Yeah. Though not really a fan of the use of ‘simpler’ here, as it has other connotations than simply ‘less syntactically complex’ which is really what we’re seeing. In many very real ways, the fragmented phrasing etc of less formalised forms of language are structurally more complex than regular written forms.

I’m surprised that what seems to me to be the most obvious hypothesis isn’t covered. Until very recently, historically speaking, written and spoken language have been very clearly separated forms of language use.

With the advent of the internet, instant messaging, social media etc, the distinction has been gradually blurring in the sense that written language is being used more and more frequently for what would previously have been considered ‘spoken uses’.

We know spoken language mostly consists of shorter fragmented phrases compared to the longer complete sentences of the written word. It should not be surprising that as writing is increasingly used for ‘written speech’, regular writing will be influenced to move in the direction of the shorter phrasing of spoken language while otherwise maintaining the syntax and grammar rules of written language forms.

Always worth keeping in mind that the first rule of power is that it never surrenders itself willingly.

In this case, what that means is thatthe courts - supreme or not - will only go along with Trump’s power grab for as long as the belief that it furthers their own power prevails. And that belief is cracking.

It’s cracking way too late to stop the power grab from progressing further, but still.

Honestly, if we’re going to insist on this representative stuff that maintains a persistent hierarchy of power, it needs to be divorced from these kinds of influence channels. Becoming an MP should be an exclusive commitment. Once an MO, you should be barred from all other employment for a long time after leaving office.

We should all be more than happy to guarantee former MPs wages for that entire period, it would be a drop in the bucket of any national budget and would be a significant filter both to becoming an MP in the first place and to engaging in this kind of influence peddling as well.

Israel doesn’t give two shits about the hostages beyond their propaganda value. That much has been obvious since before day one to anyone willing to actually believe their eyes and ears.

Think these might be creationist penguins.

Windvane Lammy… if he’s leaning towards criticism now that suggests tensions are higher than I expected them to be.

Yeah one of my more… tech adventurous friends had the most insane series of security breaches (to out it mildly) potentially related to this and some other recent ridiculousness.

I really need people to understand that a) most people neither do or want to pay attention to politics, because they don’t have time or energy for it and because b) they are (rightly) convinced that politica just doesn’t work for them. So what will they do? They will tag on to anything that sounds oine it’s different to the same old bullshit.

Not because they don’t believe the new bullshit isn’t also bullshit, but at least it’s not the same bullshit that got us into our current mess.

Everyone in politics and the media lie to us all the time about everything. That’s not meant to be a true statement, but it is one that clearly feels true to most people. And Hannah Arendt once said something important about how people respond to such circumstances, and about what such a people can be brought to do. It’s not pretty.

Am currently reading the book, it’s a worthwhile read. And I already have a list of people I will recommend it to, because I think it will nudge them in the right direction politically.

It’s arbitrary. The reasoning is based around avoiding inflationary effects, but that’s based on a stupidly simplistic and wrong-headed idea of how inflation works.

Thing about social democratic bureaucracy is that it tends to end up being extremely rigid with politicians who are particularly entrenched in this rigid system of rules. So in these states, things like ‘not hurting long term goals too much’ matters because going at cross purposes with legally stated aims in any way is more than good enough reason to not do it at all. You don’t get to interpret your way around the law in states like Norway.

Add to this that the same politicians also have entirely forgotten what social democracy is supposed to be - maintaining a capitalistic market economy while leveraging state power to counteract its negative social effects and ensure the social security of the people - in favour of some idea that it’s actually just a set of basic institutions that were invented one to two hundred years ago that don’t need any kind of updating outside of just the bare minimum of maintenance, and… well, you end up with states that run relatively well but increasingly keep creaking at the seams, everything increasingly underfunded, with politicians who seem convinced they can’t actually do anything apart from tinkering at the edges.

