thebestaquaman

@thebestaquaman@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨China's unemployed young adults who are pretending to have jobs⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Don’t know how they did the calculations here, but in Norway we have statistics for unemployment that goes down to 16 year olds.

  However in those statistics, a person is only considered unemployed if they are not attending school. Our equivalent of high school is not mandatory, so a few people (very few) decide to quit school and begin working at 16. Some further people are high school dropouts that get jobs at 16-19.

  So basically: You’re counted as unemployed if you’re not in a job or education.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Like a baby⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The sound of a baby’s scream is an incredible feat of nature. In a way, it’s almost sad that we lose the ability to make that sound at a certain age.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Looks at litterally half the population: “This is a minority”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨People who have been in meetings to determine back to in office policy. What was the discussion like?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Exactly: I can understand that an open layout makes life harder for people in an already oppressive environment. This applies regardless of why the environment is oppressive any individual.

  Claiming that “open environments are sexist” implies that they’re somehow inherently oppressive towards one gender. That’s absolute bullshit in my opinion: Open environments are just generally crap for productivity.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨People who have been in meetings to determine back to in office policy. What was the discussion like?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sorry, but what?

  I hate open-plan layouts as much as the next guy, but how on earth are they sexist?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it sexist to say "I've never worn a wet dress before"⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In general, I don’t think it’s right to lie down flat whenever someone accuses you of saying something wrong, just because they think it was wrong.

  It should be pretty fair to respond with a simple “why is that sexist? I think wet clothes are uncomfortable, so I assumed others did as well.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do movie actors or actress keep the skills they learned? Like no one would screw with Keanu after seeing all the John Wick films? And if they did would they just be fucked from the start?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Define “good”. I would say that any professional with dozens of hours of training, that could comfortably overcome any average person is “good”. Those are the people I trained with, and my impression is that Keanu is better than most of them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do movie actors or actress keep the skills they learned? Like no one would screw with Keanu after seeing all the John Wick films? And if they did would they just be fucked from the start?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  IIRC, Keanu did some extensive firearms training in connection with John Wick. I’ve seen some footage of him on a training set with mobile targets, and would estimate that he’s better at handling a wide variety of firearms than a fair portion of military personnel are before the first time they see combat. This estimate is based on my own military training on similar courses.

  I know the movies are choreographed, but I definitely wouldn’t give someone without extensive training good odds against him, based on footage I’ve seen from his training.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It’s the little things⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If we want to go to extremes, zero surface tension means no nucleation barrier for critical bubbles. In practice, this implies that liquid water is unstable, and will spontaneously vaporise at all conditions.

  So yeah, all life ends pretty quickly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It’s the little things⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It relies on differences in surface tension. If a liquid has a lower surface tension (energy) towards one surface than another, you get the typical capillary effect. In the case of water, the water-air energy is lower than the water-<whatever your capillary is made of> energy, so you get a capillary effect.

  If water had exactly zero surface tension against every interface,

  • it would not exhibit any capillary action
  • life on earth would cease to exist quite quickly
  • your socks would remain dry
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why doesn't the Trump administration simply edit the Epstein files and release them?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If you make any edits that contradict the physical evidence, you’ve outed yourself.

  We’re talking about people that contradict both themselves and physical reality on a daily basis without their supporters batting an eye.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why doesn't the Trump administration simply edit the Epstein files and release them?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Export to jpeg. Compress.

  Can decent edits still be reliably detected?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How come nobody does anything about North Korea?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Great, it seems like we agree on the major points here! I’m not denying any of the major issues of the Afghan war, nor any of the glaring problems with how the whole “nation building” attempt went about. I’m very well aware of the history of the Afghan war, and have seen several of the documentaries you refer to that point out that it was largely known that the Afghan army would likely desert once the coalition left.

  I’m not saying we don’t care.

  That is quite literally what you said in your first comment, and is literally the only thing I’ve disagreed with you on so far (“the world simply doesn’t care”).

  Many individual people did earnestly care, and tried their best.

  This is literally the point I’ve been trying to make, but it seems like you keep misinterpreting me as saying the whole invasion was a misunderstood humanitarian operation. I’m not saying that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scientists reportedly hiding AI text prompts in academic papers to receive positive peer reviews⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It differs per community.

  Good point, I’ll moderate myself and just state that I’ve never experienced it being a hard requirement in my field.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scientists reportedly hiding AI text prompts in academic papers to receive positive peer reviews⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  No it’s not. I have both published in a variety of scientific journals, reviewed for a couple journals, and turned down reviews for a couple journals.

  No journal checks your “review history” before allowing you to publish. However, if you consistently turn down reviews from a journal, the editor is likely going to get annoyed and you will probably have a harder time publishing in that journal in the future.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scientists reportedly hiding AI text prompts in academic papers to receive positive peer reviews⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yep. At that point, why even bother taking the review? You’re not forced to do reviews. Never taking any is likely to negatively impact your career, but still… just decline the review if you’re going to use a LLM for it anyway. Have some dignity.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How come nobody does anything about North Korea?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t really understand what you’re trying to say here?

  My point is that, while flimsy and flawed, there was in fact an education system and a humanitarian system in place that was propped up by coalition forces. This system did fall apart, leaving no system at all when the forces left. And yes, a bunch of Afghanis have every right to feel betrayed. I never said otherwise.

  It’s not like Afghanistan is the only place where schools, hospitals and infrastructure has been financed by western countries. By and large, we spend a lot of money on these things because a significant portion of the population sees it as the right thing to do. Because we care, and want to help people.

