thebestaquaman

@thebestaquaman@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do people come up with ts⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  “200 KMH in the wrong lane”

  I’m honestly pretty impressed by some of the obscure/absurd stuff some of these artists come up with. This one is strangely specific, yet slightly absurd. What makes you conceive of calling an album that?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨time to eat⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I see you haven’t experienced “doing something with tunnel vision for 16 hours before realising that you’re shaking because you forgot to eat and that your last meal was dinner yesterday around 26 hours ago”. I don’t think you need the beetus to experience that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Need to yak? Skip emetics, hear about what the world's Most Moral Army's up to⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I also believe there are other ways for the government to fund itself.

  The government doesn’t just need to fund itself, it needs the resources to provide collective goods like a social safety net (unemployment, health care, legal assistance, and other fundamental rights). No matter how you twist it, those resources have to eventually come from the population. We can call that resource acquisition “taxing the population”, disregarding the details of how it’s done. In that case, taxes are an absolutely fundamental part of implementing a social contract that involves the collective helping each other provide collective goods. If you remove taxation (in this expanded sense) completely, you are no longer capable of sustaining a government of any kind: You’re left with a collection of individuals with no common programs. Note: I’m saying here that any common program implies that people are providing resources to the collective, which is a de facto form of taxation in the expanded sense.

  Would you expect me to fight a European army if I was in the US and they were invading to stop US war crimes?

  Disclaimer: The following retort is conceptual, not tied to your concrete example. If russia, or israel, or china, etc… invaded your country to displace your people, steal your homes and resources, and kill those in the way, do you believe that your government has any obligation to protect you? If so, who should risk their life to enact that protection? Who should decide whether to resist or not in the first place?

  The point of these questions is that if we believe that we have a right to protection, we are implying that someone has an obligation to protect. Furthermore, that someone’s obligation to protect is tied to your right to protection, not their personal opinion on who they want to fight. Basically, stating that you would only conditionally fight to protect your country against an invading force is incompatible with believing you have the right to protection from any invading force. If it comes down to opinion, there’s nothing in the way of everyone else stepping aside when your house is the one being bombed, because they personally feel that particular bombing is justified. If that can happen, you effectively have no right to protection.

  Furthermore, unless someone is obliged to protect, nobody can have a right to protection. These are two sides of the same coin. What I advocate for is that everyone in a society should have equal rights to protection, and that we should collectively share the attached obligation to protect.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Need to yak? Skip emetics, hear about what the world's Most Moral Army's up to⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In the context of Modern US the majority of people pay the taxes and the minority of people who have the majority of wealth do not. Do you think the Social contract is already broken?

  Oh, absolutely YES. The social contract in the US is broken to the point where I don’t know if it can be repaired.

  Do you actually believe any modern war was actually for its stated purpose?

  That depends: I think Ukraine defending itself from a russian invasion is legitimate. I also think there are other wars where there is some party legitimately defending themselves against aggression. This question seems loaded in the sense that it appears to me like you’re asking if I think a war of aggression is defensible. On general grounds, I would immediately say no.

  Do you think it is wrong sending young men to die in the Middle East for oil profits?

  Obviously, YES. I honestly have no idea what would make you think that I would answer otherwise.

  It seems, based on your questions, like you think I’m some US imperialist. I couldn’t be much further from it.

  Having answered your questions, I would very much like to see your answers to mine.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Need to yak? Skip emetics, hear about what the world's Most Moral Army's up to⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks! We definitely have major issues with the increasing wealth gap, I can only hope we’re able to deal with it sooner rather than later.

  vote for policies to address this wealth gap before it is too late

  I’m doing my part! (Ref. comment below that wondered if I was a Starship Troopers citizen)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Need to yak? Skip emetics, hear about what the world's Most Moral Army's up to⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m trying to be very explicit on two things: 1) My country also has plenty of issues that need work, but I think the overall system/philosophy behind how it currently works is worth defending. 2) I acknowledge that many countries don’t provide the social safety and protection for its citizens that warrants the contributions I’m talking about.

