Jack
@Jack@lemmy.ca
- Comment on send thoughts and peer review 2 days ago:
True, and the scientific method and results have made wars more intensely deadly; but science doesn’t claim if you say some magic words you can have absolutely anything you want. The scientific method is by far the best way we’ve found that lets us figure out what is real and what is nonsense - no other method comes anywhere close to it.
- Comment on send thoughts and peer review 2 days ago:
I’ve twice asked Christians to pray in Jesus’ name asking for the immediate and permanent end to torture, rape, murder, and war. They prayed, and when I next met them they were still Christians despite none of those things ending.
I think religious people are dishonest and/or unable to differentiate between reality and fairytales.
Matthew 7:7-11
7 Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. 9 Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 So if you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! - Comment on Why are public school teachers so underpaid in the US? 3 days ago:
I’m not convinced that voting for genocide and mass extinction is OK, and I’ve looked at arguments in favor of them like the lesser-evil. I may be too stupid to understand the arguments in favor of them, but I don’t think I’m being a perfectionist because I actually disagree with many things in Green and socialist platforms - but they’re not things that cross the line for me.
- Comment on Why are public school teachers so underpaid in the US? 3 days ago:
There are some people who might not want more genocide, a climate cascade causing a mass extinction event, a psychotic economic system, a food system torturing 2-6 trillion animals to death a year and enslaving 2-4 trillion animals in torturous conditions a year, unsustainable pollution, biosphere degradation…
They might instead want to help in the long fight towards an ethical civilization instead. It may be a long defeat, but for those who won’t cross the ethical lines listed above, doing the right thing (even if they lose) is better than being culpable in actively supporting those who are making the system more evil. The difference between +9+9 and +7+6 is real, but for some the ethical lines they won’t cross is below +7+6.
If Stalin is the lesser-evil compared to the greater-evil Hitler, then there’s still the option to vote for unpopular Gandhi and maybe start the process where people realize they don’t have to be culpable in actively supporting Stalin.
- Comment on Why are public school teachers so underpaid in the US? 3 days ago:
If people want to follow Douglas’ example of supporting the lesser evil, they can - as about a third do. But I’m mostly not writing for them, because they don’t care enough that their actions are actively helping and giving legitimacy to genocide, a climate cascade causing a mass extinction event, a psychotic economic system, a food system torturing 2-6 trillion animals to death a year and enslaving 2-4 trillion animals in torturous conditions a year, unsustainable pollution, biosphere degradation… They don’t care enough that by voting for the lesser evil, they’re actively culpable of the system getting more evil after every election.
Instead, for the plurality that don’t vote at all, I’m pointing out there are other options: like voting for ethical people instead, and starting the long fight towards an ethical civilization. It may be a long defeat, but for those who won’t cross the ethical lines listed above, doing the right thing (even if you lose) is better than actively supporting those who are making the system more evil. The difference between +9+9 and +7+6 is real, but for some the ethical lines they won’t cross is between +7+6 and -5-3.
- Comment on Why are public school teachers so underpaid in the US? 5 days ago:
From your point-of-view, the Democrats winning is good, and the Republicans winning is bad. You might see them on a left-right scale of 0-10, where 0 is good, the Ds are at 3, the Rs at 9, and Hitler at 10.
Some other people see a bigger window than that: look at www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020 and compare how these people see the distance between Trump +9+9 and Biden 7+6 compared to the distance between Trump +9+9 and Hawkins -5-3. These people agree that the Rs are worse than the Ds, but they don’t want to help the Ds win because the Ds are a mass-extinction causing capitalists. To convince these people to vote for the Ds instead of Greens/socialists/not-voting at all, you have to convince them that the Ds actions of:
*making anthropogenic climate change worse and so causing a mass extinction, *helping genocides, and *propping up an economic system that rewards narcissistic psychopaths and punishes ethical people;
are good, and worth voting for.
- Comment on Why are public school teachers so underpaid in the US? 5 days ago:
The Democrats are not Left wing. They’re left of the Republicans, and less authoritarian, but they’re a right-wing party who crippled banking regulation in favor of oligarchy, bailed out the worst banks, lied about drilling for oil[1] and causing a mass extinction event, and supported Israel even after they went from defending themselves to committing genocide.
The goal for ethical people is not to get the Democrats to win, but instead to elect ethical people to government. e.g Hawkins and Nader.
It’s possible, even in FPTP voting systems, for people to reject the 2 parties that usually wins - see the UK where the Tories or Labour have been the only 2 winning parties for more than 90 years (including 2 short coalition governments); but where polling shows the 5th party (the horrible Reform) and 8th party (Greens) are now leading.
