scarabic
@scarabic@lemmy.world
- Comment on Please advise on this conversation we had over on c/Piracy. Transporters and replicators, basic operating principles? 1 week ago:
If you can convert mass into energy and vice versa, that takes care of your huge energy requirement right there. Just turn an apple into energy and you have your 50 Hiroshimas. This also solves the energy storage problem. Just stick it into matter until you need it.
- Comment on Death is a social construct 3 weeks ago:
It’s a problem of induction, like Hume’s sunrise problem.
Nope.
This inductive principle argument that we can’t know the sun will rise tomorrow, just that it always has before, was a cute little bit of philosophy when I was back in college.
But it has since been weaponized by religious people, arguing in bad faith, to undermine the credibility of science and legitimate their religious faith. They say we can’t know anything, therefore science is just built on faith anyway and is therefore no different than religion.
Again: nope.
The thing is, we know why it rises, not just that it always has. And it actually doesn’t always rise, at the poles, and we can explain that too. We have a model that can predict much more minute events than the sun rising or not, in fact. We have devised experiments to strain and test our models and predictions. Scientists don’t really talk about “knowing” things anyway. The bar a scientific theory must meet is being able to make testable predictions about the future. Maybe theory can never be proven but at some point we become fools not to accept it. To claim something doesn’t exist, based on the inductive principle, is to wave away the entire universe with a flick of the wrist as your opening argument.
If you still want to engage in this “we can’t really know anything” bullshit, that’s your choice. I no longer have any patience for it, having seen how it is being misused. Everything is just socially constructed because we can’t ever know anything, because Hume? Great I guess life doesn’t exist either because you don’t know you are alive, you just have a lot of past anecdotal evidence that you are. Perhaps your atoms will scatter in 5 minutes from now and you will prove to have been an accidental particle fart of the universe that just happened to blow in on a breeze, and then blew out again. Who can say!!!
- Comment on would you buy a compact laptop that has spacebar touch sensitivity and allows you to adjust input sensitivity, giving it dual purpose (a spacebar and a mouse)+ it has integrated A5 printer in it? 3 weeks ago:
I’m torn between “uh, what” and “no.”
- Comment on Why do AI bros and other staunch AI defenders seem happy about the potential of killing off the creative industries? 3 weeks ago:
The invention of phonographs, records, cd etc, didn’t mean that nobody appreciated live music anymore
I’ll argue with this one. The only live music anyone appreciates now is going to see world famous commercial artists made popular by their records, cds, etc.
Live music used to be: if you have some friends over and want to liven it up, one of them plays the piano. A pub has a live set of musicians who can read the room and play what people want at the tempo they want depending on if they want to dance or not.
You can say that people still appreciate live music because some of them still go out to the symphony, but the world of music from before was absolutely killed off by radio, records, etc. That world is alive in tiny pockets at best.
- Comment on Why do AI bros and other staunch AI defenders seem happy about the potential of killing off the creative industries? 3 weeks ago:
These are people without talents who have to pay creatives for cool things. All they are thinking is that they’ll be able to get the creative assets themselves for free from now on. That’s it. They don’t care about the cow when they believe they’re going to get the milk for free.
- Comment on I still don’t think companies serve you ads based on spying through your microphone 3 weeks ago:
This is a great case of confirmation bias, too. The one time your ad happens to match a conversation you had earlier, you’ll be convinced forever, and tell everyone you know about it. The ten million other times you have a conversation that doesn’t appear in your ads will go unnoticed.
- Comment on What's the deal with male loneliness? 3 weeks ago:
Huh??? We’ve been uncommunicative, miserable fucks for much longer than the internet has been around.
- Comment on Uber Eats undercover: Delivering your food for $1.74 an hour 3 weeks ago:
For sure, delivery time will never be a good thing for any food. Some just handle it worse than others.
- Comment on Uber Eats undercover: Delivering your food for $1.74 an hour 3 weeks ago:
Asian food has been doing to-go for centuries, though. It packs well and keeps well for 30 minutes. In fact there is a to-go only Thai place near me which uses an industrial kitchen and literally a hole in the side of the building to take payments and hand over food. Other restaurants we know in our area stopped seating people during COVID and would just hand out to-go orders at the door. But I can only think of Asian restaurants that did this.
