vatlark

First I wanted to give a shout out for the amazing work by the jmp.chat and cheogram teams for offering a great alternative to Google voice.

Now the issue; sometimes when I open cheogram it seems to forget my contacts. So all of my existing chats just show the phone numbers. The group chats still have their names.

Then the names come back later, but the problem is pretty common and renders SMS nearly impossible.

Anyone else have this problem?

I am really impressed by how well organized they are and how much they have been able to accomplish so little funding. The Global March to Gaza, then the Sumud Floatila have been some great ideas for significant peaceful action.

During the last flotilla and just afterward we saw:

• A general strike in Italy.
• Spanish and Italian war ships deployed.
• Spain's complete arms embargo is enshrined into law
• Many nations recognized Palestine for the first time and reaffirmed their recognition.
• Even the US, the most significant sponsor of the genocide, proposed the best peace plan of this administration and took a small but material step in opposition to Israel.

I'm hopeful the momentum continues and I think these people have demonstrated their trustworthiness as much as any group.

Really great maps and info on how the aid stations are distributed and operate.

You hear that basically no aid is getting distributed, but the details of the aid stations being hours away and only open 20 minutes a day if at all really clarifies how performative and meaningless the "aid" is.

...Other than salt and pepper

For me it's cumin. It's one of the few spices I buy in bulk and actually use up my supply.

In the winter it may lean towards cardamom thanks to copious amounts of chia.

Maybe it's not surprising, but moving my saved places from Organic Maps to CoMaps took maybe two button clicks.

Export, select CoMaps, done.

Now to move my donation :)

This proposed rule change is open for comment until May 19.

My comment was:

I urge the rejection of this proposed rule.

I think we can be very thankful for the definition of harm as currently defined. If we were talking about the human species there would be no doubt that significant degradation of our ability to feed, shelter, and produce offspring would indeed be considered harm.

From only an economic perspective this proposed rule change is extremely counter productive. We learn an enormous amount from animals and that knowledge creates enormous economic value.

An example is the horseshoe crab. The Virginia Institute of Marine Science estimates the value of horseshoe crabs to the medical research industry at $100M per year. In 2023, the US Fish and Wildlife Service began work to aid their reproduction and support this industry. If harm is no longer defined as a significant decline in ability to reproduce, will we be able to protect this industry?

As our technology advances we are always learning more from animals, so we don't know which animals will give us our next billion dollar industry. After we decimate a species, we may not get to choose if it goes extinct, and with each extinct species we inflict immense harm on current and future generations of humans.

• "Ein dog run dans le park, et son owner rennt après."
• "Un dog läuft in le parc, son master run après."
• "Ein doggy cour dans le parc, und der owner läuft nach ihm."

The silly language used in the 'Poland ball' memes got me wondering if that language was actually easier to understand for users of multiple languages. So I tried to get chatGPT to unite multiple languages (I tried Le Chat first but it wasn't as good).

My prompt:

Rewrite this phrase so that it is most understandable to people that only speak English, other people that only speak french, and a third group that only speaks German. You may use words from any language and you may misspell words if the word you use, although being mispelled, is more easily understood by speakers of both languages. You may not use slashes to separate two words for the same thing. You may change the phrase's structure as long as the meaning is the same. The phrase is: There is a dog running in the park. The owner is running after it

It's answer:

Here’s a version of the phrase rewritten to be easily understood by English, French, and German speakers:

"Un dog is courir in the park, und le master cour après."

Explanation of choices:

"Un dog": "Dog" is a simple English word that’s often understood by French and German speakers, and “un” is French for “a,” also recognizable to many.

"is courir": A mix of English “is” and French “courir” (to run), easy to guess even for German speakers who know “laufen” or “rennen.”

"in the park": Fully English, but all three languages share similar terms (“le parc,” “der Park”).

"und le master": “Und” is German for “and,” “le” is French for “the,” and “master” is close to “maître” (FR) and “Herrchen” (DE), but more internationally recognized.

"cour après": French phrase for “running after,” also intuitive to others.

The theorem has been expressed colloquially as "you can't comb a hairy ball flat without creating a cowlick" or "you can't comb the hair on a coconut".

How much time is wasted sorting socks?

cross-posted from: https://50501.chat/post/49131

Originally Posted By u/Unique-Literature-00 At 2025-03-21 11:28:30 AM | Source

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/26717237

I was curious how well wealthy countries do at hosting refugees.

The plots are interactive so its better to view them here: https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/insights/explainers/refugee-hosting-metrics.html

In the plot, the size of the circle is the number of refugees.

Germany is really doing an amazing job, y'all should be proud.

Compared to Chile, the US has 15x the population and 5x the wealth per capita but hosts fewer refugees. I certainly don't have the full picture but its not a good look.