lennivelkant
@lennivelkant@discuss.tchncs.de
- Comment on pain plant 1 week ago:
Well, given that it’s supposed to be toxic rather than just painful, I’d say we’re resistant in that it takes a high dose to kill us.
- Comment on pain plant 1 week ago:
How fortunate then that the same species resistant to their defense actually goes on to cultivate it
- Comment on Consider the following... 1 week ago:
Now get to a medical facility, but make sure not to surface too rapidly or you might get gas bubbles in your joints, blood or spinal chord.
- Comment on I'm just happy you thought it was funny, dear 1 week ago:
Do you mean the victims or the instances of SCP-3008-2? I don’t think the anomaly itself is curable.
Summary for those not familiar: SCP-049 is a plague doctor that seeks to violently “cure” anyone afflicted with some nondescript “Pestilence”.
SCP-3008 is an endless and nearly inescapable IKEA, where the “Staff” (labeled SCP-3008-2) are entirely unresponsive during the day but become violent at night towards anyone still in the store after closing time. - Comment on I'm just happy you thought it was funny, dear 1 week ago:
SCP Foundation is a fictional (I hope) organisation with the mission to Secure, Contain, Protect various anomalies catalogued with numbers (SCP-#) which are thus also referred to as SPCs. These anomaly descriptions are available on scp-wiki.wikidot.com
Some of the anomalies are references to other fictional things. If you’re familiar with Slenderman, for instance, you may enjoy SCP-096.
- Comment on got any others? 2 weeks ago:
That works if there’s enough public funding, but given trends lately and events most recently…
- Comment on Lightning bugs!! 3 weeks ago:
I hope you get many beautiful snowfalls in your life yet
- Comment on tig ol bitties 3 weeks ago:
Contriboobtion
- Comment on A daunting realization 5 weeks ago:
More like fungsus
- Comment on Psst, the Americans are asleep, post some eggs 1 month ago:
Feed him enough of it and it will work
- Comment on mrw someone tries to proselytize Christianity to me [Day 64] 1 month ago:
For God so loved the world that he invented a hell to throw people into so he could call himself merciful by sending his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
I think I might have gotten a weird translation there. Anyway, he loves you so much he might choose not to throw you into the lake of fire.
- Comment on Anon questions the KKK 1 month ago:
The core of Christianity is originally the redemption, not the threat that necessitates it and often is more prominent.
The cross is a symbol of the sacrifice made to redeem people from the threat of hell. More relevant here is that sin separates humans from God, and through that sacrifice, the connection is restored. It is a catalyst of redemption and reunion. In that sense, they don’t so much pray towards an implement of torture as an implement of liberation, salvation and mercy.
Given that those are hard things to put in a visual, tangible form and that humans tend to place a lot of value in visual, tangible representations, it’s basically the simplest symbol you could come up with as a nascent cult.
It’s not the only symbol, and particularly during the rise of the Roman church, you’ll note that icons of saints become very common too. Some places will even have the Crucifix feature the crucified Jesus as well, to drive home the point about sacrifice and gratitude.
Protestants later held that the worship of saints was tantamount to idolatry and did away with them again, leaving just the core of the message of redemption. There was in some places a conscious choice to pick the “empty” cross rather than the crucified saviour as a symbol that he is no longer dead.
All in all, given his divine wisdom and love for metaphors and similes, I’d think Jesus would understand the point of the cross…
…then proceed to trash the place out of rage over the waste of money and effort that went into gaudy churches and gold-embroidered robes instead of helping the sick and poor.
- Comment on I guess we are fucked now 1 month ago:
Garfield would be Slaaneshi - excessive amounts of lasagna
- Comment on From now on, I wish to be addressed as Lt. Commodre Squid 1 month ago:
Sounds like a university I know - brilliant and accomplished people, very proud of it, to the point of projecting that pride on everyone else and assume everyone must hold their full title as dear as they do. The idea of one of my teachers, some “First Name, Baron of Examplington-Doublename”, telling us to just call him “Mr. Examplington” would have shorted out their brains.
For all their laudable competencies, humility was not among them.
(Not in Australia, but I imagine it’s hardly exclusive.)
- Comment on South Afruleca 1 month ago:
Glad to make you laugh :)
- Comment on South Afruleca 1 month ago:
Even if I knew what that is, I doubt I could do it on my phone, but I appreciate your contribution to the shitpost request chain.
- Comment on South Afruleca 1 month ago:
- Comment on South Afruleca 1 month ago:
- Comment on Caption this. 2 months ago:
I think that, vocal complainers aside, he’s still overall fairly popular. A popular white man saying wise stuff is a great opportunity to signal how committed you are to science without having to put actually significant amounts of money on the line or entering the minefield that is angering the anti-“woke” crowd. He’s a safe investment in public appearances.
Doesn’t mean they’ll have to listen to him. He gets a more sombre version of the Jester’s Privilege that allows him to say whatever he wants, they’ll nod and applaud and perform all the gestures of approval, but they won’t actually change anything.
The other half of it is probably the Internet Outrage culture that sees inciting content get more engagement and boosted visibility in a self-perpetuating cycle of upset. Legitimate criticism drowns in a sea of bullshit, everyone’s pissed off and we’re all easily swept up in the current of emotion. If we’re not mad at one person, we’re mad at the people pointlessly or excessively mad at them. If we try to stem against that, we’re dogpiled by loud complainers while quiet agreement leaves an upvote and moves on.
