bitsplease

joined 1 year ago
[–] bitsplease@lemmy.ml 0 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Dissappear? No, of course not

Fall out of repair, and be unable to be repaired effectively without tools, resources, or knowledge that are no longer accessible?

Abso-fucking-lutely

Take a deep sea oil rig. How long do you think it'll be operational without maintenance with all that sea water? After not too long you won't be able to repair the damage without serious industrial capabilities, and that's assuming you even know how to fix it.

Really even as relatively little as a few decades of total chaos and disorganization would be enough to make crawling back really hard. A century and more and it really could be impossible, or at least improbable - especially given that the humanity that comes out of the other end of the crisis is the same one that got us into it. So the remaining pieces of major valuable infrastructure left will probably get wrecked as the survivors fight over them

[–] bitsplease@lemmy.ml 0 points 9 months ago (5 children)

True, but Its 100% possible for us to get knocked back into the iron age, and if that happens, there's a very real chance we won't be able to climb up again.

Easy to access sources of a lot of the resources needed to rebuild a modern civilization are gone, the only reason we can get to the remaining deposits is because we already have the advanced equipment to extract it. It's entirely possible that if we get knocked back down the tech ladder, we may never climb back up again

[–] bitsplease@lemmy.ml 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Some people will worship anything Bethesda puts out, even when it's mid at best

[–] bitsplease@lemmy.ml 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It’s going to be basically impossible impossible to address this. You’ve asked incredibly broad questions and I’m typing on my phone with arthritic thumbs. Anything I miss or can’t exhaustively lay out convincingly you’ll just say “well what about that thing”.

Well, yeah - when you're advocating for a very radical change in societal structure, with potential downsides ranging as far as actual genocide, I feel like it'd be irresponsible to not point out flaws perceived in the proposed structure (or - lack of structure - as the case may be). You'll forgive me for not just taking your word when you say "we've got it figure out bro".

why if you want detailed answers you can really only find them in books

The trouble with reading an argument in a book is that it's a one way conversation. It's easy to present an idea in a way that seems totally sensible, when you're the only voice speaking. I don't doubt that you've ready many anarchic books that make sense when you read them, but the fact that you and others are having trouble distilling those arguments in a comprehensive fashion here shows that the arguments made in those books were probably not as compelling as you perceived them to be when you read them, but were just presented well (likely with a bit of confirmation bias sprinkled in).

I would say I’m not sure why you seem to think centralisation leads to superior manufacturing capabilities or agility in decision making

History and modern economics? Can you point to a modern nation that is heavily decentralized with a greater industrial base than it's centralized peers such as China and the US? As for decision making, I'll grant you that on small scales a lack of centralization works in your favor. Trying to get 100 people to decide on something is a lot easier than 100 million, but when dealing with a military or economic threat from a centralized power, 1 million separate decisions made by groups of 100 don't actually help.

It’s not as simple as big military beats small military, look how badly the usa failed in its various wars since ww2

True, though guerilla warfare certainly wouldn't be unique to anarchism. And while I agree the USA has failed in pretty much all of it's military goals since WW2, I'd point out that the targets of those military campaigns were completely decimated by the time they withdrew. Small comfort to your anarchic society that they weren't completely conquered when every village has been drone striked into rubble.

I'd also point out that the failings of the US military since WW2 has infinitely more to do with the fact that none of our wars have actually had meaningful objectives. During the cold war, each one had the dubious unofficial objective of "embarrass the SU", the wars in the middle east were fought for purely economic reasons (whatever might have been stated publicly), which is a goal they did actually succeed in.

As to not having an exact answer for every conceivable problem: it’s not like our society has one either. It’s not designed, we’re making this shit up and it is failing catastrophically to address challenges like power and wealth concentration due to technology, ecosystem collapse (we are in a mass extinction ffs), and climate change. Further it almost ended the world several times over during the cold war!

I don't disagree with this at all - but the fact that the current systems aren't working well doesn't mean we should just ignore problems in proposed alternatives.And ultimately i don't see how implementing anarchism actually fixes any of the problems you describe, given that all the problems you describe are fundamentally rooted in the flaws of human nature.

Hell, Climate Change in particular is one that would be basically impossible to actually solve in an Anarchic society. Say I wanted to build a super-polluting factory in our anarchic society, I go out where there aren't any people currently living, use my own resources to build said factory, and start polluting. Whose to say I can't? Who would even know what I'm polluting? I don't disagree that our current society is fucked - but just because the current system is broken, doesn't mean we should toss it out for a half-baked one just because it's different.

[–] bitsplease@lemmy.ml 0 points 10 months ago (5 children)

The less centralised things are the less vulnerable they are

I'm sorry, but how do you arrive at that conclusion? If I roll in with a giant, powerful military from my centralized state, how does being less centralized make your position easier to defend? The less centralized you are, the less capable of a coordinated defense you are, and the more likely it is that your territory will be conquered without being able to present a meaningful resistance.

