nBodyProblem
@nBodyProblem@lemmy.world
- Comment on Coconuts 🥥 2 weeks ago:
The Panama Canal, obviously
- Comment on Socrates 3 weeks ago:
It’s a joke, it’s not meant to be serious philosophical commentary.
That said, I find your comment a bit funny because Socrates’ dialectical method was largely a result of his objection to sophistry. Note that he rarely makes a statement himself, merely challenges those who use oratory techniques to support their claims to know the truth
- Comment on Antybooties 1 month ago:
You don’t need a sense of numbers, in the abstract mathematical way humans use, to count.
Maybe a human child can’t count to 1000 but they could be taught to put a BB inside a jar every step they take. Then they can take a BB back out of the jar at every step on the way back. When the jar is empty, they’re near home. Even if they can’t count at all, they can keep track of thousands of steps this way given enough attention span and stamina.
Then, just imagine, instead of a BB’s in a jar it’s some chemical signal in the brain.
- Comment on Hey, let's breed them to make it hurt even more 2 months ago:
I have a parrot and she loves peppers. I have given her super hots a few times, like Carolina reaper etc, and it’s hilarious until you realize how messy she is. The entire vicinity becomes a straight up biohazard by the time she is done.
- Comment on brave little bird 2 months ago:
That’s what they’re famous for. However, they can catch prey like songbirds by simply being faster and more agile than the quarry, chasing them down in horizontal flight. Some journal articles credit it with a horizontal top speed in the 90 mph range.
- Comment on brave little bird 2 months ago:
Really depends on the individual birds in question IMO. A red tailed hawk for example is really best optimized for prey on the ground like rabbits. On the other hand, a peregrine falcon is optimized for aerial prey and they eat everything from hummingbirds to geese
- Comment on this one goes out to the arts & humanities 2 months ago:
This is some pretty weird and lowkey racist exposition on humanity.
Getting “racism” from that post is a REAL stretch. It’s not even weird, agriculture and mechanization are widely considered good things for humanity as a whole
Humankind isn’t a single unified thing. Individual cultures have their own modes of subsistence and transportation that are unique to specific cultural needs.
ANY group of humans beyond the individual is purely just a social construct and classing humans into a single group is no less sensible than grouping people by culture, family, tribe, country etc.
It’s not that it took 1 million years to “figure out” farming. It’s that 1 specific culture of modern humans (biologically, humans as we conceive of ourselves today have existed for about 200,000 years, with close relatives existing for in the ballpark of 1M years) started practicing a specific mode of subsistence around 23,000 years ago. Specific groups of indigenous cultures remaining today still don’t practice agriculture, because it’s not actually advantageous in many ways – stored foods are less nutritious, agriculture requires a fairly sedentary existence, it takes a shit load of time to cultivate and grow food (especially when compared to foraging and hunting), which leads to less leisure time.
Agriculture is certainly more efficient in terms of nutrition production for a given calorie cost. It’s also much more reliable. Arguing against agriculture as a good thing for humanity as a whole is the thing that’s weird.
- Comment on fossils 3 months ago:
A better comparison would be today’s birds, which descended from theropods and are the only remaining member of the clade Dinosauria.
- Comment on Physics 3 months ago:
Tasers and shooting lightning from your fingertips aren’t even close to the same thing
But the point remains that, yes, society can do a thing but the power of wizards in most fantasy stories largely comes from personal, internal, strength rather than the ability to leverage a vast web of engineers, laborers and infrastructure in the outside world
If someone dropped you in a remote area you wouldn’t just whip up a quick dishwasher to get a job done. The parallel between technology and magic as seen in most fantasy stories is weak at best
- Comment on Physics 3 months ago:
Depends on how good the magic was. If it let you fireball a room full of goblins, lightning people with your fingertips like emperor palpatine, and conjure familiars to do your house work?
I dare say physics would be more popular then
- Comment on Public trust 3 months ago:
Smokers?! Have you ever been to France? It’s like a trip back in time to 80s America, with a smoker on every street corner and an ash tray on every cafe patio table.
- Comment on Sloth Skin 3 months ago:
Pangolins aren’t in Xanarthra though
- Comment on Sloth Skin 3 months ago:
What about the pangolin?
- Comment on Headlines be like 5 months ago:
Same. I like the whole engagement ring ritual but I’ll be damned if our marriage is going to hinge on my “proving my love” with some overpriced trinket that costs a couple months’ salary and loses 95% of its value when it leaves the store. If that’s what it takes for us to get married it’s not the type of relationship I want in my life.
- Comment on Headlines be like 5 months ago:
Moissanite is by far a better buy. It has more fire for 1/100th the price than a natural diamond.
But I feel like the people saying clear stones like diamond and moissanite aren’t pretty have never seen a clear, well cut, multi karat, example in the sun. The rainbow colors and brilliance from a clear high refraction stone like a diamond is frankly insane. You can see the rainbow colors shooting off of it from like 100 yards away if the lighting is right. No colored stone has quite the same wow factor as a good diamond or moissanite in the right light. That’s why diamonds have historically been in such high demand.
Opal, Alexandrite, and many other stones are equally beautiful in their own way. But it’s weird to make that point by putting down clear stones that are absolutely spectacular.
- Comment on Headlines be like 5 months ago:
I agree diamonds are dumb and overpriced when you can get a better result from moissanite or lab grown.
That said, I’m curious why you assume it’s a blood diamond? Conflict diamonds only account for ~5% of all diamonds in the trade. Russia and Canada combined account for >50% of all rough diamonds in the industry.
- Comment on Very few people realise how environmentally devastating this game is. 7 months ago:
That’s why I dig up my lawn every year and bury it underground inside sealed plastic bags
I’m doing my part!
- Comment on Amazon CEO Tells Workers: Return to Office or 'It’s Probably Not Going to Work Out for You' 9 months ago:
Same. My strategy is basically to stay at home until enough other people come in that they can single people out. It’s not like they can fire the entire office.
When they were really amping up the “mandatory” rhetoric, we had a tornado rip through the parking lot and total the cars of everyone who actually complied with the work from work mandate. Then they refused to pay for the vehicle repairs.
Way to guarantee that nobody comes in.
- Comment on What more need be said about it? 10 months ago:
I dunno, when I was in high school there were a number of Ayn Rand essay contests with prize money.
I won’t say they’re good books but I did make good money from reading them.
- Comment on BMW 10 months ago:
I grew up in California
I’m not surprised about your experience though. I have also lived in the south and many of the southern states are still feeling the effects of decades of extensive lobbying on education by the Daughters of the Confederacy.
They DoC has historically pushed a narrative about slaves being happy and content overall, cared for by empathetic masters who valued their well-being. There are many monuments still standing glorifying the wartime deeds done by “loyal” and happy slaves. It’s really insidious.
- Comment on BMW 10 months ago:
I know there is regional variation on how the slave trade is taught, but when I was in school we had numerous, extended, and graphic discussions on the horrors of the slave trade starting from elementary school and extending into college.