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tal

@tal@lemmy.today

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tal,
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upliftingnews

I agree with the insight that a lot of news has a really negative focus. That is, a lot of things like murders or disasters or the like that don’t really have all that much direct impact on the lives of most people are very mediagenic, so get disproportionately-heavy coverage. We wind up with a really skewed-negative perspective in the news media relative to reality.

However, I also have to say that I wasn’t necessarily blown away by some past efforts I’ve seen along the lines of remedying this either – that is, a lot of feel-good stories aren’t necessarily all that important to someone’s life either. Not to say that someone can’t want and consume feel-good stories either, but if one’s goal is to try to pick up useful information, probably what one would best read is neither material about shark attacks, nor about someone who overcame cancer or whatnot.

tal,
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tal, (edited )
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Copyright violations are not dependent on profit. Profit just makes it easier to calculate damages.

Ehhh…sort of.

You’re right to the extent that it’s not a straight “copyright infringement requires that the infringer profit”, but in US copyright law:

First, the copyright holder can take profits that are made by the infringer:

www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/504

(b) Actual Damages and Profits.—

The copyright owner is entitled to recover the actual damages suffered by him or her as a result of the infringement, and any profits of the infringer that are attributable to the infringement and are not taken into account in computing the actual damages. In establishing the infringer’s profits, the copyright owner is required to present proof only of the infringer’s gross revenue, and the infringer is required to prove his or her deductible expenses and the elements of profit attributable to factors other than the copyrighted work.

Second, some forms of fair use – which permit use of copyrighted material – do take into account whether someone was aiming to make money from it (though it’s not a “all noncommercial use is fair game” sort of thing):

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. § 106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:

  1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
tal, (edited )
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Robin Hood is another example of a set of works that had many people contributing different stories into what became the present-day collection.

Historically, a lot of works had many authors using the same character. I think that it’s a bit unfortunate that modern copyright law tends to discourage that.

H. P. Lovecraft was unusual in that he allowed other authors to make use of his characters (and settings, which are also covered by copyright), which is why his world – with Cthulhu and all that – has been widely used.

tal,
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If you mean Jesus, it’s not terribly controversial that there was a historical Jesus, but there were definitely different people writing up material about Jesus, and the Bible contains self-contradictions between those stories. How closely each individual narrative hews to the historical Jesus…shrugs

For example, Christ’s birth is described differently in the different Gospels:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nativity_of_Jesus

Only the Gospels of Matthew and Luke offer narratives regarding the birth of Jesus.[1] Both rely heavily on the Hebrew scriptures, indicating that they both regard the story as part of Israel’s salvation history, and both present the God of Israel as controlling events.[2] Both agree that Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the reign of King Herod, that his mother was named Mary and that her husband Joseph was descended from King David (although they disagree on details of the line of descent), and both deny Joseph’s biological parenthood while treating the birth, or rather the conception, as divinely effected.[3]

Beyond this, they agree on very little.[3] Joseph dominates Matthew’s and Mary dominates Luke’s, although the suggestion that one derives from Joseph and the other from Mary is no more than a pious deduction.[4] Matthew implies that Joseph already has his home in Bethlehem, while Luke states that he lived in Nazareth.[3] In Matthew the angel speaks to Joseph, while Luke has one speaking to Mary.[4] Only Luke has the stories surrounding the birth of John the Baptist, the census of Quirinius, the adoration of the shepherds and the presentation in the Temple on the eighth day; only Matthew has the wise men, the star of Bethlehem, Herod’s plot, the massacre of the innocents, and the flight into Egypt.[4] The two itineraries are quite different. According to Matthew, the Holy Family begins in Bethlehem, moves to Egypt following the birth, and settles in Nazareth, while according to Luke they begin in Nazareth, journey to Bethlehem for the birth, and immediately return to Nazareth.[2][note 1] The two accounts cannot be harmonised into a single coherent narrative or traced to the same Q source, leading scholars to classify them as “special Matthew” (or simply the M source) and “special Luke” (the L source).[2]

tal, (edited )
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I kind of wish that multi-unit housing came with sound isolation ratings. That’d create an incentive to have better isolation and help customers weigh the tradeoffs.

tal, (edited )
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I don’t really want to force a specific bottom limit on sound insulation, which is what that would do, though.

Some people won’t care as much as others relative to price and may not want to pay what it’d cost. And some people may want a much-quieter unit than any bottom limit would place.

The problem is that they can’t make an informed decision now because the information isn’t available.

What is your unpopular flim opinion

I’ll go first. Mine is that I can’t stand the Deadpool movies. They are self aware and self referential to an obnoxious degree. It’s like being continually reminded that I am in a movie. I swear the success of that movie has directly lead to every blockbuster having to have a joke every 30 seconds

tal,
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www.imdb.com/chart/bottom/

In a “so bad it’s good” way?

tal, (edited )
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

Mine is that I can’t stand the Deadpool movies. They are self aware and self referential to an obnoxious degree.

