Ziggurat
@Ziggurat@jlai.lu
- Comment on Where does the revenue gathered from taxes go and what is national debt? 3 days ago:
In democracy, citizen decide how the tax money is spent by voting, usually it’s an indirect vote : you elect people to vote the budget, which makes sense considering the difficulty on the tax. But typically, left wing will put more money in education, healthcare, and rehabilitation programs while right wing will put money in police, militaires and supp rt outsourcing essential services to private corporations. Stuff can be complex as you need to pay pensions, state worker, fulfill international commitment (EU budget, NATO budget) and maintain all the existing infrastructures, and only then you can invest/re-allocate budget (which can trigger an outrage, cutting welfare expense or closing a hospital can have dramatic consequences for citizen)
If there isn’t enough money se government can borrow money, typically they don’t go the bank but say they need X billions for Y years and find investor ready to lend them this money (it tends to be quite safe, do you foresee US or Germany not paying their debt in 5 or 10 years?) alternative is to print money (aka inflation) or raise taxes. For structural investment that will bring monee, it makes sense to pay them over 10 years with the extra tax yield thanks to the new highway/university/dam. However, it also means that instead of “taxing the rich” you borr w their money and give them back, while us commoner do n’t directly see our tax money ney back
- Comment on How come laptops or pc's don't have a "webcam" facing both ways instead of just the user? 4 days ago:
A 30€USB webcam can do it, or simply turning around the laptop. Moreover, corporate have nice video conferencing room often with multiple camera, so you can select what you want to show. Finally, when I want to show a prototype to management, I rather invite them to the lab, or take the time to edit a video (even a smartphone camera one) for people in remote. Avoids the pitfalls of bringing something to a meeting room and starting it on the fly
- Comment on Is there a point we can track down when we stopped caring about doctors, nurses, teacher, etc? And thought it was a great idea to pay atheletes millions and screw everyone else? 6 days ago:
Obligatory reminder that highest paid athlete in(western) history is Gaius Appuleius Diocles a Byzantine era Chariotter.
- Comment on Is it wiser to store one savings in Gold as superior to the average bank/savings accounts nominal interest? 1 week ago:
While gold climbs well in time of crisis, I wouldn’t say physical gold is that of a great investment, stored at home it*s less secure than at bank, and unlike stock you don’t get yearly dividends but only expect the value to rise.
Main usage is tax dodging, where plenty of small shops would cash out your gold with not much questions asked, but this work for small amount not for gold bar
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to [deleted] | 19 comments
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to [deleted] | 31 comments
- Comment on Is the RAM prices explosion another manufactured crisis to corps drain money from people before the AI bubble collapses? 2 weeks ago:
A big thing is that a high end ram factory has a crazy price-tag, I’d say between 100 million and one billion Euro, and it takes years to build. Noway to step up production overnight at no cost. And when we talk about big money like that, investor get pretty conservative
- Comment on If WW3 breaks out, who is going to be on which side? 3 weeks ago:
Russia attacks EU, US stay neutral, US stay neutral, China leverage on Russia being busy to invade Eastern Russia, the conflict spread to former colonies where Russia, China, France, UK are already in cold war. Meanwhile, Turkey finally attack Greece, and Iran takes the opportunity gain influence most likely with their spy network.
As usual, America stays neutral, until US get dragged in the war (Taiwan or Israel) while Argentina wait for the last day to formally declare war. Not sure whether Japan would invade China or take back the Sakhaline island
TL/DR : Russia/Turkey/Israel versus EU/China/Iran.
As you see I am absolutely not an expert
- Submitted 3 weeks ago to [deleted] | 2 comments
- Comment on Are all dinosaur fossils 'replicas'? 3 weeks ago:
putting them on display in museums would make them less available for study.
Very often, it’s the other way around, museum are a storage plage for scientific/historical/artistic artifact and the be in display is a bonus.
Government own many objects that have an important historical value, and they can’t sell them (beside law, imagine the scandal if the French gov sell the mona Lisa or if US gov sell Neil amstrong spacesuit) so better having them in public display
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
I still don’t get why the US sobriety tests are admissible by a judge. cops can just run a breathalyser test (or even a drug test), it’s faster than all these weird test and more reliable.
If your going to arrest someone anyway , you can even get a blood/urine sample for a lab-grade drug search.
- Comment on Who shops at small businesses? 4 weeks ago:
Neighbour,
The small neighbourhood bookstore, hardware store, or food store may not be as cheap as a big brand, but the staff usually know what they’re talking about (nice in a bookstore, important in a hardware store when you have no idea on how to fix a leak). Moreover, they’re here, and don’t need 3 days of delivery.
Finally, shops nearby are part of what makes a neighbourhood nice, some people know it, and will spend the extra cash to not complaint about their dead/empty neighbourghood
- Submitted 4 weeks ago to [deleted] | 6 comments
- Comment on Could there be additional forces at super low energies? Could a new fundamental force be discovered anytime soon? + other questions relating to forces 4 weeks ago:
That’s a lot of questions…
We do have a pretty good understanding of physics, using the standard model we could predict the Higgs Boson, and the muon’s abnormal magnetic moment with an incredible precision. While cosmology isn’t as precise yet, we’re now in the precision cosmology era so new forces don’t come out of the hat.
