this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The world population has quadrupled in my lifetime, so I would be willing to believe the old bit about “more people are alive now than have ever died.” But it’s bunk. Estimated count of all people ever is 100 billion. There weren’t that many people in the past but our species goes back 50,000 years and that makes it up.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-living-outnumber-dead/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

We're even older than that! There is compelling evidence that Homo Sapiens has existed for 400k years, and there's unprovocative evidence that we've been around for 250k years or so.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I'll have it done by the end of the week

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

In Shrek 2 Pinocchio is trying to avoid lying by using double negatives. He knows where Shrek is. He says "I don't know where he's not." This is actually a lie (though his nose doesn't grow). If he knew where Shrek was he would know everywhere Shrek isn't. You can't just randomly throw negatives into a sentence and expect it to be a double negative.

Edit: It was Shrek the Third, not Shrek 2.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"The days get shorter in the winter."

Actually winter begins on the shortest day of the year so the days are getting longer in the winter.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Plus, I'm pretty sure that days are always about 24 hours long 🙃

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Ok you silly pedant

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I expect downvotes and deletion.

Left vs right wing politics. Both are the same. The real conflict is between powerful and powerless. Both sides claim to be fighting against this, while pitting the middle class against either the upper (left) or lower (right) classes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It'll get downvoted because it's an extremely cold Enlightened Centrist take. You're cherry picking one, albeit major, thing they have in common and ignoring the difference between the policies they enact.

Yes at the end of the day the real battle is absolutely between the 99% and 1% but to pretend that there is no discernable difference between the two major parties is asinine.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The “left” in the US is really actually center-right. And the “right” is far-right. So yes, both the “left” and “right” in the US are basically the same. Neoliberalism is just fascism with a smart suit and empty platitudes after all.

But saying the left and right are the same when talking about political ideology (and not the political landscape of the USA) is extremely wrong.

The right wants to conserve existing power structures or revert to previous ones. The left wants to dismantle power structures and bring about egalitarianism.

That is the dichotomy. To the right hierarchy, to the left egalitarianism.

The USA has been the subject of the most powerful and long lasting propaganda machine and psyops in history.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yes, that sounds true, but is false.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Eskimos have a kabrillion words for snow.

Indigenous Alaskan/north Canadian languages have a few more words for snow than English, but it's not that that much more.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If an object isn't pushed by any force, it'll stop moving. (It'll actually keep moving at the same speed).

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Not in real life though. Only in Highschool physics class.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Physics is about nothing but real life

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

A statement so general that it is useless.high school physics does so many simplifications that it’s only about very specific experiments in real life, but is generally not very accurate.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Statistical approximations are a large part of complex systems, such as the summation of billions of forces of atoms.

Id argue given the insane ammount of moving parts, a simplication as easy to understand as Newtonian mechanics is extremely accurate, at least compared to the limited input data

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As a high school physics teacher, if this is the hill you're willing to die on, then you neither understood the content in your high school physics class nor your university physics class. Newton's 2nd law is generally accurate in most scenarios even without simplifications.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Like me stopping to peddle my bike?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes, like you stopping to peddle your bike...

A simple force diagram and application of newton's 2nd law predicts the bike should accelerate to the left while it's velocity is towards the right. This means the bike should slow down.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That's because of friction and air resistance which are still forces. Repeat the same experiment in outer space where there's no atmosphere or stuff in the way and you won't see that

There's even things like ion engines that take advantage of that by producing tiny amounts of thrust but run over long amounts of time to build up quite a bit of speed

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Having taken not only Highschool physics but also university physics courses I know that.

That doesn’t change that for most people in most environments the sentence “if an object isn’t pushed it’ll stop” is, in fact, true.

It becomes false only if you change the context, but I would argue, if you know all the facts and scenarios, that’s willful misunderstanding.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

The earth is flat.