dragontamer

joined 2 years ago
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[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 0 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

Be careful with the plastic spatula used to flip your eggs I guess.

Except you know, plastic isn't a real chemical. There's polyethylene, polypropylene, polyurethane, and silicone... of which there are food grade versions and non food grade versions of said plastics (and many thousands of formulations).

Anyone bullshitting with scare words like 'Plastic' are immediately discounted by me. Real scientists are at least specific with their terminology and not using weasel words that have effectively no meaning in a serious discussion


Meanwhile my buddy gets fucking arsenic poisoning and there's not even a ruckus about it at all. Do you know what a REAL poisoning is like?

[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 26 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (23 children)

Ultraprocessed bullshit word by Make America Healthy Again bullshitters.

They think a can of corn is ultraprocessed. When in actuality it is just boiled corn in a can. The sooner the health food bullshitters are exposed for the crap they are, the sooner we get rid of RFK Jr. And his team of bullshit health advice.

We need to stop it with the fake science... And start to favor real science again.


Any methodology that labels canned corn and canned spinach as evil/unhealthy but labels fucking Five Guys as healthy is fully bullshit. Period.

[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 132 points 2 weeks ago (8 children)

We are on the 25th month?

[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Anki is far more grueling than beginners realize. And it's very difficult to predict future work.

Adding new word isn't just work today (maybe 5+ viewings to get Anki to make you think you've learned the word....), it's also multiple showings over tomorrow, later this week and more.

You must change your words/day to something that is doable. Keep an eye on your Anki usage, if it's longer than you want then cut down on your new words/day until you master your current review set.

And always be careful with the new words button. It's more work to learn 20 words than you might realize, so don't double or triple it to 40 or 60!!!!


20 words/day is about 30 minutes of Anki for me, because 80 reviews + 20 new words == 100 cards. But I need around 300 flips to finish Anki.

That's 30 minutes of Anki in practice (a card flip averaging 6 seconds, 10 cards per minute and yes 30 minutes/day).

If I drop down to 0 new words/day, I still have the 80 reviews per day (at least until those old words are mastered). Eventually I get quicker and Anki believes I've learned the words but it can take literally days before your workload decreases.


You must also remember that Anki / Flashcards is rote memorization. Its your "brute force cudgel". You can never truly reach mastery with Anki alone. Anki is great for spelling practice, pronunciation practice (if you have included real-world audio .mp3 with your flashcards)... and if necessary is a forced German -> English vocabulary memorization tool.

Useful skills yes, but language mastery can only happen with reading, writing, listening and speaking. Aka: "Immersion". Anki is great because it helps minimize the time spent on flashcards. If you aren't saving time but instead feel like you're wasting time, then you need to change Anki settings to something more useful.

[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago

Anki has been used to master Jeopardy, and is also becoming a popular tool in the medical community.

Anki may have been invented for language, but its useful for almost any studying.

[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Another small note on FSRS settings - adjusting the desired retention a little bit can be helpful. Defaults at 90%, turning it down makes review intervals longer, up makes them shorter. For large decks (vocab lists), I prefer it down at mid-high 80s. You want familiarity, not perfection, so less overwhelming reviews can be better.

Depends really. If you are drilling der/das/die genders and spelling, you might want perfection.

But yes, drop the FSRS setting to 80 or even lower for familiarity. If you are focusing on reading/consuming, it's better to focus on familiarity instead.

But if you are studying writing/speaking, you need to set that retention back up to 90 and also aim for perfection on each card.

In general, 90% is closer to perfection and the highest you typically should go. However, medical students have been known to aim for 95% or higher (?!!!!!?!??!!) because they want to pass an exam and then forget about it later, lol.

So even going above 90% makes sense for some communities out there.

Medical students are willing to drill 4-hours per day on their subjects and want near 100% memorization in time for their exam. It's a different kind of learning, but Anki does support that.

[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 11 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I wish Anki existed during my SAT days.

Do you know hard it was to learn 1000+ SAT words without Anki back then? I had to use like, a book. And index cards written by hand. My hand cramped up just writing all those words down.

 

Anki is an open-source flashcard app for Windows, Linux, Mac OSX with versions also available for Android and iOS. Unfortunately, iOS version costs $25, but all other versions are free.

