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Would We Recognize Extraterrestrial Technology If We Saw It?
  • When I see people make comparisons like this, I often think of a paragraph from Mark Twain's, "The mysterious stranger". It's where Satan compares the intellect of an angel to that of humans.

    “Well, it is true that they are nothing to me. It is not possible that they should be. The difference between them and me is abysmal, immeasurable. They have no intellect.”

    “No intellect?”

    “Nothing that resembles it. At a future time I will examine what man calls his mind and give you the details of that chaos, then you will see and understand. Men have nothing in common with me—there is no point of contact; they have foolish little feelings and foolish little vanities and impertinences and ambitions; their foolish little life is but a laugh, a sigh, and extinction; and they have no sense. Only the Moral Sense. I will show you what I mean. Here is a red spider, not so big as a pin's head. Can you imagine an elephant being interested in him—caring whether he is happy or isn't, or whether he is wealthy or poor, or whether his sweetheart returns his love or not, or whether his mother is sick or well, or whether he is looked up to in society or not, or whether his enemies will smite him or his friends desert him, or whether his hopes will suffer blight or his political ambitions fail, or whether he shall die in the bosom of his family or neglected and despised in a foreign land? These things can never be important to the elephant; they are nothing to him; he cannot shrink his sympathies to the microscopic size of them. Man is to me as the red spider is to the elephant. The elephant has nothing against the spider—he cannot get down to that remote level; I have nothing against man. The elephant is indifferent; I am indifferent. The elephant would not take the trouble to do the spider an ill turn; if he took the notion he might do him a good turn, if it came in his way and cost nothing. I have done men good service, but no ill turns.

    “The elephant lives a century, the red spider a day; in power, intellect, and dignity the one creature is separated from the other by a distance which is simply astronomical. Yet in these, as in all qualities, man is immeasurably further below me than is the wee spider below the elephant."

  • Someone has tried to blackmail me.
  • Probably going to get downvoated for this. If you use GNU/Linux as your daily driver and you're familiar with Raspberry Pi's, how is it you don't know that this is obviously a phishing attempt? Seems to me someone might be fishing for up votes. But I'm just an undeniably cynical bastard. I'll show myself out.

  • r/reclassified has been banned from Reddit
  • The closer you get to death, the more fascinated by you become. My grandparents died in the 80s. Last ten years before they died, my grandfather and his friends went to every funeral no matter who it was or if they knew them. You might think ha ha they went for the food, but they never went to the receptions/wakes. I think they basically just did it as a high five, I'm alive you're dead type of thing. They did this until every one of them was dead. None of them were overly religious.

  • Canada Child Benefit increased, accounts for higher cost of living
  • Canada has a direct payment system for child allowances that's issued monthly. There's also a partial dental program up to the age of I think 16 years old. Canada had some great social service systems in place in the '60s and seventies but they were stripped away by the PC governments of the '80s. It's good that they still look out for our next generation but that will also soon stop when they find a replacement for workers.

  • App Dev Here: These 1 Stars Hurt! Keep it up!
  • It's still amazes me how little polish there is to the official Reddit app compared to other third party apps. I used Firefox browser until I adopted RIF. I tried to use the official app after the deadline came and the amount of ads that I was bombarded with just became unbearable. I understand they need to make money. I understand they do this by advertising. But when they start using deceptive practices like blending the ads into genuine post they cross the line. I was a heavy user I would say greater than 2 hours a day spent on Reddit. I didn't go cold turkey but I'm down to checking top and top last hour once or twice a day now. I deleted my main account which made it very easy to stay away.

  • NSFW
    Who likes inverted nipples? 🙋‍♀️ [OC][F]
  • Neither of the above pictures are of inverted nipples. An inverted nipple is the tip of the nipple is inside the areola. And it's painful for some women but not for others.

  • United Methodists lose one-fifth of US churches in schism driven by growing defiance of LGBTQ bans
  • Leviticus 20:13-15:

    13 If a man lies with another man as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood guilt shall be upon them. 14 If a man lies with a woman and also her mother, it is wickedness. Both he and they shall be burned with fire, so that there is no wickedness among you. 15 If a man lies with an animal, he shall surely be put to death, and you shall kill the animal.

    There is NO GOOD RELIGION. Every religion that was ever created was intended to control the masses. The world would be so much better if we got together and had a religious purge. Think for yourself and don't let a imaginary sky god control your thoughts and lives.

    edit: And before you chime in and say, "but thats the old testament!"

    Jesus believed that the Old Testament was divinely inspired, the veritable Word of God. He said, ‘The Scripture cannot be broken’ (John 10:35). He referred to Scripture as ‘the commandment of God’ (Matthew 15:3) and as the ‘Word of God’ (Mark 7:13). He also indicated that it was indestructible: ‘Until Heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the law, until all is accomplished’ (Matthew 5:18).

  • 📢Entire mod team on r/mildlyinteresting (and more subs) removed and locked out of their accounts after changing their rules upon community's request. (They're also switching subs BACK to SFW)
  • It would be nice to see some some of the admins go rogue also. I know it's a lot to ask for people to sacrifice their jobs but some people still have ethics. And some people are in a positions where they can leave their job and pick up another one within hours or days if they're in the demanding field.

