SwingingTheLamp @ SwingingTheLamp @midwest.social

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Joined

2 yr. ago

Honestly, I feel like too many people have a cognitive bias from living in a time of unparalleled technological advancement. We've gone from, e.g. mechanical chronometers to calculate longitude on wooden vessels propelled by the wind to GPS-guided international flights in a historical blink of an eye. The pace of technological change even in living memory has been immense.

Not knowing how any of it works, it's easy to think of it akin to magic, and to extrapolate from "18th century humans -> 21st century humans" to "21st century humans -> alien technology". The catch is that this technological surge has come about because we've figured out how the physical universe works, not in spite of missing out on big chunks of potential knowledge.

All of our technology has plumbed the depths of our physical, scientific knowledge. The same physical knowledge that allows us to do wonders also shows us the limits, and provides the definitive answers as to why there's not "alien technology" out there that would seem like magic to us.

Put another way, it would be really bonkers if the scientific knowledge that has enabled us to do so many practical things, like create tiny devices like the one I'm using to tap out a message, was somehow totally wrong.

There was a Republican chode here in Wisconsin who voted twice to prove that people could vote twice. (The clerks caught his double vote, and he got prosecuted.)

As Bill Burr said about the difficulty of raising kids vs. pets, you can compare anything. I could compare frisbees to Bundt cakes. They're both round, but one has a hole in the center. See? I compared them.

So if I compare a genocidal, xenophobic ethno-state to a genocidal, xenophobic, theocratic ethno-state, well, that doesn't mean they're the same thing.

Indeed. Notice, too, that the concerns about Biden's cognitive abilities have instantly stopped? He's still the President, and still in charge of the nukes. But no more news stories.

Meanwhile, the other guy has recently developed a habit of swearing at rallies, and there are a few articles about his wife asking him to knock it off, but nothing pointing out that a sudden increase in swearing is a symptom of dementia. At a town hall in La Crosse, WI the other day, he didn't know why he was there at first. Still radio silence from the news media.

Funny, isn't it?

Ixonia, Wisconsin solved that problem by just drawing random letters from a hat until they came up with something pronounceable: Ixonia.

But I'm always amused by the street Oxford Place near my house. It's a street named after a university, named after a city, named after a shallow spot where cattle could cross the river.

Cairo in Illinois, pronounced KAY-row.

Have they been hunting Palestinian people across the globe? That'd make the Israeli regime worse than the Nazis, which is a bold claim. I think that, like the Nazis, they just want their targets removed from the land they claim as their own. They just happen to be fine with genocide to achieve that goal.

Our society really needs to lower the barrier to entry for this stuff, but I have no idea how you'd go about that.

I know. At least in the US. It sounds wonky, but think it through: Cars and zoning law. Between the two of those things, there are fewer and fewer third places. There's nowhere to go to just be around other people. First (home) and second (edit: work) are incredibly isolated, too. You get in the car and pull out of the garage, and interact with nobody until you pull in to the lot at work. At best, you interact briefly with fast food workers for a few seconds at the drive-thru window. There's no "local," no stores, no restaurants, no cafés in the neighborhood; you drive to those. They draw from a large area, so you never see the same people twice there.

Proximity has always been the best builder of community in human history, and we've done away with it.

This is probably 10 years ago that I read it, but I don't expect that the numbers have changed much: The median number of lifetime partners for men is 4, while the median for women is 7. The median means that half of the group had that many or more, and half had that many or fewer. If every heterosexual encounter by definition has to include a male and a female, the way that that works out is that there's a subgroup of men who have a partner count way over four.

In short, yeah, that observation checks out in the research. Among men, there are a few Wilt Chamberlains balanced by thousands with only a partner or two. (NB: extreme example for rhetorical purposes)

Perhaps the 3-day-no-poop challenge guy was one of these cave explorers?

If you're asking whether the binding arbitration clause would apply to the murder case, then no. Homicide falls under criminal law, where the state is the plaintiff. The state didn't enter an agreement under the TOS. I suppose Disney could try to argue it applies if your legal estate filed a civil suit; in the real case it argued that the arbitration clause applied because the husband (who'd agreed to it) filed a civil suit as the plaintiff.

Instead, Disney would get away with it the old-fashioned way: because it's a rich corporation.

Shout-out to Raritan Engineering. I accidentally cracked the porcelain bowl of the head that was original equipment in my 1974 sailboat, and needed a new one. Not only is the company still in business, the parts from a model they still sell are compatible, 50 years later! Their support techs were able to tell me exactly what parts I needed to buy.

Actually, quite a few marine brands are always reliable. The harsh environment at sea tends to out cheap crap in a hurry.

I think you have some stiff competition on the shortest war from the Conch Republic. You'd have to sign the peace treaty in 59 seconds to beat the record. (Be sure that the enemy sets their killbots for a very low preset kill limit.)

I think it makes sense in two ways: Some people in right-wing world think that women are property, without individual agency. If another man has been able to have sex with her, you have failed as a Real Man™ to protect what's rightfully yours, in the same way as you have failed if a fox gets into the henhouse.

Or, a Real Man™ is so good at sex that his wife doesn't want anybody else. Either way, being a "cuck" means you're not a Real Man™.

Never heard of it, but I'll check it out. Thanks!

I had a 13" black and white television in my bedroom when I was a teen. The big, color Trinitron TV that we got later was amazing. Beyond that, I don't recall the improvement in quality making sitcoms funnier, or the stories better.

In fact, to me, the old, fuzzy NTSC video is better in some ways. It helps with the suspension of disbelief, the feeling of watching a story on the screen. Even 1080p is sometimes too good, to the point that the actors fall into the Uncanny Valley, like I'm watching a live play, but not quite. Instead of a story, I see the makeup on skin, the wardrobe choices, the blocking, and the bad CGI backgrounds.

I can certainly hear the quality differences in audio, but I feel like past a certain minimum, I'm listening to the music, not the equipment. Like, my Shokz had a noticeable lack of bass when I got them, but I've adapted, and don't hear them that way any longer. The convenience of open-ear headphones far exceeds any gain in quality.

The arms in the second image are much too short. I can't unsee it, now that I've noticed.

Yep, punishment must be part of the deal, even if it costs us 3 times as much. This is how we know that, for conservatives, the cruelty is the point.

Hey, anybody remember the scandal around Dubya's Texas Air National Guard record? Somebody leaked a document to Dan Rather, and the Bush campaign even acknowledged that the information in it was 100% accurate. But it wasn't the original document. Forensic analysis showed that it had been re-created in MS Word.

Then, the Bushies made it all about the forgery, which cost Rather his job, and sent the damaging information about Bush down the memory hole.

Remember that? I'm not saying that the DonOld's campaign is pulling that trick, but IRAN IRAN IRAN!!!1!

So has he been caught having sexual relations with one of his players yet?