- Comment on Itch.io was taken down by funko pop 3 months ago:
An individual would risk corporate lawyers lobbing suits at them they don’t have nearly enough resources to fight. In that way, it’s much like other forms of activism: individual actions are easily singled out and retaliated against.
If a ton of people were to do so, however, they might have an impact. Either the registrar would have to take steps to limit who can submit them, which might conflict with some laws, or they’d invest a great deal of resources trying to sort out the legit ones. Trying to single out people for retaliation is hard when there’s enough of them. In this way, too, it is like other forms of activism:
There is strength in numbers. There is power in unity.
If, hypothetically, someone were to coordinate such actions in the style of a crowdsources DDoS, and they could get enough participants, they might get away with it.
- Comment on A tense moment. 3 months ago:
It’s a common bait-and-switch joke. “I have Ligma” “What’s Ligma?” “Ligma Balls!” (The joke being that “Ligma” sounds like “Lick My”)
Maybe you’re familiar with a similar joke: “Hey, do you think it smells like updog in here?” “What’s updog” “Not much, what’s up with you?” (Here, the joke is that “What’s updog” sounds like “What’s up, dawg”)
- Comment on Standoff 3 months ago:
Entomolinguist
- Comment on Standoff 3 months ago:
It mises the “good enough” human approximations of the “true names” when the latter is impossible for humans to pronounce: it doesn’t have to be the exact correct pronunciation. If the Ants can’t make the -lk- or -nt- sounds of my screen name and chant “Lennivekat”, It’s close enough that I get they mean me. I might try to teach them the correct pronunciation, then probably give up and ask what they actually want.
- Comment on Scientists suck at naming and abbreviating stuff 3 months ago:
There should be a Lemmy feature (perhaps just a client implementation detail?) for LaTeX conversion
- Comment on No need to boil the ocean 3 months ago:
Now I want to learn more.
That is just about the greatest compliment you could give me, and I’m delighted that my own fascination has lit some in you too.
One blog I can’t recommend enough is A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, a Roman and Military historian’s look at pop culture depictions of history like the Siege of Gondor or the general stereotype of Romans, interspersed with general info about the social patterns around making bread, a discussion on the nature and severity of the collapse of western Rome, an argument on “Why We Need the Humanities” and even some thoughts on spaceship gun placement and a followup on starship design extrapolated from the factors that informed those decisions historically (like firing arcs or protection of vital components).
I’ll give you a single, half-hearted warning that you may end up sinking hours and hours into binging this, but I honestly think that it’s a good way to spend those hours.
- Comment on No need to boil the ocean 3 months ago:
Actually, it’s not entirely disconnected.
Concrete was mostly used in large building projects. These were expensive and thus usually sponsored by those wealthy enough to invest in such projects, particularly if they were vanity projects. In Rome, that would be the Emperors. Outside, it would typically take multiple sponsors.
The decline in economic stability around the Third Century, the reduction in profitable conquest due to military power being invested in civil wars of succession and the increasingly expensive bribes for the Praetorian Guard all contributed to Emperors having less money to spend on such projects, with predictable results: Less projects were built.
This is vaguely recited from an AskHistorians post, all errors are on me.
- Comment on No need to boil the ocean 3 months ago:
Much of Roman technology was lost because the collapse of state capacity and according administrative capacity rendered the balance of agrarian to non-agrarian workers unsustainable.
A high equilibrium, where the products of population centers supports and enhances the productivity of the agrarian surroundings while administrative pressure (like taxes) encourage the trade between the two: If the farmers need to pay taxes in coin, they need to sell surplus to merchants who ship it to cities to sell it. Conversely, the craftsmen producing iron plows, pottery and so on need coin too, so they sell tools, which the farmers buy to improve their yield. The state also buys services (like construction) and the elite buys luxuries, further creating jobs and fostering more technological development.
(Obviously, the elite skim a lot off the value produced by others - just because they did some good for others with it doesn’t mean they didn’t primarily do a lot of good for themselves.)
But when internal strife, plague, worsening climate, desperate invaders and identity politics all start breaking that machine, it’s hard to keep it from falling apart. And once the rural argarian production can no longer sustain the cities, the skills and crafts of the urbanites get lost.
- Comment on Judas 3 months ago:
That, or they opted to use buzzwords to secure funding from investors more willing to buy into the hype than actually interested about the research.
Or it’s just a joke, playing off of that trope or scientific headlines to make a caricature of Musk.
- Comment on We were there monkeys all along 3 months ago:
George “Let’s ignore half of history, take a superficial misrepresentation of the other half, sprinkle some sexual violence and betrayal over it all, then let everyone claim it’s historically accurate” R.R. “The Dothraki were actually fashioned as an amalgam of racist stereotypes I didn’t bother doing even the least bit of research on, but will pretend were an actual historical inspiration” Martin?
Not throwing shade on GoT as a work of fiction, mind, as long as people are aware that it’s solidly in the realm of fiction. Its popularity alone attests to its literary quality. A piece of fiction doesn’t need to be true to reality to be good (that’s the point of fiction, isn’t it?).
- Comment on Garter snakes 4 months ago:
That is a very sweet compliment, thank you very much!
I always aspire to be better than my teachers, who were as competent in their subjects as they were boring and hard to listen to. I may not have the same depth of knowledge, but I try to make it more approachable at least.
