Hehe, good point.

people need to read more code, play around with it, break it and fix it to become better programmers.

I think AI bots can help with that. It’s easier now to play around with code which you could not write by yourself, and quickly explore different approaches. And while you might shy away from asking your colleagues a noob question, ChatGPT will happily elaborate.

In the end, it’s just one more tool in the box. We need to learn when and how to use it wisely.

What’s up with the wiggeling, is the camera dangling from a balloon?

I guess if drones can fly into doors on moving targets, an observation drone should be able to hold relatively still.

Alright, thanks! I think I understand where you’re coming from, and can relate. I’m an ex-Christian, although I guess for ex-Muslims this process is a whole other beast.

And yes, I know exactly what you mean about culture and critique - as an leftwing, anti-theist leaning atheist, I often have to cringe about my peers. It feels like false romanticizing, like we did with native americans, or other falsly understood cultures. So many things which I despise in fascism are also present in strict Christianity and strict Islam. Although luckily, very few people take their religion seriously here. So our religious nutjobs are a fringe minority and can mostly be ignored.

Refugees welcome, but I hate it when they try to establish religio-fascist areas here, spewing hate and all their nonsense, occasionally killing someone. I mean, if you want to live like that, go back. If you like our way, be welcome.

Yeah, a sensitive topic which can easily trigger people. I try not to care about the boxes they try to put me in. And I absolutely love the freedom of speech we have here. I don’t want that be ruined by migrants who think they speak for Allah, nor by leftists who think every minority shares their values. Like I was one of them. In my youth, with coloured hair and ragged clothes, I was regularly beaten up by (almost exclusively) migrants. Created quite some cognitive dissonance, some effort to justify their deeds, like worse socioeconomic status blabla. Truth is, many people are quite “conservative”, naturally more so in less liberal countries of origin. And still, I vote and speak for open borders. Our society must find better ways than building walls. This issue is challenging European core values, with at least two ways to erode the values; we can lose them by allowing hostile subcultures to grow, or we can lose them by closing us off to the outside.

Good lord, 6 years. Poor Aisha. I guess my brain was happy to forget that detail.

So thanks again for this exchange. Stay safe.

Other person.

I think there are stories in the Quran or the other important texts (Hadid?) about their prophet marrying a 9yo. Although I’ve witnessed controversy around her exact age amongst people in /r/DebateReligion. Like some said it wasn’t too bad, she was almost 14 or so.

Now your turn, what do you think? And why did you want them not to google?

Quality comment, well said.

I’m not sure (take that literally, please) wether both causes deserve to be treated as equals, but I can very much vibe with the general spirit of your comment. That’s what I had in mind when writing the last paragraph of my previous comment.

Hey, I know a pretty similar bus stop in Hamburg, Germany: https://maps.app.goo.gl/SMa5unXew4uAfVtPA

Can confirm, it sucks to wait there. Hard to reach (always tempting to risk your life for catching the bus), noisy, stinky, plus ours has bicyclists zooming through the isle.

To optimize the intersection for car traffic. Or maybe rather to minimize signal wait times.

If pedestrians could take the shortest path, it would roughly double the size of the intersection in both width and height. Which then requires clearing times on each signal pass to be longer. Which ultimately makes everybody wait longer at the intersection, including pedestrians.

So, that is one possible explanation. I guess you didn’t really ask for one, and maybe I should also add that it’s just that; an explanation, not a justification.

This is like if Hezbollah bombed Yoav Gallant in Tel Aviv. And then Hezbollah starts bombing israeli airports “pre-emptively” because “an israeli attack” (retaliation) is coming.

Yes, exactly. They had good reasons to assume the other side is angry and might do something violent, because they themselves just did something very violent to them! So to protect themselves, they deprive their opponents of means of retaliation. Pre-empting the retaliation.

Hitting someone and then hitting them again because you expect them to hit back does not seem very " self defensy" or “pre-emptive” te me.

I get you. I would totally agree if this was about a school dispute. However in war, there are a number of things which can be done in self defense or to pre-empt an enemy attack which might seem counterintuitive at first, like for example destroying your own infrastructure, or investing in weapons with the intent to never use them.

