fonix232

Specifically, foxes shagging.

Which tends to sound like an infant being raped. Super distressing.

This was me for a good three years. Standard condoms were always uncomfortable, to the point of pain, but not once did I consider going larger, thanks to my first girlfriend (our breakup was... less than ideal thanks to her cheating, and she then went on to tell me, and most of our friends, that my size was entirely inadequate, borderline micropenis, which I took to heart for quite a while).

It took the aforementioned three years and quite a few one-night stands telling me I'm big to even start thinking "hey maybe I need larger condoms".

Guys, don't be like me, if it's uncomfortable, go check out the many brands that do specifically sized nominal widths for condoms. Each will have a guide on successfully measuring yourself, or offer a sample kit which you can try for the right fit. Don't ruin your sex life with shitty condom choices.

Dumb can be helped. Most people tend to be "dumb" in the sense of lexical knowledge or lacking the understanding of logic, not the ability. Which means they CAN learn to become smarter, even if they require help and appropriate education (something the generic education system can't provide).

Perfect example are the three "worst students" in my high school class. They were troublemakers, because they didn't find the classes engaging, because they didn't understand them - all because they didn't understand the basics, as it wasn't taught to them in a way they could process it. I tutored them for a few months and every. single. teacher. No, I'm not joking, literally every single teacher made comments on their sudden improvements, often even testing them separately, not believing that students who just barely passed for 2-3 years suddenly were getting 80-90% on their tests.

So yeah, a lack of lexical knowledge is not a major issue for me. I'd definitely date someone who's attractive but dumb, because the latter can be "fixed".

What's more important in my opinion is their general attitude, approach to life. Are they kind? Are they a good person? How do they treat others - let that be friends, strangers, animals, waitstaff/service workers, etc.?

Dumb can be fixed, but an awful personality most often can't.

Basic scripting is hardly programming, and it's been available in various user-friendly forms for quite a while...

Problem is that most people do seem to treat LLMs as if they could replace a well trained engineer. Including middle managers who want to cut costs at all price.

what a load of bull.

AI doesn't "democratise" coding. One still needs to understand the basics of computer science, as well as higher level software design, to make use of AI tools and get actually usable results.

LLMs can write good code but they require constant guidance to do so. This is something that people need to understand. AI in coding is like Photoshop to an "analog" artist - super useful IF you know what you're doing, but as a complete stranger to the topic, all you'll do is basic tinkering.

The thing is, this is happening precisely because manufacturers are giving a flying fuck. They're seeing that the AI bubble is about to burst, and that this increased demand won't last for long. So why spend tons of money on expanding production capacity when said capacity wouldn't even be used?

Not to mention that the current pricing bump is entirely on the OEMs, not the ODMs (ODM here being the DRAM manufacturers, OEMs being the RAM module manufacturers). OEMs have already bought and paid for the DRAM they're selling right now, as it takes generally 2-3 months from manufacturing for the product to hit the shelves, and DRAM modules are usually bought at least 6 months, but usually 12-18 months ahead. Meaning these fuckers bought the DRAM cheap, saw the possibility of there being scarcity in the future, took a guess on how much they will need to inflate prices to reduce demand... And immediately jumped to those prices because if morons will pay £1000 for 64GB of RAM instead of £200, even though the production cost is still at £50... Well that's just "good business" to maximise profits, innit?

I really dislike this insinuated detachment of capitalism from the right.

Capitalism is inherently a right-wing ideology, placing control of the means of production into the hands of individuals and corporations, for the benefit of the individual/corporation. Individualism and corporatism in turn are core tenets of (alt)right politics.

Now it's one thing that the US Overton window shifted so much to the right that what were once borderline radical right-wing policies, are considered today to be "commie libtard ideology"... But that doesn't change the fact that capitalism is inherently right-wing. So of course fascists would heavily rely on it. After all it gives them both control and plausible deniability of said control.

That's actually somewhat of a Safari bug.

Safari has this tendency of opening videos in full screen, if the video is natively embedded (not using a third party video player component), is set to auto play, and isn't flagged specifically for not opening automatically in full screen (this is a Safari specific flag that no other browser requires as no other browser has this stupid default behaviour).

Except it does. Any LEO that is openly discriminating against specific members of the society they're policing based on inalienable characteristics - aka what they were born as, let that be being ginger, having complete alopecia, or being a goblin - should be disqualified from those duties.

Technically, money as a term applies to any kind of exchange valuation system, not just currencies and their representations (aka coins and bills and other denominations).

And the history of valuation of exchange goes back to prehistoric times - as long as barter has existed, so has money, even if it wasn't called officially that.

