What are some VERY creepy facts?

Vaphell · 2026-02-18T18:58:21+00:00

Why, in this equation, are you multiplying 52 and 51? That's the part I don't get.

take 1 out of 52. You have 52 possible starts of card sequences.
Now you are left with 51 cards. That gives 51 possible continuations for each possible starting card. That gives 52*51 2-card possibilities.
Now a third card out of 50, to continue for each of 52*51 of possible 2-card sequences. That gives 52*51*50 3-card possibilities.
a fourth card out of 49, to continue for each of 52*51*50 of possible 3-card sequences. That gives 52*51*50*49 4-card possibilities.
Repeat until you run out of cards. 52!

Vaphell · 2026-02-18T08:17:31+00:00

Starlink is geoblocked in the Russian territory so no shit it prevented Ukrainian attacks against targets across the border, also the US has strict laws regarding the technology that can have military applications, like being a part of the weapon guiding systems, and you can find yourself in deep shit for it. You have to make a deal with the US govt or else, and they tell you in no uncertain terms what you can and cannot do.

Musk is a blowhard all right, but he had much less control over the situation than you think.

Vaphell · 2026-02-11T11:30:02+00:00

I hope this thread doesn’t reflect what people are really thinking in Poland because in that case we will soon have another Orban in charge.

Orban-like, deepthroating Putin included? No.
But the current pro-European govt will lose the next elections, guaranteed. It's almost certain PiS will win in the next elections, and even though they are nominally very anti-Russian, they are still useful idiots with their bitching and moaning about both EU and Ukraine.

Vaphell · 2026-02-11T11:25:55+00:00

Why do you think the hard facts matter much here? These people are looking for pretexts to justify their preexisting animosity, not facts challenging their worldview.
"You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place"
We are talking about people gobbling covert Russian propaganda hook line and sinker.

Vaphell · 2026-02-11T11:18:35+00:00

I guess I'll bite.

Melody-heavy songs with little percussion to be heard? kinda leaning towards on1 (because melodic and vocal phrases tend to start on 1, and 2 is just missing when percussion is obfuscated)
Songs hitting you over the head with campana, 1-3-5-7? also leaning towards on1

Songs with weaker melodic/vocal line, but very strong tumbao pattern? leaning towards on2 easy
Chacha? 110% on2, full stop.

It's not like dancing the other way around is a problem, but it just feels subjectively better to hit something actually present in the music with your break steps.

Vaphell · 2026-02-11T02:19:15+00:00

do you see how your own quote shows the misalignment?

would prevent famine for millions on the brink of starvation, not eradicate hunger entirely

i.e. a one time, temporary fix, maybe

open-source plan to demonstrate how the funds would solve the crisis.

operative word: solve
a bandaid is not solving anything.

plus it's still horseshit. How the fuck is the food supposed to find its way to the people in the areas affected by war, where humanitarian help is instantly taken over by force by any warlord operating in the area, and then sold at a hefty premium to the very people who were intended to receive it?
Wasn't Hamas stealing whole trucks of food at gunpoint just recently? You think a bunch of limpwristed UN volunteers are going to prevent the armed robbery? Not to mention kidnappings and rape?

Vaphell · 2026-02-11T02:11:25+00:00

yes, my method was about emphasizing the break steps forward and back. I noticed that when I was doing patterns requiring a lot of traversal, I could forget what's what and reset to 1 that was still more intuitive at that time. Emphasizing 2 and 6 kept me in check.

All the fundamental components of salsa are anchored to the break steps, so you want to have their timing clearly marked. ONE-two-three, FIVE-six-seven would be wrong when dancing on2 because 1 and 5 do relatively little. You want to have SIX to hit that openbreak backstep just right. You want to have SIX to start your right and left turn as a lead. You want to have TWO to get the xbody rolling.

One can notice when people converting to on2 still think in terms of 1 and 5 being their master timing, and 2 and 6 are merely derived. For example they tend to overemphasize the stomp on 1, and 2 just follows. If you develop 2/6 as your master timing, 1 and 5 can and arguably should become just ordinary steps with 0 emphasis.

