kirklennon
@kirklennon@kbin.social
- Comment on Why is there no true Progressive party in America right now? 8 months ago:
it’s as valid IN ENGLISH to use it to refer to the country as it is to refer to the continent(s)
It's really not but you already know that, just as you know the (s) is incorrect because, in English, there is absolutely no such thing as a continent called America.
It’s not about confusion, it’s about the US acting like the center of the fucking universe.
It's about you being a hypocrite and accusing a group of people of acting like the center of the universe because they use a word differently in their language than you use it in yours. You are being incredibly disrespectful of other cultures by trying to impose foreign definitions on how people describes themselves.
- Comment on Why is there no true Progressive party in America right now? 8 months ago:
when the “America” in that name actually refers to the continent too
In English, there is North America and there is South America. Collectively, you can call them the Americas. Just "America" on its own refers to the country. It doesn't matter what A-M-E-R-I-C-A mean in a different language. Spanish has what is fundamentally a different word, with the same spelling, to refer to something else. In linguistic terms it's a false friend. The etymological origins are, indeed, the same, but it took on separate meanings in different languages. Nobody is confused about this, however. You're just being an asshole.
- Comment on Why is there no true Progressive party in America right now? 8 months ago:
I consider your comment highly offensive. You can’t tell a people what they are allowed to call themselves in their own language just because the same word means something else in another language. In English “America” refers unambiguously to the United States because there is no continent called “America.”
I would love to see people’s reaction if France started calling itself Europe or China called itself Asia
This comparison would work only if “Europe” meant one thing in French, and if the word “China” meant one thing in Chinese, and they both meant different in other languages.
- Comment on How does employing a rapist not constitute an unsafe work environment for female employees? 10 months ago:
I know that you can’t fire someone just for being a sex offender unless it directly interferes with work duties (in the US)
You can definitely fire someone for being a sex offender in the US. Outside of a few exceptions that probably don't apply in your case, you can also fire someone for being an accused sex offender.
- Comment on Is there a difference between customers/consumers? 11 months ago:
Customers pay; consumers use. Sometimes they're the same, often they are not.
Ad-supported services: If you search for something on Google, you are a consumer. Google's customers are the companies paying for sponsored links at the top of your search results.
Kids toys (and other gifts): The kid in the sandbox playing with a Tonka truck is the consumer of the product but their parents (grandparents, etc.) are the customers.
"Enterprise" solutions: Corporate IT departments are usually the customer, though they may never use the product. Other employees are the consumer, but they had no choice in buying it so they're not the customer.
- Comment on What is the likely outcome of the presidential immunity argument currently being used in courts? 11 months ago:
It's not outlandish enough to have his attorneys sanctioned for making a frivolous argument, but only because criminal defendants are allowed to grasp at straws. It's a deeply unserious argument with no textual or historical support and isn't going to pass muster among even the worst judges. It's not even going to meaningfully delay his trial. It's just fodder for his political supporters so he can pretend that he isn't a criminal because apparently l’etat, c’est moi.
- Comment on In the United States is there an easy way to find out what business occupied space before the current business? 1 year ago:
Going further back, you can try property ownership records
Important caveat that many (most?) businesses lease their space so there's a good chance the legal owner is just something like "123 Main Street Partners, LP" (often literally just the actual street address as the substantive part of the name), which won't tell you anything about what business was there. The lessee's name, however, is likely to be on some permits, so that would be another approach if the registered owner ends up a dead end.
- Comment on What does .: come from / what does it mean? 1 year ago:
The abbreviation i.e. is short for "id est," literally "that is." English-language alternatives would be "that is to say" or "in other words."
The abbreviation e.g. is short for "exempli gratia," meaning "for example.
- Comment on Can a company can itself Twitter now? 1 year ago:
Yes, but X is still using "Twitter." It takes an extended period of complete abandonment before you can petition to have the trademark canceled.
- Comment on Is a Lemsip Max just a paracetamol? 1 year ago:
Thanks for checking!
- Comment on Is a Lemsip Max just a paracetamol? 1 year ago:
Do you have a source for that? My understanding is that the recent review looked only at oral usage and made no determination on its efficacy as a nasal spray.
- Comment on Is a Lemsip Max just a paracetamol? 1 year ago:
They say they contain a combination of paracetamol, phenylephrine hydrochloride, and caffeine.
Incidentally, the US FDA has just completed updated studies on phenylephrine, more rigorous than when it was first introduced, and determined that when taken orally it is fully metabolized before it makes it to the sinuses and is completely ineffective. It's going to disappear from shelves soon.
- Comment on How do you call someone born in the US besides "American"? 1 year ago:
Just to be clear, I didn't think that you were being offensive. It came across entirely as a good faith question from a foreigner, but it ties into (ironically arrogant) advocacy from some foreigners who call Americans arrogant for using the term American.
- Comment on How do you call someone born in the US besides "American"? 1 year ago:
Telling people what they're allowed to be offended by is usually a bad choice.
Let em call me whatever they want in whatever language they have.
