As the other commentator says, medieval Europe was mostly early twenties. Studies of stone age remains suggest a first birth age average of 19.5 and contemporary hunter gather societies have a comparable average. Sexual activity generally begins earlier, during adolescence, but the most "reproductively successful" age for beginning childbearing has been shown to be around 18-19. Also, this age at first birth isnt "Average age of a child's mother" as many women would have multiple kids over their life, so the average sibling would have a much older mother at birth than the firstborn.
Its important to remember that puberty has shifted massively since industrialisation, "menarche age has receded from 16.5 years in 1880 to the current 12.5 years in western societies". So the post-puberty fecundity peak, that use to happen 17-19, when women are fully grown enough to minimise birth complications, now happens at a disressingly young 13-15. Not only is this a big social yuck for most western societies, but it's reproductively unideal, because of the complications linked to childbirth at that age.
I think this is a big part of it. Predators are stimulating and demand our attention. For most people spiders and snakes do so in a way that is upsetting, but because mammalian predators are less alien to us (and many resemble the cats and dogs we've domesticated) they're attractive rather than repellent. But while I might find a lion adorable in video, I'm sure if one walked into my garden I'd be extremely fucking attentive.
I guess like the Goths, the Franks were a barbarian tribe, who were presumably reasonably direct and... frank, compared to sophisticated imperial types.
I imagine it would be a total ballache for the person https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jul/03/they-said-i-dont-exist-but-i-am-here-one-womans-battle-to-prove-she-isnt-dead
The use of a pretend quote is one thing, but what is the middle quotation mark doing?
Manny's Milk "We'll deliver that white cream" that puts a smile on your wife's face"
Is everyone too distracted by the cringe to be infuriated at the punctuation? Wtf is happening with those quotation marks?
I think the reason for down votes is that the comment suggests that issues with dating are the reason for male loneliness, when most people in the thread would argue that believing that 'a romantic partner is the only acceptable source of meaningful emotional connection available to men' is a big part of male loneliness.
Worked in the UK, when I started my job I was given lots of hr forms, contract, info about benefits and leaflets for each of the two main unions that covered our workplace. If there was ever any issues, our line managers would remind us of our right to have a union rep present for meetings with management.
Yeah, I wasn't that excited about the idea of sequel in the first place, mostly because I didn't think there was much point to one. So when I saw Resurrections I was actually pleasantly surprised, and genuinely enjoyed the different tone and lamposting of the dumbness of unnecessary sequels.
For a long time lots of European music was mostly thorough-composed, where there was little to no repitition. Madrigals (the popular music of the renaissance) were mostly like this, the melody would follow it's own journey with no chorus / verse or other repetitive structure. I might be remembering wrong, but I think it was early baroque and Monteverdi's Orfeo that popularised repeating structures, and turns out people love them. If you back and listen to some madrigals, it's a very different approach to music. (also, there was folks music and all sorts of other traditions, which used more repeating patterns, that seem more familiar to us.)
I see where you're coming from, but you have to consider - THAT is how good it tastes, that people are willing to eat it even though it hurts. Other foods taste good, but I wouldn't eat them if they hurt me (if my teeth are sensitive, I'm happy to avoid ice cream even though I love it). But if I overdo chilli, my mouth can be on fire and the hardest part to deal with is not the pain, but the tension between waiting a minute for it to calm down or eating more immediately even though it'll make the pain worse.
Spicy food is so good people will put themselves through hell to eat it. Repeatedly.
Sometimes boost doesn't seem to download the image, so I do it again, and then there's two. Not sure what that's about.
Doesnt work for me. 25 is too long if I'm struggling, and if I start getting into it, a five minutes break spoils my flow. I've had more success with "I know you don't want to do this, so let's just do as much as we can in 10 minutes". And sometimes ten minutes is all I need to break a tasks back (writing some email I'd been avoiding), or I kinda get into it and am fine to continue. And if I'm really stressed and just want to escape even after starting, then I go spend some time de-stressing and try something else.
Some public schools and so-called 'experts' try to tell us the earth and other planets orbit around the sun. But anyone can see with the naked eye that the planets don't change brightness, even though their distance from the earth would vary vastly under this crazy heliocentric model! Fake science!
Hear a lot about flat earthers, but folks don't seem to have a problem with heliocentrism
Migration isn't as smooth as it should be. Generally it's good at transferring Google accounts, messages and phone logs, reinstalling apps, etc. But it doesn't automatically log you back in to everything, so there's usually a period where you keep opening an app for the first time since the move and have to set some things up (although I heard that was changing?). No idea about the home screen layout, as I use Lawnchair, and most custom launchers have options to save and back up layouts. But it wouldn't surprise me if it didn't...
I agree with the other commenters, it is mostly awful, screws up image searches, and I've had the browser extension that blocks it from searches installed for years.
