lvxferre

lvxferre , 3 days ago (edited 1 day ago)

And they're making a fucking mess of the pharmacological and social definitions of "drug". It's the propaganda version of that "ackshyually tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable" brain-rotting idiocy.

Depressant, stimulant, those refer to the pharmacological activity; it'll include even things not socially considered as drugs, such as caffeine (stimulant) and alcohol (depressant). In this sense marijuana is not its own class, it's THC is a depressant.

That "club drugs" category is a fucking mess in both definitions. Ketamine is an anaesthetic, thus likely a depressant; ecstasy is mostly a stimulant with weak hallucinogen properties, pharmacologically they're nothing alike. And socially they're closer to caffeine (as things that you ingest willingly) than to date rape drugs (things that people give you against your consent).

And even the division in social drugs depends on usage. Marijuana for example can be used for clinical or recreative reasons; abuse is of course bad, but frankly I wouldn't be surprised if most marijuana smokers had better lungs than I do (I don't smoke weed but I smoke tobacco - nicotine is a depressant stimulant BTW). Same deal with the date rape drugs, alcohol could be used as one.

Aaaaah, sorry for the rant. What I want to convey is that yeah, I get why this infuriates you. It infuriated me too.

lvxferre , 3 days ago

I fucked it up - thanks for pointing it out, fixed it. (I switched them because smoking a cig relaxes me quite a bit.)

lvxferre , 4 days ago (edited 3 days ago)

It's complicated. Short version: Portuguese and Italian.

Long version:

• Portuguese - native
• Italian - have been learning it since a kid. It's by no means native speaker level, but I feel rather confident in the language.
• Venetian - I can speak some but I can't write stuff in the language without pulling out a dic. My knowledge of the language is rusting and it pains me.
• English - written only.
• German - I can speak and write some. I use it mostly with my cat.
• Latin - Classical pronunciation and rather decent vocab. Can read Caesar unaided without too much trouble, Cicero is another can of worms.
• French - studied it a long, looooong time ago. Completely forgotten.
• Russian, Ukrainian - sometimes I play a bit with both but I don't speak or write either, I just know Cyrillic. I tend to use Cyrillic a fair bit for my personal notes but it's always with Italian or Latin, it's just so people don't snoop on my notes.
• Spanish - I never studied the language, my pronunciation is awful, but if I wasn't able to read it I'd seriously question my own basic literacy for Portuguese and Italian.

lvxferre , 4 days ago

anglijskij i russkij

I love the fact that I can understand this fine without knowing Russian.

lvxferre , 3 days ago

Yup! And there's some backstory for that.

Back when we adopted Siegfrieda*, I was studying German; and I decided to speak with her in German for my own sake, it's good for memorisation. But then I realised that she and Kika (our other cat) would pay attention to me separately depending on the language, so it was unexpectedly useful.

*the name is also obviously related to that, but partially due to the meaning; it's fitting for a cat that, when adopted, was beaten and starving and pregnant, and now only needs to bother about cardboard boxes and cups of yoghurt. It's like she got her victory peace (Sieg Frieden).

lvxferre , 3 days ago

I get that you're probably joking, but note that calling C++ etc. "languages" is at most synecdoche. A really common one, but still a figure of speech.

(Language has multiple functions; referential, directive, expressive, phatic, metalinguistic, poetic, metalinguistic etc. Those instruction sets used when programming are at best directive speech only, as they're basically issuing commands to something.)

lvxferre , 3 days ago

I got that you were probably joking. However, I've seen so many times people equating the human systems of communication with the computer instruction sets that... well, sorry for the knee-jerk reaction.

(Last time that I saw someone genuinely thinking that C++, Fortran, Python etc. were the same deal as Mandarin, English, Spanish etc., the muppet in question brought up code comments for an "ackshyually lol lmao". Yup.)

lvxferre , 5 days ago

I cross-checked it in https://www.animecharactersdatabase.com and it seems to be from Non Non Biyori indeed. The character is Renge Miyauchi.

lvxferre , 5 days ago

I'd also love to see more comms for specific games here.

