DomeGuy
@DomeGuy@lemmy.world
- Comment on Does it get windy in New York City? 5 days ago:
Yes, it absolutely gets windy in NYC.
Remember that Manhattan is laid out in a very regular grid. This is equally useful if you are a poetic zepher of wind or a becaped superhero, as these long passages make it really easy to (traffic allowing) rush forward at full speed and little chance of hitting a wall.
- Comment on How much more progressive are European views as compared to progressives in America? 6 days ago:
Political parties are creations of the electoral and governmental systems in the nations they exist in
“Most European nations” is an imprecise way of saying “dominant parlimentary unicameral legislatures”. To use the UK as an example, all sovereign power is asserted by the lower democratically elected chamber of parliment. Neither the house of lords nor the king counter the assembled majority of parliment,.who from its own members appoint those who direct the government day to day. While there is a sub-national distinction, these are essentially creations of parliment and have no inherent power on their own.
Since the only thing that matters in national UK politics is parliament, all of the political energy is focused there.
In the United States this is not at all the case… national power is split as I described before, and a similar pattern repeats at the state level with distinct difectly-elected legislators and executives. The national government was historically a creation of the states, and each state has substantial ability to act in defiance of congress’s preferences.
Since there are so many different things that matter, the value of a third or fourth party is dramatically reduced. When minor parties start to win elections on their own, the major parties either adapt or die quickly. (I have remarked elsewhere that in American politics “there is no prize for second place”, and a worthwhile collolary here would be “and there are so many games to play.”)
You are technically correct in that if God came down and reworked all of the USA into distinct european-style nations with separate languages we would likely have similar party arrangements, with both the Democrats and the Republicans splitting into multiple parties. But if God also remade Europe into a single USA-style mega-nation made up of states with similar governments who shared a single first-language, European parties would likely congeal until there are only two.
As a practical matter, of course, neither is not a useful observations. And simplified observations of the differences between “Europe” and the USA like “the USA is far to the right of Europe” were part of what led the UK to devolve into a place where you can be threatened to silence for accurately describing a rich transphobe.
- Comment on How much more progressive are European views as compared to progressives in America? 6 days ago:
Your analysis completely ignores the impact of the US Senate’s wonky “cloture” rule, which is a compromise from the prior practice of the US Senate filibuster.
As depicted in way too many movies, the filibuster let any single senator (or small team or senators) essentially veto any piece of legislation by putting the whole thing to a halt. The modern rule instead (in essence) requires any act.of Congress to clear a 60% vote threshold in the Senate.
There hasn’t been a time in my entire life when the modern democratic party held the presidency, a majority in the house, and 3/5ths of the Senate. (Clinton had a party with segregation-era racists still in power; Obama had “blue dogs” who were nearly Republican, and Biden had a coal baron and a green party scam artist in the Senate )
- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
GoG actually implements something the rich tool* behind steam once said: “piracy is a customer service issue.”
Broadly speaking, folk only private games for three reasons: either the DRM limits how they can play their game, they don’t want to make such a purchase sight unseen, or they haven’t the funds to purchase the games they want.
There’s very little that will turn the third type into paying customers, but the first and second can be converted by some combination of.the straight removal of DRM and a generous return policy.
It’s also worth noting that pirates of all three groups will on occasion make a game purchase, due to a desire to support an especially liked game or studio or behavior.
- Comment on Why are children always portrayed as the epitome of "innocence", when a lot of kids are evil af and bully their peers, and name-calling runs rampant in schools? 1 week ago:
Because “innocent” and “good” are not synonyms.
- Comment on When did Cash for Chritianity become a thing? When even Jesus the son of god wouldn't stand for it in a church? If they preach why don't they practice from the bible? 2 weeks ago:
Jesus was the word of God. As understood by most denominations, Jesus of Nazareth WAS God born as a man, and Jesus rules in Heaven now. (But it gets confusing after that, and agreement drops off.)
Going just off my memory, Jesus said about five things about money:
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He chased for-profit money changers out of the temple, who were in effect stealing from the temple and parishioners by insisting a gift of goods or other currencies had to be converted.
