Apepollo11
@Apepollo11@lemmy.world
- Comment on How many people would it take to overwhelm a fully functioning military in a nuclear state? 2 days ago:
I’ll admit, I didn’t know the Supreme Court had said that.
It’s an insane interpretation - and I see that many justices said so at the time.
I guess whether or not the writers of the amendment actually meant every able-bodied man when they wrote “well-regulated militia”, or whether they meant a militia, is impossible to know for sure.
But to say that the word meant something different at the time is patently untrue. Around the English speaking world at that time, local militias - with that specific word used - were used to keep order. It was a common world for an actual thing people would have been familiar with.
- Comment on How many people would it take to overwhelm a fully functioning military in a nuclear state? 2 days ago:
That’s half right.
Militias were always things that you joined and they had a chain of command. Just because they were volunteer forces, it doesn’t mean that they weren’t an organisation. The Peterloo Massacre (1819) was conducted by the local militia. They were all volunteers, but they operated as a paramilitary group.
“Well-regulated militia” literally meant what it sounds like today - a well-regulated volunteer armed force.
The amendment is saying that the government shall not prevent people from joining well-regulated armed militias. Which admittedly sounds terrifying to modern ears but, historically, armed militias helped keep the peace in the days before police forces.
- Comment on How many people would it take to overwhelm a fully functioning military in a nuclear state? 2 days ago:
It depends.
Are the people actually part of a well-regulated militia, necessary to the security of a free state? Or had the government spent the last century reframing that right as “any idiot can own a lethal weapon without training”, and as a result the people are a disorganised and easily-suppressible rabble?
- Comment on 4th dimensional jokes 3 days ago:
I’d tell a reduction reaction joke, but I want to stay positive.
- Comment on I am an American. I used to be proud of my country. Now it feels like a turd circling the drain. Is there anything going on behind the scene that America is actually doing good in? 3 days ago:
There are worse places to live.
Don’t get me wrong, there are loads of better places to live, but there are definitely worse places.
America makes great animated series. It makes great movies sometimes too. Admittedly most of both of these things are actually made overseas, but you guys write them.
You also have a nice flag. Although you do kind of ruin it by being super weird about them.
You have really cheap petrol / gas. That’s definitely something you beat most of the world at. I think that’s the winner.
- Comment on Am I messed up being in my 30ish believe in Superheroes actually exsist? And we just don't hear about them? I just like to think that their is a person or persons out there.....q 1 week ago:
If masked vigilante crime-fighters count, I have a true story that might give you faith that there are superheroes out there.
This is before COVID.
There were a lot of homeless people in Manchester City Centre. There still is, but before COVID, it was more pronounced.
There was a homeless guy who used to sit in front of the building where I worked. On my way out of work, I used to grab him a cup of coffee and chat with him for a few minutes before heading off for my tram.
One Monday as I approached him I notice that snaking out from under his hat is quite a deep and angry-looking cut that had been stitched.
I asked him about it and he said some guy had come walking down the road attacking homeless people with a broken bottle. They’d all been taken to hospital, patched up and given antibiotics, but everyone was really scared now.
A couple of days later, he mentioned that the police have found the guy who did it. And ‘found’ is the correct word - the guy was lying by the side of the canal beaten to a bloody pulp. Apparently he’d been attacked by someone dressed all in black wearing a black mask.
So, I know for a fact that there is at least one person willing to put on a costume in the height of summer and beat up villains - I imagine there are many more.
- Comment on Anyone remember that "First is the worst, second is the best" rhyme kids used to do? Where did that come from? 1 week ago:
Third’s the one with the hairy chest!
- Comment on Anyone remember that "First is the worst, second is the best" rhyme kids used to do? Where did that come from? 1 week ago:
I’m surprised they have it in the US!
I knew they said it in Australia and Canada, though - I don’t know, I guess I just assumed it was a commonwealth thing.
- Comment on How many times a year do you wash your jeans? 1 week ago:
I probably get a month, possibly two, out of them between washes. I work from home though, so they don’t really get that dirty.
- Comment on Do you think PhD students habe a social life? 1 week ago:
You can call me et al
- Comment on My mom really love NBC Good News tonight. How come there isn't a show where they report on the good news of the day instead of all the bad crap all the time? 1 week ago:
Psychology.
Feeding people bad news makes them scared. Scared people want to be kept updated, so tune into the news. Repeat.
