Zagorath

Zagorath , 13 days ago

Not needed. They already escape war crimes.

Zagorath , 17 days ago (edited 14 days ago)

The correct answer is that it gives you 3.5 hours at 70% of the energy boost.

Zagorath , 19 days ago

Yeah top left guy is way more disturbing to me than bottom right guy.

Zagorath , 20 days ago

He's a soccer player and he disagrees with the ref's decision. What more context do you need?

Soccer players are infamously fucking divas.

Zagorath , 20 days ago

Cos wasn't coined for anything even remotely related to sex or gender. It's just the Latin opposite of trans. Which honestly just makes whinging about the term from reactionaries like Musty all the more ridiculous.

Zagorath , 20 days ago

Damn autocorrect. Imma leave that up, it's too funny.

Zagorath , 22 days ago

To save anyone else the Google: that's the car the main characters of Supernatural drive.

Zagorath , 22 days ago

The parking couldn't be much worse than that.

Zagorath , 22 days ago

Your image seems to have been deleted by Imgur.

Zagorath , 22 days ago

Looks like you got lucky that your instance cached it before it went down. Try right clicking on it and clicking "open image in new tab" too see the original image.

Zagorath , 22 days ago

No, that link redirects me to their 404 page.

Or, to be more accurate, it first redirects me to https://imgur.com/9IlC6xy

Which then redirects me to their 404 page https://imgur.com/error/404

Are you really telling me that it works for you?

Zagorath , 22 days ago

Ok fascinating. I just installed this extension to prevent Imgur from redirecting me from i.imgur.com to imgur.com, and now the link does indeed work.

Zagorath , 22 days ago

Could also be that he just doesn't meet the minimum weight threshold of the digital scales. Mine will read 0 up to 5 kg.

Zagorath , 22 days ago

Took me until reading the other reply to your comment to realise you weren't calling the lettuce evil 🤦‍♂️

Happy cake day, by the way!

Zagorath , 23 days ago

Damn, this post left out some really crucial context. I assumed the comment was left in response to someone martyring themselves, probably after having killed others in the name of their sky fairy. And in that context I'd have backed them 100% in what they were saying about it.

But yeah, your reply there said it better than anyone could. The comment was completely out of place and inappropriate.

Zagorath , 23 days ago

Yeah 100% it's that.

Zagorath , 23 days ago

Thanks for adding it in.

Zagorath , 25 days ago

This is how I feel about leftists who join ostensibly "centre-left" parties, in countries that don't use FPTP.

Like the "Labor Left" wing of the Labor Party in Australia. Guys, you'd be doing so much better work in the Greens.

Zagorath , 25 days ago

Sorry, by "standing in the way of" you mean "pushing for improvements to…and succeeding"? That "standing in the way"?

That's absolute hilarity. More ridiculous than when Laborites criticise their actions regarding Rudd's climate policy. Because at least that one appears to be a valid critique of the Greens if you don't have all the details (like how Rudd's policy would have no reduction in greenhouse emissions for 25 years). But this? Even with the most cursory of looks, the Greens did the right thing here.

Zagorath , 25 days ago

• Syria, 1949
• Egypt 1952 (possibly—at the very least prior knowledge of the coup)
• 1952 Iran
• 1954 Guatemala
• 1960 Laos
• 1961 Dominic Republic
• 1965 Indonesia
• 1973 Chile
• 1975 Australia (this one's the most controversial on the list because of the US's long friendly relationship with the country. If the CIA was involved, it was by encouraging the abuse of existing constitutional powers rather than a direct military coup as in most examples.)

That's just a list of successful coups I could find quickly on Wikipedia that were clearly backed by the CIA during the Cold War. There were other failed attempts, including multiple 1950s in Syria and Indonesia and, yes, Cuba. And other successful coups where the US was definitely involved but it's not clear to me from a cursory look that it was via the CIA specifically, like 1971 Bolivia and 1976 Argentina. And there have obviously been CIA actions in the time since.

I think the key fact is that in almost no cases did the CIA singlehandedly do a coup. They supported people on the ground who already wanted to do a coup to make their attempted coup more likely to succeed, and to ensure that they'd be friendly to the US afterwards if they did succeed.

