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$7M Alberta advertising campaign against oil and gas emissions cap rolling out in 5 provinces
  • I don't like that the conservative party is using provincial funds to advertise for their political views -- especially with advertisements which aren't rigorously truthful. It feels slimy, but does anyone know if this is legal?

  • [Shattered] Which crown upgrade as Sniper?

    I've gotten to demon halls a handful of times, but always died in the first few floors. This is my first time making it as Sniper (or Huntress at all, actually).

    I have a +6 Grim crossbow, a projecting spirit bow, a ring of arcana, a +2 ring of haste, and +1 plate armour of swiftness. I also have a horn of plenty which I intend to transmute, and rings of tenacity, might, and evasion which I plan to sell.

    Which crown upgrade do I want? I'm not sure which one plays best for this build. Does anyone have any other advice for not dying in the Halls?

    Update: Yog is dead. Thank you so much for the help! I went Hawk and dumped the rest of my scrolls into Haste for maximum kiting.

    6
    Looking for Test Group for Stage Hypnosis Show

    Hello all!

    I signed up for NextFest, and I am hopefully going to be doing a stage hypnosis show in Edmonton this year. (I'm very excited!) My mentor recommended that I put together a test group: a few people to try out some material with, in a lower-stakes context than a stage show. I'm planning on doing it in the Belgravia Art Park on an evening -- the exact date and time subject to volunteer availability.

    If you're interested in trying out hypnosis in a safe environment, send me a message!

    0
    Democracy is back on the menu!
  • I think both of these positions are important for coercing Sony. If everyone who was upset left permanently and kept their bad reviews, Sony would have no incentive to backtrack their next boneheaded decision. But it's also true that if everyone jumps back in as if nothing happens, they have no incentive to avoid excessive greed in the future.

    Most of the players will come back, and so Sony will be rewarded for compliance. But some players will be permanently alienated, and those permanently lost profits will be a reminder of what happens when you try to screw your players over.

  • It's afraid. It's afraid!
  • Yeah. Part of me is uneasy with the monopoly, but unless they start abusing it I don't think there's really a problem. Besides, they're not the same as a railway: nothing's stopping a game company from directly providing executable downloads, and some do.

  • [Silly Discussion] Building an anti-vampire gun

    Been tinkering with some urban fantasy ideas recently, and I was thinking about gadgets a modern vampire hunter might design and use.

    Putting a wooden stake through a vampire's heart is usually quite effective at either paralyzing them or dusting them outright, depending on the author. Of course, a wooden stake is a lousy weapon in a fight, so usually it's used after the vamp is already close to defeated.

    But what if you could stake a bloodsucker at range? Crossbows could work, but they're not the only possibility. What about a shotgun which fires wooden slugs?

    I'm not a gunsmith or even a gun aficionado, so I'm not sure how feasible that is. What would be the challenges inherent in making wooden shotgun slugs? Would there be a better way to fire stakes into your supernatural enemies from range?

    9
    Is it possible to receive an electric shock when you *stop* touching something?

    I seem to remember as a young child being told that it is safe to touch a Van de Graff generator (for the hair demonstration), but that if you let go before it is safe you will get a nasty shock. I know a bit more about electricity now, and I'm a little skeptical now. Is it possible to get a shock from letting go of something?

    15
    A cool guide to pop vs actual psychology
  • It's actually counterproductive! People who want to screen stuff about abuse from their internet experience can set up filters. Those filters are broken when you censor the relevant words!

  • Buying A House In Canada Has Never Been Harder, Years To Correct: RBC
  • That's not how exploitation works, not really. The rich will exploit as much as they can. Prices are already set to maximize profit. The rich can't pass higher prices along, because if they could charge more, they already would. Cutting taxes on big companies doesn't create jobs or lower prices -- and raising taxes won't destroy jobs or raise prices.

  • [Question] Why didn't infantry tanks work?

