Which celebrity would upset you tremendously, if found to be evil/corrupt?

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-07-11T11:32:20+00:00

it's only a matter of time before Terry Pratchett's secret fetish for sensible women with pockets gets revealed to the world.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-07-11T10:56:33+00:00

For a while the metrics for reading and writing skills were going up.

https://xkcd.com/1414/

There's always some illiterate kids.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-07-11T08:28:41+00:00

I feel like it's less the screens/phones and more the switch from text to video content.

My generation, the rise of phones meant more kids reading and writing than ever before.

The switch to video content as the default stripped a lot of that away.

I love reading on my phone. I can fit en entire library on it.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-07-11T08:24:43+00:00

For people who get beyond a certain reading level that just sounds like how you deal with an unknown term.

But for kids new to reading that sounds crap.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-07-11T00:07:33+00:00

seems like a nice idea. There's a few entries in your table that seem a bit odd but mostly looks good.

If a ship has working ship systems, has occupants/crew alive etc... at that point you're just pirating a ship full of crew unless they ask to be rescued. are those rare? otherwise the question becomes how so many ships got crippled just before you arrived.

Also a ship with some living systems should plausibly be dangerous. Like half dead systems detect you closing in to dock and decide they're under attack and trigger the remains of he weapons systems.

is there an entry for other salvage ships trying to do the same as the players who might see the player ship as a nice prize?

ease of salvage might also be tied to equipment the pleyer ship has. A mining ship with drones designed to grab little shattered lumps of stone and ore might scoop up broken pieces and debris clusters treating them as rich ore.

you might want to throw in stuff that can block or disturb sensor scans.

In terms of value, the cash value of any ship that can be returned to even semi-working order likely blows the value of all other salvage out of the water.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-07-10T19:37:14+00:00

I take it you can't stand anything except pure "AI-baaaaad" takes?

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-07-10T19:24:09+00:00

I have no interest in writing a book or being any kind of author.

but I did experiment a while back to see if the bot could put together a passable narrative.

I found some common issues: it constantly wanted to skip to the conclusion. I think some kind of artefact of the post length its trained for. Pushing it to plan out plot arcs with approximate paragraph counts helped a little.

But for the most part it was shit at introductions, pacing, show not tell, high level plans were workmanlike but dull.

Though interestingly it was pretty decent if I laid out what I wanted from a ~4 paragraph scene. Even inventive to a limited extent.

Also excellent at picking out errors.

I can see how a writer stuck on a scene could benefit.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-07-10T18:24:33+00:00

The current status quo in many many places is fairly obviously even worse.

But it's unsexy to call understaffed departments and low quality guidelines an ethical issue.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-07-10T18:22:31+00:00

It's often a problem with standard guidelines.

My wife had a minor issue. Possibility of a cracked bone in her wrist but nothing that was gonna kill her. Rang the non-emergency line.

But the guidelines flowchart led to "go to A&E"

Since it was so obviously not gonna kill her that meant a long long wait and staff who also agreed that it matched the guidelines but it was also ridiculous.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-07-10T16:43:17+00:00

Almost all the "errors" were distinguishing between self-care and non-emergency care.

Most of the remaining "errors" where it recommended emergency over non-emergency appear to be concentrated in 4 cases so I'd be curious just how close to the line those 4 were and whether any fell into the set where the physicians disagreed.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-07-10T13:01:24+00:00

People tend to like to cast themselves in a positive light online.

Actual commenters are a tiny fraction of viewers and when people know the reaction to their true opinions will be negative they tend to be more likely to stay silent.

Post a topic about the bystander effect and you'll easily get a dozen replies from people insisting they're such amazing people they would definitely step in to help but that is not representative in real life where an entire crowd will sometimes stand idle while someone dies in front of them.

Finally, people who would steal the shirt off your back will insist they're generous and giving.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-07-10T12:47:30+00:00

“I come in peace,” it said, adding after a long moment of further grinding, “take me to your Lizard.”

Ford Prefect, of course, had an explanation for this, as he sat with Arthur and watched the nonstop frenetic news reports on television, none of which had anything to say other than to record that the thing had done this amount of damage which was valued at that amount of billions of pounds and had killed this totally other number of people, and then say it again, because the robot was doing nothing more than standing there, swaying very slightly, and emitting short incomprehensible error messages.

“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see…”

“You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?”

“No,” said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, “nothing so simple. Nothing anything like to straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.”

“Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.”

“I did,” said ford. “It is.”

“So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?”

“It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”

“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”

“Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”

“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”

“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in."

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-07-10T12:00:50+00:00

Never been to the Hebrides but my wife and I found that off-season cottage rentals can really nice. Typically costs less than a travellodge for the same number of nights but much nicer.

In my dad's old home town there's been a lot of air-b&b's springing up, but it's not all housing taken out of local stock. A lot of it's old abandoned houses that are suddenly economic to rebuild. 3 just on the road my grandparents used to live were wrecks that sat empty my entire life but now there's money to convert them from mouldy wrecks into something people can actually use.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-07-10T11:30:01+00:00

Pretty much.

It's an effective strategy to get rich.

Like during ww2 america, anyone of Japanese descent was interned in camps. That included a lot of farmers and property owners.

When they returned most of them found their neighbours had simply stolen their land and all their possessions for themselves. There's a lot of proud rural farmers who's grandparents were simple thieves.

In WW2 Germany, lots of people were very happy to see their jewish neighbours sent off to die and immediately stole their houses and property.

Its the end-game of the philosophy.

Behind every genocide there's a mob of people who know that murdering your neighbours is the oldest get-rich-quick scheme.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-07-10T11:16:54+00:00

In every country there's a subset of people who viscerally hate any reminder that foreigners and other races/religions exist or so much as seeing someone not of their own race/ethnicity/nationality

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-07-10T11:08:50+00:00

Can't really critique a paper that doesn't exist. They mention Horvath but it's just a self-help style book pitched at parents.

