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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)UL
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Comments 697
Besides your belief that there is no higher power, what are your thoughts on supernatural phenomena?
  • I'm not sure what you mean about a historical standpoint. I don't think there's anything in the historical record that could be considered actual evidence of supernatural phenomena. History as an academic discipline is a kind of science and generally approaches the subject matter with the scientific method.

  • Hetzner cuts traffic from 20 TB –> 1..5 TB on US VPSs
  • Citing tariffs doesn't make sense. There's no new tariff structure yet, Trump isn't in office and as far as I've seen no one has suggested imposing tariffs on VPN services. It looks like they are just using tariffs as an excuse to raise prices.

  • Besides your belief that there is no higher power, what are your thoughts on supernatural phenomena?
  • Supernatural phenomena do not actually exist as far as I can tell. There's no actual evidence to my knowledge, and plenty of evidence that humans are not particularly good at perceiving or interpreting the universe around us as it actually is. Our brains are not a reliable narrator, supernatural phenomena are most likely a consequence of this rather than anything genuinely supernatural.

  • What are the pros and cons of a sterilizing (~95%) plague?
  • Because they are both dependent on people who are no longer being born? The scenario is a population collapse, it's going to have major consequences. The labor shortage alone would destroy the economy and upend society. Our civilization would look completely different within a generation.

  • Reddit Got Rid of Their World Buffs
  • That's good to hear, I hope you're able to keep it up. I'm sure you've heard this before but just in case, if you haven't you should really consider also running a long term buy and hold portfolio. Fund that Roth IRA every year if you can. It's a whole lot easier than active trading so it really shouldn't take up much time and when you're an old person you will be glad you've got that pile stashed away.

  • Shiftall FlipVR initial impressions

    In case anyone is interested, the Shiftall FlipVR controllers are in fact a real product. I decided to take the risk and order a set, they arrived today. Since they are such a new product and it's hard to find any real world info on them I figured I would share my initial impressions here in case anyone else is interested in them.

    Getting the controllers paired went smoothly and only took a minute (just make sure you install the driver). Figuring out how to actually put them on took a bit longer, adjusting the wrist strap especially was a little tricky because you need to push part of the material up to get it to feed through. Or maybe there's a trick to it I haven't figured out yet. Regardless, after a bit of struggle I got them dialed in and they are very comfortable. The weight of the controller is noticeable but its balanced well enough that I'm typing this review with them on and it's not been an impediment.

    Flipping the controllers in and out of your hands is as fun as it looks. You can adjust how far the controller part extends and adjust its angle so getting it into the exact right spot for my hand was easy and it feels surprisingly natural. It really is a very clever design that feels right when you have your fingers on the controller.

    Quality wise I would say they are good but not quite great. They feel well made but the trigger buttons are a little more soft and wiggly than I would like and detract from the the overall impression. If the controller part is at the wrong angle I find the lower trigger can sometimes pinch the skin of my middle finger a little. If there's a future revision, improving the feel of the triggers would be my top priority. There's also a seam on the bottom part that doesn't feel great if you run your finger over it but there's no reason to ever touch that part of the controller so its really just me nitpicking. Other than that I can't find anything else to complain about.

    Overall, I'm impressed with the controllers. Despite looking ridiculous, or like the prop from a 1990s cyberpunk movie, a whole lot of thought clearly went into these things and they feel much better than I expected them to.

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    Reddit Got Rid of Their World Buffs
  • If you're trading stocks based off Reddit info you should really know WTF you are doing and have additional sources of info to back up any decisions you are making because you are playing a very dangerous game. Unless you've already been investing for years and have a sizeable portfolio I would encourage you to reconsider the path you are on and build up some capital and knowledge before attempting any kind of active trading.

  • "The **Most open** Operating System"
  • Their official marketing is to call Windows 11 "the most secure version of Windows ever" or something along those lines. They definitely use "the most secure" in their marketing, but I think they do it in a way where it is only in reference to previous consumer versions of Windows if you actually parse out what is being said.

  • Why does it seem most people, mainly conservatives, against Trans people? Unless I am wrong I never heard of one shooting up a school church or whatever. The ones I have met have been pretty cool.
  • After it became less acceptable to explicitly hate the gays in public they needed a new target. There's a lot of people who like being riled up with hatred, who are fearful and need a bogeyman, etc. It's either human nature or something deeply embedded in our culture. Eventually they will move on and find a new target to focus their hate on.

  • More of MRTV with the Shiftall MeganeX Superlight 8K

    Kayak and Alyx at the Shiftall HQ with a pre-production MeganeX.

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    Gaetz sent over $10K in Venmo payments to 2 women who testified in House probe, records suggest
  • "When you're a star, they let you do it"

    The Republican party, and a shocking number of people in general, are perfectly fine with whatever. They don't actually have any kind of genuine moral or ethical system. I feel like such a fucking old man now talking like this but goddamn is it gross that a guy who paid children for sex is going to be the Attorney General, that is not how it worked when I grew up. I mean, it was how it worked but if you got caught that was it. Everyone shunned you and your career in public service was over, you had to go work as a lobbyist or sit on some corporate boards and keep your head down.

