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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • We are indeed more sexually fluid than most species and given it’s “most” and not “all”, this isn’t unprecedented. It’s also not a new phenomena, in Ancient Greek and early-mid Ancient Roman societies queerness was quite common. In fact homosexuality was so prevalent that that the Romans didn’t even have a word for heterosexual/homosexual; instead one was either dominant or submissive (e.g. giving or receiving) with the assumption being that most were bisexual and would take partners as they saw fit.








  • I think the argument you are making makes sense. Harm reduction and rehabilitation is the way, not this dumb prison system we have.

    I believe you mistake an aspect of his argument. I don’t believe he meant to insinuate that prison and harm reduction are mutually exclusive, rather he says that the question is whether prison is punishment or harm reduction. If there’s no free will there’s no reason to punish, but there’s certainly reason to reduce the possibility of harm, and jailing an individual that is causing harm (and will continue to do so) is one way of doing that.

    As someone else in this thread put it, if we could jail hurricanes to prevent them from doing harm, we would.





  • If by ‘String/Quantum’ you mean String Theory and quantum physics then you are wrong on the latter (and somewhat even the former). Quantum physics doesn’t replace classical physics nor are they necessarily in opposition, and quantum physics is as much a theory as classical physics; so bashing one for being ‘theory’ is just as true for the other. And quantum physics is certainly in common use as you simply cant do anything at the atomic level without it. For example, any modern computer would not be able to function if quantum physics wasn’t used to inform their design; in the same vein a modern computer would not function if classical physics was used to design them. It’s important to remember that the word ‘theory’ in this context doesn’t mean unproven, rather it describes a collection of confirmed, falsifiable, explanations of the natural world.

    As for String Theory, it shouldn’t be thought of as equivalent in scale to quantum physics, it’s really just an optional framework within quantum physics that attempts to describe the fundamental nature of particles in a way that supports quantum gravity. Due to this its usage is confined to theoretical physics and is dependent on which aspects of a system is being investigated, but it’s still used in some situations as its one of the best supported tools available.

    I guess my main point is that quantum physics isn’t fringe theory that shows up only in theoretical work, it’s very much a requirement for all fields and is thereby prevalent and very much in common use. I have a CS degree and many of my courses touched on quantum mechanics, from pnp/npn transistor design to quantum-annealing/gate proof cryptography, without getting too into the mechanics/math as we were not physicists.







  • I feel that the mention of reddit’s ‘r/all’ algorithm being better than Lemmy’s algorithm certainly shows a clear misunderstanding of these algorithms; r/all can be sorted in the exact same ways as Lemmy, the only difference is that reddit has more active users and thereby more content + people filtering it by voting. I also think people in this thread misunderstand ‘algorithm’ to mean something solely meant to find posts that they may personally like or at least the least are somehow quasi-objectively ‘good’. An algorithm for that can be made, but that is not what the algorithms currently in-use have ever been intended to do.

    If someone wants a feed of posts that particularly targets their interests then they’ll have to tailor one themselves, just like on reddit.


  • While I agree with your main gist, I actually think this overall creates less misunderstanding than more; at least, and probably solely, with respect to what organic means. Because people read that headline and think ‘z0mg life discovered on mars’ and then one of a few things may happen which leads them to realize that organic != organism. Though some of those ‘few things’ may include temporarily spreading their incorrect interpretation to others, I believe even a slightly intelligent person will realize that they may have wrong information when this finding doesn’t end up as front page news and ‘breaking news’ segments around the world.

    So at least in that respect, this kind of journalism constantly teaches and reminds people that organic doesn’t mean life. Though, ultimately, I still dislike it as much as the next guy.