I don’t know if I have met anyone complaining about Ciri being the protagonist of Witcher 4. Even the most conservative people I know who are fans of the series are pumped about her being the main character because they love the story and it’s the only logical way forward. The only complaints I have heard are that in universe she’s kind of overpowered for a video game protagonist. I think people whining about this are fake fans or just agitators who don’t even play these games.
Stupid people thinking little Lemmy is too complicated to use is a feature not a bug. If someone can’t figure out how to use the Lemmy interface why would we even want them here?
Yes. God’s name is super interesting because of the extremely strong taboos surrounding saying it, stemming ultimately from the Third of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:7)- “Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD they God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guitless that taketh his name in vain.” Note the emphasis on the name of The LORD, and how the word “LORD” is all caps- this is a sort of censorship of God’s actual name, which goes back to the ancient Greek translations of the Hebrew scriptures. When you see “LORD” in a Bible passage in English, the original passage has God’s name in Hebrew. Jews have historically said the word “Adonai” (meaning Lord) instead of God’s name when reading aloud, and almost all translations follow this and just use the word for “Lord” (Kyrios, Dominus, etc.) instead.
Anyway, the name is rendered in Hebrew as “” which is roughly equivalent to the letters “YHWH” in the Latin alphabet. Hebrew doesn’t use vowels, and the vowel sounds hsve intentionally not been recorded by scribes. The modern academic reconstruction is “Yahweh” for the pronunciation based on names for people and places that include parts of the name. You may also see “Jehovah” in some contexts which is based on older German scholarship that incorrectly rendered the vowels of the word. The name’s meaning is given to Moses in Exodus 3:14 where Moses asks who he should tell his people to worship and God replies “I AM WHO I AM” “Say this to the people of Israel: I AM has sent me to you” (in Hebrew, I am who I am is Eyeh Asher Eyeh). Modern scholarship agrees that the name has some connection with the word “to be” and means something along the lines of “The Existing One.”
Myself, I interpret God’s response in the story and the meaning of His name as a declaration of self sufficiency, that God is what exists in His own right, and doesn’t need anything or anyone else to exists. It’s not only a declaration of montheism, but a declaration of supremacy over all of the universe. But yeah, not only does your Bologna have a first name, but God does too if you’re Christian or Jewish.
There are definitions of “God” that I feel are hard to prove, but others that are easy. For example, of your definition is “God is the ultimate cause of the universe” then it’s pretty trivial that if everything has a cause there must be an end of the chain. Of course, this the could be a computer program running the universe simulation or even just the laws of physics themselves if those are truly causeless. But nonetheless, it’s still a somewhat satisfying definition of “God” so I’m comfortable saying I believe in God. Harder definitions include “God is an omnipotent being” (which most of God’s traditional attributes can be derived from) and “God is the being described in the Bible/Qu’ran/other religious text” which I feel like are unprovable.
A lot of religious apologists will make arguments in favor of the easier definition and then try to claim that this means their specific view of God is real. Personally I think that’s insane. Like “there must be some end of the chain of causality therefore God became a Jewish carpenter in the ancient Roman Empire.” Even if you’re Christian that should be a bad logical jump.
I’m Western esotericism, names have power beyond simply being signifiers for the thing they represent- they embody some part of the thing they represent. The word “fire” contains some intrinsic “fire-ness” but not the whole picture. After all, everyone has different names for the same thing. It is thought that everything has a “true name” that perfectly encapsulates all things about it in their entirety, and this true name could be found by intense study, meditation, or etymology. The Bible pays a lot of attention to names in this way. Adam, the first man, names all the animals. Genesis pays a lot of attention to the names of places, and a lot of stories in Genesis are essentially folk etymologies of locations. God’s own name is of special importance, and its meaning was revealed to Moses by the Burning Bush. Even today Jews believe that even saying God’s name is powerful and dangerous and that only the High Priest would be allowed to say it once every year during Yom Kippur. Jewish folklore says that even this name is merely a part of God’s true name, and that Moses pronounced a longer more complete form of The Name to part the Red Sea, and some systems hold that there are even longer and even more complete forms that have been known to rabbis in the past.
I wouldn’t say that. It’s a tool like anything else. You don’t say a hammer is useless because it’s really bad at driving screws no matter how much your terrible coworker keeps insisting that she just hits the screws in with the hammer and it’s fine. I learned programming very quickly with ChatGPT and I use LLMs all the time for help with programming. They’re also good for proofreading, learning new languages, and a few other things. The hype is exaggerated but these things are quite useful when used correctly.
Highlander 2 is unsalvageable. That movie sucked so bad it wasn’t even fun to watch with friends to make fun of it
I say no because vampire myths developed in a time and place where only a tiny minority of people were even allowed to own property and almost everyone lived on land they didn’t own, and in those stories the vampires are invited by the resident, not the owner.
Here are some related questions that inform the answer to this one
Can a vampire cross a country’s border without approval from that country’s government? This relates to how a vampire’s inability to cross thresholds relates to governments and concepts of control, occupation, and ownership as they relate to this rule. My gut instinct says yes, a border doesn’t count as a boundary in this case because a vampire can only not enter your house but can go on your yard. Disregarding that, I would lean towards no a vampire would need permission, especially at a defined boundary like a border crossing checkpoint. I don’t think it would necessarily have to be from the government, though, based on concepts I will explore later
Can a vampire enter your home if you’re a tenant and give them permission? I say yes, because during the time period when vampire myths developed barely anyone actually owned their own homes or the land they lived on, and said myths don’t state that the vampire must receive permission from the local lord to enter the homes of his serfs. This establishes that residence is sufficient and ownership isn’t required.