  • In the US, is this actually the moment past the point of no return?
  • Maybe. US history is full of crazy fucked up shit that the nation has made its way through thus far. This kind of situation hasn't really happened in the US before though, and historically these kinds of situations do not work out well. We are past the point of no return in that the status quo Washington Consensus or whatever you want to call the previous era is gone now, whatever is coming is something new and different and the US role and position in the world are never going back to what they were before. Really I would say this process started with Bush II but there is no reversing it now that Trump has won a convincing electoral victory. Whether we're past the point of no return for the US constitutional order isn't really clear yet but it's not looking good.

  • If someone dies unexpectedly, how do you find out?
  • The internet doesn't really live up to its reputation in that regard. There's all kinds of things that never end up on the web, or if they do its so obscure you won't find it unless you know where it is already. If someone has an obituary in a random little newspaper you've never heard of in a town you might not associate with the person who died because they lived in your city for decades, and that town is on the other side of the country, even if that obituary does get indexed it's not an easy find unless they have a very unique name. I have a friend who moved less than 50 miles away a few years ago and I found out he died earlier this year, I've never been able to find his obituary. There may not even be one, and if there is it could be published in any number of different places because he lived in a lot of different places. I think most of the people I've known who have died haven't had an obituary at all, or if they did I wasn't aware of it. It costs money to get them published and I don't think it's a priority for a lot of people after someone has died. Even if they do get published they aren't always easy to find. This is in the US at least, maybe things are different in other countries.

  • What is the longest you've been awake without sleep? When and why did you do it?
  • I used to stay up all night when having fun on occasion. The longest was two nights and then I went to bed at around 8pm on the third day. It's been awhile since I lived that life but I used to wake up feeling great and generally be in a great mood, and it helped me reset my sleep cycle so my insomnia would get less disruptive for awhile afterwards. That said, not sleeping is bad for you. If you're doing it regularly you will have negative health effects, and if you stay up for more than a day you will start hallucinating and probably make bad decisions.

  • If someone dies unexpectedly, how do you find out?
  • Not everyone gets an obituary. Most of the people I know who died didn't get one, or if they did it was in a small town newspaper thousands of miles away where they grew up instead of where they lived their adult life and died.

  • Study confirms Egyptians drank hallucinogenic cocktails in ancient rituals
  • The harmala should be, its Syrian Rue, which contains an MAOI and has been used in recent decades for creating ahistorical version of Ayahuasca by combining it with either a DMT containing plant or synthetic/extracted DMT. I think access to the actual plants used traditionally for Ayahuasca is more common so probably Syrian Rue has likely become less used for that now.

  • apnews.com Missouri officers accused of pulling over women, searching phones for nude pictures

    Two Missouri police officers were indicted separately this week and accused of similar crimes — pulling over women and searching their phones to find nude photos.

    Missouri officers accused of pulling over women, searching phones for nude pictures

    Never give the cops your phone.

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    www.propublica.org Gun Companies Gave Customers’ Sensitive Personal Information to Political Operatives

    At least 10 gun industry businesses, including Glock, Smith & Wesson, Remington and Mossberg, secretly handed over names, addresses and other data to lobbyists, who used the details to rally firearm owners to elect pro-gun politicians.

    Gun Companies Gave Customers’ Sensitive Personal Information to Political Operatives

    For years, America’s most iconic gun-makers turned over sensitive personal information on hundreds of thousands of customers to political operatives.

    Those operatives, in turn, secretly employed the details to rally firearm owners to elect pro-gun politicians running for Congress and the White House, a ProPublica investigation has found.

    The clandestine sharing of gun buyers’ identities — without their knowledge and consent — marked a significant departure for an industry that has long prided itself on thwarting efforts to track who owns firearms in America.

    At least 10 gun industry businesses, including Glock, Smith & Wesson, Remington, Marlin and Mossberg, handed over names, addresses and other private data to the gun industry’s chief lobbying group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The NSSF then entered the gun owners’ details into what would become a massive database.

    https://www.propublica.org/article/gunmakers-owners-sensitive-personal-information-glock-remington-nssf

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    slate.com The Ohio Supreme Court Just Greenlit an Egregious “Fraud Upon the Voters”

    The justices are upholding an Orwellian lie that accuses an amendment to end gerrymandering of doing the exact opposite of what it actually does.

    The Ohio Supreme Court Just Greenlit an Egregious “Fraud Upon the Voters”

    In November, Ohio residents will have an opportunity to vote on Issue 1, a constitutional amendment that would finally abolish the state’s extreme partisan gerrymandering. Voters will not, however, be informed of this fact on the ballot. Instead, the Ohio Supreme Court’s Republican majority ruled Monday that the amendment will be described in egregiously misleading terms on the ballot itself, with ultra-biased language designed to turn citizens against it. Incredibly, a proposal that would end gerrymandering will be framed as a proposal to require gerrymandering, a patently false representation of its intent and effect. The court’s 4–3 decision marks yet another effort to subvert democracy in Ohio by Republicans who fear that the citizenry—when given a voice on the matter—might dare to loosen their stranglehold on power.

    https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/09/ohio-supreme-court-voter-fraud-gop.html

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