FriendOfDeSoto

@FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Was this human trafficking?⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think that’s the case in France. Technically, there was consent from the parents. The age of consent is 15. What they did was morally questionable but not illegal.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Was this human trafficking?⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Eh

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are the Roman numerals based on what your hand look like when you count?⁩ ⁨⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Then you haven’t been to China. It’s a shorthand gesture there. The character for ten is 十 so I’m not sure if the gesture informed the character or the other way around. What is noteworthy is just that both cultures ended up with a cross to denote ten.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My grandma passed away and my aunt sent me a selfie of her, my uncle, and my deceased grandma in the hospital bed, is it normal that I'm put off by this?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Most of us don’t have the luxury of choosing our families. We can just try to do the best with the hand we’re dealt. I’m sorry for your loss.

  Maybe delete the picture, put the phone down, and try to think of 20 great things about your grandmother.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My grandma passed away and my aunt sent me a selfie of her, my uncle, and my deceased grandma in the hospital bed, is it normal that I'm put off by this?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Nobody here can really give you specific advice based on the few facts. You’re part of this family, you know them better than all of us. If you feel off about it, there’s a reason for it. You’ve come here to ask the question. So I think you’re well within your rights to reduce contact with that side of the family. I would only suggest you quietly ghost rather than making a big stink.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How can I reject MAGAs version of america more then I already am?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I think for answering that question we would need a baseline to compare with.

  Lacking that, with kindness and empathy in conversations. And with resoluteness in the face of injustice.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How does Google make money from Gmail, the google calendar, drive or other services when used with third party front ends?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I think ads on Gmail are also a thing of the past, aren’t they? The answer to your question is: no income. But you’re having a constant time share lunch with Google to actually buy a share in a beachfront condo. By which I mean subscribe to their cloud and AI plan. Or YouTube. Or their business suite. Etc. And then they have converted you to a paying customer. The free service is an investment to get you hooked and then paying.

  And in the meantime they can collect some data from you so when you’re faced with ads they might be more effective.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why Titles Are Written Like This?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  In a time of handwriting, you could make clearer that This Was a Title without having to say it was a title or putting it in quotation marks.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you think Social Media is just exaggerated as being placed of being the source of all problems?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Are social media the root of all problems? No. Do they have a significant influence? Yes.

  You mentioned spineless billionaires who eff around. There are instances of real harm. There is bullying (everywhere), there are schemes to make groups depressed (teenage girls on Insta), there is a lack of moderators that lead to genocide (Myanmar). These things deserve to be looked at by legislators when the sycophants don’t do it by themselves.

  Social media addiction is a thing as well. Addictions in young people are bad. Parents should be on the front line of this. But that does not absolve social media companies from taking measures to curb certain excesses. Tobacco companies are not allowed to advertize to toddlers either.

  So saying they’re just a tool, like, say, a hammer is insincere. You can use a hammer to cause real harm. You can deploy social media to cause real harm.

  One of the greatest issues of social media is scale. People on the fringes of society who would be largely outcast in their communities can group and organize with much more ease. In the past, this was limited to the pub in three sheets to the wind discussions. Now you get sh!t like Q Anon, flatearthers, vax nuts, etc. - stuff that common sense in smaller communities would have moderated or stamped out now gets mass appeal. They seem much bigger as an online presence than they often are. But they get dedicated believers to start shooting.

  The introduction of the internet has been compared to the introduction of the printing press in Europe. Both events caused a quantum leap in the dissemination of information with profound influences on society. After the printing press we got a century and a half of conflicts and wars. We’ll be well off if all we get here is a century of people typing in caps lock at each other.

  We limit things in society. The availability of nicotine products, alcohol, the ability to drive, the availability of weaponry, antitrust laws, environmental protections, etc. I think we will not get past regulating social media somehow. By which I mean I don’t know how either.

  One thing that is certain will benefit society is investing in education, teaching media savvy-ness to young children and all adults if possible, giving them the tools to sort the relevant from the distorted. We are largely unprepared for this and I include myself here having grown up with papers and landlines. But education is the saddest item in any budget, as the costs are high and the results take a generation to bear fruit.

  Trump wants to dismantle the DOE…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why did/do sites such as the pyramids in Egypt or the Roman colosseum end up in an abandoned state, only to be "rediscovered" later?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The pyramids at Giza used to be smooth on the outside so people took pieces of them and built something else. I think they’re in a category with places like Angkor Wat. The sites’ importance decreased (religions changed, trade shifted, natural disasters, etc.) and it was easy for nature to cover them in sand or jungle and, poof, out of sight, out of mind.

