TheTechnician27
@TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
- Comment on USA 🇺🇸 USA 🇺🇸 USA 14 minutes ago:
Okay, but the ruling is totally sensible inasmuch as it applies to “purposes of tariffs, imports and customs”. Tomatoes by and large aren’t being imported for their botanical value; they’re being used for food. This ruling exists so corporations can’t “um ackshually” their way out of paying their fair share.
But that’s too sensinle; in reality, this unanimous ruling that I never bothered to spend five seconds researching independently (I am very intellectually superior) was just “le Americans uneducated ecksdee”.
- Comment on cis friend does witchcraft 3 days ago:
Except it categorically isn’t. If you sit two people in a laboratory – an adherent to an Abrahamic religion and a “practitioner” of “magic” – neither will be able to perform a supernatural feat. We agree that far. But unless the “witch” wants to resort to special pleading that they can’t perform it under laboratory conditions for no good reason (the woo magic system presumably isn’t sentient and has no reason to care? or maybe they have really bad performance anxiety?), then it’s provably false. Even if they say something vague like “better luck” or “better health”, well we have statistics for a reason. Are you not powerful enough? Okay, well like, we’re measuring down to the attometer at this point. If you want to drink masala chai under an amber calcite chandelier of 100 candles drinking masala chai and listening to pagan-coded fantasy music, and you can consistently, measurably move a human hair 20 meters away, congratulations: you’ve still proven witchcraft is real.
The Abrahamic God, meanwhile, is constructed to be unfalsifiable. It’d be subject to everything I just mentioned except that there are a million bullshit but unfalsifiable rationalizations why a sentient God wouldn’t respond to these prayers to let them be observed. Literally no matter how hard you try, a sentient third-party gets the final say.
The difference between believing in a monotheistic God and believing in witchcraft is the difference between believing in Santa Claus and believing you made and placed those presents yourself. Of course neither is true and both are ridiculous: there is another entity putting those presents there, but it’s not magic, and by taking action in the real world, you can influence what those presents will be without magic.
- Comment on cis friend does witchcraft 3 days ago:
Sure. Doesn’t make them not stupid as hell; it just makes their beliefs less corrosive to society. I can imagine they’d be extremely toxic if they had widespread public support, but probably still not nearly as much as “I commune with an all-powerful sky daddy whose word is ultimate law that divides people between everlasting bliss and everlasting suffering and I can choose to believe whatever that word is” like Abrahamic religions.
- Comment on cis friend does witchcraft 3 days ago:
Yeah, and what I think you missed is that I’m saying there are far fewer excuses for spells than there are for prayers. If we think of a prayer or spell like a transmission, that one starts and ends in our reality but can’t be measured by science is (even) dumber than one that starts above our reality by an omnipotent, hyperdimensional trickster set on not revealing itself.
A prayer means that someone else – infinitely wiser and outside time and space – will do this for you if they so choose. From this, you have near-infinite freedom to weasel around why your prayer was or wasn’t answered. You’ve made it unfalsifiable, which is intellectual sludge, but it means you’ve insulated yourself from being provably wrong.
But for “witchcraft”? Yes, this particular brand of delusion often turns to weasel spells (whereas I used to see a lot more of “I can do concrete, measurable things that couldn’t happen otherwise”), but given they’re making the action happen or creating a conduit for that action, there ought to be some physically observable explanation behind it. But apparently magic can interface with patterns of candles and lavendar and minerals and clockwise tea set up by some early 20s stoner in their parents’ basement but can’t be measured by science.
- Comment on cis friend does witchcraft 3 days ago:
Is it though…? As stupid as the Abrahamic God is, at least you have a “God of the Gaps” thing going on where all God really has to be is someone with their own agency to grant you what you ask for and to determine where to place you in an untestable “afterlife”. Of course there’s an obvious cocktail of inherent contradictions when you choose “omniscient”, “omnipotent”, and “omnibenevolent” at the same time, but then you can appeal to the idea we wouldn’t possibly understand the whims of such a god outside of time and space. Again, stupid as fuck, but you can weasel your way out of anything.
But witchcraft? Okay, you’re transferring the agency to yourself, and you’re saying you can perform magic, but now you have no evidence you’re capable of jack shit and you have no excuse to pawn it off onto. You’ll never be able to do magic your entire life because it categorically isn’t real, so is the excuse that witches are real but you personally really suck as one? Is the idea that you do what “God” does and take credit for anything that vaguely “works” by sheer coincidence and ignore everything else? Do you only cast “spells” that function as placebos like easing someone’s pain or making them feel happy – similar to many prayers?
So now you’ve gone from untestable woo like the afterlife and testable but weaselable woo like prayers to woo that you should absolutely be able to test empirically because you’re in control of it.
- Comment on I am gorge 4 days ago:
- Comment on Flashbacks 6 days ago:
Are the people who put hot sauce on their eggs using napalm?
