I didn’t know about their craziness, but the UN office of human rights has had their eye on the organ harvesting allegations since at least 2016. The Falun Gong might be as crazy as scientologists and mormons, but that doesn’t mean they should be treated this way.

USAians drinking coke instead of tea. Makes sense. Guess making a good cuppa takes too long to fill the immediate need for another sugar dump 🤷‍♂

Indeed, yes. It’s subjective and we are both somewhere in the middle with a bit of nuance, but there are people who just throw it around willy nilly. The unhinged use is what this post felt like. “I see slop everywhere”. Makes me think of the phrase “if you smell shit everywhere, look under your shoe”.

From what you say, you perceive the term “slop” as a direct synonym to “low quality”, without any extras.

Slop to me is a simple, low-quality, repetitive output.

If you went to a restaurant that made a high-quality, complex soup, for hundreds of customers per day with the help of machines, would you call it slop? I wouldn’t.

If the restaurant however made ramen from packets, threw in some starch to make it thicker, and they had a nice big ladle to slap that liquid into a vessel with a nice sound, I would for sure call that slop.

That output is what matters, because there’s no way for us to see the input. How are you going to know what words somebody used to generate an AI image?

Slop to me is a simple, low-quality, repetitive output. So, it’s not just one simple, low-quality medium but many. Looks at this video for examples. Or just scroll youtube shorts after searching for anything Indian or even literally “omg look at this” for the search term and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

If you have a hard time telling whether AI did it or not, it’s not slop.

“slop” is being thrown around just like “socialist” and “gay”. Save it for actual AI slop. Just because something is made by AI doesn’t make it automatically “slop” 🙄

Fucking A. Printers back in the days used to just print and had refillable ink cartridges. Some expensive ones are still chugging. My dad has one from the 90s that still fucking works. The new one we got cries about colour missing when trying to print a black n white page 😩

100% my problem. My mom bought a sewing machine about 4 decades ago and it still works to this day. It cost her a fortune, but it paid off. Sewing machines nowadays have all kinds of fancy electronics in there and if it fails, you’re fucked. I don’t even know if paying more really gets you a better quality sewing machine…

Thanks for sharing. He does sound like a devout Christian who does believe in a creator, but because of science is questioning his beliefs. It would’ve been nice for him to keep that opinion out of the video and just stick to the point: this thing is awesome.

As an atheist agnostic myself, I don’t think anybody can claim to know that there was a creator or not. However, there is much more evidence for the lack of one than for it. Who knows, we might be wrong and we’re just in some intricate simulation created by sentient beings, but that then forces the question if those sentient beings are in a simulation themselves and how far up does it go? The other option is that nothing was created and it just came to be.

Both options still raise the question of how either (creators or existence) came to be. To me, they might be unknowable.

What I do like about his presentation of the options is that he says wherever your flag is, learn more and always question your position. IMO that’s actually sound advice. Nothing is for certain. Neither scientists nor believers can claim to know anything for certain. The difference between science and religion is that science is a process of learning with need to discard incorrect knowledge, while religion is the claim to know everything claiming there is no need to disregard facts as it is impossible for them to be wrong. Scientists can easily fall into the latter trap too.

His point about investing in the pricier, good quality product instead of periodically paying for the cheaper, bad quality product, only makes sense if you have a guarantee the pricier product actually have a good quality. And that’s not the only thing that matters. Companies like Malus claim to have better quality and we can debate that all day, but what’s undeniable is their anti-repair stance. That means you can have a problem with their product and have to buy a new one anyway because it can’t be repaired.

Do you have a source? I’d find it really ironic for a channel called “smarter every day” to push a creationist agenda.

It’s fine that you feel upset, everyone has emotions. It’s what we do with them that matters. It’s a good thing you asked here and that the responses mostly aren’t hurtful.

If you don’t feel like you can talk to your girlfriend about it, I invite you to go to a mosque and try to get to know a few Muslims. Or if you have Muslim friends, try to talk to them about relationships and about women dating. Also, if you do want to talk to your girlfriend about it, try to be the listener. Do not push back, try to be understanding, give a space where she feels comfortable to go into the details. Just don’t pressure her.

This is a good relationship to discover how you deal with discomfort regarding the issue of acceptance by others. It will give you an opportunity to practice. You might handle it well, take the advice you got from here and apply it successfully. You might also end up without a girlfriend, but that’s all part of the journey. You’ll get to know yourself better.

