58008

Sorry fam, I can buy you maybe 5 minutes. Make 'em count.

One of the few things I remember from my French classes in high school was that the letter is called "double V" in that language. Why did English opt for the "U" instead?

You can hear the French pronunciation here if you're unfamiliar with it:

https://www.frenchlearner.com/pronunciation/french-alphabet/

V and W are right next to each other in alphabetical order, which seems to lend further credence to the idea that it should be "Double V" and not "Double U". In fact, the letter U immediately precedes V, so the difference is highlighted in real-time as you go through the alphabet:

• ...
• U
• V
• W
• X
• Y
• Z

It's obviously not at all important in the grand scheme of things, but I'm just curious why we went the way we did!

Cheers!

I've now watched both. I didn't know the 2024 version was a remake, or I'd have watched that second, but I actually think that watching them in 'reverse' order is a better experience. If you've already seen both, maybe you can sympathise with that view.

Both films are excellent, don't get me wrong. But there are subtle (and some not-so-subtle) differences that really, really make the overall experience very different, including the impressions and understandings you come away with. The newer film is almost insultingly Hollywoodised, as it waterboards you with exposition that the original has no problem risking you not figuring out on your own.

Please do yourself a favour and don't read up on either film before watching them. I've been reading reviews of the newer film that completely spoil scenes in the original that were different. It's unreal how cavalier people are with that sort of thing 😒

So, my recommendation is to watch James MacAvoy absolutely demolishing the scenery with his chompers (I mean that in the best possible way), and then grab a cuppa and a blanket and watch the original.

This started in my head as a plot device in a story, but I was wondering if it'd actually fly in the real world.

There are many public figures who almost certainly have closets which are positively creaking to bursting point with skeletons. Politicians, especially. Can you hire a private detective to investigate someone without having a clear goal in mind? Like, just "investigate until the money runs out" kinda thing, in the hopes that eventually something incriminating or reputationally hazardous is found?

Is this legal? If so, who should we send the P.I.s after first? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

It would be interesting to see how certain people would behave if they simply heard we were planning this. Like, would JD Vance suddenly start burning shit in a barrel in his backyard if he heard about the army of P.I.s we've paid to look into him? We could make that the scheme: go through the motions of crowdfunding an investigation, but the real P.I. will be watching the named individuals and seeing what they do in response to the threat 👀

I enjoy the way forums work and how they're laid out. I also love how useful they are, especially when so many companies are replacing their entire communities with a Discord channel, which is less than ideal. I only use a few forums, but I'd like to find some more to browse through, it doesn't matter the topic!

My wee list:

• TIGSource Forums - Video game developers big and small post here, there's even a section for showcasing work-in-progress projects which is really cool.
• The Metal Archives Forums - The main site is pretty much the gold standard for metal music cataloguing. The forums are obviously about the metal genre, too.
• Cook'd and Bomb'd - This is a comedy aficionado forum. It's about all comedy, but it originally focused on the work of Chris Morris (Brass Eye, The Day Today).

EDIT: "Meal" to "metal" 🤦‍

If it is, I assume it's measured in thousandths of a gram or something, but are we all nevertheless a wee bit heavier than we ought to be?

A single mildly bumpy ride won't turn you into an NFL domestic abuser, but over the course of 20+ years? And if you were on horses or in rickety carts from the time you were a squishy infant? Boom, curdled grey matter.

No horses = no war, no murder, just pure enlightenment and peace on Earth.

Beware the horse 👀

The theory, which I probably misunderstand because I have a similar level of education to a macaque, states that because a simulated world would eventually develop to the point where it creates its own simulations, it's then just a matter of probability that we are in a simulation. That is, if there's one real world, and a zillion simulated ones, it's more likely that we're in a simulated world. That's probably an oversimplification, but it's the gist I got from listening to people talk about the theory.

But if the real world sets up a simulated world which more or less perfectly simulates itself, the processing required to create a mirror sim-within-a-sim would need at least twice that much power/resources, no? How could the infinitely recursive simulations even begin to be set up unless more and more hardware is constantly being added by the real meat people to its initial simulation? It would be like that cartoon (or was it a silent movie?) of a guy laying down train track struts while sitting on the cowcatcher of a moving train. Except in this case the train would be moving at close to the speed of light.

Doesn't this fact alone disprove the entire hypothesis? If I set up a 1:1 simulation of our universe, then just sit back and watch, any attempts by my simulant people to create something that would exhaust all of my hardware would just... not work? Blue screen? Crash the system? Crunching the numbers of a 1:1 sim within a 1:1 sim would not be physically possible for a processor that can just about handle the first simulation. The simulation's own simulated processors would still need to have their processing done by Meat World, you're essentially just passing the CPU-buck backwards like it's a rugby ball until it lands in the lap of the real world.

And this is just if the simulated people create ONE simulation. If 10 people in that one world decide to set up similar simulations simultaneously, the hardware for the entire sim realty would be toast overnight.

What am I not getting about this?

Cheers!