- Comment on The Harbinger of the Dystopia 1 week ago:
Fair point! I entirely agree with that perspective in other areas. If we’re using this as an example, then I understand, but I actually think this is one example where the change is a tangibly good thing.
- Comment on Everybody poops 1 week ago:
Why did I think the centaur on the left was a man doing unspeakable things to a small elephant
- Comment on The Harbinger of the Dystopia 1 week ago:
And god knows McDonald’s wouldn’t want to be confused with inferior coffee.
- Comment on The Harbinger of the Dystopia 1 week ago:
I’m actually going to say that I think designing a restaurant for disastrously unhealthy fast food in a way that makes it look and feel like a playground shouldn’t be legal, and I’m happy to see them look as dull and unappealing as possible to young children.
- Comment on Fine Literature 2 weeks ago:
This is so true. But your title is fewer than 20 characters. Under Rule 7, Amendment 6 § 38.5, you’re hereby banned from every community I moderate.
- Comment on Juneteenth 3 weeks ago:
I definitely think Juneteenth fits best as the final application of that proclamation. Although it’s slightly incongruous with July 4th celebrating the Declaration of Independence (rather than the end of the war), I think what distinguishes them is who declared the independence: the oppressed or the oppressor.
Independence Day celebrates the oppressed declaring their freedom and then later fighting to win it; an EP day would celebrate the oppressor declaring the freedom of the oppressed, so it seems less like it’d be celebrating black freedom and more like “wow guys look at what a good thing we did”. I’d imagine the EP falling on January 1st does its viability as a holiday no favors either.
- Comment on Juneteenth 3 weeks ago:
Celebrated as the end of slavery in the US. Obviously excludes the clause of the 13th Amendment that served as a loophole, but emancipation holidays aren’t always so cut-and-dry.
- Comment on PROGRESS 3 weeks ago:
Just bend and glue them to make a toroidal sandwich.
- Comment on PROGRESS 3 weeks ago:
A spherical sandwich would just be a 3-ball of air surrounded by a 2-sphere with the following layers: bread (inner), contents (middle), bread (outer). You could also have a 3-sphere sandwich, which is homeomorphic to a calzone.
- Comment on Radio transmissions 3 weeks ago:
A few additional fun points about this:
- “Crab” is Germanic.
- “-ification” itself has its roots in Latin, so even your proposal would be “Latinised”.
- "carcino- comes from Ancient Greek.
- True crabs’ scientific name, “Brachyura”, is Neo-Latin derived from Ancient Greek.
- Comment on Radio transmissions 3 weeks ago:
I think the meme is funny too, but it seems like it’s becoming so divorced from its original context that some people actually believe that carcinisation is some kind of ideal endpoint of evolution. Just to clarify: this isn’t true given how few actual examples there are and the tradeoffs involved.
- Comment on Don't kink shame Oklahoma City. 4 weeks ago:
🎵 It takes a lot to make a stew 🎵
- Comment on I've hated donald trump since day one but then I saw this and thought.... 4 weeks ago:
I’m not German and thought “huh, I’m not German; maybe I’m actually wrong, and I’m not going to overstep here”… And then the Germans arrived.
- Comment on Good job 4 weeks ago:
“Let’s nostalgia bait millennials who miss the Aero aesthetic.”
- Comment on I've hated donald trump since day one but then I saw this and thought.... 4 weeks ago:
“Are these anti-Nazi protestors holding up a Star of David trying to protect democracy in Germany, or are they just trying to keep their family from being deported?”
🤡
- Comment on Anon is in the folder now. 1 month ago:
What’s the ratio of sweat to passion?
- Comment on Grieve with me 1 month ago:
- Test the cable first if you have a spare.
- Test the AC adapter if you have a spare.
- If both fail, inspect the charging port with a flashlight. 4a) If it looks dirty, try cleaning it out with a toothpick (if you have a dedicated plastic tool for mobile repair, use that). 4b) If it doesn’t look dirty, refer to 4a. What often happens is that lint from your pocket compacts over time as it gets in there and then gets pressed in by the charger.
- If this doesn’t work and you have a good, locally owned mobile repair shop nearby, they might look at the port for free just to see if there’s anything you missed.
Only after all of this would I start to strongly consider the phone itself as the culprit.
- Comment on Are you amused 1 month ago:
You finally got here. This is the ninth “Your Sanctuary” location. But it’s mine now. Take it from me, if you dare…
- Comment on “This script is fantastic. Let’s get Julia Roberts to play Harriet Tubman.” 1 month ago:
Oh god, it’s real.
- Comment on Github keeps shoving copilot everywhere. 1 month ago:
- Comment on Max changing name back to HBO 1 month ago:
Thank fuck, honestly. What a stupid fucking name; took them long enough.
- Comment on It's My Nature 1 month ago:
They should end in the style of the author’s notes from the fanfic My Immortal instead.
- Comment on When you think that YOU are always correct 1 month ago:
9gag-ass meme tbh