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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)E
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181
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • Gotta paint some faces on there, with puckered lips.

  • You can afford the moldy stuff?!?

  • A course I took in undergrad on the history and philosophy of science really stayed with me, and is a really helpful way of understanding how science actually works.

    Karl Popper wrote the revolutionary work The Logic of Scientific Discovery, which proposed that what separated science from pseudoscience as whether the discipline actually makes predictions that can be proven wrong, and whether it changes its own rules when it observes exceptions to those rules.

    Well, Thomas Kuhn came along and wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which argued that not all scientific theories were equally falsifiable. Kuhn argued that science actually tolerated a lot of anomalous observations without actually rejecting the discipline's own paradigms or models. In Kuhn's view, scientists performed "normal science" by accumulating knowledge under an established paradigm, including tolerating observed anomalies, until someone would have to come along and use the accumulated anomalies to actually propose something revolutionary that breaks a lot of previous models, and throws away a lot of the work that came before, in a scientific revolution. Under Kuhn's description, science is quite resistant to criticism or falsifiability under the "normal science" periods, even if it accepts that revolutions are occasionally necessary.

    The prominent example was that Mercury's orbit didn't quite fit Newton's theory of gravity, and astronomers and physicists kept trying to rework the formula on the edges without actually challenging the core paradigm. For decades, astronomers simply shrugged their shoulders and said that they knew that the motion of Mercury tended to drift from the predictive model, but they didn't have anything better to turn to, if they were to reject Newtonian gravity. It wasn't until Einstein's general relativity that scientists did have something better, and learning that Einstein's theory works even when near a large gravity well was revolutionary.

    Others include the phlogiston theory of combustion that persisted for a bit even after it was measured that combustion of metallic elements increased the mass of the resulting burned stuff, as if phlogiston had negative mass.

    Imre Lakatos tried to bridge the ideas of Popper and Kuhn, by observing that each discipline had their own "Research Programs" that weren't necessarily compatible with others in their own field. Quantum physics was aware of cosmology/relativity, and it didn't much matter that these two sets of theories and research methods had different scopes, and contradicted each other at times. But each Research Program had its own "hard core" that was not subject to questioning or challenge, while most scientists did the work in the "protective belt" around that core. And even when a particular Research Program gets battered by a series of contradictory observations, it's perfectly rational for scientists in that field to rally in defense of that hard core to see if it can be revived, at least for a time until that defense becomes untenable. In a sense, Lakatos described the fields where Kuhn's "normal science" and "revolutionary science" actually happened, and how Popper's falsifiability criterion fit into each space.

    Paul Feyerabend also added a lot of color to these theories, too. He described the tenacity of ideas as being driven by more than simple falsifiability, but also of just how attractive of an idea it was. In his descriptions, ideas basically fought for popularity on many different metrics, and the sterile ideas of falsifiability didn't actually account for how ideas compete in the marketplace, even among allegedly rational scientists.

    So yeah, this comic is basically Karl Popper's views. The world as a whole, though, has definitely moved on from that definition trying to demarcate between science and pseudoscience.

  • Gravity ain't shit. It's not the falling that kills you, it's the impact at the bottom. Which are electromagnetic forces.

  • You're paying way too much for antimatter, man. Who's your antimatter guy?

  • Slang term for ejaculating, usually with some projectile distance implied. Very popular term in the mid-2000's, see Get Low by Lil Jon.

  • I just subscribed to cocktails. Thanks for putting that together.

  • I still have a few reddit alts that I lurk with, at least until we get enough activity on Lemmy on those topics:

    • Sports discussion, including specific leagues and teams
    • Discussion about my specific local city (and maybe the other cities I frequently visit)
    • Things relevant to my career/industry in law
    • Economics and financial news
    • Food and cooking
    • Television shows and movies, including specific shows or narrow discussions
    • Super specific hobbies and interests, not just the stuff I'm personally into, but also knowing that there's a community around some other hobby so that there is lots of archived discussion where I can just click around and learn something new. For example, the most recent plane crashes in DC and Toronto, I went to the aviation community on Reddit to see what experienced professionals were saying about those things as the news broke.

    Lemmy's good on all the tech and science stuff I like, and most of the memes/humor that I'm looking for. It's coming along on some mainstream interests, including the ones I've listed above, but still has a ways to go before the organic discussions reach the level of detail and expertise that reddit has. But it's on the right track, and I'm optimistic about those things filling in over time.

  • Yup. If, for example, you're designing a deep space mission, where every gram counts, there's a conversation to be had about whether it's cost effective (and appropriate risk) to send nuclear reactors and fuel aboard those spacecraft.

    Or using modern engineering, whether an aircraft carrier should be powered by nuclear fission or internal combustion of hydrocarbons.

  • I do.

    I know some who work in defense/military/foreign policy who had assumed that there would still be guardrails in place to prevent the nomination and appointment of totally unqualified conspiracy theorists to the highest positions in the defense and intelligence world, the haphazard effects of DOGE cuts on the military and intelligence and veteran agencies, or the vindictive pettiness of some of the senior military firings (or even the termination of security details for officials from the first Trump admin).

