While it doesn’t work as well with or as your joke, the ATF is actually now the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. So we need to add the E as well and we can spell FACET, which is less fun. Or use M for Marijuana and spell FMEAT.

Jesus fucking christ. You know how water works, right? It fits the form of the container it’s in. It’s an simplified analogy to explain what that other guy linked to. We (well, you) see a universe fit to our kind of life, but the reality is that we developed to fit the universe.

You remind me of this guy I saw the other day claiming that a whole bunch of rocks that are vaguely shaped like body parts might be fossilized body parts.

He just kept saying “I’m not saying it definitely is, but imagine if we don’t understand the world, and it’s maybe this way? Crazy right?!”

It’s such cowardly bullshit. If you want to believe a thing because it sounds nice to you, don’t half-ass it and throw qualifiers on it. You brought it up, and then when challenged the tiniest bit, backed down with a “I’m not saying that’s definitely true… but maybe…?”

and that doesn’t match our expectations.

What expectations? Actual scientist, using facts, don’t have expectations of alien life. We don’t know the probability of life existing anywhere but here because we have nothing to compare it to. We have the one universe with the one data set available to us. Until we discover alien life, we should have no expectation for it. Do I think it’s likely there is life elsewhere? Yes. Does that mean I expect it? No. We don’t have enough information about the cosmos to even start to calculate whether it should happen.

I had a roommate once who believed that the stuff from the Alvin the Maker book series was real. The magic and shit. I asked if he had anything that led him to believe that or if he just really liked the books and wanted it to be. OF course he didn’t have any evidence or real reason for it. He just wanted it to be so, so he decided that he was going to believe that thing.

You’re doing that. Stop it. Be a grown-up here and stop believing in make-believe and believe things only when we have sufficient (or in your case, I’ll take any) evidence.

Have you heard of the puddle analogy?

A small amount of water sits there, it this hole in the ground it finds itself in. It looks at this cavity, observes how perfectly it fits the contours of their liquid body. It’s perfect! Every nook and cranny seems to be formed to fit the puddle perfectly.

“This hole must have been made for me! It’s too much of a coincidence that, with all the ways a hole could form, this one formed perfectly to fit me!”

You’re doing that. You’re saying it’s a crazy coincidence that all the right things were in place here for life to exist that led to us being here… but if it wasn’t, then we just wouldn’t have developed as life-forms. Or if the environs were different, life would have developed to fit into that kind of solar system. I think you just like the idea, so you believe it, but I think it’s better to believe things we have evidence for.

The thing is, if the place you’re getting your information from doesn’t list it’s sources, you can’t trust it. Whenever I’m researching a thing on the internet and I find an article or a paper, I don’t just stop there, I check where they got their info, then I find that source and read it. I follow it all the way back until I find the primary source.

Like the other day I was writing a paper about a particular court case. In the opinions, as in most cases, they use precedent and cite prior cases. So I found the other cases that referred to the thing I was writing about, and it turns out they were also just using prior cases. I had to go 6 deep before I found them referencing the actual constitution for one of them. On another I found it interesting that the most recent use case was so far removed from what the original one was about and it was could probably be questionable to even use it as precedent if they had used the original instead of another case.

Anyway, the point is, always check sources. If anyone says anything on the internet, assume it’s just their opinion until you check and follow the sources…

The purpose of libraries has simply expanded. A lot of people do still use it for books, but this being an online forum there’s likely a selection bias at play. People learn to go to the library when that’s the main place they have access to stuff, often because purchasing or finding it digitally is out of the price-range. As a consequence, those big beautiful libraries in the nice part of town are often pretty empty but the cramped one near us poor folk is full of families and their kids every weekend.

But libraries offer so much more than books. They have digital services, often with access to computers (again, mostly used by those who can’t afford a personal computer), and research assistance. Librarians know how to research and find sources and are an invaluable help when trying to find research on a topic. My local has community events where someone comes in and gives presentations or activities for kids often. Libraries are a community project that brings people together. Unfortunately, public libraries, being not for profit, don’t have extensive funds so they don’t have the reach they used to. Public sentiment has also turned away from libraries for a variety of reasons and in different ways. The capitalist-centric world-view lends to people’s appreciation for owning things and improving your own station while shying away from improving the group condition. Libraries whole purpose is antithetical to that world-view, so they’re ignored at best, actively fought against at worst.

