I'm not high right now I swear I just had this thought going through my head for a while.

Imagine you had an Eve online (never played) style space game. There are 1000 servers, organized in a grid 10x10x10. Each server is simulating a region of space corresponding to their grid position, and connected via a network link only to the servers right next to it, so as to facilitate traveling between them.

The game is populated by a bunch of bots flying around shooting each other or whatever they're doing. If too many bots happen to be on the same server, it gets overwhelmed, everything on this one specific server slows down to slideshow levels.

I posit that, over time, the bots would tend to get stuck in this laggy region of space. If they fly around randomly, they'd encounter the laggy region of space eventually, and it would take them a lot longer to get out again.

Furthermore, the neighboring servers might also slow down, to a lesser degree, because they have to wait for the laggy server which is unable to respond quickly when handing over bots.

The observable result would be (a) clumping, like how matter clumps together in the universe due to gravity, and (b) time would seem to slow down in the clumped up area, like it does in the theory of relativity.

(a) At a sufficiently large scale, like trillions of servers and bots, this might look like a large scale attracting force. I can even imagine that two large bots swarms, flying past each other, might get stuck more towards their common center point, effectively creating a kind of orbital mechanic. Though maybe not, you'd have to simulate this to see if you could make this happen.

(b) The bots in the clumped up area, being bots simulated by the overwhelmed server, would not notice that time has slowed locally. But if you had two bots, one flies around the empty parts of space, while the other flies into the clump and then comes back out, it would seem like more time has passed for the bot that was in empty space the whole time.

I just bought an ice cream machine with a compressor for half price. I thought it would be easy (it isn't) but I am nerding out.

I will explain to you all, to my best understanding, some theory about frozen deserts.

First, about ice formation: Imagine some water-ice mixture. Liquid H₂O molecules will, with some probability pertaining to their low kinetic energy and being next an ice crystal, join the ice crystals, making the ice crystal grow. At the same time, water molecules on the surface of the ice crystal, will, with some probability related to their kinetic energy, break loose of the crystal structure and join the liquid water.

If more molecules go from liquid to ice, more ice will form. If more molecules go from ice to liquid, the ice melts. What effect dominates depends on the average kinetic energy of the water molecules aka the temperature. Above 0 °C, more ice melts than freezes onto crystals; below, more freezes than melts.

Now, if, instead of pure water, you dissolve sugar (or salt or ethanol or whatever) into the water, that will make it less likely for liquid water molecules to join the ice crystals, because the sugar is in the way of the water molecules wanting to join the ice. It makes the liquid-to-solid transition less common, less probable, because there are just less liquid water molecules next to the ice surface. Because the sugar doesn't join the ice crystals itself, the ice is is just pure water, and the opposite ice-to-liquid transition is not affected by the sugar.

So, in a sugar-in-water solution, for the same temperature, less H₂O molecules will join the ice, while the same amount will melt as in the pure water case. This effectively depresses the freezing point. You now will need a lower temperature than 0 °C to form ice in order to make up for this. You can approximately calculate this temperature quite easily because the drop in freezing point is proportional to the amount of sugar (or salt ...) molecules in the solution.

Interestingly, the mass of the sugar doesn't matter, only the number of molecules does: If you dissolve a certain amount of sucrose (a double sugar) molecules, it will affect the freezing point the same way as adding the same amount of glucose molecules, even though glucose is half the mass. The same goes for salt: One NaCl, because it splits up when dissolved in water, will depress the freezing point approximately like two sugar molecules.

The second important point: The concentration of sugar in the water increases as ice forms. The sugar stays in the liquid solution; the ice is pure water. So more ice means a higher sugar concentration in the liquid that remains, depressing the freezing point of the remaining liquid. This means that for any specific temperature, sugar-water will freeze only partially to a certain percentage. You can calculate (for example), if you have 500 g of sucrose dissolved in 1 l of water, and you freeze that to -18 °C, about 79% of the water will be in ice form.

you can't hide from the truth, because the truth is all there i-i-is
you can't hide from the truth, because the truth is all there i-i-is

• Today's Self-Werewolves might be limited, but we're only 14 months away from Full-Self-Werewolf.
• We need to be very concerned about the existential threat of General Werewolves.
• What effect will Werewolves have on the Economy?
• It's important that we loosen copyright protection to support the development of Werewolves.
• Will a Werewolf take your job?
• Can a Werewolf Assistant make you more productive?

I bought some very cheap enameled steel (not cast iron, stamped steel) pots, for cooking pasta and potatoes and such.

