thebestaquaman
@thebestaquaman@lemmy.world
- Comment on [deleted] 3 days ago:
I spend more time than I would like to admit on reddit 50/50…
- Comment on Anon's dad is a tailor 1 week ago:
Tbf. a bunch of people (myself included) are very careful of calling something out unless there’s very good reason to believe it’s LLM crap. There’s really no reason to believe this greentext is generated by an LLM.
- Comment on Anon thinks about wheat 1 week ago:
Oh, that’s definitely true! I was honestly surprised at how much response I got to what was initially meant as a semi-joke :)
- Comment on Anon thinks about wheat 2 weeks ago:
Preserving fish is great! You can salt it, dry it, ferment it, smoke it, pickle it, soak it in lye (we have a dedicated word for that), aand that’s about it :D
- Comment on Anon thinks about wheat 2 weeks ago:
I believe I’ve read that potato’s were, for a significant period of time, the average Norwegians primary source of vitamin C. Not because it contains loads of vitamin C, but because people ate them by the boatload. (Don’t peel them, that gives you scurvy)
- Comment on Anon thinks about wheat 2 weeks ago:
Oh, don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of berries around. You can pick 10 L of blueberries in not too many man-hours, the same goes for cloud berries. Lingon berries are also abundant for that matter.
As mentioned, they definitely had these things as part of their diet, but it was nowhere near being a primary calorie source. The reason for that is probably that fishing or harvesting seagull eggs was a much, much more efficient way to get the calories you need. When you’re already sustenance farming, you typically maximise efficiency when possible. My primary point was really that when maximising calorie-efficiency (which they largely did) you end up living primarily off boiled fish and boiled potatoes.
- Comment on Anon thinks about wheat 2 weeks ago:
Source: Grandparents that grew up on a plot of land (read: hunk of rock) on the west coast and lived off sustenance farming (which includes a significant amount of fishing) as late as the 1930’s.
Sure, berries and some other foraging products was part of their diet, but not a very significant one. It was mostly whatever would grow on that plot. Mostly potatoes and onions, with some other minor stuff. While berries are abundant, picking them gives you a lot fewer calories per man-hour than fishing, so fishing takes priority.
- Comment on Anon thinks about wheat 2 weeks ago:
Significant point: “Edible” is subject to discussion. Not more than 100 years ago, the expected diet in large parts of Norway was boiled fish, boiled potatoes, and some form of boiled grain. For every meal. Your entire life. Vitamins? Go chew on that shrub until the scurvy goes away.
- Comment on What's it going to take to truly stop the US? 2 weeks ago:
I seem to remember reading that the US navy comes in second (which makes sense considering that a single carrier has a larger air wing than most countries air forces) but the point still stands.
- Comment on Nothing could go wrong 2 weeks ago:
For all the shit that can (and should) be thrown for the blatantly illegal attack on Venezuela: Putins wet dream is that he could have pulled off the same attack against Ukraine.
Full disclaimer: The attack on Venezuela’s integrity is horrendous and I condemn it.
- Comment on if I ever have grandkids that is 2 weeks ago:
I think the point is that the military, I assume in most countries, can accept a completely different risk picture for soldiers that society at large can accept for civilians. Thus, the military can viably mandate a vaccine that causes severe side effects in e.g. 1/1000 cases, given that the alternative (a serious disease spreading in the ranks) is worse.
Remember that by far most military casualties have historically been due to disease and other conditions not directly related to the enemies weapons. The militaries primary job is to remain combat effective, even if it means mandating a vaccine that is known to cause casualties. This kind of approach would never be acceptable for civilian society at large, where society is deemed responsible for protecting every individual. The military isn’t. It’s primarily responsible for protecting the civilian society, even at the cost of exposing soldiers to high risk scenarios.
- Comment on Belief 3 weeks ago:
One has to wonder if that’s truly a highly specific incompetence, or intentional.
I’ll apply Hanlons razor again: These people are stupid, therefore doing “everything in their power” involves using woefully ineffective means to achieve their goal. I have no problem believing that most anti-abortionists genuinely believe that they’re trying to save innocent lives. However, being relatively dumb people means they are primarily driven by feelings rather than logic, and are easily manipulated. This results in them using the means that they “feel” should be effective, rather than proven methods. It also means that the few people that actively are looking to oppress others can manipulate their feelings to make them support means that hurt the people they’re trying to help.