There’s nothing wrong necessarily with having a separate delivery service. Restaurants aren’t good at making menu apps or driving cars. It may be a little awkward fit for restaurants who rent retail space and offer dine-in tables, but the world is transitioning and I fully expect more Doordash-first restaurants operating out of less expensive kitchen space and just skipping the whole dine-in waiter thing.
I hate to hear that Doordash pays so poorly but we always tip 20% or more which, even if it is the only payment the driver receives, usually seems fair for 30 minutes of work. We are a family of four and our order is always over $50. So that’s $10 / 30 minutes or $20 / hour minimum (if everyone used it the way we do). That seems like an okay wage for a job with so much flexibility. Probably the real thing that kills it is gas and wear on the car being invisible costs. Just like with regular Uber drivers.
- Comment on Why can't someone create a public alternative to health insurance in the USA? 1 month ago:
Not exactly. In theory corporations need workers so they should benefit from a healthy public.
In reality, their needs for workers are met. They’ve been exporting and automating jobs for decades. So even with the system leaving lots of folks behind, enough are left over to occupy the jobs that are needed. If anything, we have more healthy people than corporations need - what is lacking are skills.
And so in a very American sense of “business first,” the current system is operating just fine. People and their health have no intrinsic value here.
- Comment on Why can't someone create a public alternative to health insurance in the USA? 1 month ago:
And now they say Obamacare didn’t go far enough and is kinda weak. I could strangle them.
- Comment on Why can't someone create a public alternative to health insurance in the USA? 1 month ago:
Blue Shield of California is a “big corporation” that employers here often contract with for health insurance, and it is a non-profit. Somehow this doesn’t really result in a dramatically different experience.
- Comment on YouTube ads have ruined the good, old-fashioned Rick Roll. 2 months ago:
There was a vociferous but somehow under the radar outcry about this back in 2018 and an incredibly simple solution was widely suggested: demonetize the video.
However, the highly viewed video is a significant source of royalty revenue for Mr. Astley, which, as he well argued at the time in a series of tweets, is only just compensation for the way his image has been turned into a joke literally hundreds of millions of times now.
Mr. Astley implored YT not to bow to pressure and demonetize the video. YT famously replied “don’t worry, we’re never going to give you up, never going to let you down.”
- Comment on It's pretty cruel, particularly for non-native English speakers, that 'lose' and 'loose' seemingly switched spellings, meanings and pronunciations with each other when no one was looking 2 months ago:
English is idiosyncratic as hell. Didn’t someone famous call it “not a language but 3 languages in an overcoat.”
Adding to this specific instance is that even native speakers spell things wrong. They loose their keys, etc.
- Comment on It's pretty cruel, particularly for non-native English speakers, that 'lose' and 'loose' seemingly switched spellings, meanings and pronunciations with each other when no one was looking 2 months ago:
I would lohz my shit if we had to pronounce it that way.
- Comment on Bluesky hits 20 million users 2 months ago:
I’m with you 100%. The Twitter product has always been a clunky pile of bullshit for me. But somehow it became the default public space and choice of celebrities, etc and I think that has been 98% of its appeal.
- Comment on Apple's controversial iPhone accessory may have been discontinued 2 months ago:
You make a good point. When a small number of people complain loudly but most people don’t care, I’m not sure that’s “controversy.” The majority don’t care but this accessory is for the minority who do, and they hate it, so yeah “hated” would not be overstating it :)
- Comment on If Orange Dickhead dies before taking his oath again will sucession still be applicable? Like Vance the new pres and Johnson the new VP? 2 months ago:
Two assignation plots though, and that was before his presidency was assured. I’m not hoping, I’m not calling for it. But the impulse definitely seems to be out there to pop a cap in this man.
- Comment on If Orange Dickhead dies before taking his oath again will sucession still be applicable? Like Vance the new pres and Johnson the new VP? 2 months ago:
It would be really interesting watching Vance try to carry on Trumpism without Trump. He’s already strained to convert himself into an angry, insane Trumpian after starting out in quite a different place. Could he continue dancing if the music stopped?
- Comment on There should be a term for people who never really returned from the pandemic's social isolation 2 months ago:
If we could get 100% of people to do anything then the world would be a utopia tomorrow. Spoiler: that isn’t going to happen.
