rational_lib
@rational_lib@lemmy.world
- Comment on [deleted] 3 days ago:
Miss Cleo was big in the 90s. And she wasn’t even the dumbest one. Americans have always believed in stupid bullshit. The CIA used to hire psychics too. Go back to the 1920s, and Americans pretty much took it for granted that fairies are real.
What’s changed recently is that the media went from being a mostly curated place where completely lunacy was hard to find, to a right wing clown show led by con artists. And don’t underestimate the degree to which this was done deliberately - Elon buying Twitter was a pretty clear example of the billionaire mafia taking a platform that was sort of trying to be more attached to reality and making it a lot dumber and more right wing.
- Comment on Terrorists 4 days ago:
Some guy improving Teslas with cool free penis art
- Comment on Why aren't there mass protests in the USA? 1 week ago:
Because protests don’t do shit. There were mass protests over police brutality in 2020. Didn’t do shit.
- Comment on How likely is the US government going to identify and arrest every online user who have disagreed with the current administration? 1 week ago:
It’s completely unrealistic in the short term, more so in the long term. This would require arresting millions of people - there simply isn’t enough jail space. They would have to execute people on sight, and that’s also not realistic because low level soldiers would refuse (there’s a reason the nazis needed to build a system instead of just executing jews on sight). Obviously if this were attempted it would result in extremely violent resistence which would destroy any economic, political, or other incentives for such an action.
Instead we can see what happened in Russia for a more realistic example - there was a slow elimination of dissent. Even today there are some Russians who vocally oppose Putin and don’t get arrested so long as they stay small enough. And that’s in a place where the society never had a culture of freedom to begin with, so here it will probably be much harder and obviously MAGA is much dumber than the Russians too. But regardless that’s why it’s very important to be vocal now and oppose any silencing of dissent, like the removal of pro-Palestine activists here on green cards. It may not affect you now, but if they keep at it for a decade or two it’ll get to you eventually.
- Comment on NEW TAPEWORM JSUT DROPPED 1 week ago:
TWILF
- Comment on Musk shares post that Hitler didn’t kill millions, public workers did. Union rages 2 weeks ago:
en.wikipedia.org/…/List_of_companies_involved_in_…
The holocaust, like all slave labor, inevitably was exploited by capitalism.
- Comment on Am I the only one who feels uncomfortable about many Americans constantly calling people "black" and "white" and making such a big thing about it? 2 weeks ago:
Because to me personally this kinda feels like America is still stuck in those slavery/segregation times
Yes. American culture is very much based on social hierarchies, and slavery created a very easy, color-coded social hierarchy. So it’s hard to get rid of because a lot of people are invested in it - whether they admit it or not.
Americans (except for the most liberal) tend to look at race as a biological reality and regard anyone saying race isn’t science as woke extremism. Generally when science conflicts with common/traditional sense in America, common sense wins. The only reason quantum physics isn’t banned from schools yet is because probably only about 10% of Americans know the first thing about quantum physics.
Americans also regard a wide variety of racial discrimination - such as in dating (including who you allow your kids to date), or where you live, or where you send your kids to school, as “not racist”. This is considered not racist because the goal isn’t to harm racial minorities, but rather you’re just doing it to protect your place in the social hierarchy. The race-based social hierarchy. And if this harms minorities, well it’s not like it’s your fault right?
And if you dare try to suggest that the above is racist, people will get very angry at you and do things like elect Trump.
So yeah, racism is still very prevalent in the US.
- Comment on fuck this asshole 3 weeks ago:
Let’s not keep making the mistake of assuming Trump’s tweets have force of law. He’s just talking out of his ass again, just like he’s not actually invading greenland and canada. If Trump tries to do anything in this regard no judge* will uphold it.
*Obligatory other than Clarence Thomas
- Comment on Im thinking we still have a deeper bottom 4 weeks ago:
Because some people don’t know how to copy and paste text, and other people don’t discourage these posts by downvoting them.
- Comment on smort 4 weeks ago:
The average person (and to be fair, most psychologists) thinks of intelligence as the innate, fundamental characteristic of a person to think across all cognitive areas. However, this concept is not easily falsifiable and therefore arguably exists outside the realm of science.