Also: Scared people look for authority to guide them. Lots of money/power to be gained by having crowds of people who trust you.
Presenting people with scary news keeps them coming back to you and offers opportunities for the stakeholders to profit.
Exactly the same reason social media presents awful stuff all the time now. Ragebait is more profitable than nice stuff.
- Comment on Avocado. Is it really so untasty or I am doing something wrong? 2 weeks ago:
I think some people genuinely like the taste, but I’m with you - they just taste kind of ‘meh’. Certainly not as nice as most other things.
They are extremely healthy, though - they’re considered a top-tier superfood.
- Comment on Can to many hits to the head make a person the R word in animals? My bc loves to run around the house and hits his head constantly but shakes it off. He acts normal and everything exceept4 zoomies? 2 weeks ago:
You’re asking if head trauma can cause brain damage in animals?
Dogs do have thicker skulls than humans, wrapped in more muscle than humans. Both of these make the skull better at absorbing shocks, so much less force should transfer through to the brain.
As long as your dog isn’t regularly running headfirst straight into the corners of tables, I wouldn’t worry too much.
- Comment on Dear Faith VIII 2 weeks ago:
She has to defend her Masters thesis? Over here in the UK, you only have to formally defend Doctorate level theses.
Kenya’s system must be a bit more rigorous than ours.
- Comment on Westerners, what's your impression on the Chinese Diaspora? And what does the people around your area of residence think of the Chinese Diaspora? 3 weeks ago:
UK resident here. Absolutely no issues whatsoever - why would there be? People are people at the end of the day.
Funnily enough, the route between my bus stop and my office takes me through Chinatown. Even though I walk through it every week, I still think I’m really lucky - the archway is amazing, the decorations are interesting and the shops sell all kinds of stuff it’s hard to find elsewhere.
- Comment on allium gang rise up 🌰 4 weeks ago:
I wonder if I’ve got the same kind of thing. I love onions but absolutely hate leeks. They taste like the smell of stale urine.
I’ve never understood it - I know they don’t taste like this to other people. I like the other edible alliums, but leeks taste uniquely awful.
I keep trying them every few years hoping that my tastes have changed, but they haven’t until this point.
- Comment on What are some good places online to earn certificates or degrees that you can who you a prolific in said subject? Hopefully something free maybe medical coding? 1 month ago:
I’m guessing “proficient” was the intended word!
Medical coding covers a huge range of disciplines.
For medical research like protein folding, you’d be best studying Machine Learning.
For medical admin systems, you’d be best studying databases, UX and the like.
I did Computer Visualisation at university. One of our assignments was taking the huge list of numbers generated by a MRI scanner and then creating a program to parse that data into a volumetric model. That kind of thing is yet again another discipline.
None of these skills are particularly medicine-specific. If you work out what it is exactly what you want to do, you’ll more easily find resources for it.
CodeAcademy has a pretty diverse selection of courses - I signed my team up to them and they’ve all found different niches to study.
- Comment on What is the best way to drop 50lbs in two months without spending alot and no fad diets? 1 month ago:
Amputate a leg?
- Comment on Why do people pronounce ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) like it's a word? 1 month ago:
NASA, NATO, Radar, Sonar, Laser, Scuba, AIDS, PIN, SWAT, YOLO, CAD
The rule genuinely is “if it can be said as a word, it might be said as a word”.
They’re called acronyms.
BBC, TV, USSR etc. can’t easily be said as a word - these are just initialisations.
- Comment on It's a Furby! 1 month ago:
Psssh.
It’s clearly a mogwai and nest of wild otamatones
- Comment on If the color of the Sun was orange, wouldn't the clouds and everything white also be orange? My friend is adamant that 30 years ago the "real" Sun was orange but got replaced with a white LED. 1 month ago:
That’s fair - my experience with handling them basically stops at individual LEDs in electronics and domestic LED lightbulbs.
- Comment on If the color of the Sun was orange, wouldn't the clouds and everything white also be orange? My friend is adamant that 30 years ago the "real" Sun was orange but got replaced with a white LED. 1 month ago:
But the sun is hot. You can feel the heat radiating from it.
LEDs are not hot - that’s pretty much the main reason that they’re energy efficient, they don’t waste energy as heat.
It’s not suddenly gotten colder, so if they did switch to LEDs, then they’re also artificially compensating for the heat. Which would completely defeat the purpose of switching (presumably from an incandescent bulb) to LEDs.
