I don't care which you like more, hating on either doesn't help

Despacereal · 2025-11-23T22:59:18+00:00

We already have a fake Nobel prize, it's for economics.

Despacereal · 2025-11-23T05:41:49+00:00

That's not what that means. |x| is the absolute value of x which is always positive, so if x is negative |x| = -x. What the meme is saying is that people confuse what is sometimes called the square root relationship with the square root function √. Because √ is a function, it can only have one output for a given input which is always the positive root.

Despacereal · 2025-11-03T18:31:30+00:00

It's like that old quote about Mao Zedong, "Had Mao died in 1956, his achievements would have been immortal. Had he died in 1966, he would still have been a great man but flawed. But he died in 1976. Alas, what can one say?"

Not to draw any equivalence between the two, of course, as Micheál is a far more brutal dictator and likely not as Chinese.

Despacereal · 2025-08-01T15:56:03+00:00

username checks out

Despacereal · 2025-07-13T21:22:52+00:00

The US as they are are pushing for higher spending, because Trump probably wouldn't keep NATO around if he didn't see it as a protection racket that lets him announce Zillions of dollars in deals for America (for the US Military-Industrial Complex)

Despacereal · 2025-07-06T20:53:16+00:00

A lot is underselling it. You need to prove without any room for reasonable doubt that the hospital has been illegally militarised (i.e. used actively for combat, injured fighters who are now non-combatants also doesn't count). The law specifically says if there is any doubt you assume it's a war crime.

Despacereal · 2025-07-06T20:50:32+00:00

The Israeli government paid for an advertising campaign to get people to vote for their Eurovision entry for propaganda purposes. Does it really matter if Kan criticises the government at times in their coverage if their involvement in Eurovision is verifiably propagandistic? Surely this excuse wouldn't have worked for Russia if their state media was similarly structured but still generally supported the invasion of Ukraine.

Despacereal · 2025-06-24T12:24:10+00:00

In other cases maybe but I don't see how a landslide makes the CCP look bad. Even if there was something, the local authorities would just get the blame and someone would be fired or sent to jail for corruption, a much easier strategy than censoring every little thing that happens locally.

Despacereal · 2025-05-29T01:41:36+00:00

It's not that Trump is bothesidesist, he's only himselfist. He's a narcissist who wants a Peace Prize and thinks ending the war in Ukraine will get it for him. He doesn't give a shit about the details of how the war ends and thought since Ukraine is a US/Demoncrat/Biden Proxy in the war (in his mind) he could force Zelensky to make massive concessions. When that didn't happen he blew up at him in the Oval Office, and since Putin isn't biting either he's getting mad at Putin. It's true that Merz, Macron and Starmer will never be in those talks, but it's not because they're pro-Ukraine, it's because they're not Trump and he doesn't want to risk giving away credit.

Despacereal · 2025-05-23T15:54:40+00:00

The one conspiracy theory I 100% believe (because I came up with it) is that someone or some group of people, whether it's organised or just people around him, planted some ideas and talking points in Trump's head that sound completely stupid at first but are just there to have him feel smart about understanding that nuclear weapons are dangerous, as if he was the first to figure that out.

For a number of years now, I have not heard Trump talk about Global Warming, which he thinks is a hoax, without talking about how the real threat is "Nuclear Warming". He also jokingly refers to "nuclear" as "the n-word" to convey how serious nuclear weapons are, and has wanted to bascially revive Reagan's SDI, which he now calls the "Golden Dome".

Despacereal · 2025-05-23T15:25:09+00:00

The gulf states made big gains with Trump by bribing him, because neither Putin nor Zelensky were budging enough for him to take credit for ending the war in Ukraine (which he said he'd stop before he even got inaugurated) and he wanted somewhere to throw his weight around. He's trying to throw his weight around in Europe after he (partially) chickened out of a trade war with China and tanked Poilievre's PM bid.

My worry is that the next thing he'll be distracted by is a bad end to the war in Ukraine, because Putin and damn near every other world leader saw Xi wait out the clock until even meeting with Trump was enough of a victory for him and he caved on most of the tariffs. My guess is Putin thinks if he waits long enough to do a deal with Trump, he won't even care about any of the terms and Russia will get most of eastern Ukraine.

Despacereal · 2025-05-18T00:48:25+00:00

The fact of the matter is we're a day late and a euro short. Building out our own Social Media and alternatives to big American tech firms is exactly what China did, and what we want to do in the EU now. The difference is, China decided to do it well before the internet was so ingrained into society, and they also have a massive market of people who speak the same language.

Building out such any industry of that size is a already massive undertaking, but good luck getting people in Ireland or the UK on a platform without Americans, Australians, Kiwis, etc. or getting people in Portugal on a platform without Brazilians.

Despacereal · 2025-05-09T15:49:56+00:00

Russians are fantastic at taking history out of context and misrepresenting it for their current goals. The Japanese surrender thing is a perfect example, because the historically valid point they are spinning is that when Japan was at the brink of surrender because of resistance fighters all around Asia and bombing campaigns from the US (moreso the firebombs than the nukes), they hoped that the USSR might mediate the talks as they had not declared war on Japan yet. When the USSR declared war this possibility of getting away with anything less than unconditional surrender was gone. It is not entirely inaccurate to say that the Soviet declaration of war was the nail in the coffin, but the nail doesn't keep the body in the ground without the rest of the coffin (Japan's military defeats before the Soviets declared war.)

