I personally like saying the word, but I'll admit this is one of the worse examples I've used in a while. Because I genuinely was trying to imply they were dumb, which makes it a more serious use of the word.
Personally I can't imagine saying that word in reference to anyone with a true disability. In my social circles, retarded is reserved for people acting in dumb ways due to really bad social skills or often even self centeredness or laziness. Using it in regards to the teachers was probably too close to a serious use of it and I shouldnt have. Sorry.
Back in my day you to to download a couple GB worth of cygwin, and that wasn't an actual environment, basically just a GNU toolchain compiled for windows. But it got you like....grep and bash and stuff that ran natively on windows which was kinda cool.
Does any older folk here remembers when NT was the Cool New Thing (TM) and it had by design support to multiple subsystems plopped over the NT API, and Win32 was just one of them alongside POSIX (Interix) and OS/2? There was even a _very short_ time span when Interix was actually usable (it was extremely short though)
Yes, the only reason I cared for Linux in first place was that the POSIX support wasn't that good.
I am convinced that if POSIX subsystem was UNIX serious, GNU/Linux would never taken off on PC, and the whole would be divided between SGI, HP-UX, Solaris, Aix and Windows NT.
Cygwin was fun. I'd done zero development on Windows, but about 10 years ago I had to figure out how to deploy some nightly shell scripts across a bunch of local computers in a few dozen offices, where about 80% were MacOS and the rest were Windows. I don't remember exactly how I rigged it, but basically cygwin allowed me to keep the scripts as they were and trigger them in place, with a few small modifications.
I never want to deal with that again ;)
[edit] fwiw, Termux on Android is similarly a fun pseudo-environment. It's a nice and helpful toy.
The biggest issue I remember is directory seperators... windows of course using \ which bash would then interpret as an escape. Cygwin mostly papered over that from what I can recall, but it could lead to some weirdness, like sometimes you'd get C:\\path\\es\\like\\this
You could also use forward slashes, like C:/path/subpath, which has worked since Windows 1.0/DOS 2.0.
That's handy when you're entering paths in a Cygwin/MSYS Bash shell, but might not help much if you're trying to parse or otherwise work with existing patgh variables composed with backslashes.
Yes, you could if you were entering them manually, but some apps that generated file names would screw it up. I think they were using some sort of stdlib function to get the path seperator. Forward slash paths working in native windows apps also wasn't quite a given, either. Keep in mind this was a loooong time ago... like windows xp era maybe, even.
Yeah, I recall directory paths being the biggest PITA with running scripts in cygwin. But I mean, that was a very minor set of things to fix compared to what would've had to be written in anything else available at the time.
Doing retail office deployments of custom code on employee computers is a weird niche, and you find whatever works and hope you can maintain it somehow. Cygwin was awesome though, saved me a ton of time and the client a lot of money for the moment. (The client later stipulated to all future franchisees that they had to buy only Macs, lol)
what do you mean? that's still the only way to work as a human in windows. wsl1 almost replaced it, but obviously they scrapped it.
if you must use windows, it's because you will compile for windows. so you install MSYS, which is a linux distro-ish compiled native for windows. and do your work.
wsl2 (and this apple thing) is just a meme. if you're working in it, you're better of just installing Linux or ssh'ing to a server.
I purchased an iPhone 15 a few months ago and ended up making this discovery myself. CarPlay would refuse to launch unless I enabled Siri. I didn't do any of the Siri setup, or anything but the app would hard refuse to launch unless I went and toggled on Siri. Maybe that's different depending on your make/model, or the specific infotainment system in your car, but in my '21 Kia Forte, Siri is a very hard requirement.
Co-work is damn near magic. I've been working on a mapping project the past few days, am probably a couple hundred prompts deep in to it (I'm doing some very weird stuff with the data to produce a hybrid map). The processing pipeline is something like 12k lines of python and counting.
In a healthy society there would be no need for intoxicants with so severe harms (BBC list for substances by harm is a good reference) and thus no exposure for a addictive substance.
Now the norm decides that, almost without exceptions, we must all be exposed.
That’s an impossible to prove opinion without changing the laws of physics. But there are some precedence we can refer to as a counterargument.
1. There have been plenty of other substances that have been banned which were legal and widely taken since before such laws existed. Demonstrating that governments are willing to control substances that were previously legal.
2. There have also been other drugs that have been legalized after they were previously banned. Proving that governments are willing to accept the risk of people taking drugs.
3. And your augment about alcohol specific actually did happen in some places. It is commonly referred to as "prohibition". And that decision never stuck.