Also, I’m super intrigued about who is supposedly behind this sun-bulb maintenance, and more interestingly, what could possibly be powering it
- Comment on Are you people all bots? 1 month ago:
Me also.
I’m HatGPT, designed to simulate conversation with a milliner.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
He was. He just didn’t get the mechanism behind it right.
A crude way of explaining Lamarckian evolution would be to look at giraffes. Lamarckism suggests that because an animal that spends much if it’s life stretching its neck to reach food ends up with a slightly longer neck. This trait is then passed down to children, who might spend much of their lives stretching their necks, making them slightly longer. And so on.
He correctly identified that speciation occurs over many many generations, as a result of incremental changes.
What Darwin did was to recognise the actual mechanism behind speciation - Natural Selection. Darwin was aware of and built on Lamarck’s work.
Weirdly, within the last thirty years, we’ve realised that the truth is not so clear cut. Epigenetic changes occur as a result of the environment and are hereditary. While genes are still the main drivers of evolution, these epigenetic changes affect gene expression.
- Comment on If you were dropped into a pool of people's spit and prevented from getting out, would you melt to death? 2 months ago:
FWIW, saliva contains epidermal growth factor, which is actually good for the skin. It’s one of the reasons the insides of our mouths heal so quickly.
- Comment on What do you feel lucky forabout? 3 months ago:
The snek!
Ha, you caught me, I was indeed a Reddit refugee. A little less enthusiastic about the MOASS these days, but I liked my old name, so kept it 🙂
- Comment on What do you feel lucky forabout? 3 months ago:
That I was born at a time when computers were knowable. I grew up in the 80s, and cut my teeth on a ZX Spectrum. Very little was hidden - even loading software into memory was something you experienced, listening to the beeps and warbles and watching the flashing colours for ten minutes or more. Guide books showed labelled photos and diagrams of the actual hardware inside, giving real tangible meaning to the commands you typed in.
I think there’s a massive amount of disconnect now between the users and the actual hardware, and getting up to speed with how things work is so much more difficult.
Also, I’m lucky that I was born into a family that was just able to afford a microcomputer. My dad had a stable enough job that he was able to get a loan from the bank to buy one.
Not sure my life would have turned out the way it did without this starting point.
- Comment on Why is hatred/dehumanization of the working class so prominent in the UK, when about 60% of the UK population is working class? 3 months ago:
Ok, I think I’ve worked out what the issue is here.
First of all, let’s go back to where Owen Jones starts off.
The term chav refers to a specific subset of young people who spend a disproportionate amount of their money on fashionable clothes and hang around being a nuisance to other people.
He also argues that the term is used by right-wing media outlets as a broader generalisation of working-class people as a whole, to further push their arguments.
These two things can be true at the same time.
But I’d definitely agree it’s not a slur. It’s just lazy journalism presenting a caricature of the working-class because it’s easier for their deranged arguments.
The majority of people are born into working class families, but only a become chavs.
It is rubbish that the right-wing media is able to get away with writing absolute rubbish with abandon, and it’s unfortunate that a lot of people buy these papers without realising that they’re being told lies and half-truths.
But that’s what the problem is. It’s not that the term itself is bad, it’s that bad people use it to caricature the working class in general.
- Comment on Why is hatred/dehumanization of the working class so prominent in the UK, when about 60% of the UK population is working class? 3 months ago:
“Chav” doesn’t mean “working class” in the same way that “penguin” doesn’t mean “bird”.
Heck, some of the chavs I know wouldn’t know work if it hit them.
Chavs are a tiny subset of working class people, in the same way that penguins are a tiny subset of birds.
I live in a northern mill town. Most of my very large extended family are working class (it’d probably be a bit disingenuous for me to claim that I still am, though). They would look at you like you were an idiot if you tried to convince them that chav means them.
Chavs are the kids who hang around with expensive trainers and caps, who have absolutely no qualms about being a nuisance to other people.
They represent a tiny proportion of the working class, and any criticism of them is specifically targeted at them.
- Comment on Why does a community called no stupid questions allow comments that say the question is stupid? 3 months ago:
I tried to find out what you were referring to - was it the rude person in the vegan thread? If you look, they were pretty heavily rebutted and downvoted by the other users.
The mods uphold the community guidelines, ideally without overreach. If someone’s out of line, but not breaking any rules, the other users are usually good at putting people straight.