AbouBenAdhem

@AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does each country have a book/library of the laws of the land that a commoner can consult to check if they're about to do something illegal?⁩ ⁨⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  From the article on Public.Resource.Org:

  Malamud called for increased awareness that Westlaw was a commercial broker of the United States Federal Reporter, Federal Supplement, and Federal Appendix. While Westlaw had been adding value to the content by indexing it with their proprietary West American Digest System and accompanying summaries, the purchase of their products was the only way to access much of the public domain material they hosted.

• I wonder what humans do when they’re not taking showers. And where does all this water come from? And how did I become sentient?
  Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ to ⁨showerthoughts@lemmy.world⁩ | ⁨9⁩ ⁨comments⁩
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are there so many Christmas songs, yet hardly any New Year's ones?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  New Year’s is celebrated by everyone

  More so than Christmas, perhaps—but you still have people with different calendars (Chinese, Jewish, Muslim, etc.).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a word or (concise) phrase to describe the paradox of sharing something (like a website) that you don't like, but because you're sharing it you're tacitly helping it?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  “Feeding the trolls?”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does everyone put celery in soup stock?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Water Chestnuts are a fantastic substitute if you like the crunch.

  My opinion of celery vs water chestnuts is apparently the exact reverse of yours.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This long-term data storage will last 14 billion years⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  @remindme@mstdn.social 14,000,000,000 years

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are all dinosaur fossils 'replicas'?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  In the sense that the original organic material has been replaced by minerals? I guess that’s a version of the old Ship of Theseus question.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don't compasses have just two Cardinal directions (North, East, -North, -East)?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  We could use one, and assume we’re operating in the field of complex numbers:

  North
  i North
  -North
  i^3^ North.

  And we could use the complex modulus to indicate distance… or we could map the Riemann sphere onto the surface of the earth and use a single complex number to indicate location.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Theoretical Physics with Generative AI⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s like the Sokal affair in reverse.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How come there is not a pope without grey hair? I mean a much younger pope like 30s 40s. Really can't be that hard. You got an ocean of cardinals and priests who pretty much tell say?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Many of the people electing the pope have hopes of becoming pope one day themselves, so they elect someone they expect to outlive.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Assuming humanity last another few hundred years; How many human languages do you think are gonna be left in 100 years? In 200 years?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Once we get good, universal real-time translation, we might start to see a new proliferation of local languages. And of small groups inventing their own cryptolects for privacy, trying to evolve them faster than AI can keep up.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a word for when someone is not capable of, or doesn't try to understand verbal communication in a language, they are fluent in similar to functionally illiterate but for speech?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Aphasia or aphrasia?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why did Montreal need to prove that it's a real place? What happened to the people who called it Montimaginary⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Montreal is just the real subspace of Montcomplex.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I wonder what the Hapsburgs would have thought about pugs⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Probably the same way Putin feels about Dobby.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It can be harder to surveil private conversations if everyone just used sign language.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sign language isn’t just another way of expressing English that can be picked up like learning a different alphabet or a secret code. It’s a full language with its own complete vocabulary, syntax, inflectional system, etc. that takes as long to learn as any other spoken language.

  It would be great if more people knew it for the sake of communicating with the deaf, but as a means of foiling surveillance, there are many other approaches that would be more effective for less time investment.

• Maybe "CAESAR STABBED IN BACK BY BRUTUS AND CASSIUS" was just a metaphorical clickbait headline, and the actual event was a minor policy dispute instead of a literal assassination.
  Submitted ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ to ⁨showerthoughts@lemmy.world⁩ | ⁨10⁩ ⁨comments⁩
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is it called "overseas" even if a dispora population move to a place connected by land?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Before trains, sea travel was the standard way to travel long distances even if a land route was available. Sea voyages came to represent any destination that was far enough away that communities wouldn’t be in continuous contact.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Maybe there was a cure for human cancer, but it didn't work at all in mice.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Assuming that

  • human phenotypic traits that correlate more closely with mouse traits have more-predictable outcomes with mouse-tested medicine, and

  • more-predictable medical outcomes correlate with higher survival and reproductive rates,

  can’t you plug that straight into the Price equation?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Maybe there was a cure for human cancer, but it didn't work at all in mice.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  In the long run, using mice for medical testing will result in selection pressure for humans whose physiology more and more closely resembles that of mice.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is re-visiting a place of trauma a good idea? Have anyone done it?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t have any direct experience with that—but I’d say if you’re going to do it, do it with some friends and try to create some positive new experiences to overwrite the traumatic ones.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Poetry is like a set of compression tools for meaning⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d say devices like metaphor and synecdoche are compression tools for meaning, and devices like rhyme and meter are checksums for error correction.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What exactly is the reasoning behind Satan ruling Hell?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah—Milton’s Paradise Lost seems closer to the modern conception.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A hotdog should be the opposite of a cool cat, but it's not.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s like a double negative: a cool dog is the opposite of a hot dog, but a cool cat is the opposite of a cool dog, so you end up back where you started.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Would it be correct to say that enshittification is the physical manifestation of the economic ai bubble bursting?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I think that’s reversing cause and effect: the AI bubble is the result of the preexisting corporate practice of enshitification getting a new toy to play with.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When kids come trick-or-treating, what happens if I choose trick?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Immediate civilizational collapse.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨From what I've seen, public transit is either expensive and terrible or cheap and good.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah—ideally, fares only need to cover the marginal/fluctuating costs, not the fixed cost of the whole system.

  For private transportation, fares need to pay for both, and generate a profit on top of that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨From what I've seen, public transit is either expensive and terrible or cheap and good.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Being good and being cheap are both indications that public transit is being properly funded. When funding is short, they have to raise fares and cut services.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Would one run faster without arms?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Additional weight makes it harder to accelerate, but once you’re up to a steady speed it doesn’t make so much difference.

  On the other hand, using your arms as counterweights makes it possible to transfer more force from your foot to the ground with each step.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do I need a domain to access my Funkwhale library but not SyncThing?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Syncthing uses a centralized discovery server to connect device IDs to IP addresses (although you can change this to point to your own discovery server, too).

  I don’t know if Funkwale has a similar option.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scientists Say We May Have Been Wrong About the Origin of Life⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The paper and the phys.org article are a year old—any guess why Popular Mechanics is reporting on it now?