Anki is a self-graded flashcard program / app. This makes it a combination quiz-app + timer system. Unlike Duolingo or other programs, Anki entirely relies upon self-grading, but this is more than sufficient for study.

Anki grabs the top cards from a deck (defaulting to 20 new cards per day. Feel free to customize this to whatever fits your needs best). Then each day, it grabs "scheduled review" cards + shuffles in the new cards, and shows you them one at a time. Once a card is shown to you, you the user click a button to reveal the other side.

After the flip, Anki asks you to self-grade yourself on your performance. "Again" means you grade yourself as "incorrect", and Anki will remember this mistake. Because you were "incorrect" on this card, Anki will show you the card again very soon.

If you choose one of the three "correct" scores (labeled "Hard", "Good" and "Easy"), Anki remembers that you've answered correctly, and will schedule the card some time in the future. I'll get to the difference of the three scores later, but consider all three to just be "correct" for now.

The precise time is calculated based on how well Anki thinks you know the card. If you know the card well, "Good" might schedule the card to be reviewed 1 month from now, but if you've made a lot of mistakes with a particular card, then that card will likely be reviewed 1 or 2 days from now. Its all data collected on a per-card basis.

Above is an example screenshot of Anki's memory: every single self-graded score is remembered on every single card, as well as the date and time of each score.

As such, Anki is a system of spaced repetition. The "better" you are with some cards, the less you see them. The "worse" you are with other cards, the more Anki shows you those particular cards you keep making mistakes with. Timer + self-grading == you only see the cards you're doing bad with, while Anki hides the cards you are doing good with.

The Algorithm

FSRS is a new experimental algorithm Anki is using. There's been 6 versions (FSRS-1, -2, -3,... and of course FSRS 6 today). Fortunately, the overall gist has been the same for all 6 versions. Alas, its a lot of blogposts and technical math that's far too nerdy for most people https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/fsrs4anki/wiki/The-Algorithm. For the math nerds who want to learn the algorithm, study away. But I'll attempt to do a simpler "translation".

Before we get started, click on your deck's preferences and scroll down to the FSRS button. Ensure it is on.

FSRS is simply three pieces of memory being applied to each and every "card" in your Anki decks. Every single card will try to figure out "R", "S" and "D". R is the probability that you've forgotten a card each day. The longer a card goes without being shown, the worse-and-worse "R" gets (this is the value Anki uses to determine when to repeat a card to you, it wants to show you a card before you've forgotten, but after enough time that you had a chance to forget, defaulting to 10% chance of forgetting).

Every single card tracked by Anki has this "forgetting" curve, primarily defined by the "R" aka Retention variable.

The theory is: if you show a card too often, you never really test your long-term memory. Furthermore, its too much extra work to review so many cards. By waiting days, weeks, or months before showing you a card again, Anki saves you time by not overly-reviewing cards you already know the information of. Furthermore, studies have shown that showing you information "right as you are forgetting about it" is the best way to remember (!!!). Any sooner, and you really aren't learning too well, but instead just temporarily holding things in your short-term or medium-term memory.

"S" stands for Stability. The more "stable" a card is, the longer Anki-FSRS thinks it can stay in your memory memory without review. Most "new" cards are assumed to be forgotten about within a day by default. However, as you get the card "correct" over-and-over again, Anki-FSRS will increase stability, thereby causing the longer review intervals. (Maybe showing you a card once every 3 days, then 7 days, then 1.5 months, then 3 months....).

"D" stands for Difficulty. The more times you get a card wrong (ie: when you click the "Again" button), the worse Difficulty gets. Anki-FSRS remembers that some cards are harder for you to remember... in particular the ones you keep getting wrong.

Even if you get a high-difficulty card correct multiple times, Anki "remembers" that you have been forgetting this card, and will show it to you again sooner. Ex: by default Anki will mature a card within 7x correct answers in a row. However, if a card is "difficult", Anki will keep showing you that card 10x, 15x or more, knowing that you need the extra practice.

Or in more math-nerd terms, "Difficulty" is the derivative of stability. The change-of-stability is determined by the "Difficulty" of a card.

Hard / Good / Easy

Hard / Good / Easy all count as correct (ie: increases the stability of Anki-FSRS), but will do different things to your Difficulty score.

