hydrospanner
@hydrospanner@lemmy.world
- Comment on Mythbusters 3 days ago:
More great points, I agree.
Also…it might just be me, but I find that I subconsciously have more respect for a person, both as a person and as a reliable source of information, if they present things with qualification, as you suggest. To me, it’s a sign of humility and an indication of an appreciation for the complexity of any given subject if someone is knowledgeable enough to both field questions and demonstrate proficiency while also being careful to qualify and delineate between what’s fact, what’s generally accepted, what’s their understanding, and what’s their opinion or guess.
I listened to a podcast last year about TOP GUN instructors and the grueling process they go through to become subject matter experts in their specific subject, and one of the things that stuck out to me was that they’re less worried about being right all the time and more worried about three qualities: being knowledgeable, approachable, and humble…with the understanding that with those three qualities, you’re going to eventually get to the point where you’re almost always right, with the added benefit that you’ve trained yourself to remove ego from the equation, so you’re less likely to fall prey to the trap of clinging to bad information/belief/assumption just because you want to look correct.
- Comment on Mythbusters 3 days ago:
I’m glad you addressed the aversion to being wrong because I think that’s part of the core of what’s causing so many problems in America today (and maybe other places, but I can only speak to my own familiarity).
I feel like as a society we have created an environment where we demonstrate and reinforce to children from like kindergarten onward that the worst thing you can possibly do is be wrong. Someone who is always right is seen as smart, capable…in short, a winner.
Conversely, if you’re ever wrong, that completely and permanently undoes your entire argument/position and not only that, but you’re branded as unreliable/untrustworthy, uninformed, stupid, dishonest, or naive.
We expect perfection in correctness, and while being right is the expectation, being wrong is a permanent black mark that is treated as a more serious negative than being right is considered as a positive. Nobody just assumes that if you’re right about one thing that you’ll be right about all things, but if you get something wrong, there’s a very real shift toward double-checking or verifying anything else that comes after.
We even tease friends, family, and children for mispronouncing words or singing incorrect lyrics. Basically, being incorrect is so stigmatized that we reinforce to everyone, children and adults alike, that it’s better to not even try…not even make an attempt or join into a conversation…than to risk being wrong. When someone is wrong we use words like “admit” like it’s a crime, or admit defeat…and that just creates an environment where nobody is ever encouraged to speak up about anything for fear of (gasp!) being wrong.
And now we’re coming full circle on this at the highest levels, with our leaders being blatantly and objectively wrong…and absolutely dead set on avoiding having to admit that at all costs, setting a precedent that has oozed into even casual discourse among regular people. It seems like it used to be that being wrong was bad enough, but to dig in and refuse to admit it was even worse…lately it seems that admitting you were wrong is now even worse than doubling down on it…so now we have a situation where we can’t even agree on basic facts because one or more sides will be wrong but would rather insist on their position than just acknowledge they were incorrect.
- Comment on Missing cold pizza 2 weeks ago:
You do you, but if I’m up early enough to have breakfast, I’m unhappy about that, so I’m not gonna get hung up on levels of processing or grams of carbs.
Give me fried pig and chicken ova. And lots of coffee.
- Comment on Missing cold pizza 2 weeks ago:
Sausage gravy over biscuits is one of the very few things that make me appreciate the South.
Y’all have something special there.
- Comment on Missing cold pizza 2 weeks ago:
These are not interchangeable for me.
Pancakes are a filling main item, dressed with syrup. Toast is a vehicle for egg yolk, jelly/jam, or as a sandwich foundation.
- Comment on Missing cold pizza 2 weeks ago:
Right?
I get in the mood for some of those some of the time, but most days?
Gimme 15 cups of coffee, don’t talk to me until the third cup, and get outta my fuckin way when it’s time for the coffee shit.
- Comment on Is lemmy now what reddit used to be 10+ years ago? 4 weeks ago:
Well said on all counts.
Reddit was never perfect, but in my 12+ years there, it was never as bad as Lemmy has been the entire time I’ve been here.
Basically I’m only still active here because Reddit’s mobile app is such trash and Lemmy is more convenient to browse from a phone.
