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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)MA
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2 yr. ago
  • Fun fact, snakes' adaptations to their feeding style are actually not about the way the jaw hinges. Instead, their lower jaw is two separately moving bones held together with stretchy ligament tissue so that each side of the mouth can be "walked along" the prey item separately.
    So the chef could eat the burger... but would follow along its longest dimension to do it, laying it down sideways.

  • Not one I've watched yet, but there definitely is some magic to listening to someone talking about something they really care about, if you connect with them as a communicator.
    Like, I don't have any relationship to Disney's Buzzy animatronic myself, but I've rewatched Jenny Nicholson ranting about it more than once because it's fun. Captain Disillusion talking about the effects work that inspired him also feels kinda similar.

  • Really appreciate her work - the educational stuff is good at putting things into a context and giving laypeople some mental coathooks to hang things off of, and I like how she emphasizes the video explainer format is a provider of jumping off points more than a source of real understanding.
    Her discussion of media and news is maybe not as relevant here but still pretty on point in my experience.

  • No Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
    US Constitution section 9 clause 8.

    I'd say that's pretty clear an official act to the giver's benefit is not a necessary element of the prohibited conduct. If something is offered, both houses of congress must vote to allow it or the gift must be declined.

  • It's the parts of a program's concepts, rules and behaviours that are specific to the program's task. For instance

    • Items, a shopping cart and the conversion of such a cart into an order at checkout in an e-commerce application.
    • Clips of video and audio, static images etc. and the compiling of these into a single output video for a video editor.
    • Vertices, triangles, meshes, animation rigs etc. for a 3d editing program.
    • Accounting standards and tax laws for an accounting system.

    When developing software you deal both with these kinds of specifics and generically reusable concepts that are more purely computational science, so a term to distinguish them is handy.

  • I think this is partly about giving yourself an out for liking childish things as a near- or young-adult. Kids shows commonly do include some Parental Bonus but extending that idea specifically to dark undercurrent plots that you have to read between the lines of the text seems like a way to feel "in the know" about something adult in the work while still consuming something you feel society expects you to have grown out of.
    Then with a bit more maturing than that, you can hopefully just embrace childish joys earnestly, because joys are precious.

  • It depends a bit on what you want to optimize for, as there's drawbacks to all the major methods:

    • Ultrasonic sprayers are decently efficient but spread any contaminants around your home, potentially still biologically active. Dissolved trace minerals will turn into fine dust, affecting cleaning needs.
    • Boiling for humidification is energy intensive because of water's heat capacity.
    • Air forced wicks are by default great habitat for mold and similar, so they need regular care and replacement.
  • It really is a fascinating game, and as odd as the volume view is when you're new to it, it's extremely helpful to be able to orient yourself.

    ::: late game The 5D courses were a nice surprise as well. :::

  • Some computing problems are "easy"* to solve. We call these P.
    Some problems let us easily check a proposed solution if we're given one. We call these NP.
    All problems in P are also in NP, since checking a solution proposal works is never harder than solving the problem starting from nothing.
    We suspect but can't prove that some problems in NP are not in P.

    It turns out that it's possible to translate any problem in NP into the boolean satisfiability problem (SAT) using an easy algorithm, so this problem effectively is an upper bound on how hard it could be to solve problems in NP - we could always translate them into SAT and solve that instead if that sequence is easier.
    We call SAT, and any problem that it can be translated into easily in the same way, the problem class NP-hard.
    NP-complete is just those NP-hard problems which are also in NP, which is many but not all of them.

    *: require asymptotically polynomial running time

  • The use of "alumni" in the singular. A person is an alumnus or an alumna, the alumni are always a group. Seems to be a very American usage, and I don't know why it feels aggravating where other Americanisms like positive anymore don't.

  • Federal election times are set by 2 U.S. Code § 7 as 1 day after the 1st Monday in November (of even numbered years). The law is from 1875 and from what I can tell is indeed nominally motivated by the voters' need to first observe rest day on Sunday and then travel to their polling place. Keeping it and not having a federal holiday coinciding with it is largely aimed at keeping voter turnout low.

  • ...

  • It's also my favourite place to kill monsters, take their stuff and use it to get better at killing monsters and taking their stuff. I do feel like it has so much build space to explore I find building without some reference to a guide frustrating, but it manages that progression well and the atlas passive trees are a neat way to let you customize what content you want to engage with.

  • ...

  • Incremental games are a bit of an "I know it when I see it" grouping, but two typical characteristics are progression systems nested within each other and game loops that start simple but "flower" into a number of more detailed and mutually interacting ones over the course of play.
    Universal Paperclips is a nice example, casting you as a newly built AI with the goal of making as many paperclips as you can. You start out able to make paperclips and sell them to humans for funds you can then use to invest in more capabilities. You work on building trust with the humans so they'll let you do more things, and on making more clips faster, and there is a lot of escalation from these humble beginnings. Some other good ones are Cookie Clicker and, if you're into programming puzzles, Bitburner.

  • ...

  • This is definitely important in making the very most engaging base-builders - a pleasing mixture of longer term goals (manufacture this piece that I can eventually put in a future science pack or whatnot) and under-performing pieces of your older infrastructure that you have to scale up or re-plan is just so helpful for getting you into that flow state.