- Comment on Has anything from the lemmy universe ever went viral before Reddit or Tictac or Insta? 3 weeks ago:
I don’t know for certain, but can’t really imagine that being the case. There are several reasons I can’t imagine something going viral off lemmy per now:
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The combined user mass of lemmy is probably smaller than the critical mass needed to really go viral 1a. This could be “worked around” if someone reposted from lemmy to some other, larger network. Still, I wouldn’t say that meant something “went viral off lemmy”, since that would imply it went viral before being reposted.
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Lemmy doesn’t (by default) push heavily to get trending stuff into everyones feed. 2a. I say “by default” because I’m assuming someone could set up an instance designed around maximising the views of trending material.
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Slightly related to 1, but afaik, there are few, if any, very big social media personalities on here. For something to go viral, you’re basically reliant on either an algorithm catching on to your stuff and shoving it in everyone’s face or some person with a huge following shoving it in everyone’s face.
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The very system of lemmy (following communities rather than users) makes it extremely difficult for any individual user to gather a large enough following to make things go viral by posting/sharing them
Basically: Too small user mass, no big personalities, and a “following system”/visibility algorithm built around promoting interesting and healthy media consumption rather than cultish behaviour prevents things from going viral off lemmy.
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- Comment on w e a k n e s s 3 weeks ago:
Funny, creative, smart woman that makes a living messing around with building cool stuff… was there anyone that didn’t have at least a little crush on her?
- Comment on "i can hear the difference" 3 weeks ago:
I’m so glad this is illegal where I’m from
- Comment on Is there a point we can track down when we stopped caring about doctors, nurses, teacher, etc? And thought it was a great idea to pay atheletes millions and screw everyone else? 3 weeks ago:
With modern tv/streaming, tickets aren’t a limited resource anymore, in the sense that by far most of the viewers are not in place live.
Sure, you could price live tickets following “normal” market rules, since you still have the practical limitation regarding the number of people living in reasonable distance from the stadium. The idea of using pricing to regulate demand/consumption for streaming services doesn’t really make sense the same way, since the marginal cost of another viewer is essentially zero.
- Comment on Is there a point we can track down when we stopped caring about doctors, nurses, teacher, etc? And thought it was a great idea to pay atheletes millions and screw everyone else? 3 weeks ago:
I have to admit that, without wanting to defend absurd wages for anyone, there’s a pretty decent explanation in the case of athletes. If you’re one of the top ten boxers in the world, there are tens (hundreds?) of millions of people that want to see your matches. It’s not unreasonable to ask for some compensation for providing entertainment, so let’s say each viewer is paying 1 USD / match. After paying the costs of setting up the match, you’re still left with millions of dollars per match.
Specially in the case of top-level athletes, we’re in a situation where very may people want to see very few people provide entertainment. Even if they take a very low price, they’re still going to be making buckets of money. I don’t really think that would be unfair, provided they actually charged some small amount. What irritates me is that the sports associations have decided to charge absurd amounts to squeeze people fore mine to make even more. That should definitely be illegal.
- Comment on Under what circumstances or axioms do spheres (the shape) have infinite surface area? 3 weeks ago:
While I’m completely open that my factor is likely wrong here, the expression you provided is definitely wrong in both the 2D and 3D case (I’m assuming the r superscript on the pi was a typo), since it gives neither n = 2 => A = 2 pi r nor n = 3 => A = 4 pi r^2.
- Comment on Under what circumstances or axioms do spheres (the shape) have infinite surface area? 3 weeks ago:
I believe the surface area of an n-dimensional hypersphere is (n - 1) pi r^{n - 1}. In that case (I may have some factors wrong here, just going off memory), an infinite-dimensional hypersphere has infinite surface area as long as it has non-zero radius.
- Comment on Hospital Bill 1961 3 weeks ago:
This sounds so dystopian I’m having a hard time comprehending it… what happens when they provide the mandatory emergency care and invoice someone who just doesn’t have the money to pay?
- Comment on Hospital Bill 1961 3 weeks ago:
Wat? Are you saying that people who give birth in a hospital are sent a 13 000 USD bill afterwards? Like, is that actually what happens? I feel like I have to ask, because I actually cannot comprehend that being the case.
