isleepinahammock
@isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- Comment on I know Reddit sucks but this one is funny. 3 hours ago:
This is actually a fun bit of historical trivia. That passport isn’t something someone just cooked up in Photoshop. It’s real.
In 1976, his remains were issued an Egyptian passport (nearly 3 thousand years after his death) so that he could be transported to Paris for an irradiated treatment to prevent a fungoid growth.
- Comment on The Dangers of Socialism they warned us about... 1 day ago:
But none of them have ever actually met the definition of communism.
I really dislike this kind of thinking. People citing that we’ve never had a communist country tend to think:
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Only true Communism counts as communism. (So no failures of any real nation can ever be attributed to it.)
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Any country with any degree of market economy counts as capitalist. (So the sins of any nation can be attributed to capitalism.)
They use an extremely tight definition for communism and an extremely loose definition for capitalism. I’m a leftist myself, but I can recognize the intellectual inconsistency.
By the same logic, I could argue that the Catholic Church never covered up sex abuses by priests:
True Catholicism has never existed, as there’s never been a time it’s been truly universal. (The word “Catholic” means “universal.”) Obviously we can only ever talk about the failures of Catholicism once we’ve actually achieved true Catholicism. Until literally every single living human being is a devout Catholic, any discussion of the merits of Catholicism is purely theoretical and shouldn’t serve to guide our decisions.
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- Comment on The Dangers of Socialism they warned us about... 1 day ago:
For certain kinds of communism/socialism, authoritarianism does seem pretty much inevitable. It’s not inevitable for more distributed community-oriented forms. But for any socialist/communist government organized at the national level, authoritarianism seems inevitable to me.
In order to seize the means of production, you have to do just that - seize it. You have to send scores of armed men out with guns to physically take control over all the productive assets in a country. And those assets are then available for the state to use, for whatever reasons it wants. Sure, the people in power will promise to use those resources for the greater good, but who is going to stop them if they don’t?
If we’ve seen anything in the last 20 years in the US, it’s that power and wealth are interchangeable. Wealth is power. Power is wealth. It’s why I oppose the very existence of billionaires - no individual should have that much power. If that weren’t true, I wouldn’t care so much about them. I really don’t care if a billionaire builds an obnoxiously large yacht. I do care if they start throwing their money around and controlling national policy. And whenever a government seizes control of the entire economy, it now owns the entire wealth of a nation. And if you have all the assets, have complete authority to decide who works what job, have complete say on where people get to live? Well that government now has total power over everyone’s lives.
Any government that powerful immediately falls to authoritarianism. Why? Because there is one and only one locus of power in that country now. Ambitious people can’t start a business or seek power through some other level of government. All resources are controlled by the central state. If you want to have any influence at all over that society, you need to get in power of that central government. The government is all-powerful. The stakes are total. Power is completely centralized. You as a leader either control everything or nothing.
It’s rather impossible not to end up with authoritarianism when a form of government requires, as a first step, to gather all power and wealth under the control of a single authority.
- Comment on Anon tries dating apps 4 days ago:
I mean, it is a very reasonable concern. Upon hearing Helen’s story, it’s very easy to see how it might have been a Clever Hans situation. At surface level, Helen Keller’s story sound a lot like Clever Hans.
The difference between the two is that Keller’s claims actually stood up to scrutiny. Hans could never perform his feats in independent and controlled testing. Keller was able to function and communicate independently with people for decades. But if they are not aware of this history, I can see why people are skeptical.
- Comment on Anon tries dating apps 4 days ago:
This wreaks of incel talking points. You’re literally doing chads and stacys here. I think the real problem may be more things like this:
Women tend to have realistic expectations and seek out partners their own age on dating sites. Men of all ages try to get with 22 year olds. 40 year old men who are bald, 50 lbs overweight, and with no real hobbies will message women in their 20s expecting a response. And they themselves will have a long list of weed-out criteria. No woman nearly as obese as he is. No women with children. No women over 30.
The data shows that women are much more reasonable in their partner expectations than men. This is likely what is largely responsible for the difference in gender ratios on the platforms.
- Comment on Do women actually enjoy sex? 5 days ago:
Have you tried using a set of medical dilators?
- Comment on Do women actually enjoy sex? 5 days ago:
Medicine traditionally does not consider the pain of women or young children to be worthy of consideration.
- Comment on It’s Looking Like the Cybertruck Is the Biggest Flop in Automotive History 6 days ago:
So you own a Tesla, I see.
- Comment on How do I become more "woke"? Just to aggervate the right a little. 6 days ago:
Well, you can be uncomfortable. I’m comfortable with that.
- Comment on Hey looky! I'm on a list a just learned about three minutes ago! 1 week ago:
Sorry. I just bristle at potential sea lioning.
- Comment on It’s Looking Like the Cybertruck Is the Biggest Flop in Automotive History 1 week ago:
On the next car I design, the shifter will be located in the trunk. Just to keep things interesting.
- Comment on How do I become more "woke"? Just to aggervate the right a little. 1 week ago:
I’ll assume you’re a cis guy who is unambiguously read by strangers as one. If this is the case, wear a pin that says he/him and has a trans pride flag. If anyone asks about it, say you’re not trans, but an ally.
The best part? You can use a pronoun pin in a way trans people can’t - to unambiguously identify and call out bigoted assholes.
It’s hard for trans people to call out misgendering, as bigots know how to deflect. If a bigot knows someone is trans, even if they appear cisgender, they will still misgender them. When called out, they’ll deny it and say, “sorry, I just read you that way.”
