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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • I’ve known quite a lot of people to complain about affirmative action and similar efforts. And while I can agree it’s a pretty clumsy solution, I’m not sure what people expect when they’re not willing to have a deeper conversation about the tensions and issues that lead there, even outside the United States. In the U.S. itself it’s headache-inducing when people’s “solution” is to simply undo affirmative action with no other response or ideas to take its place.



  • Hard to give a toss about most of them, they knew what they were getting into and it seems like the entire submersible community tried to warn against it, but such was ignored and disregarded as established interests stifling ‘innovation’.

    But I feel really bad for Suleman Dawood. He was just a kid, and was – seemingly wiser than the rest of them – rightly terrified of this aquatic death machine. A lot of people, especially in the media, have tried to make light of their collective, violent end, suggesting it should be some consolation that it would’ve been over before they knew anything was wrong, Except according those most informed on the situation, stubborn owner aside, those onboard seemed to be entirely aware something was wrong. (Why else would they have been trying to surface?) Really sucks that a teennager got roped into this stupidity on account of his Titanic-obsessed dad.

    Gallows humour is to be expected with these things, but finding out about Suleman left me utterly depressed. Perhaps it’s wrong to direct my irritation thus, but I felt particularly disgusted at someone who casted things as somehow beautiful for a father and son to die together, as though creating a deep, spiritual bond between them in the afterlife. So much media mindlessly lumping him in with his father’s motivations as though he was a fellow extreme tourism enthusiast, rather than a scared kid simply looking to his father for validation.


  • What weirded me out was it was being cast as a joint exploration effort when one of the members was charging the others. Would seem like a total grift, given the cost-cutting steps, if not for the owner/‘designer’ putting their own life on the line too.

    Such deep sea submersibles are inherently a bit of an experimental industry, but even a cursory scan of opinions from others in that community seems to suggest it’s seen as extremely not-kosher to put others’ lives on the line with your experimental craft. Dude just seems to have been a bit nutty, and not altogether considerate enough of his own wellbeing or others’.


  • Much akin to reddit, the best thing about goodreads isn’t the product itself so much as the communities that use it, and the resulting history of reviews/comments/etc. that build up over time.

    The absence of these user generated reactions (for lack of a better catch-all) is a big part of why I never really managed to permanently migrate to Librarything instead. Though, given their devs are quite technical, one could hope they would consider connecting up with the fediverse some day too.

    (I realise that many reviews on GR are worthless, but sadly if you’re interested in some particularly niche things, it can be not only awkward to find the right version of a book on LT, but often enough there just aren’t any reviews at all, or at least not enough to make it useful when a particular text is niche to begin with.

    But assuming it federates in a way that’s actually useful, this at least might mean a beginning that could lead to better alternatives. If someone has to make the first move, I’m glad this happened.





  • Correct me if I’m wrong, but since ETH moved to a proof of stake model rather than proof of work (i.e. “mining”), isn’t its environmental footprint now a fraction of the wasteful behemoth it was previously?

    (Though I 100% agree given the ‘gas fees’ (transaction costs), it’s still absolutely useless as an actual currency.)