going to disagree with most of your takes on the media/journos. that entire industry is mostly corrupt for the past 20 years because the barriers to entry are so high that you have to be part of the elite to become a journalist, hence why journalism has become increasingly irrelevant and seems completely out of touch to anyone who isn’t part of the elite. Also i feel like a lot of your political claims are way over simplified and exaggerated, but there is some truth to what you are saying. I stopped reading most ‘elite’ publications because they really started showing their detachment from any greater reality around the late 2000s, and it got far worse in the mid 2010s.

I spent a decade studying/working/teaching philosophy, history, and political theory. Hardly anyone knows anything about these things… and often when you see them on media… the takes are horrible ignorant/bad/wrong and vastly oversimplified. So are the takes by most consumers of philosophy the podcasts/books/etc about them. And it’s sad frustrating how people think they know everything there is to know about Plato’s views because they listened to a 45m podcast about The Cave or read one of his books once. And the people who do know about these things? totally ignored both mainstream media and the social media types… but their insights when they are given the time/effort to shine is truly wonderful and insightful.

I also taught coursework in these areas… most of my students were not dumb or idiots… but only 5% actually gave a shit about learning. Most just wanted to be entertained or validated in their delusions and pre-existing beliefs about the world, and they got very frustrated when the course didn’t do that for them. At least when I taught 15 years ago they were not prone to violence, threats, and intimidation, like they are now.

Now I work in tech…and it’s astounding how horrible ignorant most technological ‘smart’ people are… and how much of their ‘intelligence’ is just… a quasi religious belief set. I think because tech is ‘mysterious’ to the general population the ‘techies’ now considered themselves the high priests of society… saw this going on 20 years ago and now we are reading the point where the corruption, idiocy, and delusions of grandeur have really started to show. I’m not a huge expert in most tech… but the amount of sheer ignorance perpetuated by overconfident idiots in the tech sector is just… mind blowing… and most ‘techies’ i know legit seem to feel an innate sense of superiority to non tech workers and if you challenge them they throw temper tantrums like children.

You left-out the critical resource of https://www.semiaccurate.com/ btw…

What a generally … outright-awesome post.

The Guardian changed-ownership recently, & cut their journalism-staff, savagely, ttbomk, AND they are now purged from DuckDuckGo??

searching for

kremlin papers trump site:theguardian.com

produces NOTHING at DuckDuckGo, now, & for the last few weeks, at-least?

& I’ve seen that FT definitely has anti-viability strategy in its pushing of distortion, in its stuff…

fscking-idiot webmastering at TheGuardian… WHERE’S THE SEARCH-FUNCTION??

https://www.theguardian.com/index/subjects/a

THAT page has a search-function.

??

WHEN I search on the keywords

kremlin papers

only-in-title, only-in-English, then click the button, then I get

https://www.google.co.uk/search?as_q=kremlin+papers&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&lr=lang_en&cr=&as_qdr=all&as_sitesearch=www.theguardian.com&as_occt=title&as_filetype=&tbs=

So, TheGuardian IS BLOCKING DuckDuckGo for sake of kickbacks for Google-exclusivity??

Looks like it…

“Those who are ignorant of history, are damned to re-enact its disasters.” is true for our entire world, & especially true in the domain of journalism!

IF you keep disappearing historical key-information ( as for-profit, & for-institutional-status/importance, “journalisms” both do ), THEN you’re garrotting OUR WORLD’s viability!!

Scum…

The highest quality science-news is https://www.science.org/news

whereas the highest quantity of science-news is probably https://phys.org/latest-news/

( you have to fight with phys.org, as it keeps trying to prove one is just a bot, if one keeps digging into archives )

Salut, Namaste, Kaizen, & Gratitude for making this post!

_ /\ _

For someone interested in journalism it’s odd you don’t know about the Bylines network.

ITT: autism

I kid. Kind of.

Animals are one of my special interests, so I have a lot of knowledge about keeping several types of animals (especially dogs and parrots). A lot of people that have pets don’t actually seem to look that deeply into keeping them, or even consider too much before getting them, which leads to a lot of problems and rehoming situations.

The most important thing is; before you get yourself any animal, look up and read about their needs first, there’s so much that has to be considered, since they’re living feeling beings and you will be responsible for them.

