[-] james1@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Unless you're a raw milk TB-chaser type the milk you drink is probably processed too. Being processed doesn't make something inherently worse, and "no nutritional value" is a daft claim. OK if you consume milk as your only source of protein or fat, you probably want to choose your milk substitute tailored to whichever the rest of your diet is deficient in, but better or worse for us is a fairly arbitrary concept.

Livestock for dairy production are unarguably bad for the planet though.

[-] james1@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago

Automation that replaces the need for work can be a good thing, but only if it is used to ease the overall burden instead of making a bunch of people unemployed so that the capitalists who own the company can increase their profits. The idea of machines doing all the work sounds great, but if that means that the handful of people who own the machines have a great quality of life and everyone else suffers then that is not a good trade-off.

[-] james1@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

Some states do use their own definitions of terrorism to explain why it's bad when other people do it but OK when they do it, but that's definitely not a uniform definition.

the calculated use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective.

- Britannica

The use of violence or the threat of violence, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political goals.

- American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

the use of intentional violence and fear to achieve political or ideological aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war against non-combatants.

- Wiki

(Government, Politics & Diplomacy) systematic use of violence and intimidation to achieve some goal

- Collins English Dictionary

the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes... government or resistance to government by means of terror.

- Webster's

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submitted 11 months ago by james1@lemmy.world to c/bookclub@lemmy.world

This is the reading challenge organised on the Discord in the community sidebar here. Here's the link to the Storygraph challenge: https://app.thestorygraph.com/reading_challenges/12c988c6-8fd4-4343-81d6-d6c43f8a722e

[-] james1@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

While some limited ecotage does happen, non-permanent disruption is more popular than permanent damage. And the more public, less relevant showboating stuff is what gets the public eye. Just Stop Oil got a lot more attention when they started sitting in traffic and throwing stuff at paintings and whatever than when they were focusing more on things like blocking oil terminals.

I'd recommend Malm's book How to Blow Up a Pipeline for more discussion about more radical approaches to protest, but bear in mind that there is a distinction between strategic sabotage which can get public on-side and the sort of adventurism that ecoterrorism implies. As /u/lil_tank@lemmygrad.ml mentions below this has the risk of driving more people away anyway.

I'd really recommend Marxism Today's youtube video about the film pseudo-adaptation of How to Blow Up a Pipeline, discussing both the risks and bad examples in that film itself but also the broader context of trying to encourage this.

Disruption and sabotage of fossil fuel machinery might be effective from a public optics perspective, as well as on a large enough scale hopefully impacting capitalist profits/making polluting ventures seem riskier to investors. However, ecotage is distinct from eco-terrorism and the latter should be avoided.

However, not the question of subjective motives but that of objective expediency has for us the decisive significance. Are the given means really capable of leading to the goal? In relation to individual terror, both theory and experience bear witness that such is not the case. To the terrorist we say: it is impossible to replace the masses; only in the mass movement can you find expedient expression for your heroism.

- Trotsky in Their Morals and Ours

The [Earth Liberation Front] realises that the profit motive, caused and reinforced by the capitalist society, is destroying all life on this planet. The ELF therefore feels that the only way to stop the destruction of life is to take the profit motive out of killing.

- ELF spokesperson in a 2003 interview

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submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by james1@lemmy.world to c/albumartporn@lemmy.world

First of a new compilation series from HDK (Heimat Der Katastrophe), I just really dug the cover.

The cassette cover is what it looks like here, but the digital cover is this full photo with the Italian language RPG in the background.

The four artists - Serhli Cho'l, Idylls of the Last King, Radagast, and Blaze J. Grygiel - each have one 15-minute dungeon synth track on here.

https://heimatderkatastrophe.bandcamp.com/album/hdk-160-adventurers-magazine-1

[-] james1@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

While stuff like Tomb Raider is the quintessential example, for a five year old you would probably be better with something more colourful and fun, even if you are the one playing it.

With that in mind my first thought was A Hat in Time although I've not played it through to verify end to end appropriateness.

You could also try Mirror's Edge because bright colours and dynamic movement, I don't remember it being that violent but maybe on second thoughts consider the safety aspect of introducing a child to the concept of jumping between buildings and maybe I'm talking myself out of this.

Celeste is colourful and fun and honestly at that age I don't know that she would pick up that much on the heavier aspects of the story which are allegories for anxiety/depression/gender dysphoria. A five year old is basically going to see it as a story with an evil twin I think.

I haven't played Child of Light but that might be appropriate?

