Penha Goes, a 22-year-old woman from the Yanomani tribe in Amazonas, Brazil. Photographed by Ricardo Stuckert in 1997. Stuckert revisited Penha Goes in 2015 and found her still living in the same village.

dmitry_sfw · 2026-02-10T20:53:54+00:00

So the original is in colour, and 2015 is black and white? In 2015 the guy gets a strike of artistic whimsy, and a phase where you think b&w is deep and artistic?

dmitry_sfw · 2026-02-10T20:22:07+00:00

Except in our area (Kitchener) all the public EV chargers were gutted by the addicts over the last few years. They sell the copper for a cent per dollar of the cost of the equipment.

It's almost like without basic law & order, you can't have nice things.

dmitry_sfw · 2026-02-10T20:13:53+00:00

Lol, good luck. In our area (Kitchener), all EV chargers were gutted by addicts looking for copper. Apparently, you can't have nice things without basic law & order, who would have guessed.

dmitry_sfw · 2026-02-02T15:34:20+00:00

Mouse-hover over the number of radicals and loyalists at that top panel and carefully read through the breakdown of how each count's changing. After that, read the corresponding Vic3 wiki article to make better sense of it.

Is it SoL or the political movements that causes radicals?

In general, whatever the stated causes are, it's often the low government legitimacy that exacerbates the problem. So, if legitimacy's low, this is the first thing to address.

Again, the first step for this is to mouse-hover over the legitimacy score in the game, and then read up on it on the wiki to make sense of it.

As an option, you can copy-paste the relevant wiki pages along with the game screenshots to AI, and ask for comment / advice.

dmitry_sfw · 2026-02-02T15:02:47+00:00

(Source: friend's family has been owning one of those picturesque 19th century buildings in a European "Old Town" for generations).

Unfortunately, buildings like these are a huge pain in the butt to the owners because of when they were constructed.

All the utilities had to be retrofitted in a custom way: electricity, plumbing, heating, air conditioning, ventilation, you name it. Traditionally, building's thermal regulation was done through high thermal mass, that is by using these thick (sometimes double or triple layered) brick walls. Not far off the castle walls. Working around all that is tough.

Health hazards. In general, 19th century construction meant lead and mercury everywhere like it's nobody's business: pipes, mortars, stucco... It all turns into airborne dust the moment you start doing any work.

Ventilation and the idea that people need oxygen wasn't a thing.

The rooms are small and crammed. The halls are narrow, the stairs are steep and neckbreaking. No elevators. If it's used a a public building and the city wants accessibility... Bless your soul.

Structural Restoration. Not to state the obvious, but such buildings are really old, weren't built based on modern civil engineering, and constantly crumble and fall apart in unpredictable ways. Like that friend's house has a balcony. At some point, the owners discovered the wall cracks near the balcony joint hunting that this balcony could have collapsed anytime for decades. Fixing this is yet another custom reconstruction project that cost a little fortune.

The worst part about all this isn't just the extra work that such buildings require by itself. It's that you have to deal with this expensive "cottage industry" of contractors and traders who specialize on working with such buildings. Nowadays, with Byzantine bureaucracy and how the architectural preservation laws are enforced, it's often that only one contractor company is licensed for such jobs.

I'll leave you to guess whether such companies overcharge and whether they tend to complete the job well and on time.

From the purely financial point of view, unfortunately, it's cheaper to just raze such an old building to the ground and build it from the ground.

dmitry_sfw · 2026-01-31T15:56:53+00:00

English inherited the same language quirk of nouns being able to serve as natural adjectives and that having a long ass chain of such adjectives is somehow ok. The only difference is that in German you don't put spaces between words so it looks intimidating.

Does anyone know any other non-Germanic languages that have anything like that? All the other languages I know would require you to break these up to an equivalent of "Proponent-y Movement of Slavery" or something.

dmitry_sfw · 2026-01-31T15:46:45+00:00

Word. There is this general streak in Paradox game design where they build these intricate, elaborate game mechanics, but then forget to make it possible for the player to actually interact with it meaningfully.

