imperialismus's recent activity

  1. Comment on Turkey and Germany in spicy feud over doner kebab in ~food

    imperialismus
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    If you go to Berlin, you'll find more places selling döners than bratwursts. At least that was my experience, and it was over ten years ago. I find it interesting that it seems they're not trying...

    If you go to Berlin, you'll find more places selling döners than bratwursts. At least that was my experience, and it was over ten years ago.

    I find it interesting that it seems they're not trying to make it some kind of special geographic designation. Like, you can't call a sparkling wine Champagne unless it's from the Champagne district of France. But these guys aren't trying to say a döner kebab has to come from Turkey. Instead, they're trying to create a very rigid definition of what ingredients and methods are allowed to call something döner.

    Kebabs in general, and döner in particular, have quickly risen as the preferred late-night snack across Europe. It's kind of a difficult issue when you have an ethnic food gain widespread popularity abroad through a diaspora community, but it certainly feels to me like this particular food has been so widely adopted it no longer belongs to Turks living in Turkey alone. My entirely unscientific impression is that most döner shops are still run by people with a Turkish background, but one, two or three generations removed from the country.

    4 votes

  3. Comment on What is a non-professional situation, area or activity in which you are uniquely experienced or skilled? in ~talk

    imperialismus
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    You just reminded me of when my father taught me how to drive, and made me hill start, in winter, on a street so steep it later became a one-way street (you can only drive downwards). It was an...

    You just reminded me of when my father taught me how to drive, and made me hill start, in winter, on a street so steep it later became a one-way street (you can only drive downwards). It was an old VW Caravelle that I actually accidentally managed to hill start in third gear (which is absurd).

    My car is manual because it's old, and automatics didn't really become standard until around ten years ago where I live. You just made me realize if I ever have kids, I'm definitely going to be milking the uphill-both-ways-in-the-snow angle of learning how to drive.

  4. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~games

  5. Comment on Dear Mr. Borges, which translation should I read? in ~books

    imperialismus
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    It wasn't intended as a personal insult. You could respond to the substance of the comment, which wasn't bound up in the choice of one word, or leave it be.

    It wasn't intended as a personal insult. You could respond to the substance of the comment, which wasn't bound up in the choice of one word, or leave it be.

    4 votes

  6. Comment on Dear Mr. Borges, which translation should I read? in ~books

    imperialismus
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    I have to say, I disagree with this kind of language mysticism. I don't have any particular personal skin in the game, so to speak, since English isn't my native language. But it hasn't been my...
    • Exemplary

    I have to say, I disagree with this kind of language mysticism. I don't have any particular personal skin in the game, so to speak, since English isn't my native language. But it hasn't been my experience, learning English over the course of many years, that the language requires some special kind of specificity. English has an insanely large vocabulary owing to it being a global language that borrows liberally from other languages, but most people's working vocabulary is much smaller.

    It's a bit too much in the realm of linguistic determinism for me to propose that something like the genre of magical realism is born out of the language itself, rather than the culture. Magic realism is associated with Latin America, not Spain. And there are many examples of works that fit the theme and techniques that originate from elsewhere. The most prominent, which Gabriel Garcia Marquez cited as a formative influence, is Kafka's Metamorphosis. Kafka wrote in German - a language stereotyped for its rigidity and lack of imagination. And sure enough, people are still debating how to translate that famous first line.

    I think, rather, it's a common experience that writing in a foreign language makes us think harder about exactly what it is we want to say. Because we can't just express ourselves in the way we find most natural, that prompts us to examine our thoughts more deeply - but it can also cause us to simplify complex things, because we can't figure out how to say them in the foreign language, so it's not exactly a lifehack for writing better essays. I've often found when learning foreign languages that they make odd distinctions that my language does not - but also that they fail to make distinctions that mine does. They're both more and less precise. Russian, for instance, makes a distinction between one-way and multi-directional movement: different verbs. And yet it fails to make a grammatical distinction between definite and indefinite. It's (to a foreigner) absurdly precise in some ways and absurdly imprecise in others.

    9 votes

  7. Comment on Collecting sex-crazed zombie cicadas on speed: Scientists track a bug-controlling super-sized fungus in ~science

    imperialismus
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    As an example of what might happen, consider Toxoplasma gondii. A parasite that reproduces in cats, and is known to modify rodents' behavior to make them more likely to be eaten by cats so that...

