pjwestin
@pjwestin@lemmy.world
- Comment on Why aren't all rooms holodecks? 4 weeks ago:
- Energy. In TNG, the holodecks burn a lot of energy. Can’t imagine what would happen if you turned every room into one.
- The holodeck isn’t a Tardis. The space inside the holodeck is an illusion created by the room. The room can make the space look infinite, and the floor can function as a hard-light treadmill that let’s you explore that infinite space, but the room still needs to be large enough to accommodate all the real-world things in it. That’s why they’re so large in TNG and Voyager. Holo-quarters would still need to be roughly the size of regular quarters.
- Same problem with the bar. Sure, you could make anyone’s quarters look like Ten Forward, but if your quarters fit 3 people, that’s how many people can drink there.
- The sickbay would still be essential because the problem isn’t medical equipment, it’s staff. Unless you’re going to have the medical staff running all over the ship making house calls, having that staff in a centralized location and having the crew come to them just makes more sense, especially in an emergency. Emergencies are also why that equipment should never be holographic. If the ship is under attack, the last thing you want is sickbay disappearing because of a phaser hit or having to turn off the medical equipment to power the sheilds.
- Comment on Tough question 1 month ago:
Astrology daughter. NFT son will be bankrupt in your basement, no matter what. Astrology daughter might marry a rich guy.
- Comment on For a group that considers .world to be Reddit 2.0 and a "CIA propaganda front" they seem to get awfully mad whenever it comes up 2 months ago:
Before joining Lemmy: “It really doesn’t matter what instance you join, you’ll be able to see content from all over.”
After joining Lemmy: “So you’ve enlisted in .world, eh? Welcome to the fight, soldier!”
- Comment on What is the origin of aliens looking like humans? Why and when did it become the norm? 2 months ago:
Yeah, that’s my thinking as well, although to be clear, I’m not saying that intelligent life would be humanoid, just that it’s the most reasonable real-world explanation I can come up with for why fictional aliens look human. I’m not an exobiologist, and I have no idea what the leading theories are on what intelligent life might look like. I’m just saying that, whenever I’m watching some sci-fi with a bunch of human-looking aliens, my go-to head cannon to explain it away is Convergent Evolution, and it at least feels like a reasonable explanation.
- Comment on What is the origin of aliens looking like humans? Why and when did it become the norm? 2 months ago:
If you’re asking why it appears in our sci-fi, you were correct in assuming it was mostly about cheap costuming and special effects. If you’re asking for a general canonical reason for it, there isn’t one, but many sci-fi shows have come up with unique ones (for example, Star Trek had the Progenitors, a species of humanoids that seeded world with their DNA). If you’re looking for a possible real-world explanation that could account for it, Convergent Evolution might explain why intelligent species wind up being bipedal tetrapods.
- Comment on Video Games Can’t Afford to Look This Good 2 months ago:
They call this design philosophy, “Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology.” Basically, “using old tech we understand very well in new and innovative ways.” For example, they were slower to get their 16-bit console to market, but while working on it, they used their expertise in 8-bit consoles to release the first cartridge-based handheld system.
- Submitted 3 months ago to [deleted] | 4 comments
- Comment on Does anyone else think the NYPD photos of the UHC CEO shooting suspect don’t match? 3 months ago:
“OK, now do these two pictures-”
“Not guilty!”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh , sorry, too soon? I’ll wait.”
- Comment on Does anyone else think the NYPD photos of the UHC CEO shooting suspect don’t match? 3 months ago:
No, I think they match, but if I wound up on his jury, I might start to doubt it.
- Comment on Torrent of Hate for Health Insurance Industry Follows C.E.O.’s Killing 3 months ago:
A longtime employee of UnitedHealthcare said that workers at the company had been aware for years that members were unhappy. Mr. Thompson was one of the few executives who wanted to do something about it, said the employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the company does not allow workers to speak publicly without permission.