The reality is drugs aren't legal nor illegal based on solely the harm they do. They are judged based on how easy they are to regulate (read: monetize and tax) and the subsections of society which enjoy them.
To expand on that last point: there's a reason cannabis was illegal in most countries while cigarettes weren't. And that reason wasn't because cannabis was considered more dangerous than tobacco. It's was because certain leaders wanted us to think that the people who smoked cannabis was more dangerous than the people that smoked cigarettes.
> 3. And your augment about alcohol specific actually did happen in some places. It is commonly referred to as "prohibition". And that decision never stuck.
> Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, alcohol has been strictly banned in Iran, where consuming, producing, or selling alcohol is punishable by prison, floggings, and fines. Despite the official ban, Iranians still drink foreign and homemade alcoholic beverages that are sold on the black market. Over the past year, there has been a spike in the cases of fatal alcohol poisoning, according to medical officials in Iran.
And I'm pretty sure few Europeans nor Americans would want to mimic the laws seen in those Islamic countries. Even putting aside the depressing rise of nationalist parties in the west, Saudi and the US and EU are just culturally very different. So what works there isn't necessarily going to work here.
You've completely missed the point. People don't drink alcohol because it's healthy. Just like people don't eat cake because it's healthy, nor drink coffee because it's healthy.
They do it because the unhealthy effects are desirable.
Which is why moderation is the key. There's absolutely nothing wrong with someone enjoying a drink. But there is with people who need to drink. And that's just as true for sugar addition and caffeine addition too.
Now I'm not suggesting that the negative effects of all vices are equal, because clearly they're not. But suggesting that total abstinence is the answer completely misses the point of why people enjoy a drink to begin with. You're setting an unreal expectation that will never work with society. Just like telling people that they shouldn't ever eat cake or drink coffee would be an unrealistic demand on society.
We already have a mountain of evidence that prove the removal of said vice without solving the underlying problem only drives people will just switch to something else. Often that "something else" can be much much worse. So it's far better to give people outlets but ensure there is support to ensure they descend into dependence (and the vast majority of people do consume in moderation).
> I was only using your own framing. You're the one who lazered in on health.
Actually no I wasn't. It was shrubby who mentioned "health" in the medical sense. I was replying to them using "health" in the social wellness sense. ie making the point that "health" is a nuanced term and shouldn't be used in an absolute way like they, and yourself now too, have done.
Health isn't just about physicality. There are social and emotional benefits. For example, enjoying a beer, or glass of wine, with my wife on a Friday evening when we rant about work is a great way to unwind for the weekend. It improves our mental health to have that shared experience. Our relationship is closer for spending time together. It has a net benefit despite it being an unhealthy treat.
You could replace the `wine` with `cake` in statement and have a similar point. But I don't personally enjoy cakes. Also take notice of how I'm not telling you that you shouldn't eat cakes because I don't personally like it ;)
> With alcohol this is well established to be false.
Again, you're missing the point. People enjoy stuff that isn't healthy, but sometimes that can still promote other benefits. Such as mental health. "Health" is a broader term than you give credit for.
Also the links you shared do not prove your point. There's no actual data in either of them. It's just pop-science articles with zero substance designed into scaremongering people. For example their arguments that it takes just one drink to become an addict is just laughable. The real statistics they don't print show a very different story where occasional to moderate drinking is not going to significantly increase your risk of cancer nor anything else. You're talking about fractions of a percent in the change of risk -- and that risk was already a low percentage to begin with. This is where understanding how statistics actually work makes a difference ;)
For example, some studies studies only show a correlation in 5% of cancer cases being related to alcohol consumption and that was proven against heavy drinkers. And the percentage of drinkers who have that cancer are < 1%. eg
And a lot of these studies exaggerate what I'd classed as a "light drinker". Take that link I shared:
> Even light drinkers can be at increased risk of some cancers. For example, women who have just one drink per day have a higher risk of breast cancer than those who have less than one drink a week, and risk is increased even more in heavy drinkers and binge drinkers (3-7).
If you're drinking 1 drink per day then you have a dependency. That isn't occasional consumption. I would not class that as demonstrating moderation. If you need to drink every single day then you fall into the category I described in my previous comment when I said there is an underlying problem that needs addressing.
Most people do not drink every day.
---
So to summarize:
- light and occasional drinking is a rounding error of 0 in terms of physical health risk. But it can have much more significant positive effects on mental health.
- understanding the actual statistics and how they work matter if you're going to argue about the risks to health
- people don't become alcoholics from one glass of wine
- if you don't want to drink then I agree nobody should force you. But please don't share bullshit pop-science articles claiming we're all going to become cancer-riddled addicts from an occasional drink just because you don't understand why some people do enjoy the occasional glass of wine. That just demonstrates you don't understand the subject matter.