    I know some who work in healthcare who are terrified about the cuts to healthcare and science research, and a lot of the informational/data infrastructure that they depend on: tracking diseases, etc.

    I know some who work in finance and banking who thought that the tariff talk was just a negotiating plot rather than a true belief, and sees real danger that Trump permanently ends the post-war global economic systems that elevated American prosperity.

    I even know some in oil and gas who are now convinced that even though Trump says he cares about their industry, he's not even competent enough to protect them from the harm he's causing everyone.

    And sadly, the worst examples are the immigrants I know who didn't actually believe us when we told them that Trump 2.0 was going to be a disaster for immigrant human rights and livelihoods, even permanent residents and legitimate visa holders with high incomes and educational backgrounds. Now they're sharing stories of good law abiding people they know getting rounded up and questioned, and just otherwise fearing for their safety.

    And this isn't exactly the same as people only caring when things affect them. It's slightly different. It's people only realizing that he's full of shit when they come to mess around with areas of their own expertise and experience.

    So yeah, I know a bunch. I try to tell them they've been duped and that we can move forward by lobbying the Republicans they voted for, but the underlying unspoken theme does often carry a bit of an "I fucking told you so" foundation.

  • No, if you look closer I actually managed to avoid the 2008 stuff by kinda being immature and "behind" by not being super set in my career path in my late 20's. My smart friends from high school and college were decimated by the 2008 recession. When I went back to school in the early 2010's, I basically got my law degree with a bunch of people who were younger than me, and got myself on the middle millennial track (despite being an old millennial).

    My delayed career progression, as a slacker in my 20's, saved my financial situation.

    And if I were even older, 2001 might have permanently set me back, too. Lots of late Gen X never really recovered from that.

  • Some of us millennials have been extraordinarily lucky.

    I'm an old millennial but I avoided any personal impact from the 2001 recession by being in college, on financial aid.

    Then the 2008 recession didn't hit me very hard because I wasn't a homeowner was a single childless dude who was flexible enough to just up and move wherever there was a job, across the country if necessary. I had a different job in a different state each year from 2008 through 2011, taking big raises with each move, then eventually back to school.

    Then the 2020 recession didn't hit me very hard because my wife and I both had counter-cyclical jobs (I tend to be busier when businesses are failing) and already owned a home, allowing us to bypass much of the inflation of the post-2020 period with a fixed rate mortgage we had refinanced to below 3% in 2021.

    Now, the 2025 recession is probably gonna hit us hard. But I've basically escaped the last 3, so maybe I'm due.

  • I think in Lilo and Stitch the aliens mention in passing that they use Earth as a wildlife preserve for mosquitoes.

  • Use context clues. It's about sounds, so it's obviously sax.

  • The anus may have evolved from a hole originally used to release sperm

    But whose sperm are we talking about here?

  • Ok, that's funny. I'd go on a date with you.

  • Her: So, you want anything to drink?

    Wait are you hitting on them at their place of work, as a customer? Don't fucking do that.

  • Maybe forget "techniques" and be real.

    For many people, being playful, like on OP's example, is being real. I'm a playful person. I have generally been a class clown my entire life, and I'd even say it's a pretty core part of my personality and my identity.

    I've been married over 10 years, with kids, and I still do this kind of stuff with my wife. I enjoy being silly with my kids, too.

    And when I was dating I'd rely pretty heavily on humor for flirting throughout all stages, from meeting a stranger to setting up a first date to being on a date, to going on multiple dates. The other person's laughter was an indicator of whether we were making a connection. And then, later on, I learned that I could expect my partner to be funny too, and actively make me laugh.

    Being fun and flirty is a legitimate strategy for making sure you have the opportunity to connect with people. It is, in itself, attractive to some. And it might be unattractive to others, but it's better to be attractive to some and unattractive to others than it is to be forgettable and unnoticed.

    If they like you they do, if not who cares?

    I think this is a pretty naive way of looking at relationships. Connections require some level of effort, especially in adult life. As much as we'd all love to just naturally have friendships, romantic partners, and other relationships just fall into our laps, that's not really how that works. Most connections require a bit of work to find others, to find commonalities, to develop interest, to have some give and take of making a deeper connection, to have some vulnerability and growth and change as that stranger becomes an acquaintance and develops into someone close.

    For younger people, especially under 30, looking for a partner isn't just about looking for someone they like now. It's also someone they want to grow with and experience things together with.

  • From this summary, The American Health Association still has a very modest recommendation to avoid excessive dietary cholesterol but no longer recommends a daily limit, and notes that foods high in cholesterol tend to be high in saturated fat, which does still show a link to serum cholesterol.

    In other words, foods that are high in cholesterol but low in saturated fat (like shellfish, and to some degree eggs) are still fine.

    I'd trust the American Heart Association over a video by a doctor who advocates for veganism through his books and media appearances. He seems to me to be more of an advocate (and isn't very open about the fact that nutritionfacts.org is his own marketing website for promoting his specific products). And his books rely partially on data now known to be faulty, about "blue zones" where lots of people live past 100 (turns out each are hotspots for pension fraud so it's hard to actually know how old people actually live in those places).