The main issue that I see is that it's extremely hard to create a "critical mass" of people here to discuss a game. Both because Reddit has lots of content (tutorials etc.) feeding into the network effect, and because it's hard for it to screw up to the point that gaming discussion is affected.

Both [Reddit and Steam Forums] are fucking horrible.

I've been using 4chan /vg/. It's far from ideal, but fairly active.

lvxferre , 5 days ago

It's only an option if you're OK with the admins being as transparent as a chunk of charcoal, and enforcing a hidden rule that boils down to "don't disagree with us or our political views."

They're specially prone to distort what you say in order to fit the rules that they actually list in their instance.

Source: former lemmy ml user for 3 years, that used to moderate comms there. I got the fuck out after the notoriously poor way that they handled ani.social.

lvxferre , 5 days ago

Thanks. [Frankly, I had to re-re-reedit this a lot. Otherwise the tone would definitively not fit Beehaw.]

lvxferre , 5 days ago (edited 5 days ago)

I believe that less than it looks like.

While only 5% of the pilots are women, flight attendants receive basic training for emergency situations, such as when the pilot is incapacitated. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them could actually land a plane in a life-and-death situation, or at least find a passenger who can.

With buses the picture is a bit brighter. If I had to guess, 20% of the bus drivers around the world are female? And a missing driver doesn't automatically spells your death - the bus might be going slow due to traffic, and a lot of people are able to at least step on a brake.

EDIT: I'm genuinely curious about the downvotes. If I said something that is either factually wrong (false) or morally wrong (sexist, insensitive, etc.), feel free to point out, as I can't guess anything based on downvotes alone.

Alternatively, if the downvotes are due to a faulty reasoning, then please show the flaw.

lvxferre , 5 days ago

I asked my sister and my mum this question.

Sister: she'd be working as usual. Her only co-worker in their small biz is also a woman, so no issue. She asked about her male cats first, before asking about my nephew and BIL.

Mum: she said that she'd be eating air fryer French fries and ice cream through the day and watching movies. She can't be arsed to cook. (I'm usually the one cooking here.)

lvxferre , 5 days ago

Yup. The main concern in the bus situation is how suddenly the driver disappeared vs. reaction time of the passengers. If it's sudden enough, and the bus is fast enough, even if all passengers were able to drive it, odds are that it'll still crash.

lvxferre , 6 days ago

OC infographics, shared as pics. Include the URL of your Lemmy account, for authorship. If the infographic is interesting/cool/useful people will share it, indirectly promoting Lemmy.

lvxferre , 5 days ago

Odds are that the Galicians will want it too. And perhaps the Andalusians - because linguistic factors are only a fraction of what creates identity, and even if they speak a variety of Castilian a lot of them keep a separated identity.

lvxferre , 6 days ago

Zero - I browse by subscribed. I probably have 100~200 comms subscribed to through this account, plus a dozen in my ani.social account.

lvxferre , 6 days ago

Even the strategy being used by the botter is obvious. Scrape off post titles, feed them into a LLM prompted with something like "Output a funny and short reply for each of the following prompts. Do not output any text besides said reply.", then comment the output.

I tried it, and here's how it turned out:

Post title	Annual-List1897's answers	Gemini's answers
Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox (2024)	Ah, the dynamic duo! They're like a time-traveling dream team. Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox in 2024?	Great Scott! They're still not in 2024?
Just leaving this here..	Oh, you're just dropping a mysterious statement and walking away, huh?	Don't worry, I'll try not to trip over it.
Pee Pee Island to Poo Poo Point road trip.	Sounds like a wild adventure!	Packing the Depends and air freshener?
ABC will air fewer "Monday Night Football" games during the 2024-25 season	Well, I guess that means fewer opportunities for people to fall asleep on the couch with the TV on after a long Monday!	ESPN execs right now: "Finally, some peace and quiet on Mondays."
Mysterious package sent to my wife (info in comments)	Well, well, well, a mysterious package for the misses, eh?	"Honey, is this your 'Oops, I accidentally signed us up for a lifetime supply of clown shoes' subscription?"

