The Factory Floor

2:46 AM

@bilbo_pingouin I use Perforce currently (actually I am an admin...remind me tomorrow if you have questions)

5:04 AM

@James, bowlturner had. I use git, and I'm fine with it.

10:05 AM

someone's a bit salty

You wouldn't get heavily downvoted on this SE. — PandaLion98 16 mins ago

@Quill, curiously enough that user doesn't appear to ever have posted on WB

I would think sock, but they have activity and rep o_O

Pavel Janicek

I must say that my personal opinion is that getting downvote here is rather hard

I rather cast close vote or flag than downvoting

@Quill, comments only, plus the automatic 100 rep from being a trusted user

well, yeah, I count association bonus as activity at least

Pavel Janicek

10:11 AM

the user has profile here on worldbuilding

but also only 101 rep

A: Sandbox for Proposed Questions

On the subject of not getting horribly downvoted, I've posted a question in the sandbox that I wouldn't mind some input on in due course: meta.worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/3271/15882 I'm asking here as it's perilously close to idea generation (though I think it's a perfectly good question), so I want to get some input on how it relates to the current discussions before I post it

setting a good example for the other users and all that!

StackExchange

0

Justification for making clouds Back story I had an idea for a (short) story I want to write some time ago that centres around the concept of "Cloudscaping". Basically, in this world there are no natural clouds, but they are created by people for... some purpose (This is the bit I'm struggling ...

What triggers that ^ ?

magic

it's a feed

10:31 AM

But I want to knoowwwwwww! What are the parameters behind what it chooses to post?

It's an RSS feed, it probably checks the room feeds every 15 mins for new items

11:40 AM

@Quill and @IStanley there are automatic feeds... whenever a question is added to the sandbox... or a question is added to meta... or a new post appear on the blog

@bilbo_pingouin Yeah, I know.

And apart from some primary election, it's pretty hard to be heavily downvoted on WB... you'll have your posts deleted much before that

it does not know check every 15 minutes, it is immediate... but sometimes the caching of information makes it appear a bit later

And for whoever is interested, ELL.SE just got their new design... well like 19 hours ago.

20

Q: New site design!

As you can see the new design just went live. Congratulations! Thank you for your valuable design feedback. We have also themed the twitter account and newsletter template for this site, and adjusted the privilege levels to higher thresholds. If you see any CSS/styling bugs, please start a new ...

ELL ^^^^

12:50 PM

Nice :)

Hopefully we'll get more news on ours soon

so do I :)

but I haven't received any answer on my comment so far...

I reckon "The Observation Deck" would be a cool name for this chatroom

Yeah, we discussed a few different names originally but we wanted to keep it clear and obvious

the moderator chat room is "The White Mice Lounge" though

That's awesome

There's a strange lack of hitchhikers references on SE outside of that and Travel's towels swag item

there are a few around, not massive numbers though

1:00 PM

on this chat there are a few of them...

but the implausible character of the piece isn't what people are looking for usually...

I've no time to do any research but does anyone have a handy query to list tags by order of questions used, least first ?

worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/tags?page=11&tab=popular

gives you some indication, doesn't it?

unfortunately not, or at least I went to the last page and they had widely varying numbers of questions

My guess is that that's by upvotes not questions

yeah probably

@TimB, I haven't checked, but it seems that was simple: data.stackexchange.com/worldbuilding/query/edit/441980

Worldbuilding Meta

0

Q: It's back, the [Life] tag

The Life tag was discussed and destroyed before: Rename [life] to [lifestyle] Blacklist the [life] tag However it's come back. Do we still want it gone? Shall we blacklist it or synonym it or what? It might be too vague to synonym.

discussion specific-tag

1:14 PM

yeah, I checked for a few examples and that seems to work: data.stackexchange.com/worldbuilding/query/441980/… list the number of questions for each tag starting with the less used ones

1:27 PM

@TimB, I made an update, so you can see both the accumulated score and the number of use

