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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • Bldck@beehaw.orgtoYUROP@feddit.orgNice try...
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    24 days ago

    Bonjour, parlez-vous anglais?

    That’s my baseline for speaking French. 99% of the time the French are gracious and switch.

    The few times someone has responded “non” we use pidgin franglish or pantomime whatever we need to discuss. Haven’t had someone be a jerk about French or English in France for almost 20 years.


  • Bldck@beehaw.orgtoMemes@lemmy.mlFirst time?
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    26 days ago
    • Operation Condor: right wing dictators in South America repressing leftists with the support of Americans and possibly the French
    • Gladio: Post WWII Allied Forces and then NATO intelligence operations to delegitimize and destabilize leftist groups in Eastern Europe from end of WWII through the 1990s
    • Ranch Hand: US led effort to destroy the foliage and agricultural land in Vietnam to deprive the Viet Cong of food and places to stage attacks
    • PBSuccess: CIA led coup d’état in Guatemala at the request of the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita)
    • Phoenix Program: CIA led effort to infiltrate the Viet Cong




    • One Day by David Nicholls because it uses overlapping narratives and different perspectives to tell one story
    • The Dog Stars by Peter Heller because it uses a post apocalyptic backdrop to take you on an emotional journey with the characters
    • This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud because its overlapping narratives over decades continually recolor events and motivations and outcomes
    • Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin because its three protagonists have their own stories to tell, but they are intertwined and dependent. -Same Bed, Different Dreams by Ed Park because the complex story structure lends itself to a powerful emotional journey for the protagonist and the reader


  • There’s a fascinating historical nonfiction book by Erik Larson that covers the early days of the American civil war.

    The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War is mostly focused on the soldiers and officers manning Fort Sumter in South Carolina, the site of the first battle of the war. But it also includes lengthy discussions of how Lincoln was vilified for things he never said and blamed for things he didn’t actually do.

    The southern states, specifically the landed elite, were very interested in starting a war so they could maintain their wealth and power so they used Lincoln as a scapegoat to rouse the masses




  • Bldck@beehaw.orgtoPrivacy@lemmy.mlProton CEO Andy Yen Interview
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    5 months ago

    In 2024, Nate’s model accurately predicted the exact electoral map.

    He doesn’t do any polling. He aggregates other pollsters, weights it based on past performance and then uses other factors (he calls them fundamentals) to produce an outcome. And I think it’s misguided to suggest that Democratic leadership is looking at Nate’s polls to reinforce their own positions.

    Here’s a quote from a column he wrote for the NYT

    It may even feel as though we’re Ping-Ponging between radically different futures, never quite certain what lies around the bend. Yet on the whole in 2024, polling did not experience much of a miss and had a reasonable year. Ms. Harris led by only one point in my final national polling average. And Donald Trump led in five of seven key states, albeit incredibly narrowly. The final polling averages were correct in 48 of 50 states. The final Times/Siena national poll (including third-party candidates) had Mr. Trump one point ahead. There was plenty of data to support a Trump win.

    Remember that the Biden campaign had an internal poll showing Trump winning ~48 states in a total landslide victory, but they maintained that Biden was the best candidate.


  • I’m reminded of this Nate Silver quote from the election:

    Democrats, however — and here, I’m not referring so much Silver Bulletin subscribers but in the broader universe online — often get angry with you when you only halfway agree with them. And I really think this difference in personality profiles tells you a little something about why Trump won: Trump was happy to take on all comers, whereas with Democrats, disagreement on any hot-button topic (say, COVID school closures or Biden’s age) will have you cast out as a heretic. That’s not a good way to build a majority, and now Democrats no longer have one.



  • Evans: I think it depends on how we phrase it. So, in terms of, yes, young men are much more likely to say, Yes, women could work, they can go out to clubs, they can do whatever they like, they can be totally free, and young men will support and vote for female leaders. So in terms of support for recognizing women’s capabilities, absolutely, younger generations tend to be much more gender equal, and that holds across the board. The only exceptions are places like North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia where there’s no difference between young men and their grandfathers. But in culturally liberal economically developed countries in the West and East, young men are more supportive.

