testfactor
@testfactor@lemmy.world
- Comment on Why doesn't the US name this state? Are they stupid? 16 hours ago:
Man, it looks like sheer laziness that they can fit “Kentucky” into its state, but “Alabama” gets a pointer line. You’re telling me that you can’t do the exact same thing you did with “Georgia” there?
- Comment on YSK De-banking is often how the US first declares you "homeless" 1 week ago:
Yeah, that’s what I told my doctor when he said I didn’t have unicorn pox. He was like, “that’s not a real thing, and if it was I’d have heard of it,” and I told him he was just an arrogant jerk. He doesn’t know all the diseases, just cause he’s a doctor.
- Comment on UK wants to weasel out of demand for Apple encryption back door 2 weeks ago:
Even in your made up scenario it doesn’t prove the negative. Maybe your mind reading didn’t work because Apple has a mind wiping device that made them forget. Maybe the crystal ball didn’t work because Apple made an even more powerful “crystal ball blocking” device. You can’t prove that’s not what’s really happening.
So no, you in fact can’t prove a negative.
- Comment on Are you using Lemmy / others to create noise in your life and to replace talking to people irl? 2 weeks ago:
How many fascists have you killed? Genuine question. Cause if the answer is zero, you have stopped short of killing fascists. Saying you would is no different than the person who says they would care about politics but doesn’t.
I don’t mean that as an attack. I simply am pointing out that everyone draws the line differently. A Ted Kaczynski would say a person who really cares about these issues would already be sending mail bombs.
I disagree with that (as do you I imagine, as I don’t think you’ve started mail bombing people, as that would’ve been in the news), but he was just as sure of his line as you are. Why do you not go that far?
To be very clear. Don’t mail bomb people. Don’t take this as a challenge. I’m just genuinely curious how that falls against the line you are drawing.
Also, back to the original topic, you said earlier that you can’t go to events solo due to your social anxiety, which is understandably difficult, but could you not bring your partner along? Why can’t you have that security blanket as you go out to meet new people? Having a partner makes making new friends a thousand times easier!
- Comment on Are you using Lemmy / others to create noise in your life and to replace talking to people irl? 2 weeks ago:
I do think there’s an element of privilege here. Just because you have the luxury of time and space to be involved in politics and spend a lot of emotional energy in that area doesn’t mean that everyone else has that luxury. For the single mother of three, working two jobs to provide for her kids, she probably doesn’t have the bandwidth to be super “educated” politically.
But what would you have that PTA soccer mom do? The bar is always arbitrary. I could choose to set it higher or lower than you. Why is your spot for the bar what it is? I could claim anyone who isn’t vegan, or uses toilet paper, or doesn’t drive an EV, or isn’t growing their own food, or isn’t chaining themselves to government buildings in protest isn’t doing their part and is actively “contributing to the destruction of humanity.” You have defined your threshold of acceptable somewhere short of actively murdering fascists (I assume), so why is that? And what makes your choice of threshold the correct one?
I think we have a tendency to say, “what I’m doing is the correct standard,” in order to make us feel justified in our outlook and superior to the people around us. Is it that others are actually “contributing to the destruction of humanity” more than you, or is that something that you tell yourself to help maintain an emotional wall of protection?
And, literally all that aside, I think your assumption that there aren’t plenty of people around you who feel similarly to you is unfounded. You could make friends by getting involved in a political campaign. I did that a number of years ago, and met a lot of great people. Helped a lady get elected into the House of Representatives. Had a great time and met a lot of cool people along the way. And surely those people would meet your thresholds of “good enough,” no?
- Comment on Are you using Lemmy / others to create noise in your life and to replace talking to people irl? 2 weeks ago:
It does sound like you’ve let doom scrolling negatively impact your life.
I won’t argue things are bad, but the reality is that most people are generally decent.
Sure, there’s a lot of dicks out there, but they’re very much the minority. They are just overrepresented in the Lemmy echo chamber (and other online platforms too of course).
