Notices by robryk@qoto.org

@jzillw I can't decipher worm color

@freemo [qoto issues]

In the last weeks I see cases when:
- my reply doesn't seem to be propagated to the instance of the person I'm replying to (e.g. https://qoto.org/@robryk/113466284303691885, https://qoto.org/@robryk/113466431766455928, and https://qoto.org/@robryk/113438196768975142),
- a reply made to me doesn't cause a notification to appear (IIRC https://mastodon.social/@_thegeoff/113437771508645893 had that issue).

I don't know if both issues started at the same time. At least in one case of my replies not making their way to the other instance (https://qoto.org/@robryk/113438196768975142) my posts made their way to that instance both before and after, so I would be even more surprised than by default if a relevant blocking relationship existed.

@freemo @rchusid

The text of SESTA I could find (https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1865/text) doesn't seem to have any such effects. Do you have a reference that mentions that effect?

@freemo

I wonder what you think about:
- if the victim is not breathing and there's a spare helper available, send them off to find an AED,
- if the victim fell from a nontrivial height, impacted into something headfirst or backfirst (or you suspect that in face of lack of witnesses) do not move them unless they aren't breathing/are unable to breathe and tell them not to get up if conscious, but do not try to restrain them,
- if the victim is unconscious in an ~enclosed space, esp. under ground level, with no obvious reason for the unconsciousness and there is no well person in the space space, be extremely wary of entering it (or just don't).

@mcc so... Patreon is not going to have per-creation billing at all, even for people who e.g. don't want iOS users to be able to subscribe?

@bonifartius @freemo @louis

If you have some estimate of likely results (in the form of a probability distribution over vote counts -- likely you'd assume an uncorrelated multivariate Gaussian or something similar), then it's fair to say that you can estimate the direct effect of your vote: compute the probability (as a function of what vote you cast) that your vote will be the deciding one, and pick the vote where you like that distribution the most.

In places that have a threshold this usually means voting for a party that has a significant chance of being above the threshold, sadly. Apart from this it often doesn't align with voting for larger parties (nor even, in FPTP, parties that are very likely to get at least one seat in your constituency: voting for a party that's expected to be just below 1 seat is better than for a part that's expected to be above 1 and well below 2, if you like both equally).

@bonifartius @freemo @louis

Yup, and there's no good way to handle "everyone is taking into account how the system works", because if there were, the resulting system would break the Arrow's impossibility theorem.

A colleague of mine btw did write up a computation of that kind for most recent parliamentary elections in Poland, but the point there was mostly to compare voting in different constituencies (you may vote in any constituency in those elections, as long as you actually arrange for that slightly ahead of time and appear in a voting location in that constituency).

@freemo

Do you know of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexitarianism? I feel that the wiki article fails to describe a variant where the choice depends mostly on cost/level of incovenience caused by not relying on animals. That is an approach that I mostly have, my threshold of inconvenience above which I ignore is pretty low, and yet I eat mostly vegan due to the power of defaults.

The reason I mention this is that I imagine a person with a similar approach to mine, but slightly better organized and with a slightly higher threshold would eat basically only vegan food[1], but their approach to abortion would be basically unaffected.

[1] I specifically mention only food, because the levels of inconvenience caused by e.g. having to find an alternative to leather hiking boots or woolen shirts are very person-dependent.

@Suiseiseki

I think you are right on limited consequences of a fire. I would expect though that an ignition source should be pretty easy to find in a car accident: the exhaust systems of all involved cars are likely got enough.

@Suiseiseki @sohkamyung

I would guess that the main risk comes from blows to the valve (which enjoys a significant but incomplete protection from that collar).

@freemo @digastricus

Then Japan didn't really acquire the writing system from China. The grammar is iiuc very different, and at some points in history characters were imported for the pronunciation, ignoring their meaning.

@freemo @digastricus

Huh? Isn't that the case with all languages that use Latin alphabet but aren't romance?

@freemo @AmpBenzScientist

I think this isn't true without some additional qualification? After all, all petty crime, vandalism, littering, aimless churlishness etc. is against social norms. I think I get what you mean though, but am also missing a term for that kind of social norm contravening.

@freemo

My vague recollection is that there was oneish root of ideograms, but the languages evolved before writing in an unrelated way. I don't know how much adoption of writing affected the languages.

@freemo Roots of the language and of the writing system are not necessarily the same. There were multiple instances of significant import of "characters" from ~Chinese into Japanese and I had the impression that at least some of them didn't import much past the characters themselves.

@freemo Note that they are present in some theme(s?) only.

@freemo

Higgs boson? :P

@freemo @peterdrake

Same thing with another poll: https://social.jvns.ca/@b0rk/112050034752815560

This time 3x.

@freemo @peterdrake

Yup, only polls.

@freemo @peterdrake

Still happening, albeit with a smaller number of copies: I've got two notifications for end of the following poll: https://mastodon.neilzone.co.uk/@neil/112048388768399462