• 11 Posts
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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: September 2nd, 2023

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  • It’s a vague recollection of something that happened almost 10 years ago. These are passing comments, not facts in a scientific article. If the comment is sufficiently accurate that it can be used to find back the event that I’m referring to, then it’s good enough imo. I believe in cutting people some slack, myself included.




  • Trump’s funniest year as president was his first imo. Sean Spicer hiding in the bushes, Trump’s nonsensical lies about the size of his inauguration crowd, the EU president using simplified colored cards to explain trade to Trump, Scaramucci’s 1 week as spokes person, the still liberal Washington post counting all Trump’s lies, … Trump’s first year was farcical comedy, but nowadays it’s a lot more horror than comedy imo.



  • I only know jitter from electronics as well, but it could be applied in mechanics as well. Iirc, jitter is the irregularities in the intervals in a periodic signal, like data transfer. But jitter will be present in anything with a period, it doesn’t have to be digital signal. A jerk is a single action, so there is no period and there can be no jitter. A series of jerks could have a seemingly regular period, but when measured more accurately, the intervals between jerks will have small variances: jitter. Hence why imo a series of irregular jerks could be considered jittery.

    Noone ever uses it that way though and I’m not even sure that I phrased it correctly, but because of the word “jerk” I find it a mildly fun play on words.











  • I’d say stupid. I live in a country where most houses are brick walls + concrete floors, and smoke detectors are still common + since a few years also mandated by the government.

    The government mandate came after it was found that of the dozens of people that died every year from house fires, 95% suffocated in their sleep.

    Some numbers for my region: ~7m population, 70% of houses had smoke detection before the mandate, on average 63 died per year from house fires.

    Some incorrect approximative math: Lets assume that the amount of dead could have been halved if those 30% houses had 2 smoke detectors per person (lets say 2 cheap ones for 2x20 euros per 10 years): 7m x 0.3 x 2 x 20€ /10 /63 x2 = a cost of 267€ per year per life saved. Imo that’s a no brainer, it’d be stupid to not invest in smoke detection.


  • Not the same in all western countries. Afaik it was tradition in most countries for the wife to take the husband’s surname, except in Italy and Spain. Regular people also often didn’t have surnames, instead they were “son of …” or named after their or their parents’ occupation. Edit with more musings: surnames could also be their place of birth, their farm, … Names which would then get made hereditary in the early 19th century, but many people still kept using the old changing forms for generations longer. During his life, my great grandfather wasn’t known by his official surname in his village, only the state called him that.

    In the last few decades, most western countries (afaik again) are allowing the woman to chose if see wants to change her surname or not. Or to use both surnames. They also allow the man to change his name to that of his wife. Equality.

    And that recent development is also why it’s not a problem for same sex marriage. Back when the wife had to take the husband’s name, same sex marriage wasn’t allowed so there was no naming problem. Countries that allow official same sex marriages are typically also countries that will already have equality for surnames.


  • So your idea of justice is to heavily sentence people for actions that are not related to the crime that they are being sentenced for. That’s not justice, that’s called vengeance.

    And yes, someone defrauding the government should be sentenced less severely than someone who does a violent robbery. Violent robberies can get people killed and even if noone dies or gets wounded, the victims will still be traumatized. None of that can happen with white collar crime against a big organisation. That this difference isn’t obvious to you, should imo be a wake up call for yourself that you need to calm down and take some time to rethink some of the things that you belief.


  • And Trump does the following: “President Donald Trump signed off on several eyebrow-raising pardons this week, including a man whose daughter donated millions to his PAC and a convicted fraudster he had already freed from prison for a different fraud scheme during his first term”

    Trump hands out pardons after blatant corruption & at the start of people’s sentences. Biden did not do that. That you want to portray Biden to be as bad as Trump, shows that apparently your fairness compass is very broken.

    And that person who got pardoned after already serving 10 years of his prison sentence … 10 years is already a freaking long time for non violent crime, which also didn’t ruin anyone else’s lives. Sentences have to follow a gradiant along the severity of the crime, if not you end up with a broken system (like the USA one). Prison should be temporary, a chance for correction and rehabilitation, where the person one day gets released with another chance at living a quiet honest life. That you want that man to die in prison … Says a lot about you again.