That's not what this is about though, which is precisely the point. In other languages, "America" means something else, and they all have other terms to refer to people from the US. The whole discussion is about what Americans should be called in English.
- Comment on How do you call someone born in the US besides "American"? 1 year ago:
The proper term is American.
everybody born in the american continent is technically “american” too
The implied context of your question is in English.. In the English-speaking world, there is no American continent. People from North America are North Americans; people from South America are South Americans. People from the United States of America are American. There is no ambiguity. There is also no good term to collectively describe everyone from the Americas but there’s also rarely any need to discuss that.
I consider terms such as “USonian” and whatnot to be highly offensive. Nobody should tell a people what they are allowed to call themselves in their own language just because the same word means something else in another language. It would be like telling French people they’re not allowed to call their arm a bras because it refers to an article of clothing in English. Other languages where America means something else already have their own terms for people from the US. English, however, has no real ambiguity except that caused by those trying to shame Americans for calling themselves Americans.
- Comment on Why don't laptops have proper low power states where useful stuff like downloads can run during sleep/with the lid closed? 1 year ago:
Apple introduced the “Power Nap” feature to do this stuff in 2012, support starting with the 2011 MacBook Air, and almost a decade before they started switching away from Intel. The chips are capable of it, at least in the right hands.
- Comment on Shrinkflation is out of control 1 year ago:
Or a 11% increase in price overall. Meanwhile inflation is at 6-7%?
Over what time period, though? We'd need to know when the 255g for $10 price was introduced. If the price and weight have been unchanged for a few years, this could even be below the rate of inflation.
- Comment on What's up with the end-to-end encryption notification all over the whatsapp? 1 year ago:
I don’t think there’s anything particularly partisan about the law in the first place so it’s not so much an issue of what any party supports but rather education of the electorate at large. People aren’t going to get excited about encryption but they will be angry when WhatsApp stops working (which is what is going to happen) and they need to know why. Ideally they’ll hear enough rumblings that literally all of their messaging apps are going to stop working before the law goes into effect to stop it in time.
- Comment on What's up with the end-to-end encryption notification all over the whatsapp? 1 year ago:
I think it may have something to do with the fact that the UK is far along in a plan to effectively ban encrypted messaging, and many other countries are looking in the same draconian direction. They want non-techy users (AKA voters) to know about it and to understand that it's super important.
- Comment on Reality for thee, not for me 1 year ago:
If prosecutors lost more cases, that would mean they were being even more aggressive in over-prosecuting flimsy cases.
- Comment on Reality for thee, not for me 1 year ago:
The criminal justice system is intended to be biased in favor of the defendants as innocent until proven guilty. Consequently, if everything were working perfectly, I'd expect prosecutors to only charge people if they were extremely confident that they could prove the person's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Taking cases without solid evidence and regularly losing at trial would be indicative of a major problem.
- Comment on Is it legal to be out in public in just underwear? 1 year ago:
IIRC in Seattle it effectively depends on whether anyone cares enough to report you. If your neighbors don’t mind you gardening naked in your front yard then you’re fine. If they gripe about it then you have to put clothes on.
That’s not the case. You do not have to put on clothes just because your neighbors don’t like it. Gardening nude is fully legal even if someone complains.
Nudity itself is not obscene, only obscene actions can make it obscene.
- Comment on Why do Americans keep falling for the Democrat and Republican scare mongering and propaganda? 1 year ago:
Where are the anti-war democrats?
Voting to send Ukraine all of the weapons and resources they can possibly use. That is the only legitimate anti-war stance. It's a remarkably black and white scenario where an authoritarian country invaded its democratic neighbor. Russia could end the war immediately simply by leaving. Ukraine, on the other hand, needs to actually win the war. Anything other than an absolute Ukrainian victory where Russia is forced out of all of Ukraine is a victory for war. The real-world anti-war position is that war must not be allowed to be an effective means of aggression. If war works, we get more war. When dictators learn that war doesn't work, we'll have less war. As long as Putin isn't willing to pull back his soldiers and abandon all claims to all Ukrainian land, the only other option is to defeat him in battle.
Anybody who opposes arming Ukraine is objectively pro-war because the only plausible outcome in that scenario is a Russian victory.
- Comment on Is the blockchain an interesting innovation, aside from cryptocurrencies ? 1 year ago:
I thought it sounded interesting when it was new but the more I've learned, the more convinced I am that it's completely useless. I've never seen anything done on a blockchain that couldn't be done faster, cheaper, and more securely in a SQL database. Even the not-a-scam applications are ridiculous and fall apart upon examination. Blockchain as a definitive record of ownership? Absolutely not. There's no way to force a person to update a record. Lose your house in a bankruptcy? The sheriff on his way to evict you isn't going to care that you've got some NFT saying you still own the house. Anything involving contracts at all? If a court can't unilaterally update the blockchain record, then the record is unreliable. But if the government can unilaterally update a record, then you're not relying on community consensus and immutability in the first place.
Blockchain isn't useful for anything important, and it's not a logical choice for anything trivial aside from literally just playing with blockchain stuff for the sake of playing with blockchains. I think it's a dead-end technology.