WoodScientist @ WoodScientist @lemmy.world

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Joined

11 mo. ago

Are you Philip J Fry?

I'm trying and failing to find it. But awhile back I did see a trolling video one of the YouTube woodworkers created. I can't recall the exact details, but they built a fireplace, a stove, or similar fire containing device. Except, they built it out of wood. Unfortunately, the concept seems unsearchable, as there's no way to not get the search engines to interpret "fireplace made of wood" as "wood burning fireplace."

They built this thing and set a fire inside it. And it went....well, about as well as one would expect.

We're talking on a casual forum. This isn't an academic discussion. Blog posts are a lot more approachable than most journal articles. And blogs often contain references.

Not everything is a formal academic debate. Most things aren't. Note, you didn't reply to the parent commenter demanding that they provide journal articles for their point. You just saw something you didn't like about my comment and decided to demand a journal article as a citation. Usually when people who aren't participating come into a discussion to demand peer-reviewed sources, it's done in bad faith. They demand high quality sources from one side while not extending the same requirement to the other.

Here's another blog posts that address the original topic. You can look up the primary sources if you are so inclined.

https://www.newhopecg.net/post/so-your-brain-actually-isn-t-fully-formed-at-25

Or if you want to improve the quality of discussion, perhaps add your own sources instead of demanding others provide them.

And note, even you don't provide academic sources for your claims. You claim you're seeing blog posts linked everywhere, but where is your journal article defending this claim? Where is your paper performing a statistical analysis to prove that people are citing blog posts more frequently than in the past?

And I would argue that linking to a blog post is far from pointless. Blogs are less rigorous but far more approachable and digestible than journal articles. The real purpose of linking to them is so that a commenter doesn't need to spend the time greatly elaborating a point that could be made simply by linking to a larger outside discussion. That has value. And a blog post certainly has more value than a random short Lemmy comment. At least if someone is taking the time to write a blog post dedicated to a single topic, it shows that they've put the time in to consider the subject.

Hint: if you have only some wood and no instruments to work on it save a saw and a hammer, you are not going to make a car with internal combustion engine

As a wood scientist, I can confirm that wood is generally a poor material for engine block manufacture.

Please stop posting comments offering nothing of value.

Because that’s what’s going to need to happen when porn is inevitably locked out thanks to Christian fascists complete control of the government.

Honestly it will become a moot point sooner or later. Jailbroken and open-source AI tools can already generate porn images, and videos aren't far behind. And porn isn't high cinema or fine literature. AI art is soulless and without a voice, but that matters a lot less for porn. It's still not easy for the average non-tech savvy person to access these porn-generating AI tools, but it's only a matter of time until they are dumbed down enough to be accessible. Hell, someone will likely create freeware image and video generation tools specifically optimized to generate porn images and video. At that point, any horny teenager can get a copy of the AI porn creator. And even if the tools are somehow banished from the net, such tools could easily be passed via sneakernet. Once the tools are convenient and packaged in an easy to use form, the idea of porn bans will be laughable. Anyone can just pass around an app on a USB stick that can generate an infinite variety of customized AI porn.

There is no age where the brain stops developing. The idea that the brain stops developing at age 25 is a myth. This myth comes brain studies that studied brain development...up to an age of 25. Pediatric studies of brain development don't extend into far adulthood.

https://www.sciencefocus.com/comment/brain-myth-25-development

My bloodline is currently rotting in a landfill somewhere outside of Bangkok....

Cop guns really are like "the call of the void" aren't they? All I know is if I'm ever trapped in a Groundhog Day time loop, one of the first things I'm doing is grabbing a cop's gun. I don't want to grab it and shoot anyone with it. I just want to grab it and run off into the distance, cackling with glee like a madman.

I mean, Dr. Who was originally intended as an educational TV series. The original pitch was the Doctor would travel to historical time periods and teach kids in the process. It just developed a life of its own and grew out from there.

Bathroom access has long been used to punish undesirable groups and to keep them from public life. Women who chose to work outside the home were punished in the 19th century by not having access to restrooms. People of color were punished in the 20th century for daring to exist in society by being denied restroom access at white establishments. And now people are trying to punish trans and gender non-conforming people by denying them restroom access.

In case you haven't connected the dots, the obsession over restrooms isn't actually about restrooms. If you can restrict the ability of undesirables to access public restrooms, you can effectively bar them from public life. It's a way of criminalizing innocent people without actually having to arrest or throw them in prison.

And yes, these laws do effectively ban trans people from any bathroom. I'm a trans person myself, but you wouldn't know unless I told you. I would be violating the law if I used the women's restroom in Florida. But if I went into the men's, I would have people throwing me out, telling me I'm in the wrong bathroom. Hell, I could be arrested for trying to use the men's room in Florida, the very bathroom the law requires me to use. There's no easy way for me to even prove that I am trans. My legal documents have all been documented, and I went far enough in transition I couldn't even prove my trans status by dropping my pants. And yet, the law in Florida requires me to use the men's restroom. So if I use a restroom in Florida, I either have to violate the law and risk arrest if somehow someone were to figure it out and report me. Or I could follow the law and still face harassment, assault, and possible arrest.