  What became very clear in Afghanistan was that you can’t force a population to be a liberal democracy. They have to be willing to fight for it themselves. The Afghan army (on paper) had several hundred thousand men, loads of heavy equipment, and several years to train and prepare for coalition forces leaving. There was a government structure in place. These things instantly folded when the coalition left because, clearly, enough people preferred Taliban to what the outsiders had forced upon them.

  I guess I’m saying it’s a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. If you stay, you’re an oppressive occupier. If you leave, you’re a traitor that permits a humanitarian crisis to occur.

  The OP here asked “why doesn’t anybody do anything about NK”, and my answer is that we (seem to) have learned that you can’t force democracy and human rights on a country. Chalking it up to “we don’t care” is reductionist.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨As expected every page in the book is blank⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve always carried my balls in one big unisack that holds them all. However, I do think the idea of splitting my eggs between different baskets sounds interesting.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨As expected every page in the book is blank⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  ball sacks

  You guys have several?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How come nobody does anything about North Korea?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It didn’t go to shit when we left, it was shit from the beginning.

  It seems like you didn’t observe the thousands of people swarming the airport in Kabul trying to get out with the last planes. It also seems like you haven’t picked up on the people crying about how people are being brutally punished for getting an education or listening to music now.

  I’m not denying that shit was really bad while coalition forces were there, but acting like it didn’t get worse for a lot of people when the left is just closing your eyes.

  Regardless, it’s ludicrous to claim that western countries “aren’t doing anything because they don’t care”. It’s not like we’ve spent truckloads of money and thousands of lives over 20 years of trying to get a functioning system in place while preventing a humanitarian crisis because we “didn’t care”. People saw it as immoral to just turn our backs on Afghanistan and let them solve their own problems. The result was largely that we learned that you can’t force democracy and human rights onto someone else, as proven by the almost complete absence of people willing to fight for just that once the coalition left.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How come nobody does anything about North Korea?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  “The west” isn’t really a cohesive unit regarding Israel/Iran. You have some western countries supporting a genocide and committing blatant violations of international law, while others condemn them for it and try to pressure them to stop.

  Sadly, one rogue state can cause a lot of damage, and countries typically have a very high bar for using military force against their closest allies in defence of a third party.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How come nobody does anything about North Korea?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s not that people “don’t care”. We’ve tried intervening with force in e.g. Afghanistan, where the oppressive regime was forcibly removed, and military power was used to ensure that elections were held and the results were respected.

  We have observed, several times, that everything goes to shit when we leave. Not only that, but people generally don’t seem like it when outsiders take over and tell them how to run their country, who should be allowed an education, and that <insert group> cannot be oppressed. So a side effect of the armed intervention is that a lot more people hate you now.

  Western countries “aren’t doing anything” because we’ve both learned from experience that military intervention doesn’t really work, and been repeatedly told by the rest of the world to mind our own business.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Financially rewarding and you will always have a job⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  We have a “complicated” relationship to the EU. There was a vote in the '90s where we decided not to join, and now we’re connected through the EEA (which another comment treats in detail). Today, the EU debate is rising again, largely because of the war in Ukraine. However, it seems like public opinion is still marginally opposed to membership due to our somewhat special situation regarding oil, hydropower, and (lack of) agricultural land.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Financially rewarding and you will always have a job⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  What do you mean by “little other support”? I don’t get any other “support” from my job as a phd than my salary?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Financially rewarding and you will always have a job⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Norway here: This is kind of how it works, but not quite.

  While studying, you get a student loan. 40 % of that loan is automatically “forgiven” (turned into a stipend) as you complete your courses. In order to remain eligible for the loan, you need to maintain a certain progression in your studies, and there’s also a limit to how many years you can receive the stipend for (I think it’s eight years now). As long as you’re studying, the loan doesn’t accrue interest, and you don’t need to make down payments.

  Throughout five years, I received very roughly 200k NOK (≈20k USD) in stipend, and 300k NOK in loans.

  Also, a PhD is treated as an ordinary job here. I’m paid about 600k NOK (≈60k USD) per year, which is a bit less than my peers from engineering studies in industry jobs (the get around 700-800), but it’s by no means a bad pay. I’ve been able to afford a small apartment together with my SO on that pay. Hearing about places where people have to take up loans in order to finance taking a phd makes my head spin.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"You can't hook copper into fiber that way, you just can't do it."⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  A cue to whether someone is educated is how hard they try to fight experts in a field they know nothing about.

  People with expertise in one field tend to respect those with expertise in another.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Danish Ministry switching from Microsoft Office/365 to LibreOffice⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The dream here, in FOSS terms, is that governments see the massive potential value in using FOSS, and start actively contributing to it.

  Imagine if the German or Danish government puts the people on their IT payroll (who are now maintaining Microsoft systems) to maintain FOSS systems. This would be a huge benefit for everyone, and may push stuff like Microsoft into being a niche.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Micro-retirement⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s fun to interact though :) and the graphics were really great! Thanks for posting them :)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Micro-retirement⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  No worries :) I think it was

  The orange in the pic above are minimums for first-time employees

  Which made me think you meant “minimum” as in “you must take this amount off”. I understand now that you meant “minimum” as in “employers must allow you to take this much time off”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Micro-retirement⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Hva mener du? Vi har fem uker lovfestet ferie i året (pluss røde dager), er ikke det ca. det samme som Storbritannia?