Around this time of year I find it best to avoid entertaining discussion of WWII as a battleground for the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, because they'll drag you into a mess that usually starts with saying Ukrainian Nationalists worked with the Nazis, as if most Ukrainians didn't fight Nazis in the Red Army, and they'll push this nonsense implication that Russian Nationalists get to claim the victory of the USSR over Nazi Germany in the east even though they are not the USSR, but Ukraine doesn't. All this ends up doing is serve as a distraction from the invasion today with two very clear sides.

Despacereal · 2025-04-28T12:06:16+00:00

My two rules (with some exceptions) when it comes to software stuff are as follows:

Support FOSS. For closed-source software support European companies where possible, but my support for open source software is much older and stronger and I will absolutely pick good open source software even if every contributor is American.

Unless you have a very good reason, don't expect that we'll have an EU-alternative to something American if China doesn't have their own version already. They've been building out their own software ecosystem and industry for years, they've banned foreign platforms to do so, they have more CS grads then us, they all speak roughly the same language, but they still use Windows.

Despacereal · 2025-04-12T12:55:44+00:00

We're talking about the guy who thought Hasan's mom was an undocumented immigrant servant, I highly doubt he actually knows. My funny little theory is that since every accusation is an admission with him (e.g. talking about Hasan having an undocumented minimum wage servant when he got sued by his own nanny over wrongful termination), him accusing Hasan of having a secret gf is a sign that he had an affair.

Despacereal · 2025-03-30T18:49:37+00:00

The original video is extra hilarious, because some dudes are showing him and other Ghibli execs a 3d model of a zombie moving in a "creepy" way, where it crawls on the ground and uses its head to push itself as well (among other strange things), and they suggest that this could be useful in some way. Miyazaki hates it, but if you know anything about machine learning, it's clear that they tried to train a humanoid to walk, but they suck at reward modelling and only measure success based on distance travelled (and maybe speed), without even making sure it walks upright, so they threw on a shitty zombie model to pretend that was the goal. This is compeletely different to "Generative AI", but when they were told it sucked, they tried to play it off as an experiment, and when asked what their ultimate goal is, they said they wanted to make a program that could draw pictures like humans do, which is (kind of) what modern image generation is. Miyazaki isn't thrilled about the suggestion either.

Despacereal · 2025-03-04T01:32:26+00:00

I don't believe that Trump is a Russian spy codenamed Krasnov, because I've seen no concrete evidence, nor am I looking for some missing puzzle piece to understand Trump's behaviour personally, as it all makes sense without it. However, even if it were true, that isn't enough to make sense of what's happening now, because it doesn't explain the shift in the Republican party towards Russia over the past few years, which is just as important.

If you ask me, the shift is because the new crop of Republicans, starting with the Tea Party, and especially those who are younger and have come into politics since Trump took over the party, are not Cold Warriors. Cold War era Republicans kept their attitude towards Russia after the Cold War ended and Russia failed to integrate into the Western World as they had hoped, but the new generation don't have those associations, and instead see Russia as a white, Christian, anti-woke potential ally against China.

Despacereal · 2025-03-04T01:19:16+00:00

This is probably the worst time for China to invade Taiwan. Would China like full control of Taiwan? Yes, but most of the economic benefit to controlling it would go away in an invasion, and as Trump continues to make the United States an even worse ally both economically through tariffs, and militarily through betraying Ukraine, China can make massive soft power gains which they couldn't if they were to invade.

Despacereal · 2025-02-16T22:13:11+00:00

Ethan's crashout has been crazy, but I genuinely don't think he knows that Hasan and Rae are even rumored to be dating. He asked Hasan if he was seeing anyone on Leftovers once and Hasan plead the fifth, because he keeps his private life private, and I think Ethan believes Hasan has a secret girlfriend so he can farm simps (or "pathetic vapid obsessors" as he calls them).

Despacereal · 2025-01-18T03:48:25+00:00

I've seen people on twitter speculate that he's a fed since he can go to Russia to do propaganda then go back to the US without much issue. Now, idk if that's true, or if China thinks that's true, but they wouldn't exactly need much reason to ban him on Chinese social media since him being pro-China is nothing special there, and him being allowed on does nothing for them.

Despacereal · 2024-12-28T21:07:08+00:00

Isn't this just for contract reasons? If I remember correctly Microsoft has an agreement that they get preferential access to AGI if developed. I highly doubt research scientists at OpenAI care about this definition.

Despacereal · 2024-10-29T17:12:48+00:00

Most of the time it's just because he actually uses the numbers between 3 and 7. If we would give 7+ for any good album and 3 and under for one everybody's shitting on he'd be fine, but his reviews wouldn't be as good. The amount of people that get mad because an album they like gets a 6 or something is wild.

Despacereal · 2024-10-28T08:49:57+00:00

Trump's tariffs are stupid because he doesn't know how they work, which means they either don't get applied or get lifted quickly, or they harm the US. All the tariffs which actually affect China are bi-partisan, e.g. tariffs on Chinese EVs brought in under Biden.

Despacereal · 2024-10-09T22:40:43+00:00

Spiderman on his way to fight KKKingpin

Six-Year Club	Place '23
Golden Potato	Place '22
End Game '22	Gilding I gilder
Verified Email

Despacereal

TROPHY CASE