    Evans: One is that men care about status. Everyone cares about status. Big examples of status goods include getting a great place at university, being able to afford a nice house, and also having a beautiful girlfriend. Those three things—good education because that matters for signaling for credentials; good place to live; and a pretty, pretty wife or girlfriend—those are your three status goods. Each of those three things has become much, much harder to get. So if we look, as university enrollment rises, as it has, it becomes much harder to get to the top, to get to the Ivy League, right? So only a small percentage of people will get to the top, but those getting to the Ivy League is so important for future networks. Meanwhile, those who don’t even have bachelor’s degrees will really struggle to get higher wages. So one is that men are struggling to get those top university places, which are important for jobs. Then on top of that, housing has become much more expensive. And the gap between wages and house prices has massively increased. Especially if you don’t have inherited wealth. So for the guy whose parents were not rich, it becomes so much harder to get onto the property ladder. So it’s especially hard for these young men to get status. Now, a third and really important factor is that it’s become harder to get girlfriends. So as societies become more culturally liberal, open minded, and tolerant, women are no longer shamed, derided, and ostracized for being single without a boyfriend. … But as women are not facing that pressure and that ostracism, they can become financially independent. Women’s wages are approximating men’s. They can inherit parental wealth and buy their own property. So that means that women don’t necessarily need a man. So demand for male partners has plummeted because of that economic development and cultural liberalization. As a result, Pew data tells us that 39 percent of adult American men are currently unpartnered.

    Demsas: So basically you have these three buckets here that you’re talking about. You’re saying that you see this divergence with young men in particular because young men, I guess, are concerned with status in a particular way, and that the economic circumstances of our moment in time here in the U.S. have made it more difficult because of home prices, because of diverging outcomes for people with a college degree versus those without. And then finally that because of women’s increased opportunities that they’re able to actually reject men that they feel like don’t give them either economic security or the love or respect. And in previous generations, they would have had to make do because they weren’t afforded that freedom in society.

    Evans: In fact, they’re guys with emotions who—and nobody wants to be ghosted, to be rejected, to feel unwanted. So if men go on these dating apps and they’re not getting any likes, and even if they speak to her when she doesn’t have the time of day, it just bruises and grates at your ego, your sense of worth. And so then, men may turn to podcasts or YouTube, and if you look at that manosphere, if you look at what people are talking about, it’s often dating. And so they’re often saying, Oh, women have become so greedy. They’re so materialistic. We see this vilification of women. So that kind of filter bubble, once you self-select into it, you become surrounded by this sense of righteous resentment and, oh, you know, It’s not your fault for lack of studying in schools, it’s women are getting all this positive discrimination. Women are getting all these benefits, you know, every, all these companies are hiring women because they feel they have to, because that’s woke nowadays. So if you hear all that kind of angry discourse, and the same goes in South Korea where I was earlier this year. There is a sexist, discriminatory law which mandates that men have to go into military conscription. And that’s terrible, it’s very abusive, it’s hierarchical, it’s unpleasant, lots of men commit suicide, and that is now increasingly used as a way of signaling that life is very unfair for men. And so men are facing a tough time, and then social media, which they’re self selecting into, can reinforce the legitimacy of that.



  • 🐬 Improvised Underwater Timekeeping for Dolphins:

    An intelligent dolphin could adapt to underwater timekeeping by observing natural cycles, biological cues, and marine phenomena. Here’s how:

    1. Harnessing Natural Rhythms

      • Tidal Changes: Dolphins could monitor the ebb and flow of tides, which occur predictably based on the lunar cycle. Changes in water current speed, temperature, or pressure could serve as cues for time measurement. • Day-Night Cycles: Despite being underwater, ambient light penetration varies with time of day. Dolphins with sensitive vision could detect shifts in light intensity or color. • Marine Sounds: The ocean environment is rich with natural sounds that vary throughout the day, such as coral reef activity during daylight hours or nocturnal hunting sounds.

    2. Biological Cues

      • Internal Circadian Rhythms: Dolphins have well-developed biological clocks that could help them estimate time intervals based on their innate circadian rhythms. • Heartbeat or Breathing Patterns: They could track their heart rate or breathing intervals to measure short durations.

    3. Environmental Markers

      • Bubble Streams: Dolphins could use their breath to create bubble trails or patterns and observe their rise time or behavior as a rough timing mechanism. • Floating Particles: They could monitor the sinking or rising of particles like algae or debris to estimate time.

    4. Intelligence and Communication

      • Echo-Location as a Timer: Dolphins use echolocation effectively. They might develop a way to measure time based on how long sound waves take to bounce back from consistent underwater structures. • Social Synchronization: In groups, they could rely on collective signals, such as patterned clicks or whistles, to denote the passage of specific intervals.

    5. Innovative Tools

      • Natural Hourglasses: They could manipulate objects like sediment-filled shells, observing how long it takes particles to settle or rise when shaken. • Thermal Layers: Dolphins could detect thermal gradients or changes in water temperature at specific times of day.





  • rysnc might be a faster and more reliable option. It can compress the files for transfer and does checksums after the transfer is complete

    I used something like this to transfer 12 TB from offsite to onsite with zero failures

    
    rsync -arvzip --progress /path/to/host /path/to/destination
    
    

    You can set up a screen and let this run in the background all the time