• What is the healthiest diet for them? How often do they eat? How much does feeding them cost? Where can you get their foods?
• How will you deal with their shitting/peeing, or the mess they’ll make? How will you have to protect your house so they don’t kill themselves or destroy everything?
• Do they need special lighting? Certain temperatures or humidity? What sort of cage/toys/other things they need, and how much will those cost?
• How much space do they need? (Never go with the recommended minimum!) Do they need to go outside every day, and how many times?
• Do you need to get multiple for them to have company and be healthy? Can you keep multiple of them or will they kill each other?
• What things should you teach them?
• How much time do you have to spend with them everyday? What will you do if you have to travel?
• How long lifespan do they have? What will happen to them if you die first?
• How will you take care of their fur/nails/beak/etc.?
• Do they need a specialist vet and are there any close by? Do you have enough funds to pay for their typical vet care and sudden emergencies?
• Where can you get this animal? Are they legal where you live? Are there any rescues for them, do you have to find a reputable breeder? How can you avoid getting scammed or supporting unethical practices? (Never buy anything wild-caught!)
• Etc…

Anyone remotely interested in Japanese music, J-pop, or rhythm games might have seen some music being labelled with something like “BOFU2017” or “BOF:NT” in song names, and a lot of these music have surprisingly high production value. This actually has some rather interesting history

So Beatmania was a DJ simulator rhythm game released by Konami in 1998 that was an inspiration for a lot of music games in the future. The Be-Music Source file format was developed for a community simulator of Beatmania. Later, BMS evolved into essentially its own rhythm game (which anyone can play btw, beatoraja is even available on AUR), and the community forbade players from playing official Konami charts (referred to as “illegal charts”)

In order to increase the amounts of content available for BMS, the community decided to host BMS creation competitions to encourage players to make more BMS… the flagship event is called “BMS of Fighters” (BOF), hosted annually starting from 2004. All music from the events are completely free and libre: as in, free as in both freedom and free beer. And the competition is fierce; a quick search on YouTube will show some top-ranking songs and their production values tend to be very high (… and there are some shitposts too, we don’t talk about Mopemope or that stupid Kirby song)

Obviously because of the libre nature of these competitions, a lot of these songs end up getting picked up by various rhythm games that are not BMS at all. The most popular rhythm games (like DDR, maimai) tend to have a generous collection of the top ranking BOF charts. The low-budget games even more so: when I was in China for two months and saw a lot of local arcade games (basically Chinese clones of maimai, DDR/PIU and Dancerush), guess what songs they have the most! Muse Dash which also started as a Chinese indie game also has a ton of BOF songs; in fact, Blackest Luxury Car, a song which I strongly associate with Muse Dash’s entire identity (they even have a stage modeled after the song), was in fact… a song from BOFU2017

It’s hard to tell but I wouldn’t be surprised if BMS have a wider societal impact on rhythm game music and even the entire Japanese music genre as a whole. A lot of the artists behind top-ranking charts probably got contracts with various rhythm games… or maybe even beyond those. One funny example I know is that one artist became the lead composer of a gacha game that grossed $18M last month; the game in question is almost universally praised for their good soundtracks

As for the BMS themselves… distribution is not centralized whatsoever, especially for less popular songs. Some are on Google Drive, some on OneDrive, some on certain hosting websites, some only in packaged archives that some people are thanklessly maintaining… but anyways it is rather fascinating

Also the 2025 BOF started on October 3rd and is ongoing now. The portal for all BOF events are here: https://bmsoffighters.net/

As someone who’s into composting:

Some maggots (specifically of black soldier flies) can literally climb out of their buckets.

This feels well known but…

Adding split screen to games is actually a very funky process.

It changes how the UI works, input setup, how sounds are handled, how some effects are done, how optimizing is worked on, it significantly increases testing and QA time because split screen may have its own unique bugs, and other quirky problems due to either the game’s or engine’s design (most of the time split screen is not a high priority focus compared to other features)

All that for something a very small percentage of players will even look at.

I often see people lament the lack of split screen games, and I do wish there were more, but its a hard sell and I can see why many games abandon it completely.

