luciferofastora
@luciferofastora@feddit.org
- Comment on Aha! 1 week ago:
I’m not sure many people were dental guinea-pigs though. Sucks that you got fucked by it though.
- Comment on Buzz off 1 week ago:
Got stung as a stupid kid who found a few piles of dead branches you could bounce on like a trampoline. Yeah, turns out one of them had a nest underneath, and the tenants weren’t quite happy with the upstairs neighbour partying so hard the ceiling came down.
Absolutely my fault, no question about it, and my only feeble defense is “I didn’t know”.
My issue is now, that I struggle with seizing up in panic if I know (or think) there is one mear me. Not the “shrieking trying to run away” kind of panic, just freezing in place, struggling to breathe or move. I can’t chase them away or anything, even if they were docile and harmless enough.
- Comment on Why exactly are nursing aids paid so poorly? 2 weeks ago:
- the original tweet could’ve been written with this mindset (which, I should add, is the dominant mindset, btw), and should be taken at face value
- many of the readers will have this mindset, and will not have the theoretical tools on their belt to appreciate it for the rhetorical device it is, much less take advantage of it and learn something (they might walk away with anything ranging from “huh that is weird” to “it’s those darned republicans/democrats”)
Those are good points I didn’t consider.
On the first, I tend to lean towards assuming the best of people where possible, mostly because it helps stave off defeatism. That doesn’t make it likely, just less depressing.
On the second, I genuinely didn’t see that angle. Thanks for pointing it out. They don’t need to appreciate it as rhetorical device (and in fact, it may be more effective if they’re not conscious of it), but if it leads them to make up their own conclusions to reinforce existing assumptions, instead of being curious and open-minded, that would indeed miss the mark.
I guess to some degree, it’ll be a “shotgun” approach to hopefully get some people curious, even if you’ll never get everyone. I’m not sure a more direct statement of facts would have gotten the others either.
In either case, making an explanation (there’s more than one) explicit is useful, if only to open up space for people to disagree with the explanation.
That’s the conclusion I was aiming for, yes. In thr context of the device, the question is a setup and framing for the answer. By “prompting” for it, it seems less like preaching (which may turn people away) and more like a “genuine” and natural conversation. Interviews are occasionally framed in a similar way, but with an open question on the internet, it may seem less “staged” if that makes sense?
(I’m not sure those are the best words to describe it, but I can’t put my finger on the nuances so I’ll just call it a vocab/language barrier)
In fact I’d be willing to bet that the person who wrote the tweet disagrees with my explanation, specifically the part involving flavors of capitalism. I bet they’re advocating for something like the nordic model.
The Nordic model tends to be idealised to some degree. I understand how it would look like a significant improvement over some other forms, particularly the US, and I’ll freely admit I’m also subject to bias, but it can’t cure all the problems baked into the system.
From the glimpses I’ve caught, it doesn’t seem to solve all social issues either. The specific example I’ve heard of is racism, but I didn’t do a thorough investigation about other effects. Then again, I’m not sure I have a good solution on hand to effectively shift cultural stances like that either.
- Comment on Why exactly are nursing aids paid so poorly? 2 weeks ago:
It’s a rhetorical device I forgot the name of. If I say “I don’t understand X”, that will have one of two effects on most people: either they also don’t know, realise that and hopefully get curious, or they do and know the point I’m aiming for. If they offer that explanation, it creates a Socratic approach to making an argument: Framing it as an explanation of a question the rest of the audience is hopefully also curious about.
You explanation is the second part of the argument.
- Comment on Bee Brushie 2 weeks ago:
I’ll take the kittens. I’ll lose, but it’s a more dignified death than seizing up in panic and not even being able to defend myself.
- Comment on Pride month 2 weeks ago:
…and there goes my boner
- Comment on Title 2 weeks ago:
They’re overrated anyway. The true art of siegecraft will always be in the earthworks.
- Comment on i'm fucking devastated but there are no exception 3 weeks ago:
Yeah, I figured. I just found the contrast striking when my own church was the least segregated place I knew for most of my childhood.
- Comment on i'm fucking devastated but there are no exception 3 weeks ago:
since the church is still the most racially segregated place in America
Unrelated to the rest of your comment, I find this observation perplexing. In Germany, the church I went to had close ties to several African communities. I loved their joyful, passionate style of worship-parties, more than what I learned of other churches in Germany. The Africans I knew at that church (refugees) were some of the kindest, loveliest people I’ve known. I’d credit that as being one of the good things I took from my faith: Growing up in frequent contact with different cultures and in a spirit of appreciation, I wasn’t even conscious of the concept of racism.
My mom once told me that, when she’d been babysitting a friendly couple’s son and pushing him in the stroller on a walk, she got evil looks from some people. For the longest time, I assumed that was just because it was apparent that we had come from different fathers and people thought we were both hers.
In middle or high school, when I learned about it from history class, the concept seemed so alien to me, like a relic of the past… until I realised that my primary school had one black kid, who was bullied (and a bit violent at times, which I’d now attribute to trauma from fleeing an active warzone coupled with facing racism in a fairly conservative town) while my secondary school had none, mostly upperclass “white” with a few other “white”-adjacent (Italian, Russian) ethnicities.
The idea that this childhood friend might have drawn evil looks because he was black hit me years later like a freight train of shattered childhood innocence.