What if you don’t have the money? Do they expect you to just hold it in until you’ve saved up? Or do they just prefer that people give birth at home with no access to medical care if something goes wrong?
- Comment on Anon follows orders 3 weeks ago:
Not really, it’s more nuanced than that. It’s about an inevitable division of responsibilities. In an effective fighting force, every individual cannot be equally responsible for all levels of strategy/tactics. At the same time, in an effective fighting force, every individual must have a rather high degree of trust in their nearest commander and brothers in arms.
The consequence of this is that an effective fighting force inevitably becomes susceptible to misuse by higher-ups. If you’re able to highjack enough of the command chain, it becomes very difficult for the remaining parts to figure out what’s going on and do the right thing. It’s more than just “soldiers are brainwashed”.
- Comment on Have you ever considered THIS? 4 weeks ago:
I know people that were actively hoping for twins and got them , twin-twin!
- Comment on Anon follows orders 4 weeks ago:
I think a crucial part of it is also that you, as a simple soldier on the ground, don’t really have a good way of figuring out the big picture.
If your sergeant tells you to “prevent anyone from entering or leaving the parliament building”, you’re very likely to assume that something bad is happening and that the army has been called in to secure the building. You basically have to trust your commanders to see the bigger picture, so that when they tell you that “the guys over there are the baddies”, you can engage them without walking over to check for yourself. If those guys are in police uniforms, that probably means the baddies got a hold of uniforms to try to sneak past you.
- Comment on why is fossil fuel still used? 5 weeks ago:
That almost seems like a wilful misinterpretation of what I wrote, since I never claimed anything of the sort.
What makes you completely wrong is that you’re using the fact that petroleum companies are filthy rich and bribe politicians to hell and back as an explanation for why we’re still reliant of fossil fuels. The basic answer to why is that “fossil fuels and combustion engines are pretty damn hard to beat” to the point where we still haven’t found a viable alternative for some applications.
- Comment on why is fossil fuel still used? 5 weeks ago:
I get why you would say this, but it’s an oversimplification to the point of being completely wrong.
Fossil fuels have an absurd energy density. They’re just really hard to beat. Modern batteries and liquid hydrogen don’t even come close. Pair that with the fact that we’ve spent a couple hundred years optimising the steam- and internal combustion engines, compared to some decades (in practice) for electric-based stuff, and you start seeing why fossil fuels are so hard to push of the top of the hill.
Until very recently all alternatives were pretty much worse under every conceivable performance metric. There’s a reason electric planes are still in the prototype phase. It’s just technically really really hard to even get close to jet fuel and combustion engines.
- Comment on Choose wisely! 1 month ago:
You’re just clearly not interested in having a reasonable discussion about what I consider to be an interesting topic, and appear more interested in attacking me over opinions I don’t have, and positions I haven’t defended.
I’m not really interested in being talked down to be someone that appears to be wilfully misinterpreting me, so I’m probably just going to leave this comment section now.
- Comment on Choose wisely! 1 month ago:
It’s actually absurd to me that you’re able to read that out of my comment. I’m literally asking whether we have a moral obligation to use the technology available to us to prevent cancer, ALS, Alzheimer’s, compromised immune systems, metabolic diseases, and fragile backs in our future children.
I even specifically stated that this wasn’t about whether the same technology can be used for nefarious purposes, which is a different discussion entirely.
- Comment on Choose wisely! 1 month ago:
But that doesn’t answer the question of whether we are morally obliged to use it for good purposes when possible. It’s just a different point entirely.
- Comment on Choose wisely! 1 month ago:
I’m not saying that this kind of thing cannot be used for bad purposes. I’m asking the philosophical question of where our moral obligation to do everything we can to give our children the best possible life begins.
Should we let them be born “as is”, and then have a moral obligation to do everything we can to make the best of whatever genetic baggage they have, or should we do whatever is in our power even before they’re born to give them a better shot at a good life?
Explosives have caused enormous amounts of death, but also allowed enormous amounts of people to live in safer, more affordable houses, and have been critical for mineral extraction that essentially makes modern society possible, as well as modern transportation infrastructure. Explosives, like most technology, aren’t an inherently “evil” thing, even though they’re used for bad purposes.