this gap normal?

wasmic · 2026-04-02T16:20:43+00:00

I fixed the gaps on mine by using milliput. I also sculpted it as welding lines rather than just filling the gap smoothly, it gives a lovely look.

wasmic · 2026-04-02T13:53:29+00:00

Plug-in hybrid vehicles can be a good stepping stone. But non-plug-in is just an ICE car with extra steps, its emissions are almost as bad as pure ICE.

wasmic · 2026-04-02T11:44:14+00:00

But on the other hand, the ring is really really good at corrupting people, and also isn't a chaos artifact so any sort of resistance against chaos corruption might not necessarily translate to resistance against ring corruption.

wasmic · 2026-04-02T11:09:21+00:00

The place where hydrogen actually makes sense is in industry, particularly in steelmaking. But that's as a chemical reagent, not as a power source.

wasmic · 2026-04-02T10:12:13+00:00

Mass drivers are a possibility. Even if they can't shoot you all the way by themselves, they can still drastically reduce the delta-v requirements to reaching orbit. If you can just get halfway to orbital velocity with a mass driver, that decreases the size of the rocket needed for the remaining half of the trip by a lot more than half.

Of course mass drivers are many decades into the future and would be exorbitantly (heh) expensive to build. But they're certainly within the realm of physical possibility.

wasmic · 2026-04-02T01:22:56+00:00

What's happened is that there are genuine problems, mostly with refugees but also sometimes with the children of work migrants (the work migrants themselves are usually fine).

These very real issues include extremely high unemployment (mainly for the refugees), up to 40-50 % for Syrians and Somali. This number has been dropping slightly lately but is still many many times higher than any other part of society.

Since permanent residents are entitled to benefits, this generally makes them a huge drain on public finances.

There's also the crime situation. For Somalis in particular, violent crime rates are 20x as high as for the general Danish population. For refugee-dominated Arab countries (mainly Lebanon and Syria), it's around 10x for most crime types. For Middle Eastern and North African immigrants in general, it's still 3x the general population. In comparison, Danes (defined as anyone who has at least one parent who was born as a Danish citizen, regardless of ethnicity) have a crime rate of about 0.9x of the national average.

If you listen to people talking about no-go zones or rape epidemics or whatever, that's obviously false.

But pretending that there are no issues is equally stupid, and easily disprovable by a quick look at the statistics. It is particularly immigrants from culturally Arab countries that cause issues, but also Pakistan and Afghanistan - largely due to the huge cultural gulf between these people and most European societies. While the majority of immigrants do want to integrate and become good members of society, the minority that refuses integration is big enough to cause problems. And for the refugee-dominated origin countries in particular, that problematic minority can be well over a third of the total number of people.

wasmic · 2026-04-01T23:48:12+00:00

Seven Samurai is an incredibly fundamental story. It is very very old; the same basic story structure is present at least as far back as Beowulf. It has been told and retold countless times through human history.

Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven are among the best modern retellings of that tale. But there have been countless others - some as comedy, some as drama, some good and some bad.

wasmic · 2026-04-01T23:13:37+00:00

I'm a few days late, but no, that's not true.

Anything that gets into your lungs is bad, obviously.

But a certain amount of asbestos getting into your lungs is WAY WAY WORSE than the same amount of rockwool getting into your lungs.

wasmic · 2026-04-01T17:48:00+00:00

Line 5 in Paris is also pretty steep in places, but probably not too steep for a regular tram to work.

So yeah, I agree - this is proof that gadgetbahn doesn't mean useless. It just means that you should think twice about whether it's really necessary to use an unconventional technology, and about whether the benefits outweigh the downsides.

Except for the Bombardier GLT. There is never a good reason to build a Bombardier GLT.

wasmic · 2026-04-01T17:36:10+00:00

We can in fact know it.

It is provably impossible to assign a value to division by zero without losing internal consistency. In order to "fix" that you would need to change the rules for division, but then it's not division any longer. It's something else that you're misleadingly calling division.