Background: After I dropped my decades old stainless steel pasta pot and the plastic handle broke off, I got some cheap IKEA so-called "stainless steel", which is chrome-free, and it rusted (do not recommend). So I'm trying enameled steel since it's cheap and cannot rust (well except the rims which just have some chromed steel crimped on I guess). Only 40 € for four pots in different sizes.

I can boil water on the electric stove at full blast, and that hasn't broken them, but I also have a super powerful mini induction hob, and that's like 10x faster and I'm afraid to try that in case it might shatter or warp.

Theoretically they're great for cooking liquids because they're not reactive, thin, light and good on induction but I'm kind of afraid of breaking them. Enameled steel used to be a thing here in Germany but pretty rare now. It seems to be almost unheard of in the US, but maybe some people on here from around the world have some experience about what sort of abuse these pots should be able to take.

You all know and love debunking. But have you heard of pre-bunking?

One approach is so-called “pre-bunking” - the targeted presentation of other perspectives and fact-based information. This involves being proactive instead of just reacting. In other words, not just trying to refute disinformation after the fact.

Check out the big brain on Mr. Osintguy. I spent way too much time looking at their sponsors. You can find the funniest shit in their mission statements:

PulseOfEurope: Defend the heart of Europe – with your vote.

iac Berlin: Understanding and developing relational approaches in the field of philanthropy

Relational approaches are increasingly recognized for their potential to support sustainable solutions and to nurture greater resilience while navigating complex challenges.

The good Lobby: We democratise lobbying

Toguna Leadership:

What do we see as the art of leading people? To be an invested sparring partner as those we lead wrestle with the most fundamental questions, we all bring to work and life: Does my contribution matter? Do I belong (here)? Will I stay relevant and have a future (here)?

Front Europjeski: Literally just "European Front", I guess Eastern Front was too on the nose?

Very clever puzzle game. Combines Sokoban-like block pushing with predicate logic. So for example, if you create a rule like "Walls is you", you now control the walls, or you can undo an existing "Walls is stop"-rule and the walls are now non-colliding. The rules themselves are created/destroyed by pushing three blocks together: object IS property.

Pro-Israel American academic cries of 'Islamo-fascist mob', claims Malaysia 'unsafe' for travellers despite spending days here

KUALA LUMPUR, April 25 — Pro-Israel academic Bruce Gilley whose events were cancelled by the Ministry of Higher Education has now accused Malaysia of being an “unsafe” country to travel to, despite spending several days here.

Gilley also accused Putrajaya of stirring an “Islamo-fascist mob” after receiving backlash for his remark claiming Malaysian leaders of advocating a “second Holocaust” for Jews.

“I have safely departed from Malaysia, one step ahead of the Islamo-fascist mob whipped up by the government there.

“This is not a safe country to travel to now. Updates to follow,” he wrote on his X account.

Despite his claim, there was no such mob protesting or physically harassing him in the country.

This guy is something else. He wrote an article called "The Case for Colonialism" (archive):

There are three ways to reclaim colonialism. One is for governments and peoples in developing countries to replicate as far as possible the colonial governance of their pasts—as successful countries like Singapore, Belize, and Botswana did. The “good governance” agenda, which contains too many assumptions about the self-governing capacity of poor countries, should be replaced with the “colonial governance” agenda. A second way is to recolonize some regions. Western countries should be encouraged to hold power in specific governance areas (public finances, say, or criminal justice) in order to jump-start enduring reforms in weak states. Rather than speak in euphemisms about “shared sovereignty” or “neo-trusteeship,” such actions should be called “colonialism” because it would embrace rather than evade the historical record. Thirdly, in some instances, it may be possible to build new Western colonies from scratch.

He wants to "reclaim" colonialism and make new colonies. Guess where he got this idea?

His views about the good side of colonialism were strongly influenced by his years as a journalist. We has worked in Hong Kong for the Far Eastern Economic Review, an English language weekly with a good audience among the political and economic elite, and a typical product of the British colonial empire, now defunct. It stood for the values which Gilley defends in his essay: Free government, free press, free market.

In Hong Kong he got to know the last British governor, Chris Patten, and he saw how this man had the guts to defend ‘the fundamental values of British colonialism’ in the face of a powerful Chinese neighbour. (source | archive)

Also in there is this hot take:

"Academics keep writing about the glorious slave revolt of Haiti (1791-1804). As if it still is the best thing that could have happened to Haiti. But it is the worst thing that happened to Haiti."

So... you've probably noticed that when downloading a game or doing serious p2p piracy, your internet latency suffers: websites take longer to load, video chats stutter, online games glitch.

