My favorite of all time is the beautiful concision of the article “YouTube”'s first version:
YouTube is a website for hosting videos. It is similar to Flickr, except instead of photos, it is for videos.
history repeats itself once again
Submitted 6 days ago by QuinnyCoded@sh.itjust.works to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/bd7391a3-f560-4606-aaad-0ac4113fb71d.png
Comments
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Rhaedas@fedia.io 6 days ago
Clicking on newer revision lets you walk through time.
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 6 days ago
You can also check the diffs to see exactly what changed! Seeing how major articles progressed (especially ones that started in the early 2000s or when the subject was only marginally notable) is a lot of fun.
NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Let’s say you have an ax. Just a cheap one, from Home Depot. On one bitter winter day, you use said ax to behead a man. Don’t worry, the man was already dead. Or maybe you should worry, because you’re the one who shot him.
He had been a big, twitchy guy with veiny skin stretched over swollen biceps, a tattoo of a swastika on his tongue. Teeth filed into razor-sharp fangs—you know the type. And you’re chopping off his head because, even with eight bullet holes in him, you’re pretty sure he’s about to spring back to his feet and eat the look of terror right off your face.
On the follow-through of the last swing, though, the handle of the ax snaps in a spray of splinters. You now have a broken ax. So, after a long night of looking for a place to dump the man and his head, you take a trip into town with your ax. You go to the hardware store, explaining away the dark reddish stains on the broken handle as barbecue sauce. You walk out with a brand-new handle for your ax.
The repaired ax sits undisturbed in your garage until the spring when, on one rainy morning, you find in your kitchen a creature that appears to be a foot-long slug with a bulging egg sac on its tail. Its jaws bite one of your forks in half with what seems like very little effort. You grab your trusty ax and chop the thing into several pieces. On the last blow, however, the ax strikes a metal leg of the overturned kitchen table and chips out a notch right in the middle of the blade.
Of course, a chipped head means yet another trip to the hardware store. They sell you a brand-new head for your ax. As soon as you get home, you meet the reanimated body of the guy you beheaded earlier. He’s also got a new head, stitched on with what looks like plastic weed-trimmer line, and it’s wearing that unique expression of “you’re the man who killed me last winter” resentment that one so rarely encounters in everyday life.
You brandish your ax. The guy takes a long look at the weapon with his squishy, rotting eyes and in a gargly voice he screams, “That’s the same ax that beheaded me!”
Is he right?
Billygoat@piefed.social 6 days ago
NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world 6 days ago
John Dies At The End by Jason Pargin. My favorite book series of all time, no contest. That’s how the book starts.
The fifth book, There Are No Giant Crabs in This Novel: A Novel of Giant Crabs, is releasing this year.
BilboBargains@lemmy.world 6 days ago
It is simultaneously the same axe and not the same axe. In a strict material sense, the final axe bears no relationship to the OG axe but in the figurative sense it is the same axe.
We must accept this paradox in the same way we must accept that our bodies are in a constant state of renewal and the person we were seven years ago has been completely renewed at a cellular level (maybe bones are exempt but brain cells don’t last forever). We tend to think of ourselves as a continuous process and our identity persists and is stable. On the other hand, it’s easy to argue that we are not the same person as we were seven years ago, we have grown and changed physically and spiritually. Only our identity documents contend that our identity is static. We seek stability and certainty everywhere and find it nowhere. If we can accept the ever changing nature of the universe at large we can find solace in constant change because that’s how it will always be.
NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Aww, man, you’ve really got to read the book. From that comment alone I am 100% certain you’d love it for nothing more than the chewy thoughts with long lasting flavor that it has to offer on that precise level.
luciferofastora@feddit.org 6 days ago
You brandish your ax. The guy takes a long look at the weapon with his squishy, rotting eyes and in a gargly voice he screams, “That’s the same ax that beheaded me!”
Is he right?
Does that grant it some additional symbolic power over him? Then, yes, I’ll gladly concede the point and chop him down again with “the same ax”.
NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Nah, for that kind of plot armor you’d probably want to blast something like Holding Out for a Hero by Bonnie Tyler or Home Sweet Home by Motley Crue.
Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world 6 days ago
If the guy has a new head is it the same guy though?? 🤔
NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I’d say yes, you’d need a lot more overhaul to hit ship of Theseus levels, I think a head replacement counts as a simple repair, you know, like changing out an air filter.