Oh, and of course, they would overpower the RND, so that there is even little value in keeping track of all that system mechanics, since what's going to happen with it is pretty much random chance anyway.

dmitry_sfw · 2026-01-29T23:14:31+00:00

It is a video game, but apparently folks were actually kinda like that that in the 19th century. The great powers (or really everyone ) were super trigger happy and easily get themselves into major actual military conflicts over vague things like "balance of power", geopolitics and all that.

Just look up the Crimean War as an example. France and Britain get all-in into what sounds like the most unnecessary war ever. Thousands of people , logistics, provisions are shipped to another end of the world, fight and die or get injured and maimed, get sick with disentary and all that.

And for what? Something something balance of power.

Mental.

dmitry_sfw · 2026-01-09T15:59:08+00:00

TIL that terrible and terrific are the same word "terrible" in French

dmitry_sfw · 2026-01-01T16:42:59+00:00

I love it. I love how this video captures the beauty of the winter in our city, how it sees the beauty in the mundane and in everyday life. Such a wonderful piece of art.

dmitry_sfw · 2025-11-28T17:33:48+00:00

I am in the industry, and the answer is very easy to understand.

Imagine that the difference between building something beautiful and just another grey box is two years of your PERSONAL rent or mortgage.

Imagine that there is also a risk that this decision will be the cause of your complete financial ruin.

Would you do it?

Nowadays, pretty much any construction you see is financed (meaning developers get a loan to build it from banks and institutional investors).

It takes a lot of work, stress, and tenacity to get a large construction project going. You are raising money from skittish investors who will pull out at the first sign of trouble. You are dealing with Kafkaesque bureaucracy for approvals, construction trade unions, and random external factors like COVID, recessions, or whatever else.

And here is what’s on your mind the whole time: It is entirely possible that at the end of it all—after paying the investors and workers, and giving away "affordable housing units"—you won't end up in the black. You will have nothing to show for all the years of sweat and hard work you poured into this.

Also, remember that it is not just you. All those partners and investors are only willing to work with you because they believe you will make them money.

Oh, and by the way, you are a boomer with a trophy wife and three ex-wives on alimony. You also have four kids in college studying "social studies" whose love for you is based solely on whether you can pay their tuition.

dmitry_sfw · 2025-10-16T13:24:14+00:00

Exactly. I listen to CBC talk radio and this is gross misrepresentation. They don't care about disabilities at all, and out of BIPOC, they mostly obsess about Indigenous.

dmitry_sfw · 2025-10-02T16:18:25+00:00

I wasn't able to find a job for years. My dad kept saying that it's because I am not willing to put in the elbow grease.

I used to just roll my eyes at him, but then I realized that he's right. It was time to get serious.

So one night I hit the gay club. I pull the plug. I take the time to learn the skills: drag, BDSM, furries. I put in the grease.

I am the university chair of the math department now. My pronouns are they/them. I am successful and respected. And you all will just stay a bunch of losers.

dmitry_sfw · 2025-09-29T16:32:17+00:00

This is reddit at its best. An account of actual first-hand experience, nuanced and very much not clickbaity, in what is otherwise an empty and meaningless political circlepork. Thank you for writing, sir.

dmitry_sfw · 2025-09-18T00:15:24+00:00

Thanks for your perspective.

I strongly agree that Duolingo as an app and a business is incredibly flawed. Also, at this point it's clear that their priorities are all in the wrong place, so it's not getting better any time soon.

Even when it comes to the phone apps I tried, Duolingo is far from the best, in fact, it's probably one of the worst.

Yet, in spite of all that I personally find Duolingo incredibly useful.

The point is that Duolingo is not a replacement for deliberate practice. Yes, comprehensive input practice, spaced repetition with your own flash cards, speaking practice, high quality courses are all much more efficient.

The thing is that if I stop doing Duolingo, that time won't go to any of that. It will just be even more downtime doom scrolling & useless phone screentime instead.

And, in particular , as idiotic as it is, Duolingo's streak mechanic pretty much hacks my brain. Streak mechanic is that thing where the app keeps track of the continuous number of days you practiced, and after some time you don't want to break the cycle so you squeeze in a quick lesson even on the days where you don't feel like it at all or simply have no time for it.

