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Cake day: October 6th, 2024

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  • For me it’s the difference between a preponderance of evidence suggesting such, and something being applied and proven until any doubt is removed.

    For example, I was trying to find studs in drywall recently (last house was plaster and lathe), and looking at things Socratically, I could use a stud finder but I might be drilling into conduit or a pipe. So I was like “I can use magnets to hit drywall screws to try to confirm the presence of a stud”, and it seems reasonable, but I’ve never attempted it in practice, and there could be all sorts of things a magnet could hit, since I’ve no experience with drywall, how close a steel pipe could be, any of that. So it’s a belief. It’d be rather arrogant of me to accept this as a reliable method without testing this method, drill through a pipe and wind up with egg on my face.

    So, I tested this by getting two magnets to stick vertically, then measured 16" out, got 2 more magnets to stick vertically, kept doing that until I hit half a dozen spots, all 16" apart. Drilled a pilot hole, felt resistance and the smell of wood, drilled a couple more.

    I think somewhere between mounting a flat screen to fixing 3 closet shelves it became knowledge, not sure exactly when, but all the doubts were removed and it never blew up in my face. I can just waltz in a room and sink a bunch of holes in the right spot now without being skeptical of some electronic stud finder.

    I guess what I mean to say is that testing something and having it consistently work and be reproducible is what leads to knowledge imo



  • The problem is a confluence of flaws related to capitalism and psychology that allows guys like these to be as they are, gives them ample opportunity to speak, and compels others to listen.

    Eric Schmidt and people like him have so much money and influence that they’re presented the opportunity to sit down with policy makers and use media as a megaphone to the point that his voice alone is louder than tens of millions of dissenters and the collective group is able to speak over the entire scientific community.

    We’ve normalized it to the point that he can pitch an idea that is as existentially catastrophic as this, and the article writer spins it as some profound statement worthy of deeper discussion.

    The CEO of Starbucks attempted to justify flying across state in a jet in order to commute to work, and a lot of people either accept it as some sort of tenet of capitalism or attempt to play the devil’s advocate as to why something like that would be deemed necessary by a person. And while he’s doing that, he’s not univerally lambasted for it, policy doesn’t change to prohibit that, and we just squabble amongst ourselves about the merits or necessity.

    But as long as guys like these continue to receive money, they and their lobbyists will be chanting the same mantra















  • Purely anecdotal but I tend to avoid any sensitive hardware purchases off of Amazon because they suck at packaging things a lot of times and I’ve had more than a few DOA components because they just tossed the box into an even larger box then apparently yeeted it down a flight of stairs

    Edit: I should add that I live 10 minutes from a Microcenter which plays a large part in my overall pickiness, but that said, when I’m looking for something sensitive to handling and needs to be purchased online I stick to computer hardware retailers solely because they love packing peanuts and bubble wrap as much as the components love them


  • There’s no apparent successor and there hasn’t been any attempt by Trump to nudge anyone towards that (he doesn’t give a shit about a post-Trump lanscape), but a half dozen people would attempt to claim it as their own, so if MAGA does survive it’d probably be really messy for a while.

    Normally we use conventions for this kind of thing but they’d be competing against traditional Republicans in that space, so I’m expecting to see MGT and DJT and Boebert and a bunch of others just try to pull each other’s hair out, like an obscenely wealthy grandparent that had no will and no clear next of kin.

    The heirarchal structure is basically Donald so the risk of the entire collective decapitating itself is pretty high