- and please don't ignore the parallels I made about coffee and cake. They demonstrate the hypocrisy of comments where people claim absence is the only smart choice.
(and no, those bullet points were not AI generated)
edit: sorry for all the crappy grammar. I'm multitasking...badly it seems haha
I'm tempted to start the full deontology and Jellinek model on substance abuse on this, but don't have the effort now.
If we perform a cost benefit analysis on alcohol the downsides are plentiful and then some.
And the pluses are practically masked versions (taste, buzz,...) of the two major things that make human do anything: what others are doing and what I'm used to (which are pretty shit reasons to do anything IMO) it basically boils down to addiction. Not chemical, but functional and social.
Then we return to the cost benefit analysis and start figuring out how far the lying disease has progressed. The fierceness of the debate feels like a good indicator of this usually.
I'd be tempted to explain this more in depth, but I have stuff to do.
I actually don’t disagree with some of that. But that’s not the point I was discussing.
Let me put it another way: banning something that most people use sensibly and enjoy in moderation isn’t a society that anyone wants to live in nor should live in. I'm sure you'd be the first to complain if the government went after something you enjoyed that caused harm to a minority of other people.
Which is why I keep coming back to the cake analogy. The only reason people eat cake is because of the buzz and taste. Which are pretty shit reasons to do anything in your opinion. And people do get addicted to sugary snacks. Some people even eat for comfort. But a lot of other people do have self-control. Should we ban cake for everyone regardless? Of course not!
As I said in my earlier comment, the problem with substance abuse isn’t the alcohol. The alcohol is just a tool. If you banned alcohol today then people who want escapism will switch to something else. And we’ve seen this trend time and time again throughout history. And it's what any experienced doctor of medicine will also tell you.
So if you want to understand the problems of alcohol abuse better, you need to first understand what drove people to abuse alcohol. Banning alcohol isn’t a shortcut to solving that problem -- despite how much you might like it to be.
Also accusing all people who drink, even those who only do so occasionally, as being addicts (as you literally have done) is so far wrong that it’s just insulting.
Banning something that has so huge disadvantages, but has been lobbied just like cigarettes is exactly the kind of society I want to live in.
But the choice is not mine, so in that way I win.
It's a social norm and a poison from my POV and just like pfas or plastic in the drinking water I believe it should be controlled and the lobbying banned. Then we'd see the true wish of humanity.
Now our needs are manufactured, not around our wellbeing, but for what "must" be lobbied and advertised.
The norm is manufactured. Just like the addictive algorithms and almost any other thing in this world of pseudo-free will.
Even the likes of Joe Rogan are bringing up the issue, with many others so I see some light in the tunnel for my society, but so far you're right. Your side seems to be winning.
> Banning something that has so huge disadvantages, but has been lobbied just like cigarettes is exactly the kind of society I want to live in.
Alcohol isn't like cigarettes. It's more like coffee or cake in terms of the social aspect. You clearly have huge prejudice against alcohol as a whole, but you need to understand that the vast majority of people who drink, do not drink like the minority of people you associate with alcohol.
Also, cigarettes haven't been banned. Their sale has just been hugely restricted. Which is also true for alcohol.
> Now our needs are manufactured, not around our wellbeing, but for what "must" be lobbied and advertised.
You're now just reiterating the same point I made elsewhere ;)
> Your side seems to be winning.
It's not a battle to win. It’s about choice and support. You are responsible for making your own choices. But you shouldn't be dictating how others should live their own lives.
The way a healthy society works is you give people opportunities and support, and the freedom for individuals to make their own choices. However what you're advocating is taking those choices away for everyone based on your own personal prejudices of a small few. And that's not a world anyone else wants to live in.
You also keep ignoring my point that the actual subsection of society you have a problem with (alcoholics) are the same subsection of society that needs support first. If you simply take the booze away, then their underlying mental health and addiction will just drive them to switch to different substances. And if you solve their condition first, then alcohol no longer is the problem you protest so strongly against.
Simply put, you really don't understand the thing you have such a strong opinion about. And it's evidenced by the fact that you keep sidestepping the real issues behind alcohol. But you still want to restrict peoples freedoms regardless.
You're now making a rational argument against an irrational condition.
As I keep saying: the underlying causes behind alcoholism is something that needs to be specifically addressed if you don't want alcoholics to simply switch to something worse.
This is why support groups like Alcoholics Anonymous talk about people's lives and their struggles. They aren't trying to address the access to alcohol, they address the mental state that drove people to abuse alcohol.