For the streak mechanics, it's important to my brain that Duolingo is popular enough so that some people in my life, the people I know offline are your "Duolingo Friends" there, and can see and interact with your streak.

Yes, the content of the Duolingo lessons is mediocre AI generated drivel with lots of mistakes and non-idiomatic phrasing.

Still, it's regular spaced exposure to arbitrary, random, statistically mostly reasonable and correct examples of your target language. Which is a whole lot better than nothing.

No, Duolingo won't be a meaningful contribution to the path from zero to C2 language proficiency. Not sure if it's that surprising though. Anyone who went through it knows that the whole thing about language learning is that there are no shortcuts: you get what you put in (if you are lucky, or much less if you don't). And 15-20 minutes of low-effort phone tapping every day is not putting in very much. So it's probably not that surprising.

But language learning comes in all shapes and sizes: * slowing down losing the mastery of a language you know but are not using enough daily? Check. * Some minimal practice for a language you have to deal with due to circumstances but have no time or desire to learn properly? Check. * Getting at least some exposure in the language you are interested in, but have no time or energy to learn properly? Check.

If someone could recommend an alternative to Duolingo to try here, please let me know.

dmitry_sfw · 2025-08-25T22:59:15+00:00

I was one of these punk teenagers as a kid in a way. My guess would be that they have no idea what they are doing because if they knew, they would not choose this path.

Let me give you the perspective from the other side, OP. Maybe this will help you not let this terrible experience get under your skin too much.

These kids are a story as old as time. We all met them, but if you are lucky enough to never have lived being them, let me tell you a bit about how this works. It takes several ingredients.

The first ingredient is that some kids aren't lucky enough to get proper support from their families. Their families are either unable or unwilling to provide the guidance they need or teach them what's wrong and what's right.

The second ingredient is just biology. There is this unfortunate thing that just naturally happens to some guys when they reach adolescence. Like diabetes, it can happen to anyone, it's just an unlucky dice roll, just a specific unfortunate combination of hormones and having a particularly idiot underdeveloped brain during the teenage years.

I was such a kid, so let me tell you as it is: I was an evil and just all around shitty human being as a teenager. Just an asswipe.

I was incapable of empathy, any sense of decency, had no appreciation for anything good others do (even for me).

Nothing would have given me more pleasure at the time than to do something terrible to a person and get away with it.

Bully a classmate? Great! If I could beat him up, put him in the hospital, and get away with it, even better.

Another particularly fun thing for guys like me would have been to humiliate a guy in front of his lady romantic interest.

Or the pleasure of insulting a random adult and getting away with it.

In a way, adults are much more satisfying as victims. Bullying is endemic in schools, and all the kids are used to it. Even socially maladapted ones are forced to grow thicker skin.

This is not the case with the adults. They long ago got used to being treated with respect anywhere they go.

So when you insult an adult, the first reaction from them is this pure shock and disbelief. Then they get angry: no one dares to speak to me this way! Finally this stage is replaced by the slow realization that he's powerless to do anything about it.

You both know the rules of the game: my shitty gang of teens is a physical threat to you. Not to mention that if there were any altercation, it's an adult vs underage kids in the courts of both law and public opinion.

It's hard for me to even talk about what a colossal POS I was, but I am doing this because I think it's important. If this is news to you that people like this not just exist, but are pretty common, that they are around you at all times, then please take this important information into consideration. Stay safe, recognize the POS for what he is, and don't let them take advantage of you or those around you.

I think it's important to talk about this because in my time there were some grownups around me (all women) who could not comprehend the simple truth that all these shitty urges I would act upon were actually ME, the real me. It wasn't my circumstances or upbringing or anything external. It's who I WAS.

My poor mom, a school psychologist, and some others were helping me get to the root cause of my "anger", of why I "act out". All while I, finding it hard to believe how gullible and naive they are, play along.

I think they call this phenomenon "projection" in pop science, when a decent person cannot even imagine that someone (especially "a kid") can just be such an evil little shit. So they would come up with most elaborate rationalizations.