Sure, it is not the same replies, as this would depend on the exact prompt and the LLM bot being used. But note how it gets really close in spirit.

And this shit is trivial to do. Even for a non-programmer like me. Reddit might not allow you API access, but sometimes a simple scrapper does the trick.

@Windex007 mentioned the "default" name pattern, note that if necessary those could be also generated.

lvxferre , 6 days ago (edited 6 days ago)

Yeah, the botter might have overdone it.

Another thing that I realised is that you could actually do this in a semi-auto way, without coding a single line of code - using a plain browser and an auto-clicker. EDIT: I'm not saying that autoclicker+browser is how people trying to bot Reddit "should" do it. I'm using it to highlight that botting Reddit is an extremely low-hanging fruit, to the point that you expect lots of bots there.

lvxferre , 6 days ago

I follow a "rule of seven" with tabs: once I open the 8th tab, I check the other 7 to see if

• I don't need it any more - close it down
• I'll need it in a near future - keep it open
• I'll need it in a far future - bookmark it, close it down

Seven is small enough to keep track of them, but large enough to be flexible.

lvxferre OP , 9 days ago

Even when cleaned, she still refuses it. I think that she smells "the annoying kid used this box, now it's ruined forever!". The only solution is to clean the litterbox with alcohol, retire it from usage for a few days (so she forgets about it), and then reintroduce as if it was a "new" litterbox.

As such I don't think that the auto-cleaning box would help either.

lvxferre OP , 9 days ago

I'll let you know if I find a solution. Your situation reminds me my sister's cat though - he "used" the litterbox halfway (his front paws inside, his back paws outside), and then did it on the floor next to the litterbox. Might be worth checking if that isn't what's happening. (She solved it with taller boxes)

lvxferre OP , 9 days ago

I'll give it a check. If this exists (and if it's available in Brazil, and reasonably priced) it would solve my problems really well. Thanks for the idea!

lvxferre OP , 7 days ago

Thank you guys for all those ideas! Sorry for the late reply.

A few highlights on ideas mentioned here:

• @0x0's idea of testing different litters might work. Frieda used to be a street cat, so she'd rather use dirt or grass (or finer litter), while Kika was always a home cat so she prefers more typical gravel-like litter.
• @atx_aquarian mentioned odour removers. I didn't try them, I used alcohol instead. Got to try it too.
• A lot of people mentioned smart systems that allow/deny entry for a cat based on the microchip. I gave those a check, and they're outright expensive here in Brazil. (Import taxes are specially harsh on electronics, plus cost of living is smaller than in Europe and CA/US so stuff like 100 euros or dollars is actually a big deal here.) I might want to try a poor man's version of that though, by not allowing Siegfrieda to access my bathroom at all, and placing Kika's litterbox there.

A relevant detail that I didn't mention is Kika's age - she's already 16, and cats get a bit stubborn when old (not that we humans are any different...). But I think that a mix of the solutions that you presented might work.

lvxferre , 9 days ago

Give up and install SponsorBlock.

lvxferre , 9 days ago

Some scientists say CO2 removal is simply a distraction from the urgency of the climate crisis and an excuse to continue burning fossil fuels.

Bingo~

lvxferre , 9 days ago

The article says that "some companies are experimenting with alkaline rocks". So it's the opposite.

lvxferre , 9 days ago

That's correct. And my point is that they aren't "further acidifying" the ocean, like Icalasari said; they're doing the exact opposite.

I'll use the opportunity for an info dump. You potentially know what I'm going to say, but it's for the sake of users in general.

Carbon dioxide dissolution in water can be simplified through the equation

CO₂(g) + 2H₂O(l) ⇌ H₃O⁺(aq) + HCO₃⁻(aq)
gaseous carbon dioxide + water generates (→) hydronium ("acidity") + bicarbonate, and vice versa (←).