Good luck.

I’ve had friend groups where nobody knows which job the other person had. Somebody could’ve been a CEO or a cleaner. It didn’t matter. We went to the same concerts together, hung out in bars and the beach together, had deep political discussions and also shot the shit.
At no point did I think “wow, if this person hadn’t told me they went skydiving, I’d never hang out with them”. We happened to have the same sense of humor, watched some of the same shows, did similar activities, and were open to others vision of the world. I can’t even remember their “achievements”, just that they were nice people to be friends with.

You may require achievements and some mix of attributes you attach to those achievements in order to hang out with people. That’s fine. Not everybody’s the same.

There are countless alternatives and everybody has to find what that means for them. For example I have no real achievements to speak of. Sure, you could look at my paycheck and say “that person successful”. You could look at where I live and say “you’re successful”. You could look at where I vacation and say “you’re successful”. But what does that mean? It might mean something to you because you attribute some kind of value to it, but I don’t. My self-worth is attached to how I treat others (or how I don’t), how I view the world, how I will leave it when I’m gone and the things I tried to do before ending up as fish or worm-chow.

If you feel like you have to live up to some kind of metric of success setup by other people, that’s fine. I hope that makes you happy. It wouldn’t make me happy, but I’m not you.

“De-radicalization is a noble, worthy line of research,” she said. “But the existing evidence from that field of study suggests that prevention is easier and more effective than trying to pull these people out once they’re already in.” Potential strategies might include fostering better digital and media literacy, i.e., teaching kids to be cognizant of the content they’re consuming online. Exposure time is another key issue.

The education system world-wide is quite bad. Yes, it’s better than nothing, but still, its not good. Media and online literacy are part of the smallest subset of curriculums. As a whole, the education system fails at preparing most people for life. It’s even bad at preparing people for a vocation, its seemingly intended goal.

With better education, traditional mindsets would be much less common. I mention this because in my opinion the major cause of being an involuntary celibate and considering that status a problem, is traditionalism. That attaches self-worth to achievements in life and tightly couples success with partnership and parenthood.

Better education creates more free thinkers and independent individuals who are not easily controlled or swayed by popular narrative. They are not immune to it, nobody is, but giving humans a toolset for critical reasoning can go a long way.

If your joke might be offensive to anyone, its probably best to save it for outside of the workplace if you share it at all.

That’s not good advice. Any joke can be offensive to someone - especially when people are committed to being offended.

Debatable what “civilized” is, but I imagine most westerns consider themselves “civilized” and developing countries to be “uncivilized”. It has colonialist vibes and is not necessarily racist, but can be quite ignorant and prejudiced.

Christians invaded many countries and pretend to make them “civilized” but instead enslaved their people and treated them like animals. Pretty far from civil if you ask me. The US considers itself civilized yet it has a death penalty, just like Myanmar, Saudi Arabia and a bunch of other countries. Greece introduced a 6-day work-week which hasn’t been a thing in Europe since the industrial revolution, a time we would now consider quite uncivilized. Israel is currently committing genocide under the guise of self-protection and will not listen to reason, yet they probably consider themselves quite civilized.

It seems to me like “civilized” is a form elitism that can be quite close to racism, depending on who you talk to.

Block em. I blocked nearly every community about USAian politics and my feed is now quite OK. Also block people who make everything political. There will still be enough out there to interact with, trust me. I’ve blocked swathes of people here and still find it entertaining. Also, do your best to contribute non-political content, it’ll help provide others something to comment on that isn’t political (and of course block those that try to turn it political).

Also, do create multiple accounts per activity. A political account, a non-political account, a gaming account, a botany account, a bird-watching account,… whatever your interests are, make an account for it and curate your content. I have multiple and this is probably my most political one. Others barely mention politics and aren’t connected to this one. Until lemmy or other fediverse software allows creating personas on the same account, this is the solution I find works best.

In other words, there is no real algorithm here that will secretly bubble up certain type of content depending on how you interacted with the platform. You more influence on your own experience than you know.

For PFAS that definitely isn’t true

In the new EPA study, experts added oxidizing substances to water contaminated with PFASs and heated the liquid above its critical temperature of 374 degrees Celsius at a pressure of more than 220 bars. During this process, the water becomes what is called supercritical: it is neither a gas nor a liquid. In this state, even water-repellent substances such as PFASs dissolve much more readily, and at the same time, the state accelerates chemical reactions.