Dann halt so:

Es regnet, es regnet Blut
Es regnet den Spielmannsfluch

Hach, das hab ich auch lange nicht mehr angehört. Danke für die Erinnerung!

Well, first of all, through God, all things are possible, so jot that down

I think this leaves out the “epistemological imperative”, which I understand as the compulsion to use this specific language for the sake of being scientifically accurate. Particularly when dealing with peers, who will all too readily hold you accountable for inaccuracies, being precise is important, possibly even necessary to avoid the scientific community’s habit of tearing into any error to prove their own proficiency by showing up your deficiency.

I can’t find my source any more, unfortunately, but I read an article once about how students are essentially scared to have their writing torn to shreds because they were too direct in their assertions. I recall that it related an anecdote about birds on a movie set that were supposed to all fly away at the sound of a gunshot. Except they tried to fly away beforehand, so the solution was to tie them to the branch and release that wire when they were supposed to fly. Then the birds tried anyway, didn’t get anywhere, ended up hanging upside down and falling unconscious. When they tried again (after restoring the birds to consciousness), they released the wire… but the birds had learned that trying to fly away was unpleasant, so they just sat there instead. Why bother, if you go nowhere?

In the same manner, academics who write too clearly will end up getting bad grades, have papers rejected, essentially be punished for it. They may learn that, by carefully coaching their assertions, assumptions or just about anything that could be conceived as a statement of facts in a multi-layered insulation of qualifying statements and vague circumscriptions to avoid saying something wrong and show the acknowledgement that, like science in general, the causation they’re ascribing this phenomenon to is at best an educated guess and, while we can narrow down things that are not true, we can never be certain that things we assume are true really are and won’t be refuted somewhere down the line, making them look like morons…

I lost track of the sentence. Anyway, if you make mistakes, you’ll get attacked. Most people don’t like being attacked. So if you’ve been attacked enough, eventually you’ll either give up or adopt strategies to avoid being attacked.

Being complex and obscure in your phrasing makes it harder to attack you. And if it’s hard to understand you, people might just skim the points and not bother with the attackable details anway. If you notice that people who write in a difficult style don’t get attacked as much or as badly, you’ll adopt that style too.

Eventually, your writing is read by students stepping to fill your shoes. They may not understand why you write this way, but they see that many successful academics do. They may also experience the same attacks and come to the same conclusion. Either way, your caution has inspired a new generation of academic writers who will continue that trend.

Finally you’ll end up with a body of scientific knowledge that only experts can still navigate. They know to skim past the vagueness, indirections and qualifications, mostly understand the terms and can take the time to pick apart the details if something strikes them as odd. The common rube doesn’t understand jack shit. Your research may further the understanding of a small group of people, possibly see some practical use, but the general public can’t directly make any use of it.

I don’t think that’ll solve my painting problem, unless it can do details. I skimped out on painting equipment, should get myself some better brushes, but it’s good enough for the broad areas. Mechanicus just have so many small details, and I suck at freehanding the rim of the coat.

I think this is more of a raid than a genocide. The objective of the aggressor is to secure resources, not to exterminate the victim. And why would it? There’s no ideological conflict, it doesn’t need to claim land for its own tribe to live on, nor does it seek riches out of vanity. It just needs food, and to that end, it invades and robs the dwellings of its prey.

I don’t think it even cares about fighting the defenders. Would be kinda stupid to entirely annihilate its source of food too. Someone needs to survive to rebuild, breed and feed a new generation of food, after all. It just tears down the defenses, then absconds with its loot. Really, it’s more a form of exploitation, albeit cruel to modern sensibilities - robbing the young directly instead of the food used to nourish them as raids in human history would.

It doesn’t bomb the nests along with their contents, capture and abuse the inhabitants, then lay eggs in the ruins and accuse all who criticise its imperialism of being Antipernites.

(Yes, I spent too long on this, and there really isn’t any point in applying human morality to creatures that don’t have the sapience to weigh their actions beyond the drive to secure subsistence. I just came up with and liked the term Antipernites and wanted to use it, so I came up with an elaborate setup.)

No way am I procrastinating painting my minis for months, eventually make myself go and do it, only to have someone eat them.

