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Pxtl

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Pxtl,
@Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

Wow that took a turn halfway through the last sentence.

Pxtl, (edited )
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Idunno, I like the reverse better:

Batman’s nuts. Like everybody else in Gotham. He’s pathologically obsessed with beating the crap out of criminals with his bare hands because he needs to emotionally. The fact that he’s saving the world is incidental.

That actually makes his “no killing” rule make more sense. A person doing this for moral reasons would grapple with the continuous living trolley problem embodied by The Joker, and would likely eventually do what needs to be done. An otherwise-decent person feeding addiction to violence would draw a hard line in the sand that he will never ever cross no matter the cost. Which sounds more like Bats?

It also makes his choice of weapons make more sense – tazers don’t satisfy him the way his fists do.

Yes he might also do philanthropic things but that’s not what drives him.

A hero driven by dark needs is way more interesting than a boring paragon of virtue.

It also gives his emotional divide from Nightwing a more coherent moral centre than just “Nightwing didn’t like how Batman’s mean”.

Pxtl, (edited )
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We all got trauma. Trauma isn’t what makes Batman interesting. Obsession is. The maniacal motivation to make himself into the greatest DCU superhero by sheer force of will.

Pxtl,
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Note on the players involved here:

Alvin Tedjo, the guy pushing for this upzoning, ran for leader of the Ontario Liberal party as a minor also-ran against Del Duca and Coteau in 2020. I do wonder if the Ontario Liberals wouldn’t have been re-minivanned with his presence.

Also, the mayor of Mississauga, Bonnie Crombie, is the front-runner in the current leadership race of the Ontario Liberals.

She did not show up for this vote.

In a statement to CBC News Thursday, Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie said Ontario’s approach to housing needs an overhaul, which is "why I support implementing all 74 recommendations in the Housing Affordability Taskforce.

Under her leadership, the city of Mississauga released documents loudly lambasting the HATF recommendations she champions in this article, and she personally campaigned against them:

twitter.com/BonnieCrombie/…/1507080290602299392

Pxtl,
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Buildings have costs beyond mortgage, especially ones that are old enough to be paid off.

I support rent control, but “no sudden shifts in rent” rent control, not “rent must be frozen in amber and can only be raised below inflation levels” rent control. The market changes over time. Otherwise we get the “f you I got mine” problems we have with homeowners, where nobody has to care about new people looking for housing because every existing owner or renter can ignore market reality.

If we want to eat the rich, just tax them more. I like Jagmeet’s idea to increase cap gains inclusion to 3/4 instead of 1/2.

Pxtl,
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Want to really hurt these people? Build some competing buildings so they can’t charge whatever they want for rent.

If it’s so profitable, the public sector can pull it off and make a mint that can go to services.

It’s win/win! Government gets more money to help people, and landlords face downward pressure on rent.

Pxtl,
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Rent controlled apartments are still capped at 2.5% increase per year.

Yes, while anybody who is not in a rent controlled unit is facing a bloodbath, plenty of people are seeing their rents go down once you figure in inflation. It’s just that “dog doesn’t bite man” is even less of a news story than “dog bites man”.

Pxtl, (edited )
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While there is no evidence to support it, some experts are pointing at Putin’s lukewarm response after the attack, and the fact that this division of efforts is immensely helpful to his invasion in Ukraine, and are wondering if he worked with Iran to help arm and plan this attack by Hamas.

So, in other words, “stretching its ability to support Ukraine” was the whole point.

thehill.com/…/4250708-putins-fingerprints-are-on-…

Pxtl,
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How do people not have an “are we the baddies” moment after saying stuff like this?

Pxtl,
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I mean in the numbers we’re talking about 11,000 is kind of a rounding error.

Pxtl,
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City hall says no.

Pxtl,
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I’d say these should be “recommended plug-ins” but imho FF/Moz embarassed themselves on that front with the whole “Pocket” thing.

