Signtist
@Signtist@lemm.ee
- Comment on New York Times Tech Staff Strike, Ask Readers Not to Play Wordle and Other Games in Solidarity - GAMESCENSOR 2 weeks ago:
Dang, I just started playing a couple weeks ago. But I guess that means I made it just in time to be one of the people who stop playing in solidarity!
- Comment on If I threaten a politician to kill them like Trump did to Liz Cheney could I be arrested? If so how come Trump hasn't been arrested for it? 2 weeks ago:
Would you be arrested? Probably not, but you’re more likely to be than Trump. See, committing a crime isn’t the only factor that influences whether or not you get slapped with the punishment for that crime, even if it’s plainly obvious to everyone you committed it. Another major factor is whether or not someone is going to go through the effort of ensuring you get punished - if nobody does, or if they try, but can’t get to that finish line of getting a judge to declare you to be guilty in court, then you walk away scot-free.
So, the thing that’s keeping you from being arrested is your relative insignificance. You’re just some person, so it’s unlikely that anyone will go through the trouble of ensuring you receive the punishment for the crime you committed, even if it’s a relatively easy thing to do. Now, if you were to go on TV and say it, that would significantly increase your risk, since now more people are seeing you and someone who gives a shit might decide to go after you. That would be damning for you, since it would require very little effort to punish you - you clearly committed the crime, and you have no way to influence the court to make you harder to punish.
For Trump, his protection isn’t insignificance - there are plenty of people who would like to ensure he’s properly punished; instead, his protection comes from making it really difficult for someone who wants to punish him to be successful in that endeavor. He has a lot of money and influence, so he can hire good lawyers that can drag out the expensive legal process - something he can afford, but a lot of people who might try to go after him can’t. His lawyers are also good enough to find loopholes in the law to avoid punishment, so even if you can afford a cheap lawyer for a long time, he’ll likely still walk away unscathed. He’s also shown that he has the ability to influence what judge gets put on trials he’s a part of, which is another factor that influences whether or not he might get punished for the crime.
Ultimately, you’d have to have a rock-solid case presented by a team of very good lawyers working non-stop for months to years in order to bring Trump to justice, and the only people who reasonably have that power are almost exclusively on his side to begin with. Trump has knowingly committed multiple major crimes, and has shown that he has the ability to prevent them from hurting him, so he knows that he has virtually no chance to be punished for minor crimes, and commits them openly all the time.
- Comment on Gandalf failed to consider incest, half my ancestors are related baby 3 weeks ago:
Yeah, that’s the family history of inbreeding that I was talking about - if you continuously have children within the family for multiple generations then the risk continues to rise so long as the trend continues. It’s generally only the risk of getting 2 copies of some familial recessive condition or other issues that arise from getting identical copies of genetic information from both parents, though, so breaking the chain and having a kid with someone outside of the family removes that risk; even if someone has a family history of inbreeding, it doesn’t put their potential children at risk so long as their partner isn’t related to them.
- Comment on Gandalf failed to consider incest, half my ancestors are related baby 3 weeks ago:
Inbreeding generally stops being a notable factor around 4th degree relation between parents. Even first cousins, 3rd degree relatives, only have about a 6% risk of an anomaly at birth when having a child together, compared to the 3% normal rate for all pregnancies.
- Comment on Tradition 3 weeks ago:
- Comment on I hate that that happens 3 weeks ago:
Nah, it’s referring to the first space by grouping the first and second words, “Pig” and “And,” and then referring to the second space by grouping the second and third words, “And” and “Whistle.”
- Comment on Mha heart 3 weeks ago:
“Thank you I came in 30 seconds.”
- Comment on Dragon Age: The Veilguard | Official Launch Trailer 4 weeks ago:
Looks cool, but I worry that they’ve got so many different enemies pulling in different directions that they won’t really get into an interesting story for any of them. The reason I loved Origins was because it really focused on the darkspawn, both in terms of the lore surrounding them, and the effect their invasion has on society. Then the DLC came out and teased that the darkspawn are more than they appear to be, setting up for future games to delve into that even more. It was great, but then the next couple of games came out and didn’t seem to have that same feeling of depth, and I lost interest. If the game is just a checklist of different things to kill, I’m not really interested in playing it.
- Comment on Chat, what do you see? 5 weeks ago:
When you accidentally grab a blank slide and panic for a little bit.
