AI uses content to train is legal
    2. provide artists a tool to prevent their content being used to train AI without their permission

    On the surface it sounds all good, but I can’t help but notice a future conflict of interest for Zhao should Glaze ever become monetized. If it were to be ruled illegal to train AI on content without permission, tools like Glaze would be essentially anti-theft devices, but while it remains legal to train AI this way, tools like Glaze stand to perhaps become necessary for artists to maintain the pre-AI status quo w/r/t how their work can be used and monetized.



  • it’s such a wild example of feature creep, and yet it’s not quite the wildest example of Star Citizen’s feature creep. When Roberts’ funding exceeded his wildest dreams, he should’ve changed nothing from his original pitch and simply delivered that. For reference:

    Original funding goal: $2 million US

    Funding by end of Kickstarter campaign: well over $6 million US

    If they finished the project with a $4 million surplus, great! They’d have ample budget for post-launch support, and maybe even for some free post-launch content updates to improve goodwill. If that’d gone as planned, the dude’d be sitting on a whole new generation of goodwill.

    Oh, and we’d have a game like this:

    Pick up jobs as a smuggler, pirate, merchant, bounty hunter, or enlist as a pilot, protecting the borders from outside threats.

    A huge universe to explore, trade and adventure in

    Wing Commander style single player mode, playable OFFLINE if you want

    Actions of the players impact the universe and become part of its history and lore

    Fully dynamic economy driven by player actions

    If caught alone in an online ambush, send a distress broadcast to your friends and if they’re nearby they can jump in-system to save your bacon.

    You wanted proper Newtonian mechanics. You got it! Spaceships adjust their trajectory and orientation just like the real thing.

    10X the detail of current AAA games (as measured in polygons)

    Range of scale never seen before in a game - ships from 27m to 1km scale, all at same level of detail

    Support for Joystick, Gamepad, Mouse, Keyboard, as well as HOTAS, flight chair, rudder petals, and VR

    the cardinal rule regarding “in-game purchases” is: Players who spend money purchasing in-game credits will have no advantage over players who spend time!

    Instead they immediately pivoted to a pay-for-ships funding model and let the scope grow to seemingly every one of Roberts’ wildest whims

    The tech demo is cool. Realization of no-loading-screen transitions from surface -> atmosphere -> orbit -> microgravity -> docking with another ship is wild. Being able to watch your pilot and gunner do a space battle from out the window, while you go walking about the ship is wild. But having it be only a tech demo for this long is so disappointing, and having the focus pivot from singleplayer-with-online to online-with-singleplayer are significant disappointments.

    funding timeline: https://starcitizen.fandom.com/wiki/Crowdfunding_campaign

    original pitch/campaign: https://web.archive.org/web/20121015042706/http://robertsspaceindustries.com/star-citizen/



  • Even if the arrest is unlawful, resisting arrest is clearly illegal.

    And the punishment for breaking any law is death? Or from your prior comment:

    They tried to stun him twice, use a baton, the only option left was to use the gun.

    Yeah, the gun was the only option. You definitely can’t just let someone run away for resisting arrest at a traffic stop. Even if you impound their now-abandoned car, they might go on a whole spree of resisting arrests or something.

    In case you can’t tell my tone is past sarcasm and well into disgust.


  • Also coming here from all. I had no idea any of the things you said were features of flashlights. Maybe a useful question for me to ask could be: what got you into flashlights as a ‘thing’? Also, do you feel you have a sense of what trades and hobbies mostly comprise this flashlight community?

    Lastly, in your estimation is there a reason for an average flashlight user to make the jump from $10 flashlights that are bright enough for them to find their dog’s poo in the dark, to a $50 flashlight like those in this post?

    This is coming from a slightly incredulous place, but I’m also trying to mentally pivot from incredulity to curiosity. I hope my tone hasn’t been abrasive.