I would suggest wiping the series/films/etc.-related tags, like dexter, conan-the-barbarian, sims... they are very precise and do not bring anything useful

Yeah, that's why I wanted the info

I've been doing some retagging and already found 2 tags

so figure it's time to do a cleanup

Can you do a meta post listing all the series/film tags and suggesting burninating them all? I'll need to look through the rest of the list this weekend to look for otheer candidates

if anyone else wants to look through the results from that query and make suggestions that would be good too :)

options are...leave, burninate, merge (with synonym), burninate & blacklist

I could, but I am leaving work very soon... and tonight I'm busy... but I might over the week end, if no one else does

yeah, no worries

I'm at work myself :)

not to (uhm) appear to be criticizing, but (uhm) there are some facebook and chtullu user by a single question...

anyway, going home, enjoy the rest of your working time :)

1:50 PM

yep, facebook is definitely burnable I think, cthulu not so sure

2:25 PM

I would suggest we burninate Cthulu, but I bet I'd start typing with those really weird-looking characters

Also, I have an ethical dilemma I've been considering. If you had to choose between saving a duckling or a crow, which would you choose?

Can I raise a complaint about the fact that cthullu is incorrectly spelled?

@DaaaahWhoosh is this a philosophical study into whether people consider crows to be "less good" than ducks?

@IStanley That, and whether or not it is ethical to save stupid babies over more intelligent forms of life

I can't tell if it's just evolution or not

@DaaaahWhoosh not sure what you mean by that last comment.

Neither are parasites or particularly nasty animals so I would say that their value of life is equal. It'd then come down to the specific rarity of the species. If one was of a particularly endangered family, that would be the one I saved. If not... flip a coin I guess, though I rather like crows myself

2:40 PM

@IStanley I appreciate that analysis, but to me I'd try to save the more intelligent individual. That way, given a choice between an animal and a human, for the most part I'd be able to pick humans. But there are a lot of people who would choose to save the duckling, because it is a baby animal, which somehow makes it more important, I just can't tell if that's because we've been conditioned to defend our own babies for millions of years

or if there's some innate good in babies that makes them more important

Oh right. There is an evolutionary trait of "Cuteness"

but it's more commonly associated with Human babies than other animals.

yeah, but then what's the benefit of finding baby animals cute? We should want to eat them, not cuddle with them

Conditioning side-effect? It's more "Things that look cute" than "babies"

take for instance the fact that people are far more likely to care about a butterfly than a caterpillar

well, yeah, that's more of a beauty thing than a cuteness thing, but you make a good point

but I would still equate cuteness with babies, even fully-grown cute animals are treated like babies

I guess we could just compare human babies and adults, if you had to save one or the other, which one and why?

3:03 PM

@IStanley Cthulhu is spelt ok in the tag I think...was just a typo when bilbo put them in chat

@bilbo_pingouin just so you know in the latest version of Perforce a native git integration was added. Release 2015.2

@DaaaahWhoosh, am I allowed any more information? What age is the adult? Do I know anything about their potential contribution to society?

Well @James so far I don't like Perforce. but then I didn't like git at first after using SVN. Though I liked SVN a lot after Visual Source Safe...

If there is no way to prevent one of them dying, I'd necessarily have to choose the one that offers the greatest potential contribution to the human race. Unless one of them is related to me, at which point it becomes an impossible choice

@IStanley Yep, that sounds about right.

3:14 PM

@bowlturner We use it currently, we switched over from ClearCase a few years ago...which may explain why I love it. Its easier, more modern and far faster. (IBM sucks)

@James I can believe that. haven't used that one, but if it was anything like VSS then most other options are better. I really like git now.

@IStanley Also what's the situation? In a survival situation where the baby will just die anyway save the adult.

Tell your admins to update the server and clients for Perforce to the newest version (rebranded as Helix) it allows you to use git commands with P4

and git repos for that matter (as I understand it)

hmm, that new vampire question looks like a dupe but I don't have time to investigate

can someone take a look? we've had a lot of vampire questions so I'd be surprised if it's not covered

@James I'm a contractor. I don't get to affect change like that... At least not at this one.

