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pusher_robot

PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS

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joined 2022 September 04 23:45:12 UTC 

				
User ID: 278


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
pusher_robot


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 04 23:45:12 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 278


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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	 Hot Bump Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
	



		

	






	

		
		

		
		
	

	

  







		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Once again, Wisconsin is leading the way.  Kidding aside, I really have come to appreciate the "bar as neighborhood rec room" that is very common here, as opposed to "bar as establishment/nightclub".  The music is lower, the drinks are reasonably priced, the popcorn is free, and you can chat with people, play some games, watch TV, or sit by the fire and read.  I appreciate as a singleton that there is no particular expectation that you provide your own company.


But I'm most likely to experience that feeling of complete ease and satisfaction, that I think is called Gemütlichkeit, at the beer garden.  In a rare moment of sanity, civic leaders have permitted operators to serve beer in the public parks (the parks getting a hefty slice of proceeds, natch), and the experience of sitting above a rolling river under a stand of towering old oaks, or the closer shelter of leafy maples, on a warm summer's afternoon, eating picnic food and quaffing a couple liters of fine lager over several hours - it's the closest thing to bliss that I can imagine.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 15, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You may want to check out Transport Fever 2 (soon to be 3).  It's made by Germans I think, who presumably thought that Railroad Tycoon was too simplistic.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 15, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
First thing to do if you haven't already is load the BIOS and reset the configuration.  Many enthusiast systems have performance setting options which will attempt to overclock various components, which usually works, but when it doesn't it can cause issues like what you describe. There should be an option to set everything back to normal or safe settings, which might fix the problem all by itself.


Second thing to do is try booting a recovery environment like https://www.system-rescue.org/.  If this is successful, you can try to mount the hard disk partitions to copy data to another drive or network share.  This won't work if the disk is encrypted, unfortunately.  You would be able to test the RAM though - it's one of the boot options on that image.  You could also run a few hardware tests, like copying the hard drive blocks to /dev/null to test for read errors.


Another tip that might help you is that if it's a standard ATX power supply, you can try scrounging one from just about any other standard PC.  The machine will need no more than around 100 watts just to boot up.  The high power requirements only really come into play when working the GPU and CPU hard.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I loved and still love Dredd for its absolutely relentless pacing, Verhoeven-levels of over-the-top action and gore, and its ability to play a fundamentally somewhat silly concept (from a comic book, after all) completely straight.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Our economic ideology is rooted in jealousy, and the jealous rise to the top to be crowned "billionaire".




No, the desire to create more wealth and power is not necessarily rooted in jealousy.  I don't go to work and save my money because I'm jealous of other people that have houses and cars.  I do it because I want these things for myself, independent of what other people do or don't do.  Because having those things is better than not having those things. That's a totally different motivation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Is this soft power?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I disagree with this take. The natural human tendency will be to either invest it conservatively or spend it on lifestyle. For a person with that kind of wealth to plow ~100% of it on self-run high-risk, high-reward business ventures is actually quite rare and should be lauded.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
No you're not crazy. Not only is our GDP much larger now, we also spend much more of it on welfare than we used to. Yes, at levels that even approach western Europe. That doesn't prevent people from being jealous, though.  Even under hard core communism, the preternaturally jealous personality will covet the smallest things with equal resentment.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But over all this time, I've kinda synthesized a superstructure that I don't think is gonna change, that I think is not on the left right axis, but on another mysterious plane: I'm jealous of china.




Any ideology rooted in jealousy is likely to be catastrophic in its application to society.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
And yet people voluntarily sign up to live on submarines for stretches at a time, under military rules and discipline, and with the knowledge that other people may try to deliberately kill them.  I think you are engaging in far too much typical-mind fallacy.


I also think that you would only need a relatively small cadre of pioneers to establish the core infrastructure that would enable building out more comfortable living for larger numbers of people.  Submarines are unusually cramped due to the tremendous forces needed to protect the low-pressure space.  Using cut-and-cover construction, building larger-volume spaces is fairly straightforward (and structurally easier than on Earth due to the lower gravity).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Like what?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Short of a nuclear war, this is the worst our space capabilities will ever be.