  It is very likely that they weren’t in fact totally forgotten. There probably was local knowledge about them that led white men with too much time and money, thinking themselves superior and as preservers of culture, to “discover” them. Tourism was for the elites and there wasn’t any money yet in preserving these old sites.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Even blue states vote on a working day and can have ridiculously long lines due to the booklet voters are asked to fill in. That’s already bad from my POV. All the other shenanigans are extra, on top of that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I have stated elsewhere in this thread that I have limited sympathy for the US non-voters. So refer to that if you’re curious. I am trying my best not to condemn everybody equally. A free election, in most democracies, means you’re free not to go. Perhaps we’d all be fine with non-voters if Mrs. Harris had won. Putting blame at their feet is also shutting the barn door when the horse has already bolted. We should motivate the ones willing to stand up and resist. You don’t want to injure their pride and get them to jump on the MAGA bandwagon out of spite.

  There are protests taking place. I just saw Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were in the news leading rallies and protests. American and Canadian protesters gathered on either side of one of the lakes, forgot which one. There are people who are saying something. Even GOP voters are shouting down their elected leaders in town hall meetings because Elon chainsawed a benefit that affected them and theirs. It’s easy to draw parallels to 1930s Germany but this Trump 2.0 administration will plot its own despicable course.

  One of the reasons why you don’t see so many mass gatherings like you saw in Serbia recently or Slovakia is also US infrastructure. It’s real hard to get thousands of Americans into one place anywhere when there isn’t sufficient public transport and it would statistically be 1.2 people per car - you’d need a Rhode Island just for parking.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I agree. I didn’t mean to imply all of the remainder would be pro just one of the candidates. My guess is that it’s still enough to make up a silent majority. Which sounds great but no one can prove anyways.

  I’m inclined to give American voters a limited raincheck on not bothering to show up. Voting is often a booklet of ballots on various issues and elections for office. It takes forever to fill it in. That explains the long, slow-moving lines outside pulling stations, much rarer occurrences in other democracies. And that’s only the people who are able to come on a workday (and didn’t have the foresight or were unable to get mail-ins). That’s after a registration process that can have Kafkaesque features in many states. So I would forgive the single mother who didn’t have time to do this between working her two low paid jobs. It’s part of a subtle but deliberate disenfranchisement. We’ll add that one to the list of grievances as well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's so important about keeping military operations secret?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  #4 still applies even if you already looked like a “fucking ass clown” before. Fuckingassclownery is limitless!

  I would only add that depending on size it may not be possible to keep an operation secret. D-Day or Gulf War 1.0 come to mind when the world knew it was about to happen, maybe not the exact hour but we still knew. And then it’s a game of obfuscation, i.e. deliberately leading enemies down garden paths so you can surprise them with your real plan. But you wouldn’t want to leak your disinformation campaign in your text group either.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I would say “stupid” is a judgement you should keep between your ears. I think Americans are undereducated before they get released into a mad for-profit higher education system that gives them debts for life (but hitherto also great sciencing at a high level). The strong cultural undercurrent of exceptionalism hardly ever lets them look elsewhere for comparison. And the political system, which is based on who can spend more money, not so much on ideas, is proving to be a system that’s rarely bringing out the best people for top jobs. But it’s a dog and pony show and that favors characters over good policies. The fragmentation of people all watching the same news show at night 3 decades ago, to watching partisan 24h news channels 2 decades ago, to splintering even further on the socials now adds to the problem. There is no largely unified audience with the same facts at their disposal.

  It’s also nice that Trump is now dismantling the democratic state because voting in the US always gets filtered through electoral colleges and gerimandered districts, skewing results to favor the two main parties, often only one of them. It was pretend-democratic until now.

  Something that gets overlooked easily is the long history of fascist rules that was in place in the south after the civil war. Jim Crow laws masqueraded as democracy for a long time and every time courts tried to put a stop to it, the white people in charge found other ways to be a-holes. That’s part of American culture already.

  America has always had a penchant for whacky leaders. Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George W. None of them fit my idea of a virtuous leader. But at least the ones this century adhered to a decorum, an unwritten standard of how to behave as president. Nixon didn’t want to get caught. Trump doesn’t give a sh!t. So the leadership culture has shifted, not for the better.

  All this mixes a large chunk, an uncurious population that still sees itself pretty much as a role model for the world, falling for simple populist messages. It should also be said that tarring all Americans with the same brush is unfair. I think it was the votes of less than a third of eligible voters that made Trump 2.0 a reality, roughly another third just behind it, with the remainder not bothering to vote at all. I would say the often fantasized silent majority is actually not pro Trump.

