merc
@merc@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on Anon tries to understand his coworker 1 day ago:
I’d say they’re tight, not loose.
- Comment on [Thread] Mental Math 1 day ago:
Ronaldo’s ego is incredible, and he’s almost always looking out for himself in everything he does. But, you can’t deny that he’s one of the best ever players. And his charisma means he’s a great choice for something like this where he has to perform and interact with all the “scientists”. Someone like Messi could do the same kinds of moves, but he wouldn’t be able to chat with the presenters and “scientists” between events in a natural way. (P.S. I love that they got someone named Ronald to be the ordinary guy who couldn’t do anything useful, that was just funny.)
I also think Ronaldo genuinely cares about all the biomechanics and all that, as long as it’s something that applies to him, and that he could use to make himself better. A lot of other players just play on instinct and don’t want to have to think about it.
- Comment on [Thread] Mental Math 1 day ago:
Hearing is definitely part of it, but I imagine it’s only hearing the sound of the ball being kicked. After that it’s going to be far too quiet to hear until it gets close, and he’s obviously reacting long before that. Maybe hearing helps him adjust in the last tenth of a second, but he’s not hearing the ball’s entire flight.
As for the body mechanics of a pitch or a kick, it is amazing. Like, a proper powerful punch involves leg muscles, hip muscles, waist muscles, chest muscles, and only then do you start to get to the arms. For most of us, the best way to realize how coordinated everything has to be is to try to do something with your wrong arm/leg. Everything that flows naturally on your strong side is just completely wrong on your weak side.
- Comment on [Thread] Mental Math 2 days ago:
What’s amazing is our ability to calculate the path of something in the air.
There’s a test they did with Cristiano Ronaldo where someone kicked a ball to him so he could head it. They shut off the lights before the ball was in the air and somehow from the body shape of the person kicking it, he was able to know how to make contact with it without being able to see it.
- Comment on Anon takes the horsepill 4 days ago:
tract
- Comment on Anon takes the horsepill 4 days ago:
Playing Red Dead Redemption makes me think that at one point they weren’t that expensive if you lived in a very rural area.
- Feeding them probably wasn’t too expensive if you had a place they could just graze. Even if you didn’t own a farm, there were probably still wild / common areas where animals could graze.
- Shoeing / vet care probably wasn’t as expensive when horses were the main means of transportation, so vets and smiths were everywhere
- In a rural area, you probably already had a barn / stable / shack that you could use to provide the horse with shelter, so it didn’t need its own additional building. If you did need to build a structure, land was cheap and so it was only the cost of labor you had to worry about.
- Cleaning out the horse poop was a chore, but it could be used as fertilizer, so it wasn’t just something you had to dispose of
- You’d still need saddles, stirrups, reins, etc. But, that was made from leather and metal and would probably last decades with some basic maintenance
- Since horses were, ahem, workhorses, not race horses or display horses, they were probably bred to be sturdier and not as prone to requiring medicine or frequent vet trips
It was probably similar to cars today, where some people had expensive, fancy horses that they spent lots of money on, and other people had old clunkers that they got cheap and then rode until they died.
I get the impression that when people today talk about hoses being expensive, a lot of that expense is due to them living in a city. My guess is that if you already live on a working farm, adding one horse is not going to massively increase your expenses.
- Comment on US Democracy 1 week ago:
It’s amazing the stories that Americans tell themselves about the American Revolution. They pretend that the “founding fathers” were heroic idealists standing up for honorable values against an evil despotic regime. The truth is much more complicated.
A major goal of the 7 Years War was about controlling the colonies in the Americas. Had the French won those wars, the modern people of North America would probably speak French. Look at how many US places still have French names, and especially are named after the French king: Louisiana, Louisville, St. Louis, Mobile, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Detroit, Lafayette, Arkansas, Illinois, Calumet, Decatur, Boise, Montpelier, etc. But, the French lost the war, so the English took over all that territory. Fighting that war was incredibly expensive, but it was worth it for the English because they now controlled a whole new continent with all its resources. To pay for that war, they levied taxes. The English colonists in the US, who were largely the beneficiaries of that part of the war, decided they didn’t want to pay those taxes, so they rebelled. They got the benefit of a continent won for them by English armies, but without having to pay the bill for that fight. Now, again, it’s complicated. The English armies were integrated with the colonial armies. George Washington was initially an officer in the British army (and was part of starting the French and Indian wars, which became the 7-years-war). The US colonists were part of the force that fought against the French and their native allies.
