wolframhydroxide
@wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on It's a mysteria 6 days ago:
I am confused. You are not the OP?
- Comment on Plex now will SELL your personal data 1 week ago:
Perhaps. The issue I perceive is that, for corporations, evil deeds are only illegal if you get caught and the government actually pursues you. Then, the most the corpos face is a fine, and remember: if the penalty for doing something illegal is a flat fine, then it isn’t a punishment, it’s a price.
Thus, this corporation has indicated its clear intent to sell me to the highest bidder. I would not give them a chance to do so. A “do not agree” button is just that: a “do not agree button”.
- Comment on On trees... 1 week ago:
AH, I see. So, it already existed, but until trees evolved, it wasn’t used to such an extreme extent.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
Right, and they need to know what the process is, because the ACTUAL interview is at the BEGINNING, without the machine, like I SAID. That is the part that they need to focus on.
- Comment on respect dandelions! 1 week ago:
No, they are saying that they would be interested to see the archeological evidence that backs up the oral tradition, because oral tradition is a great way to start your research, but is insufficient as evidence for a scientific claim. Just like how I can say that there’s oral tradition that St. Brendan landed in america in the 6th century. However, since there’s fuck all to support it, that’s not a very convincing claim, but it sure would be interesting if someone discovered archeological evidence for it. The Icelanders claimed to have landed in america for hundreds of years with oral tradition, and few believed them because there was fuck all to support the claim. Then, all of a sudden, they find remnants of viking settlements in Canada, and now its very interesting.
You specifically cited DNA evidence. Then, when someone asked about it, you immediately accused them of European exceptionalism in a ridiculous strawman. So, either your claim can be very interesting, or I can treat it with the same amount of credibility as St. Brendan over there in his leather raft.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
Did you actually read my comment? Again, I am not saying that it works, but that it doesn’t MATTER whether it works, because they are going to do the polygraph anyway, and this person needs to know the actual procedure, not useless navel-gazing about how, surprising nobody, the US government uses ridiculous tests, spends obscene amounts of time and money, and all of it amounts to a fucking vibe check.
YES, it’s WORTHLESS, but that isn’t going stop the fucking fascist across the table from you from judging you by it, and arguing over it is PRECISELY as worthless as the test itself.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
Okay, literally none of these are the ACTUAL answer to the question, and if you’re in the US in a position to take a polygraph, I want you to succeed. These people saying that it doesn’t work DO NOT MATTER, because you’re going to be taking it either way. So, as someone who has actually TAKEN a polygraph with the CIA for a TS Clearance, allow me to tell you the actual answer:
Before the polygraph is hooked up, you will spend as much time as you need going through every question you will be asked. You have the opportunity to bring up concerns with question ambiguity then. They will work with you to make sure that you feel comfortable answering any question they ask with a straight “yes” or “no”. I don’t remember what the specific wording was when they asked me that question, and it would technically be illegal for me to tell you anyway. I hope that this is more helpful to you than “hurr-durr, it doesn’t work”.
- Comment on science never ends 1 week ago:
I mean, how technical do you want to get, because gravity isn’t a real force, assuming Einstein is to be believed.
- Comment on science never ends 1 week ago:
To be fair, Newton was suggesting the feasibility of using chemical propellants to create stable orbits in space as far back as the 1600s with his cannonball example.
- Comment on science never ends 1 week ago:
An honest and sincere question deserves an honest and sincere answer:
Gatekeeping: Simply suggesting that others need to read more, or that they need to “look into” one of the largest and most controversial philosophical topics in history is a haughty and disdainful way of saying “I’m right, I’m not going to cite my sources, and anyone who disagrees with me must carry the burden of proof”. Don’t leave the justification for your argument as an “exercise for the reader” involving the entire canon of published thought, since that insinuates that they are simply too uneducated to understand how correct you are. THAT is gatekeeping knowledge.
I didn’t say maths was from Europe: Not directly, but you supported your argument for the statement “[The scientific] method is predicated on European Enlightenment avowals of what constitutes an acceptable boundary of truth… [etc.]” with nothing but the statements “2+2 does equal 4. That doesn’t mean valuing 4 as an answer or valuing the act of valuing of the certainty of 2+2=4 is an objective position.” As exemplary evidence. You are, quite literally, stating that the “valuing” of 4 as an answer to 2+2 is a question of science (otherwise it’s a non-sequitur), and that this is an example of how the scientific method privileges European Enlightenment ideals over others. That is saying that the precepts of mathematics are based on European enlightenment ideals, Q.E.D.
