lvxferre

lvxferre, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Apparently my method is a mix of those listed in the text.

I’m in a similar situation as OP, some of my income is irregular. So my monthly budget isn’t directly based on the last month income, I use the average of the last six months, relying on a checking account for that. (I keep it with enough money to last me one or two months.)

Then I split that budget into four categories:

• savings - I aim for 25%. Into the saving account it goes.
• monthly fixed expenses - periodic, somewhat predictable, monthly. For example bills, cornmeal and rice, cat food, etc.
• variable expenses - they’re necessities like the above, but there’s some wiggling room. Like, if necessary I don’t mind eating eggs four lunches a week and walking instead of taking a bus, but I’d rather not to. Usually split into four weeks, so I expend it gradually.
• **"fluff"***¹ - avoidable expenses that I still want for some reason like “it improves my mood”. Things for my hobbies, going to a restaurant, buying nicer clothes or hardware, etc. Unused fluff gets transferred to my savings account in the following month.

Then here’s how I address some complexities:

• periodic expenses for things that I buy every few months (e.g. gas canisters) - I include a fraction of them into the monthly fixed expenses, and only remove the money from the checking account when buying it
• erratic but large expenses (e.g. house repairs) - I usually “borrow” this money from the savings, then “repay” it in the following months, as a fixed expense*².
• high income multiple months in a row - I cap the budget and send the overflow to the savings.
• low income multiple months in a row - cut down fluff, then reduce variable expenses, then reduce monthly fixed expenses, then reduce savings, in this order.
• really low income multiple months in a row - if really necessary I borrow from the savings, keeping in mind that I’ll need to repay myself.

Notes:

1. The actual name that I give to this category is “imposto das lombrigas”, or roughly “roundworm tax”. That’s from from my family jokingly referring to cravings as "to have roundworms for [something].
2. Some people might use a credit card instead for that, to build credit; that also works, but it depends a lot on the government that you pay taxes to. I do have a credit card but I tend to avoid it, as often there are discounts for paying things in cash.

lvxferre, 4 months ago

I don’t understand, why are you calling the other poster racist? I’m so confused… everything that he said is true. Source: I’m a gratch.

lvxferre, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

In my opinion the better option is to ditch the concept of dogwhistle. We [people in general] should look at what a symbol (including words, gestures, etc.) conveys within a certain context, we shouldn’t be picking individual symbols and assuming the discourse (what is being said) based on them.

For example, the 88 in the title of the game should be associated with the rest of the game. Because depending on the rest of the game it might convey only “1988”, or it might convey “heil Hitler”.

lvxferre, 4 months ago

Okay… I think that it’s worth to look further at the Twitter comment chain from Josh Fagundes, mentioned in the text.

I’ll use the exact same [lack of] reasoning that the author used to “prove” that he’s a Nazi. (I don’t think that he’s a Nazi, mind you; I’m doing this to show how bloody stupid his witch hunting is):

• Josh ‘Anoriand’ has 14 characters, including the quotation marks. Coincidence? Perhaps not!
• Look, I’m not saying it’s IMPOSSIBLE that this game wasn’t made with ill intent is exactly 14 words. And it’s immediately followed by “but 88”. Coincidence? Perhaps not!

“Conclusion”: I’m going to play it safe and treat Josh Fagundes as a nazi!

…yes, it is that tier of stupid. And if the developers are actually Nazi trying to push a Nazi discourse into the players, Josh is not “denouncing” them. He’s actually helping them to push said Nazi discourse, since now they can say “ah, that’s just someone being silly. Pay no mind, look at the ridiculous shit that he’s using to “prove” that our game is Nazi.”

---

Here’s a better approach.

What’s “88” in the title conveying to the player, within the context of the game? Through all the screenshots being shared, I’ve seen it being consistently used to refer to 1988, and nothing else. Is there any other element contextualising it to be interpreted as “heil Hitler” instead of the year?

lvxferre, 4 months ago

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/57e0278c-7d03-4bfe-90b1-e7e3daf3dd4f.jpeg

Relevant reply from the developer. I’ll transcribe it here.