  I thought “I got mine” would mean that I was content with my own situation and therefore neglected the plight of others. That’s not at all what I’m doing or attempting to convey.

  Since you ask, I’m from Norway.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Need to yak? Skip emetics, hear about what the world's Most Moral Army's up to⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks! I’m honestly surprised by how controversial it was to state that we should all have the same rights, and the same obligation to defend/uphold those rights for each other.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Need to yak? Skip emetics, hear about what the world's Most Moral Army's up to⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  How so? Do you not think that the right of social benefits should be coupled with the obligation to pay taxes if you’re capable? Do you actually believe that, if a neighbouring country invaded, you have some kind of right to hide in the basement while someone else mans the AA protecting your house?

  If the answer to either is “no”, then you probably agree with me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Need to yak? Skip emetics, hear about what the world's Most Moral Army's up to⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You argument is a weak version of I got mine

  I quite honestly don’t see what you mean. I’m advocating for how I think a society should work, while acknowledging that I live in a society that’s fairly close to that ideal. Sure, we have a lot of stuff to improve, but I have yet to see the kind of situation in my country that you’re talking about.

  “I got mine” would imply that I’m somehow ignoring the problems that exist elsewhere: I’m not, I’m simply acknowledging that I’m lucky enough to live in a system that I feel is worth supporting.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Need to yak? Skip emetics, hear about what the world's Most Moral Army's up to⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This is an implicit part of my point: If the state doesn’t provide a social safety net, or protection from violence, then you’re also (in the moral framework I’m advocating for) absolved of your obligation to support said state through taxes and military service.

  I’m lucky enough to live in a state that provides both, so I think it’s completely fair that I’m obligated to support that system as long as I also get the benefits of it. At its core, a state is a social contract regarding what you can expect of others (via the state), and what others can expect of you. If you’re seeing only obligations and no benefits, then the state (social contract) is dysfunctional and/or unfair.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Need to yak? Skip emetics, hear about what the world's Most Moral Army's up to⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I would honestly like to hear a better alternative. Is it fair, reasonable, or just, that some subset of society is tasked with putting their life on the line to defend everyone else? That very quickly devolves into something like the US system where people with less resources and options end up signing up out of economic necessity. Then they end up fighting and dying for a richer elite that doesn’t have a skin in the game.

  It’s a pretty simple concept really: I’ll protect my neighbours if necessary, and they’ll protect me. We’re in this together. The only incentive anyone should have to be in the military is to defend themselves and their (extended) neighbours.

  You can make the exact same argument for taxes: Should some subset of society be taxed, while everyone gets the same social safety net and general rights? I think not: I think everyone should contribute, and that everyone should get the benefits.

  As for the starship troopers comment: That society is fundamentally segregated into people with rights, and people without them. It also happens to be a heavily militaristic society. Starship Troopers shows exactly the kind of society I think looks terrible, because most soldiers there effectively sign up out of necessity, while those with resources can live peacefully. I’m advocating for equality, not segregation. I’m also trying to be explicit about saying that the only use of a military should be defensive. You could summarise this by saying that, in peacetime, we should have an absolutely minimal military, and everyone has equal rights. If the need arises, everyone has the same obligation to defend each other.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Need to yak? Skip emetics, hear about what the world's Most Moral Army's up to⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The shitshow that is the IDF aside, 19 year olds are perfectly capable of being soldiers. Call me old-fashioned, but I honestly believe that being an adult with rights (e.g. to vote) in a democratic society also implies obligations to that society, and that the two (rights and obligations) should follow each other.

  To be clear, what I mean is this: I live in a society that provides me with a solid social safety net, as well as a right to protection if shit hits the fan. I then think it’s reasonable that I’m obliged to contribute to that safety net for others (in the form of taxes or community service), and protection (in the form of military service if shit hits the fan). Basically, it’s an “all for one, one for all” mentality. We’re all better off standing together, which means that we all take care of each other (via taxes etc.) in peacetime, and protect each other (in the form of military service) if necessary.

