A mere 20 years ago we could sit in mixed company laughing and groaning during an impromptu “everyone’s best and worst pickup line” contest, that levity among friends. Levity is serious business re-learn it.

You still can. The discourse is because a large chunk of the male population doesn’t understand how to do that without being creeps. Don’t be a creep and women will like being around you

Damn dude, that was such a spot-on summary I feel like I don’t need to log in to lemmy for a month lol

This is such a spurious connection lol but I read the article anyway

The pattern probably emerged as a result of Darwinian natural selection: cicadas that naturally matured in easily divisible years were gobbled up by predators, and simply didn’t live long enough to produce as many offspring. Those who, by chance, had long, prime-numbered life spans fared best, survived longest, and left the most offspring, becoming the dominant variation of the species.

I’m glad the author actually took the time to describe the evolutionary process accurately. When I was an impressionable youngin’ arguing against evolution, a big sticking point for me was how so many people described evolution as if there was some design or guidance behind it all. Nope, just common sense chaos and lots of death

[The Fine-structure Constant] quantifies the strength of the electromagnetic interaction between elementary charged particles.

Why the constant should have this value is not understood, but there are a number of ways to measure its value.

Sounds like we know what it is, we just don’t know the reason for its value. (Edit: Unless I’m misunderstanding what you mean)

Wikipedia link

What are we considering in vs out of city? Does in city mean just downtown, within city limits, within metro area? And what are we considering a city - 300k population?

Maybe so! Always hard to say with the range of opinions I see on the internet these days

How did volunteers who run reddit’s for-profit business for them for free end up equated with landed gentry?

You’ve been downvoted by leftists for bashing socialism, and by liberals for implying that China is actually socialist. A beautiful thing to witness

The fact is that technology advances and makes other technology obsolete,

Yeah, it happens on both sides, it’s an arms race. It will swing the other way eventually - it always has and always will

The second thing you’re not addressing is how long the “ebb and flow” takes anyway

That was intentional. There’s no estimating a timeline, but with the development of technology it’s not unreasonable to expect a reversal even in a decade. Anyway, if you’re trying to ward off doomerism you’re not going to do it by only looking at what you stand to gain

Looking at the world rn, I dont think things have a tendency to get better on their own

This is called a recency bias (I think lol) - you’re looking at the world rn and assuming its trends must continue. When you look at history you see that there are ebbs and flows, and that stasis is rare. If you focus on certain things, you may certainly decide we’re in a downtrend. There will always be an uptrend afterward. And vice versa

And he said “Hi stuck in a non-linear perception of time, I’m Dad.”

you’re a father

Being into them is being attracted to them which, on an instinctual level, is wanting to fuck them

Edit: simplified, obviously, you can be attracted to someone in a more emotional way but some would argue that’s still wanting to mate or partner with them in some way

Oh the definition is fine, I just mean that it seems illogical to adhere to it dogmatically.

Like, ok I’ll try to come up with the best summation but bear with me lol. Basically, let’s say you’re with your current partner. You’ve been into other people in the past. So, logically, you’ll probably be into other people - at some level - in the future, right? That seems like a natural development to me.

So if it’s natural, why should we have the little fine print on all of our relationships that reads “If you’re into other people this contract is null and void?”

Am I making sense? Lol. Like I just mean that it’s natural to be attracted, in some way, to more than one person so why do we default to holding ourselves and our partners to the unnatural? In that way, I’m monogamous with one person at a time seems logically inconsistent to me. It accepts the existence of plurality of attraction, yet denies its engagement

Fair enough have you tried 1.5?

Even then it seems illogical to me tbh (internally inconsistent?), but at least it’s less rigid

Spock and Chewbacca is an interaction I never knew I wanted. Or Data

It’s interesting that people try to explain this away with all kinds of retroactive in-universe technobabble. I mean, I enjoy Star Wars just as much as the next guy but it’s abundantly clear that SW wasn’t meant to be investigated at this level. It’s space mythology, not hard science fiction. And that’s fine! We can have fun asking things like “Why is the Outer Rim considered a backwater if it only takes a few hours to get from galactic center to the rim?” and we don’t really have to stress about answers to those things as fans. Edit: Or we can if that’s what fans enjoy doing, but it just isn’t my thing and I think that’s ok too

Who would win, a B-17 Flying Fortress with no bombs, or the USS Missouri?

Edit: Also the Missouri can fly too, but it’s a little less maneuverable, usually

The Millennium Falcon would destroy the Enterprise somehow. Then Kirk and crew would be stranded on a planet until they find a way to get aboard and commandeer the Falcon. Ultimately they would use it to go back in time and save the whales or something