TomSwirly

TomSwirly, 3 months ago

@petrescatraian @OGjester

Question for you: do you think that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and
the German Democratic Republic proves that democracy doesn't work? Do you think that Nazis were socialists because. of their name?

We live on a planet that is completely dominated by capitalism, which is systematically killing the planet's ecosystem.

No crime committed by any states could possibly equal that.

TomSwirly, 3 months ago

@koteisaev @jeffowski

> Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky

Can you explain what, say, Marx and Stalin have in common?

(I had a lot of trouble not being mocking or incredulous in my comment...)

TomSwirly, 3 months ago

@petrescatraian @OGjester

Yes. That's the point. The DPRK is not democratic, in exactly the same way that the Communist Party of China and the Soviet Union were not communist.

> It is people's actions that affect the ecosystem and the environment. All people. Whether rich or poor

You are completely and utterly wrong.

https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/carbon-emissions-richest-1-percent-more-double-emissions-poorest-half-humanity

A tiny group of people is driving the bus off the cliff, and are very willing to use violence to stop us stopping them.

TomSwirly, 3 months ago

@petrescatraian @OGjester

> Vegan products are still more expensive than regular products, at least where I live.

The first time I went vegan, it was because I ran out of money in university.

When people make this claim, I used to be baffled, but then I realize that people think "vegan food" means expensive, prepackaged goods with the word "VEGAN" on them.

But what is cheaper than potatoes, beans, rice, vegetables in general? Tofu runs about half the price of beef and has more protein.

1/

TomSwirly, 3 months ago

@petrescatraian @OGjester Seitan is even cheaper!

Tempeh here in the West is artificially expensive so it costs the same as beef, but in Indonesia it's a fraction of the cost of beef.

(And some places have "textured vegetable protein" which is also very cheap but I'm not sure of the health status of it.)

We buy all sorts of rices, beans and other dried food in bulk, and then use a tiny bit of the money we save on exotic spices and other flavoring agents, like ginger or wasabi.

TomSwirly, 3 months ago

@petrescatraian @OGjester

Quoted for truth:

> But billionaires? They have all the money they could have. They can make the choice of not using personal jets when traveling around. Or doing anything that could cut their emissions.

> Yet they do not want to.

Hear, hear! I realized what was happening around 2001 and changed my life

When I see some billionaire fly two jets (one empty!) around the world just to see a sports game, it's hard not to feel a flash of rage...

TomSwirly, 3 months ago

@petrescatraian @OGjester

All of those are vegan! ❤️

Indeed, I see you're Romanian. (My father spoke that language, along with many others, but I can only understand a few words.)

When I was young, vegans were mostly poor hippies and would go to bulk stores to buy rice, beans, or peanut butter in bulk. I was at those stores too, buying the same stuff, but because I was broke.

But then when veganism became popular, businesses decided to make expensive, special vegan products.

1/

TomSwirly, 3 months ago

@petrescatraian @OGjester And to be honest, some of these are very tasty. The Beyond Burger and Beyond Sausage taste really good... but they are not just expensive, they aren't super healthy either.

We have these once or twice a week at most, as a treat.

I recommend to most people a "plant-based diet". Basically, it's just like vegan except you ignore tiny amounts of non-vegan stuff in your food, and occasionally cheat. 👿

2/

TomSwirly, 3 months ago

@petrescatraian @OGjester For example, most potato chips contain "whey", a byproduct of making yoghurt and other stuff, because it's very cheap. (Why do pickle flavored chips need milk in them? No idea.)

A vegan would never buy it - a plant-based person would say, "Oh, it's like 1% of this junk food, I don't care."

You get nearly all the health benefits, nearly all the benefit to the planet, and you don't have to go wading through labels all the time or feel militant.

TomSwirly, 3 months ago

@petrescatraian @OGjester I was a vegetarian when I got married: my wife was not, but then started reading up on the whole thing and went full vegan! I made zero attempt to influence her, either, but she was always a lover of animals.

