I often see the 'crow lady' at our local park come to the fields and call out to 'her crows', and they immediately come to her, rest on her shoulders, coo and craw, and generally seem to be pets. Its pretty fun to see wild crows come when they're called, its magical.
She told me that she's been doing this with the crows for years - almost two decades now - and that she thinks the crows are telling their young about her, because she notices new generations over the years.
Of course, she's got treats for them - but even when they don't get treats, the crows seem to be really enamoured with her, as if she has a history of being the 'peanut giver' among the local murder.
Around 4-5 years ago, I seen a baby seagull had fallen out of it's nest into my garden so I immediately noticed seagulls for the first time. I would feed it cheap haddock cuts. At first the parents were in attack mode but I feel that eventually they accepted me. It was cool to see the baby learn to fly and the parents seemingly being involved.
Anyway although it is hard to tell by looking, each year one of the parents comes back. The only way I feel I know is because in spring if I hang my washing out, all of a sudden this seagull will land and mooch around on the grass, sometimes I have to nudge it with my foot as I go along the washing line to get it out of the way. It's pretty odd given how cagey seagulls are and it doesn't do that if I am not alone.
Edit: I feed it bits and pieces which is the reason of course, but it's nice to see the association none the less.
Anyway I call him Steve as in Steven Seagal. Hopefully it's a male.
ITT: folks whose livelihood depends on that Facebook Ads campaign manager payout, vs. those of us who would rather live in a world free from this sort of manipulation.
This has nothing to do with the Islamic world and everything to do with poverty and income disparity. The fact that you associate this with Islam is repugnant. The West is equally corrupt - you just don't gain a moral kick from recognizing the equivalence.
> The fact that you associate this with Islam is repugnant.
I think that your comment would've been a lot stronger without the jab. Every time you call someone repugnant for having a particular bias (which we all do), you increase distance and decrease understanding.
Expressions of religious bigotry are not conducive to HN's guidelines.
Bigotry on the basis of religious grounds is repugnant wherever you see it, and should be called out wherever you see it, because it always results in atrocities. Casual bigotry like this only grows into collective hatred through complicity.
It seems much more appropriate to write "Islam doesn't teach people to be corrupt. Corruption is a function of poverty, not religion. For example countries of religion X aren't islamic but report similar signs of corruption." Calling people bigots seems less appropriate and counter productive.
Someone who makes even a rude assumption about a people isn't necessarily a bigot. They could just be wrong and you could correct them without insulting them in the same you would hope people would correct you if you said something inaccurate.
I think its very clear that the auto-hatred of Islam is driven by bigotry and fear. Anyone who does even a cursory examination of the subject can see it does not, in fact, promote corruption.
You might be pantywaiste about calling out bigotry online, but I'm not.
I think its quite appropriate to be discussing these projects, given that:
a) they are AMAZING (Zynthian is truly an extraordinary project - as is MOD, which is included in the zynthian distro incidentally) and,
b) these projects are available for you to put on your own hardware .. which is an ideology which runs counter to almost every other hardware manufacturer today, operating in the synth business ..
It should be noted, also, that this open attitude and sharing/caring is what good musicians do. Music is one of those realms where the maxim 'information wants to be free' is true, with every single note.
I know, which is why I said "mod-host, what the MOD and Zynthian devices use" ;)
The guitarix-foot-remote project is awesome, it's only part of the package and not really got the same scale of use with the customer/developer feedback loop that the first poster (and I) wanted to focus upon. Development seems to be stalled, so I'd rather direct folk to more active projects.
The Zynthian has co-ordinated a stack with UI etc, and artists use it, and they give feedback, and MOD/falktx wrote part of that stack and I think MOD has a larger market share, so IMHO I think it's a better example about that kind of customer/developer relationship.
This is especially true of Pine's other interesting product, the PineWatch. There isn't a very clear path which of the many distributions that are available, is the right one to follow - Pine themselves don't seem to have any interest in setting up a canonical release asset that customers can follow, and I agree with you - this is fracturing the ecosystem.
I bought an rsync.net account a few years back when John made it known on HN, and have used it solidly as a backup for my .. wristwatch!
