In other news today...
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@karla said in In other news today...:
@pjh said in In other news today...:
Demons use their left hand to eat: Turkey’s top religious body - Türkiye News
Using one’s left hand while eating is not desirable, Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) stated on its official website on Feb. 3, warning that “demons eat and drink with their left hand.”
I guess I won't be travelling to Turkey.
This isn't quite as crazy as it sounds. In the Middle East (as in many countries, even today), eating utensils were not used. The left hand was for personal cleaning (performed with soap and water, not paper), the right hand was for eating.
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@chozang said in In other news today...:
This isn't quite as crazy as it sounds. In the Middle East (as in many countries, even today), eating utensils were not used. The left hand was for personal cleaning (performed with soap and water, not paper), the right hand was for eating.
...which provides some additional context to the traditional penalty for stealing.
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@dragoon Jesus Christ. I've met Gavin and Meg before, they're the nicest people, and I'm so horrified for them right now. The occasionally blurred line between "real life"/social media is fucking scary.
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@chozang said in In other news today...:
@karla said in In other news today...:
@pjh said in In other news today...:
Using one’s left hand while eating is not desirable, Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) stated on its official website on Feb. 3, warning that “demons eat and drink with their left hand.”
I guess I won't be travelling to Turkey.
This isn't quite as crazy as it sounds. In the Middle East (as in many countries, even today), eating utensils were not used. The left hand was for personal cleaning (performed with soap and water, not paper), the right hand was for eating.
I get it as a custom...thats different than calling us demons.
Though...I can't wipe with my non-dominant hand very well. When I had an infected cat bite on my left hand I had a very tough time.
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@jbert I forgot about that. TIL that I am one of the mutants who, rather that white with gold lace or blue with black lace, see light blue with gold lace.
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@doctorjones said in In other news today...:
Hmmmm, I wonder if it's anywhere near as good as Google Perspective? (which by our own testing, is pretty hit and missshit)
They claim a 0.005% false-positive rate, which is remarkably good. One might even say incredibly good.
They also say it's intended to flag videos for human review. I'm sure nobody would ever decide the failure rate is so low that they don't need to bother with the human review part of the process, and just take down flagged videos automatically, without providing an effective means of appeal.
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@karla said in In other news today...:
When I had an infected cat bite on my left hand I had a very tough time.
I had my left arm in a cast for two months, last year. What I was surprised to find was that the hardest thing wasn't not being able to bend my wrist, or take weight on it, or the limited finger/thumb movement, but not being able to twist my hand. I have a lot of empathy for dinosaurs now.
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Apple's HomePod speakers leave white marks on wood
The tech firm has said owners may have to re-oil surfaces if the ring marks do not fade.
I wonder how much the accessory to resolve this will cost?
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@dragoon What a courageous product!
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@dragoon said in In other news today...:
Apple's HomePod speakers leave white marks on wood
The tech firm has said owners may have to re-oil surfaces if the ring marks do not fade.
I wonder how much the accessory to resolve this will cost?
You're just placing it wrong.
Don't put it on wood!It'll likely be solved by a free coaster which leaves an apple-shaped mark to show your brand loyalty.
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@jbert said in In other news today...:
@dragoon said in In other news today...:
Apple's HomePod speakers leave white marks on wood
The tech firm has said owners may have to re-oil surfaces if the ring marks do not fade.
I wonder how much the accessory to resolve this will cost?
You're just placing it wrong.
Don't put it on wood!It'll likely be solved by a free coaster which leaves an apple-shaped mark to show your brand loyalty.
Let's see what happens when you put them on @wood!
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@jbert said in In other news today...:
Don't put it on wood!
What if you have to take a picture of it on a wooden table?
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U.K. couple used a fake garage door to hide illegal tiny house
The local planning council is not happy, and the couple now must turn the house back into a garage and pay hefty fines.
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Man spends three days in sewer, walks six miles, asks for cigarette after rescue
His first question was 'does anyone have a fag'
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@djls45 said in In other news today...:
<> That's trash, not garbage. Garbage is organic waste. Trash is non-organic waste. </>
TIL
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His first question was 'does anyone have a fag'
Next up: man sets off sewer gas explosion
Filed under: I know the article said it was a stormdrain but whatever
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@boomzilla We have the bookmark thing applied locally, so it should be fine to do a big jeff.
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@jbert said in In other news today...:
man sets off sewer gas explosion
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@scholrlea said in In other news today...:
@jbert I forgot about that. TIL that I am one of the mutants who, rather that white with gold lace or blue with black lace, see light blue with gold lace.