For example, say I wanted to come up with a concept called “sportsness” which is the ability to be good at sports. I could test a bunch of people in a battery of sports-related tasks, and I’d probably get a nice bell curve where some people have high sportsness across all tasks and others have low sportsness across all tasks.
But does that prove the existence of sportsness? Or did I just measure a spurious correlation caused by the fact that some people are just more likely to be playing sports than others, or that some body types may lead to being better at sports related tasks, or some combination thereof? Of course most would say the latter, but then maybe some would defend the concept of sportsness by saying sportsness is just an emergent property of those things or something like that. But then is sportsness useful at all? You get the idea.
- Comment on What Did William Burrito Mean by This? 5 weeks ago:
Getting sick of all this observational humor.
- Comment on How does this pic show that Elon Musk doesnt know SQL? 5 weeks ago:
To me I’m not really sure what his reply even means. I think it’s some attempt at a joke, but I figure the joke can be broken down into two potential jokes that fail for different, embarrassing reasons:
Interpretation 1: The government is so advanced it doesn’t use SQL - This interpretation is unlikely given that Elon is trying to portray the government as in need of reform. But it would make more sense if coming from a NoSQL type who thinks SQL needs to be removed from everywhere. NoSQL Guy is someone many software devs are familiar with who takes the sometimes-good idea of avoiding SQL and takes it way too far. Elon being NoSQL Guy would be dumb, but not as dumb as the more likely interpretation #2.
Interpretation 2: The government is so backward it doesn’t use SQL - I think this is the more likely interpretation as it would be consistent with Elon’s ideology, but it really falls flat because SQL is far from being cutting-edge. There has kind of been a trend of moving away from SQL (with considerable controversy) over the last 10 years or so and it’s really surprising that Elon seems completely unaware of that.
- Comment on Yeah, let's stop with this "don't judge people for their poiltics" bullshit 1 month ago:
The most successful tactic of the right has been judging the left for their politics - “woke” etc. The left needs to be similarly unabashed.
But it needs to be more fun and less serious than this post. Why is there no “screaming maga” meme? Surely there’s plenty of those images, and more.
- Comment on We're in the endgame now 1 month ago:
If you were to try to drive someone else’s car, that would be illegal
If you were to try to get money from a bank account that’s not yours, that’s also illegal
Vice Presidents aren’t allowed to fuck couches. - Comment on Why was Hitler so mean and hateful toward one group or another? I find it hard to believe he woke up one day and said you and you suck but these people over here are good. Taking it so far as killing? 1 month ago:
Gustav Bauer had no religious affiliation and in any case he did not sign the Treaty of Versailles. It was signed for Germany by Matthias Erzberger, who was also not Jewish. But, those sorts of facts tended to make little difference to the German far right of that time which basically branded everyone they didn’t like as Jews.
- Comment on Why was Hitler so mean and hateful toward one group or another? I find it hard to believe he woke up one day and said you and you suck but these people over here are good. Taking it so far as killing? 1 month ago:
There’s probably as many theories as there are people.
My own is that cognitive dissonance is a powerful force, especially for a narcissist. Hitler spent 4 of the best years of his life is the pure misery of the trenches of WWI, and even worse - running between the trenches to deliver messages. He was gassed so badly it put him in the hospital for the final month of the war. Hitler was probably also deluded about Germany’s failing position in the war, probably kept in the dark by German propaganda and made quite gullible by his fierce patriotism. So when Germany surrendered, that must have actually both shocking and enraging for him. And we know that because he frequently attacked the treaty of Versailles, even before he was known to be anti-semetic.
The “stab in the back” myth is the idea that Germany’s surrender was corruptly carried out by politicians, and due to common antisemitism across Germany and Europe generally it soon focused on Jews. In reality there was virtually no Jewish people significantly involved with the surrender and events leading up to it, but that didn’t matter because as is often the case today, emotional truth is more important than reality. Given that Hitler couldn’t possibly bring himself to believe that he incurred tremendous pain and suffering by voluntarily and stupidly buying into an imperialistic war that was doomed to failure from the start, the stab in the back myth would’ve been extremely appealing to him. He wanted to believe it, so he did.
So when he happened to be assigned to monitor the DAP - the predecessor to the Nazi Party - he was ready to wholeheartedly accept their antisemitic ideas. Even though he seemed to get along with Jewish officers during the war, by a year after the war he was already talking about “removing” the Jews.