- Comment on Nintendo, famed for hating emulation, likely using Windows PCs to emulate SNES games at its museum 5 weeks ago:
They’re a company - their only purpose is to make money. They don’t hate emulation, they hate not making the absolute maximum amount of money they possibly can. Public use of emulation lowers their profits, while their own use of emulation helps increase their profits. It’s not some weird enigma or hypocrisy - money is the singular driving factor for every company; every action they take traces back to making more money. This is why we need much tighter regulation instead of trusting companies to “be reasonable” or “do the right thing.”
- Comment on I used to hate QR codes. But they're actually genius 1 month ago:
Maybe just this once, for old time’s sake.
- Comment on Cereal 1 month ago:
I make Special K bars for get-togethers every once in awhile, and I sometimes get people who ask me if they’re healthy. I always tell them that nothing in them is even the slightest bit healthy except the Special K itself, and even that’s debatable.
- Comment on OK yes I'm dumb so what 2 months ago:
I think they’re talking about “justified” madness. Realistic madness is just seeing things that aren’t there, or reacting extremely to mundane stimuli, but if you had somehow been given comprehension of some higher truth about the world that nobody else would ever believe, the actions you take as a result of that knowledge might seem crazy to those around you, even if they’re perfectly logical from your enlightened perspective.
- Comment on OK yes I'm dumb so what 2 months ago:
I’ve seen this image floating around for a while, which breaks down the reasoning - or lack thereof in certain media - pretty well.
- Comment on RIP 2 months ago:
My groups usually think of them as a powerful fey creature who sometimes just whisks people away for an indeterminate amount of time, only to bring them back later.
- Comment on Crystals 2 months ago:
My mom died of cancer a few months ago because she was convinced that a combination of sunlight’s natural vibrational frequency and some expensive “medical” herbal teas would cure her. Placebos affect people, but if you let them believe that they’re an alternative to actual science and medicine, then they’ll use them as such.
- Comment on Corn 🌽 3 months ago:
Again, selective breeding suffers from the same issue of introducing changes that can be detrimental to the organism itself and its place in the balance of the environment. Look at dog breeding as an example. Pugs were bred for a specific look, and that inadvertently caused them to have severe breathing issues. Dachshunds are another example, with many developing spinal issues over time. The difference, as I said before, is the speed; making a change causes unintended side effects - when you make a huge change quickly, it will produce more side effects than making a small change slowly will.
And… again… as I already said… there should be limitations to prevent rolling out new GMOs without specific testing for safety, both in a lab for potential problems to the organism or - in the event of an agricultural product - its consumers, as well as in the environment as a whole, to determine how it may affect the ecology if and when it is introduced. It may take decades to notice changes if the GMO is released immediately after being developed, but if testing protocols are made and followed, we should have no problem quickly spotting any issues **before **the organism is rolled out into the world.
Just like newly developed medicines need to go through rigorous testing to prevent things like the Thalidomide scandal that caused an immense amount of birth defects due to lax testing, new GMO’s will need to be tested as well. But, just like you likely understand the benefits of medicine for helping people suffering from various diseases, GMO’s can provide the same level of benefit to people suffering from malnutrition, among a wide range of other positive uses. The key is to study new developments to the point where we can spot and address issues. Throwing away the technology as a whole is not the answer.
- Comment on Corn 🌽 3 months ago:
GMO’s trace back further than that - even when we’re specifically talking about modern methods. The first Drosophila melanogaster fruit fly genetics experiments happened in 1910, though it took a while for us to begin actually creating GMO strains; the first study I know of that did so was in 1927 by Hermann J. Muller, using x-rays to purposefully induce mutations. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter who was the first to purposefully modify the genetics of an organism, modern or otherwise.
The fact of the matter is that we can use, have used, and should use genetic modification for beneficial purposes. Again, GMO’s are neutral; it just means an organism was purposefully modified on a genetic level by humans - it’s the purpose itself that determines whether its good or bad. People will use it for bad reasons just like any technology, and we should stop them, but that doesn’t mean we should shun the technology itself when genetic modifications have been used beneficially for millennia, and modern techniques are just as capable of producing incredibly beneficial changes as they are the detrimental ones everyone’s scared of.
- Comment on Corn 🌽 3 months ago:
Monsanto creates GMOs based on nothing but greed - they have complete disregard for the environmental impact of the wanton use of pesticides that their resistant strains encourage. But that’s just one GMO application - other crops use genetic modification to produce greater yields or better nutritional value.