  So calling all Americans stupid is not right. There are a lot of people hurting right now as they watch their country develop in a bad way. We need those people to stand up and fight and calling them names doesn’t help.

  (Other countries have gone down similar routes, have had whacky leaders, have done questionable things. The US is not alone on this path.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Will We See Restrucutred UN in Near Future?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I think we only differ in optimism here. You think good leaders can still turn it around. And I doubt it. Either way, I wasn’t foretelling the UN’s demise.

  I appreciate your sentiments in italics and bold text concerning war. I understand that tone is hard to decipher here. If you have taken from my text that I’m pro-war then allow me point out that I am not. I’ve merely pointed out historical precedence and extrapolated from there. I thought it obvious that the scenario I drew is undesirable. I guess I was wrong, wasn’t I.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Will We See Restrucutred UN in Near Future?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You could make an argument that its usefulness has decreased the way it is set up right now. Reform seems unlikely as some of the big guys would have to give up on their vetoes. The fact that France and Britain continue to sit permanently in the Security Council yet no one permanently from Africa or South America says everything.

  So it’s not impossible that some countries will leave frustrated but I think this will be a rare occurrence. Most sober heads will still value diplomatic channels even if they are imperfect.

  These international organizations kind of need a world war to reform themselves. WW2 was sort of the end of the League of Nations and the UN took its place. So what we need now is WW3 to get the UN to adapt better to our world today. That sounds great, doesn’t it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's this thing?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I believe you should fart excessively around it and indeed encourage fellow commuters to join in, as it will provide terrible air quality results here. Which will in turn improve ventilation measures in this area, which would not have happened otherwise. Checkmate! The act of observing alters the results!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How would we choose a "world language" in a fair way, for a hypothetical one world government?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think speaking the language immediately condones the horrible acts of the people who spoke it in the past. German should’ve creased to exist 80 years ago.

  There are certainly situations where use of English could be considered offensive, say, at a memorial of an atrocity. Carve those situations out and have a plan B - there is no necessity to all speak the same language all the time. It’s enough if a good number of people in the right positions do. And consider that there already are English speakers in France, Iran, and North Korea (3 random examples that don’t all love English-speaking countries).

  English is already the lingua franca of the world and has displaced French as the language of diplomacy. In Europe before that were the Frankish tongue, Latin, Greek. Other places had other languages. It’s no shoe-in that English will remain at the top but in our lifetimes I don’t think it will change.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The short answer is no but the long answer is yes. You can fight like the old guy from Up! but in the end you’ll probably lose (YMMV because of location).

  Municipal planning though often involves spaces allocated for roads and stuff. So the plots of land don’t all border each other but imaginary roadways have already been drawn up if not built already.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It might be helpful to know where this is.

  The easiest answer regardless is become active in local politics, try to get into the municipal government, and allocate funds to building up infrastructure in your area.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Could authoritarians rule with capitalizing on fear, hate, and ignorance?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it is possible but not very likely. And I think scale and economic prosperity may have something to do with it. I’m thinking of Singapore, which isn’t the most democratic of states but also is tiny. Monaco falls into the same category. What those two very roughly have in common is economic strength and that seems to sort of compensate for lack of democratic liberties. I would drop the theory that a state the size of other countries’ cities can establish an authoritarian leadership that doesn’t rely mostly on fear mongering (but probably will here or there).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can autocracy exist without a media apparatus?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think there is any example of an autocracy in the last 125 years where the media completely resisted the establishment of the regime. The reasons there can be twofold. Media needs to make money. Not aligning your business with the strongman (or woman) spells out economic decline so blind eyes are turned until blind eyes prevail. The other reason is that most autocratic regimes don’t come fully formed on the day of the coup etc. There is a period of incremental changes that can silence critics or get them to censor themselves while gaining support with the less critical part of the media (and alternatively jailing people who say something bad). Like the frog in the pot the media is stuck in the hot water. Or it jumps out into a show trial or other instrument of repression.

  I would say in the days before newspapers, a power base had to be established to take over from a royal. Those were the people with power, the aristocracy. You didn’t need all of them but a substantial portion. It’s only since we’ve pulled the silver spoons out of dukes and barons, the power base has shifted to include people who didn’t just inherit a title and most of the shire. That, I would say naturally, includes selfmade industrialists as well as selfmade media moguls. They have become a necessity today when it was much less important before (or much easier to control the narrative with fewer resources). Additionally, as any revolutionary will tell you these days, you have to of course capture the broadcasters with military might if you can. But even that will seem quaint soon when all you’ll need is an online media presence that you can control 100%. Trump shows us that way.