@everyone // Our game “Infestation 88” is set in the 1980s, with the year 1988 chosen simply due to its symmetrical design in the game’s artwork/logo. Unfortunately, we were unaware of any additional meaning the number ‘88’ has. However, after learning about this, we’re changing the game’s name to “Infestation: Origins” We apologize for our ignorance on the and appreciate that this was brought to our attention so we could address it ASAP!

With respect to our Discord server, we also apologize for the current lack of moderation in place, and will be working on remedying this ASAP. As per the rules, any hateful speech or content in any regard will result in a ban. We also plan to update our FAQ soon when we have a chance to address common questions that pop up. We greatly appreciate your patience and support!

@here Due to the overwhelming number of posts and rule-breaking content, we’re temporarily pausing discussion until we have better moderation in place. We hope to have things back online soon! Thank you again for your patience.

lvxferre, 4 months ago

More like “tankie user defends basic reading comprehension”.

What Josh is doing here is witch hunting like a moron. That only helps the Nazi by giving them a believable cover.

lvxferre, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Not the point. “Infestation” + 88 + gassing vermin is absolutely not comparable to the mental gymnastics you just vomited out as an example.

You didn’t read the Twitter thread that I’ve linked, right? Do it. It’s actually way worse mental gymnastics than my shitty example. (“1-4 players = Nazi dogwhistle” tier.)

Even if the developer was truly this oblivious, it would still not change the issue of it, and the Nazis that posted on their Discord for so long were clearly proof of that as well.

Give this a check. The developers are changing the name of the game, and addressing the Discord server by pausing discussions there until they get better moderation.

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EDIT: by the way you’re already doing less worse than he did. At least you’re trying to connect discursive elements, like “gassing vermin”, instead of doing conspiracy shit tier things like “they’re active from 2010 to 2024! That must be a sign of an enemy Stand 14 words!”. And the fact that you called me a “tankie” shows that you at least checked my profile to see if I was potentially a Nazi, seriously, props for that.

lvxferre, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Well sure, but people use dog whistles so it’s important to recognize them.

Fascists don’t need to use dogwhistles to call each other. And they often don’t use them, specially not the best known dogwhistles - because it’s like saying “I’m a fascist lololol please kick my arse!”.

As such, when you look for dogwhistles, you’re bound to get

• lots of false positives - someone being mislabelled a fascist because they used the same symbol to convey something else;
• lots of false negatives - fascists slipping past your radar, because they didn’t use the dogwhistles that you trained yourself to identify

It’s simply not a good way to find and get rid of them. Unlike looking at what they’re saying “in the big picture”; that’s always reliable because they need to convey their shitty discourses if they want to spread them.

Context can be important but sometimes it’s subtle

Context is always important. And as a general rule (not failproof): if you’re actively looking for the context and it’s still too subtle for you, then odds are that it’s too subtle for the fascists to get it too.

(Note: I’m talking about “fascists” here but it also applies to other shitty groups of people.)

lvxferre, 4 months ago

lol

I’m not surprised that you didn’t get it.

lvxferre, 4 months ago

Chomsky would say that the original purpose of language is to structure thought, with communication being solely secondary. (Or something like this, I don’t recall it word-by-word.)

If that’s correct, then internal monologues are simply a result of your brain processing your thoughts.

lvxferre, 4 months ago

Chomsky’s concept of UG (universal grammar) is able to handle this. Since there would be a chunk of language that is innate (universal), that feral child would share it. So, as a conclusion from that, even if the feral child isn’t expressing it through vocalisation, since they lack an “application” of the UG (like Nahuatl, Mandarin, Quechua, English, Kikongo etc.), they’d still have some rather simple internal monologue.

…that said I think that Chomsky’s UG is full of shit. I do agree with him that the faculty of language might have developed first to structure thought; but my reasoning resembles a bit more yours, the role of language would be to formalise thought. Thinking without language is possible in the same way as moving across a village without roads - it’s doable but clunky, and you’ll likely take far more effort than with proper roads/ a language.

