I needed this explanation for “L’Engle”:

References A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engle. Characters cross great distances by “tessering”, moving via a tesseract through a higher dimension which essentially brings the two ends of the journey together from the perspective of the traveler. The image shows the two ends of the gap being brought together, with the gap apparently crumpled in between them.

Similar to the arbitrarily defined density of other stuff in the same orbit. We need to draw lines somewhere to impose categories on nature.

It can bother people who believe in omnipotent deities.

A debate between people who read the source and others who project preconceived narratives onto facts. Before this sadly popular meme, I thought the latter was a misdeed of climate “skeptics”. It’s quite painful to see how long-lived this meme is. It makes us look as bad and post-factual as the opposition. What do we do about this? Accept it as human nature? In consequence, stop blaming “skeptics”, and people who rather believe what they want and don’t look up, because we do exactly the same? I think we can and should do better, hence my effort here.

The core point people make and take away from this meme is “It’s not us, it’s them!”. Meaning, consumer emissions don’t matter, because corporate emissions are so much bigger.

And in exactly this core point, this meme is misleading. Because “our” emissions are included in “their” emissions (that’s what phase scope 3 is about). It’s like a child blaming their parents that they spend so much on food, while living off their purchases.

Probably, yes. Which means, this post is quite misleading.

Carbon majors is about fossil fuel producers. Drilling oil, mining coal. This is the first misleadioning: Big and popular companies like Apple are not covered. They also count whole national sectors as one producer, like “China (coal)”. Not what the average reader might think when reading “company”. Misleading.

Further, the report includes IIRC 3rd phase emissions. Meaning emissions caused by end consumers using the product. Meaning you burning coal to use electricity, or fuel to run your car.

That doesn’t mean these companies (producers, sectors) are guilt-free. But we should hate them for the right reasons, of which there are plenty.

Offering a slight damper / correction:

This is about two things (design and ownership), which are correlated, but not identical.

Malicious design can be things like:

• Algorithms to keep people engaged
• UIs to confuse users (luring them to purchases, or making ‘cancel’ hard to access)
• Using intermediate currencies to make it harder to assert value
• …

Obviously, these patterns and practices can also be applied to a FOSS instance you own. There is less incentive to do so if the profit motive is removed - which makes a huge difference.

These design patterns are fundamentally about making user numbers go up. Attract more users, keep them on your platform longer, make them leave less. And a portion of user guidance mixed in. None of that is inherently evil, to some degree even desireable, and to some extent unavoidable to offer a functional service.

Some users may expect a feed like lemmy to browse indefinitely, since they find it inconvenient to have to click to go to the ‘next page’. And because they got used to this feature elsewhere. Others already see this as a dark pattern.

I just wanted to highlight how some of the malicious stuff may still be present in the fediverse, without any company involved. Here, we’re kind of in charge on both sides: Each is responsible for their own user agency (like controlling your online hours, or what sites you visit), and collectively to decide what user experience we want to shape (which might include controverse patterns).

I spent way too many words on this. Mostly I agree with you! And overall, users will encounter far less malicious patterns on FOSS.

[Edit: Formatting]

Same here. My max is about 5.5’’ and 160g. Otherwise I feel it’s too hard to carry and handle, or even just hold. I also want to be able to reach the opposing screen corner with my thumb.

Weigh on Earth or on Moon?

Hehe, good point.

people need to read more code, play around with it, break it and fix it to become better programmers.

I think AI bots can help with that. It’s easier now to play around with code which you could not write by yourself, and quickly explore different approaches. And while you might shy away from asking your colleagues a noob question, ChatGPT will happily elaborate.

In the end, it’s just one more tool in the box. We need to learn when and how to use it wisely.

Hey, I know a pretty similar bus stop in Hamburg, Germany: https://maps.app.goo.gl/SMa5unXew4uAfVtPA

Can confirm, it sucks to wait there. Hard to reach (always tempting to risk your life for catching the bus), noisy, stinky, plus ours has bicyclists zooming through the isle.

To optimize the intersection for car traffic. Or maybe rather to minimize signal wait times.

If pedestrians could take the shortest path, it would roughly double the size of the intersection in both width and height. Which then requires clearing times on each signal pass to be longer. Which ultimately makes everybody wait longer at the intersection, including pedestrians.

So, that is one possible explanation. I guess you didn’t really ask for one, and maybe I should also add that it’s just that; an explanation, not a justification.

Much like that comment. Can you give a better example, or express why it’s a bad example? That would bring some quality in.

FYI you can self-host GitLab, for example in a Docker container.

You can find “piggy power” at the bottom of the article, headlined “How to describe your game instead”.

Pixel Washer is a cozy, zen-like game where you play as a cute *piggy power washing* beautiful pixelated worlds.

I can read it in two ways: Either you’re a ghostly piggy power, who is washing. Or you’re a “piggy”, who is “power washing”. The grammar is ambiguous.

Maybe you meant to take side for the interpretation as a “cute piggy”. I agree that’s the most likely interpretation.

Still, this might confuse or downright misinform some readers. The main point of the article was to communicate what the game is in a clearer, more accessible way. So I found it worthwhile pointing out how it kind of fails there.

