Yeah, we have one-choice FPTP where I live, and it sucks.

Given the context, I feel the need to mention that starting an organisation is super, super hard to start with, and Lemmy is niche on top of that. There’s organisations IRL that are always looking for volunteers.

Well, I left during the whole API thing, so I’m not sure I’d say I’m new. But anyway, glad to hear it!

so it’s not at all a stretch to be conservative, religious, and democrat all at the same time.

Yes. That’s a lot of older African-Americans, from what I’ve heard. Church every Sunday, but they’d chew off their own leg before they vote Trump.

My impression is that the average .world user is a progressive. Some stray towards centrism, some are communist. The Pol-Pot post I saw was on Hexbear.

IRL, well, you know.

The .ml mod history is full of people getting banned for whatever, and shoehorned into rule 1. I know, because every time my posts don’t get votes for a while I go and check it, just in case.

Man, that must be tough for them. Lemmings run between solidly Democrat and contemplating critical support for Pol-Pot.

Honestly, it’s been better than Reddit so far, probably because of who’s self-selected into being here. In the long run, I expect it will be the same.

Like someone else said, there’s prominent Marxist-Leninist instances, including this one to a degree, so this probably isn’t the place if you want to talk about your cool new landlord sidehustle (for one example). Most of Lemmy (like everywhere I’ve been, probably even NCD) leans left of the IRL center, but it sounds like that won’t slip you up.

Yes, I went and learned as an adult, even. I figured the world is 70% water and I really needed to have a chance in case of a surprise encounter with it.

For one thing, Musk’s offer was thought to be very generous. He was also a lone actor who didn’t need to worry about it blowing back on him somehow if the deal fell through, as opposed to a CEO who’s actually accountable to someone.

Another billionaire could have done it, I guess, but there’s like ten guys who were rich enough and only one was Elon Musk.

Nietzsche was low-key a little too excited about the meaninglessness of the universe, from what I’ve seen.

people still manage to catch a glimpse of happiness. Why?

Why not? Happiness comes from what happens while we’re still alive. It’s ““just”” a question of finding those things.

And, protip, you’re not going to be around for option 1 anyway.

Yeah, more uncommon than complicated.

Hah, I actually make a lot less sense when not in text form. I can write, reorder and edit a bunch on here. IRL my very first communication idea comes out, and it’s stupid.

I know this is .ml, but I don’t really expect a global revolution either. Then again, the UK never had a (successful) revolution, and their monarch is just a figurehead at this point, so I still expect change, good or bad.

I mean, doesn’t that imply the existence of natural rights outside of our social agreement they exist? I think there’s lots in history that runs counter to that assumption.

So, reinterpreting a bit, should we have a right to be forgotten? On the one hand, that sounds nice. I’ve fucked up a lot in my life, and as long as someone remembers it feels like it’s permanent. On the other, there’s all kinds of academic arguments to preserve everything. Who knows what brilliant anthropological research you could do in 3000AD with the time someone overheard teenage me smack-talking their baby? (Only semi-/s)

I guess my main instinct is that once a right is established, it should be hard to get rid of. For that reason, I’m going to say no, not without an overwhelming argument for it. I still like legislation that allows you to withdraw your information from services, but that’s more because I don’t trust the services (practically and in abstract) than for a deep philosophical reason.

That’s most of what I understand, honestly. It also connects to the weak force somehow, and I think other fields can have the same effect in certain case.

I’m confident about the basic quantum mechanics of matter here, but I can’t actually do quantum field theory, so I guess I could still be misunderstanding something. Buyer beware.

Moderately bad would be, for example, getting stuck in the agrarian neolithic for geological time because every significant technological advance leads to a devastating social collapse that wipes it away. If farming is already a new thing to the species, why shouldn’t we struggle just to keep it going at a basic level?

I mean, technologies getting lost did happen all the time, and social progress basically didn’t exist until recently. But, progress in both senses eventually came. By the 20th century there was little anyone from the paleolithic would recognise in Western life, and we adapted, with only a few health and demographic problems to show for it.

Here’s a version you can scroll through to-scale. Patience required.

I mean, it’s not something for nothing. You still get drag at least matching lift to conserve energy.

The false thing they teach is that air has to go over the longer side faster. Actually, it’s under no obligation to meet back with the same air on the other side, and doesn’t in practice. The real magic bit is the corner on the back, which is not aerodynamic and “forces” air to move parallel to it (eventually, as the starting vortex dissipates).

The pressure difference from different volumetric flow speeds is real, it’s just not that straightforward to produce, because air mostly does whatever it wants. A lot of aerodynamics is still more art than science, and it’s even possible the Navier-Stokes equations it’s based on fail under certain conditions.

There’s a possibility of using the plasma directly for inducing electrical current, actually.

But then yeah, probably steam with whatever’s left.