In war, an attacker can very well attack again to defend themselves and/or to pre-empt the enemy reaction.

If you could hire one of two generals to protect your country; one which considers pre-emptive follow-up attacks and one who would rather let the other side strike back because it seems fair, who would you hire?

You expect a military force to sit tight, not move, not shoot, while they know the enemy is about to attack?

Because, the enemy “is defending itself”?

I’d love to hear that rally speech with which you would motivate your soldiers to just eat incoming rockets without using the tools they have to prevent being attacked.

The strikes are only pre-emptive if we put on white-nationalism glasses and take away Lebanon’s right to defend itself. Israel attacked Beirut first.

I guess as always with language, there are many possible interpretations. Yours is one, that’s right.

To me, it came somewhat surprising to see you connected “pre-emptive” to moral judgements, or to the question who attacked “first” (which is a controversial and potentially infinite topic to track the actual honest true ‘first’ origin).

Another interpretation is just military doctrine. The best defense is a good offense. Who cares who started the fight.

In this interpretation, the IDF felt there might be an attack incoming, and prevented it’s adversary from doing so by striking first.

Much like Hezbollah (or any other military force) would gladly pre-emptively strike their foe to protect their own troops. Doesn’t say anything about who started the overall conflict or even who’s right.

You still have a point; by highlighting the reasons behind the strike, and painting it as a protective measure, it probably makes it easier for the reader to sympathize.

As a german, I feel the right side is much more alien to me than the left side (split at “Start here”).

Is that circumstancial, or does it reflect some linguistic truth? Like, are the languages on the left one family, and the ones on the right another family, or however linguistic taxonomy would call that?

Maybe it’s just that the left side includes all the germanic languages, so that feels more familiar. There are also languages on the left side where I have no clue what or where that might be. But much more so on the right side.

Right, that was the spirit. Though to be honest, it can harm. Some people are shy. Or strongly shy away from awkward situations caused by not-yet-close-friends. They can still be great friends, but unlucky situations during the getting-to-know each other phase can prevent that. We judge people with different standards, depending on how close they are. So when you interpolate distant-behavior to predict close-behavior, there is probably some error margin.

So there is some risk involved in asking, but likewise for not asking. I guess just be you and see where it goes.

One final thought: I think it’s important to take care that the question is not perceived as an accusation.

Usually I stop after 2 or 3 attempts.

You could also ask him directly. Maybe he’s generally not interested in lunching together, or he was just too busy to respond, or whatever. These questions can be awkward, but also deepen a friendship. A risk-reward mechanic in the game of life.

While possible, it goes against the Mediocrity principle:

The idea is to assume mediocrity, rather than starting with the assumption that a phenomenon is special, privileged, exceptional, or even superior.[2][3]

Right. Also the speed of transition matters a lot.

Take any devastating effect that climate change might bring. Regions becoming uninhabitable, millions migrating, thousands of houses destroyed, crops failing, species going extinct.

For any of these effects, it helps a great deal if they can be delayed by years or hopefully decades. It gives everything more time to adapt. Like 10 million people migrating in 1 year puts a hell lot more stress on everybody involved (including the receiving countries) compared to 10 million migrating in 10 years.

Or your country might be blessed to deal with wildfires and floods one after the other, instead of both occuring simultaneously.

More time is worth more effort.

Much like that comment. Can you give a better example, or express why it’s a bad example? That would bring some quality in.

FYI you can self-host GitLab, for example in a Docker container.

You can find “piggy power” at the bottom of the article, headlined “How to describe your game instead”.

Pixel Washer is a cozy, zen-like game where you play as a cute *piggy power washing* beautiful pixelated worlds.

I can read it in two ways: Either you’re a ghostly piggy power, who is washing. Or you’re a “piggy”, who is “power washing”. The grammar is ambiguous.

Maybe you meant to take side for the interpretation as a “cute piggy”. I agree that’s the most likely interpretation.

Still, this might confuse or downright misinform some readers. The main point of the article was to communicate what the game is in a clearer, more accessible way. So I found it worthwhile pointing out how it kind of fails there.

