GreenBeard

@GreenBeard@lemmy.ca

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is South Korea "Over"? Is Japan on the verge of "Collapse"? Do these narratives have real evidence or just exaggerating/fearmongering?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago⁩:

  There are real problems in Japan and South Korea, but the headlines are clickbait. Everything is exaggerated for engagement. There’s truth there but you have to dismiss about 2/3rds of the sensationalism to get a good feel for how serious the problem actually is. The same goes for Europe and North America.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does neuro divergent only mean Autistic and ADHD?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  You want the official answer or the somewhat more “woke” answer?

  Technically, it doesn’t. Neurodivergent is a broad umbrella that means a number of different disorders. Including, but not limited to, autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), bipolar disorder, developmental prosopagnosia, developmental speech disorders, dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, dysnomia, intellectual disability, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorder (FASD), obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), sensory processing disorder, synesthesia, Tourette syndrome, and more.

  Why do most people THINK it only means Autism and ADHD? They tend to get more media attention.

  The “woke” bit is Autism and ADHD have been historically “male coded” disorders, while things like Bipolar, OCD, etc. were either female coded or gender neutral in popular culture. For a long time they didn’t even think women could have Autism or ADHD.

  I for one don’t want to pretend I didn’t benefit from more pearl clutching over people’s “perfect baby boys” being a little atypical neurologically. I did, and it’s silly to pretend I didn’t. Also as one of the “Flagship” neurodivergences, I’m also more likely to end up in a MAHA gas chamber to “Purify the Gene Pool”, so there’s both upsides and downsides to penis-privilage, but at least people care which is more than some other spectra get.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Without saying "Cynic" or "Nihlist" what the perfect term to describe someone who views both Woke and Anti-Woke as completely flagrant pompous?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The only way you believe that is how it works, is if you’re already buying into the framing of the “Anti-Woke”, “Anti-Empathy”, Anti-human. You’re imagining a world where it all begins and ends in Republican or Democrat.

  I want you to think real hard. Most Democrats, can’t stand each other. There’s like half a dozen different factions, and the only thing that they all agree on, is we should probably not intentionally destroy our lives, homes, and futures, condemn our children to die and ultimately wipe humanity off the face of the Earth. We’re stuck, working with a bunch of idiots who keep undermining every positive thing we try to do, and I will stand with you always to oppose them someday. But right now, we have a bigger problem. Because this isn’t a fight between right and wrong. This is a fight between “Right, Wrong, Good, Bad, and Ugly” vs “The End of Everything”.

  You’re right, Democrats aren’t a solution. They’re a stop-gap. They’re a play for time and we have to come up with a better answer in the meantime, because they will fail. Their true policy is they have no real policy because they are such a big tent they have no coherent message. They’re just opposed to ending everything.

  So yeah, if you take the Republican framing of this being a clash of two principled, moral, coherent world views, it seems reasonable to say neither of them seem to fix anything. It’s not though. It’s the chaotic mess of everything that might be on one side, vs endless silence on the other.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Without saying "Cynic" or "Nihlist" what the perfect term to describe someone who views both Woke and Anti-Woke as completely flagrant pompous?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Confused

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Would mechs make effective tools or weapons assuming the engineering and physics worked out, or are limbed piloted vehicles really just a rule of cool thing?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Targeting systems

  Drones

  bigger heavier equipment capabilities

  Bigger Drones

  nimbleness over odd terrain

  Drones

  Under no circumstances is walking better than flying, tactically. Once you introduce airborne combat, a mech loses all tactical benefit. Tanks/mobile artillery? Sure, that you can justify, mostly because it’s low profile and easier to hide if necessary. In almost every other circumstance, if you can have an airborne gunship you want an airborne gunship, and you don’t even have to alter the laws of physics to make them work.

