this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2026
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Weird how many people seem to think it’s like a competition or something. It’s a descriptive label.
The whole Pluto thing taught us a lot about the psychology of letting go of something taught at a young age. People getting proper frothing at how they shoulda just let Pluto keep it, just to save themselves the extremely minor cognitive dissonance.
When people get upset about pluto, I'll just tell them if pluto is planet, so is Ceres. Which then results in mindless staring because they never even heard about Ceres...
And Cedna. And Eris. And Makemake. And Haumea. And...
Yeah. Removing pluto was the more conservative option.
truly it was. still workin on it tho
There are about 200 of these space objects that are roughly the size of Pluto.
So either we live in an 8 planetary system, or a 200+ planetary system. But it will never be 9 again.
I really doubt more than .001% actually care if it's called a planet or not, it's just a meme to pretend that you care. Like pineapple on pizza.
No one actually cares if you put pineapple on pizza. No one actually cares about Pluto being a planet. But there are many people who see themselves as some sort of white knight defenders of the truth against haters that don't actually even exist.
I care if you put pineapple on pizza. Please put it on yours. Please. That means less on mine. Not that i dislike it, i just lack the parts to digest it properly.
Pineapple digests you before you digest it!
precisely
Have you seen the lengths people go to in order to not have to change their world view even a smidge? To not have to correct themselves about anything at all? I'll give you a hint, literally every right wing party in the world doing well is because weak people can't change a damn thing about themselves.
"World view" is very fitting here.
Not just the right. The entire Taiwan situation is entirely due to the Chinese being taught at school that Taiwan just is part of China like it's an immutable fact.
I guess the evil Chinese authoritarian school teachers even infiltrated the IMF and told them Taiwan is a province of China.
What's the name of Taiwan's government again?
China 2 Tawainese Boogaloo
Can't tell if you're joking or just a dickhead tankie.
Is it dickish to point out even Taiwan calls itself The Republic of China?
Because they consider themselves to be the original China, since their government was formed from the Nationalist (pre-communist) government of China, who were chased out by the Communists.
The situation is NOT like this:
It's like this:
Which is why there are some countries that do not recognize the People's Republic of China (mainland), and instead recognize the Republic of China (Taiwan) as China.
My information from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_of_the_government_of_the_Republic_of_China_to_Taiwan
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2016/12/04/2003660529
Sounds like tankie nonsense.
Are you sure Taiwan hasn't been an independent state with nothing to do with China forever, and China just wants to invade because its an evil dictatorship?
And China calls itself the People's Republic of China. Which means China on its own does not exist.
Which means The Republic of China is not part of The People's Republic of China.
Now get your semantic ass out of here.
This isn't semantics, the "China" they're referring to is the same place, both governments claim to be the legitimate ruler of all of China, It's not "The Republic of One Little Island off China" and "The People's Republic of All of China Except That One Little Island".
Look at a map of their claimed territories, they're 95% identical.
Amen.
I always suspected that the discussion about letting Pluto stay a planet is especially relevant in the US since Pluto was the only planet to be discovered by US scientists ... so it's a point of national pride.
It's likely most of us Americans don't know about this fun fact.
I've certainly not seen anyone frothing at the mouth about it in the francosphere. It's a non-subject, we just updated our textbooks and moved on. Whereas in English-speaking media even reasonable actors mentioning Pluto in passing will pointedly remark on its status one way or another. Americans won't admit it but the only reason that's a thing is chauvinism.
It's funny how being bilingual one spots a lot of small semantic or cultural differences that amount to large paradigm shifts between languages. Like how most French people were taught the hydrocution myth (swimming after a meal supposedly being deadly), older Koreans believe fans to be dangerous to use while sleeping, and English speakers associate vanilla flavour with blandness because of the (English-specific) synonym even though the flavor itself is very powerful and no less overused than e.g. strawberry flavoring.
What's less funny is how when you point out such a difference some people get Big Mad about it because they can't admit that some core belief from their childhood is actually a specific sociolinguistic quirk not shared by the rest of the world. People get tribal about the weirdest, most inconsequential shit.
tbf i believe that too (but about ACs and not fans) and i'm not korean. the reason i believe this is because of my real-life experiences. When AC is running, it typically gives me the sensation that the air it gives off is not just cold, but creepy cold, like an iron rod is not just hard, but hard enough to smash somebody's skull with it. The same intensity is the coldness from the typical ACs that i've experienced. At least some of them.
That's just because it's dry by nature. Monitor your indoors humidity and adjust accordingly with a humidifier.
I'd agree with you but the definition is arbitrary and is not of Natural Kind. Even worse, instead of making the definition of a planet more clear it just makes the determining what is a planet more difficult.
Honestly, if they just went with defining 'Major Planets', 'Minor Planets', and asteroids determined by mass and spherical shape, I think everyone would've moved on by now.
If this is true, then please tell me what totally non-arbitrary reason there was for Ceres to not be universally considered a planet?
I'm not sure what you mean. It should be a planet by the definition I gave before unless I didn't convey what I was trying to say correctly. It's definitely large, heavy, and spherical enough to be a planet in my opinion.
There's tons of different sized objects in our solar system and it's distinguishable enough to qualify in this one.