There is no way of knowing this.  This was also true in 1973, and then until very recently, it wasn't for a long time.  That recent change was not guaranteed.  It could only take a relatively minor slowdown in global economic growth to make spaceflight uneconomical if not impossible, and while the whole of human history is one long mostly-continuous rise in technological capability, past performance is no guarantee of future results, as they say.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Most gold on Earth doesn't physically change hands, it just sits around in bank vaults being traded electronically




Is this true?  Gold is highly useful in a variety of both jewelry and commercial applications.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Why?  The constraints of reality will be more severe, but it's not obvious to me why bureaucracy would be a priority in such a location.  Leaving efficiency on the floor for the sake of feel-good regulations is exponentially more expensive.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Both of these "sealed" examples occur on Earth, shielded from radiation, and in moderate ambient temperatures. This will not be the case on Mars, nor on the 9 month journey to the Red Planet.




A Mars settlement would never be sealed in any sense of the word.  It would be pressurized, but unlike the Biosphere experiments there is no reason or expectation of a fully recycled or self-sustaining ecology.  If you need more oxygen inside your pressurized volume, you just go out and get it from the surrounding environment.  If you have too much CO2 in your volume, you dump it into the surrounding environment.  This is less like operating a miniature biosphere than maintaining the environment in a submarine.  The only limiting factor is how much energy you have available to work on resource utilization.


Now obviously for the entire settlement to be self-sufficient in all aspects, you will probably need to grow crops of various sorts, but again, this is more akin to standard industrialized farming, where you can avail yourself of all kinds of resource inputs and discard unwanted outputs.  There is no requirement that they operate in perfect balance.




This relieves a lot of the "population pressure" to colonize space, but also indicates a collapse in the narrative of progress that underpins the whole rationale that would lead us to even want to do such an absurd thing




Disagree.  The population was far lower in the 19th century, but that didn't prevent relentless pressure to settle the entire continent.  Aside from simple population pressure, there is also the inherent freedom of the frontier, which will always be attractive to people who chafe under the rules and expectations of settled society, which appear to only ever increase over time.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I would not rule out the chance to preserve a nucleus of human specimens. It would be quite easy...at the bottom of...some of our deeper mineshafts. Radioactivity would never penetrate a mine some thousands of feet deep, and in a matter of weeks, sufficient improvements in drilling space could easily be provided.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What do you mean?  Article II is fairly specific as to how, exactly, the President is elected (by the Electoral College).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm thinking this might be true only among men.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
So long as it's not in Computer Modern.  Dislike that font family.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for February 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
IMO the coin flopped because most register tills couldn't accommodate any more coin types, so cashiers never provided them as change.  Now that the penny is going away, that opens up a slot.  There's also now no reason not to retire the $1 bill.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for February 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I still like my idea for a five-dollar coin better, but this would be an improvement on that status quo if it also retires nickles.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I didn't watch the show.  What motivates such a character to attend Starfleet Academy of all things?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That's a strange case. The constitutionality of such a law seems dubious to me under Lawrence.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I was born before the 90s, and went on my own walking to and from my elementary school every day, at 6 years old. It was considered a normal thing back then.




Same, in the 80's, I walked about a mile home from school in first grade (though I got a ride to school).  That year, we moved to only about a half mile from the school, and I never got another ride to or from school until my friends were old enough to drive.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think both the pilot and the episode itself does enough to bring that background.  You could, I guess, watch Skin of Evil after the pilot to cement data's personality and account for the disappearance of Yar, or Elementary, Dear Data to show his more whimsical side (which also sets up the clever Moriarty episode later).  The good thing about TNG generally though is that it was conceived and written as an almost 100% episodic show, so while episodes can benefit from familiarity with the characters and the world lore, it is generally not necessary.  That's one reason it was very popular in syndication.