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He answered a question about if His followers should give taxes to Rome by pointing that Ceasar’s face was on the coin,.and that they should “render to God what was God’s, and render to Ceasar what was Ceasar’s”
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He extolled a poor woman’s gift of a few coins as a greater gift than the numerically larger gift from others,.since it was a larger share of the woman’s wealth.
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He marked that one cannot “serve two masters” and could either seek wealth for its own sake or serve heaven, but not both.
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When a rich man asked what it would take for said rich man to enter Heaven, Jesus told him “sell everything you have and follow me,” at which the rich guy went away sad.
There may well be others, but at no point in the gospels did Jesus forbid commerce or currency, or suggest that it was somehow improper to pool money together to fund a common house of worship.
Some modern self-described Christians are very money focused, to an extent that I’d argue they’ve abandoned.thr gospels like the rich man in that last bit… But Jesus wasn’t ever explicitly against cash.
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- Comment on When did Cash for Chritianity become a thing? When even Jesus the son of god wouldn't stand for it in a church? If they preach why don't they practice from the bible? 2 weeks ago:
Martin Luther was more than 1000 years after the start of Christianity. Heck, he may have been 1000 years from the conversion of Rome.
- Comment on Insuranace is a joke 2 weeks ago:
To be salty: you seem kinda bad at math.
2019 was.six years ago, not “basically ten”. Which wouldnt matter, if the rest of your post didn’t have such “if the raise put me in the next tax bracket I’d actually lose money” energy.
Car insurance is typically for the market value of your car as-s. Not the price for a car from the same model year that has a dealer’s warranty behind it.
Or to put it another way: insurance should pay out the amount you could get if you sold your car, not the cost to buy another similar car.
Now, there are insurance companies that will sell you “replacement cost” insurance, but this always means they’re charging a higher premium than they otherwise would.
And you’re absolutely right that insurance companies categorically suck. Auto insurance is actually the friendliest one that regularly has to pay out. Health insurance is even worse.
(Sorry for being so salty.)
- Comment on If the Nürnberg process had to happen today, we d just feed the documents to chatgpt, and ask it to generate the accusatory speech 2 weeks ago:
LLMs are only about as useful in law practice as a uber-caffinated non-lawyer. The things simply don’t know the law, and any argument it may create should be checked with the same thoroughness that a lawyer would give that of a associate who was revealed to have had super early-onset dementia.
If you’re in the situation of going to court and are thinking of trusting the advice you get from a LLM, dont. You’d be better off appearing “pro se” with advice from the sovereign citizen movement.
(I mean, so long as you don’t try that admiralty court / all-caps pseudo-corp bullshit. The law is written in a keyword-less syntax with a case-insensitive parser. )
- Comment on [deleted] 2 weeks ago:
Because, unlike oil, humans are a renewable resource.
Like, oil, however, too many of us is unsustainable.
- Comment on Coordinated Pro-Russian Propaganda Network Targeting ActivityPub and ATProto Services 2 weeks ago:
Better. That actually supports the assertion that Russia does engage in left-targeted disinformation (in Canada, on Twitter.)
It also supports the original point you dismissed as “wrong” – of the 90 “most influential” accounts, only 9 were subjectively identified as “Canadian far left”.
Maybe you should spend more time reading the actual articles, and not just their headlines?
- Comment on Coordinated Pro-Russian Propaganda Network Targeting ActivityPub and ATProto Services 2 weeks ago:
True enough. But even a tyrannical government at least has a presumable intent of working for the betterment of its country. (Albeit through wrongheaded and small-minded means )
A.foreijgn power, especially a historical adversary and bad actor, is instead presumably working to harm or diminish us.
- Comment on Coordinated Pro-Russian Propaganda Network Targeting ActivityPub and ATProto Services 2 weeks ago:
You presented it as proof that Russia is supporting misinformation on the left. To be that, it has to both include all three parts of the claim – that there is disinformation on the left, that Russia is covertly supporting disinformation, and that some of the disinformation on the left was supported by Russia.