(Save for a few that made it entirely their focus, like split fiction)

Having a lot of resources is a curse. Countries that have natural ressources (Iran, Algeria, Nigeria, Russia) tend to be highly corrupt and exploited by a small elite. It’s simple. The elite can take control of the oil fields, the gas fields, the mines. Just sell ressources. Shoot protesters. No need to invest in anything else. It’s much better to live a country with limited resources (Taiwan, Japan, Switzerland). Lack of resources force the elites to invest in science and education. The most unlucky country in Africa is Congo. It’s full of diamonds, forests, oil, gas, lithium, cobalt, rare earth. So Congo has suffered horribly because of that. In fact, it’s still being looted.

This isn’t actually true. You can look at the Nordic countries which are very oil rich and owe a lot of their prosperity to that. The United States is pretty resource rich as well. What is a curse is imperialism, and having lots of resources attracts lots of imperialists. The “oil curse” or “resource curse” is a myth made up to whitewash imperialists and absolve them of guilt.

Strap in and let me tell you about my special interest, Iranian history. In the 1800s, before the discovery of oil, Iran was ruled by an extremely corrupt line of shahs who sold out every part of the impoverished country to fund their lavish lifestyles and massive harems - to the point that other countries had to step in and say that they weren’t allowed to sell out that much of the country. But the Iranian people were upset by this state of affairs, and staged a massive boycott, which set the stage for a mass movement in 1905 that established a democratic parliament and a constitution, with the support of an overwhelming majority, including the clergy (a fatwa was actually issued declaring violating the boycott to be haram). Iran was well on it’s way to becoming a peaceful, prosperous, democratic society - but then the Fire Nation attacked, in the form of the British and Russian Empires moving in, shelling the parliament building and dividing the nation between themselves, like a pack of wolves.

The Iranian people suffered tremendously in the following years, with major plagues, famines, and genocide conducted by the Ottoman Empire. Of course, the Russian Empire collapsed, the British took the opportunity to unify the country, propping up a shah of a new dynasty as their puppet. That shah proved uncooperative during WWII, and the Allies invaded to set up supply lines between the Eastern and Western fronts and to secure the Iranian oil (which had now been discovered), and the shah was forced to abdicate to his son, who the British found more amenable.

The British technically owned the rights to Iran’s oil, but the deal they had made was with the previous dynasty (Qajar). The one that had been selling out their country to an absurd degree, the one that had been overthrown by the people precisely because they were selling out the country, and so naturally the deal they had struck with the British regarding oil (which had been made before oil had even been discovered in Iran) gave them extremely lucrative terms. But it actually didn’t matter how lucrative the terms were because the British were just straight up stealing it. They falsified their records and forbid any kind of inspection of their facilities.

This led the Iranian people to once again mobilize in support of democracy and self-rule. As outrage over the exploitation grew, the shah, who had previously rubber-stamped anyone the British picked, began to fear his own people more than the British and appointed democratic reformer Mohammad Mossadegh as prime minister. After the Iranians had watched the British stonewall them for decades, Mossadegh nationalized the oil industry with overwhelming public support. Iran was once again on track to becoming a peaceful, democratic, independent country.

But the British set up a naval blockade that crippled their economy. Iranians, at this point, had a neutral to positive view of the US, and hoped that it would live up to its stated ideals and support them against the British. The British, meanwhile, expected the Americans to back up their “property rights.” President Truman threw up his hands in frustration, seeing both sides as intransigent. But Churchill simply waited him out, and offered his successor Eisenhower British support in Korea and NATO in exchange for the CIA launching a coup, and so Iran was passed around like a bargaining chip. Mossadegh’s commitment to democratic ideals allowed the CIA free reign, he didn’t crack down on the press despite the CIA controlling virtually all the newspapers, he didn’t crack down on protests while the CIA was hiring protesters on both sides, etc. Naturally, he was ousted (although the CIA denied it/covered it up for decades), and the shah was given much more power (which he used to hunt down and exterminate the Iranian left) and the oil kept flowing.

But after a few decades, once again, outrage over the exploitation came to a head, and the shah, seeking to appease his people, participated in a multinational oil boycott. But as a result, his foreign support was withdrawn, which set the stage for the Islamic Revolution. President Carter, against the advice of his state department, allowed the shah to take refuge in the US. Naturally, this outraged the Iranians, because the US had previously staged a coup to install the very same man as a dictator. In retaliation, some of the revolutionaries seized the US embassy and took hostages. This of course led to a breakdown in relations between the US and Iran.

