The whole Zuckerberg pretending to be conservative now that Trump is in power has been hilarious really. Like being in the Joe Rogan show, saying companies need more masculinity or some shit.
How about we don't let private companies do whatever the fuck they want?
Readit Newstheclansman commented on Meta Censoring '#Democrat' on Instagram mstdn.chrisalemany.ca/@ch... · Posted by u/vool
theclansman commented on Meta Censoring '#Democrat' on Instagram mstdn.chrisalemany.ca/@ch... · Posted by u/vool
The question for the people who find this outrageous, why didn't you find the opposite situation just as outrageous? For years, liberals have been tacitly and often explicitly endorsing censorious behavior of Twitter, Meta and others as not only legitimate, but desirable. And this outcome is exactly why that was a dangerous position to embrace. Because, soon enough, someone you don't agree with will come into power.
We need to denounce censorship always, _especially_ when we disagree with those being censored.
It's hilarious to me that so many people are just noticing the censorship of these sites. But hey, I guess that's a good thing right? Surely we all want freedom of speech now.
theclansman commented on ’Brain rot‘ named Oxford Word of the Year 2024 corp.oup.com/news/brain-r... · Posted by u/ChrisArchitect
I wouldn't stress too much about 'brain rot' being the "word" of the year. The Oxford Word of the Year 2015 was the 'Face with Tears of Joy' emoji
I've noticed that younger fellows like to correct people while using the crying emoji, and point disturbing stuff with the skull one. Tears of joy is probably not ironic enough for them.
theclansman commented on ’Brain rot‘ named Oxford Word of the Year 2024 corp.oup.com/news/brain-r... · Posted by u/ChrisArchitect
Just do what we've done since the dawn of time: hang out with friends and family, prepare and eat food together, maybe play card or board games. It feels good and it's good for you.
That's actually not that easy to do when people are expected to be living alone at a certain age. Finding a partner could be good for you but that's also not so simple. I think most people would prefer hanging out with others rather than scrolling tik tok (you might enjoy alone activities but tik tok scrolling comes out of boredom), but sometimes they have no choice. It's like the way we live is pointing us specifically in that direction, at least by default.
I cannot agree. It's just "feel-good thinking." "Everybody can do everything." Well, that's simply not true. I'm fairly sure you (yes, you in particular) can't run the 100m in less than 10s, no matter how hard you trained. And the biological underpinning of our capabilities doesn't magically stop at the brain-blood barrier. We all do have different brains.
I've taught math to psychology students, and they just don't get it. I remember the frustration of the section's head when a student asked "what's a square root?" We all know how many of our fellow pupils struggled with maths. I'm not saying they all lacked the capability to learn it, but it can't be the case they all were capable but "it was the teacher's fault". Even then, how do you explain the difference between those who struggled and those who breezed through the material?
Or let's try other topics, e.g. music. Conservatory students study quite hard, but some are better than others, and a select few really shine. "Everyone is capable of playing Rachmaninov"? I don't think so.
So no, unless you've placed the bar for "mathetical skill" pretty low, or can show me proper evidence, I'm not going to believe it. "Everyone is capable of..." reeks of bullshit.
Anybody can do everything if we restrict everything to things everyone can do.
> I agree with the sentiment of this. I think our obsession with innate mathematical skill and genius is so detrimental to the growth mindset that you need to have in order to learn things.
I would argue something different. The "skill" angle is just thinly veiled ladder-pulling.
Sure, math is hard work, and there's a degree of prerequisites that need to be met to have things click, but to the mindset embodied by the cliche "X is left as an exercise for the reader" is just people rejoicing on the idea they can needlessly make life hard for the reader for no reason at all.
Everyone is familiar with the "Ivory tower" cliche, but what is not immediately obvious is how the tower aspect originates as a self-promotion and self-defense mechanism to sell the idea their particular role is critical and everyone who wishes to know something is obligated to go through them to reach their goals. This mindset trickles down from the top towards lower levels. And that's what ultimately makes math hard.
Case in point: linear algebra. The bulk of the material on the topic has been around for many decades, and the bulk of the course material,l used to teach that stuff, from beginner to advanced levels, is extraordinarily cryptic and mostly indecipherable. But then machine learning field started to take off and suddenly we started to see content addressing even advanced topics like dimensionality reduction using all kinds of subspace decomposition methods as someting clear and trivial. What changed? Only the type of people covering the topic.
I saw a lot of this when I went to college for engineering, some professors had this ability (or willingness) to make hard things simple, and others did the opposite, it was the same with the books, I dreaded the "exercise for the reader" shit, I don't think I ever did any of those, so those were all proofs I never got.
Most people don't try hard at the gym. Most people don't try hard at music. Most people aren't comedians.
This reads like the foreword to the incel handbook.
And that's obviously bad because incels are not real people with feelings.
theclansman commented on Programmer in Berlin: Culture wickedchicken.github.io/p... · Posted by u/jnord
As a European I enjoyed reading this, I think it is a nice illustration of some of the differences between Europe and the US without falling into the silly "US bad" or "Europe weird" rethoric.
But one thing struck me as very odd:
> One thing I found unusual was how many people regularly smoked in Europe. [...] I guess that’s one of the few downsides of universal healthcare.
The idea that people living in a country with universal healthcare would more easily indulge in risky behavior because they would not have to pay for medication or hospitalization is, frankly, nuts. It's hard to imagine Americans smoke less not because they are scared of dying painfully of lung cancer, but because they could not afford the medical expenses in case they do get cancer; but maybe this is the case?
All I know is that the idea of not having to pay for healthcare is not at all reassuring when I think about the risks associated with something I'm doing - be it smoking, driving, drinking or anything else.
The conclusions a lot of people draw from universal healthcare are, frankly, insane most of the time. I've seen people saying that people in Europe are happier because of free access to therapy (as in, mental health), which implies a lot of things, but is not even true. Going to therapy here in Norway is extremely expensive.
The idea that someone would indulge in risky behavior just because a doctor will "fix you" for free is also ridiculous. This person clearly didn't think too much about it considering how people eat in the US.
All these weird comments about alcohol abstinence...must be a religious fundamentalist, must be an ex-alcoholic, etc. I have a drink maybe 5-10 times per year, and I'm not actively trying to abstain. It tastes gross, and I'm not drawn to it. Why is it so hard for some people to understand that alcohol isn't appealing to everyone?
I've always found weird how people draw conclusions from small correlations, specially when other studies show the opposite result. They call it hypothesis, but weirdly enough these conclusions often coincide with their world view. Look at that, now I'm the one drawing conclusions, must be human nature to try to make sense of things. But what I've found is that often reality is counter intuitive, and that's more fun.
I bet this is not because alcohol is good for you in any way, but because being intelligent is related to being eager to try new things.
I knew that smoking crack meant I was smart