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ContriteErudite

@ ContriteErudite @lemmy.world

Posts
1
Comments
96
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • Removed Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

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  • There was a post not too long ago discussing boobs and how people react to them. One of the responses was from a foreign aid worker in Haiti after the earthquake. In Haiti, it's not uncommon for women to walk around with uncovered breasts. At first, the poster said, they found it extremely distracting, because boobs were everywhere. After a few days uncovered boobs stopped being novel and sexy, because they were everywhere.

    Once their assignment in Haiti ended and they returned to their home country, boobs started being sexy again... all that to say that while they are a secondary sexual characteristic, it is a cultural construction whether or not they are seen as overtly sexual.

  • Oh god yes

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  • I meant to reply the other day but, well, everything is a distraction.

    I checked out Black Vomit and really enjoyed it! That's the kind of noise-as-music that I like. It is equally background and foreground; melts into my environment while I'm focusing on something else, but interesting and attention-grabbing in the moments when my focus waivers. Excellent recommendation, thank you!

    I wrote down your jazz recommendations and am slowly getting to them (lately I haven't been much in the mood for jazz, but the mood always comes back around eventually). Free Lancing was a hell of a ride, and I loved every track. Shared it with a friend of mine who also likes experimental/eccentric guitar-focused music and they also liked it. I'll add your other recommendations to the list and will definitely give them a listen in the coming weeks. Thanks again! :)

  • Oh god yes

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  • Oooh! What is the album? I'm a sad fool for noise-as-music. The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation and Black Boned Angel are some of my favorite backgrounds.

  • xkcd #3182: Telescope Types

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  • Please accept this hug from an internet stranger that is likely heading down the same road... hoping the symptoms end up being a huge nothingburger, but if not then I'm going to miss my hobbyist equipment.

  • South Koreans hunt for old LG air-conditioners after logos turn out to be pure gold

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  • No, some people just do contentious things without any real purpose.

  • I'm not even gay

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  • I think it was directed at the second party. But also shouted at the boundless void in the hope that someone, something, anything with the power to make things make sense hears us. Just like most of my posts.

  • Dropped Beets

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  • I think this room is a vestibule of sorts; the railing outside the window is the type that's usually installed on a raised walkway/ramp, which means that window likely a door where deliveries are made. Depending on where this was photo was taken, local regulations might require entryways and vestibules be kept clear.

  • Anon's neighbors have chickens

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  • You shouldn't anthropomorphize animal behavior by misinterpreting their instincts for human emotions. Feral and tame cats of all kinds will play with their food to hone hunting skills. Dogs will ravage and eviscerate other animals as play. Hamsters will eat their offspring under circumstances where it would mean the parent has a better chance to survive without them.

    Cats do not "love seeing things in pain" for the same reason that dogs don't "love" seeing a toy rabbit torn to shreds: both behaviors are rooted in their hunting instincts. True sadism (hurting or killing another being for no reason other than pleasure) has only been observed in animal groups that also possess higher-ordered cognitive and social traits, such as cetaceans and apes.

  • A new ‘solution’ to student homelessness: a parking lot where students can sleep safely in their cars

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  • Paraphrasing a quote I head years ago: Americans will always do the right thing, after exhausting all other possibilities.

  • What's the oldest video game you still find yourself playing?

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  • Darklands - a cRPG released in 1992 by Microprose. It's set in medieval Germany; you are a party of fledgling adventurers looking to build fame and money, and somehow you get pulled into a battle against the forces of the apocalypse. Instead of magic, you invoke saints and use alchemy to craft potions. I loved it when I was younger, and I still, somehow, enjoy it today.

    If you hate the following things, then I highly recommend checking it out!

    • great graphics
    • good music and sound design
    • easy to understand game mechanics
    • stable, bug-free game play
    • yourself

  • Hillary Clinton Says Young Americans Are Pro-Palestine Because They Watch ‘Totally Made Up’ Videos of Gaza Horrors

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  • My guess is some sort of SEO to correlate those terms to this post.

  • The U.S. Is Funding Fewer Grants in Every Area of Science and Medicine | A quiet policy change means the government is making fewer bets on long-term science.

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  • Thank you for that. I do my best to be direct without sounding antagonistic or demeaning. It's always been hard to have a good conversation on the internet, but I feel that lemmy - for the most part - has a good community with a strong sense of equanimity. I've always loved learning new things, so I really appreciate your open-mindedness and candor about wanting to learn more. Cheers!

