• 0 Posts
  • 61 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
cake
Cake day: August 22nd, 2023

help-circle
  • And who or what exactly is going to stop him?

    When no one (who is in a position to enforce) cares what is legal or constitutional, he can do anything he wants. Just look at the current state of the US and tell me anyone in any power or authority cares. Do you really think “third term” is where they’ll draw the line? I’d put every dollar I have that is not actually about not carrying, but that this is the desired outcome, to enrich themselves.

    I only see one way to stop him, and it’s certainly not by law or votes.


  • Personally, I am very pleased with my Max Lumi (which has been superseded by other models). It was quite expensive, though, but I can say I have used it very often for five years and expect many more of it, still. However, because of its size, I don’t often bring it out with me. I primarily use it for studying at home.

    But if you don’t need the largest size (13"), the smaller ones are less expensive. If I were to replace mine, I’d probably go for a 10" one. I think that seems the right balance of size for writing notes and portability.








  • Where I am, there’s a requirement for 15% (I believe) of new condo developments to meet accessibility standards. You wouldn’t believe how people—potential buyers, not developers—are against that, saying it’s too many. That’s just new developments. All the existing old stock is not accessible, so that percentage of total accessible living spaces is, actually, still tiny. But it’s still too much to accommodate accessibility.

    Literally everyone is one accident, illness, or old age away from being disabled in some way. I can’t believe how stupid and short-sighted people are. (Maybe that’s their disability.)





  • Truly, I don’t understand why, but there are fully grown adults who believe that anything an LLM says is true. Maybe they think computers are unbiased (which is only as true as programmers and data are unbiased); maybe its the confidence with which LLMs deliver information; maybe they believe the program actually searches and verified information; maybe it’s all of the above and more.

    I know a guy who routinely says, “I asked ChatGPT…”, and even after having explained how LLMs are complex word predictors and are not programmed for factual truth, he still goes to ChatGPT for everything. It’s a total refusal to believe otherwise, but I can’t fathom why.


  • As a childless adult, it’s my duty to be part of other people’s lives and support families by being a trusted adult (trusted by parents and kids) and be a good role model for others’ kids.

    Why? Because we live in a society. Today’s kids are tomorrow’s adults. There are, unfortunately, a lot of terrible social influences out there, and parents can’t battle society alone. Young boys and girls need to learn and develop healthy relationships with men and women alike, beyond just their parents, in order to have something to model themselves after and to learn how to treat others with love and respect.

    And this is especially so for singletons. A lot of the bad and warped ideas about “relationships” and even self-esteem comes from unhealthy views of romantic relationships. Ideas like if you’re not good enough if you don’t have a boyfriend/girlfriend. Or ideas that men and women cannot “only” be friends (objectification of other sex). Ideas that men are owed relationships and sex by women (incels). Ideas that it’s better to be with a bad partner than to be single (abuse).

    Parents can’t fight all of that on their own.


  • Around two or three years ago, I was on a sales call/app demo as a potential customer–not for TikTok, of course. It’s an American company and I’m based in Canada. I asked the sales guy about their data storage, encryption, privacy, and the like; he didn’t know. I said I needed to know that if our group uses the application to communicate internally about, for example, helping refugees, the government won’t be able to access it. The guy asked me if that really was a concern.

    Well, you tell me now, sales guy, is it really a concern?




  • I tried out a bunch, including Babbel, Busuu, Language Transfer, Mango, and Memrise. I didn’t like them for one reason or another. I finally landed on Lingodeer. It’s similar to Duolingo, but it is a paid app. (You can try level 1 of any language for free.)

    The regular subscription price is definitely not worth it. It’s okay (not great, but not awful) when they do their sales. But I felt okay about paying human workers.

    This kind of learning is a great start, but will only get you so far. If your local library has access to Kanopy, look for the Great Courses series on Spanish. I thought that was an excellent series after a little bit of Duolingo.


  • Saul (Sha’ul) is a Jewish/Hebrew name. Paulos is a Greek name. Even until now, bilingual people who are of a minority culture (compared to where they’re living) often have two names, one in their their native (family) language and one in the local majority language, one official, the other unofficial.

    This was not limited to Paul, even in that immediate timeline. Levi (Jewish name) was also called Levi (Greek name). There’s no reason to believe Paul “changed” his name sheet his conversion. He continued to go by Saul after he became a Christian. He went by his Jewish name among Jewish people, then his Greek name when he travelled across Rome and interacted with Greek-speakers.