• 21 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • If there are higher dimensions, say the extra seven asserted by String Theory, then we have breadth (thickness?) along each axis that is non zero. The higher-order string theory dimensions (which communicate particle information like gravity) are tightly rolled up.

    Brian Greene uses the metaphore of an ant on a wire who can move along the wire freely, but can’t go far laterally. They may be so small that our quantum bits can’t drift anywhere, so our liver doesn’t abandon us drift along a high-level axis.

    If there are flat higher level dimensions, then either a force or some kind of membrane would have to exist to keep our blood from leaking.

    That said, when we have pure elements, or even pure minerals or chemicals, they retain the same density (mass to volume, sometimes affected by temperature) which suggests nothing is hiding away in other dimensions whenever we take measurements. If there is room along higher axes for unseen activity, it doesnt bug us enough to work out consistent properties.



  • I remember uneven wealth distribution was a bad thing even in pro-capitalism Economics 101 (macroeconomics), like this is the thing that will collapse your economy and cause death, disasters without response and eventually popular uprising.

    FOX NEWS has, for decades now, been showing us our oligarchs don’t care.




  • I suspect we all have mental problems. Most people are not assessed and are high-functioning, yet we’re not meant to work forty hours a week and live in nuclear families, let alone struggle in precarity. Mental illness is and family dysfunction are intergenerational and have been through the twentieth century, if not through the common era.

    While there are recreational uses for drugs, I suspect most drug users self medicate, which is to say the drugs they take unpresribed are used to cope with symptoms of stress and existential horror, the same way we take drugs to cope with migraines or allergies, or chronic symptoms.

    Does that mean they’re uncool? Not at all. Self aware people, deep thinkers, philosophers, artists, scientists and engineers all often drink, smoke, binge on edibles or engage in street chemistries in order to cope, and the ones who are self-aware are able to recognize it’s a thing they need right now, and that others who are addicted are not to be blamed or judged by whatever gets them by, night after night.


  • Until we can find a better way to enforce civil liberties, the striking of illegally obtained evidence in the prosecution of terrible criminals is necessary. That they get to walk free is the point first as a penalty to the state (that now a monster remains at large) and second as a penalty to the public for allowing the state to let its agents abuse their power.

    If neonazis and terrorists aren’t protected by our Bill of Rights, then you aren’t either. And it informs how the massive extrajudicial surveillance state got formed in the first place, as the US state believes national security (in all its ambiguity) is valued more than American lives.



  • So far! no-one has ever died from loaded halloween candy. (The few incidents have all been inside jobs, like a parent poisoning their own kid).

    The fentanyl candy scare came from brightly colored Oxy tabs that looked like packed-powder candy such as Sweetarts. It was a non-issue, but made for a scare piece to frighten conservative people who believe in teen rainbow parties.





  • To be fair, Jesus’ message (some of it, scripture is not univocal) is that divine power is within the grasp of us mere mortals. That everyone who follows him would be able to do miracles like his.

    (Apologists suggest he was referring to just the apostles to explain why the rest of us are bound by naturalism, but there are implications that’s not what he meant.)

    Note that Gospel Jesus was big on direct evidence.

    That said, the cross was made of wood, and Jesus wasn’t the only convict tasked with carrying one. The gravity is in being willing to die for one’s principles which all of these characters would do unflinchingly.



  • Reagan was super anti-worker, and that’s when the drift started. After the PATRIOT act, the entire justice system (including the court systems) started seeing the public as the enemy (after all, we were harboring terrorists) which corresponds to the shredding of the Bill of Rights (specifically the fourth and fifth amendments to the Constitution of the United States). Business interests (and their plutocratic masters) were the true citizens of the US, with us lowly proletariat becoming second class citizens. Citizens United took us by surprise but we haven’t really done anything and won’t until the police are busting our own heads (or we see enough officer-involved brutality – which is, incidentally, how La Résistance got started in Paris).

    Now recently

    • SCOTUS neutering regulatory agencies in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo
    • SCOTUS deciding in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson that civil and criminal penalties for camping on public land do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment of homeless people.

    If you’re too broke to have a place to live (easy to do right now), then you can have life, liberty and property stripped from you by the state. Essentially, being a human being is very much insufficient to have rights in the US. You must also be able to afford renting or owning a place to sleep. (As tempted as I am to rant about this, I’ll stop here.)