    It seems to me that in the interwar period there were a lot of tanks designed with the idea that they would stay with groups of infantry, providing direct fire support while being a lot more durable than a field gun. My understanding is that this was generally abandoned in favour of faster tanks which operated somewhat independently of infantry. But to my very limited knowledge, the infantry tank seems to make sense. What were the theory's disadvantages? (Or is my understanding flawed?)

    14
    Quebec parents file $1.6M suit after teacher allegedly puts kids' art for sale online
  • The teacher was selling prints of the art for hundreds of dollars. The article doesn't say how much profit they made, but it could be substantial. There's also the privacy violation, and split amongst ten kids it's $160,000 per victim. Don't get me wrong, that's not nothing, but it seems reasonable for such a wilful and knowing violation of copyright, rights to one's image, and privacy rights. (Assuming all alleged facts are true.)

  • Is "female" offensive?
  • Typically it does flow better, but I have a little mental stumble every time someone uses "woman" or "women" as an adjective. I know why they're doing it and I can't really fault them, it just... feels off.

  • Dangerous, sexist rules of how to be a man are still alive for many
  • Made an account with mailinator.

    Lewis Harvey recalls the moment the internet realised he was a male of a certain age: he started being bombarded with ads for stuff it thinks Australian men are supposed to like.

    Harvey noticed how algorithms seeking to capture young men chased him with unsolicited content, including information about drinking, gambling ads on high rotation, and clips by misogynist influencer Andrew Tate.

    Harvey, 23, a screen production graduate, has placed a bet only once in his life and feels fortunate to have positive role models of manhood, including his soccer coach, in his life.

    But harmful messages about men needing to be dominant, aggressive, have as much sex as possible, be in control in relationships with women – and use violence to get respect – still hold power over many Australian men, research has found.

    The biggest Australian study of attitudes about what it means to “be a real man”, just released by The Men’s Project of Jesuit Social Services, has revealed 37 per cent of men aged 18 to 45 – nearly four in 10 – feel pressure to conform to rigid male norms, including that men must be tough, not show emotion, be in control, not do household chores and have the final word in relationships with women.

    One-quarter of the representative sample of 3500 Australian men said they believe in these rules, which lead to a greater likelihood of them perpetrating violence and experiencing poorer mental health and wellbeing.

    Harvey said he had noticed the internet trying to pigeonhole him, and how even when he actively dismissed clips popping up in his feed, the algorithm still “gives it a shot”.

    “Every second advert I get on any social media platform is a gambling ad, to the point where I could recognise the guy from the Sportsbet ad sitting in a bar I was in. It was funny – like, ‘I can’t believe I can pick him out of the crowd’,” he said.

    “I always noticed, and found it interesting, especially in about the last 10 years when the internet got big enough to kind of pigeonhole you; to see a lot of things that are being assumed – because I’m a bloke – I want to hear about.”

    The Man Box 2024: Re-examining what it means to be a man in Australia report is the most recent such study by The Men’s Project. The data, collected by CloudResearch and analysed by Wallis Social Research, found Australian men who most strongly endorse rigid male norms are more likely to have sexually abused their partner, sexually harassed women, experienced poor mental health, and displayed problematic gambling behaviours.

    Jesuit Social Services’ Matt Tyler said the research showed the negative impacts of believing in outdated ideas about masculinity: “[It] finds that when men believe these rules, the results can be devastating for people in their lives, particularly women, as well as for men themselves.”

    Men who most strongly agreed with the rules were 31 times more likely to believe “domestic violence should be handled privately”, and 17 times more likely to have hit their partner. They were eight times more likely to have thoughts of suicide nearly every day, and six times more likely to have forced a partner to do something sexually degrading or humiliating.

    “More than half of the men who most strongly agreed with Man Box rules met the criteria for problem gambling,” the research found.

    Compared with the 2018 study, which looked at men aged 18-30, the data showed “some good news”, said Tyler, in that social pressure to conform to these standards had dropped by 12 percentage points – especially [regarding] thinking it was required of them to act tough.

    “Where we’ve seen less of a change, and it is reason for concern, is related to ideas around the use of violence, and the expectations related to relationships with women,” he said.“For example, regarding the Man Box rules that men should use violence to get respect if necessary, and in heterosexual relationships, a man should always have the final say.”