"Good" is the default, and Anki recommends that users hit the "Good" button 80%+ of the time. Lets pretend that a particular "Good" answer will result in 1-month timer for a particular card...

"Easy" basically is telling Anki that you don't want to practice with this card anymore (ie: low-difficulty card). After clicking "Easy", instead of taking a 1-month timer... Anki will likely choose a 1.5-month or 2-month timer on the card.

"Hard" is telling Anki that you want extra practice with this card. It increases difficulty, despite increasing stability. You'll see this card again more-and-more in the future. Instead of 1-month timer, Anki might show you the card again within 2-weeks.

Where Anki fits in language learning

Anki was originally developed to help its original programmer learn Japanese. Its not an end-all be-all app however. Anki is only a piece of any language-learner. You must also buy grammar / theory books, as well as write regularly in the new language... speaking and listening and more.

Nonetheless, "Anki" is your cudgel. A brute-force method to try to force vocabulary words into your brain through raw force. You'll likely never gain mastery of the words through Anki... but you can at least become a beginner and learn how to start reading. There's literally thousands, if not tens-of-thousands of words you must learn to become proficient in a language. And that's spelling, grammar usage (gender / der/das/die in German, or maybe conjugation rules and pluralization rules), definitions and more!!

In all cases, Anki can be used as a way to force this information into your brain, getting it ready so that those words can "begin to be learned" when you watch TV, listen to a foreign language podcast or hear those words in a song.

Yes, Anki isn't enough. But Anki is a great tool to get you started. And getting started is sometimes the hardest step for many people.

Remember: 1000 words is beginner level (near 1st grade level understanding), while 10,000 words is roughly high school level. If you wish to be seen as a competent adult in a new language, you must figure out a system to reach those 10,000+ words known. 10,000 words sounds like a lot in isolation... especially because true mastery of 10,000 words includes spelling, grammar (pluralization/conjugation/gender), meaning, and pronunciation. But think about it: 10,000 words is merely 14 words per day for 2-years. Plenty of people have used Anki to jumpstart that kind of long-term forced-learning of words.

My Anki routine

My current Anki deck is the 4000 German words/phrases by frequency (https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/653061995). Anki decks vary in quality but this is one of the better German decks.

Despite that, this deck starts out-of-order. I had to reorder the first 200 words into the correct order (for some reason, words #1 through #200 were actually the least frequent words). After reordering, I hit the "FSRS" button, signed up to AnkiWeb.com and synchronized my Desktop + Phone to this deck through the web-account.

I currently keep the defaults of Anki-FSRS at 90% retention and 20 words per day. I roughly have 80 review words per day + 20 new words, or 100 flashcards to review (front and back). I hit "good" or "again" most often, though some very easy words (ex: "Ich") I do hit the "easy" button on. I rarely hit "hard" at all.

When a card feels poorly made, I always go into "Edit" and improve the card. In most cases, the "English side" of this deck is lacking (ex: "because" either turns into weil or denn). In these cases, I add a German sentence to the English side with the German-word missing, so that the card can become "more fair" as study material. Anki Decks should always be customized to become your own notes.

If Anki gives me a new word, I also check Wiktionary for the proper pronounciation, as well as additional "example sentences" of that word. Anki is NOT a dictionary, its simply a notecard system, and you should rely upon good and proper dictionaries. In some rare cases, I go to German Language Discord and ask the community to help me understand a concept, but in most cases I do try to figure out the word myself.

I also use many songs, kids songs, Anime songs, pop songs and more as my primary source of "Practical German". (Ideally songs harder than Ramstein's "Du Hast", lol). I'm building an Anki deck out of these songs (ex: Backe Backe Kuchen, or "Bake Bake a Cake", a traditional German kid's song, has a list of common ingredients like sugar, salt, milk. Its good vocabulary practice... and also is a good source of practical words for an Anki deck). I also have a beginner German book ("Cafe in Berlin"), with a huge vocabulary list. Fortunately, the author for this book already made an Anki deck and I can just go to to the listed website and download the pre-made Anki.

[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

You've got equities, debt and derivatives.

Equities are ownership into shares. These are the simplest to understand. You own a share of a company and thus are entitled to a % of the profits (though most companies today choose 0% as their decision).

