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Cake day: May 4th, 2024

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  • As an awkard person I’ll admit that it would reassure me somewhat. I mean, I wasn’t going to but I’m glad it’s an option. It’s like feeling being accepted despite messing up before potentially messing up, which allows us to skip that dreadful moment between messing up and being either forgiven or despised. And come on, imagine shitting in a closet by, uh, mistake, and not fully expecting that your entire social live is now in ruins and you need to delete all of your social media and move to different country. It could be worded better, sure, but it’s a neat gesture.


  • voldage@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldInteresting analogy
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    2 months ago

    So, listen, I’m not making a case for all of them, but…

    Seriously though white people fucked stuff up for native americans and africans pretty hard, and just because it’s not discussed in the slightest and everyone (white people) pretend it’s not an issue, it doesn’t mean it’s not an issue. It’s less about white people though, and more about capital class that upholds the status quo, the by-product of which is the white supremacy - and that is very parrarel to the zionist claim.


  • How do you reconcile the understanding of her not being a good person and doing harm to the world with being a Swiftie? That’s a genuine question, I find identifying with the group supporting or admiring the person or idea I myself am opposed to on the ideological level hard to imagine. I can understand it being the case if one is defending the lesser evil, as they are coerced to do so by implied existence of the greater evil, but while I’m not well versed in the Swift lore I believe there isn’t any evil twin running around that she needs to stop. Unless.

    That’s not an attack, I believe that being a Swiftie might mean something else than what I understand by this term and I am making a fool out of myself. Still, it does seem to mean supporting what you’re opposed to. How do you resolve that contradiction?



  • voldage@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlForest of trees
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    3 months ago

    And honestly speaking I’m not sure myself if “tankie” should apply to China, seeing how most of their bad shit happend internally with the notable exceptions of Taiwan and Hong Kong, which are a stretch. There is a distinctive difference between Russia and China, despite both belonging to same political alliance and both have a dictatorial leaderships. Hating west/USA and loving either of them would make one a campist, but I’m not sure about that qualifyng as tankie. Naturally, most campists support both, so by that definition it would make them tankies.

    While your definition does describe tankies as well, I always understood it to be a derogatory term for the general authoritarian communist/pseudo-communist block more so than applying to all national supermacists.


  • voldage@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlForest of trees
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    3 months ago

    I mean that would mean I believe that they’re imperialists supporting the case of white supremacy - I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to claim that most USA supported conflicts have the purpose of benefitting the western world, which is based on white supremacy - and most likely are either politicaly illiterate and are unaware (willingly or by ignorance) of what USA is doing, or are sociopaths. They’re not tankies by virtue of not being pro post soviet dictatorships, but when it comes to the callousness towards loss of innocent human lives, they’re uh… Pretty bad. I’m not making a comparison though, I feel that’s like asking which of two shits stinks worse, and we can clearly see that both defecators had varied and distinctive diets.



  • voldage@lemmy.worldtoComic Strips@lemmy.worldHistory repeats
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    3 months ago

    There was no “science” done to prove that washing hands had effect on mortality, until someone tested that and found that to be the case. So it’s not “old science” vs “new science” but rather “no science” vs “science”. Lead was used because it was available. Radium was used because it was pretty. Bloodletting was considered helpful strictly because of tradition of bloodletting and because no one done the rigorous testing with valid methodology to check if it actually works, or if it’s just a folk belief that it does.

    You keep presenting cases where people just didn’t know something and didn’t care to figure it out, and call it “science” because someone baselessly believed in it. It’s irrational. And before you start anew with ignoring my arguments and listing more cases of people not knowing something as a proof that scientific process is harmful, I seriously don’t care. I originally commented about traditions being bad reasons for doing anything with the assumption we have some common ground in our understanding of how science work, and trying to convice someone that science does work is a fair bit too tall of a task to engage with. I’m not interested in that, sorry.


  • voldage@lemmy.worldtoComic Strips@lemmy.worldHistory repeats
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    3 months ago

    And now, the risk of the child dying during childbirth is twice as likely if the birth happens in homes instead of happening in hospitals. Almost like discovery of germs and development of antiseptics had consequences. Those pesky doctors must be tracking those homeborn children down and eliminating them in the name of science! Oops!


  • voldage@lemmy.worldtoComic Strips@lemmy.worldHistory repeats
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    3 months ago

    Your unreasonable bias against any attempts to understand the world instead of relying on traditions of unknown origin does not substitute an argument against it. Neither empirical or analitical method of scientific research is limited to some sort of elitist and corrupt academia, so your view of academia being elitist and corrupt doesn’t disprove the efficiency of those methods. And no, the knowledge doesn’t come from practice at all, if it did then ritually practiced traditions would lead to understanding of their roots and their purpose, and humans didn’t learn about spreading of diseases from burial rites, but rather from events when those rites weren’t practiced. Furthermore, we didn’t learn how to deal with those diseases from the traditions, but rather from breaking away from them and studying bodies instead of getting rid of them - which faced much backlash from the church, which wanted to uphold tradition no matter what.

