gnomicutterance

The deeply amusing thing about oglaf is how often it isn’t porn or even NSFW.

I wonder if we can start requiring history of science, philosophy, and literary & artistic theory classes in secondary school (or at least before giving out doctorates), just to limit incredibly annoying adults who think they're geniuses. I also thought I invented brain-in-a-vat thought experiments when I was ten, but I don't opine on them reinvented from first principles.

the banhammer is strong in our admins.

(for mastodon users who don't get the image: it's Andrew Lawrence's "you know the ones" tweet)

I suspect Elon's pretty comfortable with his political ideology and ego, tbh. But I agree with the second part.

They want to ban kosher food and circumcision, but love the Israeli government and the war on Gaza, which says... so many things, about so many people.

you're not wrong.

but can you observe their chromosones?

I expect SneerClub to provide my alibis when reading one of these finally makes me snap.

to be fair, a lot of the early Internet, including the early research Internet, was driven by libertarian tendencies (which always ignored the dilemma in combining libertarian tendencies with the fact that the entire early Internet was enabled by massive government funding). John Perry Barlow, the EFF, etc. It’s just that a lot of those people were libertarian utopians – and I will fully admit that in my youth it seemed very convincing. It felt like there were no space for bad actors because when the Internet was smaller, it was less obvious to idealists and the naïve that a larger internet would be incredibly useful for bad actors.

As recently as gamergate the EFF was loudly insisting that all moderation by private companies was wrong, and in the intervening few years they have only grudgingly and rarely admitted that overly libertarian moderation policies can suppress speech massively. And yet I fully believe all the EFF people mean well.

Trying to figure out if that comment is a bit or not, and at least one of the poster's other comments on the video is this literary masterwork:

some people have observable x chromosones and others have observable y chromosones, and those categories are good to make useful distinctions, just like I make a distinction between a chair and a sofa... I still don't believe gender is real, and I can still observe sex. Sure, sex could be an illusion, but it doesn't matter. The chair is most certainly an illusion.... At what point does wood become a chair? Is a three legged chair a chair? A two legged? A one legged? A none legged? Is a seat and a chair the same thing? What if I break the seat in half? Is it still a chair?

Some scientific breakthroughs were memes at first

name one.