viridian

5 ms·

1.
by viridian 10mo ago
I always found the birkin interesting because of how working class it looks versus its price tag. I grew up fairly poor, and the birkin bags always remind me of the leather purses my aunts, grandmothers, and teachers would carry. This seems
2.
by viridian 10mo ago
side note: the flynn effect is reversing in most developed countries, and started doing so between 1991-1997.
3.
by viridian 10mo ago
Impossible is almost always a colloquialism, almost everything is possible is you accept a low enough probability of success. We are talking about something less likely than almost anything else ever called impossible.
4.
by viridian 10mo ago
It's possible in the same way its possible that you will spontaneously phase through the floor due to a particular outcome of atomic resonance. Possible, but so unlikely it almost certainly has not, nor ever will happen. Might somethin
5.
by viridian 10mo ago
>Society is doomed because we stopped silencing disinformation peddlers. We know what happens when Nazis are allowed to spread propaganda freely - because that happened one time in Germany, and we saw the results. That one time in German
6.
by viridian 10mo ago
The US is a major outlier in sentencing for violent crimes and sex crimes. It's not the absolute peak in terms of sentencing, but its somewhere between the Latin American mean and the Middle Eastern mean, which is unexpected given its
7.
by viridian 10mo ago
The main rifles I've seen depicted in this conflict are AK pattern rifles, with the rare ancient armalite pattern rifle scattered among them, and a singular SCAR. Based on where most modern AK manufacturing has moved to (China, like ma
8.
by viridian 10mo ago
As a heads up, flagging is rarely done by mods, and overwhelmingly done by normal users with sufficient karma to do so, so it probably wasn't Dan or Scott. For example, the comment header for the comment I am currently replying to look
9.
by viridian 11mo ago
I fail to see how that conclusion is even possible. He's not advocating for anything, he's just taking the opportunity to dunk on Israel. His actual cloaked argument, insofar as it exists, is that Israel does not uphold these stan
10.
by viridian 11mo ago
Honestly, thinking it through, there's no way I'd engage the public at all on something like that except possibly a singular utterance that no, it didn't happen, ever, not even close, it's a bold faced lie. Trying to con
11.
by viridian 11mo ago
Look, I also find sarcasm extremely annoying, it's an anathema to meaningful discussion. However... your non-sarcastic interpretation is clearly in bad faith, and ratchets up the hostility even further. Why post this jeering reply?
12.
by viridian 11mo ago
Recently, any time I see someone railing against about one-sided coverage, it sets off alarm bells for where the person themselves is coming from. To explain, there was a study of partisan bias I once read, wherein a mixed audience is shown
13.
by viridian 11mo ago
FWIW in my experience is less the monster energy / black rifle coffee audience, it's actually the red bull / white claw audience. It still feels wrong to me, but that's how it is.
14.
by viridian 11mo ago
Whatever your own feelings on the matter are, condescending to people with terms like "fee-fees" only engenders more conflict and outrage. It's a fraction of a drop in an ocean of online hostility and malevolence, but is stil
15.
by viridian 11mo ago
I think people view it more as an irreparable shattering of the social contract. Society exists, but the rules just don't matter. Many people have become strict conflict theorists, to borrow a term from sociology.
16.
by viridian 11mo ago
The person might not intend to be trivializing the problem, but that is the common outcome. This was very observable in the wake of the Snowden leaks, where "is anyone actually surprised?" was a key prong in the narrative that arg
17.
by viridian 11mo ago
There's a lot of difference between "we don't officially support X" and "we will programmatically prevent you from using X". Even "using X will void your warranty" is actually significantly better for
18.
by viridian 1y ago
US military doctrine does often play out like this in the field. We prefer maneuver warfare strategies and tactics to positional and attrition ones as a general rule, and a key element of maneuver warfare is the units doing the work having
19.
by viridian 1y ago
Speaking of vibe checks, the vibes in this post are worse than what you've replied to. "something something", "I'll meet you at your level", "Do you see?", "you got it 200% wrong.", are all
20.
by viridian 1y ago
I still do it, for emphasis. Never had anyone complain thus far.
21.
by viridian 1y ago
Academia certainly does, although, humorously, we also have professors making the same proclamation you do, while while en or em dashes in their syllabi.
22.
by viridian 1y ago
My observations largely match your own, and also applies more generally to non-technical interactions online. I help manage a group that runs a local LAN, and have run into both the general language issues, and people making long, incompreh
23.
by viridian 1y ago
You dropped your conjunction.
24.
by viridian 1y ago
As an American, the answers to these questions are yes, no (subject to draft), and yes. Iran considers us to be "the great Satan", to give an example.
25.
by viridian 1y ago
By this measure, the Armenians were also not the subject of a genocide. Which of course, is the common opinion in Turkey, and almost no where else.
26.
by viridian 1y ago
> In my understanding Israel, in the eyes of the US, is a convenient "wedge" in the Arab space that allows for easier power projection in the area This doesn't get talked about enough but yes, this was Kissinger's geo
27.
by viridian 1y ago
Oh we absolutely are, and it's not even close. I'd almost take pride in it were it not so ruinous for everyone. We've gone from philosophers like DeBord and Baudrillard painting a somewhat manic vision of the future, to actu
28.
by viridian 1y ago
This is like saying there are no good guys or bad guys in the mafia, because the good guys all got taken out early on. What you are then left with are bad guys.
29.
by viridian 1y ago
I must not understand this analogy, because it seems to only draw the conclusion that we are to be the objects of a totalitarian state in all cases. Taking the first fundamental right from the US constitution, the right to life, is not a gi
30.
by viridian 1y ago
1% of all jobs is still a huge number of jobs in total terms. Spitball math put's h1b's much lower than that actually, .4 to .5% of all FTE positions. That said, it almost certainly has an outsized impact on the tech sector, which

More ›