Obviously it’s hard to say if you’re being “too picky” as it were without knowing exactly what lines you’re drawing, but it sounds like you might be projecting your negative expectations onto people as opposed to people actually not living up to those expectations.
- Comment on Are you using Lemmy / others to create noise in your life and to replace talking to people irl? 2 weeks ago:
Fair enough on all counts.
I would point out that if everyone only made friends with people better than them, no one would have any friends. It’s important to pour into others as well as to get poured into. It’s how we make the world better. And just because someone is “worse” than you doesn’t mean they don’t have value. And it doesn’t mean there isn’t something you could gain from having them as a friend. I’ve had friends who are “better” than me and “worse” than me make positive change in my life.
And I know you say you’re not in a place to work on this, and I can respect that, but I would say that it’s never a bad time to continue leaning forward in a positive direction. And if this is something that’s negatively impacting your life, the sooner you work on it, the sooner you’ll be less impacted by it. No time like the present and all that.
- Comment on Are you using Lemmy / others to create noise in your life and to replace talking to people irl? 3 weeks ago:
I have friends with crippling social anxiety. It’s a lot of work, and they have their ups and downs for sure. But it’s something that they’re working on in therapy and making strides on. It is possible to improve and for things to get better.
I mean, it’s hard to say without knowing exactly what you’re talking about, but universally condemned likely seems strong. But regardless, you said that you don’t value the same people I do. Does that mean you can’t value someone with different beliefs than you?
You say that there aren’t any groups in your area that would interest you. What kind of group would interest you? What group, if you saw it was starting up in your area, would motivate you to go out and meet people?
- Comment on Evading suffering is _itself_ a form of suffering 3 weeks ago:
I mean, I think you may be overselling the word “suffering.” I wouldn’t put “working so I don’t starve” in the same category as “starving to death.”
If “suffering” just means “anything I don’t 100% love,” then it’s effectively meaningless, no?
- Comment on Are you using Lemmy / others to create noise in your life and to replace talking to people irl? 3 weeks ago:
I know mental health issues complicate things, but that’s something to work on, not an obstacle that can’t be surmounted. I have tons of friends with mental health struggles of all kinds.
But you say that you don’t value the same people I do, but what makes you think so?
As I say, I was at a local boardgame meetup this past weekend. Not exactly a “party” crowd. And to be clear, there’s local meetups for everything under the sun. What do you value in people that you don’t think you could find a social group for? What makes you think finding a group you would vibe with is particularly hard?
- Comment on Are you using Lemmy / others to create noise in your life and to replace talking to people irl? 3 weeks ago:
Fair. The OP you were responding to was about how people cope with loneliness IRL with pseudo-real online interactions, and you responded with how it’s difficult to find relationships in person.
I agree it’s not necessarily related, but I the guy above was wildly afeild taking your statement as an excuse for why finding relational fulfillment online is an acceptable cope. It was kind of the topic at hand.
But, aside from that, I think making new connections is really just about going out there and doing it. I’m 33 and constantly meet new people, so it’s definitely achievable in your 30’s. Just go to things. Open up Eventbrite or whatever and find something going on that looks like fun, and then just go. There’s a whole world of opportunities out there to meet new people.
- Comment on Are you using Lemmy / others to create noise in your life and to replace talking to people irl? 3 weeks ago:
He’s just saying that using Lemmy as a cope for not having IRL friends is healthy.
But, to your point, making friends is easier than you think. Join groups. They’re everywhere. I literally went to a “boardgame play testing” event today and met a lot of cool people.
Things like that are everywhere. You just got a look for them.
- Comment on In 6 hours it will be illegal to say "I support Palestine Action" in the UK, with a sentence of up to 14 years in prison. 4 weeks ago:
I do think the situation is more complicated than Lemmy would have you believe.
Both Iran and Hamas have been geopolitical issues for a long time. And it’s worth remembering that all of this was kicked off by a large scale terrorist attack perpetrated by Hamas.
It’s also worth noting that Iran is a Russian puppet, and Europe obviously has some “neighbor problems” with Russia at the moment, so there’s a sort of baked in desire to oppose their vassal states.