Well, good news! You can do something about that if you have a router capable of running the free OpenWrt firmware.

The problem of downloads (or uploads) clogging up the pipes is called bufferbloat. Basically, there's a traffic jam somewhere, usually where your ISP throttles your internet speed. This means data packets have to queue up behind whatever data is clogging up the pipes, and so they get delivered with a noticeable latency.

Some boffins have looked at that and identified ways to improve the situation:

1. Have shorter buffers, so stuff cannot queue up as much.
2. Create express lanes where other traffic can skip the queue of Final Fantasy asset deliveries.
3. Tell the Final Fantasy asset delivery service to slow the fuck down.

Unfortunately, the queuing policy and the size of the buffers coming into your home is controlled by the ISP, so you can't really do much about that, but you can actually do #3.

This works by setting a speed limit on the OpenWrt router in your home, which tells anyone sending too much shit your way to slow down, which means the buffer on the ISPs side never get full, and therefore no traffic jam! You won't even notice you're downloading Final Fantasy. The web browsing and video chatting will feel like there's no download going on at all. You got to set the bandwidth limit 10-20% below your actual internet speed though, which I think is well worth it.

https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/traffic-shaping/sqm

Robert Habeck (German economy minister, Greens) about the DFB (German Football Association) ditching Adidas and signing a sponsorship deal with Nike:

I can barely imagine the German football jersey without the three stripes. For me, Adidas and black-red-gold have always belonged together. A piece of German identity. I would have hoped for a bit more economic patriotism.

So there is a report going around (originally by Der Spiegel and ZDF), based on "research" by Adrian Zenz, about German companies' involvement in Uyghur oppression. I couldn't find the document that Zenz is basing this on.

In this article, though not directly related to the allegations against BASF and VW, they put a face to Uyghur oppression: Gulpiya Qazybek, a Kazakh woman from Xinjiang (left for Almaty in 2019), confesses her involvement in spying on people and even helping detain them. She says her own mother was also imprisoned.

I read through a bunch of articles based on interviews with her, the first one I could find is from 2021 (see sources at the end).

I found some discrepancies:

• None of the pre-2024 articles mention her being complicit. The older articles are just about her mother being in prison.

• According to Der Spiegel, her mother was 65 in 2017, but according to Eurasianet, she was 78 in 2022.

• According to Der Spiegel (Feb 2024), the mother was released and put under house arrest in autumn of 2023. The Telegraph article (Jan 2024) does not mention this, but says "Gulpyia campaigns relentlessly for the Chinese government to free her elderly mother", implying she is still imprisoned.

• According to Der Spiegel, two of them were responsible for monitoring 12 families. The Telegraph article, however, says "she was ordered to monitor 60 families".

• According to Der Spiegel, the mother was sentenced to 15 years. All the other articles say 12.

• In 2021 New East Archive article, the timeline is: The mother gets detained more than 5 years ago, turns up in the hospital several months later. They get told that she was sentenced by a court 8 months after that. In the 2024 Telegraph story, the mother gets detained by the end of 2017, then, 8 months later, she is in the hospital, and then, the following year, they are told of her sentencing. So this "8 months" figure is after the hospital in story one, but before the hospital in story two. And the detention in story one cannot possibly take place by the end of 2017 (as in story two), because it is supposedly more than 5 years before Dec 2021, i.e. 2016 or earlier.

• In the 2021 New East Archive article, she says she "know[s] of people who sleep in their clothes in case they are detained in the night." In the 2022 Meduza story, the people sleeping in their clothes are her relatives. In the 2024 Der Spiegel article, the people doing this are farmers, but she ("we") eventually did that also. This anecdote goes from basically hearsay to something that happened to her personally.

• In the New East Archive story, her mother tells her she is in the hospital because she was kicked in the chest during interrogation, and there is no mention of any other health condition. In the Telegraph article, her mother "had been diagnosed with a brain tumour, and her health was failing". Though the mother does does also tell her "they beat me."

Sources

• New East Archive (London-based NGO) | archive (dated Dec 06, 2021)
• Meduza (Latvian-based Russian opposition media) | archive (dated Jun 07, 2022; but the original Russian version is from Mar 31, 2022)
• Eurasianet (US NGO, chair former RFE/RL, funded by NED etc.) | archive (dated Sep 29, 2022)
• The Daily Telegraph (UK arch-conservative establishment media) | archive (dated Jan 06, 2024)
• Der Spiegel (German establishment media) | archive (dated Feb 02, 2024)

The ~~anti~~-racist libs of "Munich is colorful" are calling for a protest against an event by a Jewish-Palestinian peace group.