If your wife sleeps around, and I engage in casual sex, it does not necessarily follow that I slept with your wife.
A common suspicion in America is that Vladimir Putin believes that Trump as POTUS is good for Russia, and that Putin interferes with US politics with a specific goal of helping Trump.
If you have some reporting that directly links Russia to left-wing disinformation I’d love to read it. But the BBC article I read after following your link didn’t have any such link.
- Comment on Coordinated Pro-Russian Propaganda Network Targeting ActivityPub and ATProto Services 2 weeks ago:
Your article doesn’t seem to mention Russia once.
Rumors and smears are part of free speech. To the extent that right-wing trolls and their audience are actual voters, it’s essentially just a coarse form of ordinary political speech.
The extent to which a foreign government acting coverly is either creating or artificially boosting such content is scandalous.
- Comment on The age of adulthood should be 21 and the age of consent should be 25 across the world 3 weeks ago:
25 is the age that some dude studying brains stopped looking, since it gets really hard to find study participants who are 7 years past freshmen in a university who’s longest tract is a 4 year undergraduate followed by a 3 year graduate.
- Comment on Delusions of a Protocol 3 weeks ago:
Godwin himself pointed out that his law doesnt apply when discussing actual fascists.
- Comment on Delusions of a Protocol 3 weeks ago:
By “association rights” I infer that you mean the right of free association.
If so, can you be a little bit more specific as to whose “association rights”, specifically, are a more important issue than the right of trans folk to get healthcare, be free from discrimination, and be able to play sports without being harassed?
My inclination is that the most important targets to defend against facist oppression are the ones being targeted, which does suggest one plausible answer, but I really do want to know what you meant in your post.
- Comment on Delusions of a Protocol 3 weeks ago:
Please tell.me that you have better sources in the UK than I, and that their recent transphobic swing didn’t make trans care harder to get and keep.
- Comment on Mr. Pope 3 weeks ago:
Holy fuck, thats even worse that I imagined. Most places I’d seen that just cropped to just the first line of the reply, delightfully skipping all of the “sin of empathy” heresy.
As depicted in the gospels, when Jesus was asked what the most important part of the law was our Lord And Savior literally said “love.”.
- Comment on Delusions of a Protocol 3 weeks ago:
There is a bunch of normalized transphobia in America. That certain views are shared by elected politicians doesn’t make them not transphobic.
“Trans allies aren’t even bothering to debate this white guy, they’re just calling him names” isn’t proof of anything more than the frustration of said allies. It’s essentially the same thing as “Trump derangement syndrome”.
If we want to argue that someone is or isn’t transphobic, it would be a better use of everyone’s time to focus on what they actually said and what justifications their critics give for applying that label.
- Comment on Politics in America has always been dirty. How does trump really stack up? 4 weeks ago:
If the Pope was in charge health care would be single-payer, abortion would be emergency-only, and both gay marriage and capital punishment would be illegal.
I wish I had the faith in human competency that conspiracy theorists demonstrate, but I think the truth is that humans are far stupider than that.
- Comment on Should my character be 21-23? 4 weeks ago:
Character age is a slippery, weird thing that’s best to avoid if at all possible.
Take this summer’s Superman as a great counter-example. If it’s set in 2025, and the opening crawl is to be trusted, Clark came to earth in 1995 and started superheroing in 2022. He would have been in preschool when 9/11 happened, in high school for the Sandy Hook massacre, and presumably studying in the fortress of solitude during COVID lockdowns…All of which would have distracted from the story.
In contrast, look at Peter Parker and the Fantastic Four. How much older than Sue is Reed? What year of high school did Spider Man get bit? Heck who’s older – Sue, Johnny, or Peter? None of these are answered in the MCU or consistently in comics, and nobody cares. (And let’s not even contemplate the X-Men or Batman and his Robins…)
So, yeah, a 21 year old superhero dating 30-somethings is fine. But you don’t really need to do more than establish that your character is at least 18/21 to lampshade away any squick from your readers.
TL;DR : Yeah, the age is fine. But you can skip mentioning it at all as a genre staple and nobody will care.