3:23 PM

@TimB updated

@bowlturner ...yeah ok you're sol.

yep. So I just get to learn all of them and try and smile...

Perforce it easy to pick up

I may be able to answer questions if you have any.

P4 questions are basically the only questions I have ever answered on SO

Good. I might be asking you. It's more I have to relearn how to do things,

@bowlturner unlearning old habits sucks

especially when I can't actually forget them! I'll need them again later...

3:27 PM

just back them up on an external hard drive and reload them later

take a snapshot of your current habits

incidentally, why does noone trust a poorly-dressed Monk? Cause he's got a load of bad Habits!

groan

How many people can you fit in a convent? Nun!

Do any of you ever boggle at the level of subjectivity in how history is taught in different countries?

just to go on a massive tangent

I mean, you learn history in Ireland, and you could be forgiven for thinking that nothing really happened outside Europe (not even Egypt) until the Spanish started building Caravals, and that pretty much everything from that point on either involved the English killing people or Religion

No, because I've never experienced history lessons anywhere other than here.

At some point, someone decided that it was of vast important that virtually every child in ireland learn that Ignatius Loyola was the founder of the Jesuit order (which is how I got onto this tangent). As an adult with a fairly good grasp of history I've never understood why this is remotely important

UK History teaching seems to be pretty well balanced from what I've come across - the Egyptians are at least mentioned, and I think you cover the greeks and the romans (we only got the romans). It could probably be a little bit more elaborate on the history of asia but you can't have everything, and the UK does have an awful lot of its own personal history to cover

Japanese history is a bit nuts - there is a national conspiracy to basically deny that any genocide that Japan ever partook in occurred

3:43 PM

@IStanley that's hardly the only example that comes to mind

Romanian history is pretty interesting. I still have my grade 8 history book. Pretty interesting comparing its content with those of actual history books

we make ourselves look much better than what actually happened

Russia has more or less rewritten the Second World War

what they learn (my best friend is Russian) is insanely off

and it's a very painful experience for many of them to find out that their country is not, in fact, the center of the universe

@AndreiROM That's what I'm talking about. It's mad that in this day and age where we can cross reference these things, that people still actually teach different versions of events in different countries

@IStanley because very few people are interested in doing any research

I love history and I read a fair bit of it

however there's people who think that inside the Pyramids you'd get lost in miles of labyrinths

It's not like the US is immune. When I went to college, I had to relearn most of what I had been taught.

who take it very badly when you try to tell them otherwise

@AndreiROM, or if you're Ben Carson, that you'd find storage space for Grain, but that's another conversation :P

3:46 PM

@IStanley not familiar with that issue

@bowlturner i get the impression it's pretty bad in the states, what being torn between the North/South, as well as the super-strong religious influence in education

US presidential candidate, he's a bit crazy. Thinks aliens have landed on earth and that the pyramids were grain silos built by Joseph during the egyptian famine

@IStanley I see. Why am I not surprised ?

Was it space grains they were storing ?

who knows!

@AndreiROM yes and no. there are certainly areas and schools that have atrocious history and others that just stretch the truth a little.

Must have been space grains, probably of Martian stock. Makes the most sense

@bowlturner everyone stretches the truth

the crux of the matter is that no one wants to write a history book in which they are the losers / bad guys

3:49 PM

It just amazes me that history is one of the only school subjects where it should be possible to provide concrete, definitively provable FACT. And yet, not only do different countries completely disagree on what's actually important to cover (even allowing for geographical bias and learning primarily about the history of your country), when they do cover the same things they often disagree on what happened

there are political and social issues which make their way into those courses

@AndreiROM right. and we have that to outright imaginary history.

