AbouBenAdhem

@AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you use your blinker in a car?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Using it 75% of the time is harder than using it all the time, because it means you’re consciously thinking about it each time instead of doing it instinctively.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's a sin in Christianity to consume media based on ancient mythology and folklore?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Plenty of writers in the early Christian church continued to reference Greek and Roman mythology as a source of literary analogy—so a background knowledge of classical mythology is required to fully understand foundational Christian literature.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Now that the US is under influence by Russia, what will happen to Whistleblower Edward Snowden?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I doubt Trump will do anything that could be perceived as encouraging more whistleblowers, at least while he’s in office.

  Best case—a Democrat wins the next election, Trump gives up on trying to stop it, and pardons Snowden on his way out.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do you pronounce "centaur" and why?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If it’s in a Greek or ancient Latin context I pronounce it with a hard C, but if it’s a general English context I pronounce it with a soft C.

  I’m not sure what the third way would be.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why Titles Are Written Like This?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The same reason we capitalize peoples’ names, since a title is the proper name of a written work.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mother⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  After the predator instantly becomes enamored with the adorable baby quokka, and calls her own kids over to play.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hey, do americans just want to take a break from normal politics for a bit and focus all our efforts solely on the wild boar problem?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Some animals are more equal than others!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In theory, authoritarianism is the fastest way to transform a society from one form to another—so it’s rational that regimes that take power based on the promise of rapid social transformation will be drawn to authoritarianism.

  But it’s also rational for institutions to try to preserve themselves—which for these authoritarian regimes means preserving the conditions that led to the belief in their necessity, instead of delivering on the promise of transformation that would lead to their dissolution.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If any external factor made you create art, would your art be created by that factor?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I guess in that sense you could say the only “creator” is the Big Bang.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Between Linux or Windows which do you think will be first to have a viable OS for quantum computers?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Quantum circuits aren’t general-purpose computers—they’re added to conventional computers to allow them to perform a small handful of algorithms more efficiently. I don’t believe any of those algorithms would benefit a general operating system enough that an OS would be modified to require the use of one.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  States are explicitly prohibited by the Constitution from “enter[ing] into any treaty, alliance, or confederation” with foreign states, but there are plenty of cases of state and local governments joining economic partnerships and initiatives.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do most Americans use an iPhone?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I would never use an iPhone if my phone were my primary computing device. But I just make occasional calls and texts, and use a handful of apps (for instance, Nextcloud and Home Assistant connected to my home server, bypassing most of Apple’s ecosystem). I just want something simple and sturdy that I have to think about as little as possible, and for that specific use case the limitations are a plus.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why there is no photos of earth from space?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s a certain neurological disorder where people can look at their own reflections and believe them to be fake or inhuman. I would expect them to make posts very similar to this one.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are there silly license requirements?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There are plenty of activities that are perfectly harmless when done by one person, but need to be managed when a bunch of people try to do them at once.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do some people think others are troll just because they don’t like what they have to say?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In some cases, assuming the poster is a troll is the more charitable option.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨WTH is going on with the price of a quart of Hydrogen Peroxide?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Are you looking at the 3% topical solution, or something more concentrated?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should I avoid communities on lemmy.ml?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In circumstances where similar communities exist on multiple instances, I would subscribe to all of them at first—but pay attention to differences in moderation and community norms, and unsubscribe from communities you’re less comfortable with. I wouldn’t judge a community on the basis of its instance without trying it first, unless the instance admins have unusual rules they’re imposing on all their communities.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to make multiple paragraphs render with a space?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Ah, so you want to increase the default space between paragraphs? (That’s UI dependent, by the way—in Alexandria the default paragraph spacing is closer to a full line.)

  ---

  You could always add a horizontal rule between paragraphs if you want to indicate a more substantial division.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to make multiple paragraphs render with a space?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Your post text is rendering as two paragraphs for me in both old.lemmy and alexandria. Are you seeing something else?

  For standard markdown, a paragraph is indicated by two successive returns in your source text (and a line break within a paragraph is indicated by a line ending in two spaces followed by a return).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you ever simply not understand a piece of text no matter how many times you read it despite the fact that you understand the language and individual words?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can cats see color?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Except that a rose/red filter would pass wavelengths centered around red, while a magenta filter would block wavelengths centered around green. So a magenta filter would let in proportionally more blue.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can cats see color?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  They are dichromats—with red and blue receptors—as opposed to most humans, who are trichromats with red, green, and blue receptors. So in terms of colors, they can distinguish roughly the same colors as a human looking through a magenta filter.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you think billionaires fear losing their fortune and becoming "a poor"?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Billionaires are almost always created by starting with substantial familial wealth, taking large financial risks, and getting lucky. They then generally misattribute this luck to personal excellence, causing them to underestimate future risks.

  On the other hand, they also induce institutions to change in ways that really do insulate them as a class from the consequences of risk. But both of these factors would tend to reduce their fear of losing their wealth and status.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do rhymes make sense to deaf people?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Along the same lines, do deaf people compose poems in ASL? What aspect of that language plays the part of rhyme?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you have diarrhea and you hold it in will your body retain some of the water?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I thought diarrhea was (at least sometimes) caused by too many of your gut bacteria getting killed by fever so they can’t digest solids enough to extract the water.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If we're living in a simulation, why would the simulation creators allow the sims to ponder and speculate whether or not they live in a simulation?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  So instead of a simulation, maybe we’re living inside of some other type of thing we’re hard-wired to be unable to even think of.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When leftists say "landlord are parasites" or similar dislike of landlords, do they also mean the people that own like a couple of houses as an investment, or only the big landlords?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There are lots of kinds of “leftisms” with lots of different attitudes toward landlords—but to take Georgism as a concrete example that exclusively focuses on land ownership:

  Georgists would say that the portion of the rent equal to the market rent of the unimproved lot—including the value generated by the presence of the surrounding community and infrastructure—should go back to the community, but the portion of the rent contributed by the presence of buildings and other improvements should go to the owner of the improvements.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does anyone else think the NYPD photos of the UHC CEO shooting suspect don’t match?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I heard he was wearing a white and gold blue and black coat.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There are three distinct concepts I think you’re confusing:

  • The idea of biological races. Yeah, a given culture’s definition of “race” is historically contingent and biologically incoherent. I think you get that and are assuming that’s all there is to it.

  • Race as a correlative of ethnicity. There are some ethnicities whose members tend to have darker skin colors, and people tend to conflate skin color and ethnicity. Ethnicity (as a set of cultural institutions) is meaningful to some people, and some of them interpret a disregard for “race” as a disregard for their ethnicity, or as an attempt to suppress ethnic identity.

  • Race as a social construct. When the above ideas permeate a society, people with different skin colors experience systemically different treatment—even in the absence of actual biological or ethnic distinctions. So people with similar skin colors can be grouped on the basis of those shared experiences, and the different behaviors resulting from those experiences feed back into the society’s conceptions of biological race and ethnicity. And it doesn’t suffice to counteract such social constructs by ignoring them—social behavior is taken for granted unless people make a conscious effort to reevaluate it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are Increased Colorectal Cancers Rates Linked to Using Laptops on Stomachs?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  What increased rates are you referring to? According to the National Cancer Institute, colorectal cancer rates in the past five years have declined by 1% for men and 0.7% for women.