RunawayFixer@lemmy.world 6 days ago
My favorite ship of Theseus example is the Roman Empire. They started out as a Latin speaking polytheistic + republican empire with Rome as capital; and hundreds of years later they had become a greek speaking monotheistic + monarchistic empire with Constantinople as capital. When did they stop being Romans? According to themselves, never.
DrPop@lemmy.world 6 days ago
In the game Nier Automata there is an NPC in the main settlement who talks about how he won’t replace his leg since it’s the only piece of him that hasn’t been replaced. He feels that if he replaces his legs he would no longer be the same person. This made me think of that.
conartistpanda@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Its important to mention that the leg is also robotic. They’re all androids.
anotherspinelessdem@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
😐👍
RamenJunkie@midwest.social 6 days ago
One related to this I always wondered.
A man and woman marry, they grow old, the woman dies.
The man, marries a new.hotmyoung wife, 40 years his junior.
The man dies.
The woman remarries, again, a much younger man.
She dies, the man remarries.
And so on.
What is the family dynamic here? Is it all one long chain of the same couple?
What if we have kids involved. Not like, imbreeding, but the same process starting a generation removed. Are the many times removed couples step parents or step inlaws or anything to the generstion down couples?
Waraugh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
If your parent dies and your step parent remarries there isn’t a familial line involved in my experience. Like their new partner doesn’t become your quarter parent.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 6 days ago
It’s a shame so many people don’t want to raise their quarter children. Deadbeats.
rethnor@lemmy.zip 6 days ago
If each new pair had a child, you’d have a long chain of siblings. Eventually a child would have a sibling older than their parents.
dickalan@lemmy.world 6 days ago
i’m sorry I had to have a computer think for me but this is what it gave me
This is a delightfully strange thought experiment, and I see exactly why you’re asking. Let’s break it down, first without kids, then with kids weaving through the chain.
- The basic chain: no kids
You’ve got a sequence like this:
· M₁ marries W₁. W₁ dies. · M₁ marries W₂ (40 years younger). M₁ dies. · W₂ marries M₂ (much younger). W₂ dies. · M₂ marries W₃ (much younger). M₂ dies. · … and so on, alternating.
Is it all one long chain of the same couple? No, it’s a relay race of spouses. Each new marriage involves a completely new person who wasn’t part of the original couple. What links them is that they “inherit” the previous widowed partner, but the couple itself is always a fresh pairing. You could call it a serial marital lineage, not a single couple.
The relationship between any two non-adjacent people in the chain is simply “my late spouse’s later spouse’s later spouse…”. There’s no standard family term for it. M₁ and M₂, for example, are co-husbands of W₂ (sequentially), but they have no legal or blood relation to each other.
- Introducing kids into the chain
Now imagine each marriage in the chain produces children. Crucially, no inbreeding — everyone marries outside the chain. For simplicity:
· M₁ + W₁ have children A (Generation 1). · W₁ dies. M₁ + W₂ have children B (half-siblings of A, sharing father M₁). · M₁ dies. W₂ + M₂ have children C (half-siblings of B, sharing mother W₂). · W₂ dies. M₂ + W₃ have children D. · and so on.
Let’s map the relationships to the first set of kids A, and then “down the chain”.
For child A (from the original couple):
· W₂ was A’s stepmother (father’s second wife). That relationship remains even after M₁’s death, though legal ties often fade without adoption. · B are A’s half-siblings (same dad). · C are A’s half-sibling’s half-siblings — no blood relation to A. They are the children of A’s former stepmother with her new husband. You could say they are A’s ex-step-siblings or step-half-siblings — no standard term, just a biographical link. · M₂ is A’s stepmother’s new husband. Not a stepfather, because he didn’t marry A’s parent. In some extended family trees he might be called a step-stepfather (jokingly). · W₃ is even more remote: stepmother’s new husband’s new wife. That’s a step-step-stepmother — purely biographical.
What about “generation down” couples?
Suppose A marries someone X, completely outside the chain. Is M₂ (W₂’s second husband) a step-parent-in-law to the couple A + X? No. A’s in-laws are X’s parents. M₂ is not A’s parent, nor X’s. The link is too tenuous: “my father’s widow’s new husband”. That might be a quirky mention at a wedding but has zero legal or customary standing.
Now suppose B (child of M₁ & W₂) marries Y. B’s mother W₂ is still alive? If W₂ is still alive when B marries, M₂ would be B’s stepfather, because W₂ married M₂ while B was a child (possibly). In that case, M₂ is a step-parent to B, and he would be the stepfather-in-law to Y. That’s a standard relationship, as long as the step-relationship formed during B’s childhood or adulthood through marriage.