Pxtl,
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It only counts if they’re Chinese and it helps the Liberals.

Samsung joins Google in RCS shaming Apple (www.theverge.com)

Samsung has released a new video in support of Google’s #GetTheMessage campaign which calls for Apple to adopt RCS or “Rich Communication Services,” the cross-platform protocol pitched as a successor to SMS that adopts many of the features found in modern messaging apps… like Apple’s own iMessage.

Pxtl,
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Okay, Samsung is the party with some credibility here. It’s a lot harder to hear Google whine about messaging standards when their churn in messaging has been hilarious and embarrassing.

Israeli minister: 'We are fighting human animals' (www.middleeastmonitor.com)

Israel’s Defence Minister Yaov Gallant has ordered the complete closure of the Gaza Strip, including a ban on the entry of food, water, fuel or access to electricity as Israel intensifies its bombardment of the besieged Strip in the wake of the surprise attack by the Palestinian resistance. His comments have drawn criticism...

Pxtl,
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So two different Israeli politicians are saying two different things. Great. Which one is their Minister of Defence?

Pxtl,
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Interest rate spikes killed a lot of projects, and municipal stonewalling keeps the developers riding a pretty thin edge of profitability. These are for-profit businesses, of course when the loan repayments are going to eliminate all profit, they’re going to back off on their plans.

Imagine you’re planning a building - you design a massively profitable but huge building, but then years of bickering with city hall shrinks the building and raises your carrying costs until it’s just a modest win. Still fine. You get the permits and then interest rates jump. Now if you go forwards, the project will be deep in the red. The city won’t let you go back to your original huge form of the project without another multi-year fight.

If you sit on it until interest rates go down again, you’re not building. If you get started on a new application for a more profitable building, you’re not building.

You don’t have to listen to the dead-eyed mobbed-up reptiles of the for-profit housing industry to see this, listen to progressive affordable housing builders like Jen Keesmaat or Housing Now TO and they’ll tell you the same thing.

Pxtl,
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I mean I hate Poilievre but he’s not wrong there. Municipalities are a big part of the reason they’re not building.

I follow my local municipal gov’t closely. They talk a good game about housing, but their actions speak louder. A developer wanted to build two huge towers on a parking lot, next to an existing huge tower of the same size. City staff said no, 39 storeys is too tall for the urban core of Hamilton, 4 storeys is too tall for a pedestal.

A charity wanted to convert an underused park into a tiny-home homeless shelter. City council said no.

Before the pandemic, developers wanted to sprawl out more suburbia. City council ran a referendum. The public said no.

Now, you can disagree with any of those three solutions – personally I strongly hate building more suburban sprawl. But if you block all 3, the evidence shows you just don’t want housing, regardless of what you say.

At every turn, municpal governments say “yes, we want more housing, but not this housing”.

Interest rates have jumped, which means buildings aren’t as profitable to make. The way to get back some of that profitability is to make them bigger. If a 10 storey building won’t best the cost of the loans taken to build it under the new lending conditions, a 20 storey building probably will. And the municipality says “no”.

I hate Poilievre. I care about trans people. I care about climate change. But he’s the only one talking about giving city governments the ball-busting they deserve.

Pxtl, (edited )
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He absolutely is wrong there; municipalities can’t reach housing targets if they only get funding after reaching them

Municipalities can absolutely reach housing targets, they just have to stop saying “no” to infill developers. The Hamilton example is not spurious - the only reason it’s going through this multi-year delay is because the building is too tall and needs to get a variance for being too tall.

The concept of “too tall for downtown Hamilton” is absurd on its face. Cities should have amended their official plans years ago and streamlined approvals for large, high-density infill developments. They choose not to. So they must be forced to do so.

It’s not just reptilian amoral for-profit developers facing this, it’s the heroic affordable housing builders too. You’ll hear the same complaints from Housing Now TO and Jen Keesmaat.

