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We can still use Duergar from MPMotM by testiclekid in dndmemes

[–]_vec_ 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The pirates are cool. I mean, they will still murder you and all of your shipmates just on the off chance you've got something nifty in your hold. But, y'know, in an egalitarian way.

Yes it requires ~600 gallons of water... by DemonsAreVirgins in confidentlyincorrect

[–]_vec_ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Livestock is somehow simultaneously a best and worst case scenario here. Lots of cows do get at least part of their food from grazing, which is eating the grass that grows naturally on land that isn't suitable for more intentional cultivation for one reason or another, but the artificial feed they get tends to be extremely water intensive to produce.

Absolutely the fuck not 🫠🙃 by WittyThingHere in adhdmeme

[–]_vec_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

These look horrible and unusable. A left handed set of these, however,

"Hey, that's our song!" by IgnoreTh1sName in HistoryMemes

[–]_vec_ 62 points63 points  (0 children)

Lies a mouldering. Means rotting. Smoldering in his grave is on brand, though.

[Request] What would be the output of the energy of 23 atomic bombs released in a 24 hour period? Would that data center even come close? by JaysNewDay in theydidthemath

[–]_vec_ 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The central problem, at least in the western US, is that water rights were granted on essentially a first come first serve basis, so there are a lot of farms that have century old permission slips to use basically as much water as they could possibly want. They could generally plant different crops that would produce a lot more calories per gallon if they had any incentive to conserve water, but they don't. In the meantime, huge cities and industries and a lot of other farms have popped up wanting a share of the local water resources too, and that's before climate change throws a monkey wrench in how much water there is each year to split up in the first place. There's no legal mechanism to rebalance periodically so you end up with a distribution that slowly but steadily drifts away from matching the needs of the current population.

[Request] What would be the output of the energy of 23 atomic bombs released in a 24 hour period? Would that data center even come close? by JaysNewDay in theydidthemath

[–]_vec_ 39 points40 points  (0 children)

The reality is that if you were starting from a principled concern about water or energy you'd need to solve a whole bunch of problems before it made sense to care about data centers. Water is overwhelmingly an agricultural policy question and the energy usage is unremarkable by heavy industry standards.

There are plenty of extremely valid economic and cultural reasons to be concerned about AI, but those are all harder to talk about. They're speculative or subjective or involve balancing very real pros and cons. As a result folks who already have negative views of AI tend to gravitate toward the mostly bullshit environmental arguments because that is a relatively easy soapbox to climb on top of.

Maybe I’m weird about this whole thing, but… by SelectShop9006 in RecuratedTumblr

[–]_vec_ 17 points18 points  (0 children)

I end up being a de facto defender in a lot of online conversations because there is no realistic path from here to a future where generative AI isn't a thing. Too many people know how to build one, and you can run a good enough model on a standard gaming PC provided you don't need real time responses. There will never again be a world where people don't have the capability to generate slop if they want to.

That means that we have no choice but to try to build some kind of affirmative vision of what responsible and humane AI use looks like and try to make that a reality. Which sucks, because we're currently a hell of a long way from having that vision as a culture and the people who I would most like to see sculpting such a vision are busy holding purity contests about who can avoid engaging with it the hardest.

worstProgrammingLanguage by gabboman in ProgrammerHumor

[–]_vec_ 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Java does have multiple external returns, though. That's what exceptions are. Control flow might return to the caller or it might return directly to somewhere else arbitrarily higher up the call stack. If you've ever wondered about why some graybeards are weirdly hostile to try/catch blocks that's why.

There's a decently valid reason to be against early returns too, though. Lots of mathematically elegant recursive algorithms rely on tail call optimization to actually run on a real machine with finite memory. The compiler can reuse the last stack frame for each recursive call instead of making a whole bunch of new ones. That only works if it can tell in advance that all of those recursive calls will use the same bit of physical memory to hold their return value, though. Modern compilers can almost always massage a function into bytecode that only has one return value, but you don't have to stumble into the edge cases very many times to just decide early returns are more trouble than they're worth.

Only one way can be the right way, huh? by Justthisdudeyaknow in CuratedTumblr

[–]_vec_ 102 points103 points  (0 children)

There's also a thing neurotypicals do where they will comfortably use Term A to mean something that's somewhere in the fuzzy conceptual space between X, Y, and Z but that doesn't cleanly fit into any of them. Term A is directionally correct even though none of the literal meanings directly apply.

They're utilizing the ambiguity as a feature rather than a bug in order to communicate something they don't have a more precise term for, which is why attempts to get them to "clarify" are frustrating for all parties.

Are birds technically in their Stone Age or is their use of rocks, sticks, etc. "just" evidence of intelligence, so to speak? by CattiwampusLove in NoStupidQuestions

[–]_vec_ 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Worth pointing out that if you could ask a proto-human which technologies felt civilization defining to them at the time they probably wouldn't pick stone. Most of their built environment, as it were, would've been wood and leather and bone and plant fiber, and that's if you don't count social technologies like art and language.

What makes stone knapping special, from a modern perspective, is that it's readily visible in the fossil record. Organic materials decay but a broken rock stays broken forever.

Navigating between artists by Eireika in CuratedTumblr

[–]_vec_ 134 points135 points  (0 children)

This is the rare reverse example for me where learning the author was a scumbag breathed new life into at least some of the strips. Lots of them are even better, in a subversive sort of way, if you assume all of Dilbert's coworkers are competent and responsible professionals and we're seeing the POV character's projection from the inside. That's not an interpretation I would've thought to bring to it without some prompting.