Wow, I thought I was the only person who reacted to "is this white and gold or black and blue?" with:
"huh?? It's obviously gold and blue. Here, check the RGB picker" (Well, HSV works better here, whatever)
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‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
PARKLAND, FL—In the hours following a violent rampage in Florida in which a lone attacker killed 17 individuals and seriously injured over a dozen others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Wednesday that there was no way to...
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@topspin said in In other news today...:
@scholrlea said in In other news today...:
@jbert I forgot about that. TIL that I am one of the mutants who, rather that white with gold lace or blue with black lace, see light blue with gold lace.
Wow, I thought I was the only person who reacted to "is this white and gold or black and blue?" with:
"huh?? It's obviously gold and blue. Here, check the RGB picker" (Well, HSV works better here, whatever)I saw it as both ways. That is to say, the color of the pixels vs the effects of lighting and photography on the actual color of the fabric.
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@topspin I also like that one:
New School Shooter Drill Includes Practicing Pleas To Lawmakers To Do Something About This
WASHINGTON—Explaining that the updated procedure could prevent needless tragedies and save countless lives, officials from the National School Boards Association announced Thursday that new active-shooter drills would include practicing pleas to lawmakers to do something about this. “This new...
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@topspin A final one:
US-Waffenlobby fordert Verbot von Schulen
Nach dem jüngsten Amoklauf an einer Schule im US-Bundesstaat Florida mit 17 Toten könnten schon bald erste politische Konsequenzen folgen. Um derartige Unglücke künftig zu verhindern, hat ...
Translation: "NRA demands a ban on schools."
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FDA authorizes marketing of first blood test to aid in the evaluation of concussion in adults
FDA authorizes marketing of first blood test to aid in the evaluation of concussion in adults; new quick testing option to help reduce need for CT scans, radiation exposure for patients
That is pretty nifty.
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@rhywden In the US, that's a lot more likely to happen than a ban on guns. Or even enforcement of the existing laws. 'Cos 'Murica.
And no, I am not joking. There actually is a small but well-funded lobby trying to end public schooling in the US, or at least move it entirely into private/charter schools. Oh, they would give vouchers to the students' parents to pay for them to attend... but experience with charter schools in the dozen or so major metroplexes which have tried them basically shows that a) the vouchers aren't enough, so parents with money pay more while the poorer family's kids get arrested for truancy (yes, this happens in some areas with 'charter-only' programs), b) any public schools that are still in the system get basically no funding at all, and c) exactly zero oversight of the privately run schools occurs, leading to several scandals over misappropriated funds, failure to provide promised schooling (or any at all in some cases), organized cheating on standardized tests, and either a prison-lockdown mentality where 'control' trumps education, or a complete abandonment of the students to a State of Nature (in Hobbes' sense of the term, i.e., anarchy).
Also, IIUC, most of the recent spate of teacher/student sex scandals have been in charter schools, and while the main thing driving the apparent rise is simple publicity and attention - mostly due to careless use of
SnatchSplatSnapChat and otheranti-social media by those involved, who probably wouldn't have been noticed at all otherwise in most cases - the fact that charter schools often lower the bar is a pretty serious matter given how low it is for public schools already.Now, I won't say all or even most charter schools are bad... no, wait I will say that, otherwise it would imply that good schools exist in the US... and certainly the public schools have been in serious trouble almost from the day they were introduced. But the fact is, they are for the most part the wrong solutions to the wrong problems. The argument that capitalism is more efficient is completely without merit if there is no competition, or if the competition provides no consistent advantages from one over another - the way chartered schools in most districts that use them are set up is in essence designed to prevent free enterprise, being more a form of graft than a competitive business market.
The fact is, the general attitude of many in the US is not (little-d) democratic or (little-r) republican, but rather anarchist - the assumption is that government is inherently evil, and not even a necessary evil. While I won't argue that point myself (I usually go with 'government is a hallucination, business is a hallucination twice over', but that's me), it has led to some serious contortions in how US society sees, and approaches, public life and actions. The fact that those who hold such positions don't really understand their own psychological motives in that view (hint: it has nothing to do with government or business) is simply amusing to me.
Getting back on the topic of schools (not shootings, that's another matter, we swear!), that fact is that no one in the US wants to admit that the real purpose of public schools isn't education but indoctrination - that, and keeping the students locked up several hours a day. That's not a swipe at the US education system; it's the simple truth of any public schooling system. They exist because industrialized societies don't really know what to do with someone who isn't old enough and sane enough to take care of themselves - and while most of those who are 'adults' can't either, a fact which has been true throughout human history but largely ignorable before because no one cared much if 75% of people died young - now that we can keep children alive to adulthood with better than even odds, we can't cope with all these ones who end up swallowing detergent pods, smoking crack as an escape from how shitty existence is, or shooting each other because they can and because life has become unbearable. And that's the ones over 21...
