Tell me you’ve never cycled seriously without telling me you’ve never cycled seriously.

Fwiw these days balance bikes are considered better than training wheels for people learning to ride. Training wheels are ok if you actually need to go somewhere accompanied by an adult on a bike, but they’re terrible for learning. They don’t teach you how to steer or balance properly; a balance bike does. In fact, training wheels can teach bad habits that are difficult to unlearn.

Yeah but a basic Wordpress.com site could do exactly the same thing for free. Or for super cheap if you want your own domain.

How so?

I think it’s likely he would keep it, but fail to provide it enough funding to actually do anything of value. Possibly also limit its remit so it’s incapable of providing the best recommendations.

and games that feature “simulated gambling,” like casino games [now R18+]

So Pokémon Sapphire would be an R18+ game if released in 2025, then? That’s fucking absurd. Gambling with in-game currency to win in-game currency or items in a single-player game should not have any impact on its rating. It gets more complicated if there are inter-personal dynamics, and obviously if real money is involved that completely changes the equation. But as that quote explains it, it’s absurd.

I think you’re somewhat understanding what Platonic love is. In modern usage, I’d say that Platonic love is a really strong form of love, stronger than could be called friendship, but which lacks a sexual or romantic dimension (or at least lacks enough of those to characterise as a romantic or sexual relationship).

But it might also be interesting to look at what Platonic love meant to Plato. I’m not an expert. Not even close. But my understanding is that he might have meant it to be the most perfect form of love. We have the phrase “platonic ideal” that we use in other contexts to refer to something that is the most perfect version of that thing, and I think Platonic love likely originally meant that, for love. It was love of the body, the mind, and the soul. Not less than romantic love. Not equal-but-different like the modern usage of the term. But instead encompassing everything that romantic love is and more.

But I’ve only read extremely shallowly into this matter, and would love to hear more from someone who really knows their stuff.

Long term, I’d love to see us build high-speed rail all the way from the Sunshine Coast to Geelong, via the east coast capitals. But starting with smaller routes from major satellite cities into their capitals, like Newcastle–Sydney, is a fantastic way to build up local expertise before tackling the longer routes like Sydney–Canberra and Canberra–Melbourne.

I just really wish we were doing a better job at preparing for it. Like the soon-to-open Cross River Rail in Brisbane should have been designed wide enough to install dual-gauge rails with standard gauge, even if those additional rails weren’t themselves installed yet. But they haven’t been, and so when we come to eventually do the Brisbane–Gold Coast link it’s gonna be way more expensive than if we’d planned ahead.

Reverse image search says yes, Singapore.

That bastion of socialism.

Ah, a triangle with a platonic base.

I doubt it. Other forms of AI could be useful, but generative AI? I doubt it.

And tbh even deep learning through neural networks doesn’t seem to be making the leaps we’d hoped for. AoE4 promised, prior to release, a machine learning–based AI would be delivered down the line. It’s now almost 3 years since release and we haven’t heard a thing about it.

Maybe eventually we’ll be able to easily train a machine learning algorithm to play any game at a wide variety of skill levels (or at a very high level, if not at customisable levels), but it doesn’t seem like it’s any time soon.

A century or so of oppressed masses and greedy elites did it.

True, and that’s important context if you’re trying to get a deeper understanding of how Julius Caesar came to have the power he held before his assassination.

But there’s enough of a problem you can see even if you just start at Julius, which is what I was concentrating on in my previous comment. The parallels to Trump are terrifyingly on the nose.

saying protestors deserve to be targetted with indiscriminate chemical weapons

Sorry, were we reading the same comment?

My significant other has the same vague possessive connotations

I don’t think it does at all. In fact I think just the opposite. It’s saying they’re an “other” person who is “significant” to you. It’s quite sweet, actually, IMO.

Oh yes! Nice one! I’ve heard that small native shrubs and stuff are meant to be especially good for our smaller natural wildlife, and the trend towards large trees with nothing but grass surrounding them is why shitty bullies like noisy miners are so common. More local planted plants in people’s back yards is great!

Huh?

The Age of Mythology music cueing up at about 5:00 threw me off. Was not expecting that here, considering how much I’ve heard it lately with the recent release of Retold. !aom@lemm.ee

Cats and rats and rabbits were obvious, but I was surprised to see things like cattle and goats make the list.

We eat Easter Bilbies in this house, damn it.

Where? I haven’t seen them in stores for years.

Oh I didn’t for one second think it was a true story. But it is a fun story that, with the exception of this one massive glaring hole, reads really well. Which just makes the one plot hole stand out even more.

Oh good, I’m glad someone else is asking this question. The whole story hinges on it, and it doesn’t make sense.