Zagorath , 25 days ago

Like many other admirer's of Nabokov's novel of a pedophile who pursues a 12-year-old girl, Rowling loves it for the writing style.

Oh ok, fair enough. Not an especially controversial take.

"There just isn't enough time to discuss how a plot…becomes…a great and tragic love story

Oh…oh no…

Zagorath , 25 days ago

cheering for a dude hooking up with his aunt.

Which dude, exactly?

Only one example immediately springs to mind, but that hasn't happened yet in the books. And the way it happened in the show, I'm not sure was executed very well, but I don't think it was really portrayed as a case where we "cheer for a dude". He barely seemed into it, definitely not as much as she was.

Zagorath , 25 days ago

Jamie being a unisex name, I dunno if "she's amazing" is the typo or "he is a guest" is.

Zagorath , 27 days ago

Very popular Netflix show. Other than that, the only thing I know about it is that the paladin in the D&D movie is in it.

Zagorath , 27 days ago

I don't love the way it has to tear down the other characters in order to prop up the one. Surely the message could have been gotten across in a more wholesome way?

Zagorath , 27 days ago

Thank goodness 4-chan is there

Isn't this Tumblr?

Zagorath , 28 days ago

I dunno if it's "family sharing" or some other thing, but I can play games from my sister's library through some means that I set up a couple of years ago.

Zagorath , 29 days ago

Safe, sure. Efficient? Not even close.

It's far, far more expensive than renewable energy. It also takes far, far longer to build a plant. Too long to meet 2030 targets even if you started building today. And in most western democracies you wouldn't even be able to get anything done by 2040 if you also add in political processes, consultation, and design of the plant.

There's a reason the current biggest proponents of nuclear energy are people and parties who previously were open climate change deniers. Deciding to go to nuclear will give fossil fuel companies maximum time to keep doing their thing. Companies which made their existence on the back of fossil fuels, like mining companies and plant operators also love it, because it doesn't require much of a change from their current business model.

Zagorath , 29 days ago

First, no, that's not what I said. If you're only going to be arguing in bad faith like that this will be the last time I engage with you.

Second, baseload power is in fact a myth. And it becomes even worse when you consider the fact that nuclear doesn't scale up and down in response to demand very well. In places with large amounts of rooftop solar and other distributed renewables, nuclear is especially bad, because you can't just tell everyone who has their own generation to stop doing that, but you also don't want to be generating more than is used.

Third, even if you did consider it necessary to have baseload "until we have adequate storage", the extremely long timelines it takes to get from today to using renewables in places that don't already have it, spending money designing and building nuclear would just delay the building of that storage, and it would still end up coming online too late.

I used to be a fan of nuclear. In 2010 I'd have said yeah, we should do it. But every time I've looked into it over the last 10 years especially, I've had to reckon with the simple fact that all the data tells us we shouldn't be building nuclear; it's just an inferior option to renewables.

Zagorath , 29 days ago

You can't cut the red tape. The red tape is why we're able to say nuclear is safe.

the weird part is most people do think nuclear fusion plants are a good thing and can solve stuff. But they have almost all of the downsides nuclear fission plants have in terms of red tape, complexity and cost

Huh? Nuclear fusion doesn't have any downsides or upsides. Because it doesn't exist. We've never been able to generate net power with fusion. (No, not even that story from a couple of years ago, which only counted as 'input' a small fraction of the total energy used overall. It was a good development, but just one small step on the long journey to it being practical.)

Being anti-nuclear was a poor stance to have 20, 30 years ago. At that time, renewables weren't cost effective enough to be a big portion of our energy generation mix, and we should have been building alternatives to fossil fuels since back then if not earlier. But today, all the analysis tells us that renewables are far cheaper and more effective than nuclear. Today, being pro-nuclear is the wrong stance to take. It's the anti-science stance, which is why it has seen a recent rise among right-wing political parties and media organisations.

Zagorath , 29 days ago

Nuclear doesn’t mean anti-renewable, both can exist.

Not easily, for the reasons explained in my reply to @Frokke.

The people who I talk to who are pro nuclear seem very well informed

I doubt it, because the science itself is against nuclear. Evidence says it would be too expensive and take too long to deliver compared to renewables.

