nickwitha_k

nickwitha_k, 1 day ago

I would be surprised if someone hasn’t been scraping it for years.

nickwitha_k, 18 hours ago (edited 15 hours ago)

Fighting the good fight against accelerationism, authoritarianism, and bad faith. I don’t have the emotional energy to do so with any consistency at this time - the 21st century has been very draining. Make sure that you take time for self-care. @pugjesus you too.

nickwitha_k, 18 hours ago

I know you’ve got a ban but, hopefully you can see this.

I find it concerning that I no can no longer tell which group is supposed to be the one telling the other to shut up about the toppings

This is actually a rather good reflection of the reality, though maybe not the way that you intend. Anti-electoralism, accelerationism, and right-wing politcs, by the data on outcomes are equivalent. It is hard to tell, at this time, whether an individual supporting the former two is genuinely a believer, a state actor, or other political operative.

nickwitha_k, 9 hours ago

Money doesn’t buy happiness but it can help someone who is struggling to meet their basic needs not get stuck in a depressive state. Plus, it can be used in exchange for goods and services that show efficacy against depression.

nickwitha_k, 2 hours ago

Everyone’s brains are different. For some SSRIs might work. For others, SNRIs. While there are claims of cocaine and prostitutes being helpful for some, that’s not really scientifically proven and there the significant health and imprisonment risks. There is, however, strong evidence for certain psychedelics.

TL;DR - Drugs might be helpful for some.

nickwitha_k, 1 day ago

No place that experiences temperatures of 100F/37C in the Fall is suitable for human settlement.

nickwitha_k, 1 day ago

Hey, Cairo and Baghdad:

No place that experiences temperatures of 100F/37C in the Fall is suitable for human settlement.

nickwitha_k, 1 day ago

Happy Blendo noises

nickwitha_k, 1 day ago

Blendo was a robot made by Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman to compete in Robot Wars before MythBusters. Its “weapon” was a horizontal flywheel. After two matches, they were given a newly-created award of co-champion on the condition that they did not participate in any more matches.

The sheer amount of energy stored in and dumped from the flywheel obliterated their competition and posed a very real human safety risk.

nickwitha_k, 1 day ago

A Great Kilt (invented by Scots, as far as am aware) definitely. I should have been more specific. I was referring to the Small Kilt (which is what I most often hear people referring to as a kilt), which comes from the 18th century.

nickwitha_k, 1 day ago

Should have been more precise, I think. I most frequently hear “kilt” referring to the Small Kilt which comes from the 18th century, not the Great Kilt.

nickwitha_k, 18 hours ago

Kinda. nil is a weird value in Go, not quite the same as null or None in JS and Python, respectively. A nil value may or may not be typed and it may or may not be comparable to similar or different types. There is logical consistency to where these scenarios can be hit but it is pretty convoluted and much safer, with fewer footguns to check for nil values before comparison.

I’m other words, in Go (nil == nil) || (nil != nil), depending on the underlaying types. One can always check if a variable has a nil value but may not be able to compare variables if one or more have a nil value. Therefore, it is best to first check for nil values to protect against errors that failure to execute comparisons might cause (anything from incorrect outcome to panic).

ETA: Here’s some examples

<span style="color:#323232;">// this is always possible for a variable that may have a nil value. 
</span><span style="color:#323232;">a != nil || a == nil
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">a = nil
</span><span style="color:#323232;">b = nil
</span><span style="color:#323232;">// This may or may not be valid, depending on the underlying types.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">a != b || a == b
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">// Better practice for safety is to check for nil first
</span><span style="color:#323232;">if a != nil && b != nil {
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    if a == b {
</span><span style="color:#323232;">        fmt.Println("equal")
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    } else {
</span><span style="color:#323232;">        fmt.Println("not equal")
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    }
</span><span style="color:#323232;">} else {
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    fmt.Println("a and/or b is nil and may not be comparable")
</span><span style="color:#323232;">}
</span>

nickwitha_k, 19 hours ago (edited 16 hours ago)

This has become so non-stop that I had to do some research on logical fallacies because I was quite sure that there was a formal name for what we’re seeing from anti-electoralists and accelerationists (the Venn diagram is pretty much a circle). And I was right.

In this thread there’s actually two (at least).

• False Dilemma (aka false dichotomy): “You can either support genocide by voting for Biden (or Trump) or oppose it by voting third-party (or not voting).” This is just ridiculous levels of oversimplification with an implicit nested False Equivalency fallacy (“both sides are the same”).
• Denying the Correlative (what I had to look up): “Vote third-party.” In the first-past-the-post, two-party system, there are only two choices that can have an impact. According to the data, voting third-party is nothing but a spoiler for the candidate of the major parties that one prefers. The choice is Biden ⊕ Trump. This fallacy is basically the inverse of the False Dilemma, which makes it all the more impressive to see the two used alongside one another.

nickwitha_k, 1 day ago

I’m a cis-het white guy so, don’t exactly have direct personal experience. However, having studied a bit on the subject in university in the 00s and have tried to better learn (and unlearn things from growing up in a small town).

Here’s based upon what I know:

It is not just the frequency of conservative Christianity in POC communities. It is also being a member of another group with a history being targeted for violent repression. So, it’s not just the societal institutional racism at play. It’s also the societal institutional homophobia, and the conservative christian homophobia, and the homophobia from any other root cause in their POC community, and the other risks that gay men are subjected to just by existing.