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Looking for "R-rated", gritty, gorey high fantasy books
  • The First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie is a fine example of grimdark high fantasy. It isn't overflowing with sex scenes, but carnal relationships are definitely in play.

  • Darmok and Jalad on the Falcon
  • More of a "only speak in cultural memes" thing. We all speak in phrases mostly.

    "I am feeling alarm at the moment of realization that every warrior I am commanding may be killed by the enemy who has prepared for our assault with deadly guile." This complex and specific meaning might be encoded as "Ackbar above Endor when the Death Star struggled."

    The whole thing is a bit queationable with the whole "how can they say things without some sort of language independant of their cultural memes to encode those memes within." That part never made sense to me.

  • Why does it feel like too much effort just to go from sitting around looking at garbage online to simply watching a film or playing a video game?
  • A shallow angle from the sun give you that long shadow, but it also gives the light lots of extra air to pass through sideways on it's way down out of space. The extra air filters out more light, and without an intense enough light your skin won't make Vitamin D.

  • My grocery store wants to know my BMI
  • Sorry to dissappoint.

  • My grocery store wants to know my BMI
  • As for purpose, it is just a higher fidelity, deeper hook into measuring you as a consumer.

  • My grocery store wants to know my BMI
  • Nah, fuck em. Even the less sophisticated Wi-Fi approach is skeevy as fuck. I should just trust that the will only do what they say when given more than they need? Absolutely not. They might, but I wouldn't rely on it.

  • My grocery store wants to know my BMI
  • They want to use your gyroscope to synchronize your movement within the store with their mapping of what products are on which shelves.

    Historically this has been done by offering free in-store Wi-Fi and then triangulating the movement of cell phones within the store based on their signal strength from the perspective of the various Wi-Fi access point supporting the store's network, but a gyroscope will even tell them if you crouch down or turn around.

  • If a machine is never 100% efficient transforming energy into work because part of the energy is converted into heat, does it mean an electric heater is 100% efficient? [@[email protected]](h
  • Black-body radiation is an interesting argument against 100% efficiency, but couldn't you just extrapolate and argue that the emission will be converted back to heat once it stops reflecting and becomes absorbed?

  • California's war on plastic bag use seems to have backfired. Lawmakers are trying again
  • I'ma second. This is officiallly unofficial permission to begin your dissertation on unforeseen consequences. I'm here for this.

  • "Outdoor Cat vs Indoor Cat" by Sarah Andersen
  • Cats survived before us by hunting small mammals and small birds, and they are very effective at getting fed.

    The motivation at the core of naming owners of outdoor cats as irresponsible is a sharp decline in songbird populations in direct proportion to the increase in outdoor cat population.

  • Help me understand module system in ES
  • In all seriousness, this is a fine scenario for AI guided learning. I gave Bing Copilot your question, and the response was very helpful.

    Here's the trick though:

    // In 'firereact/firestore/index.ts'
    export { useDocument } from './useDocument';
    

    and:

    // In 'tsconfig.json'
    {
      "compilerOptions": {
        // ...
      },
      "exclude": ["**/*.test.ts", "**/*.spec.ts", "path/to/firebase.ts"]
    }
    
  • Neurodiversity In The Workplace
  • I might use the idea of horseback riding as an analogy. The neurotypical reflection of a human mind is a well-trained horse with a proficient rider. The rider is the concious viewpoint of the mind tied up with concious will. The horse is the rest of the mind (including the parts that control the body).

    Someone with ADHD is riding a poorly-trained horse. It doesn't mean that the horse doesn't sometimes respond correctly to the commands of the rider, but it is far more likely to listen when the commands align with whatever the horse would prefer to be doing, and sometimes the horse won't listen at all even if the rider is trying desperately to get it to stop eating grass and get back on the path.

    The analogy here drives home the idea that there is a disconnect between what the concious mind "wants" to do and what the rest of the mind is doing.

    The analogy doesn't stretch very far, but by highlighting one of the major flaws of the analogy you can likewise highlight the painful irony of ADHD: to an outside observer there is no way to see that the rider is trying anything at all. This whole analogy is taking place inside one person's skull, and the entire concept of struggling to steer your own mind doesn't make much sense when you have a horse and rider that work so smoothly together that they feel unified.

  • Equation by Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
  • enough

    I think you underestimate the extremes we could go to with the directive to keep adding money until it works.

  • *Permanently Deleted*
  • What was the other?