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@scholrlea said in In other news today...:
Also, IIUC, most of the recent spate of teacher/student sex scandals have been in charter schools, and while the main thing driving the apparent rise is simple publicity and attention - mostly due to careless use of SnatchSplatSnapChat and other anti-social media by those involved, who probably wouldn't have been noticed at all otherwise in most cases - the fact that charter schools often lower the bar is a pretty serious matter given how low it is for public schools already.
No. Not at all. Not even close. They're dominantly at public schools. Just as a matter of sheer statistics. I went through the first dozen or so of https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/notorious-teacher-sex-scandals:
Of those, 1 was at a charter school. Also, 1 was male (and 11 were female), but that's a separate thing.
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@benjamin-hall I stand corrected.
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@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-accuses-west-of-using-lizards-for-nuclear-spying/
I expect one day to find out that they were right.
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@scholrlea said in In other news today...:
And no, I am not joking. There actually is a small but well-funded lobby trying to end public schooling in the US, or at least move it entirely into private/charter schools. Oh, they would give vouchers to the students' parents to pay for them to attend... but experience with charter schools in the dozen or so major metroplexes which have tried them basically shows that a) the vouchers aren't enough, so parents with money pay more while the poorer family's kids get arrested for truancy (yes, this happens in some areas with 'charter-only' programs), b) any public schools that are still in the system get basically no funding at all, and c) exactly zero oversight of the privately run schools occurs, leading to several scandals over misappropriated funds, failure to provide promised schooling (or any at all in some cases), organized cheating on standardized tests, and either a prison-lockdown mentality where 'control' trumps education, or a complete abandonment of the students to a State of Nature (in Hobbes' sense of the term, i.e., anarchy).
My 4 yo is in pre-K. She has been speech delayed. I recently had to meet with a social worker to discuss her getting continued therapy in Kindergarten.
I am a firm believer that learning until age 6-7 should be through play. And apparently she is delayed in fine motor ability, because she can't print her name legibly or cut well yet. I attribute this to her being left-handed but still using her right hand a lot. I've had a lot of the same problems. I still can't cut well.
The social worker told me the teachers in K (in public schools) in will expect her to read, and do writing drills until she gets it right. I will absolutely, not force her to do this.
She did say the charter schools she knows about would be more open to my attitude toward learning.
I freakin applied to 10 schools for Kindergarten for her...I only applied to 4 schools for college. Though, for college, admissions were based on specific qualifications, all of these charter schools are by lottery.
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@karla While I wouldn't support "drills" I would indeed suggest regular repetitive exercises.
You only learn something like that through rote repetition - repeat until you do it right. There really isn't any other way.
And fine motor control is kind of important in other ways, too, so I wouldn't wait too long. Doesn't need to be writing letters - a colouring book where she learns to stay within the lines would probably work, too. Or something like that.
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@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
Microsoft Engineer Installs Google Chrome During Presentation After Edge Freezes
“I always love it when demos break,” he says
I know this is an old one, but the worst part of it is that the article has him giving this explanation of why it wasn't working:
"The age of these machines are [sic] wacked down a little bit"
What he actually said:
"The Edge on these machines are locked down a little bit"
which does make more sense as to why an alternative browser would help.
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US-Waffenlobby ... such a great name! Get B.J. Blazkowicz on the job to root this evil out!
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@scholrlea said in In other news today...:
trying to end public schooling in the US
That's because anything public is inherently
badsocialist. Just go ask @polygeekery. I have a real life friend, Republican voting and USAF member, who thinks taxes are stealing (yes, literally). I have no idea where he thinks his wage should come from.
Maybe some kind of mob system where you pay protection money for the things police/fire department/military protects you from, because it'd be a shame if something happened?
The fact is, the general attitude of many in the US is not (little-d) democratic or (little-r) republican, but rather anarchist - the assumption is that government is inherently evil, and not even a necessary evil.
Oh look, you already said that...
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@rhywden said in In other news today...:
@karla While I wouldn't support "drills" I would indeed suggest regular repetitive exercises.
You only learn something like that through rote repetition - repeat until you do it right. There really isn't any other way.
And fine motor control is kind of important in other ways, too, so I wouldn't wait too long. within the lines would probably work, too. Or something like that.