So the “many times removed” couples only become step-parents or in-laws to the specific children whose parent they married. The further the chain moves from those children, the more the role evaporates into “person my ancestor’s widow later married”.
- A concrete multi-generation picture
Let’s make it visual with ages so you can see the strange generational overlaps:
· M₁ born 1900, W₁ 1900 → kid A born 1925. · W₁ dies, M₁ (now 50) marries W₂ born 1940 (40 yrs younger) → kid B born 1950. · M₁ dies, W₂ (now 30) marries M₂ born 1970 (40 yrs younger) → kid C born 1980. · W₂ dies, M₂ (now 40) marries W₃ born 2000 (40 yrs younger) → kid D born 2010.
Now:
· A is 25 years older than W₂ (her stepmother is younger than her). · B (born 1950) is 20 years older than stepfather M₂ (born 1970). · C (born 1980) is 20 years older than stepmother W₃ (born 2000).
When C marries someone Z in, say, 2010, his stepmother W₃ is only 10 years old at the wedding — a bizarre but legally valid stepmother-in-law to Z, because M₂ married W₃ while C was a child or adult. This can create intergenerational absurdities where step-parents are younger than stepchildren, but the titles stick.
- Answering your core questions directly
What is the family dynamic here? A cascading string of remarriages that creates a web of half-siblings and step-relations across wildly mismatched generations. It’s not one couple but a lineage of conjugal partnerships that “hand off” younger spouses.
Is it all one long chain of the same couple? No. It’s a chain of different couples, each linked by one common member with the previous couple.
What if we start a generation removed? Are the many-times-removed couples step-parents or step-in-laws to the generation-down couples? It depends which “generation-down” couple you mean:
· For the children whose actual parent is in the later link of the chain, yes — the spouse of that parent is a step-parent, and thus an in-law to those children’s spouses. · For children further up the chain (e.g., A’s children, grandchildren of M₁), the later spouses are at most step-step-grandparents — a descriptive curiosity with no real familial weight. · The chain dissolves into “my ancestor’s widow’s later spouse’s later spouse” which no culture formalises.
In short: you’ve invented a marriage matryoshka where each generation’s step-relations nest inside the next, but the titles dilute quickly. Delightfully, it remains entirely legal and non-incestuous as long as no one marries a blood relative.
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 6 days ago
AI;DR
oascany@lemmy.world 6 days ago
If I wanted to read dice rolled sentences I would do it myself. The computer does not think for you, stop posting slop.
Taldan@lemmy.world 6 days ago
If we wanted an AI opinion, we could ask it ourselves. Don’t share that garbage.
Pogbom@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Well that was about one small village worth of water, thank you.
RamenJunkie@midwest.social 6 days ago
Yeah, the imheritance part feels wacky. Especialy, as I understand, spouses do not pay inheritance taxes. So you could just, keep passing things on endlessly.
QuinnyCoded@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
I think a couple is between 2 people, so if one of them leaves or dies it’s a completely different couple.
However, what about a polycule? is it the same polycule if everyone who was there at first leaves?
sbv@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
That’s not the original clap gif!
Or is it, but just modified?
sbv@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
I think it’s the original? In the tradition of shitposters everywhere, I grabbed the first thing that kind of looked right.
morto@piefed.social 6 days ago
Now we need to take the original phrases and rebuild the first version of the article elsewhere. Then we will ask ourselves which one is the same ship of theseus article
luciferofastora@feddit.org 6 days ago
Can we justify creating a separate “Original Ship of Theseus” page for demonstration value?
Mr_Dr_Oink@lemmy.world 6 days ago
This is a good allegory for the racists claiming the country is theirs and foreigners need to be kicked out.
Are modern brits even brits anymore? If heritage matters so much how like our ancestors are we really?
Johanno@feddit.org 6 days ago
Well I can tell you how the answer will be:
People who weren’t born in the USA, but look “right” are true Americans and can stay (Elon Musk)
People who look foreign (for example Latin) But have always lived in the USA since it was founded. They need to go. Such people they don’t want in “their” country
sik0fewl@piefed.ca 6 days ago
bomberesque@lemmy.world 6 days ago
We call a bicycle that you’ve had for so long that out has no original components (and perhaps a frame swap along the way) Trigger’s broom after the only fools and horses sketch
inlandempire@jlai.lu 6 days ago
Love me some 1792
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 6 days ago
My company’s ancient accounting system could be described as Software of Theseus.