When she lost her job, she just threw herself into cooking in a big way, and I got the benefits.

She doesn't even spend much time on it - the secret is pre-planning the day before, and yes, a pressure cooker.

TomSwirly, 3 months ago

@petrescatraian @OGjester You're very very welcome. It's always a pleasure!

And I see you're a dog owner. ❤️ We had two dogs, now one (the other got very old...) and we changed their food fairly often as they got allergies, and sometimes they are vegan and sometimes not.

TomSwirly, 3 months ago

@petrescatraian @OGjester You can do all these things with a few pots on a stove, we did it for years.

The pressure cooker just saves you some time.

TomSwirly, 3 months ago

@petrescatraian @OGjester It's always a pleasure to chat with a fellow dog owner!

We used to have two dogs, but one got very old.

Both dogs had sometimes been vegan, sometimes not. We actually first switched our dog to a vegan diet on the advice of a non-vegan vet to deal with allergies, which worked for a year, until he got allergic to the vegan food.

He's vegan again at this point, and really seems to love this food, but I expect that will again change.

TomSwirly, 3 months ago

@petrescatraian @OGjester Heh, not fries.

TBH, the only truly Great fries I've had have been professionally cooked. I spent some time here in Amsterdam chatting to a woman who ran fry stand about her process, wow! (She had two different oil friers, at different temperatures, and would run something like 2.5 minutes in one and 3 in the other...)

We got an air fryer during the pandemic, and that makes OK fries, but still....

TomSwirly, 3 months ago

@petrescatraian @OGjester Well, even a picture of a dog is good enough for me!

It's funny, I was 50 before I had any relationship to dogs at all. I mean, I've always loved animals but I was a bit scared of dogs. Now I have to stop myself from petting random dogs on the street! (Don't try that in Romania, I hear!)

TomSwirly, 3 months ago

@petrescatraian @OGjester This is the role of dogs since before the dawn of history!!

TomSwirly, 3 months ago

@microtones Steve Reich started wearing hats once his male pattern baldness took over, much like Ian Anderson.

I understand the reasoning!

TomSwirly, 3 months ago

@dcz @bbelderbos typing.NamedTuple is based on tuples and therefore is immutable.

dataclasses are simply regular objects, so they aren't as tiny as NamedTuple, but have additional features.

There are some other subtle differences too.

TomSwirly, 3 months ago

@dcz @bbelderbos dataclasses are very full-featured, I find I end up using them quite a bit more than NamedTuple.

For example, what if you want to do something to the object after construction?

TomSwirly, 3 months ago

@bbelderbos @dcz Sure, that'd be exciting!

You have an almost guaranteed uptoot from me. 😄

TomSwirly, 3 months ago

@idoubtit Evidence for your claim?

What would your explanation be for these?

TomSwirly, 3 months ago

@astrid The world of Python dependency management is cruel and dark.

TomSwirly, 3 months ago

@astrid @byte Weeeeell.... it turns out that solving this problem is intrinsically exponential in the number of existing versions, so if you have a lot of dependencies with no version numbers there are intrinsically a lot of steps.

Don't get me wrong, this could be solved or mitigated, but by no means easily.

All your other complaints are bang on!

TomSwirly, 3 months ago

@astrid @byte

It depends on your dependencies.

As an experiment, in my last job I replaced all the restrictions except Python with "*" and ran a resolution using poetry.

I stopped it 28 hours later. No way to tell how far it had gotten!

There were a lot of transitive dependencies, this was an AI project that included many other AI projects.

TomSwirly, 3 months ago

@SFRuminations I recently read two Moorcock books, The Warlord of the Air (1971), and The Land Leviathan (1975).

I got them a few years after they were published when I was in a big sword and sorcery kick, and I don't think I even finished them, but now I felt they were a cut above, say, Elric, by being having more political awareness and a more radical view of the world. (I'm about to start Stormbringer but TBH, the first four of the five I could find on my shelves were a bit dull...)