@IStanley because the "Facts" are often muddy as hell

here's the thing with history

it's written by the victor

but not all the defetead are always killed

and the victor doesn't always cover up the entire truth either

so on one hand, for example, you have the allies accusing Germany of executing some prisoners of war (just an example)

on the other hand, you have documents detailing German officers refusing those orders

or the Americans putting barbed wire around 300 000 German POWs and leaving them to starve

It's not so much the facts, but the 'interpretation', you usually need at least a 100 years to get some unbiased looks and even then it is viewed through the lens of the current culture.

but in no history book i've ever read will the americans be accused of killing POWs

3:51 PM

@AndreiROM yeah I know. It's just crazy

@bowlturner sometimes much longer than that

my Russian friend thought that the Soviet Union was one enormous fighting machine

Samuel

What's with the heavy handed moderation lately? I keep having comments deleted and I've seen two questions in as many days closed via mod-hammer.

true, but that is usually the minimum for any large event

what's even more crazy is you know that it still goes on. Chances are that by the time current affairs make their way into the history books certain aspects will be totally misrepresented

each citizen gladly joining up for the mother land

dying in eroic glory

that the USSR saved us all

reality came as a huge shock to him

more recently, i think it was only around 2010 or so that Putin publicly admitted that the USSR executed 4000+ polish officers in Katyn forest

3:53 PM

@Samuel, it's our new overlords stretching their limbs of authority (that and likely the start of an implementation of policy based on the discussions of the "topicness" of the site falling off the rails a bit)

something the Germans had claimed since WW2

and which the Poles had been accusing them of since the 50's

yeah that was in our history books

things get worse when the government really wants to 'hide' facts from it's citizens, which many are in that position right now.

Samuel

@IStanley That doesn't explain the comments. It's troubling in any case.

I'm getting flag notifications, but they wont load

@Samuel nothing can explain the comments. It will remain a mystery!

3:58 PM

@Samuel if you're worried about heavy handed moderation, a question on Meta WB might be the place for it?

@AndreiROM Chat flags?

@ArtOfCode them's the ones

the little blue notification numbers

@AndreiROM I'd better stick around for a while then

@ArtOfCode all hail the mighty Moderator!

my partner in crime and boss are both out of the office unti lwell after lunch

today is a good day to chat

i mean .. work

Heh. The mighty Mjolnir has arrived

4:01 PM

on something terribly important

@AndreiROM, who gets anything done on a Friday? :P

@IStanley freaks and boring people

silly question: has anyone played Clash Royale? Or clash of clans ?

I've seen enough adverts for the latter but never played it

I did my MMO time when I was younger

no real interest in getting back into it

I play both .. CoC for about 1.5 years now, and CR for only 3 days

what I like about them is that I can just play on my phone for 20 mins a day during lunch and forget about them the rest of the day

@AndreiROM If you do get a notification to load, take note of where it is and I'll go pay them a visit :)

4:05 PM

I was just curious if anyone else had tried them

@ArtOfCode thanks (i'm assuming we're talking about flag notifications

aye

@AndreiROM they both look like a pair of horribly addictive time sinks to me :P

@Samuel In general if a comment is flagged it gets deleted, so that's most likely what happened there. Or obsolete comments get deleted

For example we had a discussion about your answer, after the answer was edited the discussion was obsolete and/or misleading so I deleted the conversation

I'm a bit late to the history conversation, but I think it's nice that schools in the US are teaching about Japanese internment camps. Shows that we don't hide all of our mistakes

if you've got a strong stomach read the wikipedia page on "unethical human experimentation" the nazi's were some of the most shocking but others came close including a lot in the US

4:18 PM

@DaaaahWhoosh the more time passes, the more OK we are with admitting that "those other people, who are now dead" made mistakes

@AndreiROM unless you're talking about the Founding Fathers, of course

@DaaaahWhoosh In God We Trust, Amen, please don't shoot me

I listen to a 'nostalgia' radio station on the way to work, every day at 9AM they have some sort of patriotic song that I always laugh at

@DaaaahWhoosh no patriotic songs in Canada

I remember reading somewhere that the Founding Fathers weren't all devout christians, and that some of them could be considered at best Deist

