My parents don’t speak English, but I learned it as a kid by watching a lot of Cartoon Network. All the cartoons were in English, no subtitles or dub or anything. Somehow I assimilated the language without any external aid, and then learned the rest when we first got the internet and I started communicating with others via games.

So, if I had to teach a kid English, I’d just expose them to as much English as possible with plenty of context and encourage them to express themselves in English when they can. This is also a popular method how adults can learn languages, called tprs

The meaning and ideas of solarpunk are still evolving, but the main themes are freedom, community, ecology and pragmatism. I won’t go over the anarchic organisation of communities since I think you mistook the pragmatism for primitivism.

Solarpunk is not about primitivism and a return to a low-technological era, and neither is it a high tech cyberpunk spinoff, as some others think. Solarpunk is about using practical solutions that are also ethical and egolocially friendly. This often means not throwing stuff away, but fixing what can be fixed and reusing what can be reused, because mass production and consumerism is seen as a damaging force. So instead of trying to make up new tech and produce new things, solarpunk would ask you to first consider whether you can do something already with what you have, which means that a DIY approach is encouraged. However, if new technology can improve our lives without damaging everything else, it’s acceptable.

And it is the complete opposite of thinking about the “good old days”, as solarpunk is looking only towards the future. The ‘punk’ in the name means that when you look at all the doom and gloom in the future (capitalism, wars, global warming) you don’t fall into despair, but instead try to play your part in your community to fight it and promote a lifestyle of mutual aid and a respect for nature, with whatever level of technology can give you the best results.

That was my attempt at a short presentation. We have a wiki and a manifesto if anyone is interested

Crucified, hallelujah

That part is actually adressed in the solarpunk manifesto:

The “punk” in Solarpunk is about rebellion, counterculture, post-capitalism, decolonialism and enthusiasm. It is about going in a different direction than the mainstream, which is increasingly going in a scary direction.

In Serbia as well. Whenever someone mentions an annual salary, I have to divide it by 12 to get some sense out of it, because we only talk about the monthly.

Right, I think it only covers personal information: companies can only collect what they need to run their service, users can request to see their data etc. I don’t think it applies to comments and posts.

This might be due to the fact that I’m not a native speaker and I encountered this phrase at a later date, but people saying “it’s all but xyz” to mean “it’s xyz” really gets on my nerves. I get it, “it’s all but complete” means that virtually all the conditions are met for it to be complete, but I find it so annoying for some reason.

“The task is all but impossible” registers as ‘it’s not impossible, it’s everything else: possible’, so the fact that it means the opposite of that makes my brain twitch.

I’m so traumatized by that video that now, 17 or so years later, I had to carefully scroll your comment in case the picture you posted was the screaming face

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it”

And at the end:

“No one keeps death in view, no one refrains from far-reaching hopes; some men, indeed, even arrange for things that lie beyond life—huge masses of tombs and dedications of public works and gifts for their funeral-pyres and ostentatious funerals. But, in very truth, the funerals of such men ought to be conducted by the light of torches and wax tapers, as though they had lived but the tiniest span.” [As if a child had died]

Seneca, On the Shortness of Life

Have you noticed how the articles keep mentioning the Oct 7 first, something that happened 6 months earlier, then goes on the passively call “Palestinian deaths” and not tie to Israel directly, in their titles at least?

I have not actually, the first link starts with:

Life remains dire for displaced Palestinians in Rafah, a city near Gaza’s border with Egypt. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has now set a date for a planned offensive.

October 7th is mentioned in the latter half, as context as to why Rafah has so many people there currently. And it also mentions how Israel’s military told the civilians to evacuate to the south where it would be safer, but:

Rafah was supposed to be a safer place, but it never was, said Loay Fareed, who has been displaced multiple times with his family since the war began.

“There are bombings almost every day, and the frequency is increasing every day,” Fareed, 46, told DW via telephone from Rafah.

If you want the finger pointing directly:

Israel’s siege of the enclave has led to the onset of famine, particularly in northern Gaza, according to aid agencies and the United Nations.

The second link mentions October 7th because it’s literally giving an overview of the state of the region in the past 6 months. And it is literally showing pictures of dead Palestinian children.

The third link does not mention October at all.

The last link mentions October at the end for a 6 month statistic where it is said by name that Israel killed Palestinians:

At least 29,782 Palestinians have been killed and 70,043 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said. In the past 24 hours, 90 Palestinians were killed and 164 injured in Israeli strikes, the ministry said.

“The Israeli government is starving Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, putting them in even more peril than before the World Court’s binding order,” Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, said.

“The Israeli government has simply ignored the court’s ruling, and in some ways even intensified its repression, including further blocking lifesaving aid.”

And this is just stuff I found after scrolling the above media websites for like 10 mins in total. There is no monolithic “western media” entity that repeats the same lines as almost all ‘criticism of western media’ implies. Some are objective, some are biased to a one specific side, some to another, some are just crap.

But whatever the case, it is demonstrably not true that no popular media in the west is reporting on the massive killings and destruction performed by Israel, that they all just ignore or downplay it.

Here you go:

https://www.dw.com/en/little-escape-for-rafah-residents-amid-plans-for-offensive/a-68729764?mobileApp=true

https://www.reuters.com/pictures/pictures-six-months-war-israel-gaza-2024-04-05/

https://www.reuters.com/pictures/israeli-troops-exit-gazas-shifa-hospital-leaving-rubble-bodies-2024-04-01/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/feb/26/middle-east-crisis-live-gaza-israel-netanyahu-ceasefire-deal-hamas-rafah

Seconding this. I started doing 10-15 mins of yoga when I get up and around 30 mins when I get home from work a few weeks ago and I haven’t had back pain since.

A colleague lent me a book with various yoga poses a few weeks ago and it has massively improved how I feel. Currently I’m working on digitizing it by creating an application where you can choose a pose, and it will be shown on your screen. I never made gui apps with GTK before, so it’s a nice learning experience.

I forced myself to watch through the first season of Breaking Bad, the second was meh, but starting from the third and until the end it became the best series I ever watched. The same happend to a friend, he wanted to stop watching, I told him to go on and at the end he loved it.

Better Call Saul also got better as episodes went on.

The Foundation series had terrible pacing in the first season, and they massively improved on that in the second.

When people had analogue technology (radio/phonograph) there was no solid concept of the universe being a simulation

I’d argue that Neoplatonism is very close to the idea of the world being a simulation. “The One” is a creative power that made all things, itself being beyond existing. That neatly corresponds to the idea of a machine simulating us, as it itself is not simulated, but simulates.

Even Plato can be seen in that light. There exists a world of perfect forms, and this is but a projection = There is a reality the simulation is based on and computed. Our souls know everything in their pure states outside the bodies = The class is on the same level as all other data until you instantiate it.

Of course nobody talked about computers, but the general idea was there. The simulation theory could be seen as just fleshing out the technical details, but the architecture was there for a while. Not that I necessarily agree with either, I just think that the simulation theory is not really a new concept in its core.

I made an account

“Geralt, it’s me, Yennefer, you haven’t seen me in a long time and Ciri is back and in danger!”

“Oh wow, that’s the biggest thing that has happened to me in a long time, so I’m going to become the best gwent player in the north”

I get that some instances censor certain words, but would that also affect posts that are simply images that happen to show letters?

Don’t know honestly. I once ate cold mashed potatoes and peas, like straight from the fridge cold, and it was awful. The thought of eating frozen flat bean soup, the liquid gelatinized, gives me a gag reflex.

I had a colleague that would bring frozen soups/stews, warm them just enough so that he could break through the ice, and he’d eat that. It was disgusting.