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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • The flag patriotism and intense praise of military action was a lot for me. I remember going to a mall, and seeing what would typically be reserved as disabled parking was instead veteran parking?? And then the cinema in the mall loudly advertising its discount for veterans as well. We do have a general discount in my country too, but it’s not so… intense. Like no one else has to know it’s happening because it’s more of a state benefit than it is a form of patriotism.

    Neighbourhoods in general are what I found the strangest when I stayed in the States. Flags everywhere as you say, but also just the intense size, and the lack of walkability (the kurb drops felt massive compared to my country). Beyond that I remember walking for around 20 minutes through a suburb and counting upwards of 10 different company logos on rubbish bins. This neighbourhood seemingly had 10 different bin days rather than one centralised service.






  • Uggggggghhhhhh another one for the pile. I love Chromecasts but to be fair the latest one with Google TV was a sign that things were getting shitty soon. 22% more CPU for a YouTube machine? Who cares? A home hub that needs my TV to work? Who cares? It’s like the tech industry regrets putting everything on your phone and now they want to separate it out again. Fuck off.









  • You make an interesting point, but I can’t help but feel it’s not completely the same and you’re reaching a bit. I feel like it’d be closer if GIMP, next to shape tools for squares and circles, literally had a ‘Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker’ shape. The crux of the issue as I see it in this part of the legal debate is whether or not AI companies are willing participants in the creation of potentially copyright infringing media.

    It reminds me a bit of the debate around social media platforms and if they’re legally responsible for the illegal or inappropriate content people keep uploading.



  • Maybe a US/UK divide? At least in the UK boffin is relatively inoffensive depending on how it’s used. Eg if I build a fusion reactor in my garden my neighbour might say “wow, look at what this boffin did!” and it would be a complement where boffin is a stand in for a word like genius, only with a tounge in cheek touch of jealousy.

    Thinking about it I would say that ‘nerd’ is typically putting someone down for their intelligence or interests, whereas boffin is a light insult while identifying the ‘boffin’ as being smarter than yourself.





  • I know at least for French it’s been more controversial as there was no direct they/them equivalent. Instead new language has started to be used, though it’s not standard. I find it interesting as they/them is often defended (beyond the fact that it’s been in use in English for a long long time) as being a language tool in English that’s readily available and a far more palatable alternative to neo-pronouns. However in French (and other languages) I wonder if an invented gender neutral equivalent is culturally perceived as being no different.