  • Are we 'Shadowbanned' from beehaw?
  • That makes it a lot easier to understand. I was confused on how messages propagated. Your last paragraph is what cleared it up for me. Won't this lead to strange comment chains? You could have a hundred different people commenting on a chain and they're all a mix of federated and Def federated instances. Some will see some comments and others will see other comments but none will see all the comments unless they're completely federated with all the sites. This is where it loses me. Not that I don't understand what's happening, it's I don't understand how it's supposed to work in a threaded environment. I guess once I start seeing in an action I'll get a better grasp of it. I don't think this is going to work out as well as it was intended to.

    Cheers.

  • Are we 'Shadowbanned' from beehaw?
  • Hi,

    New here and still learning the ropes. With lemmyworld being defedrated and the way activitypub works, can I still post to, interact with(up vote, down vote) and subscribe to instances originating from beehaw? Or would being federated put all people who log in from lemmy.world on a block list from interacting with the communities and only being able to view?

    Cheers.

  • The blackout is starting to have a financial impact on Reddit, but we must stay dark!
  • I never had premium. But I deleted my 8-year account today. I took a screenshot as I was using power delete suite. I was tempted to make a throwaway account and post it to some of their subreddits that are still trending and see if I could start some kind of stupid little movement. Maybe they think a little bit longer if they start seeing people delete long-term accounts. And I'm sure there are lots of accounts out there that are much longer term and much higher Karma than me. Actually sacrificing some of those accounts could actually make a difference.

  • how do we report problematic instances?
  • I 100% agree that it's the owners choice if he decides to block content. But as far as I know if a instance is defederated and the instance owner doesn't publish a block list, users on the server would have no idea it existed in the first place.

    There are already a couple of search engines that show instances. Maybe if some of the developers could add categories so people could find things they are interested in. This could be a useful tool for building communities. As long as it's an uncensored database of indexes I think this would be great. If you know one that is indexing instances by category please post it.

    I'm sure instances will post guidelines and rules once they get everything straightened out. I'm just a strong advocate for personal choice. Once again I understand why some people want moderation and I understand eventually it may well be needed for some communities. As long as the owners are open about this that's fine, but not all operators are going to be transparent with these policies.

  • Want to enjoy Lemmy on your phone but not a fan of Jerboa? Try Native Alpha!
  • Also the nsfw is always on, no matter if checked or not.

  • Want to enjoy Lemmy on your phone but not a fan of Jerboa? Try Native Alpha!
  • Giving it a try now. One thing I noticed it's lacking or maybe I haven't found yet is a sort top by hour. A lot of people have been requesting this jerboa also.

  • *Permanently Deleted*
  • Much better answer than I gave. My buddy's been hanging sheetrock and doing plastering and painting for the past 30 years. I've helped him out enough just to know that I don't know much.

  • *Permanently Deleted*
  • If it's in a stud then yes. Most people just knock them in then fill them in with a little bit of plaster compound. Let it dry and sand with a high grit sandpaper. Then paint over. I can't really tell if that's paint texture on your ceiling where it's close up or if it's stucco. If it's light stucco it's going to be harder to patch without being noticed though.

  • I signed up for lemmy.world because I don't want to write an essay. Shout out to the lazy people.
  • Hey, cheers for this. I asked someone earlier in a post how to see what instances were shown and blocked. Is this published for all sites? Is there a way it can be hidden? Or is that the way it's built into the software? 👍

  • how do we report problematic instances?
  • Semantics. If you defederate an instance, in this case lemmy.world blocks the instance /c/(hate group), you make the decision for everyone on that instance (you being the owner), on who can see what. This will create pockets of many little hubs instead of one big decentralized mesh network. This comes right back to the "owner" of the instance controlling everything that the user can see. I understand someone is paying the bills and that moderation is going to be needed. This is of course going to come down to choice. Is there a way to view each instances block list? If not it should be implemented into the back end somewhere, once again to allow freedom of choice.

    What decision procedures are in place to stop rogue instance owners from making unilateral decisions? I admit I'm very new to lemmy and activitypub as a whole. If the community as a whole can weight in on the decision, then by all means, go ahead. 100% fair and I agree with you. I'm just against any type of actions being made by small groups of individuals that are "for the good of everyone". I really don't have an agenda here. I just want the freedom of choice for everyone. I'm tired of living in a world where there are people who think they know whats best for everyone else.

    Thank you for your time to respond. Regards.

  • how do we report problematic instances?
  • While I understand your wanting to ban such a community, I think moving away from that type of action is a good thing. It's all about personal freedom. I have some instances blocked already but I would never decide to do that for everyone because what gives me that right? Speak out against them. Make your views know. Denounce, Rage, never quit. But never censor. Freedom of information and choice is the end goal. Banning a topic is what leads to radicals because they have no outlet for their insanity.

  • MorksEgg Eddie Hitler @lemmy.world

    Don't make me tell Spudgun where you live!

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