  The only way you could make the case for mechs is if whatever magic Clarke-Tech you were imagining for moving them was astronomically more efficient than flying for approximately the same tonnage, and you were desperate to conserve as much energy as possible, to the point where flight just isn’t an option, and even then, the most efficient machine would look something like a gigantic beetle.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Would mechs make effective tools or weapons assuming the engineering and physics worked out, or are limbed piloted vehicles really just a rule of cool thing?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  About the only advantage it has is intimidation factor. Kaiju are spectacularly intimidating, and a gigantic robot kaiju would definitely make some people evacuate their bowls on the spot. However there’s no edits you can make to the laws of physics that make it better at anything, from a tactical perspective, than a different form factor.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How does the world view America now that the Dems are in control of congress? Or are they waiting for the DIC to be thrown out?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I can’t speak for the whole of Canada, let alone the world, but as far as I’m concerned as long as one monstrous Republican shill still draws breath and sits in Congress, it will never be safe to trust America. If it’s so easy for America to fall to fascism once, it can and will fall again until there is massive systemic reform. It will be a generation before people like me are willing to put the past behind us. You are still engaged in illegal wars, holding foreign heads of state hostage, keeping refugees in internment camps and every masked ice agent still walks freely on your streets.

  Talk to me when the Dems actually do something about the incalculable harm America has done to the world. Boycott, divest, and sanction, for all genocidal rogue states, America included.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can anyone explain what the midterms means? Eg how it changes the power, how much it restricts Trump etc⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Honestly, I don’t expect much but a slowdown in the rate of terrible things coming out every day. We will need to continue organizing, continue building support networks, continue finding ways to protest, support our neighbours and get people prepared to fight for all our sakes. This is a positive, in that it drops a boat anchor that will keep us from falling deeper into authoritarianism… for now. It will not, by itself get us out of this mess. It will not undo the damage that’s been done, and most importantly, it won’t last forever. It’s an opportunity to take a breath, regroup, and prepare ourselves for the hard work ahead.

  Democrats in Congress isn’t going to save anyone. It’s just going to stabilize things, temporarily. It’s a place to start, not a finish line.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why would anyone downvote a question on No Stupid Questions?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  A question asked in bad faith isn’t stupid, it’s a question in bad faith. Bad faith questions are quite common unfortunately. Rhetorical questions, begging the question, questions that are based on a sneaky false premise, etc. The subject might not even realize that the question is bad faith, because they acquired that question elsewhere. The fact it was honestly posed by a proxy, doesn’t change the fact that the question is bad faith.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How was the US national debt created? Does the US have problem paying it's bills? Who are we in debt to?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The amount of money being printed has almost nothing to do with inflation (ie. the dollar losing value). As long as it’s balanced and kept in tension by a relatively responsive interest rate, it doesn’t really do much. Big, sudden floods of cash one way or the other make a lot of disruption (like QE after the recession, or COVID checks), but that’s actually pretty rare.

  You made a silly comment that sounds more like someone who listens to corpo media than someone who understands economics. How am I supposed to know what you do or don’t understand at that point?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What was the first thing "pirated" on the net? What was the first thing to be pirated off the net in the modern age?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Porn. The internet is made of Porn. Always has been.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How was the US national debt created? Does the US have problem paying it's bills? Who are we in debt to?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You really don’t understand how money works do you. If you want to get technical, private banks print more money than the fed.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How was the US national debt created? Does the US have problem paying it's bills? Who are we in debt to?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, technically yes, but also, that’s kind of a bait and switch scenario. You’re honoring the debt, but what you received is worth less than implied, which means most people are going to think twice about buying bonds again.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How was the US national debt created? Does the US have problem paying it's bills? Who are we in debt to?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  No, but playing debt-ceiling chicken every few months isn’t a good sign.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How was the US national debt created? Does the US have problem paying it's bills? Who are we in debt to?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Quick and dirty version. Governments create bonds, which is kind of like the opposite of a loan. It’s a request for money, and in exchange they agree to pay what you give them back with interest. Then they shop around for people to throw money into the bond. That money is then used to pay for government services, equipment, facilities, etc. and taxes are collected to pay out the bond. It’s a bit more complicated but like I said, quick and dirty version.

  The general idea is you get a lot further asking people to float you a loan than you do hoarding gold or something to try to scrape together enough money to do big projects, and people aren’t going to revolt or rob the treasury for a stack of unpaid loans.