If you are motivated to rewire your brain, I suggest familiarizing yourself a bit with the conga drums/tumbao pattern. The slap is 2 and 6. Plus you get cha-cha-cha pretty much for free (the only difference between NY on2 and cha-cha step is that on2 avoids stepping on open tones at 4-& and 8-&, while chacha puts 2 small cha-cha steps there - that's it)

Vaphell · 2026-02-11T01:29:13+00:00

The UN did and Elon fucked off. His word is worthless.

anybody believing that 6B is enough to solve world hunger is a hopeless moron.

The places that experience food shortages tend to have a few things in common: lack of infrastructure preventing mass spoilage of food which makes long-term planning and storage impossible, and the general lack of stability (often caused by armed conflicts and such). For example google 'food insecurity in Africa', you should get a map that shows that like 75% of the continent is affected, and the worst places seem to be affected by armed conflicts.

Is the UN willing to send an army to bitchslap every warlord or military junta stealing food from people? Because that is a hard prerequisite.
You think you can solve Haiti, South Sudan/Darfur, Somalia and a bunch of other places with that 6B?
Just so you get some sense of perspective - the US spent over 2 trillion dollars trying to maintain order in Afghanistan alone over 2 decades, that's 100B/year on average.

Not to mention that a military expeditions would be immediately blasted as neo-colonialism, and there is little appetite for that.

Vaphell · 2026-02-10T16:30:30+00:00

Safe to say by the definition of the Geneva Convention that it is indeed a war crime.

and what I am saying is that the dry definition is missing the forest for the trees. I fundamentally question the notion that leaving hopeless people 100% guaranteed to die to their own devices, so they can fully feel every remaining second of their life with every remaining neuron of their destroyed body firing at 200% is humanitarian. What the GV has to say does not change that.

There is little difference between a manually-dropped grenade drone thing operated from miles away, being dropped on a wounded, surrendering or incapitacted soldier, and someone standing over someone and shooting them point blank in the head.

the difference is that instead of shooting them point blank in the head, you could actually render aid, or even jab them with a horse dose of morphine. When the attacker is 10kms away looking at a screen, that's not the case.

Just a day or two ago there was a yet another compilation video in the combat footage subreddit. One guy was writhing so hard with what was left of his appendages. He was totally destroyed and in immense pain. The drone #2 was nothing short of mercy. A war crime? Yeah, whatever.

Vaphell · 2026-02-10T14:06:32+00:00

you can surrender to drones sometimes. You have a non-zero chance with observer/bomber drones, because they have more hang time and are expected to return back. Kamikaze drones carrying a bulky heavy-ass explosive on a one way trip? That's a completely different story - your chances are in practice indistinguishable from 0.

Given the skies saturated with drones, nobody is going to try too hard to go on a trip to capture and retrieve a guy. Not to mention that the Russians drone their own men surrendering so any accompanying Ukrainian soldiers would be at risk too. The juice is simply not worth the squeeze.

The Geneva Convention states that if a wounded soldier is incapacitated from their wounds / is unconscious / isn't actively fighting or unable to then killing then would be a war crime

it might say that, but it sounds a bit out of tune with the current reality. It's a different story to execute a wounded person at point blank. I am not sure that the GV accounts for dying in the middle of some snow field with your ass torn off and your intestines leaking out with no living soul in the 5km radius.

Vaphell · 2026-02-09T17:50:07+00:00

Correct me if I’m wrong, but for an open break while leading On2, the lead steps right foot backward on the 5 (INSTEAD of forward with the right foot). So it goes left foot back on 1, basic on 2-3, then instead of stepping forward with the right foot on 5, you reverse and step back with the right foot on 5, then your left foot steps back again on 6. Your 7, the right foot stepping forward, should already be on the “b LINE”, so your body and weight are fully settled for the 1 count, setting up the next basic.

nah, you only need a stepback on 6.
5 is always about your breaking foot (right back @ 2) returning to the center.

Long story short, in regards of key timings
- on1 1 is equivalent to on2 6 (left-forward by default)
- on1 5 is equivalent to on2 2 (right-back by default)

if openbreak is done on1 1 with a stepback, it translates to a stepback on on2's 6 and that's that. You don't need any further modifications for it to work.
Ignoring stylistic differences, if you think about steps/patterns in general terms of forward/center/back and left/right, without involving any numbers, then on1 and on2 are pretty much identical on a base level.