It's a reversible reaction, as anyone opening a soda can knows (wait a bit and the gas GTFO and you're left with flat soda). However, you can "force" a reversible reaction to go more into one or another direction, by messing with the amounts of substances in each side of the equation:

• if you add more of the junk to one side, the reaction will go more towards the other side - to consume the stuff that you added
• if you remove junk from one side, the reaction will go more towards that side - to regenerate the junk that you removed

So it's like reactions go against whatever change you do. This is known as Le Chatelier's principle. In a simplified way, "if you change shit the reaction tries to revert your change".

Now. The main concern is CO₂ in the atmosphere. We don't want it. To consume it through this reaction, we could remove acidity from the ocean. That's actually doable by dumping some alkaline substances there, because of another equilibrium:

H₃O⁺(aq) + OH⁻(aq) ⇌ 2H₂O(l)
hydronium ("acidity") + hydroxide ("alkalinity") generates water, and vice versa.

So by adding alkaline substances to the sea you could remove hydronium, and by removing hydronium you're encouraging the sea to gorge on even more carbon dioxide.

It sounds like an extremely bad idea though. Just like the two reactions that I mentioned interact with each other, there's a bazillion other reactions doing the same. Specially when we're talking about acidity/alkalinity (pH), it's hard to find something where pH does not influence the outcome!

So the consequences of "let's dump alkaline substances in the sea! What could go wrong?" might be extremely messy, and not so obvious from a first moment. Instead we're simply better off by avoiding to add even more CO₂ to the atmosphere.

lvxferre , 9 days ago

Is this when the pope Goku the Second recalls all Priestbots to the Vatican?

...life does imitate art, doesn't it?

lvxferre , 10 days ago

I avoid it almost all the time. Because:

1. I avoid uncalled advice, so there goes 90% of the time when people would suggest a brand.
2. I'd rather support local brands over country-wide or international brands. However most people whom I speak with are on the internet, and live far away.
3. Most of the time talking about the product (e.g. "shavers") works well enough, I don't need to talk about the brand (e.g. "ACME shavers").
4. I'm one of those DIY muppets. Specially when it comes to kitchen stuff. I'm not talking about the brand of tomato sauce, I'm making it! (Or butter. Or pepper sauce. Or spice mix.)

lvxferre , 11 days ago

I'm also in the "tell HR" team. If he would interpret a request to not invade your personal space* as "bullying", then he is not someone who can be reasoned with.

*personal space includes the sensory input that you're exposed to.

lvxferre , 11 days ago

Yeah, they're all stealing electrons. /joke

...if you want a serious answer, define "to be positive" in an objective way. Otherwise we'll all end talking about our personal experiences, that may or may not match.

lvxferre , 12 days ago

In addition to this [already great] answer: if you get other neighbours on the same page of you, even better. Have them reporting the scumbags to the cops, documenting the shit that they do, etc.

I'm saying this because, from the cops' PoV, it'll sound way more serious if multiple people are reporting the same thing. So they're more likely to act.

An important detail: don't make shit up. It's fine to report small shit, as long as it's real; but cops have a professionally trained nose for bullshit, so don't try to bullshit them, it'll backfire.

lvxferre , 12 days ago

https://i.imgur.com/gslHAt7.jpeg

Sorry, I couldn't resist. And contrariwise to this pic I do agree with you, the web used to be better. Sure, ads were always a fucking annoyance, but they're reaching unbearable levels nowadays; a lot of people (like me) tend to not see it because of ad blockers, but once you turn them off? Eeeeew.

lvxferre , 12 days ago

What a bloody great comment.

And yes, what matters is the discourse (the ideas within the text), not the utterance used to convey said discourse (the words on the screen).

lvxferre , 12 days ago

Cory Doctorow, enshittification: "finally, they [platforms] abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves".

That is exactly what is happening here; AI is just an excuse, not the reason.

lvxferre , 12 days ago

Ameriwho?

...dude enshittification is global. As well as people pissed with it.

lvxferre , 12 days ago

Context. Please look at the context.

OP is ultimately about Faecesbook/Meta demanding more from advertisers than it used to, and using "cuz, uh, AI! It's smurrt!" as justification. I brought enshittification up because FB is clearly on that step of enshittification - after it screwed with the users, now screwing with businesses.