Zagorath , 29 days ago

The fantastic thing about renewables is how much they lend themselves to a less centralised model. Solar collector? Sure, why not‽ Rooftop solar on people's houses? You bet! Geothermal? If local conditions are favourable to it, absolutely!

Instead of a small number of massive power plants that only governments or really large corporations can operate individuals can generate the power for themselves, or companies can offset their costs by generating a little power, or cities can operate a smaller plant to power what operations in their city aren't handled by other means. It's not a one-size-fits-all approach.

This contrasts with nuclear. SMRs could theoretically do the same thing, but haven't yet proven viable. And traditional plants just put out way too much power. They're one-size-fits-all by definition, and only have the ability to operate alongside other modes with the other modes filling in a small amount around the edges.

Zagorath , 28 days ago

Nobody wants energy stored for months. Whatever storage is used needs to get through temporary decreases in efficiency. In places that use solar, that means from one afternoon to the next morning. In places that use wind, it means until the wind picks up. We're talking storage on the order of tens of hours at the most.

Zagorath , 1 month ago

By jove you've got it! I must make haste and alert the Director of this ingenuous new strategum at once!

Zagorath , 1 month ago

They look like they're about to start snapping their fingers menacingly at 0:46.

While we're talking about it, at 0:16 on the first video it kinda looks like the PC just sticks their hand in between the wolf's jaws, before punching it with their other hand. Got a chuckle from me.

Zagorath , 1 month ago

I actually surprised that when I went looking for a clip to share along with that comment, I couldn't actually find any clip of them walking directly at the camera doing it like it happens in my head. (I've never actually watched it either on stage or film, but I guess I know it through cultural osmosis.)

Zagorath , 1 month ago

No, that's a Rubik's. A rubric is a river that traditionally marked the northern border of Italy.

Zagorath , 1 month ago

For more context, the Rubicon is famous less among geographers and more among historians. Famously, the governor of a province was not allowed to bring an army south of the Rubicon into Italy, so when Julius Caesar marched south with his army, that is the point at which it was impossible for Rome not to go to civil war. The phrase "crossing the Rubicon" is an English-language idiom (I don't know if equivalents exist in other languages, though I wouldn't be surprised if it's common across countries formerly in the Roman Empire) meaning "passing a point of no return".

Zagorath , 1 month ago

stress balls in funny shapes and things like that.

Got pulled into the office for using my own money on that one lol

Next time don't buy squishy dicks for work colleagues.

Zagorath , 1 month ago

In Australia I don't think teachers are underpaid, but schools are absolutely underfunded. Which can often mean teachers end up spending personal money on school resources, which means their actual effective pay isn't as good as it looks from the outside.

They also work way longer hours than is reflected in their contract.

Zagorath OP , 1 month ago

Connections
Puzzle #379
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟪🟦🟦
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟪

Quite a few people in my other groups got exactly the same result.

spoiler

new didn't occur to me at first as being a possibility for blue mainly because gnu is a pretty obscure animal, and slightly because I pronounce gnu as /nuː/ and new as /njuː/, so not homophones

Zagorath OP , 1 month ago

Connections
Puzzle #378
🟨🟨🟨🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟪🟩🟩
🟩🟦🟪🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟦🟪🟦🟦

spoiler

A classic example of how this puzzle's America-centricism can be a problem for those of us from other places. I've heard of the Windy City and Sin City, but not the other two. I would guess Motor City is meant to be Detroit? Couldn't even begin to guess what Magic City is.

Zagorath , 1 month ago

It depended on the time and place. Fitzroy is particularly associated with illegitimate children of the king, but until the 17th century revival of the Fitz prefix, it was mostly just meaning "son of" without any particular inclination towards or against legitimacy. But in the Stuart era it was frequently used for illegitimate children of royalty and nobility.

Zagorath , 1 month ago

Gibbon was actually a pet name form of "Gilbert".

Zagorath , 1 month ago

I do find history and etymology very interesting, but I didn't know any of this. It's literally all taken from the Wikipedia page for the name Fitz.

Zagorath , 25 days ago

When I hear an American with the caught/cot merger say "caught", it sounds way more similar to my (unmerged) "cot" than my "caught"

Zagorath , 25 days ago

Oh yeah, maybe. I don't really know how you'd measure that.