Not to challenge Chomsky on his own turf

Don’t worry. Everyone and their dog challenges him. Including himself, he’s often contradicting his own earlier statements.

lvxferre, 4 months ago

One potential regression that I see is that the current generative models are abandoned, after being ruled as “infringing copyrights” by multiple countries. The tech itself won’t disappear but it’ll be considerably harder to train newer ones.

The most problematic part is however if one of them survives; likely Google. That would lead to a situation as in your second paragraph.

lvxferre, 4 months ago

Not even a body pillow, Anon is a master tulpamancer and made a tulpa of some MLP character.

lvxferre, 4 months ago

Archive link to go past the paywall.

Well, since the old acronym lost its meaning, might as well rename it to Bricks. “Our economies sink together! Like bricks!”

I think that the decision to join the bloc will be mostly positive, for both old and new members.

Only Argentina declined the invitation after President Javier Milei, who took office this month, reversed his predecessor’s membership bid.

And Milei is a muppet.

lvxferre, 4 months ago

Little by little, the night turns around… counting the leaves, which tremble at dawn… oh wait it’ll only reach the surface, my bad.

Serious now. About the corona (sun “atmosphere”) being hotter than the photosphere (sun “surface”), the mission itself might give clues on why, but I think that it’s the wrong question:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/K-Strong/publication/258607475/figure/fig1/AS:456234085163018@1485786090820/Anatomy-of-the-Sun-The-core-is-dominated-by-high-temperatures-and-densities-that-enable.png

It’s less about the corona being hot and more about the photosphere being comparatively colder. My guess is that something in the photosphere composition reflects energy, either back to the nucleus or into the corona, and that a lot of the 1.3% of the Sun that are not hydrogen or helium are there.

lvxferre, 4 months ago

Frankly in this case even a simple bash script would do the trick. Have it check your distro, version, and architecture; if you got curl and stuff like this; then ask you if you want the stable or beta version of the software. Then based on this info it adds Mullvad to your repositories and automatically install it.

lvxferre, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

I like them, even for software installation. Partially because they’re lazy - it takes almost no effort to write a bash script that will solve a problem like this.

That said a flatpak (like you proposed) would look far more polished, indeed.

lvxferre, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

I’m proposing to check their texts out because it’s a good way to get theoretical background to back up your beliefs, if you believe in a peaceful transition. (Here’s a link to a good one, by the way.)

It’s also useful for Marxists, given that Marxism always interacted with other left-wing trains of thought. So by reading this stuff you get a better historical context on why Marxism defends some policies instead of other policies.

lvxferre, 4 months ago

I’ve read about this topic through this article, but the link in the OP is considerably saner; instead of screeching at the legislation and creating FUD against it, it’s actively analysing it to show its impact on open source development.

lvxferre, 4 months ago

I looked for it for, like, a hour or so, but couldn’t find the scanned copies. The nearest that I’ve found was the online version of the lexicon, claiming that it contains all six volumes.

lvxferre, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

It depends a lot on what you consider “toxic”.

If it’s just about intrusive off-topic political discussion, then I fully agree with you: it’s far more common in Lemmy than in Reddit, and sometimes it reaches a point that even people who’d otherwise enjoy discussing politics roll their eyes and say “not this shit again”.

However, if “toxic” includes other forms of undesirable behaviour, then Lemmy is probably less toxic than Reddit. For example: while sometimes you do see here disingenuous and deliberate stupidity, “waah TL;DR!!”, the “I don’t understand” conveying disagreement, or passive aggressiveness, in Reddit they pop up all the time.

So, what do you consider toxic? Depending on that, the other users’ experiences might be really similar or really different from yours.

lvxferre, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

That hints me that what people here is calling “toxic” is politics-related, since I’m a lemmy.ml user and I certainly would not say that my experience here is overall “toxic”.

And, funnily enough, most of the issues that I had were with users from either lemmy.world or sh.itjust.works; sometimes lemm.ee.

lvxferre, 4 months ago

Got it - mostly politics, then. That explains a lot why you guys are seeing far more toxicity than I do, I don’t generally join political discussions. (And when I do, since I’m myself communist, perhaps I don’t even notice it.)