  • The U.S. Is Funding Fewer Grants in Every Area of Science and Medicine | A quiet policy change means the government is making fewer bets on long-term science.

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  • In a different response I asked for you to provide examples, but I didn't submit that reply until after you posted this, so I'll respond here.

    I looked through those articles, and most examples of a non-military scientific study had qualification from the author on the actual aim of the study and how future studies built upon the results. On the other hand, many of the military-funded studies were, in my opinion, hare-brained and ill-suited to begin with. Any study whose premise can be milled down to "how to kill more people better" is half-baked at best, and regressively dangerous at worst. Still, they produced knowledge or technology that later proved useful. Science has always been like this: the scientists who discovered nuclear fission wanted it to be a new energy source long before the worst of us chose to weaponize it.

    The same applies to gain-of-function research. It can help us understand how viruses cross species barriers, as COVID-19 did from bats to humans. That potential is real and valuable, even if the risks feel frightening to non-scientists. Some work may be better paused, but the underlying scientific questions remain important.

    As for cost, science has never been cheap. Researchers, equipment, specialized materials, and long-term animal care add up quickly. Maintaining a single genotyping mouse colony can cost tens of thousands of dollars a year. What looks frivolous to one person may be vital to another, and many breakthroughs begin with questions that seem irrelevant at first glance.

    My broader point is simple: much of science’s value lies beneath the surface, in expertise and context the public rarely sees. Too often, people dismiss what they don’t understand instead of learning more or deferring to those who do. If we’re worried about waste, the Pentagon’s inability to pass an audit despite consuming more taxpayer money than scientific research ever has, says far more about misplaced priorities than the price of experimentation and discovery.

  • The U.S. Is Funding Fewer Grants in Every Area of Science and Medicine | A quiet policy change means the government is making fewer bets on long-term science.

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  • I’m genuinely curious what you and others who share your thoughts have in mind when they say there are a lot of useless and frivolous scientific studies. Can you please share some examples, I'd like to learn more about them.

    As far as I know, receiving government funding for a scientific study is a highly competitive process. Proposals are examined by qualified experts who evaluate their merit, relevance, and scientific rigor long before money is awarded.

    I can understand why non-scientists might jump to the wrong conclusions, especially if they only ever see sensational headlines or oversimplified editorials. But this is exactly why it’s so important to recognize our own limits and defer to the people who actually work in these fields. It takes maturity and intellectual humility to admit when something is outside our wheelhouse.

    Curious people and scientists alike know to read past the headline, because that’s where the actual knowledge lives. The studies I know of that are most often mocked as “frivolous” are examples of how misleading a surface-level reading can be:

    “Drunk ants fall mostly on their right side.” This is actually an urban-myth-tier claim. There has never been a funded study or published paper demonstrating a one-sided “drunk ant” effect.

    “Cocaine makes honey bees dance differently.” The bee study wasn’t about amusing scientists with drugged insects. It examined how cocaine affects reward pathways and communication. This research was relevant to understanding addiction and motivation across species, including humans.

    “Do woodpeckers get headaches?” This wasn’t a joke experiment. Woodpeckers were used as a natural model to study how repeated head impacts can occur without concussive injury, producing insights into human head trauma and designing better safety gear.

    Ultimately, federal funding for scientific research is rigorous and competitive. Truly frivolous projects rarely make it through the approval process. What often looks absurd to the public is, in reality, carefully designed work grounded in expertise we don’t always see or fully understand.

    This is exactly why listening to experts matters, and why it's so dangerous that American policy makers are completely discounting scientific knowledge and expertise.

  • Tucker Carlson: Trump Shooter Was a Trump-Backing Radical — and the FBI Covered It Up

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  • In a video with Ben Shapiro he questioned if the news we were hearing regarding Israel and Gaza could be trusted. Shapiro looked mortified that a fellow conservative would even entertain such a thought. It's been alluded that was the moment that Kirk sealed his fate.

  • Death of beloved neighborhood cat sparks outrage against robotaxis in San Francisco

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  • There are also a lot of people out there that will intentionally swerve to hit an animal. Mark Rober made a video a long time ago where 6% of drivers went out of their way to hit animals that were just chilling on the shoulder.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-Fp7flAWMA

  • Terrible idea

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  • They are referring to when New Jersey had a huge problem with needles washing up on the beaches back in the 90s.

  • Terrible idea

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  • Hell yeah! Where all my New Jerseyans at?

  • Chapel in the Woods

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