    As an example of what might happen, consider Toxoplasma gondii. A parasite that reproduces in cats, and is known to modify rodents' behavior to make them more likely to be eaten by cats so that the parasite may reproduce. T. gondii is actually incredibly common in humans; by some estimates, as much as half of the world's population has a latent infection. Although toxoplasmosis is a disease, the vast, vast majority of people infected with it are asymptomatic.

    5 votes

  8. Comment on Why Mount Rainier is the US volcano keeping scientists up at night in ~enviro

    imperialismus
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    In terms of US cities, San Fransisco being located right on the San Andreas faultline has to be up there.

    I'm pretty sure Tacoma has been rated one of the top 2 worst located cities (along with New Orleans) because it is right in the pathway of a lahars going to puget sound (from what I understand they do tend to have usual pathways).

    In terms of US cities, San Fransisco being located right on the San Andreas faultline has to be up there.

    9 votes

  9. Comment on Collecting sex-crazed zombie cicadas on speed: Scientists track a bug-controlling super-sized fungus in ~science

    imperialismus
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    Zombie fungi are so fascinating. Out of idle curiosity, I wondered how many infected cicadas one would have to eat to get high, or at least noticeably stimulated. I found what appears to be the...

    Zombie fungi are so fascinating.

    Out of idle curiosity, I wondered how many infected cicadas one would have to eat to get high, or at least noticeably stimulated. I found what appears to be the original paper. It states clearly that the substance produced by this fungus isn't amphetamine, it's cathinone. Cathinone belongs to the amphetamine class, but so do Ecstasy and the antidepressant Wellbutrin, and many others. Cathinone is the active ingredient in the psychoactive plant khat, a popular drug in East Africa and parts of Arabia. It's much milder than amphetamine (speed, Adderall, etc), although I can see the confusion in naming a class of drugs and also a principal member of that class the same thing. The paper does confirm that a related fungus produces psilocybin though.

    But a more accurate headline might be "cicadas on khat", which doesn't sound as exciting.

    As for how many you'd have to eat? Well, you'd only have to consume the infected bit, but they only contained nanogram levels of cathinone, so probably hundreds. Not that I recommend eating infected insects to get high, it's just a funny thought experiment.

    12 votes

  10. Comment on Denmark's male footballers have decided to refuse a pay rise for playing for the national team in order to ensure their female counterparts get equal basic pay in ~sports.football

    imperialismus
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    Fair enough. It's not a major topic I spend my time thinking about, it's just something that is a bit annoying every time it pops up and every time I say nothing, and usually nobody else expresses...

    Fair enough. It's not a major topic I spend my time thinking about, it's just something that is a bit annoying every time it pops up and every time I say nothing, and usually nobody else expresses my viewpoint either, it annoys me a tiny bit more. I said my piece now though. I'll let you off the hook and not drag it out. I didn't mean to upset you and you didn't mean to upset me, it's just how it goes.

    3 votes

  11. Comment on Denmark's male footballers have decided to refuse a pay rise for playing for the national team in order to ensure their female counterparts get equal basic pay in ~sports.football

    imperialismus
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    I truly didn't intend to be uncharitable. Let me work you through how I interpreted your comment: You've never heard of an official match being played on artificial (I assumed this statement...

    I truly didn't intend to be uncharitable. Let me work you through how I interpreted your comment:

    1. That's the first time I hear of an official match on artificial grass. 2) Not even in subdivisions. 3) Ultimately, if you can't have a match on grass, than you can't have a match.
    1. You've never heard of an official match being played on artificial (I assumed this statement didn't exclusively pertain to the World Cup, especially in context of #2)
    2. Not even in lower divisions
    3. If you don't have grass, you can't have a match

    Forgive me then for thinking you're saying you don't want even lower divisions of professional football to play if they don't have a grass pitch. Hopefully you see that the way you wrote your comment, my interpretation wasn't exactly going out of its way to twist your words, which wasn't my intention. I won't pursue that further though since you clarified it wasn't what you meant.

