• 0 Posts
  • 208 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 29th, 2023

help-circle
  • I just think this is sad.

    This is a person who believes if they go to Southeast Asia, they can easily find a life partner who fits their expectations about what that means

    There’s nothing intrinsically wrong about that - it’s very naive, but only that. It’s not intrinsically racist or sexist - they might also be racist and sexist, in which case I’ll feel significantly less bad for them.

    They might also just be genuinely clueless and/or neurodivergent… Propaganda works. Especially on those who haven’t been inoculated through experience or instincts


  • Nah, we just went up and fixed it. I think I did it while the guy on the ground eyeballed it… It’s weird how it’s impossible to see up close, but from 40 feet away humans can tell to a fraction of a percent, I was tapping it with a wrench to dial it in based on the intensity of hand gestures. Honestly, we were more impressed by how he spotted it at a glance, it’s not like we did shoddy work - it was barely not tongue click, as he put it

    It helped that I liked the engineer. Always cheerful and he gave me mini multi tool pliers for my birthday. Totally unexpected and not expensive, but I’ve got them right next to me right now, I still use them years later. And he was like that to everyone - he was a stickler for the details, but actually took an interest in us as people

    Just a good guy all around. It’s hard to be upset with someone like that, even when they make you redo work now and then


  • I remember we once installed something on a beam 40’ feet up. While waking through an inspection of many such things, the engineer stops, cocks his head for a second, and says “that’s not quite straight”

    And then it wasn’t. Like a cast of manual breathing, the thing I had been frequently walking past for weeks was suddenly wrong, ever so slightly






  • The problem is the same as the problem everywhere - big is bad

    Organizations with too much power fuck up everything. I love the Bible - I’ve taken more from that book than any other. The old testament was a story of how my people fuck up constantly, but someone wise and in harmony with existence shows up and they listen. Then the heroes wander off into the wilderness, or they get a big head and become the seed of the next fuck up

    Jesus is my biggest role model out of very few, because he sacrificed himself to die a hero before he could taint his message, very deliberately and to great effect. There’s nothing to criticize, because he learned the lesson. He was deliberate and effective… Nothing human and fallible was left, because for three years he lived his message and taught the third path, and then he either died or faked his death and fucked off to Asia

    Jesus was brilliant - as a bastard son of a craftsman he became an existential threat to Rome. He taught the third path, and his message was so effective they had to kill him, massacre his followers, and even then the empire only survived because Constantine slapped his name on a rebrand of the Roman religion. The legions of Rome were spreading his message, because it resonates with everyone

    He showed violence once - when people abused religion for profit. He still harmed no one, accepted everyone. When did he say abortion was wrong? I seem to remember a lot of forgiveness outside of that one incident. Across race, across profession, across physical state

    Almost like it was truly universal love.

    W.W.J.D. Probably accept everyone regardless of unsavory circumstance and reject money, like he did when he lived

    Religion is the problem, because the difference between religion and spirituality is only scale

    Read the Bible - I did it when I was 7 and had diarrhea. It’s worth reading. It’s not as long as it seems. I’m shocked at how few people read it cover to cover - I assumed it was normal for decades. At least know the enemy, right? Or better yet, take the wisdom within and build up a tolerance to the rest when it’s misquoted at you


  • My biology teacher had this thing where every test you had to submit a question. My question was always the same - how the fuck does atp synthase work?

    She did not appreciate my question especially after the first time, but it was always genuine… How the fuck does that shit work? If you understand it, please attempt to put it into words


  • It’s the power of language

    The older I get, the more proof I see that dr. Doolittle is true. Animals understand each other, they understand us… We’re the idiots walking around calling animals stupid for not speaking our language

    It’s literally how llms work. They’re a high dimensional mathematical construct that creates a shape called a shoggoth - it’s a high dimensional labyrinth through our language



  • theneverfox@pawb.socialtoScience Memes@mander.xyzMushrooms
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    13 days ago

    It looks like dirt. Or, depending on your perspective, a forest

    How does it work? Imagine nanobots created to control nature. It connects to all the plants, creating little tubes to exchange nutrients and electrical messages between them, in exchange for a nutrient “tax”. Split the network in half, and now you have two. Put them back together, sometimes even entirely different species of mycelium, and you have one.

