nikt

nikt, 4 months ago

I’m really surprised no one here has mentioned this yet, but a huge factor would have to be globalization and the offshoring of American manufacturing.

It started in the 70’s, with companies like GE and the car manufacturers moving factories to Mexico and later Asia, and with growing supply of imported cheap goods like steel. This really took off in the 80’s and 90’s with deliberate market liberalization and promotion of globalization during the Reagan/Bush and Clinton administrations.

In other words, American workers’ wages were pressured by the extremely low wages of overseas labour.

nikt, 3 months ago

Them’s hunting eyes.

nikt, 3 months ago

Those are some really bad comparisons. Caffeine and adrenaline have nothing to do with each other. A better comparison might be maybe heroin and morphine?

Methamphetamine and the amohetamines in Adderal aren’t all that different. Same mechanism of action, similar pharmacology. Meth is actually sold in the US as a Desoxyn. It still blows my mind that it’s Schedule II (classified as having legitimate medical uses) when cannabis is still Schedule I.

nikt, 4 months ago

Something about love in subs for Google ? And also JPEG?

nikt, 4 months ago

Isn’t this along the same lines as arguments against reducing carbon emissions (the climate naturally changes anyway, and species should be allowed to adapt on their own) or against reducing pollution (shit happen, deal with it)?

Spend a bit of time witnessing the impact invasive species can have. A formerly vibrant piece of nature goes quiet, monotonous, and ecologically deprived. Sure it still looks green, but it’s comparatively dead.

nikt, 2 months ago

I’m finding shade really challenging for native plants.

Things that are supposed to work, like Canada anemone and wild ginger are surviving but not thriving, and my Ostrich ferns have been anemic at best.

I threw in some Zig zag goldenrod, beard tongue, and obedient plant seeds last fall though, so we’ll see what happens this year.

nikt, 2 months ago

Digging up the entire back yard to try to remove all the Ailanthus roots that have been murdering just about everything I try to grow. Wish me luck!

Also a bunch of seeds I was stratifying in jars all winter have now sprouted. Pearly everlasting, Prairie smoke, Northern sea oats, Leadplant… yay!

nikt, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

I still blame Balckberry’s downfall on their deep integration and dependence on Microsoft server tech. A few weeks of dealing with that in the mid 2000s and I was sure the end was written for Blackberry.

nikt, 4 months ago

I won’t argue about whether this is dystopian, but the practical reason for the face projection is that they wanted to make this not just something you wear sitting alone in your basement, like most other VR headsets. They wanted it to be usable around other people, at a workplace, with family, etc.

Interacting with someone wearing a full face blind is just weird, so they thought that making the eyes visible would help make this a bit more socially usable.

I’m not sure that’s really going to work out — seems at least as awkward as Google’s failed Glass project — but Apple’s design decision has some merit.

nikt, 4 months ago

Apple is great at polishing and packaging things that already exist. The iPhone was a better Blackberry, the iPod a better MP3 player, the iMac a better all-in-one PC… I have a hard time thinking of stuff they truly pioneered. The Newton maybe? That did not end well for them.

If I had to bet, the Vision Pro will turn out to be a burnt pancake, but long term I have no doubt that something like it — something that augments reality one way or another — will become a thing. And in the meantime Apple has pockets more than deep enough to survive a failed Vision Pro.

The backlash against them trying to innovate is kind of dumb though. They aimed high for a change, and taking risks like this should be lauded not laughed at.

nikt, 3 months ago

To be fair, this is basically most of northern Canada in May/June as well. Also add black flies to the mix, which take small, anesthetized chunks out of you to make you bleed so that they can lick the blood off your skin… sometimes in clouds so thick, you have no choice but to just let it happen.

nikt, 3 months ago

Horseflies are big and they hurt! Black flies are small and completely silent and hurt only afterwards. They also keep bleeding and bleeding… No bueno.

nikt, 3 months ago

I was recently pleasantly surprised that this actually works with Siri, the former dunce child of mobile assistants. Stuff like “Remind me about X when I get in the car” also works now, so the reminder goes off when you connect to Carplay.

nikt, 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

Yes, it’s named after Claude Shannon, but I’ve never heard him described as “the founder of AI”. He’s the father of information theory, which is only indirectly connected to AI.

nikt, 3 months ago

Also don’t forget the “externalized” costs of massive and irreversible environmental damage!

nikt, 9 days ago

Doesn’t LG use WebOS?

Or at least they did three years ago when I wanted to buy a TV but everything was back ordered to he’ll…

nikt, 10 days ago (edited 2 days ago)

I am a very “techy person” (in fact Y-Combinator’s Hacker News has been a partial Reddit replacement for me), but like you, I too cringe at Lemmy’s constant stream of shitty star trek memes, repetitive “this is what living with ADHD is like”, and posts with days-old news items from 3rd rate wannabe-journalism sites. I mean a quarter of this site is literally screenshots of Twitter posts.

The obvious answer to the shitty content here would be to stop complaining and just start posting the things I’d want to see. But there’s a sense of futility in throwing good things into what feels like a giant pool of detritus.

Anyway one of the great things about old reddit was that, overall, the site (or rather the reddit hive brain) did a decent job at pushing the good stuff to the top. For reasons I don’t entirely understand, that doesn’t seem to be happening as much here on Lemmy.

nikt, 4 months ago

Also Portugal! I’m consistently pleasantly surprised every time i read or hear something about that country. And I’ve still never been.

nikt, 2 months ago

As with alcohol, I think it really depends on the individual.

For me, I find that too much regular pot puts me in a dim, slightly dissociated place. But it might also be that in the past I may have smoked too much cannabis at times when I was already headed for dim dissociation, so bit of a chicken and egg situation maybe. Meanwhile I have friends who swear that cannabis has saved their life, helping them cope with anxiety, OCD, etc.

Either way, if I had to choose between a pot or alcohol abuse problem, I’d def choose the former. It’s not ideal, but it’s far less likely to kill you or ruin your life.

nikt, 3 months ago

This is basically just a skeuomorph.

nikt, 3 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

That was my first thought too. This Cooper’s Hawk is way too small.

Turns out (according to Wikipedia) their adult size can vary a lot depending on location and other factors, from 14”-20”. The ones I see around here are def closer to 20 than 14, and the sharp shinned hawks are relatively small and slender.