"IArticle 4 allows member states to call for discussions with allies if they believe their security is threatened without triggering an automatic military response. It was recently invoked by Poland following a Russian drone incursion on Sept. 10. "

“not because they are imbued with spirit but because I am.”

Ooh, I really like this phrasing

I sort of like that on my ThinkPad though. It reminds me of the defiance shown in liberating the laptop from its grim past life.

I respect this.

It reminds me of a friend who was doing a PhD involving some weird, new kind of lasers. Catching up with her one time, she said "Well, men have started explaining my own research to me, so I guess that means I pass ¯_(ツ)_/¯ ".

My response was “Congratulations? Also, F.”

Do you have a favourite crystal formation?

I’ve just been reading up on this now, and it seems that flexoelectricity is distinct from piezoelectricity, but they are related. Flexoelectricity involves the strain a material undergoes — i.e. how much the material deforms — whereas piezoelectricity is about the stress a material experiences. Of course, stress and strain are pretty closely linked — applying stress to a material often induces strain.

I need to read more about this, but I wonder whether there may be some materials that are piezoelectric but not flexoelectric, and some that are flexoelectric but not piezoelectric, as well as some materials that are both.

People like you are why I finally got round to playing the original Hollow Knight (Thank you; I’ve been having a lot of fun)

I’m not on Bluesky, so I’m not going to follow this person. However, I really appreciate how considerate it is to leave this link for people who would like to. Thank you; this is the kind of action that communities are built on.

I really like the world exploration. The world is pretty big, and it’s common to come across an obstacle that you can’t get past. I like the feeling of spending a few minutes trying to assess whether there’s a way past, and then going off adventuring elsewhere, eventually finding something that makes you go “ooooh, that’s how I’m meant to get past that earlier place”. I like that it really rewards exploration. There’s a lot of hidden stuff, but it’s not overly opaque — there are usually lots of clues that help you to find secrets.

The open world also makes bosses easier. I’m not great at bosses, so quite often I will get bored of trying against a difficult boss and go elsewhere. There’s nearly always more places to explore, and possibly find things that will make things easier.

I also love how well tutorialized the game is. When you get a new ability, the level design in the section after that helps you to learn first hand how that ability works, so even though the literal tutorial bit is little more than "Press [button] to [use ability], you come away with a good understanding of what that new ability will allow you to do.

I’m also typically not keen on platformers, but this game scratches a different itch for me

We shouldn’t conflate the Jewish people and the Israeli state/Zionists. That benefits Israel

Why not both? Political pillow talk time

I had heard about the online discourse in this area, but I’m glad to hear that something has come of that movement.

Fucking hell, that must have been terrifying

It took me a while, but I ended up really enjoying Death Stranding. One of the things that made it click for me was that I watched a video essay on a different game that used the playwright Bertholt Brecht’s V-effect as an analytical frame.

My rough understanding of it is that Brecht wanted to break the fourth wall and prevent audiences from identifying too heavily with characters, enabling them to better engage with the themes of the play; for example, if audiences end up identifying with a character who is a relatable asshole, then they might be less inclined to critically understand this character and the systems that facilitate their assholery.

Death Stranding invokes this with its absurd characters and setting. I never stopped finding it jarring when you have such silly character names and plots. This meant that for my first few hours of playing, I felt like I didn’t “get it”, and it seems like this is a fairly common reaction. However, this sense of “I don’t get it” is interesting because of how it primes you to search for something to get — some larger point that Kojima is trying to make with the game. If nothing else, I appreciate games and other media that have something to say, even if I struggle to grasp that message.

If I had to distill things down, I think the most prominent theme I understood was “Play is an essential component of human wellness, and it has tremendous capacity to facilitate building human connection”. I enjoyed how this was explored narratively through Sam’s interactions with various characters, but also through ludic means via the player interacting with other player build structures (I really enjoyed getting so many thumbs up for all the roads I built). Death Stranding sometimes feels pretentious, but I remember thinking “what’s more pretentious: the game that’s trying (and possibly failing, depending on perspective) hard to say something larger, or the player who regards the game with disdain”. Ultimately, I feel that the potential pretentiousness is neutralised by how earnest it is. Yes, it’s a very silly game, but that’s sort of the point.

Regarding Rings of Power, I absolutely hated the show, which sounds like a stronger opinion than what you hold. However, I completely agree that the discourse around the show is a trash fire of bad faith criticism that makes it impossible to express legitimate dislike of the show that’s based in honesty.

My current computer is the one that I helped my late best friend build, and I’m so glad that we ended up going for an AMD GPU. I wasn’t using Linux back then (and neither was he), so it was just a lucky fluke. My switch to running Linux as my main operating system would’ve been far more stressful with a Nvidia GPU, it seems.

I bought a pint for an acquaintance at my philosophy discussion group because he was moving away and this was his last session. I’m pretty poor at the moment, so even a small purchase like this was a lot. It was definitely worth it though, because it convinced him to stay for a while longer than he would have (the group session is held upstairs in a pub, but afterwards there’s usually informal discussions that continue downstairs in the main pub).

It felt very much like I was performing human socialisation in a deliberate, but nice way. I already told the dude that I would miss his presence at the group, but buying a farewell drink for him was a way of reiterating that sentiment.

This is hilarious. I’m deeply sad that I don’t think my irl friends would appreciate this joke, because I want to share it with everyone.

(I am personally irked by vibe coding because some assholes in my life have been real smug about how much better of a programmer they are than me due to vibe coding. )

I recently used Jekyll (https://jekyllrb.com/) as a static site generator. I found it easy to use. I personally used Gitlab pages, because I didn’t feel confident hosting on my home internet (didn’t want to inadvertently cause issues for my housemates when I’m still learning this stuff).

The nice thing about static sites is that it’s pretty easy to find free or extremely cheap hosting for them.

Nowhere in OP’s comment do they suggest that their country has no racism. Perhaps you would do well to go back and carefully reread what they actually wrote.