When I went to kindergarten it was a half day. I am pretty sure I didn't read ahead of time.
School has her write her name when she gets in the morning. She has a pretty long name (9 letters).
She gets additional practice. Last weekend she made a necklace stringing beads on yarn.
Doesn't need to be writing letters - a colouring book where she learns to stay
What about?
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@topspin said in In other news today...:
That's because anything public is inherently bad socialist. Just go ask @polygeekery.
Careful with that strawman. Be a shame if something were to happen to it...
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@polygeekery said in In other news today...:
@topspin said in In other news today...:
Careful with that strawman. Be a shame if something were to happen to it...Might not actually be your opinion, but it's not quite a strawman either. Or what do you think of "I get my wages from the taxpayer, but taxes are stealing"?
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@topspin said in In other news today...:
@polygeekery said in In other news today...:
@topspin said in In other news today...:
Careful with that strawman. Be a shame if something were to happen to it...Might not actually be your opinion, but it's not quite a strawman either. Or what do you think of "I get my wages from the taxpayer, but taxes are stealing"?
I think that is pretty hypocritical, FWIW. But I also don't think that taxing wages is the only way for a country to fund its government.
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@topspin said in In other news today...:
Maybe some kind of mob system where you pay protection money for the things police/fire department/military protects you from, because it'd be a shame if something happened?
Mind you, prior to the late 19th century, that is precisely how firefighting companies worked in most places that had any (which was pretty much only major cities). Their 'services' did indeed include the shakedown, though it was usually more a case of them showing up at a fire and then 'renegotiating' their fee while the building burned before they did anything - fires were common enough that they hardly needed to make threats. They also were infamous for only putting out the buildings they were paid to.
They would even do the ambulance chaser thing of heading over to buildings they hadn't been hired to protect yet, waiting politely but very visibly on the street corner, and then graciously accept two or three times their usual negotiated rate (cash on the barrelhead) to help out a new customer. Often two or three different fire companies would show up at once. And start brawls outside over who would get the job.
This happened with private police departments as well; most municipal governments only had a county sheriff plus whoever they had as deputies (and they usually only deputized someone for a specific case), whose role wasn't so much protective law enforcement as it was hunting down known outlaws (as in, someone with an outstanding charge), wrangling prisoners, and enforcing court orders and evictions. Major cities would also have some kind of district or parish constabulary, but they weren't so much an organized police force as what would today be called a neighborhood watch; and walled cities sometimes had city guards, but they were focused on protecting the city from invasion, not criminal activity, and were more or less out of the picture by 1650 or so anyway.
General police departments only appeared around 1830 or so with the formation of the London Metropolitan Police department, (there had been an earlier Marine Police, which was the first real organized police force in the UK, but they only really covered the dockyards), and the parallel London City Police; the Bobbies and the Coppers were known for a serious rivalry, and like the firefighters, were known to throw down with each other over who got the honor of carrying out a big action.
Finally, it should be pointed out that, Constitutionally, the US national armed forces are supposed to be just an officers corps for organizing the actions of local militia; indeed, that's what the Second Amendment was really about. The whole nonsense about gun rights is a misreading of the article: what it really says is that every citizen is required to drill with a local militia, and that these militias (not the individuals, though in practice regulating the firearms of the time would be both impossible given the thin populations, and pointless given the limits of muskets of the time) would maintain a stock of arms for use in the case of an emergency.
To put it another way: The 2nd amendment mandates universal conscription, but forbid forming a standing permanent army!
Unfortunately, the framers were too subtle by half; for political reasons, they couldn't come out and say what it was for, any more than they could with the rest of the Bill of Rights, and they of course could predict the course of weapons technology over the next hundred years.
Needless to say, that idea, appealing as it is to many even today, didn't even make it to the War of 1812 intact, and was completely untenable when the US Civil War began. Even if it were workable before then, the rise of repeating rifles and automatic weapons, not to mention modern artillery, made the idea of defending a country with a militia, armed solely with what the conscripts could carry on foot, impossible.
Anyway... it is a long-standing argument of Libertarians that this could be done today, and that it would work better. As much as I sympathize with the desire to reduce government intervention in private affairs, I personally think that they have too rosy a picture of the actual behavior of such private protective firms - they fell out of favor for a reason. Nor do I think that the idea scales well - the biggest and hardest part of modern police, fire, and military operations is logistics and coordination, something which absolutely requires a top-down control structure.