  Since I believe that these rights and obligations should be balanced, I think it’s reasonable that an 18 year old (which has all the rights of any other adult in my country) carries the same obligation as everyone else. It would be unfair if, say, 18-26 year olds got all the rights but none (or fewer of) the obligations. That immediately also opens the door to the question of which groups should bear the burden of the obligations, and which groups get only the rights.

  Full disclaimer: I think the IDF deserves to be burnt to the ground. I also think (in general) that invading another country is, almost^1^ without exception, abhorrent.

  ^1^The exception being when you invade a country in defence of another country that has already been attacked, like when the UK attacked Germany in WWII, in defence of Poland, France, etc. without having been attacked themselves first.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In France, to slow down traffic, they have these fake children by the side of the road⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Because even though specifically your father chooses to follow the law, there is effectively no enforcement mechanism to prevent him from breaking it. It’s not illegal for me to loudly announce the next stop on the bus, but I still abstain from doing it because I’m not an obnoxious asshole. Your father obeying the speed limit can be seen in the same way (plus, of course, that he may have a decent sense of self-preservation).

  Fact is, if a rich person like your father is in a rush, they can choose to say “fuck it, I don’t have time for this”, and go speeding. Of course, anyone can do that, but the potential fine can be a strong deterrent for others, while having no influence on the rich. If you’re caught and the fine is incurred, the punishment that can be debilitating for most people is a less than minor inconvenience for the rich.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨this extension is meant to mark anti-trans and trans friendly entities😭⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Is it only me that just hates the idea of “marking” someone up-front, rather than deriving what you think of them from their actions? My point being that the way we interpret things should be “this thing is bad” -> “the person is bad”, not the inverse “this person is marked as bad” -> “they said/did something” -> “that thing must be bad”.

  I feel like an extension like this is built around facilitating the latter: Judging the content or actions based on whether the person is tagged as “good” or “bad”, rather than looking at the words and actions themselves.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨most perverted men are actually very vanilla and run away when faced with a perverted woman⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Image

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It shocks me that so many people are just blindly downvoting a comment like this. They make a very testable claim, and even cite a specific, easily searchable person, as their source. If you think the claim is unreasonable, it’s very easy to ask them for more background info or sources, preferably while pointing out why you’re sceptical.

  To me, the claim that 16-20 year olds that are full to the brim of hormones, and have had less time to be exposed to various pollution than 30-somethings are more fertile seems reasonable off the bat. I have no doubt that I would have become a parent at 18 if it weren’t for contraceptives, yet I’m now closer to 30 and haven’t become a parent despite trying for a while. One side of that is that at 18 you’re more likely to be constantly pounding like bunnies, another side is that stress, pollutants, and probably a whole host of other factors make you less fertile with age.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨👴☝️I did that⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Show ads on the screen -> screen is vandalised -> nobody can buy gas anymore -> people go to the gas station without ads (and thereby functioning screens) -> lose money to the competition-> recognise that you lose money by blaring ads -> stop blaring ads

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon is incompatible⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There are security concerns with bending a device over and spreading it wide open to wireless signal.

  I think my confusion / bafflement is built a bit on the fact that we’re able to do this with the internet. I’m constantly receiving massive amounts of data over wireless signal from all around the globe, and it’s generally regarded as safe to do so. How hard could it be to set up pretty much the exact same thing with a standardised interface / protocol over local wifi?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon is incompatible⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I absolutely see the security side of it, but I would assume that could be solved quite easily by having some kind of “on/off” switch combined with only allowing manually verified connections.

