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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • The most dangerous meats are ones originating from wild animals. Eg there are all sorts of nasty parasite cysts in wild boar meat. Nature is brutal and there is no such thing as “clean” meat from wild animals. Human inability to deal with this and becoming severely sick without thoroughly cooking the wild meat is evidence that even if we technically are somewhere on omnivore spectrum, we’re not really good omnivores—certainly not as good as bears or even boars. Honestly, eating insects, honey and eggs in addition to plants (fruit specifically) seems more like what we’re evolved to do.


  • The most dangerous meats are ones originating from wild animals. Eg there are all sorts of nasty parasite cysts in wild boar meat. Nature is brutal and there is no such thing as “clean” meat from wild animals. Human inability to deal with this and becoming severely sick without thoroughly cooking the wild meat is evidence that even if we technically are somewhere on omnivore spectrum, we’re not really good omnivores—certainly not as good as bears or even boars. Honestly, eating insects, honey and eggs in addition to plants (fruit specifically) seems more like what we’re evolved to do.


  • Elder Scroll series. Skyrim for the modding and eyecandy potential, Oblivion for the madness that is spellcrafting (also Shivering Isles is the best ES DLC), Morrowind for the true alien fantasy.

    Thief II is the quintessential first-person sneaker.
    Independence War II still has one of the best flight models and a great story.

    X3: Terran Conflict is the best first-person strategy game.

    Half-Life 1 and 2.

    Il-2: Great Battles is the best WWII combat flight sim.
    DCS is the best jet combat sim.

    Elite: Dangerous is the only space sim with actual 1:1 scale galaxy, including many real-life stars and is the best life-in-space simulator with flight model as good as I-War 2 and decent enough on-foot parts (even though there is some jank and glitches).







  • Yeah, sorry, no. Even if I had the space, when I get home from work at 1900 the last thing I want to do is more work. It’s not like you can just plop some seeds into soil and do nothing until the harvest is ripe—I know, we had a decent family garden when I was a wee lad. Took a lot of work to keep it going.

    If I worked 4 or even 6 hours a day—sure, I could add some homework to my day. But not when working 8 hours+commuting. And many people are working even longer days.



  • Simply nuking the shit out of everything wouldn’t really make for an interesting story.

    It did for the Killing Star. Not nukes, but R-bombs which are probably the most insane WMD-s and unlike strangelet bombs actually feasible even at our current tech level. All you need is a light-sail and a big-ass solar-powered laser.

    But, yeah, for dune:

    1. Drop an active shield generator on your enemy position
    2. Shoot it with a laser
    3. Hilarity ensues



  • Pretty much any Batman movie. It’s subtle, because it’s not chaotic evil, but lawful evil—the status quo, established hierarchic power structures and systemic injustices that plague the city remain in place. In fact, enforcing and protecting status quo is the whole raison d’entre of Batman, who is an extremely priviledged rich individual benefitting and profiting from the status quo. And thus has no desire to enact real societal change, unlike eg Baine.

    I’d argue James Bond is also the same. Yes, Bond villains are evil—irrationally and comically so—but like Batman, Bond represents, enforces and protects the same hierarchic power structures and systemic injustices that give rise to these villains.

    Then there is Star Wars and all this light vs dark side. But if you stop and think about it, Sith and Jedi are just two sides of the same medal. Jedi mind trick that coerces someone to do something against their will is extremely evil by its very concept. Especially in how trivialized its use is in the movies. Also, there is nothing civilized about lightsabers. These are horribly dangerous to the wielder and their opponent alike, will easily cut through hull plating by accident (a bad thing when a cm of material is all that’s standing between you and hard vacuum). And would in reality not make a clean cauterized cut, but explosively flash boil the target with the end result like being blown from a cannon.

    Lawful, systemic evil is the most devilish kind of evil; it’s so subtle it goes unnoticed and is even celebrated as good, no doubt in no small part due to the vast propaganda machine lawful evil loves to build up around itself.


  • Saying that AptX is lossless since 2016 is blatantly false. And yes, just like with HDMI and USB, AptX standard naming and Qualcomm feature naming schemes are a misleading mess.

    There are 4 flavours of AptX (linked article states this as well), and only the latest supports lossless, but is available only on very few chipsets and devices so I even forget that it exists, because for all practical purposes it doesn’t.

    Denon Perl Pro, Bose earbuds and Cambridge Audio M100 are the only non-chinese earphones that I know of that support AptX lossless and the latter are not even listed by my local importer. Plus, you need a very specific (expensive) phone to use them because AptX Lossless is not available for all chipsets. Basically, Asus ROG 8 or Xiaomi Redmi K70 Pro for ones available to buy for me, and then it’s not available at every retailer, either, and the b2b wholesalers I have access to through work only list ROG Phone 8 (~1200€ retail).

    In conclusion, to make use of lossless AptX you have to jump through many hoops and spend a lot of money—700+€ phone and the 200+€ earphones. The standard is far from being, well, a standard; common and widespread. 99,9% of devices on sale and in use by people only support older AptX standards, mostly AptX HD (which is not lossless!).