And, while I think everyone would agree that the loss of civilian life is terrible, there is a huge amount of misinformation that makes it hard to be sure what’s going on. Hamas does have a long history of screwing over the civilian Palestinian population to further it’s political goals, and so people are willing to give Israel a little more credence than they deserve when they claim things like “Hamas was hiding in that hospital” or “we’re blocking aid because Hamas is hoarding it all to drive up tensions” or “it was Hamas who shot those civilians,” because it actually wouldn’t be the first time any of that had credibly happened. Something of a boy-cried-wolf scenario.
Add into that genuine desire to combat real anti-Semitism that’s been a fallout of this whole situation (a problem that hits pretty close to home in Europe due to events of the past century), and you can see why some people might be a bit over-eager to support Israel in this conflict.
It’s worth noting there are no good guys here. Israel is obviously in the wrong, and are committing horrible atrocities. I think that much is plain on its face. But Hamas and Iran have both had “the destruction of the state of Israel” as stated policy goals for the past 80 years. The reason Israel has the Iron Dome is because they’ve been getting missiles lobbed at them non-stop for decades.
And when there are no good guys, people tend to just align themselves with who they like more, or who they owe more to.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
Just because it’s generally possible for the bladder to rupture before the muscles give out, it’s certainly not impossible. A myriad of conditions or even just genetics can lead to a physically weaker bladder.
I think it’s a bit bold to say that absolutely 100%, no exceptions, that the muscles will always fail first. Even if that’s true 99.99% of the time, there’s just far to much variance in human bodies to rule it out, I would think.
- Comment on Melon-chicken-Aspic 1 month ago:
I mean, it kinda just looks like boiled chicken, so it’s probably fine? Probably not tasty, but not raw by a long shot.
- Comment on With all the scientific breakthroughs involving drugs tested on mice, it's a wonder we haven't had a Planet of the Mice type situation yet 1 month ago:
Nah, I read Mrs Frisby. They mostly just go chill on a farm when you make genetic super intelligent rats.
- Comment on Eating shit is for alphas, am I rite guise 1 month ago:
This is satire.
- Comment on Taekwondo player alleges gang-rape by priest, others inside Kanpur ashram. A national-level Taekwondo player has alleged that she was gang-raped inside an ashram located right next to a police station 1 month ago:
All posted by the same guy, to be fair.
- Comment on If comey can be investigated by the secret service for an Instagram tweet what is stopping elon from taking hold of politicians/reporters accounts and making posts that will get them investigated? 2 months ago:
Sure, I agree that it’s a stupid idea from an effort vs reward perspective. It’s at best unnecessary.
But your initial position was that it couldn’t be done without being easy to prove that it was a fabrication, and I think you’re wrong about that.
I think that they are more than capable of doing it in such a way that it’s wholly word-vs-word, with no forensic evidence pointing to it being doctored. And the idea that they would do that is outlandish enough that most reasonable people would assume the post was legitimate and that the “offender” was lying about it to try and deflect blame.
It’s the classic, "No, I didn’t post that list of porn search terms to my Twitter! I was hacked!! Totally somebody hacked me and did that. Wasn’t me at all!!” But in this case it’d be something that was a pretext for the government to arrest them.
- Comment on If comey can be investigated by the secret service for an Instagram tweet what is stopping elon from taking hold of politicians/reporters accounts and making posts that will get them investigated? 2 months ago:
Sure, but then it’s a question of narrative not proof, right?
Because the response from X would just be, “we aren’t sure why Mr so-and-so didn’t/couldn’t immediately delete the post, but we froze it in short order because we believe the fact he would post such a thing is a matter of public interest, and we refuse to let him sweep it under the rug.”
Yeah, he could say that he posted something completely different and X changed it, but how do you prove it? Everyone would just assume it to be a lie trying to cover their ass after posting something terrible.
Not saying this is at all likely. Just that it’s possible.