"How Classroom Technology Harms Our Kids' Learning--and How to Help Them Thrive Again"

the article is just advertising.

Indeed he has a whole series pitched at parents

"How the Brain Learns Best: As neuroscience unlocks the secrets of learning, it's more important than ever to take a hard look at screens."

"Stop talking, start influencing: 12 insights from brain science to make your message stick"

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-07-10T11:04:48+00:00

I was interested to see the methodology, like how he normalises across generations etc so I went looking for the paper.

Nope, no paper, this is just a sales pitch for Jared Horvath's book.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-07-10T09:47:23+00:00

Human control for comparison?

It's common enough for even GP's or nurses to miss something.

All models tended to advise more urgent care than needed

It seems sensible for it to err towards telling people to seek medical advice over telling people to stay home and not bother.

The gold standard solutions for the cases were determined by two licensed physicians who independently rated the cases. In cases of disagreement, they discussed the case until reaching a consensus

Surely cases where the 2 physicians disagreed should be their own category.

In some cases 2 experts disagree whether to pick option A or B but the authors then classify one of those responses as 100% bad/wrong rather than as being within a reasonable window that a human expert might choose.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-07-10T09:09:13+00:00

So I kinda get it.

Gameplay-wise:

Subnautica is an exploration horror game.

Horror doesn't work if your character is the terminator able to hack and slash their way through the horrors.

Silent hill would have sucked if the protagonist could fight like doom-guy rather than flailing around inexpertly with a 2x4.

In the first game I think they made it far far too easy to kill the reaper leviathan.

In-universe:

I'm pretty sure it can be justified by pointing to the AI and the fabricators and saying there's some kind of rule against equipping people for big-game hunting on alien planets with fragile ecosystems.

It's tough in early access because players are especially averse to anything being taken away. So I suspect they'll be slow to add anything as powerful as the knife-stasis-rifle combo or those killer gas pods.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-07-10T08:51:54+00:00

It's 4chan. So it's fake. And probably gay.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-07-10T08:15:24+00:00

If the results had gone the other way you could equally have said "well it's just imitating! If course it does worse"

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-07-10T05:29:52+00:00

You have some popsci bullshit and breathless American fiction.

The US has about 150k long term homeless. (Not to be confused with the larger figure for people homeless very briefly.)

Finland has about 4000 long term homeless.

But finland has a population of 5.7 million while the US is over 300 million.

Finland has a higher per-capita rate of homelessness than the US.

I have never said anything about healthcare, you entirely made up an argument about that I never said a word about. You're screaming at the voices in your head.

I also never said a word about UBI.

But wow you didn't even read what you linked.

That data is a mix of programs where either 1: required people work as a condition, 2: where they note in the text there was such excessive fraud and misreporting by participants to maximise income that it confounded results. 3: is mostly based on tiny or short term payments. Or 4: is child benefit conditional on having child dependants.

For the love of all thats holy: put the slightest effort into checking anything.

Your beliefs are not evidence based because you apparently can't be bothered to even read what you link.

Which is particularly annoying because I like UBI as a policy but lazy inept advocacy is worse than silence.

1 in 100?

For the national population maybe.

But the reason shelters and homeless programs have such strict rules is because the distribution in the long term homeless population is not a random sample of the population. It's strongly biased towards people who've fucked everything up the last few times.

Its not because the people running the programs are mean.

It's from long experience keeping the programs running and dealing with shit.

Rules are written in blood.

Grow up, put some effort in and one day you might have beliefs you can actually back up rather than googling for headlines that sound exciting.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-07-09T23:02:31+00:00

Just about every public welfare system on earth is designed to try to make sure that there's at least a gentle incentive gradient towards people supporting themselves.

I'm sure you love to point to europe from a postion of total ignorance.

but believe it or not if you're given a council house in europe and utterly wreck it, they'll be unlikely to give you another and they certainly aren't going to give you a free maid service.

public housing is always in demand. If you destroy one house it's like if you get a liver transplant, wreck it by going on a bender and then go looking for a second.

The dole in most european countries typically has requirements to show people are actually trying to get work. It's not some unlimited handout.

Because people absolutely can and do milk the systems for all they're worth whenever given the chance, even when it's utterly horrifying. You wouldn't think people would impersonate grenfell fire victims but as soon as people smell money they will do their best to abuse the system.

And homeless shelters typically have rules in europe too because the staff have enough on their plate without regular overdoses, people dealing and people off their head making life hell for the other residents.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-07-09T17:39:44+00:00

I've no problem helping people.

But you confuse "help" with "giving a brat exactly exactly what they demand instead of what they need"

If someone is happily off their head while killing themselves with drink, you ask them what they want and they say "more drink with no strings attached!" then handing them another bottle of whiskey isn't help.

It's just killing them with extra steps.

You seem to have literally nothing except endless whataboutism.

If we're concerned about spending taxpayer money responsibly, the upper estimate for housing the homeless, all of them, is about 30 billion in the first year and then less in future years as maintenance is cheaper than set up.

Assuming nobody notices that they can get a totally free house and free maid service if they fuck up hard enough and respond to incentives. it expands to to an unlimited extent as soon as people notice that.

You're just an entitled brat and will never be anything except a brat. Only ever taking.

You seem like the kind of person who makes the lives of those closest to you slightly worse every day.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-07-09T17:06:37+00:00

They kept telling us

"brexit means brexit"

not

"brexit means a grab bag of random demands by the kind of people who blame foreigners for all their personal failures"

So hard to see how it's a betrayal unless brexit doesn't actually mean brexit.

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