Debt means funding.... debt. SLABs (student loan backed securities), MBS (mortgage backed securities), bonds (government debt), bank loans etc. etc. These are surprisingly complex in practice but perhaps easiest to understand. There's lots of different details to debt (callable, puttable, tax free, convertible, coupons, notes, bills, bonds, I-bonds, EBonds, 10Y, 3M, overnight repos). But in all cases, you lend money to someone, and later they try to return it to you + a little extra.

Derivatives (usually options but there are many kinds) are new inventions that are more complex. Ignore these as they are very very complex.


That's about it.

The general recommendation is to buy an ETF for equities and an ETF for Bonds. ETF is just a combination of simpler investments that you pay 0.04% to 2% a year for convenience.

VOO takes the 500 biggest companies in the USA (aka the S&P 500) and buys mostly the biggest company and a very little bit of #500.

BND is a similar idea except it's a whole bunch of different debts from across the entire economy.

So buy some equities (mostly equities), some bonds, and leave some cash in a high yield savings account. Done.

Stocks (aka VOO) make the most money on the average, but also loses money the most often.

Bonds (aka BND) makes middle amount of money but rarely loses money.

Cash / savings accounts never lose money (except inflation). But makes very very little. It's still worthwhile to keep necessarily amounts as cash and this you should always be considering how much cash to keep.

[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 24 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

To the protesters yesterday, do you see that the protests had exactly zero impact?

The protests right now are a glorified meet and greet. Most of these folks have never protested before.

But all the pamphlets and people I met proved that we are organizing and spreading ideas. This is how it starts.

The 'protest' part of the protest is just marketing. The actual work is when you meet the local unions and shake hands with the local powers. And no better time to meet them than a 'protest'

Everyone who actually went to the protest knows what I'm talking about. The speakers and such are whatever and just preaching to the choir, but important to draw crowds. The actual work gets done at the tables and booths on the side.

Go to the next protest. Organize. We have 3 years before the next Presidential election, we have 1 year before the next congressional election. The time is ticking and we need to get the grassroots process started. It takes a long time.

[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Thanks for the clarification.

It could be 10+ years of me misremembering the explanation. The person who told me this was Korean, so it seems more likely that I misremembered than them explaining it wrong.

[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 17 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

Someone told me that Oppa means 'Uncle', but in the particular district of Gangnam the word Oppa/Uncle also means Pimp.

So it's basically a song based on a pretty bad pun. I'll protect you like an uncle, and by Uncle I mean Pimp.

EDIT: English speakers likely would do better with the translation as 'Ill be like a Father to you, a real Las Vegas Pimp Daddy (where Daddy is a word that means Father but has more Pimp connotations, and Las Vegas being famous for legalized prostitution).

It's definitely debauchery. But we likely have memorials to Austin Powers and other such pop culture icons, so it's understandable.

22
I wrote a guide to Dungeons4 (steamcommunity.com)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by dragontamer@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world
 

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3573759522

Dungeons4 is a fun RTS/Tower-Defense that took up a few of the last months of entertainment. Its a very "dad-joke" level of low-hanging fruit and pop-culture references, but comedy is often the right way to handle "Evil" plots.

The overall game is to build up an army, head out to the "Overworld" and collect "Evil" by killing Heroes, slaughtering villagers, destroying villages and towns. As your "Evil" gets collected, you can spend "Evil" on the Tech Tree to get more powerful units, upgrades, new buildings, new economic options and... eventually win the map's objectives.

Typical maps take me ~1 hour, though a speedrunner probably can complete maps within 20 minutes, while slower defensive players might take longer. With ~20 maps, you should have well over 20+ hours of gameplay, and then 10 "Skirmish" maps, and multiple (paid) DLC, its a well fleshed out game.

The one downside is a weak set of tutorial levels, and poor documentation/help. There's also very little discussion / guides. So I figure publishing this Steam guide will help any would-be players enter this game.

My guide is rather detailed strategy focused on the hardest of difficulty levels. But this advice likely will help any player on normal mode (which is plenty hard enough your first time through!).

[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 20 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Someone needs to tag this with git blame and it'd be the perfect programmer joke.