This is, of course, an American centric rant, since that’s where I am and can’t speak to the conditions elsewhere.

And it’s so lazy. You could get .pngs of all of that stuff and just stack them up in PS and throw on a sepia filter and it would look better after 5 minutes of work. AIs like this have just made people lazy. I’ve seen people talk about using Chat GPT to do Algebra 1 math. Literally any basic search engine will be just as effective and you might actually learn something but people are so determined to make AI something they can rely on. /rant

It’s definitely older than that. I remember French jokes going back decades before. They’ve always been a punching bag in America’s eyes. “The French are smelly.” “The French are snobby.” “The French are cowards.” If I had to guess, it probably goes back to WWII and their occupation by the Nazis.

I heard this guy talking about the right’s reaction to the pandemic say “This whole new idea of what’s liberty, and liberty for whom can kill. Especially when it replaces the idea of liberty as that which has to be shared in some kind of common good.”

It’s obvious though that it’s not actually a new idea, but I think this cuts to the heart of it. It’s an inherently selfish mindset that is so prevalent on the right. They use the idea of “liberty” as a bludgeon to get what they want by redefining it. Freedom has stopped meaning a group concept and become purely a personal one. Their own wants are the most important thing in all cases. And I want to emphasize want. These aren’t beliefs. They are projecting their desires of the way they would prefer the world and calling them beliefs.

It’s fairly universal, I think, but exemplified in American culture. I could go one about some of the “founding” ideas of the country that have had effects that last to today but I’m talking about freedom today. It was always a selfish idea here (bunch of business men didn’t want to pay taxes) and the end result is before us.

People see a book that makes them uncomfortable - for whatever reason - and just want it removed, regardless of any wider ramifications. They get scared about their own impending doom when a pandemic hits so they seek to remove the fear by the most direct path. Actually solving it is hard, but removing the fear is quick, so they demand that everyone just stop being afraid and stop reminding them of the things they fear. It seems to be a pretty standard through-line for their ethos.

“anti” also doesn’t mean opposite, it means against. The roots of the word, tracing back to the Greek, means against. As it does in French and it’s Sanskrit version. All forms of it mean opposed to. This is why language is important and some checks should be there to counter the “language is malleable” argument that people use as an excuse to not learn how to use words correctly. The idea that anti means opposite has been around as long as I can remember, and definitely longer than that, but it drastically changes the meaning of words.

I mean, I’m just responding to your comment where you described the employees having the power in your professional setting. People with more information than you have are telling you to treat your employees as a flight risk and not do anything to lose them. That implies they don’t want them leaving more than they want to twist the boot they have on their necks.

On a personal note, you sound like a piece of shit. Your reply makes it clear you do see your employees as less than you and want them to just get in line and do what they’re told rather than advocate for themselves.

I’m in management at some generic office job. I advocate for my employees. I’ve done their job and I know it sucks. Now that I’ve moved up and have more information, their job still sucks and I still see them as people who are just trying to make enough money to live, like we all are. I also make sure to remind them on a regular business not to trust any company and always make decisions that are best for themselves. If I was CEO I would be telling them that.

I suggest you rethink your view on your own employees. Maybe remember that they are people with lives beyond trying to make their boss a little more money. They shouldn’t care and neither should you. If you see your employees as just tools to use for the company, your boss thinks the same thing about you. You should be on their side. You have the same enemy.

Yeah. The younger generation just doesn’t understand that the system was designed specifically to keep them in check and give them as few options as possible so they have to do whatever asked or risk ending up on the street. The audacity of them standing up for themselves and refusing to put up with professional mistreatment and be willing to walk. I can’t believe they figured out that we actually need them to operate and they have more power than we’ve led them to believe.