- Comment on [Serious] Why do so many people seem to hate veganism? 1 month ago:
This is a good point, although maybe I’m just unlucky, but quite a few times over the years, I’ve encountered friends, and friends of friends, who were vegetarian or vegan and seemed to make a primary hobby out of shoe-horning that information into any and every conversation they could. And every time, it was very deliberately and openly presented in a way to praise themselves and demonize anyone not like them.
Not only is food very foundational, as you’ve said, but I also strongly feel that a reason this particular set of -isms is such a lightning rod is because (perhaps due in large part to that foundational aspect of food in society), it seems like vegetarianism and veganism very much becomes who someone is, as opposed to simply describing an aspect of their lifestyle.
Not only that, but it becomes a part of their Identity in a way that frequently impacts the people around them.
So someone is a Catholic. That’s cool. I’m not one and I might have my issues with the Catholic church, but unless they’re extremely devout, chances are, their Catholicism is more “how they worship” and less “who they are” in everyday interaction. It just isn’t likely to affect me, and as such I’m much less likely to really care. As such, I’m cool with Catholics. Add to that: most Catholic people aren’t painting their religious belief in superiority either overtly or implicitly these days. They’re just going to mass on Sunday and doing their thing.
On the other hand, someone is vegan. That’s also cool. I might have preferences and a lifestyle that conflicts with their views and vice versa but we can coexist, and our preferences on what to eat won’t ever lead to conflict between us, right? Well…if they’re a coworker…or a member of a friend group, now any and every time that group of people wants to eat, that foundational aspect of society, now the group must accommodate that -ism which they don’t share. And that’s probably fine for everyone in the group sometimes…and some of the group all the time…but generally speaking, looking at all of the group, all of the time, that’s statistically likely to eventually rankle at least a few people. Then, depending on the individual, there’s a very real chance that they eat with this group, some of which may already be annoyed by having their food options limited by the choices of this individual…and on top of it, that individual takes that opportunity to make a comment that invokes morality into the situation…and it should come as little surprise that this type of person gets a generalized negative reputation.
- Comment on [Serious] Why do so many people seem to hate veganism? 1 month ago:
If you’d like to break the stereotype of insufferable vegans, you might consider starting that process by not being one.
- Comment on What kind of institutional gaslighting is this? 1 month ago:
One of the very few interviews in my life that I ended early was the one where in the third hour of it, they usually mentioned that the (competitive) salary was based on a 45 hour work week, with “occasional” mandatory overtime as the needs of the company dictated.
Knowing from earlier that they were very short at the position I was interviewing for, I asked for a more specific answer on what I could expect as “occasional” and the response was, “Well the work for your position has been backlogged since the previous employee quit, so for the first 3 to 6 months you can expect to work 50-60 hours each week, every week. After that, it will probably only be two weeks a month. But you can work those extra hours on the weekends too, so it’s not as bad as it sounds!”
I was already done but I did some quick mental math and realized that dividing even their higher salary by that many more hours, not only was it insanely more work but was actually like a 15% pay cut, in terms of hourly rate, than the job I currently had.
I explained this to the guy and asked how much wiggle room there was on salary and he basically said something to the effect of, “Maybe in a few years you can negotiate salary, but coming in you’re really in no position to argue for more pay.”
So I thanked him for his time and told him the interview was over.
- Comment on Fossil prep 2 months ago:
No reason it can’t be both!
- Comment on We see what you're doing 2 months ago:
In a just world, he’d unpack the court, by force.
Not just saying “anyone who disagrees with my politics”, but Thomas, Kavanaugh, and Barrett have absolutely no business there.
- Comment on 2 months ago:
You swap that breading for a quick swim in tempura batter and some toasted sesame seeds and I’m in.
- Comment on I feel old 2 months ago:
Yeah you know me.
- Comment on I'm working on it, ok? 2 months ago:
Yeah, “advice” like this always just comes across as “well have you tried not being poor?”