In speeches to employees, Mr. Thompson spoke about the need to change the state of health care coverage in the country and the culture of the company, topics other executives avoided, the employee said.
The speeches:
- Comment on alpha 3 months ago:
True, although I met a girl with celiac early in the gluten-free fad who claimed that she couldn’t trust a lot of restaurants’ gluten-free options because a lot of them weren’t actually gluten-free. Restaurants were just chasing a trend that they didn’t fully understand. Things are much better now, but I think early on a lot of restaurants were treating gluten-free like the Atkins or Paleo diet, not an allergy.
- Comment on alpha 3 months ago:
Peter Gibson, the guy who discovered non-celiac gluten sensitivity, retracted his own study a few years later, but it had already become a fad diet, so it just stuck. That being said, there have been some studies that seem to confirm its existence, but the evidence is pretty thin. (To be clear, celiac disease and wheat allergies are 100% proven and can be reliably tested for).
- Comment on Brazilian's impression on the united states(i have never been there and this is based on nothing) 3 months ago:
No, I’m saying that the map labels Louisiana the crappiest state, but it isn’t because it has New Orleans. Otherwise, the OP’s map isn’t bad.
- Comment on Brazilian's impression on the united states(i have never been there and this is based on nothing) 4 months ago:
Crappiest state is either Mississippi or Alabama. Louisiana at least has New Orleans. Otherwise, not bad.
- Comment on Is it possible to have a "free speech" platform that simultaneously stops "hate speech"? 4 months ago:
It depends on how much of an absolutist you want to be. No government allows absolute freedom of speech. Libel, slander, and incitement of violence are all forms of speech that are illegal in basically every country. If your platform refuses to remove these forms of speech, you would be protecting what is generally not considered to be free speech, and it’s possible you could even be held legally liable for allowing that kind of speech to spread on your platform.
If you decide not to be a free speech absolutist, and instead define free speech as legal speech, then things get complicated. In the U.S., the Supreme Court has held multiple times that hate speech is protected under the First Amendment, so censoring hate speech would mean your platform wasn’t allowing all forms of, “free speech.” However, the U.S. has much broader protections on speech than most Western countries, and hate speech is illegal in much of Europe.
So, TL:DR; free speech is a sliding scale, and many countries wouldn’t consider hate speech to be protected form of speech. By those standards, you could have a platform that censors hate speech but still maintains what is considered free speech. However, by other countries’ standards, you would be censoring legal speech.
- Comment on Frog's Gift 4 months ago:
It also can’t be understated how much private corporations benefit from technology this research yields. We spent $25 billion ($175 billion in today’s money) on the Apollo programs alone, and NASA research has led to everything from cell phones and laptops to the rubber molding process used for sneakers. The DoD wasted a ton of money in the 80s on this new technology that involved getting computers to communicate with each other, and now we have the internet.
The government spends money in ways that could never be justified by cooperations, then the cooperations enrich themselves with that research and use the profits to lobby Congress for lower taxes and limited spending. It’s absolutely infuriating.
- Comment on "The American experiment endures," Biden said. "We're going to be OK." 4 months ago:
I was about to downvote until I saw the community.
- Comment on US Democracy 4 months ago:
The party that ran a populist message won. When their economic situation is dire, people turn to populist leaders. When there’s no populist movement in the left (usually some for of socialist/labor movement) they turn to right-wing populism (fascism). Democrats spent the last 12 years stamping out any kind of pro-labor movement that started in their party in favor of neoliberal centrism, and now their losing to right-wing facism.
- Comment on US Democracy 4 months ago:
I’m just so fucking tired of hearing why the policies that I and most of the country want are unpopular from people who can’t win a fucking election.
- Comment on US Democracy 4 months ago:
Yeah, except progressive positions are broadly popular. Raising billionaire and corporate taxes? Popular. Single-payer healthcare? Popular. Universal Basic Income?Popular. Bernie Sanders? Still pretty fucking popular!