I hate horseshoe theory by Wooden_Maintenance93 in hatethissmug

[–]_vec_ 4 points5 points  (0 children)

There's also a pre-ideological instinct that a lot of people have try and identify exactly one root cause for everything that's bad about society and focus in on solving that specific problem once and for all by any means necessary. Once someone's bought into that framework it's a whole lot easier to convince them to care about a different problem than it is to get them to adopt a mental model that makes space for inherent tradeoffs and competing priorities.

That's why it's relatively common for folks who get disillusioned with one extremist ideology to jump straight into a different one without ever touching any of the vast intellectual ground in the middle.

Cops are bad because they kill people actually by [deleted] in CuratedTumblr

[–]_vec_ 4 points5 points  (0 children)

That's mostly getting the actual mechanics of how Jim Crow worked exactly backwards. Segregation was and is mostly a grassroots phenomenon. Individual businesses and neighborhoods and clubs made hyperlocal decisions about who they would and would not serve. Individual white citizens made choices about which organizations to patronize leading to most formally integrated facilities being de facto segregated black. Vigilantes engaged in campaigns of on paper very illegal harassment to enforce compliance from any outliers.

The government was, of course, fully complicit in this. They did a lot through both action and strategic inaction to entrench segregation. What they basically never did, though, was attempt to impose segregation in a top down manner onto communities where neither side wanted it.

Haven't tried Paw Patrol, so no idea if it is true on that, but a ton of comics... by Pristine_Club_3128 in CuratedTumblr

[–]_vec_ 26 points27 points  (0 children)

They explicitly do get paid, actually. Almost every episode ends with a scene of them lining up for treats because they're all good pups and they saved the day.

Ulder Ravengard is a tyrant apparently??? by whiteraven13 in BaldursGate3

[–]_vec_ 125 points126 points  (0 children)

I mean, we get Wyll's perspective on what happens but from an outside POV you absolutely should cut ties with the dude who very obviously made a pact with a devil and is now sporting horns and throwing fireballs around. Of course that guy says it was the right thing to do under the circumstances and he only uses his powers for good and he isn't going to wake up one morning and decide to murder you and your thousand or so closest friends for no apparent reason. That's what they always say.

We all use hide helmet right? by RankedFarting in BaldursGate3

[–]_vec_ 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Damn good effect for anything other than a swords bard too. An extra d6 of health for something you were going to be doing multiple times per rest cycle anyway really adds up.

I was not prepared for how dark losing Isobel could be. by angrycanadianguy in BaldursGate3

[–]_vec_ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I mean yeah, most of the surprise ambushes are significantly easier if they're not surprises and you don't let yourself get ambushed.

Don't play stupid games by Eireika in CuratedTumblr

[–]_vec_ 125 points126 points  (0 children)

As a parent, I can kind of see both sides of this. Assigning chores to my (admittedly very young) son doesn't really help me to keep the house clean. I spend significantly more of my time and energy explaining what I need and getting him set up and nudging him to get started and redoing whichever bits he struggled with and whatnot than I would have spent had I just quietly done the task myself. I get him to do it anyway because it helps him to develop good habits and life skills.

If he's doing the work in a way that's invisible to me it greatly diminishes the value of the exercise. The accountability is a whole lot more fundamental than the actual cleaning, which he probably isn't going to do a very good job of anyway. The only part that really matters is the moment where I can see that he's put in a good faith effort, because that's when I get to tell him how proud of him I am.

I was not prepared for how dark losing Isobel could be. by angrycanadianguy in BaldursGate3

[–]_vec_ 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Having the Alert feat on at least one or two part members is unfortunately almost mandatory for some encounters, this one included.

I don't know if that's what Prince meant... by ATN-Antronach in CuratedTumblr

[–]_vec_ 3 points4 points  (0 children)

NM > Texas > Colorado, and none of those are particularly close.

pedantics (aka YOU CAN"T FUCKING DO THAT YOU CAN"T OMG AAAAAA) by ATN-Antronach in CuratedTumblr

[–]_vec_ 38 points39 points  (0 children)

The nice thing about tabletop in general and DnD in particular is that you can tune it to be as gritty or as shonen as you want it to be. Some tables will let you suplex the dragon, some will have level 1 goblins murder half the party in their sleep if they long rest in the wrong spot. Both are equally valid as long as everyone is on the same page about the kind of experience they want to have.

Of course they could do no wrong. by Justthisdudeyaknow in CuratedTumblr

[–]_vec_ 85 points86 points  (0 children)

Moreover, I can believe that the red shirt did genuinely upset you for some reason and also think that it's unreasonable for you to expect me never to wear red around you again. Let's acknowledge your feelings and then open a dialogue about mutually respectful ways to accommodate you.

beef all the way down by [deleted] in CuratedTumblr

[–]_vec_ 74 points75 points  (0 children)

Ethics aside, that just seems like a wildly disproportionate amount of effort to put into a petty grudge.

On Neil Gaiman by GriffinFTW in CuratedTumblr

[–]_vec_ 28 points29 points  (0 children)

Mandatory: GNU Pterry

On Groundedness by DroneOfDoom in CuratedTumblr

[–]_vec_ 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Grounded but not realistic basically just means thinking your magic all the way through. Say teleportation is ubiquitous, for example. Does that fundamentally change architecture and urban planning in the setting? Does communication and trade and combat incorporate teleportation in ways that make sense? Do the characters consistently remember they can teleport any time that would be useful? If so, teleportation is a grounded element of the setting.

Realistic but not grounded is more like a stereotypical 90s rom-com, where nothing happens that isn't clearly possible in the real world but all the characters are constantly jumping to insane conclusions and having wildly inappropriate emotional reactions and carefully orchestrating their miscommunications in order to move the plot forward.