For example we have records of debt ledgers from ancient Mesopotamia, cca 5000BCE, which tallied goods exchanges that weren't executed immediately (e.g. one party would offer a dozen eggs in return for a unit of wheat, but the wheat would be delivered months later).

But debt handling goes back even further, tally sticks were used as early as 30000BCE. Yes, even cavemen traded and kept rudimentary records of it.

Mind you these are all "money of account" systems. "Money of exchange" systems - where an intermediary, representative system is used for valuation instead of an account - also developed prior to coin usage. In North Africa, the Mediterranean, and ancient China, units of salt were frequently used for such purpose. In Mexico? Cacao beans. In the Maldives, natives used cowrie shells. Hell, in Ancient Greece and Rome, even slaves were used as money.

Interestingly, the first evidence of gold jewelry - from around 4600BCE to 4200BCE, the exact time being hard to determine with certainty - actually falls around the same time as the Mesopotamian use of trade account ledgers, making it hard to identify which might've appeared sooner - however most gold jewelry evidence from the era is located quite further away from Mesopotamia, in current day Bulgaria, meaning the two did not coexist at the same place in the same time (at least presumably), making it so that in some areas, gold jewelry might have appeared sooner than a formalised/codified approach to money of account, and vice versa, in some areas, accounting existed for millennia before good began appearing in use for jewelry or decoration (e.g. in Mesopotamia, the oldest discovery of gold use is dated to around 2500BCE).

But ultimately, humans of all eras, even prior to tool use, liked to adorn themselves with things they found pretty, and pretty things thus have always held value even if not officially codified, so I think we can state with confidence that gold jewelry and gold as money more or less come hand in hand in history.

Chickens are opportunistic feeders.

They take any opportunity to feed.

Fortunately bad quality DRAM can be found out much quicker than bad quality capacitors.

Not really. DRAM at its core is not even useful without a controller that actually provides managed access to it. Any backdoor would need to be either in the controller or a layer above for it to be functional. And controllers aren't the issue, DRAM chips are.

This.

There isn't a singular pinnacle stoner food because munchies hit different for everyone, and even for one person there's tons of variations.

Sometimes I'll crave a super cheesy Chicago style deep dish pizza. Another time, I'll die for some Black Forest Gateaux, or even a simple vanilla ice cream. Other times I can demolish an entire fruit basket. Hell, once I craved creamed spinach...

You fight government overreach by civil disobedience, not by corporatist overreach in the same manner.

If you give a free pass to corporations disobeying laws just because you personally dislike those laws, soon you'll find all regulations are pointless because no corporation follows them...

Also, there's no such thing as "governmental overreach" in a well working system that is FOR the people and BY the people. You elect the representatives, you have a say in what laws get passed. I do agree that we could do with a refresher because the current forms of representative democracy are breaking thanks to (primarily right wing) political false marketing with no repercussions, and nowadays we do have a way to have people give direct input on laws and regulations before they get passed, but that doesn't negate the fact that the government isn't supposed to be some shady ruler class but rather a form of communal governance.

There's no clear cut answer for that because there's no absolute morality - and this is presented by the many issues raised with the entirety of the wizarding world Rowling built.

Take house elves for example. For us it's obvious, they're quasi slaves, and no amount of them saying they want this can alleviate the fact that wizards are enslaving an entire race just to make housework easier. We do see from e.g. the Weasleys that housework is trivial - an enchantment here, a spell there, and dishes clean themselves, clothes stay clean and well shaped (let it be ironing, pressing, etc.), pretty much the only unique, unreplicateable ability elves have is that they can apparate anywhere unrestricted.

And it's not like many treat them well. Sure, the ones at Hogwarts are not abused, as far as we know. But look at the other examples. The Malfoys with Dobby, the Blacks with Kreacher, even the Crouches with their elves whose name I don't remember... Just continuous abuse. Verbal, physical, emotional.

And it's not like Harry or most of his idols are exceptions. The only people we see treat Kreacher well, are the Weasley parents, and Hermione. And by "treat well" I mean not abuse. Harry cusses him out in DH, and even throws shit at him, Ron too has some not exactly nice remarks, and don't get me started on Sirius, the man who claims to have left behind his family's "dark and evil" ways, treats Kreacher as if he was responsible for Sirius' childhood trauma.

Or take the Goblins of Gringotts. Most wizards see them as necessary downside for a working financial system. Most wizards also don't think they're people.

Or literally any other sapient creature. Look how Firenze is treated in OoP by the students. He's "just" a centaur, and even though Dumbledore names him a professor, the students don't consider him an actual teacher. Harry and a few others are open minded enough, but most think of him as a talking horse (I think this name is actually said in the books).

