Ask Lemmy

Years of shrimp posture

That the reason imperial Europe had such a huge and lasting impact on the world was because Europe was playing on a harder difficulty than everyone else.

Europe was functionally foodless when it comes to agricultural with next to no edible plants native to the region, most of their crop foods were imported from Eurasia. Boar were as lethal as the wolves and the wolves besieged cities. The living conditions were functional perfect petri dishes that bred so many massive plagues that they accidentally biowarfared the Americas, they literally didn't consider the diseases they had as bad enough to leave those guys home. The history of constant warfare in Europe had them so invested in finding new ways to kill each other that they hit the iron age while the Americas were still in stone age despite being an older population.

In contrast, we're finding out that all the "wasted land" in the US used to be curated foraging gardens. Whole forests regularly maintained by the natives to provide food year round with minimal labor for an exponentially larger population. The great planes tribes maintained a migratory lifestyle that was far less work than the farming efforts we use now. Conflict was frequent, but never to the level that needed technological advancements like Europe.

So when Europeans finally got out of their squalid hell hole, anyone not on their level, which was really just china, was solidly out classed. What was india going to do? They were solidly in the bronze age and fighting an enemy that's very arival might kill villages with disease alone and they never had to fight an enemy that could host long distance supply lines over seas which meant a counter offense could only ever push them out of the area but never back to the source in a way that could prevent them coming back. Like trying to play volleyball but your opponents can be on both sides of the net and you can't. The Americas were even worse off, the Technological disparity made the fight entirely one sides.

Finally, Europe took this "git gud" mentality as proof that they were superior in every way, so they implemented their way of life everywhere they went. Those forage gardens were knocked over and burned to grow fields of low nutritional grains because that's what worked in Europe. The European diet was pushed everywhere despite the local diet being better in most cases. The European work ethic became the standard with no realization that it was born out of desperately struggling to survive and adaptation to any other location would have greatly improved their quality of life.

And all of it still lasts to this day. Half of the things we classify as weeds are edible foods that were dietary staples. Our work life balance, sleep schedule, housing styles, land distribution, hierarchy, are all descendant of feudalism. The whole reason for the midwest dust bowl was because they tried to force Europeans farming tactics into the region with no consideration for the difference between regions.

Of course, I'm not a historian. It's just a hunch. I'm a fan of history and it was an interesting comparison to see how closely the European exceptionalism mindset aligned with the souls like git gud attitude that a specific subset of gamers developed at the height of their popularity.

That the investor class in America has been panicking for about a decade because there hasn't been a technological innovation on the same level as the smart phone in that time.

I have long suspected - and I don’t know where real music historians stand on this - that a few of the pieces of music attributed to Mozart were actually written by his sister.

That if you’re amazed by how good/smart LLMs are, it’s because you’re well below average. LLMs are still incredibly stupid and bad at things.

That something's up

Approximately 30% of any population anywhere in the world are utter and complete fuckwads.

Israel had a larger hand in Benghazi than is being let on and Israeli intelligence provided Republicans with a lot of intel regarding the attack as Obama was starting to rift with Israel on how to handle the Middle East.

I have a hunch that there's something fucky with passkeys, and it's gonna turn out to be a security and or privacy nightmare in the near future.

I'm not crazy and I've never heard of it as a conspiracy theory but personally I'm not 100% convinced about Labrador, Canada. The only pictures I can find of the place are either pictures of scenery that could be anywhere, extremely generic, or low-resolution aerial shots of settlements, nothing that concretely convinces me it exists. I know it's remote and sparsely populated, but there are more remote, less populated places that I can get normal pictures showing daily life a lot more easily.

The reason it feels like we're slaves no matter how much technology improves is incredibly simple, but invisible: money can't be created unless an equal amount of debt is also created.

This mathematically ensures that life is a game of musical chairs at all times. Interest serves to model the missing chairs.

About 160° (~2.79 rad). Been slouching too much and need to fix my posture.

That putting lead in gasoline decades ago fucked human progress and we'd have achieved much more by now if not for that.

That AI will fizzle out. It will have niche uses, but for most of us it won't be nearly as pervasive (or useful) as we're being led to believe.

Mostly I think we're going to get refined advertising algorithms and photo-realistic porn.

TL; DR: some people are just animals that believe in nothing.

Idea: what most divides us from other animals isn't thinking, consciousness, or the ability to create tools to adapt. It's belief. Not in a higher power, but in existential drive. I think it shows a level of intelligence that sets us apart as a species.

Hunch: some people are too stupid for this, and are closer to other animals than they are to us. They don't believe in anything. Decisions are made by instinct and self preservation above all.

I'd imagine that, if you were to analyze their genes, they might have traits from "another branch of the family tree."

USA will keep being a warmongering nation as long there are no wars that hit American soil and civilians.

This is a random one: (I have no clue if this is backed in any real science or history as I haven't not looked it up)

I suspect the myth of mermaids (with lower half fish and upper half human) stemmed from woman divers along coastal regions, who wouldn't have had any swimming clothes and so would likely be doing so undressed (or only slightly dressed) and likely obscured by the water.

I could also see the part of the myth that mermaids drown sailors as more or less of a 'don't mess with them' warning to people on the ships in case they decided to go check it out or start to stare a little too hard and not focus on what they're supposed to be doing.

My very first conspiracy theory: Space fuckery. I'll lay out the dots and you can connect them.

On the morning of March 19 or 20, I observed what I was certain at the time was my first meteor sighting. This was in the greater Dallas area.

Skip to Sunday I found a story about meteor sightings reported in Houston and other areas. The sightings were from the previous day, March 21.

Since last weekend there have been further meteor reports across the US.

On Thursday March 26 there was a visible missile launch from the Cape Canaveral Space Force station.

This is all in good fun for me. But with this administration and the blunders in Iran, it won't surprise me to learn later that they had something to do with it.

That the various new and inventive grid scale energy storage solutions people are trying out won't end up being better than just building big chemical batteries. Sodium Ion will probably be good enough and cheap enough.