naevaTheRat

naevaTheRat, 15 hours ago

tbh charging at fast stations doesn’t actually take much longer than petrol realistically. It would be annoying if it was the only chance to charge but like my car gets ~300 km in like 20 minutes or so? It’s not a very efficient one being small SUV sized (large dogs :( ).

If even if you commute a fair bit every day that’s still a once a week or so thing that’s idk ~10 minutes longer than a fill up and pay?

The apps are the pita. Need to regulate them out of existence in favour of standard payment terminals.

naevaTheRat, 15 hours ago

a plant based diet is completely healthy as long as you eat varied foods and don’t try something stupid like subsisting on apples and dandelions.

There are world renowned athletes who are plant based…

naevaTheRat, 21 hours ago

I think you’re actually engaging with it a bit shallowly. You are the one who invented the rule and a different framing is exploring how, if games seem to put us in situations where we must do horrible things to advance even a couple of times, we take that as a rule instead of risking losing to find other ways.

Which is a fairly glaring indictment of the whole military shooter genre which is all about “hard men and hard choices” that completely dehumanise the factions you’re in opposition to.

naevaTheRat, 20 hours ago

Military shooter games glorify war and shallowly reward horrible behaviour. Spec ops does it differently.

Majority of people: do horrible thing

Some people: experimental and find heroic thing is rewarded.

Discussion possible, why did the majority do that? could we talk about horrible and uncreative design patterns in the genre of military shooters? How media portrayals of war train us not to look for peaceful solutions? Whether this feeds into how we view American imperial wars?

you: no spec ops bad video game because I didn’t do the good option.

naevaTheRat, 20 hours ago

It’s weird. I credit my scientific education with waking me up to questioning stuff. Like when you learn about how we know stuff, the limits of proof (e.g. can’t prove empiricism is “true” it just works extremely well for certain things), how hard it is to wrangle stuff into scientific questions and so on the elephant in the room is how fucking impossible most questions are.

Then you get thinking about how untested most of society is, how many different ways there are to interpret things, how unknowable the “goodness” of your preferences is and so on.

Yet, in the same cohort as me there were a lot of people coming out extremely certain of their own worldview and blindly faithful in technocrats and the mystical power of throwing data at stuff to solve enormous problems. Like we are anywhere near being able to calculate out a human society.

So idk, I think it’s less stem vs not stem and education quality and kinds of people/where they’re at in life. You could probably go through a lit crit course and come out blinkered too, being able to do lit crit doesn’t guarantee you’d have good opinions.

naevaTheRat, 19 hours ago

you get that this wouldn’t work as a critique if it was obvious you could make different choices right? Then it wouldn’t make the player complicit. If you’re not complicit it’s just a game saying “military shooters could be different” which is a nothing statement.

Like how games with a “get the information (evil)” and “get the information (good)” button aren’t offering real moral choices. Or how deus ex would lose all impact if the “here’s a gun, go kill these people” starting mission tempting you with a rocket launcher popped up a “you might change sides in the future” warning.

By involving you, leading you just like any other military shooter for a bit then cutting you loose is what creates the critique. You compare notes after playing and someone points out something and you go “huh, why didn’t I try that?”. It’s not condemning you for not trying that, it’s asking you if you’re happy with a genre which trains you to never to try it.

naevaTheRat, 13 hours ago

Hopefully people don’t need a college degree in literature to understand basic subtext.

I think it’s about learning that it’s worth doing more than anything else.

naevaTheRat, 17 hours ago

This article is scaremongering nonsense. GHB is a very safe drug by almost all metrics. It’s endogenous so no allergies, it doesn’t damage organs, it is not particularly habit forming, it is relatively short acting, it doesn’t cause confusion about the world/erratic behaviour/psychosis. The one real risk is that it’s a respiratory depressant and that it’s LD 50 is only a few tens of times a standard dose rather than the millions of like LSD, putting it in the same category as alcohol there.

In a regulated market deaths would be a rarity, as it stands it’s mostly people polydrug using who get hurt.

Fucking media in this country I swear, we need proper regulation and education if we want to save lives.

naevaTheRat, 17 hours ago

You are talking out of your fucking arse why not see what actual scientists have to say?

www.sciencedirect.com/…/S0140673607604644

The first author was the former head of the advisory council to the UK. They rank GHB as less habit forming than almost everything else scoring a 1.19 vs alcohol’s 1.93 or heroin’s 3. Steroids are at 0.8, for context.

naevaTheRat, 16 hours ago

Yeah so if you’re taking anything potent you should dilute it first. A dose is like 1-3 g with 7 g onwards becoming extremely dangerous.

Like alcohol you it varies based on body mass/stomach content/fatigue/random biological factors. Like only someone with a deathwish would start a night of drinking by skulling half a bottle of vodka you absolutely should not be ingesting unknown fluids you got off some random (that are hopefully dyed to prevent confusion with water/make dosing someone’s drink harder) at a dose you expect to be near heavy.

In a sane world you would get like 3 packs of 1 g doses or something with childproofing. Those doses would be diluted in a larger volume of fluid. We don’t live in that world so it’s about as predictable as random homebrew moonshine.

As always if someone is going to take drugs they should get them tested (cantest in the act will do it if you live there), have a sober friend, and be in a safe location.

naevaTheRat, 16 hours ago

I don’t think you’re promoting it, but hosting web services in Australia often gets MIB knocking on your door so I get the admin’s sketchiness.