- Submitted 2 months ago to guildwars2@lemmy.wtf | 0 comments
- Comment on Let's improve the quality! 3 months ago:
improvements*
- Comment on What animal could you take in a fight? 3 months ago:
If one was attacking me, I’d certainly be worried.
- Comment on What animal could you take in a fight? 3 months ago:
Dude, I’ve seen geese shrug off a shotgun blast, wobble in the air, recover, and fly off.
There are many, many puntable animals that are dangerous, both because you’re underestimating their toughness but also their ability to avoid being punted and attack.
I’m not saying a goose or raccoon would be able to kill you, but there’s a lot of middle ground between “not dangerous” and “lethal danger”.
A rat or squirrel or groundhog could easily leave a human minus a finger without breaking a sweat. Might not be able to kill a human, but that’s still dangerous in my book.
- Comment on What animal could you take in a fight? 3 months ago:
…with multiple “pocket knives” at the end of each limb and a jaw and set of teeth specifically designed to kill fleshy opponents with a skull or trachea crush.
It also eats an all-natural diet and exercises every fucking day of its life. And has spent all of that life practicing at being really fucking good at killing things that don’t want to be dead, and spend all of their lives practicing to avoid the mountain lion.
- Comment on What animal could you take in a fight? 3 months ago:
Education actually!
- Comment on What animal could you take in a fight? 3 months ago:
Better to just hoof it instead.
- Comment on What animal could you take in a fight? 3 months ago:
Settle down there, Derek.
- Comment on Elder scrolls 3 months ago:
I am not a fan of the general trend of de-buttoning.
Like… isn’t the entire point to make things consistent and intuitive? Make a clickable button visually distinct!
- Comment on Delicious. 3 months ago:
childern*
- Comment on Plant Natives 3 months ago:
Exactly! Very well said!
Don’t make a new interest a “don’t do what interests you, do what interests me” thing.
I’m big into fishing and while people are generally pretty good to newbies, people can get ridiculously preachy over catch and release vs keeping fish, as well as safe and ethical fish handling practices.
I’m all about educating, but A) you need to do it with positivity and not guilt, B) a lot of times people get super, super anal about it…like… we’re all jamming a hook in a fish’s mouth and dragging it out of the water…in that context, laying it on some wet grass to quickly unhook it and get a picture is not the worst part of its day, and C) just because their fish handling may not be perfect doesn’t mean it’s cruel either…newbies gotta learn, and they’re going to learn better from gentle suggestion and explanation than coming at them telling them how wrong they are.
- Comment on Plant Natives 3 months ago:
At this point, seeing behavior and responses like this in so many communities of my interests, I feel like even that gentle of an approach is still too much agenda-pushing.
Not that the agenda in question lacks for value, ethics, or good intentions, but at the end of the day, based on the newbies inquiry, it’s still some version of, “You’re wrong for wanting to explore your interest. You should do what I tell you to do instead.”
In the communities for my interests that I participate in, I try (and sometimes fail, we’re all human), to explicitly steer clear of doing anything to diminish their enthusiasm, curiosity, and desire to learn. That’s the little ember that they need to really get going, so for me, the priority is not to put that out.
Especially in a case like this where, sure, maybe a native garden is ideal…but the alternative if they get overwhelmed or shut down or forcibly redirected by the community is probably just going to be grass and weeds, or no plants at all.
I think it’s great to offer up the natives as an alternative (while explaining the benefits to both the local ecosystem as well as to the gardener), but I would also say that if you’re going to do that, one should also encourage them to get into their new interest regardless of whether they follow that suggestion or not.
If OP wants to plant tulips, fantastic, and I’ll give you any tips I can on how to do that. I may suggest natives and why they’re also a great choice, but under no circumstances will I go into negative territory in telling them they shouldn’t follow up on their interest, unless of course it’s illegal, dangerous, harmful, etc.
- Comment on Where are the good political songs? 4 months ago:
Oh man I need to dig out my old Distillers stuff and listen to it again!
- Comment on Waffle Squarf 5 months ago:
The grease adds water repellency.
- Comment on Anon likes bikes 5 months ago:
Thank you; I had no idea.
I take it that the idea is that it’s supposed to be stupid?