I advocate for logical and consistent viewpoints on controversial topics. If you’re looking at my profile, I’ve probably made you mad by doing so.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • I see what you mean, but energy isn’t currently free, and as we built more headroom, crypto and AI have simply eaten up that headroom. Don’t take my word for it, simply look at the statistics on how much more energy we are using than 10 years ago, and then look at corporate energy usage now on those two things. Renewables haven’t kept up because large corporations keep eating more and more. In fact, governments have had to **de-**decomission a few coal plants because the energy usage was so high. Here’s an article on one of them that is supporting a massive crypto farm.

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m absolutely 100% glad that the energy is not all coming from coal plants anymore, but also it isn’t like none of it is.

    And no energy is emission free. You still have to pay the environmental cost to create and maintain the equipment gathering the energy in the first place.

    In short, renewables are great. Corporate overusage of energy is not, especially for incredibly selfish gain like crypto and “AI”. I’m not going to cheer for the shares at corporations to be higher simply because we have renewables offsetting a tiny bit of the massive power they suck up.




  • That paper is not really a source, it’s a literature review. That’s not inherently bad, but essentially all it does is pull things in from other (if you check, quite outdated by nearly 60 years, which is a lot, ESPECIALLY for biology) articles and say “… and therefore this other thing may be true.” It’s essentially philosophizing.

    The paper neither invalidate nor proves anything, it simply makes a loose connection to a strange claim.

    The author is correct that we do have characteristics of herbivores. However that is not something anyone was questioning; that’s literally one of the requirements for being an omnivore. We also have characteristics of carnivores. And even obligate carnivores will often have some characteristics of herbivores due to evolutionary holdovers.

    The paper is, essentially, saying nothing of value.



  • Human teeth also have sharp peaks and deeper valleys within them which is the case for the overwhelming majority of omnivorous creatures. Most obligate herbivores have flatter teeth or will regrow them unless they have teeth explicitly for a particular use case.

    Source: You can check out scads of scientific resources on herbivores versus omnivore versus carnivore teeth. I assume you know how a search engine works, but here’s a solid article on differences.

    Also my sister has been one of the veterinary bigwigs at several zoos through her lifetime and we’ve had multiple discussions on it.





  • Ace T'Ken@lemmy.catomovies@lemm.eeAnyone else?
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    2 months ago

    Full Report: Acquired the movie right after we messaged.

    My wife was working on our book and about ten minutes in wound up putting it down and watching it with me. This is notable because I haven’t been able to convince her to watch known great movies with me. She will not watch Lord of the Rings and hasn’t found the time to watch Edge of Tomorrow with me since release. She gives no fucks about any Godzilla or King Kong movies. This? Well… the moment the gorilla flipped off The Rock, we were in.

    She had a hard out at 11 PM due to work, but requested I stop and watch the rest with her tomorrow. What the fuck kind of magic shit is this?

    I don’t know how to describe it. Maybe it’s a bad movie very well told and sold by everyone involved? Everyone was likeable and seemed to be having fun. There were a bunch of solid actors in it we both knew from other things, and (most surprising of all) the comedy actually worked. I’d actually say it was probably one of the best 3 video game movies ever, and I’ve seen all but 2. I know that may not seem like a lot, but… 14 year old me loved Mortal Kombat at the time, so it’s some kind of praise.

    The Nick Cage movie “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (and maybe also Drive Angry) is one of the only other movies in my collection that I consider in this camp. It’s not great cinema, but it’s a really awesome ride.

    You sold it 100% accurately, and I really appreciate it!




  • As I’ve said since the beginning, I’d like to see more diversification of opinion in the userbase. There are a LOT of people here that are the kind of activist you’d see get banned on Reddit for being hyper-aggressive and it really turns neutral- or otherwise-thinking users off. They don’t discuss, they immediately attack and flame and it’s not good for building communities around except hyper-focused ones based on those issues specifically.

    I want people who know the reason they think something and don’t just have an emotional response and stick with it, then strawman everyone else in the vicinity who deviates.

    As we say in the main Rules for our Community ( [email protected] ), “Not everything is a genocide, and not everyone even slightly to the right of you is a Nazi.”

    I also want MUCH better Community controls such as the ability to decorate, and disable downvotes.