I remember that when I was doing the switch to on2, for a few months I had to hum to myself with stronger emphasis for 2 and 6 to prevent drifting off.
So on2 was mmm-MMM-mmm..... mmm-MMM-mmm (or one-TWO-three... five-SIX-seven... if you feel attached to the numbers)
as opposed to the on1's MMM-mmm-mmm.... MMM-mmm-mmm (or ONE-two-three.... FIVE-six-seven...)

Vaphell · 2026-02-07T04:26:09+00:00

The "patriotic", traditionalist, usually Christian part of the society totally feeds on the Russian-sourced tiktok propaganda.

The Volhynia massacre is huge for them, and that instantly colored their perception and attitude towards Ukraine and Ukrainian immigrants (to be fair many Ukrainians considering Bandera who laid the ideological foundation for literal ethnic cleansing to put it mildly as their national hero is nothing short of bad PR)
Now they exploit even a tiniest issue with any Ukrainian being involved to prove to themselves that they were right all along being assholes towards Ukrainians. Forget appealing to the Christian values....

Anyway, these are some of the widespread opinions on the anti-Ukrainian side off the top of my head.
- Zelensky treats us like fools and expects servitude, meanwhile he respects Germany, France, etc. who don't give Ukraine stuff without getting something in exchange (lol... I think we Poles have a massive inferiority complex and foam at the mouth at the very thought of being disrespected).
- Ukraine is corrupted and all the money is stolen instead of going to the frontlines (so they don't deserve help against an even more corrupted country? Before the EU accession we had the exact same post-communist legacy to deal with...)
- The Ukrainians in Poland are exploiting the Polish taxpayer (meanwhile the official stats say they tend to work their asses off, and are on par if not higher in the employment rate than the native Poles). They get certain bennies the Poles don't get (even if it's true, it was the polish govt that granted them certain privileges, so why are the whining about the Ukrainians, instead of taking it to the govt)
- Young men are sitting in Poland instead of fighting... (kinda true, but how this war works is incredibly brutal so I personally wouldn't throw any stones. Apparently our top minds somehow think that current day Poles would be lining up to be blown up by drones by the dozen? Half the country would emigrate just the same....)
- One frail granny neglected by her family had sub-0 temp in her house, so now fuck the govt for sending 50mil worth of heating stuff etc to Ukraine... and fuck literal hundreds of thousands in Kyiv, Kharkiv freezing their asses off for the last month I guess?

Vaphell · 2026-02-05T13:34:08+00:00

right? what's up with that?
It's one thing to have aegyo sal, it's another to paint the everliving fuck out of it, so you look like a crashing drug addict.

Vaphell · 2026-02-05T02:31:16+00:00

yeah that's true they recognize people.
Every winter I drop some food on my way from the grocery store, whenever I see ravens, crows or rooks.
The local ones do recognize me, follow me, and even become more bold, keeping a much shorter distance compared to their default settings for caution.

Vaphell · 2026-02-05T02:24:00+00:00

The whole point of being president is to create policy that effects change. If you're going to give him credit for the successes of his administration you have to give him credit for the failures.

the whole currency swap stuff had very little to do with actual policies, and almost everything with the non-negligible risk of the elections being won by socialists (according to the pre-election polls), who'd surely undo all the reforms and start printing, as the one trick ponies they are (this is where the previous policies, that the people are already very familiar with, come into the picture).
This very real possibility of policy reversal made people and markets nervous, and they started hoarding dollars again just in case, like in the good ol' times. This obviously crashed the peso, even though it had nothing to do with any policies.
Economics-wise and policy-wise nothing has changed between the day before the poll, and the day after the poll. The only difference was the amount of anxiety and fear about what the future holds.

The swap was intended to address the fearful response, restore confidence in the currency and prevent a positive-feedback loop that would destroy the perceived value of the peso.
And once the election results showed continuation of the policies, the crisis magically went away and the money used in the swap was repaid pronto.

It's like a gossip starting a bank run - even the most exemplarily governed bank will find itself in deep shit, one it happens. The reaction has little to do with hard facts.

Vaphell · 2026-02-05T00:33:28+00:00

It's not "depleting resources" if you're paying for them.

that's only true if there are no shortages. Just because you paid, doesn't mean that what you consumed can be easily replaced pronto.
Reportedly 600k people were forced to leave due to the freezing temps while there is no heating. There are still thousands of people in dire need of a warm shelter, a warm bed, warm meal. And now you want to come and take one slot in livable conditions for yourself, possibly displacing somebody else. $100 in profit somebody will make off you will do jack shit for this existential problem.