    The report found 44 per cent of men aged 18 to 45 thought a guy who doesn’t fight back when pushed around is weak.

    Long-time gender and violence researcher Professor Michael Flood, a member of the study’s advisory group, said it was encouraging that in the latest survey, fewer respondents agreed that men should know where their female partner is all the time than in 2018 (though in 2024, 35 per cent of 18-35 year-olds, and 33 per cent of 31 to 35 year-olds agreed that they should).

    Flood said it was positive that traditional models of how to be a man – “in which men are expected always to be tough, aggressive, risk-taking, stoic, heterosexual, homophobic and transphobic, emotionally inexpressive, hostile to femininity, and dominant” – did not receive majority support among young men, and most did not think society was imposing this on them.

    “The messages young men receive about manhood have improved in some ways,” he said. “There has been some decline in the past five years in unhealthy and gender-inequitable forms of manhood.”

    But Flood noted it was concerning that one-quarter to one-third of young men still endorse “dangerous and sexist models of manhood”.

    “This endorsement is not declining fast,” he said. “Men’s levels of endorsement of traditional masculine ideology generally are steady.”

    There was little change in attitudes towards male aggression, or in men always having the final say in relationships or marriages, but a shift away from men always knowing their intimate partner’s whereabouts was encouraging.

    Flood agreed with Matt Tyler that “traditional masculine norms also constrain young men’s own health and wellbeing”, and said work to promote healthy or positive masculinities needed to be scaled up in Australia, including at workplaces, sports clubs, and in online platforms and communities.

    Amanda Alford, acting chief executive of violence prevention agency Our Watch, said it was extremely concerning that men who accepted outdated views about manhood were more likely to have hit their partner.

    “This research provides clear direction on what needs to be done to prevent this violence,” she said.

    “We need to support boys and young men through the process of learning about who they are, particularly given the pressures they face from many areas of their lives, including friends, family, social media and pornography.

    “We need to be having open and honest conversations about porn, sex and relationships and work together to make sure young men have role models that help them understand the healthier and more positive ways of being a man.”

    Director of Monash University’s gender and family violence prevention centre, Professor Kate Fitz-Gibbon, said understanding harmful forms of masculinity was essential to helping prevent violence against women.

    “This research is critical to understanding how we prevent men’s violence, and how men can be supported to challenge dangerous ideas about what it means to be a man,” said Fitz-Gibbon, who is chair of Respect Victoria, which supported the research.

    “A strong focus on primary prevention efforts will continue to shift the dial on men’s attitudes towards themselves and others.”

  • Most Canadians changing clocks to spring forward for daylight time
  • Yes, but it is a problem. It's a problem that has no partisan component, which can be fixed without political grandstanding. It's also a problem which kills people: the 6% increase in car crashes it causes is a lot of easily preventable deaths.

  • Step aside graphics cards, you can now run ray tracing on a CPU [ 1fps (one frame per second) with 34% CPU and 0% GPU utilisation]
  • Perfect! We'd have pretty low utilization on those 80 CPUs, though -- if we made them smaller, the power draw would be lower and it would be cheaper. We could then get away with adding more CPUs. It would then make sense to put the array of simple CPUs on its own card, dedicated to graphics processing... wait a minute.

  • [System-agnostic] Running intelligent and informed adversaries that feel fair

    So, I like stories where everyone is competent, and as a GM I try to run my villains as playing to win. My goal is for the players to have a good time, but the enemies will use every resource at their disposal to achieve their aims: they will retreat if continuing to give battle is a bad idea, they will go scorched earth if it's in their interest, they will defeat the players in detail or simply attack with unfair, overwhelming numbers.

    Sometimes this results in a beautiful, game-defining moment where the players work out what their powerful and intelligent adversary is doing, and then proceed to outwit them. More often, though, the players win the way players do: shenanigans and brute force until the day is won. This can also be fun, and obviously not every story arc needs to end with an I-know-you-know-I-know battle of wits.