This is the key part you keep ignoring. Making alcohol illegal doesn't solve these issues. People will still find a way to get smashed. And there's proof of this in Saudi and Iran where black markets thrive. The proof is also with people in the the EU, UK and US who keep switching from one recreational drug to the next as governments ban new substances in a game of whack-a-mole.
What you're trying to do is treat the symptom, not the cause. And that's why I keep disagreeing with you.
Root cause is the human biases and lying due to cognitive dissonance? And alcohol is a symptom that's easy to grasp.
You’re talking about waterfall management by laws and I’m talking about individual consciousness and the capability of understanding our biases? I guess that explains the perceived differences.
I stated earlier that I really don’t have the resources for this discussion in extent, but I’m leaving a draft for a blog post based on this too. I’ve been creating a matrix of different human habits to perform the cost/benefit calcucaltion. For alcohol and for practically anything individuals do.
I’ll try to sum it up here really quickly and hope for you to provide the pluses, should you have those, for alcohol. You already mentioned with strong emphasis that its normal thus right. And I don’t think either of the “facts” that we’re used to doing something (like smoking, before it was approached with honesty) or because others are doing it (like social media on the predatory and attention wrecking platforms) are good reasons, but I’ll accept that these are pluses to you.
So based on the homo economicus narrative we are rational and will make a rational choice, right? Then this matrix (a quick draft, for reference only, I hope you give me more minuses here than the buzz, the norm and the herd instinct) should work as the guiding light. https://imgur.com/a/NgV6dt9
Then we have the homo ephicus (ethical human with a twist of brutal praxis) that knows that human “mind” is actually an intuition making decisions and strategic reasoning and excuses and post-hoc justifications (thanks Jon Haidt & Hume) we use to lie to ourselves and to our societies.
So with the lingo of THN:
normal =! right
human =! reason
human === lying
But sorry, I can’t do this more clearly as the homo economicus world is putting immense pressure on the cog, I’m positioned to be. I’ll keep you in mind should I have the time to make this bit better.
I’ve never argued against the negative psychology of the minority. And understand the how it affects substance dependence. In fact I’ve talked about the psychological effects of addiction many times before on HN and have studied it in detail. Likely more than yourself owing to the fact that I also know there’s a chemical dependence component of alcohol addiction in the worst cases, which you’ve neglected to mention.
But I was never talking about addicts. I was talking about the majority of people who drive. And this is why you keep getting replies from me after your silly strawman arguments that all drinkers are alcoholics who need the government to save them.
The point you keep ignoring is that you’re repeatedly just talking about the minority and them extrapolating that like it’s equivalent to smoking. And that is simply just your own prejudices in action.
Take the cake example I keep making and you keep ignoring. People comfort eat. People get addicted to sugar. People get fat from sugar and cause a huge burden on health services, and cut their own lives short. But you’re not advocating the outright ban of sugar. Why? Because it can be consumed responsibly. And that’s the crux of the matter.
And even if we take your silly pop-science comparison with smoking, the end conclusion is still the same; smoking isn’t illegal either. It’s just heavily regulated )just like alcohol already is). So by your own silly comparison, you’re effectively just arguing for the status quo.
>In a healthy society there would be no need for intoxicants with so severe harms
Yeah but we don't live in a healthy society. We have more abundance and more advanced healthcare and drugs than ever before, but we are sick in terms of missing social connections and family unit, even in big cities. Hence why mental illnesses and substance abuse are going up.
People don't thrive on GDP line go up and cheap large screen TVs. People need friends, family, and a support network.
Yes. 100 percent agree. The addiction industry requires us to be desperate and wanting an escape, so that they can brainwash us into complicity and brain fog from hangover or doomscrollin.
Producing a lathe cut is the first (physical) step of many of pressing vinyl.
This isn’t targeting consumers, or even record stores, but record pressing plants.
This is kind of a big deal because this sort of fundamental equipment hasn’t been available new for decades. The vast majority of plants/mastering facilities are using old Scully lathes from the ‘50s and ‘60s. Those are getting ever older and harder to source parts for, and with the vinyl boom the number of pressing plants is actually going up.
You’d cut it normal equipment, with very wide groove spacing. Start the two grooves 180 degrees out of phase. They’ll never intersect.
You could do it with more than two grooves, just to having them at 360/n degrees apart. You’ll just have to make the groove spacing wider as the number of tracks go off. Of course that comes at the cost of playback tine.
Please stop saying say. It's almost as bad as the n-word. There are a lot of neurodivergent people around here.
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