So many creatures show not just sentience (aka the understanding of self, which most animals exhibit, alongside basic emotions that aren't instinctual), but actual sapience - the ability to form coherent, complex thoughts and communicate those in some form - meaning they're not just intelligent on the level of an animal, but at least as an equal to human intelligence and cognizance. And yet these creatures are treated as second class citizens, if they're citizens at all and not just considered "wildlife", making them property.

And while Harry might be "good" in the eye of the reader... He also doesn't consider most of these creatures as equals. He fought for equality within the wizards, regardless of their birth status, where their magic comes from, or who their families are... but didn't give a crap about the creatures, he was more than happy to preserve the status quo. He saw only one side of the injustice, fought against it, and won, proclaiming himself to be the good guy. While completely ignoring the more systemic injustices and in fact considering them perfectly okay.

To make a comparison with real world... imagine if the US civil war was fought over not slaves per se, but just the non-black slaves' (so Asian, American indigenous, arab and Semitic, and what Americans considered "non-white" at the time like Spanish, Italian, Irish, Polish, etc. European immigrants) status, the Norrh saying "yeah slavery is fine up until this skin tone".

To me this screams morally grey at best, because okay, Harry is directly opposing genocide... but on the other hand doesn't give a crap about non-human members of the wizarding world, beyond "don't kill them unnecessarily". He doesn't just don't want to change the system - he doesn't even see the issue with it!

Honestly the only morally positive person throughout the entire franchise was Newt Scamander from Fabtastic Beasts. Respectful towards all forms of life, no matter how sapient or not they are, always fighting for their betterment, protecting those who can't defend themselves, and only fighting those who'd attack otherwise dedenceles creature.

Threats do work when delivered properly. See how the EU forced Apple into moving to USB-C or opening up sideloading/alternate app markets.

You just need to have weight to throw around behind your threats. The EU has weight. The UK alone? Hah.

Nope. His job was mostly to mop up after careless wizards and witches that enchanted or cursed Muggle objects to behave... differently than intended.

His fascination with Muggle stuff was a completely personal thing, although most others disliked it. Which to me made little sense, wizards being so stuck up their own arse they completely ignore the Muggle world like they're not part of it when the literally live around them.

tbf there WAS a purge of aurors who supported Dumbledore and those who stayed with the Ministry did bail once Voldy took over.

Even Arthur Weasley, whose job was mostly irrelevant and minor, hightailed it out of there.

Well no surprise there, Harry was essentially a jock who only excelled in two things:

magical self defence
sports

And he was good enough in magical self defence that he took down the biggest baddest wizard with just the disarming spell. Literally a magical "put yer gun down".

He could've gone into sports but hey, he just finished off the "big bad" shortly after he turned 18, so of course he'd chase that high. Especially when his girlfriend went into sports and they could hardly both play, that would be constant tension.

So yup, he went on to be a cop. And I see a lot of people claiming that ooh, the wizarding world is different, the police aren't sent after innocent people, their justice system isn't rigged, there's no discrimination, yada yada... Hello??? Magical SAPIENT creatures are routinely enslaved, Dumbledore, someone people thought to be above reproach, was constantly accosted by the very same cops, Harry himself was accused and dragged into a kangaroo court over DEFENDING himself, the aurors have proven time after time that most of them are just as ineffective as the typical Murican doughnut-muncher mall cop, and about discrimination... "mudbloods" need a reminder? Or how Filch is treated?

The wizarding world is the last living remnant of the elitism of the British monarchy/nobility, and if you don't see this, you lack practically all comprehensive reading skills. Put down those rose tinted glasses and read Harry Potter while paying attention to the social narrarive. It will open your eyes.

fonix232

@ fonix232 @fedia.io

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fonix232

What are your best 'strange noise from the woods' stories?

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Code Is Cheap Now. Software Isn’t

Code Is Cheap Now. Software Isn’t

After Micron's greedy decision, SK Hynix could also exit consumer DRAM and NAND business

New megadonors with major business before the government back Trump's super PAC

This CEO laid off nearly 80% of his staff because they refused to adopt AI fast enough. 2 years later, he says he’d do it again

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HP reportedly eyes Chinese suppliers for DRAM as global shortage sparks shake-up — analyst says memory chips are commodities that can easily be replaced

HP reportedly eyes Chinese suppliers for DRAM as global shortage sparks shake-up — analyst says memory chips are commodities that can easily be replaced

What would you consider the ideal "stoner food?"

Cloudflare defies Italy’s Piracy Shield, won’t block websites on 1.1.1.1 DNS

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X pulls Grok images after UK ban threat over undress tool

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