“It is infinitely better to vote for freedom and fail than to vote for slavery and succeed.” - Eugene V. Debs, Appeal to Reason, 1900-10-13
“Wage-labor is but a name; wage-slavery is the fact.” - Eugene V. Debs, The Socialist Party and the Working Class 1904-09-01
[1] washingtonpost.com/…/biden-oil-drilling-productio… As he campaigned for president in 2020, Joe Biden made a bold promise at a New Hampshire town hall, adding repetition for emphasis: “No more drilling on federal lands. Period. Period. Period. Period.” […] The Biden administration has now outpaced the Trump administration in approving permits for drilling on public lands, and the United States is producing more oil than any country ever has.
- Comment on Why are public school teachers so underpaid in the US? 6 days ago:
Maybe because 98.1% keep voting for either evil or the lesser evil; but almost none of them vote for the good like Nader?
“Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don’t fall out of the sky. They don’t pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses, and American universities - and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It’s what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, […] you’re going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain’t going to do any good; you’re just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it’s not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here… like, the public.” – George Carlin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBrbXOmnW70
“It is infinitely better to vote for freedom and fail than to vote for slavery and succeed.” - Eugene V. Debs, Appeal to Reason, 1900-10-13
“Wage-labor is but a name; wage-slavery is the fact.” - Eugene V. Debs, The Socialist Party and the Working Class 1904-09-01
- Comment on Wikipedia in read-only mode following mass admin account compromise 1 week ago:
To prevent the script from spreading further, all Wikimedia projects were set to read-only for about 2 hours, and all user JavaScript was temporarily disabled.
The NoScript extension in Firefox makes the web so much nicer. It turns out sites that don’t require JavaScript tend to made by vastly better humans than sites that do. More so for sites that require cross-site scripting and cookies to just show text.
Can’t search on google.com without allowing JavaScript, but it turns out Lite.DuckDuckGo does, and for me at least gives vastly better search results.
Wikipedia can be read and edited without allowing JavaScript, and I personally don’t like the crap that the scripts provide. It’s also usable without cookies, tho the idiotic UI options column on the right is a hassle without cookies.
- Comment on YSK you can add a noAI version of DuckDuckGo to Firefox 1 month ago:
Isn’t it better to put “q=%s” in Advanced, POST; instead of GETting it by having “?q=%s” in the URL?
- Comment on Windows 11 to add an AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders, warns of security risk 3 months ago:
there’s no Linux client that supports lossless
Do you mean ALAC files? I downloaded a sample at getsamplefiles.com/sample-audio-files/alac and played it in VLC under Linux. There are several players that can play libavcodec FFmpeg.
- Comment on YSK that apart from not having a car, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat 8 months ago:
Tonnes of CO2e, averages:
1.60 a roundtrip transatlantic flight 2.40 one year car use 58.60 one year for every child you have
- Comment on YSK that apart from not having a car, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat 8 months ago:
- Comment on The Los Angeles Police Department shot an Australian reporter with a rubber bullet while she was live on TV. Zero provocation. 9 months ago:
I think the provocation was her reporting facts. Can’t have that when most voters have chosen Trump.
- Comment on [deleted] 9 months ago:
Scientists didn’t become pickier - they just later found that Pluto was in a belt of thousands of massive object (called the Kuiper belt), like the asteroid belt but much bigger.
When Ceres was discovered in 1801, it was thought to be a comet, later a planet, but after discovering it was one of many asteroids in the asteroid belt (which it wasn’t big enough to clear), they realized it wasn’t a planet.
When Pluto was first discovered in 1930, it was in a similar situation as Ceres and thought of as a planet, but when other Kuiper belt objects started to be discovered by 1992, they realized Pluto also wasn’t a planet.
- Comment on Worshippers killed in India stampede at world's largest religious festival 1 year ago:
Kumbh Mela deaths:
- 1820 = 430 deaths, 1000+ injured
- 1840 = 50+ deaths, 100+ injured
- 1906 = 50+ deaths, 100+ injured
- 1954 = 800-1000 deaths
- 1986 = 200+ deaths
- 2003 = 39+ deaths, 100+ injured
- 2010 = 7 deaths, 17 injured
- 2013 = 42 deaths, 45 injured
indiatoday.in/…/maha-kumbh-mela-stampede-up-praya… en.wikipedia.org/…/List_of_human_stampedes_in_Hin…