The main character in Crypt of the Necrodancer is a girl called Cadence, although that is one you would really have to enjoy to make it worth it imo. I'm mostly thinking rhythm and bright colours are child friendly again to be honest, but you still have to play what is basically a roguelike mixed with a rhythm game and if that's not your jam it will be a waste of money.

You can always play a game with selectable skins too, like Spelunky 2 has a few characters you could pick between which all play the same but has a variety of designs you can play as.

[-] james1@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I made a kind of "if you like PHM you might like these other books" rec chart thing when I first read PHM; if you've finished reading it you might enjoy some of these (although it does mention a few key elements of the book so if you're going in completely blind and aren't far in yet then don't look at this yet).

[-] james1@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

The strongest centre left candidates at the moment are the Greens. As far as electoralism goes, it would be better to stand behind a party that actually has a membership than split further into parties which frankly look the same as countless other "like the left flank of Labour but better" parties.

At least something like the Northern Independence Party could raise the priority of the North. I'm not sure what this offers that, say, the Breakthrough Party doesn't apart from further vote splitting.

Feels like it will offer a similar level of political success and distinction as when you are trying to look up CPB vs CPB-ML vs CPGB-ML vs NCP vs RCPB-ML vs... except with everyone having platitudinal tech marketing guru's branding like Transform, Change, Breakthrough etc.

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submitted 1 year ago by james1@lemmy.world to c/bookclub@lemmy.world
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submitted 1 year ago by james1@lemmy.world to c/bookclub@lemmy.world

This year for the first time the crew over on the Discord are doing a reading challenge. If you've done a reading challenge before you'll know the gist - a bunch of prompts for which you choose books that fulfil the criteria and try and read them over the course of the year.

The link here is to the Storygraph version of the challenge, although you can of course track it however you prefer. There are some template graphics and things in a thread on the Discord which might help if you like making summary graphics when you complete a challenge like this.

It's more than half way through the year now but the challenge counts anything you've read this year (as long as it fits the other criteria) so you can do the thing where you sign up and instantly mark a tonne of prompts as completed, which I always find kinda satisfying.

Anyway, I just thought I'd post about it over here as well as I'm always looking for reading challenges and things to add a fun sense of completion to reading.

[-] james1@lemmy.world 65 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's a machine learning chat bot, not a calculator, and especially not "AI."

Its primary focus is trying to look like something a human might say. It isn't trying to actually learn maths at all. This is like complaining that your satnav has no grasp of the cinematic impact of Alfred Hitchcock.

It doesn't need to understand the question, or give an accurate answer, it just needs to say a sentence that sounds like a human might say it.

[-] james1@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Scientists can just make stuff up, but in this case Paul's complaint appears to be more to do with the article than any underlying research as he is trying to draw information that the article doesn't pretend to intend to provide.

A lot of the problems with publicly visible scientific research are to do with media communication and the way that journalists will interpret or spice up results in their coverage.

There are also problems with the incentive to publish surprising results more than confirmation of existing information, as well as with the incentives for research funding, and scientists can bring their own biases into research consciously or unconsciously.

For things like company sponsored research, it is not uncommon for multiple trials to be run and only the ones with positive results to be published. I'd recommend Ben Goldacre's pop sci industry journalism books Bad Science or the even better sequel Bad Pharma for more discussion of this.

Then there are journals which function more like vanity press, with insufficient peer review processes and that just charge people to publish their papers.

But there are also scientists who just wholesale make things up, whether for obvious financial gain like Andrew Wakefield making up the autism from vaccines MMR scare because he had competing vaccines he wanted to sell, or just for easy prestige like Jonathan Pruitt just copy and pasting underlying data samples to boost trends.

It is not unthinkable for researchers to invent information, although my gut will always be to trust the researchers not the international megacorporation with an obvious financial incentive and the idea of suing researchers like this without substantial proof of fraud could have devastating effects on scientific research should J&J manage to push it through.

(YT video essay about Pruitt)

[-] james1@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Space tourism is a hugely inefficient way for a handful of billionaires at a time to pop half way to orbit. There are much cheaper and less environmentally destructive ways of achieving a similar result.

[-] james1@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

You cannot do that with other social media.

Facebook likes, Twitter likes, Discord reacts, LinkedIn reacts, etc. are all publicly visible. The only possible slight difference with this is that in some cases people might not be aware, in which case the issue would be that it is less obvious to a casual browser than Facebook's "AncientMariner and 23 others liked this post" rather than that the likes are visible at all.

[-] james1@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

As well as the three you have mentioned, I would also recommend The Island of Dr Moreau.

Of the Wells fiction I've read, The Time Machine does have the most explicit class analysis/allegory though.

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james1

joined 1 year ago