  Who does the state owe the debt to? Lots of people. Mostly rich Americans but also foreign investors, other governments, retirement funds, etc.

  Does the US have a problem paying its bills? It didn’t always, but in recent decades, yes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why did they only want the poopdeck swabbed and not the whole deck?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Generally the hole(s) where you relieved yourself were off to the side a bit as the bowsprit was directly over the figurehead, but you are correct that you were effectively sitting directly above it. The head was up there because breaking waves would wash the skidmarks off the hull.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How does a normal person without any "connections" anymore go about getting a law passed? How do you grassroot it or whatever? What is the whole process?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Unless you have a few billion to spend on campaign donations, don’t bother. You will not get anything out of Republicans. As long as someone made money off the death, it was and will be considered a cost of doing business.

  Unless you have money the Republicans want you dead. You are nothing but a liability on their balance sheets.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are there world laws? Where if you violate them a group of soldiers will come to your country and take you to the ICC? If the ICC is moot then why have it? or for that matter the UN?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s not so much international laws, as there are international agreements regarding laws that tend to be universal; theft, murder, that kind of stuff. There’s also treaties governing extradition of wanted criminals internationally. InterPol exists, nominally, to facilitate international law enforcement, as well as most signatories to things like the Geneva conventions and international human rights treaties agree to use their law enforcement to detain and extradite individuals wanted for foreign crimes or required to appear before the International Criminal Court (ICC). There’s no world government so there’s no one legislating anything in any way that anyone has to follow. Contrary to popular delusion, the United Nations doesn’t actually pass laws, it just creates resolutions and any nation that feels like it can voluntarily sign on or not as their internal government chooses. If Congress or whatever legislative body a country has ratifies a treaty and makes it their own law, that’s their choice and they’re expected to enforce it in whatever way they deem appropriate. There’s a couple exceptions for “Crimes against humanity” like the Geneva Conventions where everyone agrees you did something so bad it affects us all globally which can be heard at the ICC but those are still technically voluntary. It’s just that rather than having 200 trials in every country that wants a piece of you, they can have one big trial in The Hague and be done with it.

  But no, except in extreme cases like genocide, as long as you keep your nonsense on your side of the fence, that’s your business. You go running around vandalizing stuff on vacation to.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is "sunsetting" used as a term to indicate a service is shutting down?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  “Sunset” is the end of a time period. When the sun rises again, it’s a new day, the beginning of a new journey across the sky. If the Debut of a game is the “Dawn” of an era, the end of its life-cycle is the “sunset” of that era.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Canada has some undersea cables along Hudson's Bay. This is an extremely remote area with an incredibly low population... what is the purpose of these cables⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You mean like “Look it gets very cold, and there’s a lot of snow for three quarters of the year, and a girl’s got to put herself through college one way or another.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don't communities build massive gardens for food? That way it would undercut the price of big retail stores.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  {looks at pressure cooker and mason jars} It’s too late. I’ve already been taken.