Truthfully, to me, the law in Florida has done exactly what it was intended to do. I simply won't set foot in the state of Florida, or any other state with a bathroom ban. The government of Florida has effectively barred me, an American citizen, from the right to visit the state. And all I did to deserve this banishment was be born trans.

Exactly. At this point, anyone still bitching about anti-genocide voters in the 2024 election should be assumed to be a conservative or Russian bot.

We need to outlaw individually targeted algorithmic content feeds. A feed is still fine as long as it's entirely content from channels you subscribe to. If YouTube only showed you videos from channels you subscribe to, it would be a much less toxic platform. And new channels could still spread via search, peer-to-peer recommendations, etc. This also wouldn't be censorship. You can publish whatever you want on your own site or whatever a platform allows you to publish on theirs. But it's the individually targeted, psychologically optimized content feeds that are killing us. Feeds optimized for engagement and rage. Feeds optimized to be as addictive as possible. Facebook was fine when it was just posts from your actual friends. But like other social media, it's degenerated into a rage box.

I really think this is what we need to do. Social networks were a great idea; social media wasn't. The tiktok feed and the YouTube algorithm need to be left in the ash heap of history. They're just too addictive to be used responsibly. We should regulate social media companies like we do purveyors of alcohol and other addictive products. And that could start by banning individually targeted algorithmic feeds. "Going viral" is not something that should happen automatically. The only way to go viral should be if actual real human beings repeatedly recommend your content to other actual human beings.

Yeah, most of the victims of the Holocaust didn't make it out of the Holocaust.

One of the lessons of the crimes of the Nazis is that the road to Hell is paved with The Greater Good. The Nazis themselves believed that all their crimes were necessary for the betterment of society. They thought though their actions were regrettable, it was the only choice they really had. Killing millions was the lesser of two evils.

You have more in common with the Nazis than you would like to believe. There's very little you cannot justify when you have no red lines and you'll always support the lesser evil. The Nazis themselves thought they were supporting the lesser evil.

We're on the eve of what future generations may refer to as "The Great Hunger." The worst impact of climate change won't be rising sea levels. It will be Biblical scale famines from multiple simultaneous bread basket failures. On our current path, we are likely to lose 2-10% of the total human population due to famine over the next 20-30 years. Having a way to grow bulk sustenance cheaply, in a way that is immune from the disruptions of the weather? That is a technology we desperately need right now. I agree that UPFs are not ideal. But this and similar synthetic foods could prevent what is likely to be the greatest famine in human history.

They'll pull the same crap they do with digital content you "buy." Technically you're just buying a license to use the vehicle, not actually buying the vehicle itself.

I would prefer a mixed system. All wealth over 1000x the median household income taxed at 100%. So no one should have a fortune larger than that, a number that would be approximately $80 million today. But if you secretly gather a fortune much larger than that? If you somehow secretly amass a fortune 10,000x the median household income? At that point I would apply severe criminal penalties, like a mandatory minimum 20 year sentence. I don't want to throw the book at someone just because they accidentally let their fortune grow a bit beyond the limit. But if you're a whole order of magnitude above it? Then that's when severe criminal penalties should apply. At some point your wealth becomes so large that you personally become a threat to national security. Amassing a fortune in the billions should be treated like a private citizen trying to build their own nuclear bomb. No one should have that much power, and we should treat both the same.

I like the 1000x threshold because that is approximately the maximum possible fortune one can amass in one's lifetime off of ordinary salary work and extreme frugality.

1000x the median income would be about $80 million. Consider the highest-earning non-executive salaried employees - people who spend years in school in very challenging fields. People like neurosurgeons. Imagine if there was a couple composed of two neurosurgeons, and they earn very good salaries. They're also so frugal that they spend basically nothing. You have a pair of neurosurgeons literally sleeping on the sidewalk out front of the hospital. They live like that, and they invest and save every penny they can. The highest salaried incomes combined with pathological frugality.

Even if they did all of that. Even if two highly educated workers lived off nothing and saved everything, even then those people would still struggle to earn, over their whole life, a fortune that exceeded 1000x the median household income.

Such a system allows for a capitalism that actually does live up to the marketing. You're allowed to earn a fortune as large as your own labor and skills will allow. However, the only way to obtain a fortune larger than this is to get into the business of labor arbitrage - hiring other people and harnessing the surplus of their labor. I want people to be able to earn as much money from the sweat of their own brow as they can. But I don't want people to be able to hoard strategically dangerous fortunes by exploiting the labor of others. And 1000x the median household income is a nice even number that's easy to explain to people and that achieves this goal.

Exactly. And remember, we're talking about people who explicitly choose to live in an overtly racist community. We're not talking random white people who may have passively benefited from society's innate racism. If you got a job that a black person didn't simply because the company you applied for is subtly racist, well, acknowledge your privilege, but you're not really a villain yourself.

But this? We're talking about people who woke up and chose racism.