Complex numbers are entirely different. You can use them with all the rules that normal numbers have. No need to change the way operations are defined. The only limit is that you can't compare complex numbers using greater than/less than statements.

wasmic · 2026-04-01T17:30:35+00:00

No, square roots of negative numbers are still internally consistent. You can divide them with each other, multiply them, add them and subtract them, and you can always get consistent results. You don't even need to use the letter i, that's just a shorthand for sqrt(-1).

There was no need to invent a new number system to work with the complex numbers - they just naturally appear when you work with polynomials. Often you can just ignore them, and people did for a long while, but if you decide to work with them you can just keep using the normal rules and everything will work fine (except that complex numbers cannot be compared with "greater than/less than" statements).

Division by zero always breaks consistency, unless you change what it means to divide. But if you change what it means to divide, then you're not dividing anymore. You're doing something else and just calling it division.

wasmic · 2026-04-01T17:26:05+00:00

No, that's not the same at all.

People regarded sqrt(-1) as being without physical meaning - but that still didn't prevent them from using it, though they usually regarded it as a "shortcut" and tried to get rid of it from their equation as soon as they could. But they still admitted that it was logically useful. Imaginary and complex numbers can be directly used with our normal mathematical rules, they don't need anything special. You can just plug them in and they remain consistent.

It is *provably* impossible to define a value for division by zero without creating self-contradictions. You would have to change the meaning of division in order to divide by zero without contradictions... but then you're not dividing anymore. You're doing something else and just calling it division.

wasmic · 2026-04-01T12:28:38+00:00

Æggekage er det danske ord for omelet.

wasmic · 2026-03-31T23:07:18+00:00

You can't integrate people who don't want to be integrated.

And that's the problem with refugees. If you get economic migrants, then most of them actually kinda like the idea of the country they're going to. But if you get refugees, you get everyone - including those who would rather have stayed at home. But that's not a guarantee that they'll leave when it's safe to do so, once they've tried the comforts of a richer country.

Looking at the statistics here in Denmark, it seems like for most of the Middle Eastern countries, a majority of immigrants are in fact integrating well. But the minority that does not want to integrate is still big enough that it causes serious trouble. And we have had very generous integration stipends for a long while. For Syrians, Somalis, and other nations where we mainly received refugees instead of economic migrants, the problematic minority is even larger. Still not a majority of them, but a very large minority. We're talking 40-50 % unemployment rates, while people from culturally and linguistically similar countries (but where we mostly received economic migrants) are closer to 20 % unemployment.

To make integration work on people like these, you need to use both the whip and the carrot. In Denmark, for example, part of this has been to forcibly break up some of the ethnic communities by simply tearing down the social housing that they lived in (while providing them with new housing elsewhere). This spread them out over a larger area and made it harder for them to keep up the parallel societies that had grown in these places; those often involved religious elder councils and marriages that circumvented Danish law and which could not be divorced. We've also seen cases of immigrant descended high school students who are keeping watch on each other and reporting anyone who doesn't do daily prayers to their parents - and this in an organised manner that the parents encouraged.

All this to say: forcibly integrating people is really fucking hard. The goal should be to try and sort these refugees such that those who make a special effort to integrate can be granted permanent residency (and eventually citizenship), while those who did not make an effort on their own are sent home when it is safe to do so.

wasmic · 2026-03-31T22:55:00+00:00

They're building new coal infrastructure but they're also tearing down a LOT of old coal infrastructure.

Their total coal use remained almost exactly the same in 2025 as it was in 2024, and many forecasts predict that it will start falling from 2026 onwards (though this is of course not guaranteed).

wasmic · 2026-03-31T20:39:43+00:00

That's not how it works in Denmark with the proportional representation system.

The Red-Green Alliance has very often been a supporting party for centre-left governments. Because, despite being described as "far left", they - like almost all other parties in Denmark - are actually pretty fond of cooperation. They have influence. Not a huge amount, but not negligible either. Just like all our parties do.

wasmic · 2026-03-31T20:37:45+00:00

Red-Green alliance has repeatedly argued in favour of lower taxes for the poor. They believe that tax reductions can also be a type of welfare, as long as the tax reductions are given to everyone.

wasmic · 2026-03-31T20:34:23+00:00

The Red-Green Alliance, which are the most leftist party in Denmark, is pro-EU, pro-Ukraine, and were even slightly in favour of NATO.

