TheBananaKing

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What do you think the Great Filter is?

The Great Filter is the idea that, in the development of life from the earliest stages of abiogenesis to reaching the highest levels of development on the Kardashev scale, there is a barrier to development that makes detectable extraterrestrial life exceedingly rare. The Great Filter is one possible resolution of the Fermi...

TheBananaKing ,

  • space

  • time

We've been producing noticeable radio waves for a matter of decades. We've been capable of detecting even super-powerful, super-deliberate, super-targeted broadcasts for even less time.

And on top of that, it doesn't look as though our civilisation is going to exist for more than a handful more decades, in any detectable-from-light-years-away form.

The chances of that onionskin-thin slice of lightcone intersecting with that of any other civilisation out there seems ludicrously remote.

TheBananaKing ,

For the benefits of the lurkers - this one comes up quite a bit - balls sit way higher / further forward than you think they do. All our stuff pretty much hangs off the pubic bone, and dangles down from there. We have to lean way forward to actually squish anything from underneath.

TheBananaKing ,

Dude you need to try throat singing. Kargyraa is fun.

TheBananaKing ,

Yeah, it's just secure and comfortable.

Balls aren't directly sexual, but holding onto them can be like rubbing your eyes, just kind of non-specifically pleasant.

TheBananaKing ,

In a word, fuckyeah.

TheBananaKing ,

I don't want to interact with drunk people kthx.

They're unpredictable, potentially aggressive, and I just want to avoid the entire situation.

TheBananaKing ,

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/3e998f76-ad81-4a37-9830-514e50ee2708.jpeg

TheBananaKing ,

Israel: "lol oopsie woopsie, never mind"

TheBananaKing ,

mmm yes, slavery. Delightful.

TheBananaKing ,

How about a law stating that the terms of all contracts with corporations be listed in a public registry?

You want the state to enforce the terms of your agreement, you put that agreement out in the open. No secret laws, and no secret laws-by-proxy.

TheBananaKing ,

That horse bolted decades ago; the term is lost.

Just call it racism and be done. We don't need specific terms for different demographics.

TheBananaKing ,

'Racism' is a good enough umbrella term for 'being shitty to people because of some demographic category'. Whether the basis is ethnic, national, religious or anything else doesn't seem like an important distinction. Nobody considers 'race' to be a useful term any more, after all.

TheBananaKing ,

Can the message be rude? Because if so, hornet.

TheBananaKing ,

Practicing an easily-grasped task in order to gain proficiency in a more daunting one.

Have you not seen The Karate Kid?

TheBananaKing ,

Love them to bits. They are the best.

... just get the nice marinated deli ones, not the disgusting chalky-felty sliced O-rings you get in jars.

There's no comparing the two. If all you've tried is those little abominations, I can't blame you in the slightest for hating them.

Please try the good ones.

What is a good eli5 analogy for GenAI not "knowing" what they say?

I have many conversations with people about Large Language Models like ChatGPT and Copilot. The idea that "it makes convincing sentences, but it doesn't know what it's talking about" is a difficult concept to convey or wrap your head around. Because the sentences are so convincing....

TheBananaKing ,

Imagine making a whole chicken out of chicken-nugget goo.

It will look like a roast chicken. It will taste alarmingly like chicken. It absolutely will not be a roast chicken.

The sad thing is that humans do a hell of a lot of this, a hell of a lot of the time. Look how well a highschooler who hasn't actually read the book can churn out a book report. Flick through, soak up the flavour and texture of the thing, read the blurb on the back to see what it's about, keep in mind the bloated over-flowery language that teachers expect, and you can bullshit your way to an A.

Only problem is, you can't use the results for anything productive, which is what people try to use GenAI for.

TheBananaKing ,

You are literally helping them bomb the intended recipients of that aid, you smug hypocritical bastards.

TheBananaKing OP ,

I know about Teardrop. I'm talking about the European version, the third one in the linked video - and specifically about one effect they're using in it.

TheBananaKing ,

Oh no, some nazis could get hurt

TheBananaKing ,

Your mum.

TheBananaKing ,

When Israelis give a damn about the ongoing genocide, lmk.

TheBananaKing ,

So where are the protests about it?

TheBananaKing ,

no, I'm asking about Israeli Israelis. Where are the ordinary city-dwellers getting up and marching to protest the ongoing slaughter, as you'll find in just about every other city in the world?

[Serious] Why do so many people seem to hate veganism?

Seen a lot of posts on Lemmy with vegan-adjacent sentiments but the comments are typically very critical of vegan ideas, even when they don't come from vegans themselves. Why is this topic in particular so polarising on the internet? Especially since unlike politics for example, it seems like people don't really get upset by it...

TheBananaKing ,

So, here's the thing.

