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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)SQ
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647
Joined
4 mo. ago

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  • The main issue here is that everything from a speck of dust to the massive black hole at the centre of the galaxis is pretty much the same thing on a large spectrum.

    You can clearly say that some grains of dust are something entirely different than a supermassive black hole, but it's really hard to find solid cut-off points to categorize anything in between.

    So we started with a handful of arbitrary examples for each category, which was easy when we only had these examples, but with more and more discoveries the gaps between these examples are filled and it becomes a spectrum, and then it becomes iffy what exactly fits into which category.

  • :(

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  • You are confusing science (the process of discovering understanding of reality) with truth (how the world "really" is).

    "Real science" like you describe can almost by definition not exist. Science is costly, both in time and in money. People don't just spend lots of time and money just because. For that kind of investment you need some kind of motive, some reason. And as soon as you have that, you are into politics and emotions.

  • It does make sense though. The main motivator for politicians is power. That means, naturally political systems flow towards maximizing power for those in power, that's just the natural progression.

    To change this, major political upheavals are necessary, so basically events where the whole old leadership is tossed out and the new leadership can try to setup something to stop the same thing from happening again.

    WW2 was perfect for that. All those countries were in need of a completely new political system and thus they could be built better from the ground up.

    The US never had any event like that (apart maybe from the civil war).

    To change the system without such an event, two thirds of all relevant politicians would have to vote for changing the system that brought them to power. Not likely to happen.

  • Have you looked at the amendments? So far there have only been 27 of them over 236 years. Ten of them were created within a year of the constitution being created. They were basically Zero-Day-Patches, not actual amendments, and two amendments only exist to nullify each other (18 and 21) which leaves 15 amendments over 235 years (one of which was actually also created within the first year and only ratified 200 years later).

    The last time an amendment was proposed was 54 years ago and the last one ratified was 33 years ago.

    Not counting the Zero-Day-Patches, not a lot of these amendments actually change anything fundamental. Notable ones are 12 (governs the election of VP), 13-15 and 19 (civil rights), 17 (election of senators), 22 (president's term limit) and 25 (succession of the president).

    Notably absent from the amendments is anything that changes the core political system or electoral system.

    Compare that to other countries. In the time that the US constitution hat 15 minor amendments, France had a total of 15 complete constitution re-writes, not even counting amendments. 15 full new constitutions.

    Germany had 69 constitutional amendments since 1949 (76 years, so almost one amendment per year, compared to the 1/16 amendments per year in the USA).

    But by far the biggest issue is that a constitutional amendment cannot actually fix fundamental systemic issues. The people who have the power to change the constitution came to power within the current system, so if they fundamentally change how the system works (e.g. by repairing the electoral system in a way that more than two parties can be relevant), they are directly cutting into their own power, so of course they won't do that.

    That's what you need major constitutional crises for (like e.g. Europe after WW2), so that the constitution can be re-written from scratch, fixing the issues that lead to the crisis.

    But the US has been too big to fail for too long and thus there never was anything big enough to take down the US so that it needed to be restarted from scratch. The closest they came to was the civil war, but they didn't take the opportunity to actually overhaul the system. Probably because it was still too early and there wasn't much of a precedent of how to build a better democratic system.

    But who knows, at the current rate it might be likely that the US is quite close to another chance to re-write the constitution.

  • Our independence was supposed to free the people of kings and tyrants. It’s been 249 years since 1776, we have undone what the Constitution authors fought for.

    That's what happens if you stick with a quarter-millennium old prototype of a semi-democratic system.

    The constitution was revolutionary and ground-breaking, a quarter millennium ago. But still running that old piece of toilet paper as the basis of a democratic system in 2025 is like driving a Ford Model T today and claiming that it still is the latest and greatest automobile ever created.

  • After thinking about this myself, I’m starting to feel the same way. Instead of being proud of the country, I’m feeling like I’m just another wallet that companies and the government are trying to suck all the money out of.

    Always have been, always will be.

    The cost of living is going up, the housing market is a nightmare

    Don't worry, once they deported or killed all the Jews illegals the prices will surely come down.

  • That was actually never the case. The default USB mouse driver comes with the OS. And also today any modern mouse will work just fine with the default USB mouse driver in the OS.

    What this abomination is is a kind of extended driver that allows the user to e.g. remap buttons on the mouse or control RGB lights. You know, anything but the actual basic functionality of the mouse.

  • I'm a bit younger, though not a lot.

    I all but stopped buying games because Epic and Amazon give so many away for free.

    I've got like 500 free games that I haven't even installed once.

    The only time I'd actually pay for a game is if it's a special one I want, and they've gotten few and far between.

  • First, define what you are asking for.

    Do you want someone to send you a cardboard box full of RAM? Then forget it. Nobody would be stupid enough to lend that much expensive hardware to someone on the internet.

    Or are you asking for someone to let you run random code on their PC for a few hours? Then forget it. Nobody would be stupid enough to open "a single SSH port" to someone on the internet to run potential malware on their PC.

    That's exactly what cloud platforms are there for, and if you don't like google, get any other cloud provider.