    How do they reproduce? All the ways. They range from 2-8 distinct stages of lifecycle. Sometimes they have haploid reproduction, sometimes they recombine their own genetics, sometimes they clone themselves. Sometimes they have more than 2 parents.

    Sometimes they have extra special forms like truffles that only come out in certain conditions. Sometimes they have multiple variants of mushrooms with the same genetics. Sometimes they possess multiple distinct sets of genetics

    Mushrooms are just the sexual organs of the mycelium… Sometimes they spread based on time, or based on moisture, or just when they feel like it. Sometimes they don’t have mushrooms at all

    Mycillium does everything in every way, their spores can literally call down rain and they choose what plants live and die. It looks like they have language based on analysis of the electrical signals running through them.

    The more you talk about them, the more insane you sound


  • theneverfox@pawb.socialtoScience Memes@mander.xyzShe-Ra Lives!
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    14 days ago

    I think this is just whitewashing history… Even if you look to the ancient Western world, they had goddesses like Artemis

    Generally, men fought wars. Like a lion pride - the males are the defenders because they’re bigger and stronger. Hunting doesn’t require raw strength - it requires diligence, patience, and/or endurance

    But they all hunt. Lionesses are known for it, but lions do it too. Complete division of responsibilities is an insect thing



  • I feel awkward being in public without interaction. It’s like my brain goes into overdrive, trying to predict a sudden interaction incoming like a quick time event

    I’d comment on something slightly more relevant than the weather, because the conversation can then fade to comfortable silence (for me at least) knowing no more conversation is likely, or I’d do what I always do when someone engages - everyone has something interesting about them, I’ll throw the conversation in random directions until I find a topic worth speaking about



  • People say that… And yet, in middle school they did a hearing screening, and said I had reduced hearing. I told my mom “that’s crazy, my hearing is incredible, I just had earwax in my ears”. We went to the doctor anyways, the PA said she couldn’t see any earwax even though I could hear it moving around when she put the scope in my ear

    I was adamant I just needed to clean my ears, so my mom grabbed some qtips from the exam room when the PA left, I cleaned my ears, and I passed the test perfectly

    In my 30s I can still hear those “teen repellants” that whine at a pitch most lose in their early 20s. People look at me weird when I say I heard someone’s voice on the wind, and yet I can pinpoint individuals talking normally within a half a mile in a forest

    I don’t use qtips anymore, I use a metal loop to clean my ears, but for me it’s most certainly necessary to clean them somehow


  • Of course it’s different, and economies of scale are generally more efficient. 50 Independent Burger joints would likely be healthier and higher quality, they would do more to keep money flowing around the community rather than funneled away to corporate, and their ice cream machines wouldn’t break

    But you wouldn’t have 50 - you’d have more like a dozen. Most local restaurants find the best place they can, because they want the store to succeed

    Franchises want coverage - they want as many locations as possible. They want a new McDonalds next to the Wendy’s, even if there’s three other fast food restaurants all within sight already. They’ll dictate every detail of it, because they win even if the store barely breaks even

    Such as the famous McDonald’s always broken ice cream machines. Billionaire shareholders in both companies mandate these machines, which must be repaired frequently by licensed technicians. They even shut down a couple that built a $40 device that was able to fix the glitch that causes the problem

    And that’s how it works from top to bottom. At every stage, the billionaires must get their hidden taxes. Like the ice cream machines, it generally costs more in every way to society - we would not be using decades old ice cream machines known for breaking down all the time, we wouldn’t oversaturate towns with competing fast food franchises, we probably wouldn’t be subsiding the food itself


  • But again, it’s all for their personal benefit. A human Their money is managed to grow by any means, and that has a lot of knock on effects

    They generally either put their money in funds with the highest returns (which often use unethical and illegal but accepted practices, and the best ones require large minimum deposits), or they directly own large percentages of a company and use that influence when it suits them

    I see where you’re coming from, but I think the line is blurry. Their direct personal actions don’t capture the full extent of their actions, but this also assumes full responsibility for their ownership, where honestly it’s impossible to know what level of emissions the companies would have if the billionaire’s wealth machine wasn’t involved

    I wouldn’t say this is totally unfair to say though - at the end of the day they own what they own, and letting others do your dirty work doesn’t absolve you of responsibility

    The fact that their life would barely be affected if they added emissions to their criteria for investment makes this worse - these are the figures the billionaires should be looking at to make decisions