I have a LILYGO that I coded up a time-tracking app, which basically creates an event log whenever I tap it, wherever I go - and when Internet is available, it squirts the log over to some text files that live on rsync.net ..
Pretty neat to be able to do this without much of a desktop or mobile phone in the way, I have to say. I wonder if there are more opportunities for this kind of IoT service out there .. it sure was fun to get this working without REST ..
The solution is the de-stimulation of society from an era of overt sexual manipulation and an adjustment of expectations regarding the value of casual sexual activities.
> There is simply no other way for anyone to feel safe than to simply abstain.
Well, it's the same as with anti-natalism:
People who don't care about this stuff, will still have kids / take 'consent risks' to have sex.
An important complication about the topic at hand is that a lot of human courtship / flirting, involves plausible deniability. Eg extensive eye contact in a bar can indicate sexual interest, or perhaps you just have a booger on your nose.
Similarly, status and power play are just as much ingrained in human psyche as sexual behaviour. So there's lots of overlap. Lots of people enjoy when their prospective mate is a bit brazen (or, the opposite, plays extra shy).
You're absolutely right. Human sexuality predates language, so it shouldn't be surprising that it continues to have a non-verbal, sub-rational component.
I think the discussion of explicit consent is really intended as guidance for children/teenagers who don't the dance yet. For experienced adults it's possible to navigate all of these grey areas and read the underlying signals while being crystal clear about playing within the boundaries which are acceptable to both sides. But for kids who are still figuring this out, it's perfectly reasonable to suggest that people use their words and be unambiguous.
It's been my impression that's exactly what it has been all along.
Sex outside of marriage (or even just procreation) is a pretty bad idea but people are afraid to say it because it's "conservative". Sexual everything has become such a staple in some circles that people don't have an easy way of saying they're not interested in most of it.
Sex is the oldest form of political power, and provides the shortest path to irrational reactionary thought available to the modern propagandist or political operative intent on influencing culture over generations. Our current ("Western") ideals for how sexuality is to be portrayed by our social institutions doesn't allow for much escape from the negative effects that this power can have over the individual. Hopefully that will change. One way it can change, positively, is for people to learn abstinence culture and just refrain from the act, entirely.
If you never bother attempting to initiate sexual activity, you're pretty safe from those who would use the sex act to alter your life. And if you eschew participating in collective sex-culture, its pretty easy to keep this under control, at a personal level.
Not sure what exactly you're referring to. It's virtually impossible to prosecute most sexual crimes. And if somebody's really out to frame you, the truth doesn't matter in the first place. Getting murdered by an angry lover may be more likely.
All this does is make people think twice. If you're married and trying to have children how can any craziness ever happen? Not sure what "collective sex-culture" is, but it may be what many just call "promiscuity" (which is kind of my point).
I once spent a summer in a conservative, religious country and let me tell you there was a lot of sex going on behind closed doors. And a lot of it was way more transgressive that what was happening in my left-leaning, permissive university culture.
"Conservative" = cautiously moderate, i.e. in this instance, not engaging in sex with reckless abandon, but rather with caution and moderation.
If you think "Victorians" are what is meant when someone refers to a conservative society, then you might need to read a few more books. Its quite possible to be conservative on the subject of sexual activity, while also voting Democrat.
Or sex work is going to go be very lucrative as casual sexual relationships incur more of a tax if there is even the slightest bit of confusion on consent (not to mention the fact that most people have alcohol in them, some have drugs, others just have bad experiences and carry regrets...).
Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN. This is classic internet flamebait complete with snark—exactly what the site guidelines ask you not to do in HN threads. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Edit: it unfortunately looks like you've been doing this repeatedly. That's not ok, and we ban such accounts for what ought to be obvious reasons. Please stick to the rules from now on.
Its not just a matter of 'not being rapey' - its a matter of agency over the sexual act.
If you get consent from your partner, have sex with them, and then your partner changes their mind about it afterwards - for any reason they determine under their own agency, what is to be done to avoid the danger of being falsely accused of not having gained consent, other than to simply abstain?