The author was concerned somebody might read a description like “Pixel Washer is like PowerWash Simulator meets Stardew Valley”, and partially fail to understand it, because they don’t really know what “PowerWash Simulator” or “Stardew Valley” are. Because they aren’t literate enough in game titles.

But similarly, one can worry readers might not know certain words or grammatical constructions (maybe because they are no native speakers, or for other reasons), to decide wether it’s a washing power or a piggy washing; because they aren’t literate enough in English.

Describing your game by listing other games is tempting, but not a good idea, and I’m about to convince you why.

That did not age so well. I found most arguments rather weak. Here’s an overview of all the three arguments, copied from the article:

1. It requires your audience to be familiar with those games
2. It creates pre-conceived notions, setting high expectations
3. Players prefer to discover the similarities on their own

Generally, we have at least two options for describing thing A: We can relate it to another thing B (“Pixel washer is like Stardew Valley”), or we can relate it to some abstract attribute (“Pixel washer is uplifting”). Either way, we use language shorthands to describe similarities with other known entities.

About 1: Yes, that is obviously true. And it’s also true for the opposite, when you don’t relate your game to other games. Granted, your description becomes more accessible to a broader audience since it does not require them to know the other games. But instead, the reader now has to be able to understand and visualize what your description might look and feel like as a game (and thus becomes less accessible again). Take for example the first sentence of the proposed better description:

“Pixel Washer is a cozy, zen-like game where you play as a cute piggy power washing beautiful pixelated worlds.”

I’d flag ‘cozy’ and ‘zen-like’ as probably rather less known and/or well-understood terms. I’m also not sure what ‘piggy power’ means. Is it even meant as one thing or is english grammar misleading as so often? Does it involve actual pigs or only their powers, whatever that might mean? But fair enough, even if all that remains not understood, the minimal takeaway is probably that it’s a game with pixels and pigs and washing. So yeah, the alternate description probably works for most people.

But in the same way, a description referring to other games also works for most people.

In case of unclear references, a game-reference wins over a word-description. Like when I look up ‘cozy’ and ‘zen-like’, I may or may not come across definitions and pictures which convey the same idea as the author intended. For example, I might find results about baking cookies or shooting arrows, which have nothing to do with washing pigs. Whereas, when I look up “PowerWash Simulator” and “Stardew Valley”, the results are far less ambiguous.

Argument 2 is the strongest from my point of view. But again, it’s pretty similar for both ways. It should be kept in mind. Maybe it’s best to ask your game testers how they would describe the game, including those who don’t like it, to avoid setting too high expectations because you fell in love with your game while making it.

Argument 3 was entirely new to me. It never crossed my mind, nor did I hear anyone complain about it. I think people very much appreciate language shorthands, if they are used well and are not misleading. If so, they can save time and give a crisp description. And let’s not forget that we are talking about advertisement. We know we are being lied to, that a ‘fast-paced action shooter’ can feel dull and boring quickly. As the author points out, these descriptions serve one purpose only; to generate more sales.

I also wanted to include a reference to Roguelikes or Roguelites. Apparently there once was a game named ‘Rogue’, which no one knows. But it spurred other creators to make something similar, and now we have genres called Roguelike and Roguelite. I think that’s kind of funny in this context, since in this case you somewhat cannot describe the genre without comparing it to another, specific game.

Last but not least, the whole argument is probably less relevant in mainstream games, but more so in indie, or niche, new games in a creative way. When there is almost nothing which is very similar, comparisons to other games might work less well than if you’re just releasing another RTS or FPS.

Hehe, right! (technically). Context matters! When talking about fruit, people usually don’t include stellar objects when weighing their options. Still true when taking in consideration that “apples to oranges” is usually metaphorical and not really about fruit.

I like that, especially this insight:

when two things have very few attributes in common or the attributes they can be compared on are very broad, general or abstract, it is harder to compare them.

A melon and a pogo stick are harder to compare, for their defining attributes hardly overlap except on a very abstract way.

Good on you to say “harder to compare” :D

it’s all semantic subjectivity. Poetry compares dissimilar things and equates unequal concepts all the time.

Another thing worthwhile to point out; subjectivity. I guess that part bothered me too. “cannot be compared” attempts to establish some kind of objective truth, whereas it only can be a subjective opinion.

The reference to poetry was nice, too.

My point works just as well with an arbitrary amount of options. Someone could say “These quintillion things cannot be compared”.

The number of options is irrelevant to what I tried to address. Though my examples were only pairs, so sorry for causing confusion.

Thanks for taking the time to write this detailed reply. I guess you’re right about the equivocation and I can see the irony :D

Though I have not fully understood yet. Following your example, the two different concepts are …

• in case A, we compare the value of a property (different top speed)
• in case B, we compare the purpose or context-dependend usefulness of an attribute (different types of liquid container holders)

What blocks me from fully agreeing is that still, both are comparisons. And they don’t feel so different to me that I would call them different concepts. When I look up examples for equivocations, those do feel very different to me.

I still guess you’re right. If you (or someone else) could help me see the fallacy, I’d appreciate.

Agreed, yeah. Guess I was taking the word too literally.