AernaLingus [any]

At a secret meeting arranged with his guards, he volunteered to work for the Soviet Union’s spy service, the MGB. In an interview, Blake was once asked: “Is there one incident that triggered your decision to effectively change sides?” Blake responded:

It was the relentless bombing of small Korean villages by enormous American Flying Fortresses. Women and children and old people, because the young men were in the army. We might have been victims ourselves. It made me feel ashamed of belonging to these overpowering, technically superior countries fighting against what seemed to me defenceless people. I felt I was on the wrong side … that it would be better for humanity if the Communist system prevailed, that it would put an end to war.

Really stark results in that paper! I definitely encourage folks to check out the preprint so you can see the illusions for yourselves. While I fell strongly for all the illusions with large differences between urban and rural participants, I was totally flummoxed by the contrast illusion which was used to demonstrate that there are certain illusions which are strongly experienced cross-culturally (the image they used is in the appendices of the paper). I actually thought there might be something wrong with the image or my display, so I went on the illusion’s Wikipedia page and was still not remotely fooled by any of the examples. According to that same Wikipedia page, there’s a strong correlation between schizophrenia and not being affected by this illusion. I’m not schizophrenic (and it’s worth noting that 19% of the UK/US participants in this post’s study also didn’t fall for it, presumably not all schizophrenic), but it was still an interesting tidbit.

Northernlion, is that you?

Fuck. God damn America

Wait…you might be on to something here. It’s just like how rising antisemitism globally is actually good for Isn’treal because it leads credence to them being a safe haven

which I’m assuming most of you boomers are

Guilty as charged

I just wanted to find out if Pikablu was real :(

I think I paid for this one (I usually go with libro.fm or Downpour since they have DRM-free downloads, and you pay a flat rate per book by buying credits), but it’s on MyAnonamouse and I did also find a public magnet link when doing a DHT search but I’m not sure if the torrent is still seeded. Definitely recommend MyAnonamouse, btw—it’s a private tracker dedicated to ebooks and audiobooks, but it’s much more low-key than basically any other private tracker and you don’t need to show ratio proof from other private trackers or anything like that.

I’m listening to A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear (book about a failed libertarian utopian project in rural New Hampshire) and within minutes of introducing the town’s “Founding Fathers” one is mentioned to have been convicted of possession of CP^[1] Can’t wait to hear how this absolute trainwreck unfolds.

Against all odds, I think I managed to unfuck my WSL1 Ubuntu install after the failed upgrade. I fixed the scary Python errors when running apt by pointing the Python symlinks back to the expected version instead of the new one (learned a new apt command for this one: update-alternatives) and copying a more specifically-named library file to apt_pkg.so. The other apt errors were taken care of by deleting a hook that was trying to use snapd (something WSL1 doesn’t support), doing the ol’ apt --fix-broken install, and then creating a mysterious file in /etc/apt/preferences.d so I could use apt dist-upgrade to downgrade all my packages back to the distro repository versions. StackOverflow, you are a merciful god.

I’m not super confident that it’s not going to shit the bed at some point due to an introduced weakness or dependency issues this might’ve introduced, which is something I can only discover through future use, but at least it’s not throwing errors constantly. This proves just how much I never want to nor should be allowed to be a sysadmin, jfc. Also, goddamn, was this ordeal not even remotely worth it for stubbornly trying to avoid using Docker to compile a piece of software I was mildly interested in that doesn’t distribute precompiled binaries.

Jezzageddon

In a moment of impulsivity I tried to do a version upgrade of my WSL1 Ubuntu install so I could get a newer version of a package that I needed (even though there was a little voice in my head that said, “Wait…wasn’t there a reason we didn’t do this before?”) but it failed spectacularly and now it’s still reporting that it’s on the original version but it’s completely borked Gonna try to salvage it, but I’ll probably end up having to just start from scratch. We had a good run, I guess…

https://theonion.com/report-make-it-stop-1839364957/

EVERYWHERE—Claiming that they just couldn’t stand this bullshit anymore, Americans across the country confirmed Friday that someone, anyone needs to please, just make it stop. “Please, please, please, we’re begging you here, just put an end to it immediately,” said sources, noting that it had all gone way, way too far and they would do almost anything for even a few glorious minutes of respite. “We’re on our hands and knees, pleading with you to make it all go away once and for all. What’s it going to take? Jesus Christ, just stop it! Stop it right now!” At press time, sources confirmed that they knew deep down it was never going to stop.

Mirziyoyev looking like Tyler1

Tfw you’re having a nice dream where you’re at a big gathering with friends and family and then suddenly you realize, “Oh fuck, I’m not wearing a mask,” and then you panic internally about COVID for the rest of it

Mega mega THREAD THREAD

Finally got caught up on Rock is a Lady’s Modesty (11/13 episodes) and I’m enjoying it well enough, but I’m not sold on it as a music anime. I think it’s the same reason I didn’t really enjoy Your Lie in April: it feels like a sports anime wearing a music anime’s clothing. There’s nothing wrong with sports anime—Chihayafuru is one of my all-time favorite shows—but music is really important to me, so if the show goes in-depth about how people engage with music and it feels inauthentic, it really takes me out of it. It’s clear that effort has been put into authenticity in the music itself and the animation, since they did motion capture of Band-Maid actually playing the songs, but the writing feels off, especially when they’re just throwing out jargon randomly. I’d be curious to hear from anyone who’s actually played in rock/metal/punk bands, though.

There’s plenty of shows I’ve enjoyed that have music as a theme but focus more on the interpersonal stuff that I’ve enjoyed, such as K-On!, Girls Band Cry, and Bocchi the Rock!. But as far as music shows go, I doubt anything will ever hold a candle to Hibike! Euphonium. Truly a love letter to band geeks the world over.