For the non programmers: git blame is a tool to figure out who on your team wrote a specific line of code. Inevitably, the answer tends to be 'me'. Waaayyyyyyy too often.

 

I'm doing some Galois Field / Cyclic Redundancy Check research for fun and I've come across an intriguing pattern that I need a data structure for.

Across the 64-bit (or even 128-bit or larger) spaces, I've discovered an interesting pattern relating to hamming distances that I'd like a data structure to represent.

I'm going to need something on the order of ~billions of intervals each having somewhere between 1 item to ~1 billion per interval. And I'd like to quickly (O(1) or O(lg(n))) determine if other intervals intersect.


For 32-bit space I can simply make a 512MB Bitmask lol and then AND/OR the two Bitmask. Easy

But for 64-bit space I'm stuck and a bit ignorant to various data structures. I'm wondering if someone out there has a good data structure for me to use?

I've read over Interval Trees on Wikipedia. I'm also considering binary decision diagram over the 64-bits actually. Finally I'm thinking of some kind of 1-dimension octtree like datastructure (is that just a binary tree?? Lol. But BVH trees in 3d space seems similar to my problem it's just I need it optimized down to 1 dimension rather than 3.) Anyone else have any other ideas or cool data structures that might work?

 

I can't be the only one who is seeing this fucking pattern on damn loop every few years. First, leftists managed to clobber together a movement. Lets say Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter. Or we can go more recent and talk about 50501 or TeslaTakedown.

Look, I get it. Its a lot of work and coordination to build up these movements. But time-and-time again, the movement rises up. Then the right attacks it.

Then mysteriously a few very violent actors show up (maybe its far-left. Or maybe its right-wing false flaggers). I dunno, but the violence ALWAYS shows up. BLM had groups trying to take over parts of town. I know Trump agitated the protesters with unwarranted acts of force (see the Laffeyette clearout).

But it doesn't matter "how" the violence begins. The point is some level of damage starts to occur. Its inevitable and we need to not only accept it, but plan for it.

Now what? The violence gets amplified by right-wing media and then... the movement is defeated. I shit you not. Its the death of every leftist movement for the past 15 years. The movements become a symbol of violence in the mainstream's eyes and loses all power.


We're entering the same period right now with 50501 and TeslaTakedown. The violence has begun: lots of Tesla vehicles have been smashed and arsons have started to spread.

What we need is a spokesman, who can navigate and sell the situation to the public. Martin Luther King Jr. was the spokesman of the Civil Rights era, and his "branding" was the most important element of all. If you want a violent movement, that's fine. But create a spokesman. Malcom X, to counter-act and differentiate between philosophies.

Without spokesmen (like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X), we conflate the violence and the messages. And ultimately, that destroys our movements.

Please, for the love of whatever diety you worship. Get a fucking spokesman. Now. Sooner is better. Maybe its too late for TeslaTakedown and 50501, but we need movements that truly are rallied behind a singular face who can serve as the ideological leader to the general public.

16
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by dragontamer@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
 

https://lemmy.world/post/22892985

/c/technology was the most active by far (more so than /c/cars), so I'll post here again first.

Stats

The following stats are winter tests (10F to 30F. Or -10C to 0C).

  • L1 Charger from Home is 2.05 mi/kwhr (12.0 mi/electric-$$. 17.1c per kwhr home costs) in this deep cold.

  • L2 Charger from Work is 2.8mi/kwhr (14.0 mi/electric-$$. 20c per kwhr work-charging costs).

  • 43 Miles per Gallon gasoline (13.9 mi/gasoline-$. $3.10 gasoline during test).

  • L1 Charger is closer to 2.8 mi/kwhr during 60F (15C+ temperatures).

  • L2 Charger is closer to 3.5 mi/kwhr during 60F (15C+ temperatures).

Conclusion: The cold (10F to 30F) has made the Li-ion batteries of this car SIGNIFICANTLY less efficient. We're at the point where L1 chargers are more expensive than gasoline, while L2 chargers are roughly on part with gasoline.

I recommend anyone who gets an EV to get an L2 charger. Not only for the convenience of far faster charges, but also because of the incredible improvements to cold-weather charging efficiency.


