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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 23rd, 2023

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  • The top is the percentage of people while the bottom is the total incidence. This is an apples and oranges comparison. In this case the bottom map is functionally a population map as others have pointed out. Most stats are best in “#/thousand people” or equivalent, but should always in the same unit if compared.


  • Facts, reasoning, ethics, ect. are outside the scope of an LLM. Expecting otherwise is like expecting a stand mixer to bake a cake. It is helpful for a decent part of the process, but typically is lacking in the using heat to process batter into a tasty desert area. An AI like one from the movies would require many more pieces than an LLM can provide and saying otherwise is a a category mistake*.

    That isn’t to say that something won’t be developed eventually, but it would be FAR beyond an LLM if it is even possible.

    (* See also: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/category-mistakes/)


  • Zionism is a nationalist movement for the support of a Jewish state. Throughout history different people have had different justifications for the need for a Jewish state, some of them antisemitic. It is worth noting that not all Jews are Zionists and non Jews can be considered Zionists since the desire for a Jewish ethno-state does not require one be a Jew.

    As the stated goal is the creation of an ethno-state and thus the exclusion of other groups, racism tends to be implicit for many. Since the creation of an ethno-state likely requires the removal of of the current inhabitants, some pretty despicable actions get justified.

    It is important to note that many of the most outspoken anti-Zionists have always been Jews. It’s from these that I have often heard the argument that conflating all Jews with Zionism/the state of Israel puts Jews everywhere at risk of getting blamed/punished for the actions of the state of Israel.

    Many extremist Christians support the Zionist movement out of either the desire to remove Jews from their country or because they want all of them to return to Israel so that the rapture/end of the word can be realized. Some extremist Christian groups are literally doomsday cults kinda explaining their lack of care for the future…I mean why worry when the end times are nigh.

    The US, and much of the west, show unyielding support for the state of Israel and by extension Zionism for several reasons, chiefly geopolitical in nature (oil). Other reasons include racism towards the other peoples of the region, the antisemitism described above, shame over the Holocaust (the Allies all showed some compliancy with it at least in the beginning…antisemitism has deep roots in western culture), and the fact that confronting the wrong of the colonial project of Israel means confronting their own colonial pasts…and often presents.

    Edit to add: Belief that all Jews deserve to be safe and not have to fear hatred in no way requires the establishment of a pure ethno-state, the displacement/killing of whole peoples, or the support of those who push for these. The book “On Palestine” by Chomsky and Ilan Pappe argues for a one state solution with freedom for Jews, Christians, Muslims, and other groups all having the right to self determination. As well as pointing out evidence that much of the two state discourse is explicitly vavout preventing peace in the region. Both Chomsky and Ilan are Jews.


  • I’m not op, but these are some things that I appriciate about Vivaldi:

    • Mouse gestures that work anywhere in the window with different options based on what I start the gesture on (eg. Right clicking on a link and dragging down opens the link in a new foreground tab {dragging down then up opens it in the background} but doing so on empty space opens a new tab)
    • A scrollable side bar for tabs instead of the horizontal one that is standard (not in addition to or requiring hacky workarounds)
    • The ability to minimize tabs or send them to the bottom of the cycle order (this needs to be able to be done with mouse gestures)
    • The ability to easily highlight parts of a link so that I can copy part of the text (Vivaldi highlights with a click and drag and drags the link on a click, hold and drag; Firefox doesn’t appear to do either)
    • Not having to worry about third party extensions security issues or having this core functionality stop working because the extension maintainer has to update it for the new browser version.
    • The fact that it just works with minimal configuration

    Unfortunately I am looking for alternatives to Vivaldi since Google has decided to kill quality web browsing on Chromium browsers. Much of the web is virtually unusable to me without a tool like ublock quieting things down to work past my sensory processing issues. At times it is hard to think that the majority of web devs have anything but distain for disabled people.

    I do use Fennic on Android (with ublock and darkreader) because Mozilla decided to block access to about:config in the mobile version and I have yet to find another way to always force pages to load the desktop version. (Mobile versions of sites disable most of the built in accessibility options like the ability to zoom)

    The settings I set in fennic if anyone is curious:

    • browser.viewport.defaultZoom (set a sane default zoom)
    • browser.viewport desktopWidth (say that the screen is large enough to not trigger CSS mobille layouts)
    • general.useragent.override (work around browser sniffing; I’ve yet to find an extension that actually works for this)



  • Most of Brandon Sanderson’s works. His magic systems are widely varied and well thought out.
    A couple of examples of worlds:

    -The Stormlight Archive is a world styled after a tidepool with anemone like plants.

    -Tress of the Emerald Sea takes place aboard ships sailing on a sea of deadly spores. Liquefaction due to decay at the bottom of the “seas” is the mechanism used to allow the ships to sail on what is funtionally sand/dust.