  • Ace T'Ken@lemmy.catoPatient Gamers@sh.itjust.worksAbout to try the Outer Worlds
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    2 months ago

    Played the OG version with all the DLC and not the Spacer’s Choice version, so take my comments with that in mind:

    PROS:

    • The music was completely appropriate and fit the world. It was nothing I’d listen to independently though.
    • It ran very well the entire time I played it. Very little in the way of hitching, and very quick load times.
    • Achievements!
    • From beginning to end I was having a darn good time. It’s a “smooth” game experience that I stayed up way too late a few nights in a row to get through because I couldn’t wait to see what came next.
    • Many ways to solve issues; you didn’t feel forced to end nearly anything in a certain way. The only exception was one main DLC quest I couldn’t finish the way I wanted due to the level cap being too low and not having enough points.
    • Zero bugs experienced.
    • Plenty to explore and loads of side stories to discover. Some stories weren’t wonderfully told and were hard to track, but many more than that were awesome.

    NEUTRAL:

    • It felt like it ended too soon. A game like this with two expansions should have offered more. That’s both a good thing and a bad thing in that it didn’t overstay its welcome either.

    CONS:

    • Some of the achievements are deeply annoying to the point that I gave up on completing the set. You’d have to waste dozens of hours to grind all of them and play in some pretty odd ways that wouldn’t match normal gameplay.
    • There are no romance options for the player, and only thing even remotely like it in game is a gay asexual romance quest for a side character. You get some G-rated come-ons thrown your way, but nothing can come of it. It’s extremely puzzling in it’s puritanicality in both how the colony operates, and how everything is treated. Not that this has to be a porn game or anything, mind you, but some options to do SOMETHING romance-related (or characters that operate like they have genitals) like Mass Effect or Fallout would be nice. Heck, there aren’t even any kids in the world to show that someone had bred ever.
    • Some of the environments and buildings are not terribly visibly distinct and it hurt pathfinding. It would tell me to go somewhere specific and I wasn’t sure what it was referring to, and this was after playing for hours. This has something to do with the “corporate jargon” style language they use as well. It fits stylistically, but can be confusing.
    • The sidekicks stories felt exceptionally rushed and some of the outcomes were a little nonsensical.
    • I beat the game and both DLCs close to 100% in under 37 hours.
    • The level cap even with the DLCs is set to 36 which I hit about halfway through the game, and I felt like it needed far more. It really made that feeling of progression you love in these games stop dead. There was nothing to find for new item upgrades or interesting loot past that point. This was my largest gripe with the game by far as it disincentivized exploration because there was nothing to gain by doing so at that stage. UPDATE: The new version of the game supposedly upgrades the level cap to something a little less horrible. I wish this were available during my playthrough as the game isn’t worth going through a second time. If you’re interested, I HIGHLY recommend waiting for the newer edition.

    DID YOU FINISH THE GAME?: Yup! And the DLC. Though if you’re playing now, just get the new edition since it fixes the XP progression block that I mention above.

    CONCLUSION: While it won’t stick with me for years, it was great while it lasted and I would 100% play more in the series. If you enjoy story and exploration, play this. The only things stopping it from being Fallout-level good was the awful level cap and the lack of content.



  • But come now, certainly you must recognize that that’s not even close to causation. Just because it’s done often doesn’t even come close to meaning that there’s any proof that it functions as you state.

    If I carry a “rock of tiger repellent” and tell you that I’ve never been attacked by a tiger, therefore it must work, it’s the same logic.

    Countries that do not (or rarely) have highway blockades have more civil rights or had them earlier than the US did. They also have stronger protections and aren’t helping bomb Gaza. Using the logic stated by you, that may actually mean that highway protests make things worse.

    Again, just because it agrees with you politically, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. There’s no study or data indicating that it functions, and scads of loose polls and information saying it doesn’t (which are only slightly better than no evidence at all). I’d encourage an actual study, but judging by every thread I’ve ever seen on the issue, the only people claiming to be even minutely swayed by these demonstrations were people already on the side of the protesters.


  • In this one instance they might do that. In the area where I live where it was done, there was no space for the emergency vehicles to go in the other direction. Just because there are ways they could do it in this one case doesn’t make it universal.

    Also, are you able to provide the polling you referenced showing that highway blockades change minds? I was unable to find anything other than web and call-in polls, both of which overwhelmingly showed the exact opposite (but those are hardly scientific so I wouldn’t trust them).

    Also, I’m not the one downvoting you. I do not do that.