(As an aside, that friend once declared that he’s dark chocolate and I’m white chocolate and if that isn’t the sweetest thing, I don’t know what is.)
- Comment on Vibe management 4 weeks ago:
My favourite quote about analytics:
“A measure that becomes a target ceases to be a good measure.”
- Comment on 4 weeks ago:
I mean,
NaNimplies there exists some value, it’s just not a numerical one.nulldays there is none at all. - Comment on An 82-year-old YouTuber grandma was raided by police and SWATs during her live stream last night where she plays Minecraft to raise money for her grandsons cancer. Authorities brought 20 police cars 4 weeks ago:
Of course, as soon as it is seen to be a false call, the person who did the call should be arrested as that’s illegal
Proving that they weren’t genuinely concerned can be tough, and mistakenly calling the police (or emergency services in general) shouldn’t be punished or people will hesitate to call for help when they need it.
But you’re right: there should be some recourse to abuse, if not criminal then civil. Of course, a lawsuit is a lot of work and possibly money you would pay up front, and there’s no guarantee that you’d actually see much money if the perpetrator is a basement-dwelling neet whose meagre pocket money is immediately spent on Gacha games, trading cards or those weird plastic figures with oversized heads that some people go crazy over.
So maybe the state / police should instead pay compensation to the victim and, if it seems like a case of abuse, bring their own suit to potentially recover those damages from the caller. That would reduce the damage of mistakes, protect well-meaning callers from retribution and thus shift the cost for this security from the individual to the collective. It also allows an option to shift it back onto malicious individuals.
Of course, the police response could be more measured too, and the whole thing is contingent on the justice of the judicial system, but the latter part is true of any system and the former applies to many things the police do anyway.
- Comment on history repeats itself once again 4 weeks ago:
If he’s a demigod or otherwise high in the favour of some god or other, he might be less scared of particular gods. Hades wasn’t very popular among his brothers, so I could see Theseus being bolder with him.
More significant is the human factor of who made up the respective stories and how they wanted to frame him: one as brave against Hades, the other as devout towards the god of parties. His legend won’t have been written by a single author trying to create a consistent character.
Either way, he’s a cunt.
- Comment on history repeats itself once again 4 weeks 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.
- Comment on history repeats itself once again 4 weeks ago:
Can we justify creating a separate “Original Ship of Theseus” page for demonstration value?
- Comment on history repeats itself once again 4 weeks 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”.
- Comment on what’s your best “nitric acid acts upon trousers” moment? 4 weeks ago:
Well, with his house, he will have been very confident. With my current apartment, I’m glad at least three of the four light switches correspond to actual lights. No clue what the fourth one is supposed to toggle. No way in hell am I trusting the ground wire.
- Comment on what’s your best “nitric acid acts upon trousers” moment? 4 weeks ago:
That “almost” is where the most interesting science happens.
- Comment on what’s your best “nitric acid acts upon trousers” moment? 4 weeks ago:
I think my grandpa once told me you could first touch ground, then load (or whatever it’s called in English) with the same hand and would be fine. Just make sure to let go of load first or you’ll ground it through your body and that would be no fun.
I never did try it. His confidence in some things bordered on recklessness, much to his wife’s horror at times. He was fairly healthy up until a stroke at 85, so maybe he knew what he was doing. Or maybe he just got lucky so often it becomes indistinguishable from skill.
- Comment on what’s your best “nitric acid acts upon trousers” moment? 4 weeks ago:
TIL. Thanks for the explanation (and your stories)!
- Comment on what’s your best “nitric acid acts upon trousers” moment? 4 weeks ago:
I melted lead and poured sulphur on it, and instead of getting galena I got a whiff of Hell on my face.
Was it supposed to form Galena and you messed up the process, or did you think it should but were wrong from the outset?
- Comment on what’s your best “nitric acid acts upon trousers” moment? 4 weeks ago:
Brilliant writing, funny story told well, 10/10, would set my experiment on fire for.
- Comment on When traffic comes to a standstill, drivers instantly shift left and right to create a Rettungsgasse, an emergency corridor right down the middle, so ambulances 5 weeks ago:
Unless they’re my MIL, who was confused by the sight and, upon getting it explained to her, loudly exclaimed she’d never done that.
But I’m not sure if that was just an early spell of Dementia. I can’t fathom that she’s never seen it in fifty years of driving.
- Comment on Please 1 month ago:
🫂
- Comment on Put tha lime in tha coconut 1 month ago:
Hi, I’m here to remind anyone who knows that song from back then that I am nearly thirty, born in the late nineties and that kids turning 18 this year were born in 2008. Just in case you forgot your age.
- Comment on How worried should we be about hantavirus right now? 1 month ago:
journalists are notoriously bad at interpreting WHO communications
Or particularly good at making a sensational mountain that’ll get clicks out of a molehill. Gotta sell your stories, after all.
- Comment on The Floyd Artifact 1 month ago:
It’s clearly some distance above the moon, judging by the curvature, so it might be capturing both the dark side and the earth.
- Comment on Electricity explained 1 month ago:
…the Spocker?
- Comment on Teenis 2 months ago:
Just because Americans bastardise our pronunciation or spelling doesn’t make “Weiner” the correct spelling for that pronunciation.
- Comment on Teenis 2 months ago:
It doesn’t keep you free from all judgement, just meme judgement.