Moved from @pingveno

  • 0 Posts
  • 19 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: August 7th, 2023
  • pingveno@kbin.socialtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Do you prefer digital or physical books?
    2·
    8 months ago

    For reading, digital. I can have access to a functionally unlimited number of books. They also tend to be less expensive. That makes a difference for media like manga where it racks up pretty quickly. And I can make adjustments to the text and lighting that help with readability.

    I still like having some books around as decoration. They bring a room together nicely.

  • pingveno@kbin.socialtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Will the world ever stop being anti-intellectual?
    3·
    9 months ago

    I think it’s becoming better overall, not worse. Yes, there’s a populism issue at the moment, but this is far from the first time that’s happened. We’re dealing with the introduction of an entire new means of communication, online media in general and social media more specifically. That brings all new hazards and benefits that need to be dealt with.

    The era after the printing press was developed brought intellectual development, but it also sparked revolutions. Those didn’t always wind up with that right people getting into power. It took a while for society to adapt and stabilize. I expect the same will happen with Internet communication.

    I’m also hopeful because studies have shown that successive generations generally improve their abilities in abstract thinking. (I’m having trouble sourcing that statement, unfortunately). That’s important for the economy because the jobs of the future will need that abstract thinking. At least in my experience, it also acts as a bulwark against bad actors because people with poorer abstract thinking abilities tend to be more gullible, at least when it comes to lies that they like.

  • pingveno@kbin.socialtoFood and Cooking@beehaw.org•Does Anyone Have a TIFU Moment When Cooking?
    3·
    11 months ago

    Not me, but family lore. When my parents had just started dating in their 20’s, my mother was housed in “The Beaver Hut” with a bunch of people including her twin sister (my aunt). It was spaghetti night and they were making a homemade sauce. My aunt was putting in salt. Instead of a teaspoon, she put more like a quarter of a cup or more. Everyone else was going to fish it out, but she was like “nah, it’ll be fine” and stirred it in.

    Needless to say, it was not fine. It was so salty that everyone except my father refused to eat it.

    Note: It might have been something else like pizza. With spaghetti, it you screwed up a sauce that much it’s easy enough to make a substitute sauce from kitchen staples and odds and ends.

  • pingveno@kbin.socialtoNo Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•Does anyone *not* love using their bidet?
    2·
    11 months ago

    I’ll echo the issues with too much water pressure on really cheap bidets. My first one was like a butt hole pressure washer. My second one was more expensive with a tank at the back. Unfortunately, that combined with a rounded toilet didn’t leave enough space for sitting. The ones I have now are all Tooshies. I got the ones that can combine hot and cold water, but I only have a hot water hookup for one because I would need to poke holes.

  • pingveno@kbin.socialtoMemes@lemmy.ml•*Permanently Deleted*
    7·
    11 months ago

    And looking more broadly, how much of any given system’s death toll should be counted, and in what way. Mao caused massive amounts of death with the Great Leap Forward, which arguably would not have happened under a system that relied less on central management and more on capitalism’s distributed feedback mechanisms. Then there were purges, suppression campaigns, and land reforms that resulted in productivity losses.

    But comparing that with a capitalist country that is a liberal democracy is hard. There are a lot of factors involved. Case in point: there was solid growth in China and the USSR. But we can’t make a direct comparison between them and the West. China and the USSR were playing catch up using technologies produced by capitalist countries. Take tractors, which immensely boosted productivity. Those were sourced from the West, at least initially.