It is false so say it’s not addictive at all. It is pleasurable and you could form a dependency on it that could be lethal to withdraw from like all GABAergic drugs. I have personally never see that, and because if it’s short halflife it would be difficult, but it’s not hard to imagine someone getting a bit too into the pleasure.

That said even if someone was taking it every single time they would go drinking and they did that frequently it would still be safer than alcohol.

Still, be honest about drugs. you can fuck your life up with just about anything and nobody should use something under the false notion it’s harmless/risk free.

naevaTheRat, 10 hours ago

dose is about 0.5 g for “a standard drink” type level. Usual recreational doses are 2-4 mg. About the same number of doses as alcohol for getting drunk.

Unconsciousness starts becoming likely around 7 g. severely depressed breathing around 10 g. Death gets dramatically more likely (although it’s easy enough to keep someone alive with care). It’s all in roughly the same ballpark as alcohol, just alcohol tends to make you upchuck the stuff that would fuck you.

Black market random dilutions are dangerous especially when mixed with alcohol. The real danger is dosing too much 1,4 butanediol which is a prodrug and so has a delayed effect. Obviously if people are given something different to what the expect that almost always massively increases risk.

naevaTheRat, 1 day ago

I don’t think anyone deserves to be scammed. Here’s a good Cory doctrow section on the topic: pluralistic.net/2024/02/05/cyber-dunning-kruger/#…

Everyone is vulnerable to different things at different times, the wrongdoers are the ones at fault. We should aspire to a society where being trusting is a good thing that is rewarded.

It’s actually insane that we let people get up on stages and tell blatant lies beamed right into the ears of millions of people. Doubly so when we reward them with unfathomable riches.

naevaTheRat, 3 days ago

God I long for such a trivial life as to find stuff like this bothersome

naevaTheRat, 4 days ago

No, dutton is a calculating and extremely cunning fascist.

He is not stupid, he is not childish, he is a terrifying man who has meticulously climbed the rungs of power in order to manipulate policy in favour of his terrible designs.

Don’t minimise the danger he poses, dumb thugs don’t become leader of the LNP.

naevaTheRat, 3 days ago

Seriously we need to be worried. Our system doesn’t concentrate too much power on the PM but the far right faction of the LNP are ascendant within the party right now and Dutton has been clear what his goals are.

You can read his inaugural speech here: www.peterdutton.com.au/about/maiden-speech/ and most of his goals are there. He has been continually banging the law and order drum since then despite crime rates continuing to drop and Australia being an astoundingly peaceful society.

If he leads a government they will enthusiastically continue the largely bipartisan assault on our rights to privacy and presumption of innocence. I would anticipate greatly increased rates of militarisation of the police and deeper integration with spy agencies/border farce. This is a man who deployed police to stop people in Melbourne and ask for their damn papers. Do not dismiss the threat he poses to equality and justice.

naevaTheRat, 5 days ago

When has ruining the world for everyone else ever stopped the usa before? :(

There really seems to be a lot of “If not us, nobody” in the command structure of that military cult empire.

naevaTheRat, 8 days ago (edited 2 days ago)

Some carnists are so awful they can’t even be satisfied with their almost complete hegemony. They have to come into our spaces to explain why we’re actually dumb dumbs who changed huge portions of our lives and isolated ourselves socially without really thinking the basics through.

naevaTheRat, 8 days ago (edited 8 days ago)

Benefits for cats: No FIV infections, no car injuries, safe temperatures, no fights, no parasites.

Benefits for wildlife: no murder, fewer vectors, no loss of habitat to cats

Benefits for community: no roaming cats triggering sensor lights/setting off other pets/damaging property with claws, no toxo transmission, no digging up poo while gardening/losing plants to cat piss

Cons to cats: Keepers must provide entertainment

Cons to keepers: Exercise the level of basic responsibility every other keeper of pets is expected to, or parent with children.

Issue: Controversial???

naevaTheRat, 8 days ago

I guess you’re not able to care for cats then?

why is their mood worth more than all the wildlife they kill or terrorise?

naevaTheRat, 8 days ago

Balls vs literally thousands of wildlife. What a hard decision?

Letting a desexed cat roam is literally hatred for this land. Do you want more feral cats? desex pets, it’s again basic responsibility.

naevaTheRat, 8 days ago

well there you go, someone was wrong about what cats need to be happy.

You’d think a vet would be more worried about all the heal problems they pick up outside but I suppose it’s more work for them if mr fluffypaws needs surgery or whatever.

naevaTheRat, 8 days ago

Is that from the swan princess or something? I feel like I recognise that character from one of the films my little sis watched on repeat when like 8.

naevaTheRat, 7 days ago

I don’t do evil playthroughs because my fantasy is being able to always be patient and nice, save everyone, and find peaceful solutions as much as possible.

IRL you run out of resources pretty fast trying that on your own, and bad actors take advantage unless you have a support structure. In games it’s preordained that it can work.

naevaTheRat, 11 days ago

Fuck the fucking fuckers. Swearing as much a part of human communication as cadence is.

Puritans can fuck themselves with a pineapple. It’s as ridiculous as finding full stops offensive and insisting the rest of the world bow to them by using double commas or something.