Anyhow, it was complicated. But, the end result was that after a war that took place both in Europe and in the Americas, the British crown had a huge debt. I have no idea what proportion of that debt was due to the part of the war fought in Europe vs. the part of the war fought in the Americas, but overall there was a big debt and the English crown tried to tax whoever they could to pay for it.
Was the English king a tyrant? Sure. Did the Americans have fair representation in the English parliament? Probably not. But, their main reason for rebelling was the same one that is nearly always the cause of rebellions: the rebels are in an area that’s wealthy for some reason, and they don’t want to have to share that wealth with the rest of the country / empire. In fact, it was suspected that the colonists chose not to send representatives to the colonial assembly partially because they knew that if they did that it would undermine their “without representation” argument, and the real issue was that they simply didn’t want to pay taxes.
As for the English system being tyrannical, the reality is that it has been a very slow, gradual change from an absolute monarchy to a ceremonial one. The English crown is significantly less wealthy than Elon Musk, and arguably has a lot less influence on British politics than Musk does on American politics.
By the letter of the laws, the British system is still more classist and controlled by money than the American system. But, is that true if you look at the actual real way that power is used? It doesn’t seem like it to me.
- Comment on AI Elections 1 week ago:
I like that only Iowa and Arizona are the only states with full names labelled without weirdness, and they’re completely wrong. If it were a human completing this map, I’d say those were the two states they were confident about, and they’re obviously wrong.
- Comment on Calculatable 1 week ago:
For one thing, just displaying the latest number isn’t useful if you’re doing anything complicated. For another, many calculations involve using the same number over again multiple times. Some calculators have a memory entry, but many don’t. There’s a “C/CE” but there isn’t a backspace, so if you get one digit wrong, you have to start that entry over (and hope you chose the right option among C/CE/AC/CA/etc. If you accidentally hit the wrong operation key (multiply, divide, plus, minus) AFAIK there’s no way to clear the operation. A lot of common math operations involves parenthesized expressions, but if you’re using a basic calculator you have to instead enter things in an unnatural order. It’s pretty common to end up in a situation where the calculator is displaying B and you want to do A/B but you can only easily do B/A. Fancy calculators have a 1/X button to fix this, but if not you’re out of luck. Same with having B and wanting to do A-B but only being able to do B-A. You can fix that by multiplying by -1, but again, it’s a UI issue that you can’t just say “hold onto that number for a second because I want to enter another number and then use it”.
- Comment on Calculatable 1 week ago:
Calculators just have a bad user interface in general. It’s pretty amazing that the UI was established in 1970 and was never changed after that.
- Comment on Calculatable 1 week ago:
Or uses a serious calculator.
- Comment on There are Minimum Wages, Why Not a Maximum Wage? 2 weeks ago:
Sure, everything is gameable if you’re a billionaire, but it would require clever lawyers and involve some risk.
- Comment on If Trump wins the election thru fraud how can the democrats refute it and prove they won? Or will it just be like another Jan 6 and four years of whining like Trump? 2 weeks ago:
Hardly. Historically there has been a lot of cheating in elections. Look at Chicago up to the 1970s. Election fraud was common there.
chicagotribune.com/…/how-the-chicago-tribune-expo…
Nobody can prove that there’s less cheating in Chicago elections today than in the 1970s, but people trust that it’s more honest.
- Comment on There are Minimum Wages, Why Not a Maximum Wage? 2 weeks ago:
Obviously, the kinds of unrealized gains that are a problem aren’t $250k that someone uses for collateral on a mortgage for a house they plan to live in. The problems are the millions or billions in unrealized gains that someone might use to get a $10 million loan from the bank that they then use to lobby the government to open up new loopholes in the tax code.
Taxing wealth and/or unrealized gains is tricky to do right, but not doing it at all is even trickier. If you let the ultra rich just keep getting richer, they’ll continue to use that wealth to control the political process to make themselves richer and more powerful. Obscene levels of wealth inequality and democracy can’t coexist.
- Comment on If Trump wins the election thru fraud how can the democrats refute it and prove they won? Or will it just be like another Jan 6 and four years of whining like Trump? 2 weeks ago:
Can you prove that your vote was counted and that the number of votes for your candidate went up by one as a result? If you can’t prove it, then it’s based on trust.