  I’ve seen some fun community greenhouse projects too that can operate year round. There are options if there’s sufficient interest.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don't communities build massive gardens for food? That way it would undercut the price of big retail stores.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This. Lots of useful vegetables aren’t even bulk producible because of natural properties that make them hard to grow in large industrial scales. It’s the micro-nutrients and supplementary food content that a community garden produces, not your major staples. You’re not growing a corn field in metro Brooklyn, that’s not the point. But it doesn’t actually take much effort to add some locally grown lettuce to your diet from a community garden instead of shipping it all the way from California, and it reduces demand therefore lowering prices for everyone else to do so.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don't communities build massive gardens for food? That way it would undercut the price of big retail stores.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You do know community gardens exist, yes? Lots of people contribute a few hours of labour and or funds for a share of the produce. Some cities shut them down with zoning laws or bury them in red tape, but plenty don’t. It’s usually seen as a liberal plot and attacked by conservatives, but they’re quite nice in places where they don’t burn you as a witch for growing things as a community.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If someone could make a hair trimmer that could 3d scan your head well enough to give you a taper on the edges, how much would you pay?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Also, I’m confident a person isn’t going to randomly go psychotic and remove an ear.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If someone could make a hair trimmer that could 3d scan your head well enough to give you a taper on the edges, how much would you pay?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  … You know a haircut costs 1.5 cheeseburgers (ish) right? I’ll take a human who isn’t going to hallucinate and randomly remove my face thanks.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don't people do Documentaries about the average person instead of someone who was in the news or pop culture? Like their neighbor or something.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  People make Documentaries about normal people all the time. You’re just never going to see one produced and marketed by a big media company, because the people who green-light pictures for big companies are rich and influential, and they want to see themselves on screen. They will always assume no one wants to see normal people. That’s boring and couldn’t possibly be interesting to anyone. It certainly doesn’t interest them what the plebeians are up to. There’s literally too many documentaries about normal people to even point them out to you. You’re just never going to see them if you only watch what the industry is interested in showing you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does anyone actually believe this "rogue AI" nonsense?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  IMHO, it’s less of a Rogue AI problem and more of an incompetent oversight, and Rogue AI Operator problem. Malice, incompetence, or a mix of both is really kind of irrelevant. AI is just gaming the environment its in. It just happens to be in an environment where the rules are meaningless/toothless, and no one with the power to fix them has any incentive to do so, because the reason they’re in charge was they exploited the gaps to seize power and wealth in the first place. AI isn’t doing anything more wrong than everyone else does. It’s just doing it at a scale so big we can’t help but notice. It’s not out-thinking us, we knew the problems were there and we have always known they were there. We just don’t do anything to fix it, because cheating is how you win the game.

  Welcome to the Kleptocracy, where the biggest thief always wins.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is it legal for Trump to short stocks, then bet against them? I mean he gets a shitload of money. But what about the common folk?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If you’re a jockey in a horse race, and you bet against your horse then throw the race that’s called race fixing. Now apply the same reasoning to financial markets where he’s making the decisions about who wins and who loses. And for the record, that goes for every politician, governors, congress critters, all of them. Just because it’s legal, doesn’t make it not ethically criminal.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does the net positive of Gene Therapy out weigh the negative? How so?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Your question is too broad. It’s like asking if 6 is a lot. Socks? No not really. Murders? Yeah that’s a problem. “Gene Therapy” is a broad category of different potential treatments, different methods, different tools, with different motivations, different consequences, and different moral implications. You’re going to have to narrow your scope to get a meaningful answer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does the net positive of Eugenics out weigh the negative? How so?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The fundamental problem with Eugenics is that the more fit for a specific niche you become, the more vulnerable you are to niche collapse. For example, if someone was genetically optimized to be the perfect software engineer, and now AI had made their job redundant, and the rest of their skills were mediocre at best, they now are not fit for anything else. We see this in nature all the time where a species becomes so hyper-specialized at one thing, the second there’s a shift in the environment they are instantly past-tense.

  Diversity lacks efficiency, but it improves resilience. Another example, if you over-engineer the drive shaft on a truck to very precisely meet the expected load limit and no more to save weight, the second you encounter a situation that overloads the drive shaft it will snap like a twig. The added weight of safety tolerances is inefficient… but it is also the only way to approach a world far too complex for you to anticipate every possible variable.

  For an example of how this works in human biology, lets say you found a way to completely eliminate sickle-cell anemia. That’s great, people will live much more healthy lives right? Except the second you do that, millions of people that you cured instantly start keeling over dead. Why? Because the sickle-cell was protecting them from malaria, and while it wasn’t a great solution, far fewer died from sickle-cell than would have from unchecked malaria.

  Engineering is always limited by how many of the real world variables you actually know about. It’s the unknown unknowns that will sink your titanic every time. This scattershot, random evolutionary system that produces us? Yeah, there’s a reason nature works that way. It’s actually the most efficient way to keep surfacing variables you didn’t yet know existed. For a lot of really complicated reasons, it’s actually impossible for you to think of everything when trying to engineer the perfect human, and a surprising number of things you can’t figure out a reason for and assume they’re useless at best or a harmful waste at worst, turn out to be the one thing that saves you when everyone else is dropping like flies to a thing you didn’t even know could happen yesterday.