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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • There’s a conspiracy theory going around that the music industry execs colluded to heavily promote gangsta rap over social-conscious rap during the 90’s, so that young black people would turn to a life of crime and fill up prisons, as they had recently invested in the nascent private prison industry.

    The only “proofs” are anonymous testimonies by self-described industry insiders, but the fact that rap wasn’t always about gangsta culture is real.




  • The VBA part of the meme is real, VBA is (was?) localized. Turns out it’s a horrible idea: some keywords are badly translated, some are not translated at all. Googling localized error messages is useless, so you need to guess the original error message from the translation. Want to copy/paste a function from SO? Not so fast, you need to translate the keywords first! And the variable names as well while you’re at it.

    Ironically, you end up spending a lot of time on translation-related issues. I’ve worked on a french-VBA app, and it was a miserable experience (well, even more miserable than english VBA).


  • As others have said I believe the meme didn’t originate in Russia, but was used disparagingly by its enemies. That said, a Russian author did write The Last Ringbearer, an alternative perspective on the events of LOTR:

    Kirill Yeskov bases his novel on the premise that the Tolkien account is a “history written by the victors”.[1][2] Mordor is home to an “amazing city of alchemists and poets, mechanics and astronomers, philosophers and physicians, the heart of the only civilization in Middle-earth to bet on rational knowledge and bravely pitch its barely adolescent technology against ancient magic”, posing a threat to the war-mongering faction represented by Gandalf (whose attitude is described by Saruman as “crafting the Final Solution to the Mordorian problem”) and the Elves.[1]

    Sounds familiar?



  • loutr@sh.itjust.workstoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.worldWhat is hexbear?
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    4 months ago

    Yeah, it also says that they have a low opinion of the local government, which they blame when the reforms promised in the state press fail to materialize.

    Regardless of the country, I’m very suspicious about such unanimous acclaim. There’s just no way 9 out of 10 people are happy with any given government. Have you ever been in a group of more than 10 people, trying to make a choice that’s OK for everyone?

    Look, I’m not saying that the west is perfect and China is horrible, but maybe try considering the opposite is not true either.