Regardless of a hundred different ethical and meta-ethical theories that people espouse, what everyone actually reacts to with outrage is plausibly-generalised threat perception.

If someone's actions are directly threatening you, you'll feel anger and/or fear.

If someone's actions don't affect you or yours, but :stuff like that: being commonplace definitely would, then you will feel outrage.

If I kill people and take their stuff, you'll be very upset: you're a people, and you like stuff - and if we let the general case happen, the specifics could come bite you in the ass soon enough.

If I kill and eat animals, most people don't consider it plausibly worrying that they or little Timmy will be next. We have great big enormous taboos against eating people, so that slope just don't slip - and as a result they just don't have a problem with it.

(If I go and torment animals for lulz, then that's a very different case; people who are cruel to animals are often even worse to people, after all - and so people see that as monstrous. And again, if you want to manufacture consent for some atrociy, the easiest way is to reclassify the victims as qualitatively different. Oh good lord no, we're not killing people and taking their stuff, that would be awful. Nonono, we're killing :group: and taking their stuff, totally different proposition...)

So when vegans are horrified at people killing and eating (or breeding and milking, or whatever) animals, and go to great lengths to try and elicit that same outrage, there's a disconnect and dissonance going on. The non-vegans don't have the emotional trigger of perceived threat, so to have them keep trying regardless is seen as pearl-clutching and sleeve-tugging, like making up a sad story and loudly demanding that everyone weep about it on the spot. It's uniquely annoying. And when you combine that with (perceived) moral superiority and a hypercritical attitude, it comes across as something like a Karen with BPD. It's calling red on someone else's scene; everyone is supposed to cater to the vegan's emotional distress when there's no corresponding emotion in themselves, and honestly that just provokes people to schoolyard bullying.

That's at the core of it, I think. There's a bunch of other annoyances around it, but I think they're mostly after the fact.

Honestly if you want to make people feel that general existential threat, frame it in terms of ecological damage. Animal agriculture is horribly unsustainable and causes huge enviromnental problems, not least of which are are a truly gigantic carbon footprint. Pushing that angle would actually stand a chance of being effective, tbh. But annoyingly (from the outside), it seems that the most vocal vegans don't want people to be outraged on that basis, they want them to be outraged for the poor little lambikins, and will settle for no less. I can see their point, and I can be a stubborn bastard myself about not settling, but jesus fuck it's annoying.

Not a vegan, though I've been mostly-veggie for the last couple of years for health reasons. It's interesting how it shapes your perceptions; eating meat doesn't seem wrong to me, but it has started seeming weirdly excessive and uncreative.

TheBananaKing ,

Your brain is a kindergarten, your executive function is the kindergarten teacher (who had 3 hours sleep and skipped breakfast).

Giving them all a couple of donuts won't make much difference to the kids who are already feral, but it will pep up the teacher and allow them to take charge a bit better.

Message From a Gazan to Campus Protesters: You're Hurting the Palestinian Cause ( www.newsweek.com )

It's unconscionable. But it's not just the antisemitism that has me despairing. It's the hypocrisy. Where were these caring young people when Hamas took over Gaza and slaughtered hundreds of Gazans, or when Hamas held 2 million Gazans captive for more than 17 years? Why didn't they speak out about the fact that Hamas led Gazans...

TheBananaKing ,

Obvious Israeli shill is obvious.

TheBananaKing ,

Fuck yes, controlled chaos exactly.

Like rocks bouncing crazily down a mountainside, but somehow precisely aimed at the same time.

And at the other end of that spectrum, Bach and other early music. Which is maximally-bamboozling minimalism; you stare at it like a hyponitized chicken wondering how he can wrangle infinitely deep pattern out of like three notes.

TheBananaKing ,

I must once again post The Night Watch [PDF]

TheBananaKing ,

I already cannot art.

So if I have to choose between a talent billions of others already have (and cannot make a living on), or a talent literally nobody has, which could save countless lives and entire ecosystems...

Yeah, not even a question. Rain.

TheBananaKing ,

Your body is constantly generating heat. If that heat has nowhere to go, your temperature goes up and up.

You need to be in an environment that sucks heat away as fast as you create it - and if the external air temp isn't cold enough to do that on its own, then you have to rely on evaporation of sweat to help shed the heat.

If that doesn't cut it, you die.

TheBananaKing ,

Yea, but let's design some to work on male bodies. Dresses are generally built for female body shapes, and rely on curves most guys just don't have in order to complete the shape - so we end up looking like Graveyard Barbie in them.

Guys tend to be a lot more oblong, and the overall design would need a rethink in order to actively work with that shape, instead of unsuccessfully trying to compensate for it.

No, I don't know how to do this.

TheBananaKing ,

paywall.

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