  I mean, we basically have this for bluetooth, where I can connect to pretty much any bluetooth device, and just confirm or deny the connection request. It surprises me that some similar protocol hasn’t been invented for wifi, where I could see other machines on the network (like you can see nearby bluetooth devices), and send a connection request that the owner of that device can accept or deny. Any machine connected to the internet is already “wide open” in the sense that it’s constantly receiving loads of wireless data from all across the globe. We’ve been able to standardise that in a “safe enough” way, I don’t see how doing the same thing over a local network could be any more difficult.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon is incompatible⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Because after, what, …40? years of internet, the most convenient way to move a large file between two computers on the same network is, usually, to put it on a physical drive and move it. That, or upload it to cloud storage, then have the other person download it.

  It’s unfathomable to me that we still don’t have a universally accepted and implemented protocol/utility for “send this file over wifi to this other machine on the same network”. I’m aware that there are plenty of ways to do this, but the fact that it’s typically easier to upload a 10 GB file to cloud storage for the person next to you to download it (or move it via a flash drive) is easier than just sending it directly. It boggles my mind that sending files over the local network isn’t some extremely simple cross-platform feature that any machine can access through a utility as accessible as connecting to the wifi-network.

  Just to reiterate: I’m very aware that this is easily possible for anyone with a little tech-backround. My point is that it isn’t the go-to method for most people, and I just can’t understand why…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon plays World of Warcraft⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Pride And Accomplishment™ 🤤

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨there's a Costco at the other end⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  “America!”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨👴☝️I did that⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  They don’t exist in my country, and to be frank, I’m shocked they aren’t vandalised to hell and back by masked vigilantes at night.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨that's some fucking aerodynamics bro⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Depending on how heavy simulations you want, it’s surprising how light hardware you can get away with in OpenFOAM. I used it for some university courses on a 2012 MacBook Pro (dual booted with Ubuntu) around 2021, and I could run 2D, two-phase simulations just fine.

  Of course, if you want to run 3D stuff with large shear forces or turbulence and high time resolution you’re gonna have to grab a veeeery big coffee while you wait. However, the ability to stop and restart the simulation is really nice, and lets you see what’s been simulated so far.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨that's some fucking aerodynamics bro⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Do it! It’s great fun to play around with!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨that's some fucking aerodynamics bro⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s like a 90% chance you’re right, but aerodynamics gets especially messy with stuff like this that has a more or less flat wall at the back. A significant portion of the drag comes from the turbulence behind the vehicle, rather than cutting (more “plowing” in this case) through the air in front. When you change the geometry of the back, you change that drag.

  So, if I were to bet, I would bet that turning the boat around would help. But I wouldn’t bet my life on it. Some wacky interaction with the geometry of the rear could somehow cause it to get worse.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨wat⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s why it shouldn’t be viewed as ignorant to ask questions that put a different spin on the problem, that potentially no one has asked yet. And why “this is the best explanation that we have at this time” is no reason to shut down conversation/speculation about it.

  I don’t view you as ignorant, and it hasn’t been my intention to shut down the conversation. If that was your impression, I apologise. I was very honestly just trying to give my own best interpretation of what the common consensus is, and why it is the way it is. Asking questions is an unequivocally good thing, and I enjoy trying to answer them to the best of my (meagre) ability: It helps me gain new perspective.

  How does anybody presume that the universe isn’t vastly bigger than what we’ve observed of it to date?

  I’m honestly not quite sure, but I think it’s broadly accepted that the entire universe is far larger than the observable universe. From a more philosophical stance one could ask if anything outside the observable universe should really be considered part of “our universe” since, as far as we know, it is unreachable even for light (hence, unobservable).

  As for estimating the size of the (entire) universe, I think they do that indirectly by estimating the age based on observing the cosmic microwave background, and then estimating the size based on the age and rate of inflation.

  Of course, as with anything in natural science, everything is based on imperfect models that (I personally believe) will never more than asymptotically approach the true underlying reality. Thus, there’s always a possibility that anything we haven’t explicitly verified empirically will turn out to be completely wrong.