  Tl;DR? It used to be possible. But we are in a transition period from a time when having the media on your side was a necessity to where you can easily create your own media to drown out the establishment voices and that might do the trick.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do I clean cat vomit out of birkenstocks?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You probably don’t. Those tummy acids are strong. I would wipe the surface with soap. Maybe submerge them in water if you can immediately place them in direct sunlight afterwards to dry them out again. Wipe surface again and hope for the best. I would water an un-vomited-upon Birk along with the offender, maybe not in the same sink water, to wear them out equally.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Like Trump says that the cartels have invaded Canada wouldn't they have to pass through the US, avoid checkpoint, border control on both sides and many other things? So Canada can only blame the US?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re trying to apply conventional logic to the orange one. That doesn’t work. Stop doing that. It’s all about his frail ego, flooding the zone with bs, denying everything and never giving in, and blaming everybody else for stuff he’s done.

  And just to give the poor, battered, beleaguered, ever-so-stable leader a break, there are sea lanes and flight routes available to the cartels as well. They didn’t have to go through the US (but probably did).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨can European intelligence substitute the American one?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes. Europeans have been enjoying a bed that was made for them in this area as part of a security package that came into existence after WW2. They didn’t have to invest in intelligence as much because they had it delivered to their doors. If that delivery system stops, they will have to replace it. They can do that.

  I wouldn’t be surprised if at EU level (+UK) we will see a lot of unified defense initiatives that mention in a subordinated clause that intelligence coordinating and sharing will be part of that as well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do you feel about someone taking the coins people tossed into a fountain or other public waterworks display for "wishes?"⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The most famous fountain for coin tossing/wish making is Trevi in Rome (and I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole concept came from there). You are legally forbidden from taking money back out of it there. The moment the coin sinks into the water, it belongs to the municipality, so taking it back out constitutes theft. The municipality is allowed (and indeed forced) to clear the coins from the fountain (otherwise there would be no water left after a while) and AFAIK they donate the cash for a good cause.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is cops being evil/lazy/incompetent a USA specific thing, or is it the same everywhere in the world?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Just for some German context: the Nazi salute is not covered by any freedom of expression or opinion in a political context. What Elon did on stage would have landed him in a German court. Similar restrictions apply to displaying certain symbols, e.g. the swastika. German cops are legally required to intervene when they see them in public.

  I don’t know the video in question, I don’t know if the cops overreacted - a reaction was required though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there some special process by which musicians/producers arrive at an agreed-upon tempo for a song recording?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think you can codify it more than “they do it by gut.” I think it’s pretty rare that a song goes unaltered from the spark in somebody’s head to mastered recording without many changes. It’s a collaborative effort that involves the producers and friends as well.

  I think the more somebody is knowledgeable in musical theory, can read and write notes, and maybe even has perfect pitch, the more fully formed an idea will be when it gets to the early stages of recording. But musicians are not all Mozarts.

  I dabbled in making electronic music for a while as a hobby. There was only me, I don’t remember anything from musical theory class in school, can barely read notation - in short: I’m not even mediocre. But even I felt occasionally that I needed to speed a track up or down. It’s a gut feeling.

  I know from a drummer friend of mine that performing live is hard. You’re either very good at keeping time, like, you have an unshakable metronome in your head, or the tempo naturally speeds up. That’s why during production a lot of musicians get the metronome via a click track in their ears to make sure they don’t deviate too far from what BPM they wanted to hit. During live concerts I think a lot of drummers, as the metronomes of the band, get a click track in their ears as well. And there may be concerts where a song is sped up compared to the recording on purpose, but is still played with a click track because it sounds better live when it’s faster, maybe because it’s missing a lot of stuff from the production that filled gaps at the lower speed. So you can say everything has a tendency to speed up live but sometimes tracks that are performed faster are an artistic choice.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why build for tomorrow when it's someone else's tomorrow?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  We are monkeys that with the benefit of lots of time have developed opposable thumbs, tools, and language. We used language to describe abstract concepts in words. One of those words is “legacy.” Some people are driven to build one. Some are just altruistic. The urge to create offspring is also common and with it the hope your brats will fare well. There are your reasons why some people build for a tomorrow that never pays them back.

  Consider also that somebody has built the road that leads to your house, the city you’re in, the hospital you go to when you’re sick. Civilization is a chain of paying stuff forward for those who come after you.