WoodScientist @ WoodScientist @lemmy.world

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11 mo. ago

This isn't about sports and it never was. Turns out when you're willing to give in to one aspect of unscientific bigotry (the trans sports moral panic), you'll be willing to give into others. And yes, opposing trans athletes in sports is fundamentally transphobic. Notice you never see transphobes like Newsom proposing narrowly targeted regulations that only address sports where some large and clear advantage has been proven. You never see transphobes like Newsom proposing that trans athletes in individual sports be given some handicap that would cancel out an advantage they've been scientifically proven to have. Instead it's all bigoted blanket bans that are no different from bans that used to exclude black people from whites-only leagues. They never start from a position of fairness and compassion and try to intervene as little as necessary. It's all about just keeping the filthy trannies out of polite society. These bans prohibit trans women from women's gymnastics, for fuck's sake. So yes, if you support blanket trans sports bans, you are a transphobic bigot. I'm sorry, but you can't just hand waive it away with, "well aside from this example of unambiguous bigotry, I don't see any bigotry here." You might as well be saying, "well aside from this person being a registered member of the KKK, I don't see any evidence that this person is racist."

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/newsoms-bizarre-interview-with-maga

When liberals tell me, a trans person, that I need to vote for militant transphobe Gavin Newsom after he's handed the 2028 Democratic primary victory, I'm going to tell them to shove it up their ass.

Honestly, unless you can quickly find who it belongs to, you should just eat it. If it's addressed to your nextdoor neighbor and you can easily get it to them, fine. If they don't know you enough to trust you, they at least know where you live and know that you're probably not messing with them.

But think about it. Let's say you order a cheesecake and it gets delivered to a random stranger's house. They call you up and tell you that they have your cake. Would you still want that cheesecake, after it had been in some randos house? You have no way of knowing what they may have done to it. And you can almost certainly get a replacement easily ordered.

So really, unless it was my neighbor's cake, I would just eat it. You can't legally be billed for any unsolicited goods mailed to your house, and I didn't order the cake. I'm not going to have to pay for it. And even if I did succeed in tracking down some complete stranger to give them the cake, they're likely to just throw it in the trash. Really, at that point, I'm the only one likely to actually eat the cake at all. So why let it go to waste? I'm eating that cake!

She’s in jail, not prison,

Aww fuck right off with this pedantic horseshit.

Obviously you're instructing OP to pump chlorine gas into the cabins of loud vehicles.

Three of the biggest critiques I've heard:

1. If you really are a genocidal alien race, you don't sit around waiting for new life to evolve and challenge you. You send out a swarm of self-replicating machines. They fly to every star system and simply systematically disassemble every planet that exists around a star's habitable zone. Considering interstellar communication timelines, some life could go from apes to interstellar threat before the speed of light even allows you to react. If you really are so paranoid that you'll commit genocide at the drop of a hat, then the far more safe and efficient strategy is to simply prevent new life from evolving at all. In the Three Body canon, species have been genociding each other for billions of years, but no one has bothered simply removing the source of new species entirely. The fact that we exist at all is evidence that we don't exist in a Dark Forest condition.
2. There are more than two civilizations. If we discover an alien civilization ten lightyears from Earth, it's likely there is another just a little further out, and even more even further out. The number of expected civilizations should increase with the cube of distance. The point is that if you genocide a new weak species, it's very likely that other species are going to see you do it. And they may be far older and more powerful than you. And there's no better way to convince that third species that you a threat worthy of extermination than to commit an act of genocide against a new species that is no real threat to yourself. It's possible there are dark ancient races out there, but the only species they ever attack are those that prove themselves a threat against others. Who better to genocide than a bunch of genociders?
3. The logic behind it is flawed. The same issues with communication and intentions uncertainty apply to game theory analyses of human beings. By the logic of the Dark Forest theory, I should go bash my next door neighbor's skull in right now. I can't really know what he's planning, and for all I know he's planning on killing me. I can't always observe his actions. How do I know he's not booby trapping my house while I'm at work? As I value my own survival above his, I have no choice but to kill him now. He's never done anything to suggest he has the slightest ill intentions towards me, but you can't be too careful. I can't read his mind. I can't know what he's thinking. Game theory demands I murder my neighbor. See how ridiculous that sounds? It just seems like profound logic when applied to the context of extraterrestrial species. But if you apply it to human beings, the whole thing falls apart.

i hate that people complain how he was not very good at writing people, so was Asimov.

I'm still waiting for my nuclear powered ashtray.

This reminds me of a video or discussion I once saw (can't find it now), on why we can't recreate the Saturn V. We still have all the old blueprints for the rocket; NASA took great care to archive those. But the Saturn V was designed for an entirely different era of engineering and manufacturing. Its parts were all designed for an era of manual machining and welding. It was built using many techniques that are now abandoned or incredibly niche and expensive. The plans simply cannot be practically built in an era of CNC machines, laser cutting, automatic welding, 3D printing, etc. Manufacturing methods affect part design. And designs built for one era's techniques may not map well those of a new era. We still have the plans for the Saturn V, but we can't build another one, as the world has simply moved on.

Mwahaha! I can see through your ruse! I'm not a tree scientist, I'm a wood scientist! I'm only interested in trees AFTER they're cut down. I have no use for undiscovered trees. Bring me more Douglas fir wood and we can talk!

If people literally living in jail can get a hold of alcohol, pretty much anyone can.

Scientist here. I would help, but I'm only a wood scientist, not a cat scientist. And in my professional opinion, trees are very different from cats.

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.