The author was concerned somebody might read a description like “Pixel Washer is like PowerWash Simulator meets Stardew Valley”, and partially fail to understand it, because they don’t really know what “PowerWash Simulator” or “Stardew Valley” are. Because they aren’t literate enough in game titles.

But similarly, one can worry readers might not know certain words or grammatical constructions (maybe because they are no native speakers, or for other reasons), to decide wether it’s a washing power or a piggy washing; because they aren’t literate enough in English.

Describing your game by listing other games is tempting, but not a good idea, and I’m about to convince you why.

That did not age so well. I found most arguments rather weak. Here’s an overview of all the three arguments, copied from the article:

1. It requires your audience to be familiar with those games
2. It creates pre-conceived notions, setting high expectations
3. Players prefer to discover the similarities on their own

Generally, we have at least two options for describing thing A: We can relate it to another thing B (“Pixel washer is like Stardew Valley”), or we can relate it to some abstract attribute (“Pixel washer is uplifting”). Either way, we use language shorthands to describe similarities with other known entities.

About 1: Yes, that is obviously true. And it’s also true for the opposite, when you don’t relate your game to other games. Granted, your description becomes more accessible to a broader audience since it does not require them to know the other games. But instead, the reader now has to be able to understand and visualize what your description might look and feel like as a game (and thus becomes less accessible again). Take for example the first sentence of the proposed better description:

“Pixel Washer is a cozy, zen-like game where you play as a cute piggy power washing beautiful pixelated worlds.”

I’d flag ‘cozy’ and ‘zen-like’ as probably rather less known and/or well-understood terms. I’m also not sure what ‘piggy power’ means. Is it even meant as one thing or is english grammar misleading as so often? Does it involve actual pigs or only their powers, whatever that might mean? But fair enough, even if all that remains not understood, the minimal takeaway is probably that it’s a game with pixels and pigs and washing. So yeah, the alternate description probably works for most people.

But in the same way, a description referring to other games also works for most people.

In case of unclear references, a game-reference wins over a word-description. Like when I look up ‘cozy’ and ‘zen-like’, I may or may not come across definitions and pictures which convey the same idea as the author intended. For example, I might find results about baking cookies or shooting arrows, which have nothing to do with washing pigs. Whereas, when I look up “PowerWash Simulator” and “Stardew Valley”, the results are far less ambiguous.

Argument 2 is the strongest from my point of view. But again, it’s pretty similar for both ways. It should be kept in mind. Maybe it’s best to ask your game testers how they would describe the game, including those who don’t like it, to avoid setting too high expectations because you fell in love with your game while making it.

Argument 3 was entirely new to me. It never crossed my mind, nor did I hear anyone complain about it. I think people very much appreciate language shorthands, if they are used well and are not misleading. If so, they can save time and give a crisp description. And let’s not forget that we are talking about advertisement. We know we are being lied to, that a ‘fast-paced action shooter’ can feel dull and boring quickly. As the author points out, these descriptions serve one purpose only; to generate more sales.

I also wanted to include a reference to Roguelikes or Roguelites. Apparently there once was a game named ‘Rogue’, which no one knows. But it spurred other creators to make something similar, and now we have genres called Roguelike and Roguelite. I think that’s kind of funny in this context, since in this case you somewhat cannot describe the genre without comparing it to another, specific game.

Last but not least, the whole argument is probably less relevant in mainstream games, but more so in indie, or niche, new games in a creative way. When there is almost nothing which is very similar, comparisons to other games might work less well than if you’re just releasing another RTS or FPS.

There are many, many different ways in which the economy could be shrunk. Many have the downside which you mention; making life miserable. But also many, other ways avoid this problem. A few examples how this could look like:

• reduce consumption of the super rich
• reduce production of trash products like plastic toys or single use vapes
• remove laws which enforce waste, such as minimum parking spots
• in urban design: prioritize mass transit, biking and walking over motorized individual transportation

When discussing these things, we should never forget that too little, too late action will certainly lead to what you wanted to avoid; making life miserable for poor people.