- Comment on Religious texts contributed to the em-dashes that chatbots use. 5 weeks ago:
While you’re largely right, it is worth noting that each translation is a distinct work under copyright law, and any translation made after 1929 may be still protected.
And that ignores really young religions, and the copyright status of high-authority extant religions such as Iranian Islam, Mormon and Roman Catholic Christianity, Ron Hubbard’s Scientology or state-atheist communism.
(Whether or not Hubbard, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao count as “religious leaders” is a distinction without a difference in discussion of the copyright status of their works.)
- Comment on What if this is a coma dream. 1 month ago:
Whether or not you’re “really” a real person, or a brain in a jar, or a butterfly dreaming you’re Zhuangzi, you and me and everyone else are still “people” we should respect.
Wrestling with the unfalsifiable nature of reality is something all thought traditions have dealt with, and I’d argue that you’re not really an adult in 2025 if you haven’t contemplated that all you know could be a hallucination.
The screwier question always becomes “if this is a dream , what if you’re not the dreamer?”
- Comment on A real question about trans athletes and records 2 months ago:
No, we absolutely should not mark the records of known transgender athletes in any way. Because once you start down that road you wind up asterisking cisgender athletes whose development is outside the norm.
We could get into a long discussion of transgender persons who do or do not undergo HRT, or how there are already rules against transgender women competing professionally if they aren’t on HRT, or whether or not such rules or gendered sports at all are justifiable.
But all of that is just a distraction. The elite in any competitive sport are ALREADY several orders of magnitude beyond the norm, to the point where any advantage a trans woman might have for going through male puberty is essentially a wash with “are you just naturally well-formed for this sport”.
It’s worth noting, by the way, that there ISNT broadly an athletic benefit to having gone through wrong-gender puberty before medically transitioning. Plenty of athletes have done exactly that, and as far as I know exactly none of them wound up being relatively better among their true gender peers post-HRT than their standing among birth-gendeR peers pre-HRT.
And there have been more instances of cisgender women being wrongly accused of being trans than there are transgender women athletes at all.
- Comment on What is with the obsession with gender neutral language on relationship topics ? 4 months ago:
If you’re dealing with relationship advice, the differences from one person to another are substantially greater than those which separate men and women. Even if we ignore transgender and same-gender relationships, or how a huge portion of western society’s gender differences are just toxic sexism.
“How can I (M) suggest $FETISH to partner (F)” is essentially the same question if you swap the genders, make them both F, or make them both M. And to the extent that they aren’t, many of the answers and clarifying questions will be.
- Comment on YSK: Non-violent protests are 2x likely to succeed and no non-violent movement that has involved more than 3.5% of the country population has ever failed 4 months ago:
Who I am and who did the study should be irrelevant. An idea should stand on its own or not.
Or do you really want to be the sort of person who dismissed Einstein as “Jewish science” or who told the Wright brothers that heavier than air flight is impossible? (Or, worse, the sort of person who pays for a scam “bomb sniffer” after a terrorist attack, or assumes Donald must be smart because he’s rich?)
It’s perfectly fine to answer a question with “I don’t know,” especially when your other option is “no, the emperor must have clothes on.”
- Comment on YSK: Non-violent protests are 2x likely to succeed and no non-violent movement that has involved more than 3.5% of the country population has ever failed 4 months ago:
Since you read it, and don’t reference them addressing the fact pattern I mentioned, I’m not sure reading it would be worth my time. I’d love to be convinced, however, if you can answer one question.
How did she categorize a movement as “non-violent” or not?
- Comment on YSK: Non-violent protests are 2x likely to succeed and no non-violent movement that has involved more than 3.5% of the country population has ever failed 4 months ago:
It shouldn’t be. Asserting that “no non-violent protests have failed” ignores an obvious null hypothesis.
Tyrannical regimes attack non-violent protests that get large enough, and then call said movements “violent” to justify what the state did to them.
- Comment on The answer to the The Problem of Evil could just be that "god" has a totally different definition of evil. 5 months ago:
There are no such things as unreconcilable contradictions.