Mossy Feathers (They/Them)

A

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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: July 20th, 2023

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  • Everything is political.

    Sigh

    That’s only true in an academic sense. When a layman uses the term “political”, they refer to discussion pertaining to things like how a formal government is run, comparisons between types of governance, government policy, etc.

    While deciding what cookie to eat or what color your cat’s litterbox is might technically be political in an academic sense, you’re just going to annoy people if you try to tell them that those are political decisions. I have found that trying to force academic definitions into common use is confusing at best, annoying on average, and infuriating at worst.

    An example of where a word’s academic definition has no place in common speech can be found in “information”. The informal definition of “information” typically is seen as referring to knowledge and the transfer of said knowledge. This definition allows you to gain information from a lack of something.

    However, it is my understanding that the scientific definition of “information” does not allow for the aforementioned action, as “information” refers to the properties of physical matter. The result is that you cannot gain “information” from a lack of something. You might be able to come to conclusions based on a lack of “information”, but you cannot actually gain “information” from a lack of something because “information” is inherently linked to matter.

    Now. All of that said, this meme is related to something said at an engineering school, so on the one hand, it isn’t entirely out-of-place to expect the academic definition to be used because it is an academic setting. Yet, on the other hand, it is an engineering school, not a political science school. As such, while OP should be aware that the academic definition of “politics” may come into play, it’s also reasonable to expect that their professors and peers would mainly be using the common definition of the term.

    However again, in my experience, trying to force academic definitions into casual discussion is confusing at best, annoying on average, and infuriating at worst. Please stop trying to do it. Thanks.

    (Also, imo, genocide is like Schrodinger’s Cat; it is both political and not political at the same time. Personally, I think it mainly depends on the depth of the discussion; but its “political” nature varies from person-to-person. Imo, saying that genocide is happening shouldn’t be considered “political”, but talking about why it is occuring is political.)

    Edit: whoops, somehow my comment doubled, within the comment. The fuck happened there?

    Edit 2: I swear I need to find a new phone keyboard, and I need to read over my comments before submitting. I’m finding a lot of stupid auto-correct errors, and it seems like they’re becoming more common.

    Edit 3: the reason I got hung-up on it, and I should have mentioned this, is because I often see “everything is political” used to justify bringing heavier topics into places where it’s inappropriate (like chatrooms where people are trying to just hang out and have light hearted discussions).








  • Felt like getting a snack, so I decided to try it with a bagel. Didn’t really notice a huge difference in taste, however it was significantly easier to spread. Another benefit from mixing the two is that you can spread it on toast, a bagel, etc, even if you only have a single slice, without contaminating the peanut butter or jelly/jam/preserves jar. The downside is that you have additional dishes to wash (in particular, a bowl and two spoons, one for peanut butter, the other for jelly).

    My conclusion is that it’s technically superior (easier to spread, can be spread on a single slice of bread). Only downside is that additional cleanup is required. As such, not a great method if you’re in a time crunch and don’t have the time to mix the pb&j and wash additional dishes. However, if time isn’t a problem and you want a snack, try mixing pb&j.


  • puts on tinfoil hat

    The asymmetrical internet speeds are intended to keep hobbyists and small businesses from self-hosting, thereby driving traffic to larger companies. I wonder if ISPs get any kind of kickback from large companies like AWS, cloudflare, or digital ocean. Like, reduced hosting costs for their websites and internal cloud services.

    Takes tinfoil hat off

    The reality is that it’s probably a lot cheaper for ISPs to make connections asymmetrical because it effectively lets them pump up their download speed numbers for free. However, ISPs really should give customers the option to custom allocate bandwidth. Instead of saying X upload, Y download, you get X Mbps maximum and can choose the upload/download split.










  • They’ve come up with a way they could do it. I dunno why you’re mad about that, I was just wanting to share an interesting tidbit I’d learned.

    My understanding is that the reason why scientists like playing with the idea is that it’s more feasible than it immediately seems, and it’d solve some of the issues that a Mars colony would have (increased solar radiation due to low atmospheric density and weak electromagnetic field as well at very low gravity).

    Would it be expensive? Yeah. We’re talking about colonizing another planet though. It already is going to cost hundreds of billions if not trillions to do.


  • I wonder… does anyone know how many shares in a company you have to own before you can call-in during shareholder meetings to ask questions? I’m wondering if we could push back against this by “”“asking questions”“” that make majority shareholders aware of the damage companies are doing to their own brands. I know modern capitalism is all about “money today, fuck tomorrow”, but I wonder how many shareholders would be happy knowing that companies would probably make more money if they’d stop cannibalizing studios and franchises.

    You know, play into their greed and make convincing arguments about how their decisions are ultimately robbing them of money.