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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 21st, 2023

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  • Yeah but I don’t think the average smash and grab thief is going to be smart enough to recognize the potential value of the data on the laptop, they’re just going to pawn the thing off as quickly as possible

    Anyone smart enough to want the data probably doesn’t need to smash a window, they’ll just access the data remotely when the computer is on and the drive is unencrypted

    So even then, it only protects you from the very narrow overlap of thieves who are dumb enough to need to break into cars for a living, but smart enough to harvest data off of stolen laptops








  • Hot take: A well armed populace is important for keeping the power of the state in check, and a well armed state is important so that it can’t be easily overthrown without a majority taking up arms against it

    Basically, domestic mutually assured destruction will keep everyone playing by our agreed upon rules


  • But even this application is limited to the mere reduction of copying of works previously engraved or drawn; for, however ingenious the process or surprising the results of photography, it must be remembered that this art only aspires to copy, it cannot invent. The camera, it is true, is a most accurate copyist, but it is no substitute for original thought or invention.

    -The Crayon, 1855

    In particular, art historians are wary of the “high-tech” look of computer-generated images, and they tend to keep away from them for that reason alone. In a sense, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy: as long as the majority of art historians shy away from computer art, the historical discourse surrounding the new images will remain an impoverished “ghetto”… … It is true, I would point out, that any new technology seems at first to have an overwhelming, often irrelevant meaning that comes from the peculiarities of its medium. When prints first appeared in the fifteenth century, they had such a different “look” that they were segregated from more traditional media.

    -James Elkins, Art Institute of Chicago, 1993










  • The reactor was never in danger of turning into a nuke or rendering huge swathes of Europe uninhabitable. Nuclear explosions only happen under tightly engineered conditions. A big pile of molten reactor slag, while certainly dangerous, can’t turn into a bomb.

    The danger wasn’t that it would cause a nuclear explosion, it was that it would melt its way into a large reservoir of water underneath the reactor, instantly turning it all into steam, causing a massive explosion that would fling radioactive material over a much wider area

    I don’t know if there was a risk of that happening in reality, but that’s how it was portrayed and explained in the show