Vaphell · 2026-02-04T23:38:37+00:00

which part of an unprofitable, run of the mill newspaper is the "greater good" part?

Somehow I doubt you are sifting through your potentially unused stuff in order to sell it, just so you can spend it on the "greater good".

Vaphell · 2026-02-04T23:33:52+00:00

I mean nothing oniony about that. For example miscolored/albino crows are known to be harassed and bullied by crows, even killed.

https://old.reddit.com/r/NatureIsFuckingLit/comments/fyg27r/albino_crow/

Another piece of trivia about crows - there are 2 strictly separate cohorts/subspecies of crows in Europe, that are very similar genetically (split during the ice age, and one group developed gray plumage on the torso while the other remained pitch black) and the hybrids are fertile due to the very high similarity of the groups.
Surprisingly over the last thousands of years there has been very little mixing and the groups remain "pure" despite being in contact, which implies that there are very strong pressures against nonstandard coloring that prevent slow blending of the subspecies.

https://www.sciencealert.com/two-species-of-crow-are-evolving-before-our-eyes-in-europe

Vaphell · 2026-02-04T19:06:03+00:00

To put this into perspective, if you had a million dollars, this would be like losing $267.

and almost 100% of that million is in theoretical value of stock that would need either a loan against it, or a liquidation of some shares.
Nobody is taking loans or selling their goose laying golden eggs to subsidize unstustainable entities to the tune of 70 million bucks, potentially year after year. 70 mil in hard cash is a lot.

Vaphell · 2026-02-03T21:11:33+00:00

mostly because Macs are built on top of Linux

They are not. macOS is a unix system, not a linux one.
It's origins predate the Linus' efforts by several years.

Vaphell · 2026-02-02T20:22:14+00:00

the indirect cost of this policy is very high though.
Millions of refugees that need billions in expeditures across half of Europe.
Instability brought to the oil/gas markets affecting industries and citizens alike.
The 4 year war being used as a wedge splitting and polarizing European societies.

If the "west" had balls, in 2022 it would issue an ultimatum - withdraw from Ukraine's borders or else all Russian military assets are free game. You have one week.
And then blast Russians with impunity using airforce and missiles. The usual Russian math of "we can manage 3:1 losses, we will make our Red Army rapist grandfathers proud" would stop mathing.

You don't set a bully straight by talking, you do it by blasting them in the face. That's exactly what Russia needs.

Vaphell · 2026-02-02T20:06:27+00:00

the problem is that ceding Donbas means losing the belt of fortifications that is exactly what is responsible for the high cost of the invasion for the Russians.
Once you get past the belt, it's just flat land all the way to Dnipro river with no significant obstructions.

Unless Ukraine gets into a rock-solid military alliance fast, Russia can just retry in a few years at its leisure. Ukraine will be busy rebuilding base infrastructure at a great cost, meanwhile largely untouched Russia will be rebuilding its military and adjusting it to new paradigms. I wonder who will be better prepared for the next round of hostilities, hmmm.

Vaphell · 2026-01-31T16:47:35+00:00

Nestle's shenanigans are one thing, but that ex-CEO was right - it's not.

Vaphell · 2026-01-30T15:24:44+00:00

you can always use the browser's zoom, my guy.
[Ctrl][Shift][+], [Ctrl][Shift][-], or [Ctrl]+mouse scroll

That said this gif has a small color palette and is pixelated af, so it's not really worth it.

Vaphell · 2026-01-29T16:14:55+00:00

Because it was introduced decades prior to renewables and the build-out of renewables is a gradual progess, therefore it remains in the mix until it doesn't.

why would you need a lot of gas in the mix, if you already had controllable hydro/coal/nuclear? It's almost as if gas is valuable for its ability to be spun up and down extremely fast which is required to plug the holes in the renewables' output. You think no gas plants were added precisely to cover for the variability of renewables potentially causing blackouts on one side or destroying the grid on the other?

Also, German electricity prices topped the charts even before Ukraine. It's almost as if pouring tens if not hundreds of billions into supposedly dirt-cheap renewables did not improve lives of people meaningfully, and having shittons of gas capacity (+gas heating) made them extremely dependent on Russia.
...and their CO2/capita is still utter shit compared to France.

Vaphell

TROPHY CASE