If you are at a friend’s house for a party and a vampire shows up and you say “come on in!” Does that count as an invitation? I would say yes, but there is some argument to be had here. The answer to this question determines if residency is not only sufficient, but required. If you say yes, then, it seems that merely occupying a space is what gives one authority to invite a vampire in, not residence or ownership. If you say no, then it seems that residence or control over a space is more important.
If you give a worker a garage door code and tell him he can use that while you’re not home and he turns out to be a vampire, can he enter your home? I would say yes, because you explicitly gave him permission. If you say no, then it seems that the relationship of the threshold is what’s important. Someone on one side has to be inviting the vampire to cross, and the invitation can’t be given if both parties are on the same side. I say yes, because I feel that the criteria are as follows - A person must have control over a space in some sense (but not necessarily legal authority over it) and they must explicitly give permission to the vampire to enter. The explicit permission requirement is because a vampire theoretically wouldn’t be able to break into your house by smashing a window.
Now as all of this pertains to a warrant - I think that yes, a vampire with a warrant would be able to enter a home with a warrant because the issuing authority has the ability to control access to your home via warrants and you have implicitly delegated that authority to them via the social contract, and the warrant is explicit permission to enter your home.
Depends on what you mean by “high.” I have scored between 130-140 on IQ tests I’ve taken of various quality, which is considered high by most. Idk how it would be different from anyone else’s experience of the world. I did extremely well in school and I work as a chemical engineer with a focus on machine learning implementations and capital expansion. I don’t know if I would consider myself “smarter” than the average person, just better at certain types of tasks. I also grew up in a stable two parent upper middle class household that valued education and academic success, which is a huge leg up that can’t be ignored.
Depends on what you mean by “low.” At a certain level low enough IQ is associated with intellectual disability, and a difficulty functioning in society. IQ is normalized so half of people have, by definition, an IQ lower than 100, and half have an IQ above 100. 15 points is a standard deviation, so about 68% of people fall between 85 and 115, and the remaining 32% fall within the “tails”. I assume by “Low IQ” you would mean the ~16% of the population below 85 IQ, and probably the ~13.5% that fall in the range of 70-85, as below 70 is getting into intellectual disability territory.
Statistically, people in this band do worse in just about every metric for social success. Lower income, higher crime rates, higher rates of drug addiction, poorer health outcomes, etc. However, it is difficult to disentangle these impacts from poverty. Populations’ IQs raise when they become less poor, and people regardless of income tend to be less poor if they have higher IQs. The cycle of poverty is deeply intertwined with IQ, and poverty causes a lot of the social issues associated with low IQ. There is a lot of evidence that as access to education and a more “intellectually rich” upbringing increase IQ, and such things are less available to poor people for a variety of reasons.
As for what it’s like, from my understanding speaking to people I suspect are in this band the main things are a non-inquisitive world view, a sense of resignation around not understanding abstract concepts, and low self esteem associated with these perceived shortcomings. Society does not treat these people kindly as a whole, and I think that we could all stand to be kinder to one another. I also think that our economic system is geared in such a way that not only are low IQ people punished for that, but they are also made to feel that it is a personal shortcoming even though these things are defined statistically such that there is always a group of people at the bottom who are going to be left behind.
This is lawyer territory. Randos on the internet will not be able to help.
Is there a way to play these games on PC or at least on the Switch or something? I know obviously I could pirate them but I was wondering if a proper port had ever been made.
Yeah he’s certainly the most famous modern defense lawyer. He got a guy who very obviously murdered someone off through his skills as a lawyer so that sticks in people’s minds. For the young people in this thread, he was OJ Simpson’s lawyer.
Oxidizers aren’t typically flammable themselves and only react with fuels.
Holy shit fours on blue AND yellow, AND it’s an oxidizer? My guess is some kind of halogenation agent, likely fluorine based. The lack of flammability with those stats makes me think it’s an inorganic compound, probably some wretched fluorine abomination.
I feel like if you had put half the time and effort it took to do this into improving yourself and going outside you could have at least gone on some dates with real women at this point. Talking to an AI chatbot is not the same as human connection and will only lead to further depression as you realize that no matter how much you “love” your AI girlfriend she will never truly love you back because she can’t think or feel, and fundamentally isn’t real.
On one hand this is obviously absurd but on the other hand I don’t actually know how one could solve the sheer scale of pedophilia happening on their platform without some dystopian shit. It seems like there is a maximum size for something like discord because at the scale it is now I’m not sure how you could possibly moderate it. I’ll probably stop using it if they implement this but I can definitely understand why they feel like it’s a good idea.
Nah gatekeeping is good. I agree this place and the fediverse in general are massive echo chambers and that’s bad, but the more of the general public that gets on a platform the worse it gets. Obviously you can’t have an IQ filter or a test to get on, so a janky hard to use interface is good enough to scare away Facebook drones and brainrot zombies.