Agent641@lemmy.world 6 days ago
If you printed out all those edits on paper you could use them in laminate to build a ship of Theseus ship. Of course you would have to continually replace the paper as it got waterlogged and sloughed off.
bountygiver@lemmy.ml 5 days ago
we should keep reposting this post but modify little by little until we get a completely reconstructed repost
UnrepententProcrastinator@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
But is it the same article?
herseycokguzelolacak@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
😂
Tja@programming.dev 6 days ago
Is the title a phrase?
wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
“Ship of Theseus”? It’s in reference to a ship which was used to row out to Delos every year for a ritual, but it was very specific that it had to be the same boat that Theseus used. So, as the pieces broke and had to be replaced, eventually every original plank, nail and line would have been replaced. After all of those replacements, which occurred one at a time over decades, is it still the same boat? If you collected all of the old replaced bits of the original boat, then put them together into a boat, would that be the original ship? At what point does it stop being the “ship of Theseus”?
whoisearth@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
Honest question if anyone has tried this in that who I am when I signed a contract is not the same person as I am now therefore any contract should be invalid no? Or are we acknowledging that a “soul” supercedes everything?
It’s an interesting thing I’m sure someone has tried to raise with a lawyer. I mean eventually all our cells are replaced naturally in our body right?
Impractical_Island@lemmy.world 6 days ago
The internet used to be good. Now there’s some jackass on Lemmy World that won’t stop talking about transgender assholes. You seen these things? I got about 48k pictures added to my slideshow I made my commanding officer when I am inevitably arrested for lying for having a sister that got me pregnant because I judged the wrath of my father more of a threat than the United States Military. Fuckers got 1.8k categories of types of trans bussy. Like this guy is crazy! He’s, like, everywhere talking about how them crystacious balls jiggle and her starfish puckers itself. Yea, the internet was way better when that guy wasn’t around. Fucking douchebag. He likes the gaping ones too, and like casually implies he wants that ish sent his way. Can you believe what the internet has become? Makes me weeq.
betanumerus@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
Theseus also slayed a minotaur and escaped his maze using a thread. A very accomplished mortal demigod.
wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Also kidnapped Helen of Sparta when she was prepubescent so that he, already in his later years, could groom her and forcibly wed her. Also left the person who gave him the thread, who betrayed her entire family to save him, on an island in the middle of nowhere, as far as he was aware, left to die, without even giving her the decency of a goodbye, according to some sources. And no, don’t come back at me with “Dionysus told him to do it in a dream”. First, not in all sources, and second, do you make it a habit of immediately doing whatever your drunken night terror tells you to do, as long as you dreamed it, when the life of your paramour is on the line?
No, fuck Theseus.
luciferofastora@feddit.org 6 days ago
Greek Gods and Demigods tend to be quite cruel and callous.
But also, people in the past were generally very religious. They believed their stuff. Not necessarily the tales, but the general characterisation. Particularly if the powerful gods are “known” to be vindictive and vain, you probably don’t want to offend them by dismissing their commands.
The whole origin of these superstitions was the desire to appease whatever anthropomorphised force was giving them trouble (weather, crop growth etc.), enticing it to treat them well and eventually expanded to trying to influence other things beyond (individual) human power (love, arts). If you genuinely believe that an angry god could make your life hell, it makes sense you would avoid angering them.
Not that this makes Theseus less of a dick. It’s an indictment of their dickish religion as an extension of human dickery, and particularly with myths, there will have been a desire to defend wrongdoing and make up a convenient excuse why the hero in question had to do it and wasn’t actually that bad and it was really just the cruel gods.
It’s not like the concept of “Deus Vult” has died out either. Still doesn’t excuse inventing some superhuman force to justify shit.
betanumerus@lemmy.ca 5 days ago
Yeah but a minotaur! I don’t think you’ve ever slayed a minotaur. Few people have done THAT!
QuinnyCoded@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
shoutout the community run wikipedia mastodon account. Pretty funny to see the official Wikipedia account respond to peoples hornyposts lol
wikis.world/@wikipedia
GlennMagusHarvey@mander.xyz 6 days ago
Oh dang this is on Mastodon? Gotta follow this account now.
CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
There is plenty of porn on Wikimedia Commons.
testaccount789@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Where does it come from?