Meanwhile, how popular was the flaccid centrist platform the Democrats put up this year? Is Kamala gonna be president? Are they gonna keep the Senate? Is the house looking good? No? Then maybe it’s time for all the popularity experts in the Democratic party to shut the fuck up.
- Comment on US Democracy 4 months ago:
Democrats aren’t progressives. Maybe if they were, they wouldn’t lose all the time.
- Comment on US Democracy 4 months ago:
Oh, I get to blame it on anything I like? Really? Then I’m going to blame it on Democratic party that was actively working against Sanders, a coordinated effort to anoint Biden after he won South Carolina, the billionaire who only entered the race, and an actively hostile media, and a billionaire who spent his on money on anti-Bernie ads. There were more headwinds against Bernie in those primaries than there were against Hillary, Biden, and Kamala in the general. Pretending that it was just, 'people picked Biden," FFS.
- Comment on US Democracy 4 months ago:
You’re right, I forgot that Bloomberg was still in and running a campaign entirely designed to block Bernie. Nothing says, “Democracy,” like an oligarch entering an election and using his personal wealth to undermine another candidate, right?
- Comment on US Democracy 4 months ago:
Except it wasn’t just him and Bernie. It was also Warren, so the progressive vote was spit, while the centrist vote was coordinated around Biden. Nice try though!
- Comment on US Democracy 4 months ago:
I think you’re forgetting the part where Clinton paid off the DNC’s debts and became it’s only financial lifeline, for which DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz abdicated control of party to Clinton’s team long before she secured the nomination.. Or that the AP controversially called the primary for Hillary just before California voted, giving voters the impression the primary was over before voting finished. Or that the DNC argued in court that they had no obligation give Bernie a fair, democratic primary. Or that Representatives Ford and Smith admitted the party did coalesced around Biden in 2020 to block Bernie. Or that polls had Bernie beating Trump by a wider margin than Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020.
- Comment on How do Americans win their country back? 4 months ago:
I’ll also add that you need to primary basically anyone that has been in politics for more than 15 years. There is just too much, “common sense,” in this party that is just wrong. In 2016, it was smart to run a centrist campaign that tried to move moderates away from Trump, and it failed. In 2024, they ran the same fucking campaign, and it failed.
There are well intentioned people that somehow still think that the 1992, third-way strategy will deliver gains through incrementalism, and it’s just not going to happen. Primary them, so that they at least have to contend with the new political realities. Trump picked up working class voters across across all demographics, not just the white working class. Everyone wants change; offer real change.
- Comment on ... 5 months ago:
Thank you. Something about me was rubbing me the wrong way, but I couldn’t articulate it.
- Comment on 'It Has Plateaued': Should We Be Worried About Console Gaming's Future? 5 months ago:
Well, there also seem to be credible leaks that it’ll have some sort of duel screen system, potentially functioning like the DS. It’s probably going to be more than just a bigger switch.
- Comment on Is Lemmy an effective alternative to Reddit? 5 months ago:
It’s the only site with a similar post/comment structure and a large enough user base to be viable, so in that regard, it’s the only alternative. Culturally, it’s much different. It’s far more left-leaning and hasn’t fallen victim to the same salf-importance and group-think that Reddit users have. It also doesn’t have the same wealth of knowledge Reddit built up over 20 years, though, and it’s prone to petty infighting between communities and instances (and even admins).
Ultimately, I prefer it to Reddit, and never feel the urge to go back. I’m not convinced that Federation is a silver bullet for all of social media’s ills, but I think Lemmy is an interesting project, and I’m interested in seeing how it develops.
- Comment on Absolutely nothing happened June 1989 5 months ago:
Eh, it’s a mixed bag. There’s a very high concentration of centrist, “vote blue, no matter who,” liberals in Political Memes. They’re not the whole instance, but they’ve made a nice little echo chamber that makes them a pretty loud minority.