But I have also used it, so can partly answer your question. Basically, it lets you build image collections on topics, and has convenient (but also intrusive and data harvesting) extensions / apps that make it easy to add any image you come across online to one of your boards. In the past I've used these boards for home renovation, DIY projects, world building, D&D inspiration / mood boards to share with new players, etc. And as well as just gathering together the images you save, it's pretty good at suggesting similar images.
If it wasn't so awful as a site (the out of control SEO, demanding you're logged in, presumably vast data harvesting) I'd actually use it a lot more. But I generally don't, and I'm looking for an alternative. There's something called Hoarder that you can host yourself, which could be useful. But without the network effects of humans effectively tagging and linking millions of images, it'll sadly never be as good at suggesting relevant new images as Pinterest.
Recently got my partner a miyoo mini, it looked so fun that I got myself one too. It's been really nice to just play retro games for short moments, and because it gives me a much needed break from scrolling my phone it actually feels productive and restful. I've just finally completed Link to the Past, a game I played for the first time 30 years ago but never finished.
Can we estimate how many deaths a company is responsible for?
The current news has me thinking that, while the death of any human is not something I actively relish, most people feel a certain satisfaction, relief or, at least, less sad when someone like Osama Bin Laden dies, because they were responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people.
Which got me wondering, have studies been done estimating how many legitimate insurance cases are rejected, delayed or otherwise mishandled, and how many of those result in deaths? I guess other industries are also responsible for some pretty measurable risk factors (e.g. air pollution). It would interesting to see some rough numbers of how many deaths the CEOs who choose to continue running these companies in harmful ways account for. Obviously, they are only indirectly responsible, but the same could be said about Bin Laden, he didn't fly the planes himself, he delegated.
If "AI" doesn't attract customers why are companies hyping it so hard? Are they just dumb or is there another factor?
I've seen reports and studies that show products advertised as including / involving AI are off-putting to consumers. And this matches what almost every person I hear irl or online says. Regardless of whether they think that in the long-term AI will be useful, problematic or apocalyptic, nobody is impressed Spotify offering a "AI DJ" or "AI coffee machines".
I understand that AI tech companies might want to promote their own AI products if they think there's a market for them. And they might even try to create a market by hyping the possibilities of "AI". But rebranding your existing service or algorithms as being AI seems like super dumb move, obviously stupid for tech literate people and off-putting / scary for others. Have they just completely misjudged the world's enthusiasm for this buzzword? Or is there some other reason?
Is Android increasingly inconsistent?
I feel like I'm encountering weird little tics and problems with my android devices, and those of family and friends. Just simple things where settings don't seem to be consistently applied, or the os switches something back repeatedly. For example, my apps are set to auto update, to use data as well as WiFi, etc, but every month or so I go into Play and see that some random app hasn't been updated in weeks.
Or my friend only gets Signal notifications when they open the app, despite giving full background data use, turning off adaptive battery, etc. My mother uses an alarm app that needs to display over the screen for a feature, but despite me setting that permission repeatedly Android keeps turning it off.
Is this just anecdotal bad luck? Or is all the work to preserve battery life, control background usage, etc led to an OS where the user can't control things reliably? It starting to feel a lot like MS Windows!
Why do my earbuds sound better paired to watch vs phone?
(I've got a pixel watch 2 and moto edge 40 neo, and some jlab earbuds.)
I usually listen to music on my phone, but recently linked my earbuds to my watch, and the same music played on Spotify sounds massively better on the same earbuds when played via the watch.
I assumed it was because I had installed the jlab app, and it was doing a bad job of meddling with the eq. But after uninstalling it there wasn't a noticeable difference. Is there some other setting I can adjust? Any thoughts on whether it's something my moto is doing wrong or something my pixel watch is doing right?
Its a substantial difference (although I'm not enough of an audiophile to describe it) enough that I'm now mostly playing music via my watch. But it's hitting the battery hard, so I'd rather go back to using my phone!
Site / service that will send a message at a specific date/time?
This is maybe a weird request, but I'm looking for a way to send myself some information at a specific time in the future. Basically, it's because I've got a few sites that are huge distractions for me at the moment, and I can't stop checking my accounts, responding to messages, etc. My willpower is so low, and I've got a lot of important work right now and it's starting to really mess up my life.
So my plan is to change the passwords to my accounts to a long random string, then save that string somewhere that I can't access for X days. I imagined a simple way would be to use a site that would send me an email on a date, and the content of that email would be my random passwords. But my web searches only seem to find pages telling me how to schedule my own emails, which isn't what I need.
Any advice / suggestions?
(also, in case anyone is thinking it, the sites I'm trying to block access to are all linked to the same email account, and I'm also going to change its password, so I wo
ELI5 How does chatgpt do its shit?