“Where’s the disdain”: I believe that a reasonable person would read this argument and conclude that the disdain is implied, given that you clearly seem to be complaining that the European enlightenment ideals have somehow “privileged” certain perspectives. Now, I happen to agree with that statement, but clearly in a very different way than you do:
It seems to me that, until the likes of Karl Popper’s contribution of the principle of falsifiability as the chief hallmark of scientific practice, the entrenched belief in strict empiricism was being privileged as a hallmark of European Enlightenment traditionalism. Perhaps another will come along soon who similarly unseats Popper. To claim, however, that the scientific method itself is somehow predicated on enlightenment ideals appears, to me, to miss the entire point of this original post: that science changes, just as much as how we do science. Most of the principles of the scientific method have been around for more than a thousand years. The idea of a strict “scientific method” is as much an illusion as the entirety of reality may be, but that’s just because we are always developing new ways of knowing.
- Comment on science never ends 1 week ago:
Um, actually, the scientific method as it is currently formulated is best traced back to Ibn Al-Haytham, with elements dating back throughout thousands of years, from the rationalism of Thales to the experimentalism of 墨子. Babylonians were using mathematical prediction algorithms to accurately state the date of the next solar eclipse in 600 BCE. It seems like YOU need to read up on the history of the philosophy of science, and of you claim that 2+2=4 is an “enlightenment” idea, I cannot hope to respond with a level of disdain sufficient to encapsulate your willfully-pompous idiocy.
You say that 2+2 DOES equal 4, and then make claims which suggest that it doesn’t. Certainly, 2+2 can only be said to equal 4 because of the axioms of mathematics, which are, of course, purely postulates, since Cartesian solipsism demonstrates that we cannot truly know anything to be true except that we ourselves exist (oh, but wait, your disdain for enlightenment philosophy clearly removes this, the best refuge for your argument!)
However, to accept as a matter of course that 2+2=4 and then suggest that it is only through subjective perception that we privilege 4 over any other number in that equality is not only a clear argument in bad faith, meant only to make others feel stupid, but is also patently ridiculous, since you are reneging on your own given precept.
So, if you’re planning on gatekeeping knowledge,
- Do better than "2+2=4, but also 2+2=5 because eurocentrism bad"
- Fuck. Right. Off.
- Comment on On trees... 1 week ago:
I was under the impression that lignin was what really made trees possible, and that seems like an odd chemical for a bunch of unrelated plants to all evolve. Is there something I’m missing?
- Comment on I'd choose 4 tbh 1 week ago:
1 is the monkey’s paw answer and a trap. Fat is necessary for survival. Fats literally make up the outside of every cell in your body.
2 is still dangerous, because it might just be tapeworm eggs.
Is 3 just a servant who shops for you? Or is it just that you are no longer addicted to compulsive shopping?
4 Will cause you the most agonizing pain of your life as virtually every body and muscle gets ripped apart and re-knit, and as someone who’s 6’4, it has its upsides, but having literally everything made for people shorter than you REALLY sucks, from doorways and light fixtures, even to rollercoasters which nearly remove your legs because of awful design (or just won’t close over your shoulders)
5 is nice. Go with 5. It’ll be painful, but potentially worth it in a pinch, as long as it also grants you control of that strength.
6 is another trap, since small amounts of stress are actually really important, and in order to be constantly happy, your brain would lose the ability to feel it unless it continually increased the dopamine drip. Eventually, you would kill for the ability to stop.
7 I mean, sure, if that’s what you want. Would be nice to know what kind of followers? Are they going to be religious and try to pull a Life of Brian on you?
8 is the worst, because you have no control over the extent of the memory wipe. This is existentially terrifying
9 is the safest, but then you go and read that post about why winning the lottery means you’re fucked.