And this assumes they notice it was doctored immediately anyway. Most people don’t verify that the post is correct after hitting “submit.” A good 90+% of people would probably never notice if the text was changed post upload.
- Comment on If comey can be investigated by the secret service for an Instagram tweet what is stopping elon from taking hold of politicians/reporters accounts and making posts that will get them investigated? 2 months ago:
You could just replace the text of a post as it gets submitted. Keep all metadata otherwise unchanged. Lock the account from being able to make edits.
- Comment on Nintendo issues Switch 2 supply warning in Japan: 2.2 million people have applied to buy the new console in Japan so far, which ‘far exceeds’ Nintendo’s expectations. 3 months ago:
They probably don’t have the warehouse capacity to store all those extra units. There’s a lot of logistics involved in housing and shipping 2.2mil consoles, and “just wait” can be way harder than you would think.
- Comment on Chrono Trigger Is Timeless 4 months ago:
I will say, the longer I look at that, the less confident I am that there is any difference at all, lol.
- Comment on Using the honor system 4 months ago:
If I saw this, I think I’d take and eat one? Like, I do love a good raisin…
- Comment on Does 'attempted murder' require a viable method? 5 months ago:
It kind of depends on the facts and your jurisdiction. With the button, maybe? With a death note book, almost certainly not.
When proving the elements of attempted murder (or any non-statutory crime), the state has to prove both “mens rea” and “actus rea” (that you intended to do the thing and that you tried to do the thing), but when you’re being charged for something “attempted” you have the defense of “impossibility,” when the actions you are trying to take couldn’t have possibly worked.
Now, that doesn’t cover cases where you were only wrong in point of fact. For instance, buying fake drugs from a cop. But it does cover instances like using a voodoo doll.
There’s more detail on all the above in the illustrated guide to law, which is a pretty solid resource for stuff like this. Here are the relevant sections:
Actus Rea Explanation: lawcomic.net/guide/?p=261
Attempted Crimes: lawcomic.net/guide/?p=344
Impossibly Defense: lawcomic.net/guide/?p=416
- Comment on Far to many people think that Jesus from the Bible was light skinned, even though he grew up in what we call the Middle East. 5 months ago:
The gospels were, while written decades after the fact, written by people who were alive at the time. It’s not really a game of telephone.
It turns out that when a guy dies in his early 30s, most of his buddies are still alive 30-50yrs later.
- Comment on AI-generated poetry is indistinguishable from human-written poetry and is rated more favorably - Scientific Reports 8 months ago:
In 1962 Phillip K Dick put out a book called “Man in the High Castle.” In it there was a scene that stuck out to me, and seems more and more relevant as this AI wave continues.
In it a man has two identical lighters. Each made in the same year by the same manufacturer. But one was priceless and one was worthless.
The priceless one was owned by Abraham Lincoln and was in his pocket on the night he was assassinated. He had a letter of certification as such, and could trace the ownership all the way back to that night.
And he takes them both and mixes them up and asks which is the one with value. If you can no longer discern the one with “historicity,” then where is it’s value?
And every time I see an article like this I can’t help but think about that. If I tell you about the life and hardship of an artist, and then present you two poems, one that he wrote and one that was spit out by an LLM, and you cannot determine which has the true hardship and emotion tied to it, then which has value? What if I killed the artist before he could reveal which one was the “true” poem? How do you know which is a powerful expression of the artist’s oppression, and which is worthless, randomly generated swill?
- Comment on College students used Meta’s smart glasses to dox people in real time 9 months ago:
Fair. I presume that they meant publicly available in the sense that it was accessible to the public, not in the sense that it was necessarily free.
The article says they are using PimEyes, which I assume means that they’re paying for a subscription.
- Comment on College students used Meta’s smart glasses to dox people in real time 9 months ago:
They did mention a name. Publicly available database called PimEyes apparently.
- Comment on College students used Meta’s smart glasses to dox people in real time 9 months ago:
It’s in the article. Public database called PimEyes.
It doesn’t go into much more detail than that. Says it’s an open to the public face searching database.