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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • Whatever anyone China-affiliated says they’re not doing, it’s a safe bet that’s exactly what they’re doing.

    I’m not going to push any conspiracy theories, but I believe the strongest evidence pointing towards Covid-19 originating in a lab is the Chinese government insisting that it didn’t, while prohibiting anyone not under their control from investigating. That doesn’t mean it did originate from a lab, but if anything, that’s what it points to. To be explicit: My impression is that, currently, most available evidence points towards natural origins. However the Chinese government has done its best to convince me otherwise.



  • To be fair, this was originally the point of plastic. The primary point of plastic today is that it is an extremely cheap material that you can mould into pretty much any shape.

    Need a bag to carry stuff? Plastic.

    Packaging for toothpicks? Plastic.

    Spacers inside an electric circuit? Plastic.

    Packaging for clothes? Plastic.

    Fake plant? Plastic.

    Part of the problem is that we’re using a wonder-material that lasts forever (plastic) for a bunch of mundane shit where we don’t need it, because that wonder-material turns out to be the cheapest material around as well.






  • I’m not really into conspiracies, but I enjoy fantasies about the harmless “what if”'s around stuff like this.

    What if there actually was an advanced civilisation before us that built the pyramids and was wiped out by some global natural disaster…

    What if extraterrestrial life has visited us and exchanged technology with us, but the civilisation that received it disappeared for some reason…

    What will future humans think in 10 000 years if our civilisation is wiped out in 200 years and they start finding remains of our cities and tech?

    It makes for fun thought experiments and story prompts.






  • thebestaquaman@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.worldThe Copilot Delusion
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    2 months ago

    They’re getting downvoted because they’re missing the point. It’s not about whether or not I can choose to do things the way I prefer. It’s about how newcomers exposure, and thus opportunity to get into these things, is limited. The arguments about cars or calculators don’t hold up for that exact reason: The existence of cars and calculators does not severely limit people’s exposure to the experience of walking or doing arithmetic.



  • I would say that the “bad part of town” usually has overlap with the poorer part of town, regardless of what skin colour people have there. Of course, especially in the US, there’s significant overlap between economic status and skin colour. I just hate how the typical American view on “race” is projected onto other countries.

    Americans typically have this hang-up on “race” that you really don’t find anywhere else. A lot of places you have talk about “ethnicity” or similar, but the American fascination with categorising people by their skin colour and then using that to make generalisations is pretty unique.