To keep it on point here, /u/Anticorp got yelled at above for saying that COVID is here to stay, as if this is some apathetic, defeated attitude.
I would posit that any hopes and dreams predicated on getting literally everyone to do literally anything are laughably naive and not even worth discussing.
- Comment on There should be a term for people who never really returned from the pandemic's social isolation 2 months ago:
Maybe people who lived in red states developed this notion that no one put in the effort but where I live we certainly did on a large scale and it did not eliminate the virus. Other cultures who already had a healthy practice of masking when sick still got hit with COVID. This notion that we could have eliminated it if people had just put in a tiny effort… I don’t know where y’all are getting that from.
- Comment on There should be a term for people who never really returned from the pandemic's social isolation 2 months ago:
Why are you hooting as if we’ve eliminated the flu? Strains come and go. The flu is very much here to stay and continues to kill people every year. We also masked and distanced for a very long time and didn’t eliminate COVID. I am struggling so hard to see what your point could possibly be other than to take a shrill tone with this person for having the audacity to face reality.
- Comment on There should be a term for people who never really returned from the pandemic's social isolation 2 months ago:
It’s benign in the sense of fatalities, but the lingering health issues from it seem more and more common now. I even know someone who is dealing with long term health symptoms that began right after dose 2 of the vaccine (I’m not an antivaxxer but this correlation is hard for them to ignore as they face their daily struggle to be the person they were before).
- Comment on There should be a term for people who never really returned from the pandemic's social isolation 2 months ago:
It’s amazing to see a perspective from such a different place on the spectrum. Spending more time with the kids is fine but watching them stagnate with little social life was really hard. I think it’s highly dependent on their age. Under 3: pure bonus for the kid because the parents are home more. 3-5: terrible for the kid because this is the time they’re supposed to be developing socialization with friends at preschool/school. 5-10: bummer but they got through it. My son got hit right in the 3-5 period. His social skills and life have still not fully cleared the cloud this put over him. Daughter was in the 5-10 and was able to get something out of remote school and limited access to her friends. Son got a raw deal.
It was also just physically so trying. You know how your day just goes differently when the kids are sick and don’t go to school? You have to attend to them the whole day through to make sure they are okay and not just stagnating on the couch and you can’t necessarily leave the house or do errands etc during the day like you normally would. It was like that, but for over a year, with lots of added stresses involved from the pandemic itself.
A scarring time. My job gave me something to focus on from home. But my wife, who is a full time parent, says she has never recovered.
- Comment on Has Fast Food Gotten Worse, or Am I Just Getting Old? 2 months ago:
We sense less and less as we get older. I’ve learned this from observing my kids and seeing them react to things like needles and spicy food with such greater sensitivity than me. I can remember being like them, too. But I just plow through experiences now with less sensation of them. Part of it is that my senses are slightly more dull, but also important: my cognitive filters are much more established and sensations that are outside of them get little notice. Meanwhile my kids are like raw nerves at the mercy of every experience that comes their way. Bubble gum probably doesn’t blow your hair back anymore either but I bet it was awesome when you were a kid.
- Comment on What do you like/dislike about lemmy? 2 months ago:
I like that Lemmy doesn’t have stupid levels of auto-moderation happening. And I like that threads don’t constantly get locked merely because people are engaging with them.
- Comment on What do you like/dislike about lemmy? 2 months ago:
I’m also a lefty and often find myself going against the extreme grain here. The narratives about everything being a scam designed to steal your balls, the generational hatred, the cynicism and fatalism…
- Comment on Dropbox lays off 20% of staff, says it overinvested and underperformed 2 months ago:
It’s a neat utility and all, or at least it was neat back when the cloud was novel. But I don’t understand how what’s basically a minor iCloud feature became a publicly traded company of gigantic size.
- Comment on We should have elections with no candidates. 2 months ago:
This is the idea behind direct ballot measures. Instead of working through representatives, just let people make actual decisions. Of course, there are problems with it. You wind up looking at a ballot with 10 different bond measures on it as if you’re in any position to decide on the budgets for 6 different agencies. And all the voter guides scream contradictory things at you from the pro/con positions, leaving you thinking “gee, maybe politician is actually a profession after all?”
- Comment on Typing monkey would be unable to produce 'Hamlet' within the lifetime of the universe, study finds 2 months ago:
How are they defining the end of the universe?