I haven’t read the comic books that they’re based on for a long time, but as I recall, they also break the fourth wall. I don’t think that that was introduced specifically for the movie.

googles

Apparently that wasn’t always there:

screenrant.com/deadpool-fourth-wall-break-first-t…

When Did Deadpool First Break The Fourth Wall?

Marvel’s Deadpool is known for his over-the-top violence and crude and crass humor, but perhaps his best-known character trait is his penchant for repeatedly breaking the fourth wall. Deadpool talks to the audience in comics, films and videogames - but he didn’t always have this power. In fact, early Deadpool was known for being quite serious and firmly rooted in the fictional realm…so when did the Merc with a Mouth first break the fourth wall - and how did he insult editors everywhere by doing so?

Deadpool and the assassin with superhuman accuracy Bullseye teamed up in previous issues, and in Deadpool , the two are reunited after a long absence. “How long has it been!?” Bullseye exclaims. Deadpool simply states “Issue sixteen.” It’s the smallest of fourth-wall breaks (he hadn’t even began speaking to the readers yet), but it shows that Deadpool is doing more than acting out - he’s acting as his own editor. Considering convoluted comics continuity, it’s normal for editors to occasionally place footnotes in certain panels, specifically when characters reference past events. Perhaps Kelly and Woods considered the old method, but wanted to try a new technique. Whatever their reasoning, Deadpool’s fourth wall breaks became a staple of the character.

Looks like Deadpool dates to 1997, though, so Deadpool breaking the fourth wall has been around for over a quarter of a century.

tal, (edited )
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What would you have changed from the movies as they were?

I mean, I can’t think of that many deviations from the books off-the-top-of-my-head. Tom Bombadil got cut, but he had a very different flavor from most of the rest of the series. Legolas “shield surfing” was an addition to the movies and was kind of obnoxious, IMHO, but it wasn’t that much of an ongoing thing. There were some changes around Aragorn going through the Paths of the Dead, but nothing there really bugged me.

EDIT: I’m pretty sure that nothing in the books said that the charge of the reinforcements at Helm’s Deep was down that steep of a slope – that’s probably just not practical.

clip in question

tal, (edited )
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Not only that, but looking at the cast, it looks like LOTR is New Zealanders, Australians, or Brits.

lotr.fandom.com/…/List_of_the_Lord_of_the_Rings_f…

I mean, if there was a single internationally-popular movie or series that you could choose to take issue with as being “too American”, this doesn’t seem like it’d be the one I’d choose.

tal, (edited )
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

Donnie darko and the fifth element are terribly overrated. Films made to make teenagers think they’re deeper than they are.

Okay, I can at least see where you’re coming from with Donnie Darko, but I’m completely confused when it comes to The Fifth Element.

  • Did The Fifth Element even have any teenage characters at all?
  • It doesn’t seem like it dealt with anything remotely like typical real-world teenage life.
  • I can’t see how it treated anything as being especially deep, either. I mean, the characters were flat and goofy, not complex and angst-ridden.

I mean, there are countless movies aimed at teens could maybe fit your criticism, but this seems like a movie where it’s simply inapplicable.

Is there any chance that you’re thinking of a different movie with a similar name?

tal, (edited )
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

I don’t think that RSS is a reasonable alternative for social media at all. Different use case for me.

I mean, I’d use it if I had a selection of known sources that publish content regularly that I like enough of to see all the content and have a website. Only a few sources actually meet that bar for me. Then, RSS lets me put a common interface on all of them, combines a list of new content.

I use something like Reddit or the Fediverse to take advantage of people finding useful content elsewhere, which is kind of a different use case.

I mean, you’re on social media here, rather than just following an RSS feed, so presumably RSS doesn’t replace social media for you either.

tal,
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This extension will automatically remove tracking elements from URLs to help protect your privacy when browsing through the Internet.

Firefox:

addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/…/clearurls/

Chrome:

…google.com/…/lckanjgmijmafbedllaakclkaicjfmnk/

tal,
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That’ll address the case where one is copy-pasting an URL, but not where following existing links.

tal,
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Or something was standing next to your bed while you were asleep and thought that some salt would make you taste better.

tal,
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but falling back asleep in the morning after you’ve just been woken up feels so goddamn good.

You might not be getting enough sleep.

tal,
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I don’t think that there is likely such a thing that would produce a direct response. If you wanted to not be noticed, why would you change your behavior based on what something else transmits?

tal, (edited )
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If you read the response, he’s talking about scrambled eggs, which you can get in a bag.

tal,
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Another response says I can put a hard boiled egg into a bag.

That was someone else guessing. The person talking about scrambled eggs was the original person who referenced “bagged eggs”.

tal, (edited )
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paradoxes

List of things that, at least to some people, don’t work they way they’d expect.

I think that the Monty Haul problem is a good example on there.

tal,
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It’s not particularly confusing, but there are a whole class of paradoxes that rely on the same mechanism – the truth of a statement is being altered by the existence of the statement, because it is self-referential in some way.