Watch this video presentation at Toronto City Hall by Mark Richardson of Housing Now:

mastodon.social/ (yes, that is my mastodon)

"$20 billion dollar intersection in Forest Hill; somebody said that should be a 7-storey and 70-unit building in 2018. How…where did that number come from? Somebody picked that number. Because it “conformed to the current planning policy for Forest Hill”

he explains it very clearly: the housing crisis is a self-inflicted wound caused by municipal governments. He and his org have an endless list of buildings they want to construct, and they’re being told “no” by city hall.

Want to increase units by 15% per year? Stop saying no.

I know it’s creepy to see somebody defend home-builders, since most developers are crooks. You know why most developers are crooks? Because municipal governments made building housing a crime.

Pxtl,
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It was the social media of choice for journalists. It was an excellent place to get your news as long as you followed the right people (reputable, credible professionals).

Now many of those right people have left and they’re far more difficult to distinguish from the wrong people.

Pxtl,
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The most shameful thing is that many applications that would fail to come back with all their state after restart were Microsoft’s own programs like Sql Server Management Studio – that one does better now, but well over a decade too late.

Pxtl,
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So as somebody who has avoided Win11 just because I use a taskbar in a configuration that Win11 doesn’t support (docked to the left edge of the screen, no grouping, full text labels) what’s the reason other people are avoiding Win11? Something about ads?

Because on the “windows login” thing, I actually like that part. Having automatic cloud sync of my documents and config across machines through OneDrive is handy. I agree it shouldn’t be mandatory, but it suits me.

Pxtl,
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Jabber has been an available standard for over 20 years. Google jumped onto it and then jumped off in their infamous cycle of ADHD on the subject of instant messaging. They have nobody to blame but themselves for the “green speech bubbles” problem – they could have a lot more credibility here.

Pxtl,
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Messages doesn’t even consistently fail-over to SMS if the client is unreachable through the internet. The feature exists, but it rarely works.

Messages is bad software, and has been for quite some time. Google pointing to that embarrassing trash as their heroic standard for messaging is ridiculous.

They have nobody to blame but themselves for green bubbles. I’m a die-hard Android user but their reputation on this front is well-earned.

Pxtl,
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But did you die .gif

Pxtl,
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“I’m only going to help save the world if it does not inconvenience or cost me anything whatsoever at all” is not the brilliant take you think it is.

Pxtl,
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I mean that might be true but terrorist-supporters like the Saudis aren’t the ones who should be saying it.

Pxtl,
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Why not both .gif

Pxtl,
@Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

I’d wager technical debt is the reason. It’s no secret that Bethesda’s engine is bad. Bad code makes it harder to do bug-fixes, because it’s harder to find the root cause of things and the risks of having accidental side-effects is far higher. There’s only so many hacks and emergency fixes you can slap into a codebase before it becomes a house of cards that collapses if you breathe on it the wrong way.

Pxtl,
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“How can I make this about me?”

Pxtl,
@Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

I actually rather like win 10. Win 11 I’m holding off on until they fix the taskbar.

If they go subscription, I go Ubuntu.

Pxtl,
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I dock my taskbar to the left edge of the screen with full text labels. Afaik win11 still doesn’t support that.

Pxtl,
@Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

I can see the argument for hand luggage prices when most airline planes don’t have enough room in the overhead compartments if everybody maxes them out, and the process of sorting that stuff out often adds substantial delays when loading and unloading. I’m not sure the right answer here, but I can see how there’s a legit discussion to be had there.

But the “charging to sit next to your family members” has always been indefensible.

Pxtl,
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Well, if the hidden bullshit fees get rolled into the upfront cost then it will entice fewer people to fly. But yes, mainland Europe has the kind of density where they should be focusing on high-speed-rail to the near-elimination of continental flights.

In the climate-changed world, if you’re not going over the ocean you shouldn’t be flying. Which is why the foot-dragging on high-speed rail particularly in the Americas is obscene.