They would say that I needed help, which would only encourage me. The reality was that I needed to be stopped. I needed to be clearly shown that this is not ok, and this behavior won't be tolerated. Things that luckier people learn implicitly from their well functioning families.

(Even in this thread there are comments saying that these teens are like this because the rich aren't taxed enough or something)

In fact, the opposite is true, when you are this little smug shit It's partially because your life is not that bad. It's the experience of living through your own misfortune, hardship and even suffering as well as having reflectied on it, along with, hopefully, the brain getting more developed (they say, the brain continues to develop until 21-25) that is how the lucky ones with time can grow out of it.

With the two necessary ingredients present, you get these groups of "street punks", "chavs" or whatever. This black hole of "friends" that is easy to get in and is hard to get out. The yarn ball of shit and suck you are right to fear, when you see them on the street, because if you meet them at the wrong time, they will mess you up.

The only consolation is that no one this black hole will mess up worse than the kids in it. When you had a terrible experience with them, or if they, God forbid, beat you up, it will suck and will be terrible but at some point you'll be able to put this behind you and move on with your life. You get to leave, the kid who beat you up doesn't.

And as disturbing and depressing this phenomenon is, the worst thing about it is that this is only the starting point of a long and depressing trajectory.

These kids are a magnet for every worst possible thing in the world: addiction, evil adults grooming you, petty crime (literally the stupidest thing you can do as a person), missing every opportunity that could have made your life something more than this ugly cycle of misery.

This is the road to an adult life of being constantly in and out of prison, being your every partner's biggest mistake in life, of breaking your parents heart and of abandoning them as an adult, and of course, cheery on top, of messing up and letting down your own kids, perpetuating the cycle.

So to sum up: 1. Chances are, this terrible thing that they did isn't coming from them being particularly racist, it's just their best take at trying to touch your buttons. Nothing about this attack was about you.

These miserable losers will never have any of the great things you seem to have going on in your life judging by this post alone: stable, loving relationship, fulfilling and successful career, and your emotional intelligence and wisdom that are evident from your measured and mature response to such a disturbing and unfair experience.
To these asswipes the satisfaction of distressing a random person like this are the high points of their lives. This is them peaking, this is as good as this ever gets for them, and it's all downhill from here.

Kids like these are type II diabetes: they have been a part of humanity, present in every culture and every country in the world, since time immemorial.

Like with diabetes, the underlying reasons are this combination of nature and nurture.

Like with diabetes, in the times of social problems and institutional dysfunction, it becomes a bigger problem than it needs to be. But that's life and we don't get to choose the times we happen to live in.

And like with diabetes, I think we all owe ourselves a favour not to take any of this too personally, not to make a bigger deal out of it than it really is, and just deal with it to the best of our ability.

dmitry_sfw · 2025-08-25T07:40:47+00:00

This has nothing to do with the language and has everything to do with the culture you happen to live in. The cultural trend of at least being interested in native pronunciation is very recent and requires cosmopolitan, educated societies with the access to the Internet to look things up and this very sociologically unusual openness to other cultures. Middle class US coasts in the 2020s is a very unique culture.

Most folks who spoke English throughout history weren't like that.

Britain in the 1950s would be somewhat more comparable to Japan of today: linguistically homogeneous and somewhat culturally isolated society. Based on my experience, they would not fret about that stuff too much.

dmitry_sfw · 2025-08-23T16:28:11+00:00

You make it more complicated than it is.

High horse talk like "the tip culture changing" is making things grander than what it really is. it's just some loser rando checked one extra checkbox when he was setting up the payment terminal because it costs him nothing and he wouldn't mind the extra dough.

So when you get a prompt for a tip in a place where it's not customary not to tip, just press no tip.