I think that the Berry paradox is the first one of these that I ran into, and it’s a little more confusing to most, I think.

Why do people hate on mobile games, call them "not real games" and mock them, when some mobile-exclusive games are the best games I've played?

The Infinity Blade or Minigore series, for example, or anything made by Illusion Labs. These games are genius and most consoles don’t even have a touch screen or utilise it well like some smartphone games do....

tal, (edited )
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

I wouldn’t call one “not a real game”. If you like them, great, play them. I have not been very happy with mobile games, myself, however.

A couple of reasons:

  • While they don’t have to do so, many mobile games appear to me to be designed to cater to people playing in short spurts. That is, you don’t have to build up a lot of metal state about the game; you can play a bit while waiting in a line or something, put the thing on hold, do something else, come back. A lot of my favorite games don’t work like that.
  • For a number of genres, using a touchscreen is a serious limitation, because part of the screen is obstructed by fingers. Phones can use external input devices, usually via Bluetooth, and so you can make a game that requires an external input device, but it’s an inconvenience to lug one around with a phone, so smartphone games generally need to be designed to be at least reasonably-able to be played on the touchscreen alone. That places some constraints on the way the game can work.
  • Touchscreen accuracy is limited compared to a mouse pointer, which again limits a number of genres of games.
  • Not everyone using a smartphone game can be playing sound while doing so; carrying headphones/earbuds around isn’t something that all players will do. That means that smartphone games generally need to be playable without sound, which is a constraint that PC games generally don’t have.
  • The major benefit smartphones have is that they’re mobile. A smartphone can generally run for a while, as long as most of that is idling. Playing games in most genres burns through their battery quickly. You can carry USB powerstations, but kind of a pain.
  • Even in genres – like turn-based ones – that really don’t need much battery consumption, for some reason, game developers – unlike developers of many other application types – often seem to feel the need to have stuff going on while nothing’s happening in the game, burning battery life. I’d like to have the option to minimize battery usage.
  • I would say that a greater proportion of smartphone games than PC games have in-app purchases and ads, neither of which I like.
  • Many game genres tend to benefit from a wider field of view. Smartphone screens held normally take up a very small portion of one’s visual field.
  • I am not particularly enthusiastic about having Google track and profile me. A large portion of the commercial games on Android require that one use Google Play Services and this requires a Google account. I’m not willing to get a Google account. This limits availability of many commercial games. I have no problem with getting a GOG account on the PC, and am at least less concerned about Valve, with Steam, than Google.
  • I have no idea why, but a higher percentage of mobile games seem to go for a cutesy, simplified vector aesthetic. Maybe it’s because they need to run on screens that may vary a great deal in size; I don’t know, but it’s there. Nothing intrinsically wrong with that style, but I’m not especially enthusiastic about it. The Game Boy had the same “cutesy” tendency back when, relative to larger, fixed consoles, so maybe it’s to deal with small screens.
  • Most mobile games I’ve played that I’ve liked (e.g. Shattered Pixel Dungeon) are also available on the PC, and I find that it’s more-comfortable to play there.

So for me, at least, the mobile gaming experience hasn’t really been one that I’ve been all that happy with.

I could certainly see games that I think would work well with a smartphone. Choice of Games-type multiple-choice interactive fiction, or gamebooks. Those are (or at least can be) light on a battery, are fine on a touchscreen. I’ve generally played those on a tablet rather than a phone – I think that even with those, more screen space is desirable, given the option – but I have done those, and I think that they’re all right. Annoyingly-enough, Twine games – which I would think could be a good match for mobile – aren’t, because Android browsers don’t have an ability to view file:// URLs and Twine builds pages that don’t always work well on small mobile screens. There hasn’t been the kind of explosion of freely-available games in this genre that there have been for the keyboard-oriented Z-Machine and TADS interactive fiction VMs on the PC, though.

Deckbuilding games – though I’d rather have ones without animation or 3D stuff going on, to reduce battery consumption – would be another possibility that I’d like. If cards are designed for a small screen, I think that it’d be reasonable.

What is good to eat when you have no appetite?

I am super sick right now and haven’t eaten much in a few days. It’s getting to the point where I am gonna need to force myself to eat something to keep my strength up but everything just sounds terrible to me right now. I have been subsisting mostly on small glasses of milk and the occasional packet of instant oatmeal....

tal,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

to eat something to keep my strength up

I wouldn’t worry too much if you haven’t eaten for a few days. I know of one instance where someone who was seriously obese went on a diet, and aside from vitamins and water, went over a year without eating. I’ve done over a week myself for the hell of it. Unless you’re absolutely emaciated or have some sort of medical condition that creates a need for it, you can probably handle going for quite a while without food.

All that being said, this isn’t to encourage doing it. Just that you’re probably not creating any kind of dire health situation if you don’t eat for a while.

tal,
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House on Haunted Hill had Black Dude (Eddie) being one of the only two to make it out.

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