And if you were referring to an internal threat from a populist leader, then that's assuming that the individuals involved don't let said populist leader make them more centralized for easier control - if you're just relying on the individuals always making the right decisions, then frankly you're doomed.

they're guaranteed to hold on to it for very long

Absolutely, and judging by history the typically dont. But a wannabe tyrant can do a lot of damage through their rise and fall, and tyrants have descendants.

, if you're interested then there is a lot of ink spilled on the subject. Either from the perspective of actually existing anarchists or theoretical books.

And I'm sorry but "just devoted weeks/months of your life to read anarchist literature" isn't a replacement for an actual rebuttal to my points, I have done some reading on anarchism, hence why I understand the concepts well enough to talk about them, but of course I'm not going to spend huge amounts of time reading up on a political system that I think is fundamentally flawed, and I've yet to come across any argument in your comments or others that actually negates any of what I've already said, most of it boils down to "we'll just figure it out bro, trust us"

The history of the Spanish civil war might be quite interesting to you, as the anarchists had to fight the strongly backed fascists, obviously eventually they lost but they did pretty damn well! lots to learn there.

Completely irrelavent scenario (and if it was relavent, the fact that they lost would support my point), the Republicans of the Spanish Civil War weren't from an anarchist society (nor were they all anarchists). They were residents of a non anarchist society who rebelled, using existing infrastructure created by the existing non-anarchist society.

The closest real analogue is what happened to the native Americans during the colonization (though even that is a very loose analogue, as many tribes were very very far from anarchic, though some were very very close to it), and we all know how that ended from our history books.

[–] bitsplease@lemmy.ml 0 points 10 months ago (7 children)

Ultimately this is the core problem as I see it - a hierarchical society will always be militarily stronger, practically by definition - and if history has taught us anything, it's that weak neighbors get eaten by their stronger neighbors.

Additionally I think most of these idealized community structures are overly optimistic about the likelihood of a charismatic leader coming along and getting people to follow them, and then not letting them withdraw that power. Anarchists talk about hierarchies without formal power structures, but what is actually stopping someone whose already effectively in charge from turning that power into something more permanent, especially if they've convinced the populace that they want that?

Its happened an endless amount of times all throughout history, and I really don't see why it wouldn't here. Ultimately it just seems like a fragile system that relies mostly on every single individual being perfectly rational and immune to the draw of populist leaders. Aka - completely unlike actual humans

[–] bitsplease@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago

Totally doable, use a multicolor printer and print it like 3 layers thick - you'll get thin flexible plastic sheets.

Not actually practical, but totally doable lol

[–] bitsplease@lemmy.ml -1 points 10 months ago

So, what? We're just straight up making shit up about Mac now when trashing it on Lemmy?

Its literally been over a decade since the last time Apple charged for an OS update

[–] bitsplease@lemmy.ml 0 points 10 months ago

You are though.

I'm not, reread my previous comment. Last time I'm going to say this before I just block you without giving you the courtesy of even replying, stop deciding for me what I'm advocating, I've laid out the strategy I'd like to see in my previous comment, I'm advocating for absolutely no action beyond that.

So pitbulls will still breed even if you tell people not to do it.

Yes, of course - do you actually believe this is where a majority of pitbulls come from though? No moral strategy will completely eliminate the breed, but restricting breeders will mean that your average person can't get one, which means your average Joe/Jane is far less likely to run into them on the street.

How do you come up with pitbulls having health and aggression issues?

I never said they have health issues (maybe they do, I'm not aware of it though) - When I talk about breeds with health issues, I'm referring to breeds like Pugs that live their whole lives in discomfort because of how much we fucked up their physiology.

In over half of all dog bite cases, the breed is unknown

True, that's why we only look at the cases where the breed is known for these discussions, without making any assumptions about the dogs whose breed is unknown.

It’s not anyone’s job to count dog bites by breed

I guess true? In that people don't get paid, they do however report breed information as part of the reporting of the dog bite. And as I've said in other comments in this thread, I'm entirely sure that there is a margin of error in the reporting of breeds for dog bites. However, even if you assume as much as a 5x overreporting for pitbulls, that still puts at about double the chance of an individual pitbull biting someone as opposed to a mixed breed dog.

anyone purporting to have done so is basically lying.

Ah, the ole "I don't like it, so it must be made up", very scientific.

[–] bitsplease@lemmy.ml 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Willing to bet just about anything that the second you try, they'll find probable cause to detain you

[–] bitsplease@lemmy.ml 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

And when you talk about banning dog breeds, yes you are talking about rounding them up in euthanizing them. Period.

I'm absolutely not. I'm advocating restrictions on breeders, not owners. No one should have their dog taken away, and pit bulls in shelters should still be adoptable in my view. I just don't believe we should be deliberately breeding more dogs with known issues, whether it's issues with their own health (like pugs) or issues with aggression.