    You are right though that there is a double standard. The men's WC in 2026 in Canada/US/Mexico will entail millions spent in developing new types of hybrid grass to replace the artificial turf in some of the Canadian and US venues, including US indoor venues. Unfortunately the money simply didn't exist for that in women's football in 2015. You can't compare Canada's women's WC to Russia's sportswashing extravaganza, but I do see the hypocrisy. Drawing in human rights, though, as mentioned in a link in your previous comment, is frankly laughable. Human rights is for real issues, not the relatively minor issue that is literal turf wars in sports. Plenty of professional male footballers do ply their trade on turf. They are not in the same category as actual human rights violations.

    The reason this topic annoys me so much is that football in my country would be absolute shit if artificial turf didn't exist. Nobody, certainly not me, would argue it's actually superior to grass in ideal conditions. However, those conditions (economic and climatological) simply do not exist here most of the time. The crusade against artificial turf would severely limit the ability of certain clubs to compete internationally, despite proving that in fact they're good enough to do so. It would be insanely unfair.

    There are very real issues with artificial turf and the biggest one isn't injuries or the speed or bounce of the ball, it's the environmental pollution. The rubber pellets go everywhere and they're a major threat to nature. The EU is looking to ban rubber granulate, the most common form of filling for artificial turf pitches, in the near future. Research is ongoing to replace it, but unfortunately the alternatives tested so far have been fairly, well, shit. It would be nice if, along with spending millions to develop new types of grass for a 1-month tournament, we spent some millions on developing environmentally friendly, and hopefully more human friendly artificial turf as well, not just demonize it because it would be nice if everyone had perfect conditions and infinite money to have grass everywhere.

    Rant over, sorry, it's a topic that I've seen a million times on reddit but never typed out a real response to.

    2 votes

  12. Comment on Denmark's male footballers have decided to refuse a pay rise for playing for the national team in order to ensure their female counterparts get equal basic pay in ~sports.football

    imperialismus
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    Thanks for excluding northern latitudes from playing the game, then. It was fun while it lasted. I started to type a long comment but decided a shorter one will do. In certain climates, it's...

    Thanks for excluding northern latitudes from playing the game, then. It was fun while it lasted.

    I started to type a long comment but decided a shorter one will do. In certain climates, it's extremely hard to maintain a good year round grass pitch and in those cases, artificial is simply better. A frozen patch of dirt or a muddy swamp full of ankle murdering dumps is way worse to play on than artificial grass. In my childhood the alternative was often gravel, which is worse still. It's not unheard of at the highest level: BSC Young Boys of Switzerland played in the Champions League on artificial turf this season. Bayern Munich's youth academy trains on artificial.

    I agree that natural grass is superior when climate and economy allow for it. But if they don't, you have to allow artificial. Otherwise you're just straight up excluding certain geographic regions from the game.

    3 votes

  13. Comment on Adobe TOS: I'm an artist. I have never used Adobe Cloud software. What happens if someone else uploads my content? in ~tech

    imperialismus
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    Are you saying the promises in this section aren't legally binding?

    Are you saying the promises in this section aren't legally binding?

    Under this clause 4.3(A), we do not have the right to, and will not, use your Content to market or promote Adobe. We will not use these rights to train generative AI models on your Content and will not use the sublicense rights to have anyone else train generative AI models on your Content, except at your specific request (like you asking us to train a custom model on your Content).

    6 votes

  14. Comment on Why tackling accent bias matters at work in ~humanities.languages

  15. Comment on Adobe TOS: I'm an artist. I have never used Adobe Cloud software. What happens if someone else uploads my content? in ~tech

    imperialismus
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    I think you're vastly overestimating what rights you're granting to Adobe by agreeing to their ToS. In the ToS itself they have a summary written in non-legalese: This section is to cover their...

    I think you're vastly overestimating what rights you're granting to Adobe by agreeing to their ToS. In the ToS itself they have a summary written in non-legalese:

    Section 4.3 means:

    You own your content. But in order to use our products and services, we need you to give us permission to use your content when stored or processed in our cloud. This permission is called a license.

    This license allows us to provide our products and services to you, like if you want to share your content or publish your content on Behance. Because it’s your content — not ours.