4:23 PM

@IStanley puto n your flak jacket, and a helmet, if you've got one

@IStanley The founding fathers remind me a lot of freshman philosophy majors

there's probably an armed mob carrying machine guns - which God himself wrote they have the right to own - on their way to your house

"I'm not sure about the answer to this one, so I'm going to go to the pub and see how I feel about it when I'm drunk"?

more like "there's this guy who wrote a paper about democracy, it was good, let's overthrow the government, I bet we could do it better"

@DaaaahWhoosh a block down the street they'd see the pub and decide to grab a drink first

4:26 PM

Ah yes, the Youthful Idealism That Hasn't Yet been Crushed By The Dreadful Realism Of Life

@IStanley Dreadful Reality

I find that a lot of idealism is actually based on not actually understanding how the world works, and/or why

@AndreiROM, I prefer to think of Life as a slightly malignant entity that enjoys crushing our dreams

@IStanley I did too. Then I realized that Life doesn't get personal

and yeah, agree entirely. Most Idealism falls into the category of "It'd work, in theory, if everyone agreed and stuck to it"

it's like the crushing weight of a Mill, which makes flour out of grain

4:28 PM

is that a rolling mill or a traditional mill?

it rolls around, crushing bits of grain to oblivion, but it doesn't really know or care that it's doing it.

probably a traditional mill then

@IStanley I was picturing a rolling mill. To illustrate the endless continuity of it all

Nah you're thinking of a Traditional mill with thegrindstone

@IStanley yes. I'm to understand that it's not a rolling mill ?

4:30 PM

yeah. hang on

Roller Mill, not rolling mill

Roller mill

Roller mills are mills that use cylindrical rollers, either in opposing pairs or against flat plates, to crush or grind various materials, such as grain, ore, gravel, plastic, and others. Roller grain mills are an alternative to traditional millstone arrangements in gristmills. Roller mills for rock complement other types of mills, such as ball mills and hammermills, in such industries as the mining and processing of ore and construction aggregate; cement milling; and recycling. == Producing wheat flour == To produce refined (white) wheat flour, grain is usually tempered, i.e. moisture added to...

the distinction is important from a philosophical perspective as a roller mill is specifically designed to remove everything nutritious about the grain and just leave the pure white flour

that's the wheel of life, crushing your dreams (but it's not like, personal)

and those two are Dave and Larry. They're just assholes

whereas the traditional grindstone mill like you have depicted crushes everything together but at least the goodness is still there

@IStanley yummi

4:33 PM

the Traditional mill is more common in Europe, the roller mill in the US.

(I was reading about this the other day)

@IStanley why am I not surprised?

'Murica, land of innovation!

@IStanley hey, maybe you just have a thing for mills, idk

maybe it's how you dispose of philosopher's bodies or something

you know .. the ones who go missing after last being seen being loud about their ideas on democracy and equality in the pub

I was reading about the progression of bread and how the rise in Gluten Intolerance may have more to do with the processing methods making flour more indigestible than there actually being an increased intolerance to gluten

you know, as you do...

@IStanley that actually makes a lot of sense

4:36 PM

@IStanley scary

I've been wondering why gluten allergies seem so much more prevalent now

probably also ties in with all the chemicals we put in our bodies now

(he says while eating a Tim Horton's donut)

@DaaaahWhoosh I know right? It also explains why people (like me) who react badly to excessive amounts of supermarket white bread don't really have any issue with homemade or artisan stuff

this is one of the reason why I enjoy visiting Romania

people there still make a lot of things the "traditional" way

even factories

a lot of restaurants buy their sausages, etc, from local manufactureres

food just tastes different

better

There's a big push towards that in the UK at the moment

4:38 PM

I always feel better after a restaurant meal in Romania than Canada

big supermarkets are being taken to task about where they get their food from

in North America no one cares

things which are outlawed in the EU are common here

Aspartame, which was declared to be a cancer causing agent by the FDA in the 90's

was approved when Bush Jr came to power and replaced the head of the FDA

now I'm hearing about genetically modified salmon/trout

invented in the US of A, but to be grown in Canada!