Pxtl,
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Maybe I’m being unfair, but somehow when I read complaints like this about “purity” and “insufferable” and all that, I always assume it’s “they downvoted and insulted me when I made a bigoted joke about like transpeople or something”.

Pxtl, (edited )
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Social media has a natural moat because what matters it what users are there. As long as social media sites don’t federate with each other, there will be an evolutionary pressure to start exploiting and get progressively worse as your users are locked-in and you can exploit them for the profit of your shareholders.

Paying improves the situation because the users are customers and not eyeballs to sell, but still – they’re there for their friends and follows. If they can’t get those same friends and follows on another site, you can screw them as hard as you like.

Pxtl,
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I don’t get it. The game looked completely unremarkable. Even its big hook of having some microgravity stuff was barely present in the trailers. This was their big play? Really?

a “total lack of direction” around the game, with one contributor stating many members of the leadership team were “asleep at the wheel but they never seemed to lose their jobs”. The same source noted an engine change and “not committing to doing anything adventurous with the game” were all part of Hyenas’ ultimate demise.

Yeah, we can tell.

Pxtl,
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Well yeah, but there’s lots of ways to make that more interesting than just “set gravity really low in this zone”.

Pxtl,
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Tim Kreider had a similar take on the same subject:

www.thepaincomics.com/weekly090218.htm

Pxtl,
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That’s what I was scared of. I knew if my meds ran out I would not be in the frame is mind needed to persist through this bullshit.

Pxtl,
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I have finally received my meds.

Pxtl,
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Because I’m on my meds. Which is why I was treating it as urgent. I knew I didn’t stand a chance at navigating this BS if they let me get past my last pill.

Pxtl,
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They’re three blocks from my house and open till 10pm, while all the independent ones are outside of my neighborhood and keep banker’s hours.

This is still the last straw, so I’m switching to one of those.

Pxtl,
@Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

The worry with the self cleaning band is the possibility of Kessler syndrome. See, the geosynchronous satellites are basically stationary relative to each other, and geosync is huge, so if one is junk, it’s stationary junk with nothing around it.

LEO orbits, in the other hand, criss-cross each other in a maddening dance. And if one shatters into dozens of tiny projectiles, that could shatter another and another into a cascade of space shrapnel. And then low Earth orbit is closed. No starlink, no iss, no manned spacecraft, etc.

It would self clean in a few decades. Three. Maybe five.

Pxtl, (edited )
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Starlink adds a tremendous number of satellites to Low Earth Orbit. Like, Starlink is now something like 50 percent of all active satellites. That’s a lot of traffic up there. And in LEO, where orbits criss-cross in an endless complex dance, the risk of collisions is far higher than in Geosync. While the advantage of LEO is that everything has a lifetime measured in decades until the orbits decay and they burn up, the risk is Kessler Syndrome, where shrapnel from collisions creates an endless cascade of destruction that makes LEO completely unusable for several decades. That would be the end of all LEO satellites and all manned spaceflight for possibly the rest of our lives. You could still get ships through the Kessler debris layer safely for launching high-orbit and geosync satellites, but low orbit would be too hazardous to place anything in for long-term work, especially since it would risk prolonging the problem.

If Kessler starts, it will be impossible to stop - the shrapnel is too small for satellites to detect and avoid with their adjustment thrusters. A pandemic-style S-curve of destruction as all the satellites in LEO die. And we’d have to evacuate ISS.

Pxtl,
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Obviously some people don’t care about science. But yeah, the inability to properly observe space from Earth would be crushing - while the new space telescopes are goddamned awesome, they’re also ridiculously expensive and tiny compared to the massive surface-built structures we have on Earth.

Pxtl,
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I can’t wait for this to be posted on Hacker News, get 5 of the worst techbro libertarian nonsense comments, get 3 angry SJW replies to those techbros, then dang shouts at the SJWs about tone, rate limits them, then flags the article off the site.

/it me, I’m the SJW.

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