A few new force I may think off
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Modifed gravity is an alternative theory to dark-matter which would require gravity to behave differently with low acceleration, . While, there is good reasons to think it’s not working, it’s not yet strictly excluded, so a new force can come from here
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Inflaton, would be the force associated to the so-called dark-energy which explain the universe expansion. However, the property of the inflaton particle still have to be understood, but that would be a new force
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Higgs field being a boson, it’s a force
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Supersymmetry is a pretty popular extension to the standard model (as it would solve a lot of problems, and provides theoretical candidate for dark-matter) and it involved a new batch of boson --> New force
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- Comment on If dark matter doesn't emit, absorb, or reflect light, what happens when light hits it? 1 month ago:
Scientists don’t know if dark matter really exists, or if there’s other ways to explain this phenomenon. Another explanation is that there’s no extra matter, but that this is just how gravity behaves in large scales.
I am by no mean an expert, but I When I was a master student, I spent some time exploring the modified gravity rabbithole the most popular being MOND. The big limit is that it’s a ad hoc model to fit galaxy rotation curve, it works pretty well. But it doesn’t work if you try to use it for a cosmological model, and doesn’t explain gravitational lensing. Making it an overall weak hypothesis compared to the good old cold dark matter
The standard cosmological model with dark matter and dark energy (it’s two different objets) is supported by a lot of evidences. Up to now, no alternative theory works at explaining all data we have.
Don’t get me wrong, we may have a massive hole in gravity, and may at a point get the missing piece of data to find it and explain everything without using exotic particles. But as of today, both particle physicists and cosmologists agree that particle physics beyond the standard model provides the most solid candidate for dark matter and that nothing else has a solid backing
- Comment on If dark matter doesn't emit, absorb, or reflect light, what happens when light hits it? 1 month ago:
While I’ve bee away from dark matter physics for a while, we do have a couple of theoretical candidates for dark matter, and data from cosmology and particle accelerator, somehow describing the kind of proporties that a dark matter particle would have.
And it includes a low cross section, meaning that most likely it won’t interact with light (see it as smaller than light as an over simplification). This makes detection pretty hard both in direct and indirect way
- Comment on does anyone else have this impression of gruyere? 1 month ago:
Gruyère has a pretty light taste, more something you put for the texture. If you want taste go for some goat, bleu, or Munster (beware that one will make your fridge smell)
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
Pro-tip, invite to a physical date quickly, it would filter out most of scammer, and if you don’t other person will do and the person you had a good chat with will vanish
- Comment on How many people would a generation ship need to have for inbreeding to not be an issue? 2 months ago:
If you are strictly controlling genomes and breeding pairs, ignoring monogamy and social norms. You might be able to get away with 100
In a Sci fi context where we have generation ships, I would add frozen sperm/eggs to the equation and even artificial womb. In like a 100kg package you can store a lot of genetic material. That’s pretty fucked up (and a nice writing prompt) but definitely doable.
At this point the question is also cultural what is the minimum amount of person to keep a population able to maintain a large ship over centuries and produce enough food
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
Man tend to be more rationale than woman and wear make-up when needed, so basically when they are on a stage, facing a camera, or at events like larp/concert.
But it’s way more common than you think in every day life
- Comment on What is an industrial product that, if you could purchase as an investment, you know you could find **local** customers ? 2 months ago:
CNC machine+ skills+ network
Tons of companies outsource some if not all of their mechanical parts productions, either because it’s not their core business ( but they still need some custom parts made every so and on) or to manage production peaks without paying equipment/workers used 3 months a year
- Comment on Which career to pursue? 2 months ago:
Not sure what’s your question here, you’re a first year student, you’ve never done that physics before. How comfortable do you feel, doing it for the next 5 years?
Physics is a versatile Stem field with applications going from medicine to AI so with a master of physics you’ll find a job. While you may be more generalistic than an electnonic/electrical/software/mechanical engineer you 'll get a good theoretical and experimental foundation covering also these field (which are tools you need to do physics but also applications of physics)
Science/Engineering isn’t a field to make big money If you want to make money, go for a business degree, ypu ll earn more for a more bullshit job.
- Submitted 3 months ago to [deleted] | 75 comments
- Comment on how do school shooters know how to use guns? 3 months ago:
I went to a rural school, and everyone had a “hunters education” class in like 7th grade.
For the non American, how old is it supposed to be, please tell me it’s the last year of high school with 18 yo, and you were in a vocational school not a generic one
- Comment on [deleted] 3 months ago:
From what I get, the name is so bad, that when creating your character you choose to be born as a girl and transition latter so you would-be called Marco. Looks like you knew before being born that the name was bad 😂
- Comment on My brother got arrested for a dime bag. His picture got put up on the jails website. And they advertise. So shouldn't my brother get paid at least a little for providing clicks? 4 months ago:
one more example showing how US standard are incredibly low regarding basic human rights…
- Comment on Is This Social Media? 4 months ago:
I would consider fediverse and forums, including lemmy as a form of social media. So the answer is yes
- Comment on Why is it so common to be interested in true crime when at the same time you're disturbed by it? 4 months ago:
Full story, often quite awful (you never see true crime about a drunk driver, but when a chemistry student uses acid to get rid of his ex gf body it’s get in true crime show), and with a lot of technical and legal details all of that make it interesting provided you have a good narrator
- Comment on [deleted] 4 months ago:
Like… do governments just get to shape the world as they see fit?
This is not new, most likely in history class you’ve heard about Soviet propaganda and saw how Trotsky was removed from photography.
The interesting part is now every stupid ass can forge photograph without complex techniques and a long training. IMO it’s great, people will finally understand that a photo/video is most likely fake.
It will help them to use their critical thinking skills and check the context
- Comment on How would one exit a black hole? 4 months ago:
Which is why it would work with a small black hole, but not with a large one