Well you as a cisgender man can call them out on this bullshit. If you wear a he/his pronoun pin, eventually someone will aggressively call you “she.” And in that case, they have nowhere to hide. They can’t pretend they’re just going off how they read you. They clearly just saw your pronoun pin, concluded you were trans, and decided to treat you in a way that they thought would hurt you the most. And you can publicly call them out on it.
- Comment on Hey looky! I'm on a list a just learned about three minutes ago! 1 week ago:
Try three things to find out for yourself, and post the results here. If you still haven’t figured it out then, I’ll answer you.
- Comment on Hey looky! I'm on a list a just learned about three minutes ago! 1 week ago:
I’m guessing the Tesseract list. Although, I haven’t actually found anyone posting a link to it. I’ve seen a few people ask for the link, but folks only respond with sarcasm.
- Comment on Anon has been misled 1 week ago:
Jesus: “Fuck this corporate bullshit!”
Disciple: “What on Earth is a corporation?”
Jesus: “Oh, you’ll find out eventually. AND HOW THEY SUCK!”
- Comment on Anon has been misled 1 week ago:
John Fetterman, however, does keep the entire state of Pennsylvania in chains.
- Comment on Anon notices a problem 1 week ago:
You’re also from space.
- Comment on China bans AI “boyfriends” and “girlfriends” over addiction and birth rate concerns 1 week ago:
And for every 1 monster you remove from society by locking them in an AI mind prison, you’ll ruin the lives of a hundred innocent people.
- Comment on Alternative medicine 1 week ago:
And a nomination for the annual Herman Cain award.
- Comment on China bans AI “boyfriends” and “girlfriends” over addiction and birth rate concerns 1 week ago:
You need to think of human beings as less binary good and binary evil.
- Comment on Valve says there's no end in sight to the memory crisis, and prices are only going to increase: 'Honestly, it's still getting worse' 1 week ago:
Sure. A hobbyist with the right equipment can make technically functional memory as a scientific curiosity. But making any memory module that is as powerful as anything that’s come out in the last twenty years is going to require millions of dollars in investment and years of effort combining the work of thousands.
- Comment on Is it even possible to drop 20 lbs in a month? Are there any diets for people who want to go to the extreme? Kind of like celebs do for roles? 2 weeks ago:
A pound of fat equates to, very roughly, 3500 calories. So you would need a deficit of over 2300 calories per day to lose that much weight in a month. Try to keep your calorie level above 1200/day at a minimum. So if you’re drinking so much beer and eating so much food you’re currently consuming 3500 calories/day or more, then yes, it would be possible. But that’s not exactly a healthy amount of weight loss. Even halving the rate would still be pretty aggressive. I get wanting to see tangible progress, but I would strongly encourage you to do this over two months instead of over a month.
- Comment on Outgoing British PM Starmer pushes IRGC terror label 2 weeks ago:
Such a brain dead idea. The IRGC is a national military organization. If you start branding national militaries as terrorist organizations, and then start prosecuting members of those militaries on terrorism charges? Well that’s a two-way street. Pretty soon Iran will be putting captured British troops on trial for terrorism charges and holding them personally accountable for following the orders of their government.
- Comment on Being poor is expensive 2 weeks ago:
Banks have a separate system, like the credit rating system, they use just for depositors. Credit scores reflect the risk to lend money to you. But the banks keep other scores and lists of depositors. Too many overdrafts or transactions their AI considers suspicious? You can be blacklisted from opening an account at any bank.
- Comment on Being poor is expensive 2 weeks ago:
One example I can think of is in the woodworking/DIY work I do. A common frustration of DIY projects is you often end up making many many trips to hardware stores. Often they’re not even big runs, you just need an item to continue the project. You absolutely need it, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve already been the the store twice today.
One way to reduce this problem is to buy more than you need. I once built a dust collection system out of PVC pipe and fittings. When starting, I went and bought way more parts than I knew I would need. I can afford to do this, and I knew that I would end up returning a good number of them. And I made sure to buy from a place with easy returns. But when working on a big project, I’ll happily by 20-50% more of something than I’ll need, just to reduce the number of emergency trips back to the hardware store. Saves so much time to just buy way more than you need and then return all the extras at the end of the project.
- Comment on They were right all along... 3 weeks ago:
Group chats have obvious utility beyond those methods.
- Comment on They were right all along... 3 weeks ago:
But, the prospect of having to forego virtually all modern technology or become exiled from the only family and community you’ve ever known is crazy.
Sounds like being forced to use meta products to keep in touch with family who don’t want to learn how to use anything else.
- Comment on [serious] 1 month ago:
That worked well enough back in ye olden days, but you don’t see it much in the modern world. Winning a war isn’t just about having enough people on the front line. It’s about what kinds and what quantities of weapons and equipment you can get to people that matters. A tiny country with a small population and an advanced industrial economy will wipe the floor with a country with an army of peasant conscripts 10x as large. Keeping the people in uniform equipped and fed is even more important than actually finding people to put into a uniform.
This matters because every person you send to the front line is another that can’t be on the home front working at a munitions plant, or working on a farm, or driving a train to transport war supplies, etc.
Unless your economy already has structural mass unemployment, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Every draftee you throw away into the meat grinder is one more that can’t be supporting the war from the home front.
- Comment on That kid was the WORST 2 months ago:
Thanks!
- Comment on That kid was the WORST 2 months ago:
They’re fine…until you see the monolithic concrete dome home!
I want a house that laughs at tornadoes, earthquakes, and the rare simultaneous tornadoquake.