This breeds discontent and political distrust. And in such conditions, it doesn’t really matter if the vast majority would want us to support good causes abroad, people will still be angry about it because it feels like they are getting stepped on in favour of someone else. They couldn’t tell you exactly why they feel that way, so they grab on to the nearest idea - cognitively speaking - that they can spin an understandable narrative about. Immigrants is the obvious one. Political elites playing their games the obvious next one. Then comes the common misunderstandings about economics, especially where inflation is relevant.

Basically our politicians have put themselves in a corner they are unequipped to get themselves out of, and everything they do ends up producing backlash one way or another.

Yes, the rule is up to 4% of annual proceeds can go into the national budget for covering spending. That rule, however, is arbitrary nonsense and only serves to limit the size and scale of investments on the budget.

The actual limiting factor is that the law states that the purpose of the fund is to save for the benefit of future generations. That’s something they will have to navigate. Personally I would like for there to be a mechanism that basically requires a ‘business case’ outlining how any proposed investment/spending will align with that stated aim of the fund. Making such a case here should be pretty straightforward, as allowing one of our neighbouring countries to militarily invade and conquer their neighbours wouldn’t be good for said ‘future generations’.

I think one of the more important things you can get across to him is this:

Porn is fine, but it’s fiction. It’s no more real or realistic than the latest superhero blockbuster, and should be thought of that way. It’s entertainment, not education.

There are sex ed channels on Youtube. Good ones. Sexplanations is one, but there are also others. Seek those out.

I know this is going to be a very awkward conversation, but you have to understand this: he will be finding and watching porn, and most likely already is at 14. Don’t shame him for that. In any way. Let him know that you know, and that it’s normal, but that it’s important to think of it like it’s just the movies. Cos that’s what it is.

I feel like probably the biggest UX improvement Lemmy, and the fediverse more widely, could do is to make user migration more seamless. I’m thinking federated SSO, basically, where once you have an account anywhere on the fediverse you should a) be able to use that account anywhere else in the fediverse and b) move where that account is hoeted to anywhere else in the fediverse.

I believe this is related to whatever the hell ActivityPod is doing? Feel free to correct me on that. Regardless, get something like this in place as well as better instance and services discovery (and maybe the ability to find your other connected services from you ‘account’ pages on whatever service you’re on) and I think people might start to think of fediverse as less ‘an alternative’ and more ‘the better one’.

Basically, we need standard protocols for user data management, transfer, credentials management, and service and instance discovery. I’m sure some of that exists, the important thing will be to streamline and standardise the actual UX.

The neutrinos… they’re evolving!

https://youtu.be/bXdBzpRDR5I?si=moBDV96m4xg0E8ln

SI just isn’t, or at least hasn’t been, set up to do this kind of step-change development. It’s been streamlined essentially since the split from the Championship Manager series to operate on an iterate-on-what-we-have basis with overlapping one-, two-, and three-year dev cycles geared toward developing annual refreshes of essentially the same game.

Everything from the dev cycle through AA, marketing, publishing, and even licensing is based on that fundamental structure. But that’s a model with an expiry date, and the kind of complete refresh they are currently attempting has been sorely needed for years already.

But they should have just announced a hiatus year at the start to get this done. They were never going to be able to do this within their regular annual cycle.

On the other hand, jitter in a complex system is exactly what you expect to see when that system is undergoing a process of destabilization.

Nah we’re speedrunning the 20s currently, so it’ll probably be another ten, fifteen years or so.

People seem to be missing something important about this suggestion:

In a market system where solar pv is an option, per-residence efficiency and effectiveness matters a lot and the objections raised here makes sense. But a mandate that all new builds come with solar pv changes that logic fundamentally.

You are now in the domain of grid-scale distributed energy production, grid resilience, and production scaling that will force panel prices much, much further down. This is an infrastructure change and should be considered in those terms.

I would personally have started with residential energy storage for the same reason, but honestly both should happen anyway.