Golden rice is a great GMO that can bring vitamin C and other essential nutrients to previously-deficient areas of the world, but it keeps getting delayed and disrupted by people who think that the reason Monsanto is terrible is because they make GMO’s, rather than their sketchy business and science practices they use. GMO’s as a whole are neutral, and there are amazing benefits we can get from them if we understand the difference between good and bad use of genetic modification.
OP’s post points out that beneficial old-fashioned GMO creation through use of selective breeding has immensely improved agricultural yield from the original source - the process of using our own observations to modify organisms on a genetic level is not new, and without it, we wouldn’t be where we are now as a species.
- Comment on Corn 🌽 3 months ago:
The speed is substantial, yes. That was my point. They are essentially the same; one simply uses the organism’s own natural genetic variation mechanisms, while the other introduces new variations manually. Yes, that is a difference that requires separation of the two in certain circumstances, but not when it comes to whether or not we’ve genetically modified all strains of modern agricultural corn, GMO-labeled or not.
Claiming selective breeding is the same as producing a GMO is like saying an eagle and a Boeing 747 are both utilizing mechanisms that allow them to fly, which is true.
- Comment on Corn 🌽 3 months ago:
Sure, but you could selectively breed rabbits for 1,000,000 years and get a glow in the dark rabbit; GFP is just a protein like any other - if you painstakingly selectively breed for a specific DNA sequence, you’ll eventually get it regardless of your starting genetic pool. Classic selective breeding is a form of genetic modification - modern genetic modification methods are just way faster.
I agree that we don’t currently know enough about genetics to utilize genetic modification without unforeseen side effects, and so there should be limitations on what we’re able to genetically modify until we can show that we understand it well enough to meaningfully minimize potential issues, but those same issues occur with selective breeding - they’re, again, just slower.
- Comment on Camouflage 3 months ago:
Because if you look closely, there’s some light blue blobs near the top shaped like the great lakes.
- Comment on may you live in interesting times 4 months ago:
Well, there’s your problem - you forgot the sugar, so all you’ve made is lemon juice.
- Comment on Keep honking! 4 months ago:
Right? I love the sticker (minus the random capitalized words), but I’ve never been honked at in the 15+ years I’ve been driving. I feel like if people are honking at you, you’re probably not paying enough attention.
- Comment on I don't get how people can become depressed, when we live in the century of Fentanyl, easy access to alcohol and amusement arcades. 4 months ago:
Yeah, that’s part of the reason why I just dealt with the pain whenever I was prescribed stuff like Vicodin. I don’t want to risk it at all.
- Comment on I don't get how people can become depressed, when we live in the century of Fentanyl, easy access to alcohol and amusement arcades. 4 months ago:
I’ve seen plenty of people who think they could take hard, addictive drugs and not get addicted, or that the addiction would be a small price to pay for the highs of the drug. Plenty of people have far too much self confidence for their small understanding of the situation. It’s why drugs like heroin are still around; if everyone intrinsically understood that they’re not worth it, they’d have disappeared a long time ago.
- Comment on Force of habit 5 months ago:
Microsoft was screwing over consumers before Google was even founded.
- Comment on The year is 50424 5 months ago:
Toxicity isn’t as simple as “toxic = toxic + toxic.” While some byproducts of plastic breakdown are toxic, the bacteria are further dissolving those as well, going until they get glucose, as they wouldn’t be able to eat it if that wasn’t the end product. There are probably still some toxic byproducts that get excreted rather than broken down, but plastic breakdown already releases toxins under normal conditions, so that’s already a problem we’re going to have to tackle. If these bacteria can get past the first issue of breaking it down in the first place, then that’s a net positive.
- Comment on New FPS Built Using Doom Tech Is Better Than Most AAA Shooters 5 months ago:
Makes sense. I’ve always been disappointed that instead of using better processing power to make bigger, more complex games, we used it to make the same games with more complex animations and details. I don’t want a game that only differs from its predecessors through use of graphical upgrades like individual blades of grass swaying in the wind, or the character starting to sweat in relation to their exertion; I want games with PS1-PS2 graphics and animation quality, but with complex gameplay that the consoles of that era could only dream of being able to handle.
- Comment on Shout out to Eugene V. Debs - the first incarcerated person to run for US President 5 months ago:
Go for it, bud.