    The knowledge comes not from practice, but from study, from testing different approaches and writing down what worked, until you get testing sample high enough to figure out why it worked. And then, people who figured it out probably taught others what to do without sharing in enough details why it works, and puff you have a tradition. And if people do share why stuff works and publish their research data and methodology, then we have knowledge, based on which other researchers can conduct their own research, check if they get similar results and whatnot. Peer review is a rather robust standard for truth, as far as human capabilities go.

    Academia being gamified in a way that only approved research gets funding or spotlight has nothing to do with traditions themselves being any good either. Most often power is legitimized via tradition, and many scientific institutes were muzzled because power following tradition found their pursuit of knowledge undesireable. The fact that many research topics are taboo is direct result of that.

    Lastly, your idea that the academia is isolated from the “feedback” of the “real world” is completely nonsensical. Nothing that’s not peer reviewed isn’t treated as particulary valuable, and you peer review the research by repeating the tests with the same methodology. That’s specifically the feedback from the real world. Any sort of feedback that shows some parts of tradition should be changed is commonly met with resistance however, so it stands to reason that the opposite of what you claimed is actually the truth, and it’s tradition that suffers from lack of the “feedback from the real world”.


  • voldage@lemmy.worldtoComic Strips@lemmy.worldHistory repeats
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    3 months ago

    Well seal clubbing is pretty bad for one. But the point isn’t whenever there are bad traditions, but whenever tradition is a good or bad reason to do something. Rites themselves do nothing, burying or burning the body does. Understanding why you’re doing something is vastly better than doing it because of some (possibly reasonable but unknown) ancient reason no one is able to point out. Taboo of incest is less related to traditions, and more to biology which causes people not to be attracted to their siblings in most cases. There is no ceremony or ritual to prohibition of incest, so I’d say it’s not a tradition. The tradition that have existed, however, was inbreeding of royal families, that wanted to keep their blood pure, which led to copious amount of incest and genetic defects. Many traditions rose from the dominance of one group over another and existed to legitimize this dominance further. Tradition of women being unable to vote, earn money or chose their spouse was born from the many generations of oppression. Tradition of black people being segregated away from white in USA was born out of dehumanization of slaves. There are many cases of traditional honor suicides (like seppuku) or honor killing (like stoning of women accused of adultery) in different traditions as well.

    I could keep listing “bad traditions with bad reasons” but that’s not the point I’ve originally made, more of a reply to your point about traditions being born out of useful or natural/survival reasons, which I believe those examples should disprove. The point is still that doing something solely because of tradition is bad, you need knowledge to do that well and in current age there is absolutely no reason not to seek that knowledge. In the past, when people were illiterate an easily digestible oral tradition was useful thing, but we’re way past times when we have no good way to ensure the complicated reasons for doing things are preserved. What if some tradition results in oppression of some people and it’s source is unknown or so ancient it’s no longer applicable, should it be upkept? Conversely, should the ritual blood sacrifice be kept in the celebration of plentiful harvest to appease the gods, or should you only keep the parts like dancing around the bonfire and socializing, because those things are fun and healthy for the community?

    If there is wisdom hidden in the tradition, then you want to figure it out, but if it’s kept cryptic, unknown and attempts to research it are met with disdain because someone tries to compromise your tradition, then it’s probably better to fuck around and find out what would happen if you didn’t perform the tradition. And if something bad happens, then at least you can write it down and pass to the next generation as the actual reason for doing things. I seriously doubt there is anything left in human traditions that was figured out in the past, and is currently impossible to decipher or comprehend just by analysis, without even doing empirical tests. And if for some reason something isn’t, then do those tests and find out. If you’re worried about some arcane knowledge of the ancients that is too enigmatic for us to understand just by looking, you can try doing something differently in isolated environment, with various precautions and on limited sample. No reason to keep it as “tradition” instead of “reason”, especially since the underlying reason could have been good, but due to no one knowing what it was, the method could have degenerated over the generations to the point of being ineffective.


  • voldage@lemmy.worldtoComic Strips@lemmy.worldHistory repeats
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    3 months ago

    You’ve disconnected reason from the action and outcome. Killing someone will have bad outcome regardless of reason, but if your reason for the murder was some sort of tradition, it would imply that it’s justified in your eyes and you’d do it again, and also teach your children and community to do it, and normalise it, fight against legislation that would stop it etc. I believe it would be difficult, though probably not impossible, to formulate a reason worse than tradition without referencing tradition or custom in some way. And then there is also the frequency of how often traditions are used as reason or excuse to achieve a cruel outcome to consider. If baby pandas were no. 1 reason for human death in the world by few orders of magnitude, we would probably consider them “the worst” in some way.