There were some pro-EV fans asking me to more carefully test the gasoline usage in the winter. And now you have the stats. I can solidly say that gasoline is worse during the Winter (down from EPA estimated 48), but not dramatically worse like the electric engine gets.

The above gasoline test was done over an entire week of driving to reach the 200+ miles I thought was needed for a solid test. I performed it by running out of electricity (all the way down to 0%), then driving to a gasoline station and filling up. I memorized the exact pump I filled up at.

Then, after 200 miles across a week, I came back to the same pump and filled up exactly the same. I then counted the gallons that came out of the pump and divided out based on my trip odometer. I was 203.5 miles of driving total with 4.734 gallons reported from the pump.

 

In the other topic, I've brought up the importance to prepare the meme-army to spread word about the Coffee Tariffs / Covfefe Tariffs to make sure we rub the price hikes into Trump supporter's faces.

But we need to seriously consider our strategy of memes and outreach. This is the year 2025, not the year 2015.

  • Threads / Facebook / Instagram is suspect as Zuckerberg is bending the knee. Expect memes to be suppressed by Zuckerberg and his minions.

  • Twitter / X is also suspect. We likely don't have a fair chance.

  • Mainstream media: WashPo has been captured by Jeff Bezos. LA Times was captured by Patrick Soon-Shiong. Gannett (USA Today, and thousands of local papers) also are our political enemy as these papers cut off endorsements days before the election in support of Donald Trump. CNN has been on a rightward shift. We are now the minority and the rebellious underground, we will not get any beneficial press from these papers or media anymore.

  • Reddit is suspect. Reddit is a techbro owner. Maybe not as tech-bro as Elon Musk but there's only a matter of time before things get worse.

  • TikTok's recent actions have proven them to be pro-Trump as well. We cannot trust their algorithm to help us.


Get it? We're stuck and now the rebellious underground. The few allies we've got are ignorant and terrible at their jobs (I'm looking at you MSNBC). But whatever, it just means its our own damn job to change the politics of the USA for the better.

And how to do that? The power of memes.


Why meme?

Ultimately, memes are fun. Short image macros that should be easy for us to make, and easy for us to copy once made and spread around. While a large number of internet sites are busted, we need

Don't Argue

The opposition did not reach their current viewpoints through thoughtful discussion or arguments. They memed their way and mind-controlled each other into their current predicament. Don't fall into the trap of trying to convince others (or yourself) of facts.

Preach to the Choir

Normally a bad argument, but at this juncture its necessary. The left as a whole is angry, demoralized and beginning to shut off politics. Memes could provide us a way to make our painful politics more pleasant through the power of jokes.

I would argue that memes should be uplifting. Yes, preaching to the choir but is that really a bad thing right now? We need all the encouragement we can get right now. I'm sure you've noticed the chill in the room.

We have literally years to reinvigorate and revitalize our political side. However, you'll find that 2 short years are... much shorter in practice than you'd expect.

Friendly to the Neutrals

The neutrals could be former Trump supporters who are now growing disgust at Trump's actions. Who is, or isn't, neutral will largely be politically chaotic for the near future.

I expect MAGAs to become frustrated at some tariff structures, maybe not racist enough for them or something. I expect TechBros to be harmed by foreign policy and grow disgust. I expect Hawks to fear USA's declining position and reputation in the world. I expect Doves to grow angry at Trumps outbursts and hateful rhetoric.

We need memes that make Trump look dumb or otherwise foolish. But without necessarily attacking the identity of these subgroups. A pro-Muskite will be pro-EV and anti-Climate Change. They're compromising on their values right now because they trust and believe in Musk. But when Trump inevitably cuts Musk out in a few months, we shouldn't push the Muskites back to Trump, we should instead drive them apart from each other. That would mean memes that mostly attack Trump (the big guy), without necessarily attacking subgroups (that may be split off later).

Keep the target in mind and stay focused. I'm not saying "be friends" with the Muskites, I'm saying be a little forward thinking.

Ease off in public

Its not just the left who is tired of Trump, but most people in the USA are tired of politics.

If you have a meme that needs to be made public (ex: I 100% believe we need to start a campaign to distribute coffee tariff notices out and tie the rise in coffee prices to Trump), we need to have simpler language that resonates with people who don't want to hear about politics.

Ex: "Trump's Tariffs" might cause people to stop listening to our signs.