And so, Iran is often held up as an example of this supposed “resource curse” that leads to political instability (not to mention the old line about “Islam is incompatible with democracy”), but the reality is that the country had multiple times in its history where it could’ve become stable, peaceful, democratic, and independent, but those chances were destroyed, not by Iranians, but by foreign imperialists, the vile colonial empires of the British and Americans. Had they simply been left alone, they would not have suffered from this supposed “resource curse.” If you look into the history of any similar country, you will find a similar story. But the history of these countries are simply not taught and not known in the imperial core, and so other explanations are invented.

I know more than I ever planned on knowing about audio equipment.

The first thing you need to know is that you cannot defeat physics with marketing hype. I don’t give a flying fuck how many wave guides Bose talks about or all the technology under the sun, you need a big speaker to make deep bass. There is nothing anyone can say or do to change this.

And when you look up audio equipment, ignore the “music power” because they will state what is the momentary maximum power the speaker can handle… but we don’t play micro seconds of MAX power music, we play steady audio… what you need to know is the RMS power the device can handle or output.

Furthermore, audio cables are a complete sham. You can take any power cable from a discarded vacuum, boom, you’ve got speaker cable. But but gold connectors… Yeah no.

You can clean dirty/corroded electronic edge contacts with a pencil eraser. Also helps equally as cleaning preparation before soldering.

Go ahead and try it yourself on an old penny, it’ll clean up and look shiny as new. Same principle for electronics.

You might be interested to learn about the Private Eye, a magazine which does a better job than the Grauniad in mostl respects.

People really misunderstand a lot about diving.

1

• SCUBA is an acronym that stands for Self Contained Underwater Breathing Aparatus
• SCUBA specifically refers to the gear with a tank, and not gear that uses an air hose connected to a boat
• Tanks are usually filled with just regular air, nothing special about it
• Oxygen becomes toxic at depth, so if you were to dive with 100% oxygen, you’d die at a fairly shallow depth

2

• Your flesh and blood absorb nitrogen from the air
• The amount it absorbs is based on the pressure of your environment/the air you’re breathing
• When you come back up to one atmosphere (1 bar) of pressure, your body slowly releases the nitrogen it has absorbed at depth
• This is a physical process, not one your body has any control over
• If you stay down for too long or come up too quickly, the nitrogen will become bubbles in your flesh and blood (the bends)
• That’s painful and can kill you
• A hyperbaric chamber (hyper-more than normal, baric-atmospheric pressure) can help by forcing the nitrogen bubbles to dissolve back into your flesh and release slowly
• You can use a special mix of air with more oxygen and less nitrogen than normal to increase safe dive times, but this also decreases maximum depth, because of oxygen toxicity

3

• Another danger is if you ascend without breathing out, your lungs can pop
• Humans don’t have any sense to tell us our lungs are too full
• This is called lung over-expansion and can also kill you
• It is also treated with a stay in a hyperbaric chamber

4

• Another danger is nitrogen at depth can induce an intoxicating effect like alcohol
• This is called nitrogen narcosis and can cause you to act carelessly and get yourself killed
• If you experience this, the correct course of action is to ascend a bit (like 15 feet) and wait until it subsides before you attempt to descend again
• You can use a special mix of air with helium or a special mix of just helium and oxygen to reduce the risk of narcosis on deep dives

5

• Regular diving gear has two second stage regulators, your main and your octo
• The name octo comes from how it makes your gear look like an octopus
• It’s a backup for you and for anyone who might need it
• The hose is yellow to make it easy to see

6

• The vest you wear (not everyone uses one, but most divers do) is called a Buoyancy Control Device, or BCD, or just BC
• It fills with air from your tank when you want to ascend to increase your buoyancy
• In an emergency, you can drop your weights, which should make you positively buoyant and cause you to ascend

And last, but not least:

• Diving is incredibly fun and an experience I’d recommend to everyone who is even remotely interested

Almost every song you’ve heard has included at least one sample from the Roland TR808 drum machine.

You really do just need to turn it off and back on again 99% of the time.

Almost all of the internet utilizes akamai, Amazon, or cloudflare for some piece of vital infrastructure.

If properly made, furniture made of solid hardwoods will last multiple lifetimes.

This might not be uncommon around here, but…

Between D&D and video games, I can identify most medieval weapons and armor.

Mythological beasts as well.