- Comment on Valve CEO Gabe Newell’s Neuralink competitor is expecting its first brain chip this year 1 week ago:
That’s… Not a very promising roadmap…
- Comment on Unholy curses 1 week ago:
Well, ethanol was, literally, called the “Water of Life”
- Comment on Catchiest video game song? 2 weeks ago:
My time has come. As someone who almost exclusively listens to instrumental soundtrack from movies and games, including from games I have never played, these are the ones that most often get stuck in my head (in no particular order). A plus “+” indicates a song that got stuck in my head regularly before I ever played the game, while an asterisk “*” indicates a song that still gets stuck in my head, despite being from a game I have never played at all.
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Baba Yetu - Civ IV (+)
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Hyrule Castle - Breath Of The Wild (+)
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Lorule Castle - Link Between Worlds (*)
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One Final Effort - Halo 3 (*)
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Golem King - Moonlighter
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Song of the Ancients - Nier Series (*)
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Dragonborn - Skyrim
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Far Horizons - Skyrim (+)
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Dragon Roost Island - Wind Waker (*)
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Nate’s Theme - Uncharted (*)
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Gusty Garden Galaxy - Super Mario Galaxy (*)
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Korobeiniki - Tetris (+)
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Gerudo Valley - Ocarina of Time (+)
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Colgera Battle - Tears of the Kingdom
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This Song - The Witcher 3 (It’s the song Aen Seidhe, but without vocals)
But finally, the song that I credit with making me obsessed with instrumental soundtrack, because I fell asleep with it playing on repeat for a whole night at the age of 5, and then lost the game cartridge, so I forgot what it was from, and which I would get stuck in my head roughly once a month throughout my entire childhood until I finally found it THIRTEEN YEARS LATER, :
Ω) Town Theme - Final Fantasy II
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- Comment on No we can talk here 2 weeks ago:
Yes, monster myths have always held the function of moral lessons for the many cultures that birthed them. The Wendigo is a moral metaphor for the taboo against eating human flesh, and the necessity of working together through harsh winters. The Vampire is a moral warning against demanding excess in all things carnal, monetary, and gluttonous, and for this reason it resonated with Victorian england. The zombie, however, was originally just someone who had been drugged into submission. The modern zombie does, however, make an excellent metaphor for herd mentality and over-consumption. We change our monsters (or make new ones) to fit the social mores and taboos of the culture of the time. There is a reason that many examples of “The Monster” in literature focus not on the actual villainy of the Monster, but on the villainy of the other humans in the story. Monsters are a mirror, held up to the face of the reader, demanding that we stare at the worst parts of what it is to be human.
- Comment on "You can't just have Geralt for every single game" says his voice actor, and if you think The Witcher 4 making Ciri the protagonist is "woke," then "read the damn books" 2 weeks ago:
Yeah, there were a couple of tiny decisions, any of which failed you out if you got them wrong, and several of them had deceptive descriptions during the QTE.
- Comment on "You can't just have Geralt for every single game" says his voice actor, and if you think The Witcher 4 making Ciri the protagonist is "woke," then "read the damn books" 2 weeks ago:
I was under the impression that it wasn’t Victorian London, but The Plague Year. IIRC she, canonically, brings a blanket infested with plague lice from here to there, and ends up dropping it next to the ship Catriona, which is how the Catriona plague actually gets started.
- Comment on New Game Concept: JuryNow – Get a Verdict from 12 Real People in 3 Minutes 2 weeks ago:
I think that the thing that let them down was that they didn’t actually get to participate in any discussion or consensus a building. I think that the ideal scenario to solve this issue is a quick chatroom amongst simultaneous players, in which topics for discussion are briefly discussed for a few minutes, then voted on, like a real jury. It could include deliberation, but the question writer would only see the verdict. I will tell you that I would personally play this if it followed this method:
Make it fewer players per question (like 5 or 7), so that it doesn’t take an hour. Each submits a question. Make it so that, while your question is being considered, you are in another jury room deliberating on another question. Make deliberations timed (say, 3-5 minutes per question), so that no one is in a lobby waiting to serve on a jury for too long. Then, after serving on a number of juries equal to the number of jurors (5-7), they can view their verdict. This would allow for the deliberation these people are suggesting.