- Comment on Is anyone planning on doing anything about trump creating a concentration camp at guantanamo bay? 1 month ago:
I already did, it didn’t work.
- Comment on Amazon Artificially Discounting Items $0.01 Below the Free Shipping Limit 1 month ago:
Retail capitalists are fine, but Amazon, Walmart, and Target all did the maga loyalty thing after Trump’s win. I don’t need to buy from someone who shares my politics or even doesn’t disagree with me, I just need them to not be outright oligarchs using my money to support dictators.
- Comment on Amazon Artificially Discounting Items $0.01 Below the Free Shipping Limit 1 month ago:
What’s the alternative? The other places I can order a big box of cheap stuff from (Walmart, Target) are run by even worse people and have even worse service.
I once ordered porcelain plates from target and they arrived with no packaging. I don’t mean insufficient packaging, I mean four plates just thrown in a giant box with absolutely nothing else. Somehow 3 were not broken.
- Comment on Anon questions North Korea 2 months ago:
Correct, sorted by arable land %, NK is actually pretty high on the list. The land is arable, but the dictator is unbearable.
- Comment on A totally normal figure of cancer signaling pathways 2 months ago:
“I have lung cancer? How bad is it?”
“Well let’s just say it’s…non-small lung cancer.” - Comment on Anon goes on a first date 2 months ago:
If you’re not a normie, don’t match with hardcore normies. Usually it’s pretty easy to tell.
- Comment on Behold, the peak of Twitter (formerly renamed to X) 2 months ago:
Really it’s the celebrities more than others. What’s really inexcusable is that so many Democratic politicians still have accounts - AOC, Bernie, the whole gang is still there.
- Comment on My favorite 2 months ago:
Olive Garden is Nickelback for pasta restaurants.
Never Again
- Comment on bird flu 2 months ago:
Isn’t that how these diseases are generated in the first place?
No, livestock diseases were a problem long before vaccination. In fact it’s been hypothesized that the reason Europeans killed off Native Americans with disease instead of the other way around is that European livestock spread so much disease that it meant Europeans carried and were immune to a wide variety of diseases.
As for why livestock diseases are so common, it’s probably due to the obvious - the cramped conditions, often in close contact with other animals. Think of the classic Chinese wet market with animals from many different places stacked in cages on top of each other with fluids flying all over. That’s the real bio weapons lab.
- Comment on If investing in the S&P 500 is such a surefire way to make money, then why isn't everyone doing it? 2 months ago:
A large number of us CAN be millionaires.
It’s actually technically correct that we all can be millionaires, at least on a household basis. The mean household wealth in the US was $1.06 million as of 2022, by now it’s undoubtedly higher. So with a full redistribution of wealth every household would have over $1 million.
In reality though the median household wealth is just under $200k as of 2022, and doesn’t rise as consistently so who knows where it is now.
- Comment on If investing in the S&P 500 is such a surefire way to make money, then why isn't everyone doing it? 2 months ago:
In my experience:
- A lot of people do this with 401ks and such because many times there aren’t many other options.
- People I know who are serious investors with a lot of money tend to not invest much in the S&P 500 because they think of themselves as superior investors, but I don’t know of anyone for whom this is actually true based on past performance.
- I invest some 20% of my money in the S&P 500, which is probably not as much as I should. It’s some combination of the above hubris, which is natural, wanting to be diversified, and enjoying gambling on individual stocks.
- Comment on "Images of 'Saint Luigi Mangione, The patron saint of health care justice' have been making rounds on social media" 2 months ago:
Not quite, in America we always think of the sacrificed as belonging to the other tribe.
- Comment on Happy birthday, peon 3 months ago:
And the shoes (which are abnormally large) don’t look like any work boots I’ve ever seen, resembling trail running shoes but bigger. The laces seem to be oddly non-existent and instead the straps for lacing them appear to connect with each other.
AI can get reflections right, just when it doesn’t it can be very creepy.
- Comment on Iraq War was preceded by the largest worldwide non-violent protests in history and the war happened anyway. 3 months ago:
It was also preceded by a violent act of terrorism that made people support whatever the president wanted to do in the middle east.