I hear people saying things like "chatgpt is basically just a fancy predictive text". I'm certainly not in the "it's sentient!" camp, but it seems pretty obvious that a lot more is going on than just predicting the most likely next word.
Even if it's predicting word by word within a bunch of constraints & structures inferred from the question / prompt, then that's pretty interesting. Tbh, I'm more impressed by chatgpt's ability to appearing to "understand" my prompts than I am by the quality of the output. Even though it's writing is generally a mix of bland, obvious and inaccurate, it mostly does provide a plausible response to whatever I've asked / said.
Anyone feel like providing an ELI5 explanation of how it works? Or any good links to articles / videos?
Do any languages have words for left & right that start with the same letter?
And if so, how do they label headphones, contact lenses etc?
how to find a good USB cable?
I feel like some usb cables are great, allow my devices to charge fast, connect to data reliably, etc. But it seems so difficult to find the ones that are good! I've tried buying expensive ones but it seems pretty hit and miss. Sometimes some cheapass aliexpress cable seems to beat the "good brands".
Are there standards or anything I should look out for? USB drives, sd cards, and the like have read/write speeds or different "classes" but usb cables seem to all claim to be brilliant.
Am I just being dumb?
OSR system with specific 'low level' rulebook? (Holmes/Moldvay/Mentzeresque)
One thing I loved about Holmes and Moldvay /Mentzer red boxes was having a set of rules that didn't overwhelm new players with lots of material that they won't need until later.
I know that most osr games are rules light enough that it isn't too much, but I was wondering if there are any systems out there that seperate out the 'basic' and 'expert / advanced' levels like that?
A particular peeve of mine is that spell descriptions seem so often to be presented alphabetical so that the 10 spells that might matter are lost in a bunch of pages. But even just class descriptions or saving throw tables that cover the whole range make level 1 look like a stepping stone, rather than a satisfying place to play many an adventure!
Any suggestions?
Learning computer/OS for kids, that teaches command line?
My nephews & nieces aren't currently allowed much computer access because their parents worry about screen time, inappropriate content and the like. But their mother was sharing concerns with me that they won't have the basic computer skills and understanding that we learned growing up in the 80s and 90s. Having to make computers work before you got your reward of a game was such a big motivation for me as a child. We learned to program in BASIC on spectrums and Amstrads (typing code for a game out of a magazine didn't require much knowledge but taught me a lot) and about memory management by fiddling around with AUTOEXEC.BAT/CONFIG.SYS to get DOS games running, and so on.
Are there any good educational computers / distros / OSes? Searching online mostly shows simplified GUI to access educational "games". But I was wondering if there was a Raspberry PI or linux fork or something, that was geared to create a challenging but supportive environment for learning the fundamentals.
Any sug
Any AMOLED friendly redshift / blue filter apps?
I've use Twilight for years and love the red filter for using my phone at night. But since getting an AMOLED screen it's started to frustrate me. The way Twilight seems to work means that black also gets a red tint. Previously this was great, but on amoled black is completely dark with no back-light that needs masking with red. So by shifting it red, Twilight is actually making the screen much brighter.
Tldr: Any apps that leave black as black, but give a red tint to all the other colors?
Castle Campbell, near Dollar, Scotland
Formerly know as Castle Gloom, the castle is situated in a high vantage point in the Ochil hills. It is protected on either side of the castle by two large gorges, through which thunder streams ('burns' in Scots) the Burn of Sorrow and the Burn of Care.
OSRSS: Anyone got good rss feed suggestions for osr / rpg content ?
I'm trying to get back into blogs and rss feeds after a many year hiatus. But I'm finding it hard to find active rpg blogs, so if anyone's got any good recommendations please share! (tbh, doesn't even need to pure old-school, but I'd rather avoid a "WOTC awesome new dice set!" sites).
What are up votes (uplemmies?) actually for?
Obviously, most social networks have some sort of engagement button for liking/up voting/promoting a piece of content. As well as helping users feel like they're participating, rather than just passively consuming, most networks also use the likes/ups to filter or promote content to other users.
As a dumb noob, what does the up/down vote do in lemmy in particular? Does it actually affect anything beyond changing the number beside the little arrows? I know there's some discussion about lemmy tracking 'karma' even if it's not visible in all clients. Can different instances implement "karma thresholds"? Or auto hide posts that fall beneath a certain down vote ratio?
And more subjectively, what do you feel up/down voting represents? Is it showing agreement with the post? That you want to see more posts like that? That other people should look at the post? Does it matter if this subjective purpose is actually unrelated to what the up votes do in reality?
Going to deep fry a bunch of these babies
Mix of squash / zucchini flowers. Somehow, despite the fact it'll mostly be oil, batter and salt, the fact that there's a freshly plucked flower at the centre makes me feel like I'm a healthy elf.