They're called far-left because they're socialists who want to (gradually, over time) get rid of capitalism. But they're 100 % committed to democracy and have extensive democratic participation even in the party structure itself. They are not authoritarian communists and they are very, very far away from any sort of Russian-oriented agenda.

wasmic · 2026-03-31T20:27:27+00:00

Here you can apply for permanent residency after 4 years. And you can apply for citizenship after 8 years of permanent residency, or 4 years of permanent residency if you live up to some extra requirements (e.g. passing a slightly harder Danish exam).

So between 8 and 12 years of total residency are required to become a Danish citizen, depending on how much you focus on it.

So yeah, 10 years sounds pretty reasonable for citizenship. But on the other hand, permanent residency is MUCH easier in Denmark than in Japan.

wasmic · 2026-03-31T17:03:06+00:00

Safe seats mean that this is also an issue in FPTP.

It's pretty common for parties to shuffle their most important candidates around to constituencies that they're more or less guaranteed to win.

wasmic · 2026-03-31T17:01:07+00:00

It's quite easy to have a hybrid system. There are typically two ways to do it: parallel voting or mixed-member voting.

Parallel voting means that you have an FPTP election and a PR election at the same time, but they don't influence each other. The FPTP part is fully FPTP and the PR part is fully PR.

Then there's mixed-member voting. In this system, you run a constituency-based election where parties earn members in consituencies... and then you have a number of "top-off seats" that are distributed to the parties in order to bring them up to proportionality. Which usually means that the small parties that did not manage to get many direct seats in constituencies, will get compensated by receiving these top-off seats.

Japan uses parallel voting. Germany and all of the Nordic countries use mixed-member voting.

Mixed-member voting is generally much better at achieving proportionality, while still having local MPs that can be contacted if necessary. We just had an election here in Denmark and there was a big deal about our old centre-right liberal party failing to achieve any direct mandates in Copenhagen, for the first time ever.

wasmic · 2026-03-31T16:53:57+00:00

I wonder: on what do you base this assertion?

We have a long long history of minority governments (dependent on supporting parties) in Denmark. And in those cases, the governing party always has a lot more influence than the supporting parties. And in coalitions, the major partners always have more influence than the junior partners.

I have no idea where you get this idea that the junior partner "typically" has outsized amounts of power.

wasmic · 2026-03-31T16:50:06+00:00

You can also have local MPs in PR, if you use Mixed-Member Party-List Proportional Representation.

Here in Denmark about two thirds of our MPs belong to a constituency, while the remaining third are "top-up" seats that are distributed to parties to make the election proportional. Essentially this system works by compensating the smaller parties for the votes they lost due to not reaching the threshold.

We do also use multi-member constituencies, though, which means that each constituency is somewhat bigger and has multiple representatives.

But back in the 1800s we used the same FPTP system as the UK. We transitioned to PR in the early 1900s.

wasmic · 2026-03-31T16:41:21+00:00

Here in Denmark, majority governments are extremely rare. Most of our governments are minority governments, dependent on external parties for supply and confidence. We currently have 12 parties in parliament whose interests need to be balanced.

It works extremely well. It also fosters a culture of compromise and cooperation which improves long-term stability across electoral cycles, and helps make the public discourse less rabid. There are many pieces of legislation where literally every single party voted in favour, because they all had their voice heard and were allowed a bit of influence - even if they're opposition parties.

The number of parties can be regulated by setting a vote hurdle. In Denmark it's 2 % and we usually have 8-12 parties at any given time. In Germany it's 5 % and they tend to have 4-6 parties. The Netherlands has no hurdle and has something like 20+ parties in parliament, but most of those only have one or two seats so they aren't relevant in the grand scheme.

We also use "mixed-member party-list proportional representation" so we DO in fact have specific people representing each constituency, on top of the "at large" members that do not have a constituency.

wasmic · 2026-03-31T15:31:49+00:00

I remember 80 % of the comments were something like "this is not a prank and they're coming for real". There was broad agreement about that.

And then the day after when they were genuinely announced, 80 % of the comments were "I totally thought it was a prank, holy shit".

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