I’m in the process of starting a fight with my neighbours. They complained (indirectly) about our garden being unkempt. I asked them for an appointment to talk directly so we can figure out just what the problem is. I’m not doing shit until they can tell me just what part of my little piece of nature is breaking any laws.

Product packaging for non-foods

What, you don’t think 1cm² of product should be packaged in a 7×10 cm doubled-up plastic sheet?

Shai-Hulud actually does some good though. Bless the Maker and His water. Bless the coming and going of Him. May His passage cleanse the world. May He keep the world for His people.

Tthat’s not south of Antarctica though. It’s below, in terms of the map’s perspective, but “absolute south” is the middle of the picture. Anywhere outside Antarctica is north of Antarctica.

The fact that you launch into some part of your day doesn’t change that it’s gauging your mood on her end.

Maybe not, but the fact that me launching into that is an accepted and expected part of the response does.

If a manager calls me about a project and asks how I am, they don’t want me recounting an earlier frustrating interaction. As you say, they’re trying to gauge my mood, but ultimately my mood or how it came to be are irrelevant because we’re here to talk business. If I omit my headache, they don’t care.

If my GF asks me, she actually wants a response. If I omit my headache and she finds out later, she’ll be upset: “Why didn’t you say so earlier?”

That expectation is the difference.

Only for bipedals. Quadrupedal animals can well keep a leg on the ground at all times even when moving at speed. To borrow from another comment here: Would you call a stampeding elephant “walking”?

Charitably, it sounds like someone highly competent in one field dramatically misjudging their competence in another: Just because you’re good at chemistry doesn’t meam you also know how that chemistry acts on an ecosystem.

Cynically, it sounds like someone coming up with a genius idea, hoping to make money and dismissing any shortcomings because they get in the way of money.

It was a really stupidly worded comment on his part. If he meant Big Tech and Little Tech spwcifically rather than Big Business in general and individual people, his choice of words and the claim that the tables had “completely turned” are really unfortunate. Tagging the annoying orange directly also doesn’t help make this look like it’s about the pick, rather than the picker.

As an aside, forgive me if I withhold my enthusiasm until I see her actually pull something through and not just end up another way to cripple ElMo’s competition.

Sauron still has a physical form during the events of LOTR. Frodo sees him through the tower window when walking towards Mount Doom, and Gollum remarks he was personally tortured by him, and that his hand has 4 fingers.

I tended to interpret that more like “appearing as a spirit”, but you may actually be right. It would explain how he was able to orchestrate and dominate his forces. There is no precedent I’m aware of that any of the Ainur would be able to influence the physical world without a physical presence.

When Isildur slew him, I believe his physical form was destroyed, but as long as a token of his power remained, it makes sense that he would be able to eventually recover enough strength to reincorporate.

Either way, without the Ring, his power was still limited. I’ll update my comment, thanks for pointing that out.

For PC, extra functions should be in the context menu in my opinion. For mobile, that’s a little tougher, but maybe tapping on the selected text should bring up the options? Selecting on mobile is a tough thing anyway, and any solution is probably going to be a problem for someone else.

Actually, that’s probably true for any UI design choices. There are some that are generally a good idea (like defining a reasonable navigation order for your elements or making design respond to viewport sizes to ensure that everything actually fits), but interaction options can get really muddy.

If a colleague asks me “Hi, how’re you doing?” it’s small talk and I’ll respond something like “Oh you know, the usual.” If my partner asks me “Hi, how was your day?” it’s a genuine question and I will respond “That fucking dickhead at work that always plays nice and personable came around with another set of “urgent” requests and no fucking clue what he’s actually asking for, whether it’s possible or why I told him last week it isn’t.”

The difference is in how serious I take the question.

Police: Arrest you for having an open beer in public

Judge: sentences you to prison

The PIC: 🤑

The reasons I personally know are “I have to use an app for work, there is no interoperable alternative, I have no leverage to replace that entire ecosystem and it won’t run with wine” and “It’s a company-issued device where I have no rights to change anything anyway.” Combined, they make the reason that my work Laptop runs Win11, but my private PC is Linux through and through. I’d like to be able to use said app on my private PC too, but if it doesn’t, no big deal.

Adding on to the other comment, Nobara is maintained by Glorious Egroll, the same guy that also develops the popular Proton-GE compatibility tool which adds some extra fixes on top of Valve’s Proton.

(Proton is the compatibility tool Steam uses to make Windows games run on Linux, in case you’re unfamiliar)

One of my colleagues will even occasionally ask me “Heading for a smoke, wanna come along?” I just love chatting with him, I’ll try to stand upwind so I don’t catch as much second-hand smoke, he gets some company too, everyone’s happy.

It does, in fact, turn humans invisible too. Isildur being the obvious example, but even the nine rings given to humans had that effect, shifting them to the spiritual / unseen world. That’s a whole different ramble, but for now, let’s sum it up that there is an unseen world not everyone can sense and influence, but the Maiar (including Sauron) are inherently spiritual beings that took physical shape in the seen world in order to interact with it.

For Sauron, so much of his power was poured into the One Ring that the continued existence of the ring meant that he could survive destruction of his physical form and eventually take shape again¹, though its loss in the War of the Last Alliance obviously robbed him of much of his strength and he had to hide for a long time to slowly regain his strength and renew his efforts.²

Through the Ring, Sauron had also dominated the nine human Ring bearers and bound them to him, moving them into the spiritual world. As his form was destroyed, so did they lose theirs. As he returned, so did they.

The reason they could still “see” Frodo is that they were attuned to the unseen and could sense him there, with their power over it manifesting in them stabbing his physical form even though it was invisible to mortal eyes.

There is still the question of the Dwarven rings. They were forged first, and it’s possible they weren’t as refined yet, though the dwarves are also described as more resilient at resisting the dominating effect. My guess is that the fact they were created by Aulë, Smith of the Valar, rendered them less susceptible to the craft of a lesser spirit (Sauron), but I have no evidence.

1: This paragraph and the following one originally read that Sauron could no longer take shape without the ring. I stand corrected on that, see the responses.

2: After his first destruction during the Fall of Numenor, his spirit managed to escape with the ring. 110 years later, he had enough strength to launch a strike against the nascent Gondor and start another war that lasted 13 years. He was destroyed again, this time losing his ring, and it took him a thousand years to become active again.Per the correction, he will probably have regained his form, though he was still too weak to fully reveal himself and start another open war for two thousand more years.

You’d need something to hook into the memory or storage of the app I guess?

There is a difference between wanting to live comfortably, which is rational, and actively seeking ways to exploit others for your own gain beyond what you need to live. Greed isn’t “I want to have enough”, it’s “I can never have enough”.

Society has always thrived on a measure of generosity. So many cultures have customs around giving gifts, because that’s how you build a support network of people that will help you out when you need it. Greed is shortsighted and destructive.

Or would you want to voluntarily waive parts of your salary?

Depends on the reason. If the waived amount goes to paying for healthcare, support someone suddenly unemployed or maintain infrastructure that I or other people need? Sure.

I think that’s where the world of art appreciation is now quite visibly breaking along a divide that has existed for a while. Some have always just valued the product: means be damned, if the end is enjoyable enough. For others, the process matters; for some even more than the result.

The latter group seems larger, though they may just be more passionate about their views and accordingly vocal (personally, I suspect both are the case, but I don’t know of any solid evidence).

Such is the way of new technology: it challenges traditional values. That doesn’t mean those values are without merit or have to be overturned, but I think it’s valuable that they’re challenged at least.

Here’s to hoping they stand the test.