- Comment on The four horsemen of the apocalypse 2 weeks ago:
Well, we need to wait a few years to see if H. cephalosepses individuals are capable of producing viable offspring with H. sapiens, since that would indicate that Cephalosepses is actually a subspecies of H. sapiens, just like H. sapiens boomerensis
- Comment on The four horsemen of the apocalypse 2 weeks ago:
The person to whom you were responding was trying to make this artifact of the Before-Times relatable to modern Homo Cephalosepses, which cannot comprehend anything from outside its natural environment of TikTok. Unfortunately, speciation has not yet led to a visible difference between the two extant species of the genus Homo, and behavioral differences are currently the only way to differentiate this new species from H. Sapiens, so this person was trying to bridge the divide, in case the original commenter was on the other side of the species divide.
- Comment on What's the worst spelling you've seen? 3 weeks ago:
I would argue that at least 15% of the blame lies with the racist expectation in the US that all names need be anglicized, when we have fucking Unicode. If someone whose second language is English can be expected to be able to pronounce “Rayleigh Monaghan McTavish”, then the least that the anglophone people of the US could do is learn to pronounce things in a few other common languages. There is, quite simply, no excuse for the government of the united States, in which there is no official language (even though a traitor, invalidated by the insurrection clause of the 14th amendment, had some fuckwit draft a document trying to declare it without congressional approval).
- Comment on What's the worst spelling you've seen? 3 weeks ago:
I would like to provide a counterexample. There are plenty of these people in the US intermountain west, but there are at least some cases where there is no one at fault. Next time you see one of these names without context, before judging, consider Nariaw:
I am a teacher, and one year I found that my roster included a student named “Nariaw”. As a public school, we register your student based on what’s on the birth certificate. I ask all of my students to pronounce their names for me when I first meet them, for the reason we see in the OP and with shit like “abcde”. However, when this came to my class, she said her name was pronounced “Miriam”. I spent a good twenty seconds looking at my roster, and had to ask her to spell it for me. I didn’t ask any rude and impertinent questions at that point, so it wasn’t until a few months later that I got the full story: her mother, an immigrant from Ethiopia, was still unfamiliar with Latin script when her daughter was born here in the US. So when she attempted to write out the name, which she wanted to transliterate as “Mariam”, she ended up writing only half of the first M, and wrote the second one upside-down. Whoever did the data entry for the government records dutifully recorded the child’s name as “Nariaw”. Was the mother at fault for being expected to write a name which, while she knew how to represent it in Amharic, she was forced to write in a language in which she was illiterate?
- Comment on Tesla Reportedly Has $800 Million Worth of Cybertrucks That Nobody Wants 3 weeks ago:
I can, explicitly and unequivocally, state that I derive intense joy from having the privilege of seeing this.
- Comment on Anyone? 4 weeks ago:
You can always trust @SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world to chime in with the wholesome memes.
- Comment on Liquid Trees 5 weeks ago:
Gray shit everywhere, concrete fucking everywhere, looming threat of 2-ton steel death machines caving in your head, overheating everywhere, asphalt plowing through everything, soaking up the sun at every step, tough lessons in momentum for kids crossing them, lot of traffic and pollution when there are drivers out.
You could change half of your words, and keep the meaning the same, and make a compelling case that roads, or any other things, are humanity’s greatest scourge.
Go touch whatever remaining local flora people like you have allowed to continue to exist, and quit being an imbecilic bellend online.
- Comment on xkcd #3084: Unstoppable Force and Immovable Object 5 weeks ago:
Not relative to the sun, relative to momentum. Changes in the magnitude or direction of velocity are objective, not relative. These translate to real changes in momentum, from any reference frame. A real change in momentum is imparted upon the Earth equal to your momentum at the moment your contact with the Earth ceases.
- Comment on Cookie cookie cookie 5 weeks ago:
We do get cracks. They’re the divergent plate boundaries. Water and ice just flow on time scales far too dissimilar to make an appropriate rate model at the cracks.
- Comment on What would this list look like for your generation? 5 weeks ago:
As a teacher, I cannot tell you how much this changed my life. I just spew their random shit right at them, totally straight-faced, with a painful degree of enunciation. They do not say those words again in my presence. Their cringe feeds me. I also find it helpful to try to get them to define each term, in excruciating detail, then I destroy the word for them.