grows to 3 - 4 times the size of the regular fish

SalmonPLUS, now with more Patriotism!!

becomes it contains more yumminess, of course.

it's good for you, buy two!

just because it's bigger doesn't mean it's less healthy to eat

4:41 PM

@DaaaahWhoosh well, no, but I get jumpy about gene-mods

I'd be more worried about how salmon isn't supposed to be pink

@DaaaahWhoosh valid point

@AndreiROM, ever read Oryx and Crake?

@IStanley Same here

@IStanley nope

4:44 PM

@James I have no idea what I may have said in the last hour that you're referring to :P

what's it about ?

@AndreiROM, it's largely about Genetic modification actually

@IStanley hover over his comment, and you'll see

@IStanley care to give us all the cliff notes?

since I'm a lazy Romanian bastard and all that

ummm. it's a two stage first person story, simultaneously following the life of an individual in a not-too-distant-future North America before and after an apocalypse

@IStanley say no more. I'll Google it on the weekend

4:47 PM

It's hard to summarise well without spoiling stuff, as always :P

you had me at "apocalypse"

i love that stuff

since it's probably what we're headed for :P

does anyone here believe that humanity will ever become inter-galactic?

or at least spread through-out our solar system ?

@AndreiROM I believe in humanity's children, not in the species itself

we are the tadpoles, it takes frogs to make the leap to new stars

@DaaaahWhoosh I used to think it was inevitable. Now I'm pretty much convinced that we will wipe ourselves out

I think we'll make it to Mars. We're at a crunch point at the moment, the next 100 years are important.

@DaaaahWhoosh poetic. I'm touched

@IStanley there's too much ignorance in the world

4:49 PM

We could do with a failed alien invasion or some not-fatal unifying factor

global population count is rising, but in poor countries

education averages are going down

i find it more likely that 90% of humanity will wipe itself out and fall back into the stone age

(or the middle ages)

with little enclaves of technology surviving - for a while. Until the barbarian hordes come to take their shiny lights for their own

heck, I should write a story to that effect

So, I believe the curent thinking is that if some global apocalypse were to occur, it would be impossible for humanity to ever recover to our current levels of technology as the materials that were readily available for lower levels of tech are no longer available

which is a fun thought

@IStanley our problem is that in order to make anything we need input (raw materials, parts, etc) from so many different places that it makes it very difficult to go on if the supply chain is disrupted

aye

for example I need to fix my garage door. Bought it at Costco. Easy enough

4:53 PM

if the apocalypse did happen, would you prefer to survive it or die in the initial event?

but now a part broke, so I had to talk to a customer service rep from India, so that a part from China will be shipped to me

@IStanley tough. really tough

I value life

I like to think I'm pretty open minded, and liberal.

but living in Canada I've learned that I'm actually more of a center-conservative

I lived with my grandparents on a farm in Romania

I've seen animals slaughtered for their meat

I'm no bleeding heart, etc

I'd like to think i'd go up north, and just survive with my loved ones

realistically, i'm not very well positioned to survive if it all goes south

what if we're talking specifically about a Nuclear Apocalypse? anything change?

@IStanley I live in a city which is classified as a strategic defensive area for the Canadian military

aka a prime target

hah. so no real choice then :P

so I'd probably get nuked right after Toronto

i think a more realistic "apocalypse" is some kind of virus simply sweeping the land

think "Contagion" (movie with Matt Damon)

4:57 PM

I have the lovely position of knowing that I would always have a go at survival regardless (because that's who I am), but knowing that my wife has categorically stated that if a nuclear war breaks out, she doesn't want to live to see the aftermath

@IStanley that's a painful thing to hear

still, no one really knows until it happens

yup! so I just have to hope we don't end up in a nuclear war...