    The problem here is that when this happens my players usually don't ever figure out what the plan was -- and what from my side of the screen was a clever ruse or subtle stratagem, to the players looks more like an ass-pull. My players don't know that they set off a silent alarm and the security forces stalked them around the building before ambushing them from three directions, they just got a random encounter where they were surrounded by guards. They don't know that the shopkeeper they revealed their true identities to reported them to the BBEG for a bounty, they just know that the army knew they were coming even though they were trying to be stealthy.

    So, GMs with similar philosophies: How do you make it feel satisfying / fair when the players are fighting an intelligent and coordinated adversary who knows more than they do?

    8
    Long-lost stained glass masterpiece discovered in Vilnius strip club
    www.lrt.lt Long-lost stained glass masterpiece discovered in Vilnius strip club

    A stained glass piece by the Lithuanian artist Kazys Morkūnas, created in 1974 and considered to be lost, has been disco...

    Long-lost stained glass masterpiece discovered in Vilnius strip club
    1
    What is this?

    I stumbled into this comm, but I can't figure out what EXP is. A Google search turns up nothing relevant. Is this a currently-extant game, or one in progress? Is there a public rules document somewhere? Does it cost money? What is the premise?

    1
    Beholder jack o' lantern

    Made a beholder for Hallowe'en this year. I used offcuts from other pumpkins for the eye-stalks.

    3
    What is the most stable food production method?

    Crops can blight, animals can get diseases. I don't know much about hydroponics but I know that bacteria are a concern. What food source is the most reliable, the least likely to produce less food than expected?

    82
    What's the biggest plot hole in real life?

    Since the latest season hasn't concluded yet, let's only look at plot holes from 1990 and before.

    130
    Why can't all planes fly straight up?

    I'm not great at physics and have no knowledge of aeronautics, so this whole chain of reasoning might be wrong.

    A plane stays in the air because air is moving over the wings, which generates lift. However, that air is moving because the engine is moving the plane forward. There is no other source of energy. Therefore, some of the engine's energy is going into keeping the plane in the air, and some is going into accelerating it forwards, or keeping it at the same speed (fighting air resistance).

    Therefore, if the plane points straight up, the engine should be able to support it hovering in the air. If it didn't have enough power to fight gravity when pointing straight up, it wouldn't have enough power to fight gravity when moving horizontally, either.

    (Okay, some older engines only worked in certain orientations, but I don't think that's a problem for jet aircraft, or any aircraft built after WWII.)

    So why can only certain planes fly vertically?

    16
    1001 Flavourful Magic Items

    Let's make a list of magic items that are flavourful and interesting! I'll start us off.

    1. A fine tablecloth which, when placed on a table, conjures food, plates, and cutlery. The food is different every time, but always delicious and high-quality, conferring a minor rest/morale bonus. The table is always impeccably set. The food and everything else disappears if anyone at the table commits a breach of etiquette, no matter how minor. The tablecloth then has a cooldown period before it can be used again. (Depending on how clever your players are and how much you like watching them suffer, the tablecloth might have the relevant rule embroidered on it until the next time it's used.)
    2. A pair of bracelets which, when worn, make all non-magical animals friendly. They don't allow for communication or taming -- "friendly" does not mean "subordinate", and the animals are still animal-level intelligent. The bracelets also make nearby animals friendly to each other: if you're petting a rabbit, a wolf will just nuzzle up next to it.
    3. A laser gun that does no damage, but which causes its target to believe that whichever limb it hit was destroyed or severed.
    4. A tamper-evident magical lock: fairly easy to pick, but the person attuned to it (or anyone who knows the activation phrase) can tell when it was last opened by touching it.
    5. A clockwork bird that will fly in a path the user sets when activating it, but has no collision avoidance capability.
    6. A fortune-telling implement (marked bones, crystal ball, etc) which doesn't provide any sort of divination ability, but makes other people believe the predictions the user makes with it.
    7. An enchanted flare-gun that will draw a line in the sky between the user and the closest sapient creature that isn't within five meters.
    0
    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)TO
    TotallyHuman @lemmy.ca
    Posts 14
    Comments 104