  Someone once asked me how I would react if the second law of thermodynamics was proven to be wrong (I’m a theoretical chemist), and I responded that I see the second law as an extremely good model that’s been shown capable of representing a truckload (put mildly) of things accurately. A single counter-example doesn’t mean it suddenly becomes inapplicable to all the things we use it for today. The same things apply to Newton’s laws, and a bunch of other models that already have been proven wrong. The point is: I see no reason at all to believe our current astronomical models are the “actual truth”, but I do think they’re good models for the things that we’ve actually verified that they work for.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨wat⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  If “every point in the universe originated from the exact same point” then that origin point is somewhere in the center of the universe

  This is where I’m disagreeing. Since space itself is expanding, every point “originated” where it currently sits, and has “expanded in place” so to speak. You can’t really imagine this as an expanding bubble (the balloon analogy was bad here), since a bubble necessarily expands into existing space. In our case, the bubble itself is the space.

  tracing the trajectories of every point backwards should intersect somewhere very close to that point.

  That’s where you get a problem. Space is expanding, so if you pick an arbitrary point in space, you’ll observe that the universe appears to be expanding out from that point. No matter where you are, and what direction you look, you will see that everything is moving away from you. Thus, if you reverse that process to “trace it backwards”, then no matter where you stand, you’ll see everything contracting towards you, and conclude that you are at the centre. For reference, Hubble agrees with this interpretation.

  Saying “sometimes physics is mindboggling” in order to rationalize invalid leaps is not a strong argument.

  I’m not trying to make any bombastic claims and hand-wave them away with “physics is hard”. I’m trying to give an accurate recollection of the current consensus based on my own understanding of it (which is rudimentary at best).

  Honestly, if the concept of time breaks down when you look at t=0, then that only tells me that the idea of t=0 itself is invalid and needs to be abandoned.

  It breaks down within our current models. You can of course always ask the question of “what happened before X”, and the answer today is that our current models can take us more or less arbitrarily close to a singularity (t=0), but not all the way there. There are several theories out there regarding what the “initial state” was.

  Time didn’t just magically start at some random point before which time didn’t exist. And space didn’t just magically expand into 3 dimensions before which there was only 0. (…)

  I’m not really saying it did. I’m saying that, as far as I know, we have no better model or understanding than that if we extrapolate to t=0, we get a singularity (0 D), that for some unknown reason “magically” started expanding into the 4 D space-time we inhabit today. The fact that this process violates pretty much every known law of nature really just means there’s something here we don’t understand yet. I believe it’s pretty well established that our current models more or less completely break down at around the Planck time (see the “in cosmology” section).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨lol⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I love how you can Get the evolution from the original “XD”, which low key resembles a facial expression to the “more refined” “xd”, which resembles nothing at all but just relies on cultural awareness to be interpreted.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨wat⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  By the nature of the Big Bang and the expansion of the universe, everywhere is at the origin. That is, if we believe that the universe started out as a singularity, and that the expansion of space itself is what causes that singularity to grow, then every point in the universe originated from the exact same point, and that nothing has “moved”, in the sense that the point itself is expanding. Thus, every place is at the “origin”.

  To use the balloon analogy: Draw a small dot on the balloon, that dot is the entire universe as a singularity. Now, inflate the balloon so the dot grows, and try to determine the “origin” of the dot. Of course, you could point to the centre of the dot, but I would argue that if the initial dot is infinitely small (a singularity) then every point on the expanded dot in fact originates from the exact same point.

  This does cause a bit of a headache because we’re arguing that a zero-dimensional thing suddenly became 3-dimensional. I’m honestly not sure how astrophysicists reconcile that, but I seem to remember reading that they boil down to saying “we know what happened <some extremely short time> after the Big Bang, but we don’t really know anything about what happened at t=0” per my understanding, even the concept of time breaks down when you go to t=0, so it becomes impossible to get to t = 0 + h.