  • I don’t think you can check if array of n elements is sorted in O(1), if you skip the check though and just assume it is sorted now (have faith), then the time would be constant, depending on how long you’re willing to wait until the miracle happens. As long as MTM (Mean Time to Miracle) is constant, the faithfull miracle sort has O(1) time complexity, even if MTM is infinite. Faithless miracle sort has at best the complexity of the algorithm that checks if the array is sorted.

    Technically you can to down to O(0) if you assume all array are always sorted.


  • She didn’t? I believe that’s exactly what she came across as when she said she wouldn’t do anything different if she were to call the shots instead of Biden and also reminded everyone she signed off on most of his decisions. Sure, she lost votes because of sexism as well, but instead of fresh air she chose to bring stale coffin smell to the fart battle and lost to the stink Trump was all too happy to discharge. And that coffin did smell of a old white dude, let me tell you.

    That being said, for such a gigantic loss against someone as obnoxious as Trump, there had to be a lot of factors in play. Sexism and stagnation of the party being just a tip of the iceberg.


  • Yeah but those people helping Trump get elected are the Dems pretending genocide is fine. Say what you want about lesser evil but it really isn’t the smartest political move to alienate voters who think genocide is bad. The messaging of “if you draw the line at genocide then you’re the problem” and blaming voters for not vibing with that instead of, for example, dropping support for Israel and stopping the genocide is just straight up terrible politics. You should be mad at Dems for royally fucking the campaign up instead at people for not buying into this bullshit. Did you also support Biden remaining as candidate after the debate, despite atrocious polling data?

    I do get that there is foreign interference going on, but seriously if you were attempting to sway anyone towards the Dems by shaming people for being against genocide - the obviously weakest point of Dems campaign - then in my eyes you’re most likely the Russian bot trying to remind people that Dems are terrible. And if you aren’t and you actually tried to convice anyone with this argument, then shut the fuck up until the elections are over, if anything you’re costing Kamala votes.


  • I’m Polish and believe me when I say that I would also prefer Germany to learn different lessons from those your government claims to follow. The very idea that what nazis did wrong was targeting Jews instead of creating authoritarian stratified far right society that eventualy decided to displace and genocide people based on somewhat loosely described traits is not only a gross and dumb oversimplification, it’s gross and end evil to even propose. Fascism fits the class interests of the rich and powerfull of today just as much, if not more, as it did a century ago. Germany government siding with Israel in favour of the genocide they’re commiting is not just for show, they’re very happy that defending genocide became a position close to political center. In my opinion, that is.


  • Yeah well Germany does seem a bit anxious for some reason when someone mentions Israel and genocide in one sentence, but if anyone in the world should have any reasons to be unreasonably pro-Israel, that would be them. And even then, their performative support pales in comparison to USA. IDF literally murdered USA citizens and USA congratulated them for that. That takes real dedication to the cause!


  • I don’t think that’s really the case though? I’m pretty sure most nations condemned Israel except for USA, but USA blocked all attempts from anyone to do anything. And when USA says that commiting genocide with their weapons is on the table, I doubt any country wishes to find out what would happen should any concrete action against Israel be taken. It’s a big part of the reason why everyone calls USA complicit in genocide of Palestinians.


  • I literally said that the rethoric was fascist, not person. Fascism is an ideology as well as movement, and people regardless of political power they hold can follow a ideology, so even if I wasn’t referring to rethoric it would still be viable to call someone a fascist - not that it should be done on the basis of single shitty meme. If you believe that communism is the best political system there is, then you are a communist. If you give examples and advocate for this system, then you’re most likely using rethoric that is recognizeably communist, as in, it conveys the message favourable for communism. I’ve already outlined why the message coming from the post is fascist in my oryginal comment. Your claim that one requires a degree of political power in order to be identified by the ideology they believe in would be invalid in terms of USA politics even if it was true - since USA citizens have the right to vote for whomever they want (which the OP tried to restrain with the use of threats) they do hold actual political power and influence, regardless how small it is. I’ve already explained in more details how the rethoric itself was fascist in another comment, referring to the definition and all that. Also, dancing around the definition to whitewash the condemned action is really pointless unless you’re trying to intentionally muddy the water. Convincing people to vote for specific candidate with threats of them being ousted for not doing that is directly what both Mussolini and Hitler did. Mussolini used that tactic in parliamentary elections in 1924, and Sturmabteilung did that in 1932, keeping watch by the pooling stations and threatening voters. Those people absolutely were fascists by any modern definition, and used this rethoric to achieve the same result as one that was intended here. If that isn’t enough red flags for you to call this rethoric fascist, then I don’t think there is enough common ground between our positions to engage in reasonable discussion.