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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 1st, 2024

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  • That opening is worth about a million bucks.

    I find it’s best to play ridiculous moves then that don’t show up in any books, you may end up in a strategically worse position but they have to work for their win now instead of just doing memorised plays. It’s better to burn out, than to fade away!






  • Aye, we’ve almost all learned digital skills. And as time passes the skills required to perform digital tasks reduces as user interfaces and automation improve. What many of us don’t have however is digital understanding.

    This is from a speech by the founder of lastminute.com and now member of the UK’s House of Lords

    We have let these things come upon us, but it is not too late to wake up. If we want to change this dynamic and shape the future, we need to recapture some of the internet’s original promise and more of its positive transformative power. That means we need to understand – at all levels of society – what our digital world really is. We need to address the challenges that already exist and preempt the ones we don’t know about.

    We live our digital lives this way because we have the skills to do so. 91% of us in the UK have the ability to use the internet. This is a remarkable achievement – and it’s important to continue the work to close the remaining gap and include those who are still without the skills or the access to use the internet.

    But we also need to move beyond skills to understanding. Nearly all UK internet users have the digital skills to use a search engine, but only half know how to distinguish between search results and adverts. Around two-thirds of our digitally skilled population can shop and bank online – but a third don’t make any checks before entering their personal or financial information online. More than 1.4 million of us work in tech-related jobs – but, as the recent WannaCry attack showed us, hardly anyone is investing the time, resources or expertise to keep our systems safe. The list goes on.

    Becoming a nation of people with digital understanding will be different and more complicated than becoming a nation of people with digital skills. For starters, digital skills are tangible and teachable: download this app, program this device. They also reinforce the idea that digital is something we do – time-bound and transactional.

    But in a world where we spend more time online than we do asleep and where everything from our televisions to our kettles can connect to the internet, digital is something we are. Understanding is not a race to be run and won. It is a lifelong process of learning, one unique to each of us.

    The full speech is available here. It was given in the House of Lords and is obviously directed towards UK parliamentarians but the concepts apply globally. I recommend reading the whole thing.



  • I’m sorry, but all of us here on Lemmy have agreed that we need to see your official ID, a 20 second video of you turning your head left and right while blinking, a certificate of your DNA and any other relevant biometric data, a complete list of everyone you’ve ever had sexual relations with, your passwords to all online accounts, and the account number and sort codes of all bank accounts you hold.

    If you don’t provide this information within 2 hours we’ll just have to assume you’re a paedophile terrorist and terminate your access to socialising with any other human being online.

    Thank you for your attention on this matter.

    Disclaimer!

    Please do not upload any of this information! If it wasn’t obvious enough this comment is in jest! For the love of Christ burritos do not do what a fellow student at my university did and upload your password onto a publicly visible forum!





  • Maybe in the 90s/early 00s, certainly not now.

    Almost every pub offers mocktails and “blue” beer (ie alcohol free) now because the demand for alcohol has plummeted. There’s even entirely alcohol free night clubs in some cities. Although I think they’re more of a trendy gimmick, they’re only possible because of a lack of demand for alcohol.




  • For the curious:

    The second incident occurred in 44 BC. One day in January, the tribunes Gaius Epidius Marullus and Lucius Caesetius Flavus discovered a diadem on the head of the statue of Caesar on the Rostra in the Roman Forum.[5] According to Suetonius, the tribunes ordered the wreath be removed as it was a symbol of Jupiter and royalty.[7] Nobody knew who had placed the diadem, but Caesar suspected that the tribunes had arranged for it to appear so that they could have the honour of removing it.[5] Matters escalated shortly after on the 26th, when Caesar was riding on horseback to Rome on the Appian Way.[8] A few members of the crowd greeted him as rex (“king”), to which Caesar replied, “I am not Rex, but Caesar” (“Non sum Rex, sed Caesar”).[9] This was wordplay; Rex was a Latin title meaning ‘king’. Marullus and Flavus, the aforementioned tribunes, were not amused, and ordered the man who first cried “rex” arrested. In a later Senate meeting, Caesar accused the tribunes of attempting to create opposition to him, and had them removed from office and membership in the Senate.[8] The Roman plebs took their tribunes seriously as the representatives of the common people; Caesar’s actions against the tribunes put him on the wrong side of public opinion.[10]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Julius_Caesar


  • Yes and no. They were tasked with fixing a particular problem or threat, and had absolute authority only in the scope of fixing that problem. They were then meant to step down once the problem was fixed.

    The full extent of the dictatorial power was considerable, but not unlimited. It was circumscribed by the conditions of a dictator’s appointment, as well as by the evolving traditions of Roman law, and to a considerable degree depended on the dictator’s ability to work together with other magistrates. The precise limitations of this power were not sharply defined, but subject to debate, contention, and speculation throughout Roman history.[46]

    In the pursuit of his causa, the dictator’s authority was nearly absolute; however, as a rule he could not exceed the mandate for which he was appointed; a dictator nominated to hold the comitia could not then take up a military command against the wishes of the Senate.[f][g] Dictators could carry out functions which fell outside the scope of their initial appointments, but only at the direction of the Senate; this included the drawing of funds from the public treasury, which a dictator could only do with the Senate’s authorisation.[29]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dictator