"Tariffs" might be better. Its already a politically charged word.

"Tariffs have caused our coffee prices to go up. We apologize" at least sounds neutral to the less-politically active. And that's the kind of language we want in public to keep people listening to us.

 

EDIT: Trump and Columbia seems to have come to an agreement where the Tariffs have now been canceled.

I'm leaving this post up for posterity's sake. We just need to wait for the next opportunity to push. I'm still confident that Trump and co will dramatically misstep soon and leave an obvious opening. But for now, we should get our meme-skills up and ready. I'm still supportive of large-scale real-world messages, be they stickers or chalk messages or even simple notifications that point out Trump's political missteps.


First off: condolences to any Colombian who is harmed by these events. We have a Colombian in our family and I certainly fear for her safety and her way of life. She's the nanny to my nephew, and there's a solid chance this shit won't be fixed in time for her Visa renewals, so she'll be effectively deported due to these events. I understand that Trump's latest actions today are frightening, but we need to focus on the political messaging needed to swing the tides back into our favor.

As Donald J. Trump tariffs the USA's #2 trade partner in Coffee (remember, Coffee CANNOT grow in the USA outside of like Hawaii), we can all expect coffee prices to shoot up by 25% in the near future. This is the inflation event we need to begin rubbing shitty marketplace inflation into the MAGAT's faces.

Coffee is one of the most essential of luxury goods consumed in the USA. Everyone drinks it, and we need to be ready to pin the coffee price hikes on Trump's shitty policy.


So, what's the plan people? What's the best meme we can make a sticker and print en masse. Coffee Shops seem like a liberal safe-haven, it shouldn't be too hard to ask Baristas to post up signs (or little protests) indicating that coffee shops are against the Columbian Tariffs.

Like I really think this has real action available. Even a sign that says "Due to recent Tariffs, we have been forced to increase the price of our coffee by 25%", and that's it. We don't need to make it incredibly related to Trump, its implicit in Trump's actions. We need the public to know how Trump is affecting them, but without necessarily rubbing it into their faces.

 

As Trump signs in his deportation plan, it is becoming evident that Trump is targeting blue states and so called sanctuaries (not just sanctuary cities but the traditional sanctuary of Church, School and Hospitals).

So now it’s time to think and plan the next move and how to protect those in our community. ICE isn’t very big and has no hope of any mass deportations scheme yet. But the deportations they do accomplish will traumatize families and even citizens (as they will obviously target any brown person, even US Citizens like Puerto Ricans).

The plan IMO is for us to make sure that our local schools and Churches collect as little information as possible. ICE will be looking for missing social security numbers for example and may target school and church databases with warrants. Now is the time to consider destroying or deleting that data if you haven’t already.

We don’t necessarily have to directly confront ICE officials to hamper their work. Indirect changes like this might be best especially given how small ICE is.

EDIT: I don't believe there's any good reason for schools to be keeping proofs of citizenship or building up such databases. Nonetheless, teachers and principals may have made that mistake 10 years ago before Trump was a threat or back in the era where ICE was literally not allowed into schools or Churches. Those days are behind us. If you know your school principal is trustworthy, you should campaign on getting unnecessary records deleted ASAP and start building defenses immediately.

Catholics know what I mean: our records on students and parishioners are kept for long periods of time. (Any Catholic knows and expects this, especially because we prioritize Baptism records and other such Church level Sacraments and such). I don't know how all the other Churches do it but if your local church is anywhere on the level of organization of Catholics (I know 7th Day Adventists and Mormons are also "record-keepers"), you will want to check in with your church's offices and maybe ask them to review records in the face of Trump's new executive orders.

 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/22892955

The Prius Prime is a dual fuel vehicle, able to run 100% on Electric, or 100% on gasoline, or a computerized blend in-between. This presents me a great opportunity to be able to do a direct comparison with the same car of an EV engine vs an ICE engine.

  • Toyota computer claims 3.2mi-per-kwhr.

  • Kill-a-watt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_A_Watt) claims 2.2mi-per-kwhr.

  • Additional 1.5% losses should be assumed in the wires if you wish. (120V drops down to 118V during charging, meaning 2V of the energy was lost due to the resistance of my home's wires).