If there was any sort of protest against FB going nuts, it would be when they screwed with the users. If there was any, it failed - because that step of enshittification is already complete.

What you're talking about ("brrr Israelis chilled brrr") is at most sideline related. Don't confuse the arsehole with the pants, OK?

lvxferre , 12 days ago

As I mentioned in another thread, about the same subject: that's mostly for show, with zero practical impact on the population. They might jail someone but you'll get 10 new streamers in their place. Same deal with the alleged seizure of TV boxes, mine is still working fine.

lvxferre , 13 days ago

Ah, I remember this crap. It'll show you content based on location. I'm almost certain that it's unrelated to the block.

lvxferre , 13 days ago

That is not even remotely close to what the other user is saying.

lvxferre , 13 days ago

We better be careful, with Googles track record they will be getting rid of YouTube soon and rolling it into whatever they are calling their Skype clone nowadays.

I think that five products are reasonably safe from Google's euthanasia project:

• YouTube
• Google Search
• Chrome
• "core" Android system + Play Store (it counts as one)
• AdSense

The common factor between them is advertisement: vulturing on your personal info (Chrome, GS, Android), serving you ads (YT, GS), ensuring that advertisers must pay the vassal tax to advertise (AdSense), and walling you in ways that you can't fight back (Chrome, Android+Play Store).

Google stopped being a technology business a long time ago; pragmatically nowadays it's simply an advertisement company that dabbles on tech.

lvxferre , 13 days ago

Good catch on GMail - it's at the same time a vector to invade your privacy and an additional barrier for people leaving the Google ecosystem battery farm.

I'm not sure on GSuite.

lvxferre , 13 days ago (edited 13 days ago)

I'll focus on a side question, that I'm more prepared to answer.

Truthfully, everything besides that (including ‘what are proteins’) mostly wooshes over my head

At the end of the day, proteins are biiiiig arse molecules. Mostly composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. For example, here's a protein called "myoglobin", that carries oxygen within your blood:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Myoglobine.gif

Blue = nitrogen, red = oxygen, grey = carbon, white = hydrogen, salmon = iron, yellow = sulphur. Disregard the mix of sticks and balls in the model, they're both representing atoms.

If you pay close attention to the model, you'll notice a repetitive pattern: 1) nitrogen, 2) carbon connected to some large junk, 3) carbon connected to a "dangling" oxygen. That is not just in the myoglobin, but in all proteins.

If you flattened that pattern and removed the hydrogens (to simplify it), you'd get something like this:

https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/24d192f4-3a99-453b-93fa-d2e853098710.png

That happens because the bodies of living beings don't build those huge molecules out of nowhere; they do it with smaller molecules called "aminoacids". That pattern there is the amide group, you could see it as the "solder" between aminoacids.

Here's the representation of a few "free" aminoacids:

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/1950/2017/05/31183046/figure-03-04-02.png

The fun part is that R, the "side chain". I called it "junk" but it's actually a big deal - because it's what gives each protein a different shape and property. For example, it's thanks to that junk that the myoglobin has a specific shape, that forms a "ring" of nitrogens, just at the right size to host an iron cation, but still leaves one of the sides of the iron cation free - so it could connect to something else. (Hopefully diatomic oxygen. As in, it's how myoglobin transports that oxygen within your body. But if you get poisoned with carbon monoxide or cyanide, it gets stuck there, and it's hard to take it off so the protein stops transporting oxygen.)

lvxferre , 13 days ago

Fixed - thanks for pointing this out. My brain farted the word out of nowhere, the correct term in this context would be "side chain".

I'm aware of the usage of R in org chem.

lvxferre , 13 days ago

Don't worry, you didn't sound condescending - you went straight for the issue, and then added further info.

Completely off-topic: I'm curious on your example. Most benzopyrazine synthesis routes that I've seen use IBX instead of SSA. Is this a recent development?

lvxferre , 14 days ago

And at least some people are already ranting at how Ubuntu treats deb support as low priority, in comparison with its [nowadays effectively default] snap format.