- Comment on There are Minimum Wages, Why Not a Maximum Wage? 2 weeks ago:
But, if they tried to move to another country and renounce their US citizenship they’d have to pay an exit tax based on the entire value of their assets, including unrealized gains.
- Comment on If Trump wins the election thru fraud how can the democrats refute it and prove they won? Or will it just be like another Jan 6 and four years of whining like Trump? 2 weeks ago:
Right, but no way to verify who you voted for.
And, you have to trust that the website is telling you the truth. You have no way of verifying that it always gives the same answer to everybody. I guess someone could test that there’s some connection to their real ballot by intentionally screwing up their ballot. But, that doesn’t mean that there’s any way to prove that when it’s counted that the actual tally for the person / people you voted for are going up not down.
- Comment on There are Minimum Wages, Why Not a Maximum Wage? 2 weeks ago:
I think the best way I’ve seen to illustrate it is the stories of immortals earning incredible amounts of money every day who still can’t reach the wealth of Elon Musk.
Like, you’re an immortal born during the ice age 80,000 years ago. You are somehow making $5000 per day (or its equivalent in gold for the 79,700 years before dollars are invented, and you save all of it. You’re not as rich as Elon Musk.
- Comment on There are Minimum Wages, Why Not a Maximum Wage? 2 weeks ago:
The US has exit taxes, as do many countries. If you try to renounce your US citizenship, you can be taxed based on the value of unsold assets.
I hate that the US is one of the few countries in the world that has citizenship-based taxation. It’s awful and stupid. But, in theory, it does mean that an American couldn’t just avoid taxes by moving to another country.
- Comment on There are Minimum Wages, Why Not a Maximum Wage? 2 weeks ago:
people often become defensive saying that the government shouldn’t be able to dictate how much wealth one person can accumulate
Of course it should. If we’re expecting to live in a democracy, then people need to have equal voices. If you’re a billionaire you have a megaphone, as Elon Musk has shown. Democracy can’t work if some people have far more power than others.
- Comment on There are Minimum Wages, Why Not a Maximum Wage? 2 weeks ago:
That wouldn’t catch the people who are the real problem, billionaires, who report something like $1 per year in income.
When you have billions in shares, you can use that as collateral to borrow money from the bank, and then you just spend that money. That’s not “income” so it isn’t taxed.
What’s needed is a 90% tax on people reporting high incomes as a start. But, then you need to close loopholes. The carried interest loophole for a start, which would nail most of the hedge fund crowd. Then, tax unrealized gains when they’re in the tens of millions range. Then prevent billionaires from handing billions to their children tax free by preventing the “stepping up” of capital gains for their heirs.
- Comment on If Trump wins the election thru fraud how can the democrats refute it and prove they won? Or will it just be like another Jan 6 and four years of whining like Trump? 2 weeks ago:
First, I’m writing about a person who’s watching and doesn’t know if they can trust the system. My point is that there’s no alternative to trust in the system, the system is built on trust.
Second, if you’re inside the system, if you’re an election worker or a government authority, you can tell who voted. But, you can’t tell who that voter cast their votes for – at least in a functional democracy.
The authorities can, and should, have all kinds of checks and balances to make sure that all the votes are being handled safely and counted correctly. But, if the public doesn’t trust the authorities, there’s nothing that the authorities can realistically do to convince the public that everything is above board. You can’t “prove” that the system isn’t rigged.
- Comment on If Trump wins the election thru fraud how can the democrats refute it and prove they won? Or will it just be like another Jan 6 and four years of whining like Trump? 2 weeks ago:
Yes, and again, it’s all based on trust.
- Comment on If Trump wins the election thru fraud how can the democrats refute it and prove they won? Or will it just be like another Jan 6 and four years of whining like Trump? 2 weeks ago:
The scary thing about elections is that, by design, nobody can ever “prove” they won.
Votes are designed to be anonymous. They have to be. If they’re not, they’re very vulnerable to manipulation. If someone can prove how they voted, then they can either be bribed to vote a certain way, or threatened to vote a certain way. If you can check that your vote was counted successfully for the candidate you chose, then someone else can check that you voted for the candidate they chose.