    This license does not give us permission to train generative AI models with your or your customers’ content. We don’t train generative AI models on your or your customers’ content unless you’ve submitted the content to the Adobe Stock marketplace.

    We also ask whether you would like to help us improve our products and services, but it’s never required. When you choose to help us improve our products, we need a limited license to your content for that specific purpose.

    This section is to cover their ass if You (the generic customer, not you specifically) decide to try to screw them over. Not an attempt to actually screw You over. They cannot operate their cloud services without these rights, but at the same time, they're being quite explicit about the limited purposes for which they're allowed to use them. They don't want to get sued for putting your content on AWS, which is necessary to operate the service you're paying them for. They're not trying to sell your artworks or train AI on it.

    I'm not normally an apologist for large corporations, and I'm well aware that their approach to intellectual property is often predatory (i.e., what's ours is exclusively ours for all purposes forever, what's yours is actually also ours). But I don't think this general skepticism applies in this specific instance.

    To be clear, I get that the TOS is meant to enable Adobe to run their services in the cloud. At least for now. But there are no guarantees that this will remain the sole purpose of that license.

    If they want to change the license they have to update the ToS. If somebody writes a contract that says "You grant me the right to do X for Y purpose", they can't just start doing X for Z purpose without gathering your consent. Imagine if you give money to an investment fund to invest in stocks on your behalf, and thereby grant them a right to use that money for the purposes of stock investment. They can't then just go and blow your money on cocaine and strippers just because you gave them the right to administer your money for an entirely different purpose.

    10 votes

  17. Comment on Pride Month at Tildes: #2 - Who is a historical LGBT advocate that you admire? in ~lgbt

    imperialismus
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    Kim Friele (1935-2021) was the most important gay rights activist in Norwegian history. For several decades she was the leader of a gay rights organization called DNF-48. They successfully...

    Kim Friele (1935-2021) was the most important gay rights activist in Norwegian history. For several decades she was the leader of a gay rights organization called DNF-48. They successfully campaigned to decrimiminalize sexual relations between men (1972), to convince the Norwegian psychiatry association to cease classifying homosexuality as a mental disorder (1977) and to allow gay men to enter the military (1979). In 1981, largely due to their activism, discrimination against gay people was outlawed. She also campaigned to create a legal framework for same-sex unions with most of the same rights as marriage, although she was a staunch critic of traditional marriage as an institution, and didn't choose to marry when gay marriage was legalized in Norway despite being in a decades-long relationship and having been one of the first people to enter a legally recognized same-sex civil union.

    In 1979, Friele and her partner Wenche Lowzow came out publicly as a lesbian couple. Her partner was a member of parliament for the Conservative party, and the first gay member of parliament to come out. (She was eventually not re-nominated for parliament by her party in 1985, largely due to coming out.) The two of them were invited to testify before the US Congress on gay issues in 1982. They had to apply for special permission to enter the country and Lowzow's diplomatic passport, which he held as a member of the Norwegian parliament, was stamped with the mark "a sexual deviant" when she entered the US. Their visa also restricted them to only visit Washington DC.

    8 votes

  18. Comment on The South Korean Jeonse housing system: Revolutionary, antiquated, or simply broken? in ~life

    imperialismus
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    So the deposit is up to 70% of the home's value (according to this which was linked in the original article), which means you basically have to get a loan anyway. I guess it's good that people who...

    So the deposit is up to 70% of the home's value (according to this which was linked in the original article), which means you basically have to get a loan anyway. I guess it's good that people who maybe can't get a mortgage for 100% of a property's price can get a loan for 70%, but at the end of the rental period you don't own the property. So it's still a rental agreement after all. That this works out to be cheaper than rent while being effectively a rental system that goes through the middle man of a bank loan sounds... I don't know, kind of like a happy coincidence? I don't see a fundamental reason why this would be better for tenants than traditional rent, although I can definitely see the benefits for landlords since they get an interest free loan.

    6 votes

  19. Comment on Nürburgring 24 Hours (May 30th - June 2nd) in ~sports.motorsports

    imperialismus
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    License revoked? Ouch. Sounds like the dream is dead for a while.

    License revoked? Ouch. Sounds like the dream is dead for a while.

  20. Comment on Nürburgring 24 Hours (May 30th - June 2nd) in ~sports.motorsports