If consent can be retracted after the act, the act is not safe. So abstinence is the only answer.
And really, this shift towards abstinence is an appropriate social response.
"Change their mind" was never about changing mind afterwards. It's about "I don't like what you're doing, you should stop now" situation even if you were happy up to that point. You misunderstood the idea.
Or perhaps it is you who doesn't understand the word 'abstain'. If your partner changes mind mid-act, of course you stop - that is abstaining from further activity.
The point is, this is precisely the kind of confusion to avoid by maintaining abstinence as your primary mindset.
It is the only way to be sure: abstain at all costs, even if you were given consent, because that consent is not immutable.
No, I understand abstain and don't care about it in this context. I'm speaking out against the "change their mind after the fact" idea which gets brought up way too often as a possibility. It's disrespectful when discussing consent.
You responded to a message which mentioned changing one's mind in terms of continuous consent, not false rape accusations. These are different things. If you want to talk about false rape accusations, don't call it "change of mind".
"Change their mind after the fact" = you had consent, you no longer have it, stop what you're doing - i.e. abstain from further activity.
And that is the point - you're already in the danger zone if you've started and consent has been retracted. Better to just abstain entirely and not engage in sexual activity, at all, under those conditions.
No means no, always. To protect yourself from the "yes .. yes .. okay, no" dilemma .. just say no to casual, irresponsible sex - in the first place.
It is only way to be sure you won't get accused of assault, and even then, if you're not checking for continued consent every few milliseconds while engaged in the act, you're probably having very, very dangerous sex ... so just don't bother.
> To protect yourself from the "yes .. yes .. okay, no" dilemma
Why protect yourself? Why is this a dilemma? If you stop when asked, it's not an assault.
If you're worried about this, you're worried about false rape accusations, not some dilemma about people changing their mind. "if you're not checking for continued consent every few milliseconds" is an imagined problem taken to extreme. People who actually change their mind during sex will tell you about it and not treat it as assault.
Because withdrawn-consent can be used offensively. False rape accusation do happen and have resulted in many, many ruined lives - of people who legitimately and honestly thought they had consent, where the court later did not agree.
Ignorance of this fact doesn't support your argument.
I don't disagree false accusations happen. I'm saying that it's shitty to bring them up when a legitimate change of mind is discussed. Yet people keep popping up whatabouting this one, like someone's just waiting to accuse them of something.
False Rape Accusations are a form of abuse. Rape is also a form of abuse. They are not equivalent, but can certainly lead to the same order of life-destruction magnitude in either case.
Both of these things are relevant in the discussion of consensual sex, and I disagree with your attempt to elevate one position over the other.
Rape is bad because it negates a persons agency over themselves and denies them their basic human rights - false rape accusations also deny a person their basic agency and human rights.
Best way to avoid either case: just don't have sex, i.e. learn the value of abstinence.
Sure have. Never been raped, never been accused of it, and have a lot of happy, consensual sex all the time.
However, I will be teaching my teenage boys that "Yes is not always Yes, it can be changed", and that "No thanks, I'll abstain, even if you give me explicit consent" is always the safest approach.
Who's talking about after the fact? You can consent to sex, then change your mind in the course of things. Maybe you just stop wanting to have sex, maybe your partner starts going into territory you're uncomfortable with, doesn't really matter. An app where you give consent beforehand can't handle real life.
False accusations work just fine despite your abstinence. If the other person is lying about consent, what's stopping them from lying about the sex too?
No, I meant even not having sex (abstinence) doesn't 100% protect against accusations.
Of course, in practice people deal with certainly below absolute. But once you admit that, the argument for absolute abstinence loses some of its punch.
Perhaps the surveillance state might save the day. If the sequence of interactions is recorded a jury could review it and decide if any consent was given or given and subsequently withdrawn at any point :-)
She told me that she's been doing this with the crows for years - almost two decades now - and that she thinks the crows are telling their young about her, because she notices new generations over the years.
Of course, she's got treats for them - but even when they don't get treats, the crows seem to be really enamoured with her, as if she has a history of being the 'peanut giver' among the local murder.