veddox

11 ms·

1.
by veddox 8mo ago
I spent many fun hours there! It blew my mind to discover a game world that was so deeply player-driven and offered so many possibilities - my main character became a professional author... I earned my first money in-world by writing poetry
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by veddox 1y ago
Very cool! I expected this would be quite a rudimentary map, but it actually uses OpenStreetMap, so you can zoom right in to the street level.
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by veddox 1y ago
That depends on what threat scenario you're looking at. If your government wants to track you, they'll find a way, regardless of what phone you're using (or not). But the privacy gains of not installing a load of third-party
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by veddox 1y ago
Replacing stable, working "low-tech" solutions with less user-friendly, unstable "high-tech" approaches is not "progress"! Just because something is newer doesn't mean it's better. Obviously, the re
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by veddox 1y ago
I've been thinking about moving to a dumb phone again for the past few months, but so far I've decided against it, for three reasons: 1. Signal/Whatsapp/Threema: biggest reason by far - while I message much less than man
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by veddox 2y ago
All through university and for several years afterwards I had an Online Vision Classic, which served me very well. Unfortunately I lost the first one at some point, and its replacement had various issues. So a couple of months ago I decided
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by veddox 2y ago
Ditto for the fountain pen. For the past few months I've been trying to switch off the computer as much as possible and do as much writing as I can by hand. I can concentrate a lot better and I enjoy the physicality of handling a good
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by veddox 2y ago
I've begun thinking in that direction too, after seeing how my peers have been moving all over the country in the last few years - first for uni, then for a job, then another job... I'm one of the movers myself, and I know why I m
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by veddox 2y ago
While I agree with your scepticism of our smart phone use, this comment doesn't do the article justice. (The author addresses that point and explains why he thinks that smart phone use, while a problem, is not the root cause.)
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by veddox 2y ago
Hm, I think I understand your point, but I still disagree. For three reasons: First, Tolkien isn't writing another Grimms' fairy tale. His world has sufficient depth to it that we can make valid comparisons to real-world societies
11.
by veddox 2y ago
I still wish I could work in Lisp, but have also become very happy with Julia. Julia is not as elegant as Lisp and doesn't offer as many powerful language constructs. But it is a very cleanly designed and well thought-out language that
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by veddox 2y ago
Can you elaborate? I'm using Julia macros to help make my research software easier to extend for others, so would be interested in your experiences.
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by veddox 2y ago
I partly agree. > Aragorn is not a ‘feudal king’, he is a king of legend. I was not using "feudal" to denote a time period in our world's history, but rather a system of governance based on liege-vassal relationships. I ag
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by veddox 2y ago
If you think the Lord of the Rings is one big trope, you really haven't given it enough consideration. Yes, Tolkien has very clear moral and social ideals, but using this as grounds to portray LotR as "two-dimensional" absolu
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by veddox 2y ago
I would rather take it at face value, as a perhaps surprising but nevertheless fitting display of magnanimity and mercy. Theoden has been restored to his right mind and character. The whole thrust of the his character plot (in the books) is
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by veddox 2y ago
Here's the tax policy quote in context: https://www.tolkiensociety.org/2014/04/grrm-asks-what-was-ar... > being a wholesome person is largely orthogonal to being a good king I disagree with Martin here. Of
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by veddox 2y ago
Because this opinion has surfaced a number of times here: Yes, Tolkien did care deeply about the realism of his world. And because he spent his whole life studying pre-modern societies, the societies he creates in Middle Earth do function v
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by veddox 2y ago
Speaking as a biologist, it saddens me every time I hear somebody say that they dropped biology as soon as they could in high school, because they inevitably do so just before it starts to get interesting. The problem is that biology is a s
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by veddox 2y ago
Just to add as a caveat that Wohlleben's books are regarded quite critically by most forest ecologists I know. The general consensus seems to be that he picks up on real phenomena and is a vivid science communicator, but has a tendency
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by veddox 2y ago
Aldo Leopold, "Sand County Almanac". In German: Josef Reichholf, "Mein Leben für die Natur".
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by veddox 2y ago
You're doing to ecology exactly what the author complains teachers are doing to molecular biology. Learning about molecular biology often begins with memorising what the cell is made of. I understand that many students find this dry an
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by veddox 2y ago
A list of my favourites: 3. "Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon." 14. "In the long run every program becomes rococo - then rubble." 19. "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about progra
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by veddox 2y ago
I've seen several of these before in SICP and other places, but happy to find a longer collection here! Perlis just has his own style and humour...
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by veddox 3y ago
That's an unnecessary insult to what could well be an honest question.
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by veddox 3y ago
> The real danger I think is in the decrease of insect population. That is certainly one of the most important issues. However, habitat loss is even more critical (not only but also because it also decreases insect numbers). > Is ther
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by veddox 3y ago
Principally the direct payments. Farmers in the EU get a certain amount of money for every hectare of land they farm. This accounts for 40% of all CAP payments, and disproportionately benefits large farms, as they not only get much more mon
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by veddox 3y ago
Sorry, that's just not true. Just type "renewable energy bird populations" into Google Scholar and work your way through the results. There's tons of research on that out there. See e.g. here for a recent study: https:&
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by veddox 3y ago
> If higher input leads to higher output, demand can be met with less land. That is a big debate in conservation biology (known as "land sparing vs land sharing"). One of the major problems of the land sparing approach, which y
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by veddox 3y ago
Your first point is partly correct, but your conclusion isn't. The authors split up their results by country to show exactly the differences you mention. However, you have to keep in mind that the EU Common Agricultural Policy applies
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by veddox 3y ago
I reference this paper in almost every science-communication talk I give as an ecologist. It was not a new result by any means, we've had a whole range of other studies showing the same over the last three decades [1]. But it was still

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