Classic selection bias. I don’t recall the exact numbers, but I remember reading that the majority of men who have ever lived never reproduced. That’s unfortunately pretty normal.
I have this problem, as well. Distorted amplification, song lyrics, speech against loud background noise? Forget it. Oddly, I got a pair of Shokz bone-conducting headphones recently, and noticed that I have been understanding lyrics for the first time in songs that I’ve been listening to for 30+ years. (I should really listen to that song about how “Shareef don’t like it; Fuck the passport, fuck the passport.”
Flat design is clinical depression in graphical form, a reflection of the contemporary existential/mental health crisis. It’s a societal cry for help, basically.
Apple’s skeuomorphic phase overlapped the Retina display era, though, so I don’t buy that explanation. Also, it’s nothing to do with raster vs. vector. The photos that we take with phone cameras are raster graphics, for example. They look great, and it’s because they’re high-resolution. High-res raster UI elements would look great, except then the versatile manipulation by CSS would not be possible. Vector graphics are very good at that.
But here’s the thing: Complex vector graphics exist, too. There were some pretty fancy PostScript graphics even back in the early 1990’s. With all the pixels that we have now, we could have good design instead of flat, if the developers bothered. But it seems we’ve internalized the feeling that we’re not worth the effort, aesthetics and color aren’t interesting, and life is a joyless slog. Which sounds and awful lot like clinical depression…
(Incidentally, odd that emoji aren’t flat design.)
I’d be so happy for a desktop window manager that didn’t make all of the window borders grey-on-grey, and distinguish the active window by making the title text slightly-darker grey.
The study made some strong remarks about the kind of people who would modify their car’s exhaust. If psychopathy and sadism aren’t bad enough, apparently loud truck owners would do even worse....
In a completely unsurprising story out of Manhattan, NY, the words “money isn’t everything” were just spoken at brunch by someone who, conveniently, has lots of it.
I agree, I see the concept that the headline means to convey, but the author missed the mark. The better version would be: ‘Money Isn’t Important,’ Says Person Who Has It.
I gotta take issue with those numbers. A car moving at 130kph covers 18 meters in about half a second. According to the numbers I found online, experts estimate the perception-reaction time for braking at 1.5 seconds, which is up from the value of 0.75 seconds that they used to use. Thirteen and a half meters is an unrealistically-close following distance, even for German super-humans.
I have not driven on the Autobahn, but the videos I can find show scenes much more consistent with a ~55 meter (1.5 seconds) gap between cars, or much-slower traffic speeds. That drops the estimated human-throughput way, way down.
Kudos to Obama for actually following through, but the withdrawal from Iraq had a deadline set by the U.S. Status of Forces Agreement signed by Bush, per the request of the Iraqi government.
Edit: while I’m at it, does anyone know what I should do when I’m waiting for a coincidence/adventure to happen, but it never comes? I can’t really go outside and arrange for it to happen because I don’t know what I’m looking for.
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
ETA, same thing a different way: “That’s the thing. I don’t think I believe in ‘deep down’. I kind of think all you are is just the things that you do.”
The first one is from Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night, which is the story of the American Nazi propagandist, Howard Campbell, who briefly appears in the more well-known book, Slaughterhouse Five. The second is from the show BoJack Horseman, specifically episode 12 of the first season.
Oof, this feels unintentionally personal. The stories those quotes come from are about doing bad things while thinking of yourself as actually a good person “deep down.” For me, though, it was realizing that people can like you for who you are only if you communicate to them who you are.
True, but if you call yourself conservative while espousing views that society at large views as somewhat left-wing, you’ll constantly need to explain yourself.
Right. To us, the phrase “law and order” means a peaceful society that results from everybody obeying the rules. To the MAGA/authoritarian crowd, it means exercising the power of the state (law) to maintain the correct social hierarchy (order). And guess who’s on top of that hierarchy?
I think about this a lot, about free will to make a choice in an otherwise-deterministic universe, and the thing that gets me is… yeah, it sort of makes sense if you consider the person making the decision like a black box. A decision comes out, and it seems free.
But what goes on in the box? How can it possibly be free will? If I were making a choice to benefit myself, and I had perfect information about the options and the consequences, then wouldn’t everybody in my position make the same (objectively best) choice? If I make a non-optimal decision because I lack some information, then that’s not free will, that’s due to an external circumstance. If I make a non-optimal decision because I’m not of rational mind, then that’s not free will, that’s either an intrinsic quality of my mind, or due to external influences. If I chose to be intentionally non-rational to prove that I have free will, the idea of free will itself and the need to prove it would be the external influence driving me.
If the choice was just one of just one of preference, then the preference is either one I was born with, or the product of outside influences. Maybe there’s somebody who can logic themselves into liking cauliflower au gratin without reference to subjective sensory experience, or cultural significance, and I just can’t imagine how?
I do tend to think of choices that way. The way I understand the human mind is as a rational optimizer of utility. The brain has to balance all manner of competing sensory and cognitive input, and the mind constantly seeks to maximize pleasure and/or relief from distress. (That’s what I mean by utility.) They say that all models are wrong, but some are useful, and this one proves very useful. Instead of dismissing people as disturbed or crazy, look for the pleasure or relief that their mind is optimizing for. Drug users destroying their lives by seeking the next fix do so because the pleasure and relief of the drug is greater than distress from alienating family and friends. This is why people have to hit rock bottom before they’ll kick the addition; it’s when the distress of ruining their lives overwhelms the lure of the drug. This model even helped me understand a friend with schizophrenia. Her decisions were quite rational, actually, but were based on distorted and false perceptions.
Now this is funny, writing it out like this brought a mini-epiphany to me, a different model of what “free will” might mean. Our minds do have the freedom to change and react differently to different sensory and cognitive inputs. We’re not automatons fixed to a preset course of action. And it makes sense that way that even protozoans have some degree of free will. Intriguing!
More facebook cringe
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What's the most basic thing you can't do?
What Era was the best and why was it the 90s? (lemmy.ca)
Study Says That People Who Like Loud Exhaust Are Psychotic (www.caranddriver.com)
The study made some strong remarks about the kind of people who would modify their car’s exhaust. If psychopathy and sadism aren’t bad enough, apparently loud truck owners would do even worse....
‘Money Isn't Everything,' Says Person Who Has It (reductress.com)
In a completely unsurprising story out of Manhattan, NY, the words “money isn’t everything” were just spoken at brunch by someone who, conveniently, has lots of it.
32000 bikes on Berlins Autobahn (i.imgur.com)
Part of an event called Sternfahrt where cyclists protest for policy changes by taking over the city on 20 routes covering 2000 km of public roads....
Mexico's new president! (i.redd.it)
boingboing.net/…/mexico-elects-first-woman-presid…
What is a quote that captures something you've learnt through living your life?
Edit: while I’m at it, does anyone know what I should do when I’m waiting for a coincidence/adventure to happen, but it never comes? I can’t really go outside and arrange for it to happen because I don’t know what I’m looking for.
Trump Supporters Issue Threats of Violence Online After Guilty Verdict (truthout.org)
It just doesn't make any sense! (i.postimg.cc)
It must be a test (lemmy.world)
Union-busting firms like Littler Mendelson and Morgan Lewis advise corporate management to break labor laws because of low violation costs (inthesetimes.com)
An M1 Abrams Tank can see children in front better than many current trucks. (thelemmy.club)