Huh. I guess I could just not paint them.

I share your hope. I’m just offering the caveat that it might not go as quickly and smoothly as you expect (unless I’m reading your comments wrong - do correct me!)

It’s my perpetual gripe with many of those open tools that I love ideologically, but practically find lacking in some respects, typically UI/UX (including the pre-experience of the decision whether to use them). I don’t have all the skills or knowledge to fix the issues that bother me, as it’s often far eaiser to know what’s wrong than how to fix it.

I understand and endorse the philosophy that it’s unfair to demand things of volunteers already donating their time and skills to the public, but it creates some interdisciplinary problems. Even if capable UX designers were to tackle the issue and propose solutions or improvements, they might not all have the skills to actually implement them, so they’d have to rely on developers to indulge their requests.
And from my own experience, devs tend to prioritise function over form, because techy people are often adept enough at navigating less-polished interfaces. Creating a pretty frontend takes away time from creating stuff I’d find useful.

I don’t know if there’s an easy solution. The intersection between “People that can approach software from the perspective of a non-tech user”, “People that are willing to approach techy Software” and “People that are tech-savy enough to be able to fix the usability issues” is probably very small.

…oder einfach einen anderen Geschmack? Ich mag bitter, vor allem wenn noch andere Noten mitschwingen.

Is nicht für alle, das seh ich ein, aber ich bin bspw. mit Wein* oder Sekt nie warm geworden; Wirkung hin oder her. Das alleine kanns also nicht sein. Da bevorzuge ich dann doch ein leckeres Bier.

Über Geschmäcker will ich hier gar nicht streiten. Gibt bestimmt Dinge, die dir schmecken, mir aber nicht. So sind Menschen eben unterschiedlich, was ich auch gut finde:

Dann bleibt mehr für mich :p

*Außer einem guten Honigwein. Gibt aber auch da welche die nur widerlich sind. Vielleicht müsste ich nur mehr Weine probieren um einen zu finden den ich mag?

It’s so big that it can take a lot of bleeding before it dies. It doesn’t help that there is no significant enough consensus yet on an alternative.

It seems like some people are flocking to bsky, probably because it has better visibility and seems more accessible than Mastodon (“What’s an instance? How do I pick?”). Others are heading to Threads just because it’s there already.

If enough people move to some other platform to generate a critical mass, they’ll pull others too. Until then, inertia will keep X rolling a good while to come.

I prefer Mastodon to what is ultimately still a for-profit corporation (“public benefit” notwithstanding), but both are better than Twatter.

Ich iel: Gewalt sollte die letzte Lösungsmaßnahme sein, wenn alles andere versagt.

Ich in Zivilisations-Spielen: Mist, mit Gewalt komm ich nicht weiter. Dann muss ich es halt mit Diplomatie versuchen bis ich wieder genug Militär hab.

Echt so. Wogegen soll der läuternde Zorn der heiligen Kriegsmaschinen entfesselt werden? Wofür überhaupt eine Fabrik bauen, wenn sie nichtmal Feinde anzieht und damit Gelegenheiten für Verehrung des Geallesten* durch Zerstörung seiner Feinde? Nachher wird den Maschinengeistern langweilig…

*Laienversuch, Omnissiah irgendwie zu Verzangendeutschen - ggf gerne korrigieren

The value of distributed redundancy

Most furries are harmless. A few are creeps with no concept of boundaries. Some are particularly deluded Nazis. Like every group of some size, they have a certain percentage of scum. Depending on your standards, they might be weird, but I’ll take harmless weirdness over harmful normalcy any day, let alone harmful weirdness.

I do think he is unique, but also the prime specimen to show that not everything unique is valuable.

Ich mag deinen Namen. Ich find den witzig. Dachte das könnte dich freuen.

Given the heavy use of subject-specific jargon, I’d guess as much. I wouldn’t go to the length of looking up neuroscience terms just to roast neuroscientists, because that just seems like a poor happy chemical return on the mental energy investment, whatever the proper terms for that might be.

Now, if you’d ask me to build a data model to analyse my unhappiness for key influencers, we’re in business.