  • Level 1 charger at home (known to be less efficient).

  • Toyota computer claims 53miles-per-gallon (American Gallon).

  • I have not independently verified the gallon usage of my car.

  • 295 miles driven total, sometimes EV, sometimes Gasoline, sometimes both.

  • 30F to 40F (-1C to 4.5C) in my area this past week.

  • Winter-blend fuel.

  • 12.5miles per $electricity-dollar (17.1c / kw-hr home charging costs)

  • 17.1 miles per $gasoline-dollar ($3.10 per gallon last fillup).

If anyone has questions about my tests. The main takeaway is that L1 charging is so low in efficiency that gasoline in my area is cheaper than electricity. Obviously the price of gasoline and electricity varies significantly area-to-area, so feel free to use my numbers to calculate / simulate the costs in your area.

There is also substantial losses of efficiency due to cold weather, that is well acknowledged by the EV community. The Prius Prime (and most other EVs) will turn on a heater to keep the battery conditioned in the winter, spending precious electricity on battery-conditioning rather than miles. Gasoline engines do not have this problem and remain as efficient in the winter.


I originally wrote this post for /c/cars, but I feel like EVs come up often enough here on /c/technology that maybe you all would be interested in my tests as well.

 

The Prius Prime is a dual fuel vehicle, able to run 100% on Electric, or 100% on gasoline, or a computerized blend in-between. This presents me a great opportunity to be able to do a direct comparison with the same car of an EV engine vs an ICE engine.

  • Toyota computer claims 3.2mi-per-kwhr.

  • Kill-a-watt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_A_Watt) claims 2.2mi-per-kwhr.

  • Additional 1.5% losses should be assumed in the wires if you wish. (120V drops down to 118V during charging, meaning 2V of the energy was lost due to the resistance of my home's wires).

  • Level 1 charger at home (known to be less efficient).

  • Toyota computer claims 53miles-per-gallon (American Gallon).

  • I have not independently verified the gallon usage of my car.

  • 295 miles driven total, sometimes EV, sometimes Gasoline, sometimes both.

  • 30F to 40F (-1C to 4.5C) in my area this past week.

  • Winter-blend fuel.

  • 12.5miles per $electricity-dollar (17.1c / kw-hr home charging costs)

  • 17.1 miles per $gasoline-dollar ($3.10 per gallon last fillup).

If anyone has questions about my tests. The main takeaway is that L1 charging is so low in efficiency that gasoline in my area is cheaper than electricity. Obviously the price of gasoline and electricity varies significantly area-to-area, so feel free to use my numbers to calculate / simulate the costs in your area.

There is also substantial losses of efficiency due to cold weather, that is well acknowledged by the EV community. The Prius Prime (and most other EVs) will turn on a heater to keep the battery conditioned in the winter, spending precious electricity on battery-conditioning rather than miles. Gasoline engines do not have this problem and remain as efficient in the winter.

 

Hey, lots of Political Topics coming up that's just turning into blame games, anger and bad vibes. I'm enacting a temporary rule: no new politic topics for one week as of now.

I recognize that there is a lot of anger around the election and it's legitimate to feel that way. But I'm willing to bet that none of the political talk in the next week constitutes a 'Best Of' post anyway.

That being said: feel free to use this topic (!!!!) as political talking points. I'm serious. People deserve to discuss their opinions and I don't want to hamper them too much.

If you have political stuff to say, say it in here. I'll promise to lightly moderate this topic, which means this topic will naturally lead to bad vibes and poor arguments.

But we need a place to discuss and vent.

 

Hey Gaza / Free Palestine guys,

I'm pissed about the Kamala loss but that's not important right now. I need to know what media you were using.

Where did Free Palestine/ Gaza memes and discussions start?

I'm worried that the discussion is a right wing disinformation campaign designed to make us tear each other apart. I cannot find any legitimate politician (even far left ones like Bernie Sanders, AOC, etc. etc) that would have pushed the message of 'Joe Biden / Kamala is just as bad as Trump on the issue of Gaza'.

The only ones who would push that message are right wing trolls who try to separate us. So now I want to track down and confirm my suspicions. Who meme'd this? Where did you hear it? Was it Twitter? TikTok? Reddit? Facebook? Instagram?

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