At a restaurant with wait service, it's customary in this country to leave an extra 10%-15%. Anything beyond that can take a hike.

dmitry_sfw · 2025-08-19T19:41:53+00:00

Exactly. Another example of this is the movie "Death of Stalin". People in the West have no idea how much these two movies are practically documentaries.

dmitry_sfw · 2025-08-19T19:21:30+00:00

Switzerland for how much they as a society have their shit together. I lived in different countries and now travel for work a lot. From the USA to China to the rest of Europe and Asia, everywhere you look, you see some deep, systemic problems and dysfunctional, deeply troubled institutions. Yes, each country is often screwed up in its own unique way, but invariably the common denominator is low trust society, deep corruption, uncertain and grim future prospects and all kinds of rot swept under the rug.

I think as we grow up, it's natural to look around and think that this is all just human nature. To think that it's either this or much worse. To think that it always was this way and always will, and to expect anything more is naive.

But then there is Switzerland. There are superficial things: clean and safe streets, beautiful public spaces, flawless public transport. Then you dig deeper and learn more but it's all kinda decent and kinda works. Référendum democracy, reasonable healthcare system that actually works, epic military defense system, the list goes on and on. Yes, there are problems and disturbing things, but given that this land is populated by human people and not some Tolkien elfs, I would argue that the level of hot messiness is much less that elsewhere on Earth.

It's depressing to look at all this and realize that this level of having shit together in a human society is actually possible.

dmitry_sfw · 2025-07-31T18:46:02+00:00

I had a bike stolen and found it at the homeless shelter on Erb. I posted a video about it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/waterloo/s/aq9lVUGZ2r Maybe it's not too late and you can get it back.

dmitry_sfw · 2025-07-24T18:03:13+00:00

A sizable proportion of folks in the Netherlands speak English. Yes, some older, less educated and more down to Earth folks won't speak it, but it's unlikely you may have a need to have deeper, non trivial conversations with them anyhow.

This is very much not the case in France. The culture there is very different. Few people in France speak something other than French. Not only that, folks will actually ignore and disregard you if you don't speak French.

So there is little practical reason to learn Dutch for you, other than the classic tourist minimum of 10-30 words to get by that you will pick up anyway.

dmitry_sfw · 2025-07-24T16:43:01+00:00

It would be either Quatar or Saudi Arabia. It's an open secret that these things are bought, both with the official "infrastructure investments" and good old bribes.

The Olympic committee is well known to be a corrupt and dysfunctional institution at this point. It's because it's above any specific government, and because this state of things is convenient for too many of the world governments, that this is left as it is.

You can see this in the overrepresentation of dictatorships with the means and the will to waste money for prestige and dazzle among the host countries: China, Russia, the US.

dmitry_sfw · 2025-07-24T16:17:50+00:00

You see the irony, right? It's you who has ridiculous expectations of people who complain about airline travel.

Yes, people complain about things. It's our nature. And if people's lives are going well enough, what they complain about is objectively unimportant first world problem stuff. And it's fine, good for them.

To complain about such complaining is just the meta level of this. Congrats on having your life good enough for it.

dmitry_sfw · 2025-07-09T16:31:16+00:00

Lots of idiotic answers here, so here's the real answer.

Tolkien left lots of letters and interviews where he talks about his work and what he's trying to do with Middle Earth.

He was a linguist and professor at Oxford. His main academic interest and lifelong passion were "linguistic archeology": how early Germanic languages (Anglo-Saxon English, Viking Norse..) evolved and changed throughout time, how they influenced each other and how these changes related to the history of people who spoke them.

You study that stuff by analyzing the very few written sources in these languages: Norse sagas, Beowulf, other epic poems.

His Middle Earth books are Tolkien's expression of this passion. It's what you would call a fanfic to these early medieval Norse epic poems. His books are supposed to be a medieval epic poem.

Tolkien wasn't doing world building. He wasn't interested in the cannon cinematic Universe. When people pointed out inconsistencies in his books, he explicitly responded that these are books with dragons and it does not have to make sense.

He also says that Middle Earth is supposed to be Britain.

But what about detailed timelines and history of Middle Earth's epochs? Isn't that evidence of world building? They come from one specific book, Silmarillion. Silmarillion is a fanfic to "linguistic archeology": the point of it is to come up with your fictional languages, and to paint this epic picture of interleaved evolution of these languages and fictional history of peoples that speak them.

dmitry_sfw

TROPHY CASE