That means that, by design, the only security that elections can have is in the process. In a small election, like 1000ish votes or fewer, someone could supervise the whole thing. They could cast their vote, then stand there and watch. They could watch as other people voted, making sure that nobody voted twice, or dropped more than one sheet into the box. They could watch as the box was emptied. Then, they could watch as each vote was tallied. Barring some sleight-of-hand, in a small election like that, you could theoretically supervise the entire process, and convince yourself that the vote was fair.
But, that is impossible to scale. Even for 1000 votes, not every voter could supervise the entire process, and for more than 1000 votes, or votes involving more than one voting location, it’s just not possible for one person to watch the entire thing. So, at some point you need to trust other people. If you’re talking say 10,000 votes, maybe you have 10 people you trust beyond a shadow of a doubt, and each one of you could supervise one process. But, the bigger the election, the more impossible it is to have actual people you know and trust supervising everything.
In a huge country-wide election, there’s simply no alternative to trust. You have to trust poll workers you’ve never met, and/or election monitors you’ve never met. And, since you’re not likely to hear directly from poll workers or election monitors, you have to instead trust the news source you’re using that reports on the election. In a big, complex election, a statistician may be able to spot fraud based on all the information available. But, if you’re not that statistician, you have to trust them, and even if you are that statistician, you have to trust that your model is correct and that the data you’re feeding it is correct.
Society is built on trust, and voting is no different. Unfortunately, in the US, trust is breaking down, and without trust, it’s just a matter of which narrative seems the most “truthy” to you.
- Comment on Gandalf failed to consider incest, half my ancestors are related baby 2 weeks ago:
What’s interesting is that historically a lot of people never had children. But, by definition, none of your ancestors were among them.
So, even if being a childless femboy slut was incredibly common historically, that’s the one thing none of your ancestors would be able to understand.
- Comment on Eat lead 3 weeks ago:
That’s not a paradox though, it’s a silly logic puzzle that isn’t hard to solve. It doesn’t prove or disprove anything about omniscience or gods.
- Comment on Eat lead 3 weeks ago:
If we assume that god, by definition, must be omniscient
Why must that be true by definition? Many of the Greek gods were clearly not omniscient, because the stories about them all involve intrigues and hiding things from each-other.
Also, you can’t disprove a god’s existence by making a logic puzzle that’s hard for you to puzzle out. Just because it’s a toughie for you doesn’t mean that it disproves the existence of gods.
That isn’t even a particularly difficult logic puzzle.
- Comment on Eat lead 3 weeks ago:
The existence of a god is something that can’t be disproven. You can always find gaps in knowledge and explain the gap by saying a god / multiple gods did that. As gaps narrow with more knowledge, you can always just say that the holy books were just a metaphor in this one case, but the rest of it is literally true.
It gets even more complicated when you run into people who refuse to believe in any science, or anything outside their own personal experience.
Personally, I believe the Earth is a sphere. I’ve been to Australia, Europe, Africa, Asia and North America. The time the flights took and the routes the in-flight maps showed make sense for a spherical earth. So did the scenes visible out the windows, and the day/night cycle. The mere existence of time zones and seasons strongly suggests the Earth is a rotating sphere tilted slightly off vertical. But, it could be that I’m living in a Truman Show world, where everything is a lie designed to make me believe something that isn’t true. I haven’t personally done all the math, all the experiments, etc. to prove the Earth is a sphere. And, if this were a Truman Show world, the producers of the show could mess with my experiments anyhow.
For someone who doesn’t want to believe, there’s really nothing you can do to make them believe. The world really relies on trust and believing Occam’s Razor.
- Comment on Cheeky 4 weeks ago:
I mostly go barefoot too, and the shoes I have are “barefoot shoes” that have extremely thin soles. But, I still don’t think the individual toes are that important to grip. Sure, the toe pads are important. If you’re moving on the balls of your feet, I’d guess maybe 30% of your weight is in your toes. But, I don’t think I’m getting much contribution to agility from my baby toe being splayed out. If I glued my toes together, I think it wouldn’t hurt my agility much, and it would mean I’m much less likely to catch that individual, fragile baby toe on a corner.
- Comment on Tomorrow's Problems 5 weeks ago:
It could, and eventually would, but the premise of this comic is “the earth has stopped rotating”, not “the earth is now rotating at 1 revolution per year”.