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@scholrlea said in In other news today...:
Finally, it should be pointed out that, Constitutionally, the US national armed forces are supposed to be just an officers corps for organizing the actions of local militia; indeed, that's what the Second Amendment was really about. The whole nonsense about gun rights is a misreading of the article: what it really says is that every citizen is required to drill with a local militia, and that these militias (not the individuals, though in practice regulating the firearms of the time would be both impossible given the thin populations, and pointless given the limits of muskets of the time) would maintain a stock of arms for use in the case of an emergency. To put it another way: The 2nd amendment mandates universal conscription, but forbid forming a standing permanent army!
No. Not at all. Not in the state constitutions it was based on, not in the federal one. THat argument was tried and failed 9-0 at the Supreme Court.
The 2nd amendment is an individual right to keep and bear arms for any otherwise lawful purpose. With or without a "good" reason.
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@benjamin-hall said in In other news today...:
for any otherwise lawful purpose
Is shootimg people a lawful purpose? Would it be otherwise lawful to shoot people if it weren't lawful to own the gun you shot them with?
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@jaloopa said in In other news today...:
@benjamin-hall said in In other news today...:
for any otherwise lawful purpose
Is shootimg people a lawful purpose? Would it be otherwise lawful to shoot people if it weren't lawful to own the gun you shot them with?
Shooting people may be lawful depending on the circumstances. The second sentence is TDEMSYR.
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@benjamin-hall said in In other news today...:
@scholrlea said in In other news today...:
Finally, it should be pointed out that, Constitutionally, the US national armed forces are supposed to be just an officers corps for organizing the actions of local militia; indeed, that's what the Second Amendment was really about. The whole nonsense about gun rights is a misreading of the article: what it really says is that every citizen is required to drill with a local militia, and that these militias (not the individuals, though in practice regulating the firearms of the time would be both impossible given the thin populations, and pointless given the limits of muskets of the time) would maintain a stock of arms for use in the case of an emergency. To put it another way: The 2nd amendment mandates universal conscription, but forbid forming a standing permanent army!
No. Not at all. Not in the state constitutions it was based on, not in the federal one. THat argument was tried and failed 9-0 at the Supreme Court.
The 2nd amendment is an individual right to keep and bear arms for any otherwise lawful purpose. With or without a "good" reason.
Phht. I don't give a flying fuck about the issue of 'gun rights' or 'gun control' either way; it is purely disingenuous for politicians to be arguing about it when the fact remains it isn't actually important. Like with apoetion and immigration, the 'debate' exists solely to give the parties a measuring stick for their propaganda; the actual impact of gun ownership, and even shootings like this past one, are splashy but negligible except in terms of how many clicks it gains the infotainment channels and how many votes it garners in the polls.
If the government wanted to take someone's guns away, it would, and justify it after the fact - if it can't then it isn't a government. The idea of 'limited government' is a fantasy created by one group of alpha personalities (the 'Founding Fathers') to smear their rivals (Parliament), and has no real substance. The fact that they drank their own Kool-Aid (as evidenced by the existence of the Constitution in first place) doesn't change that.
I was talking solely about what they were trying to accomplish when they were putting the second amendment - and the rest of the Bill of Rights - together. Their primary goal was to prevent whoever had their butts on the throne from gathering together enough power in one place that they could then force their will on everyone else. The fact that they didn't see the contradiction in the idea of a government that wasn't permitted to govern isn't my fault.
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Guys, please take this gun conversation to the garage, or attempt to create a civilised salon topic for discussing the virtues of guns, if that is your preference.
@boomzilla already moved several posts from this topic to the newly created Florida Gun topic. He did that for a reason.
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@luhmann He seems to rather like guns.
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@doctorjones Yes, which was followed almost immediately by a certain person posting yet another gun-related article here.
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@karla That image really... serves a different purpose than probably needs to be served.
Of course there's room to be yourself; these days that's pretty universally agreed upon. But at the same time, horrible, boring repetition is useful for learning control. Balance is important.
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Fair enough. I have said my piece anyway, save to add: I am aware, painfully aware, of how hypocritical my statements are coming from someone living on a government disability pension. I contain multitudes, and I am not an Objectivist, such as to believe that my personal prejudices and self-interests are immutable physical reality.
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@karla said in In other news today...:
I am a firm believer that learning until age 6-7 should be through play. And apparently she is delayed in fine motor ability, because she can't print her name legibly or cut well yet. I attribute this to her being left-handed but still using her right hand a lot. I've had a lot of the same problems. I still can't cut well.
Making a nice, straight, clean cut (I assume from the context that we're talking about paper here) is actually very easy:
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