Please don't presume to tell me what I'm advocating.

[–] bitsplease@lemmy.ml 0 points 11 months ago (6 children)

Yeah frankly the statistics are pretty conclusive. You can argue about bad owners all you'd like, and theres probably at least some truth there (if you're an asshole who wants a violent dog, you're of course going to choose a breed with a reputation for violence), but it's clear to any unbiased observer that pit bulls have a high tendency towards violence.

No one is advocating that we round up all the pit bulls and euthenize them (no sane person anyways), but that we stop breeding new ones. Frankly there needs to be a lot more regulation on dog breeding, besides violent breeds, there's no reason we should be breeding more (as an example) pugs, who are doomed to spend their whole lives suffocating just because some people like their squashed faces

 

This is my first time posting here, so I'll give a bit of background,

Start Weight: 303 lbs/137kg Goal Weight: 220 lbs/100kg

Height: 6'4"/193cm

My whole family decided more or less together to get our shit together and start being healthy, my brother was the first, and he's almost 40lbs down now, then my parents joined him, then my wife, and finally I got off my butt and joined them

My routine has changed a lot from the start, but where it sits now is this

Workout Sun-Thurs - alternating gym days and running 5km - at the gym I do 35 mins on the stair stepper doing interval training, basically just doing the highest level I can manage without cheating, currently at 100 stories in those 35mins, then weight training afterwards. My 5k times are currently clocking in around 40mins, I'll be running an actual 5k next month and my hope is to get down to 35mins by then, but we'll see!

Nutrition - On a typical day I aim for around 2k calories with a macro ratio of 40% protein and 30% carbs and fat. I often miss my protein goals, but I do my best - my main concern at this stage is weight loss, so I pay more attention to the calories than the macros. On my rest days I bump up to 3k calories, which is just a bit below my TDEE. To help manage my calorie intake, I've been using Huel's Hot & Ready meals pretty much every day for lunch, mixing in Costco rotisserie chicken breasts for extra protein/flavor. It helps to have my lunch be low calorie and consistent because I enjoy having a big dinner. I also have two scoops of Whey after every workout with 2 scoops of creatine for muscle growth.

The first 15 pounds shed off really quickly, in the first few weeks, but from there I hit a bit of a plateau hovering between 15-20lbs, I was finally able to break the plateau by introducing refeed days - which I originally left out because I figured CICO was all that matters and that refeed days were just working against myself, but it turns out they help a lot as long as your long term calorie intake is still a deficit.

Right now my main focus is to drop pounds until I get to around 220, then I plan to focus mainly on building muscle and lowering my body fat % while more-or-less maintaining weight

Still a long ways to go, but I'm further along than I dared hope I would be at this stage!

 

I'm re-reading the City Watch series via the new audiobook (pro-tip, listen to them at 1.2x-1.3x - I really disliked them when I listened at 1x, but speeding it up a bit really improved them). And I can't help but feel like STP went into the series with an entirely different expectation of what he was going to be writing about.

I'm talking, of course, about Carrot. Now obviously, anyone whose familiar with Sir Terry Pratchett's writing style knows that Carrot was never going to be crowned King of Ankh Morpork. His story was, right from the get-go very clearly supposed to be a subversion of the old "Long lost king from humble origins saves the city and comes into his crown" trope.

I still do get the impression though, that Carrot was planned to be the main protagonist of the series, and that Pratchett just fell in love with Vimes as a character early on and pivoted. It sure seems like the original plan was for Carrot to eventually wind up as the commander of the City Watch, with Vimes retiring, which would play into the theme of Carrot's character that he can do the most good for the city by not being King.

But it reads as though along the way Pratchett saw the potential in Vimes and had so much fun writing his character that he changed his mind. It would explain why by the final few books in the City Watch series, Carrot goes from having one of the largest shares of "screen time" to being a barely present side-character.

Thoughts?

Side Note - anyone else catch the multi-layer pune (or play on words) for Carrot's name?

A Carrot is an orange (see hair color) vegetable that grows underground until it is plucked out from underneath the soil to fulfill it's true purpose

And

Carat as in diamond, as in diamond in the rough, as he's a King living amongst "commoners"

 

Right now the user count Lemmys is comparatively tiny when held up against reddit - but the user count isn't the thing that makes a social media site, it's the engagement

So even if you're used to lurking, try to get a little more active! Post memes, vote on posts, talk in the comments, whatever!

If people come here and see activity, content, and discussions, they're more likely to stay and contribute their own - if they come and see a ghost town, they'll just go back to reddit

 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1184436

 

Lemmy doesn't seem to have any popular woodworking subreddits, so I thought I'd post here. Just deleted my reddit account and want to contribute some content here!

 
 
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