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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • Pre-home internet I remember running a line-in to my soundblaster card from a clock radio and recording Tool’s Sober to my HDD.

    The wav file took up a good chunk of the HDD. After a good amount of funking around with encoding it was barely comprehensible and still took up too much room. Was exciting and felt like a glimpse of the future.


  • This is Piaget’s conservation of volume test. I did this experiment at school (we went to the elementary school next door and ran tests on the kids). Most of the kids said the higher one held more liquid because it was ‘taller’, though some said the short one had more because it was ‘fatter’.



  • SuperApples@lemmy.worldtomemes@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    2 months ago

    I find usually when I can’t articulate something clearly, it’s because I haven’t thought about it/researched it well enough, and I should stop trying to contribute on that topic until I have a better understanding.

    That’s why I often end up writing long comments, but don’t hit post. Not a waste of time though, as it helps me identify areas in which I’m more ignorant than I thought I was.


  • It’s mostly supply and demand. In Tokyo and Osaka / satellite cities, prices are going up, everywhere else they are dirt cheap.

    However, in urban areas prices still aren’t as crazy unaffordable as you may think, because Japan has a very narrow wage gap (everyone in Japan thinks they are middle class, and their not wrong compared to other countries).

    Another thing that makes Japan different to other housing markets, and is affected by the laws, is earthquake concerns. What other countries would call ‘established’ dwellings, they call ‘second hand’. Laws are updated every ten years or so that mean newer dwellings are much safer than older ones. Knockdown/rebuild is so common that there is competitive prices, as there’s plenty of builders to choose from. The builders are also very efficient, and apart from safety law, regulations are low (you can build whatever you like, so long as it’s robust), so labour costs are much lower compared to other countries.

    If you go on Suumo.jp you’ll find plenty of very affordable houses, even in good areas/good rail links, but it’s because they don’t expect anyone will live in the house as-is - the buyer will most likely “reform” it (massive rennovation) or replace.

    The state of the Japanese housing market is due mostly to cultural/economic/low immigration. If you want a policy solution other high-income countries can use to solve housing issues, the state-capitalism solution of the Singapore HDB is the best model I’ve come across. Second would probably be Vienna’s focus on social housing.




  • We dont know how much power they have, it’s illegal to know:

    | Due to secrecy laws, it is extremely hard to find documentary evidence of the queen’s exercise of influence. In the United Kingdom, government documents that “relate to” communications with the sovereign or the next two persons in line to the throne, as well as palace officials acting on their behalf, are subject to an absolute exemption from release under freedom of information or by government archives.

    • “relate to” is so broad and it means we have no idea what is going on.

    | But The Guardian has managed to expose a chink in this armour of secrecy. In the UK’s National Archives, it discovered documents from 1973 showing the queen’s personal solicitor lobbied public servants to change a proposed law so that it would not allow companies, or the public, to learn of the queen’s shareholdings in Britain. The gambit succeeded, and the draft bill was changed to suit the queen’s wishes. Perhaps these documents escaped the secrecy embargo because they involved communications with a private solicitor, rather than palace officials

    https://theconversation.com/the-queens-gambit-new-evidence-shows-how-her-majesty-wields-influence-on-legislation-154818


  • Australia already spends time and money maintaining the English monarch as the head of state. And it’s not a ceremonial position; the governor-general has reserve powers, such as the ability to remove office holders, like in 1975. It is only convention, not law that appoints and makes the GG act on the PMs ‘recommendations’ rather than the Monarch; the description of the office has not been rewritten. We can’t rely on convention to govern a country and need to have explicit laws that match our ideals of how a democracy should behave. It’s unexploded ordinance that should be cleaned up… let’s do that rather than spending our time and money changing all the pictures on the money, and the pronouns on all the legal documents each time a monarch croaks.






  • her status and authority, unfortunately, make her an acceptable target

    Agreed, but It’s really more that she’s a complete arsehole. As a nimby mining magnate, she is a sponsor of organised climate denialism and vocal about it herself, a race she clearly has a horse in. She’s also an active libertarian who wants to further dismantle the welfare system, and reduce taxation, and wants Australian workers to be cool like Africans and work for $2 a day. And a vocal Trump supporter.

    It’s not the painting that makes her ugly, it’s her behaviour and ideology.



  • I’m from a country with ranked choice voting. We can vote for our preferred third-party candidate and it’s not only fine but better. Even if they don’t get in, they will get a portion of government money for help with campaigning in future elections, and our vote for the first viable candidate will be counted instead.

    In the USA this is totally not the case. Your electoral system is designed to prevent third-party votes from meaning anything. As an anarchist who hates the politics of both neoliberal US major parties, I would still vote democrat, because a third-party vote is literally a wasted vote. It does not influence the 2 major parties in any way. They know there is no real threat from minor parties or independents unless they have massive overwhelming majority support.

    Change the system through political action, community engagement, and spreading information. This vote will not change a thing unless it’s for a major party, and only really if you’re in a swing state. It’s shit but true.


  • I tighten them and it saved my monitor! Robbers broke in to our house, stole a bunch of stuff. The computer monitor was still there, connected to the computer, dangling from the table.

    How do I know they tried to steal it? Because they tried to cut through the cable with PAPER SCISSORS, because they didn’t know how to unscrew the cables.

    I feel sorry for the dumb robbers. I hope they didn’t pawn it and are still enjoying playing Wii Fitness without the balance board, which they neglected to take with the console.