471–480 of 782 posts
Take a few minutes to learn the NATO phonetic alphabet Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu Gotta spell anything over a voice line? Use it. No more screwing around with "B.. like Bryan, and then U, like .... under". s-c-r-o-l-l-a-w-a-y: sierra charlie romeo oscar lim…
A few minutes? Ha, no way. I think it'd take me at least a few days of short deliberate practice sessions to actually memorize this from scratch. Also, useless outside of the US. (I'm whining, but I do think this is cool.)
In the 1800s, scholars who knew a lot of languages (including, often, several modern and ancient European languages, and increasingly also Sanskrit) started to notice some amazing patterns about similarities in words among all of these languages, including languages from very far apart and that had no visible connection at all from the point of view of their present-day speakers. As these patterns were explored, they…
On this general topic, I recently learned that the words undulate and water have the same origin in Proto-Indo-European: wódr̥ (PIE) → udōr (Proto-Italic) → unda (Latin) → undulātus (Late Latin) → undulate (English) wódr̥ (PIE) → watōr (Proto-Germanic) → *watar (Proto-West Germanic) → wæter (Old English) → water (Middle English) → water (English) In fact, I'm now noticing that the t in the Proto-Germanic line corresp…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any piece of engineering design is a statement. By the designer without the user. - MSM
That is from Michael S. Mahoney (1939-2008) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Sean_Mahoney https://www.princeton.edu/~hos/Mahoney/
Take a few minutes to learn the NATO phonetic alphabet Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu Gotta spell anything over a voice line? Use it. No more screwing around with "B.. like Bryan, and then U, like .... under". s-c-r-o-l-l-a-w-a-y: sierra charlie romeo oscar lim…
The word "Yankee" originates in calling early Dutch colonists Jan-Kees, Jan and Kees being common Dutch male names.
The Boltzmann brain hypothesis suggests that it would be more likely for a single brain to spontaneously and briefly form in a void (complete with a memory of having existed in our universe) rather than for the universe to come about in the manner cosmologists think it actually did. In this physics thought experiment, a Boltzmann brain is a fully formed brain, complete with memories of a full human life in our univer…
I recall first hearing about this by being introduced to it via the "giant marshmallow hypothesis"†: it's somewhat equally likely that a giant marshmallow spontaneously and briefly form in a void. A Boltzmann brain is then merely a different arrangement of atoms and stuff.
† I don't think it has a specific name.
Most rape victims in the United States are men: https://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/prison/report.html Caution: that’s hard, explicit, distressing reading.
There are therefore around 3 times more people incarcerated in the US than in UK, proportionally.
As rapes are very frequent in the US jails (as this terrible report points out) and most of the jail population are men, then indeed, what can conclude that - statistically speaking - that most rape victims are men.
But if you take apart the population in jail, most rape victims are women.
Of course, one can argue that prisoners are human beings like others: they are. But the gendered statistic on rape is turned upside-down by the totally abnormal proportion of people in jail in the US, when compared to comparable countries, PLUS the totally despicable jail system where rapes are numerous.
Note that rapes are very common as well in jails of comparable countries. I have no information about this, but I can't see why rapes would be more frequent in American jails rather than British jails - all others things being equal. But maybe the US jail system and/or the US jail population may lead to more (or less, why not) rapes: I have no clue about this.
I'm not saying that they are in jail for no reason, but that the US society is ... dysfunctional. That analysis may appear outrageous in the US, but it is something obvious to many other countries.
But from saying "dysfunctional" to point out why it is so, there is a huge leap where political inclinations are bound to express themselves. In this case, these are not biases, because politics is precisely about how we live together in a society. And indeed, people don't live in the same world, in the sense that their interpretative frameworks are so diverse.
That's why I find the formulation of that figure problematic. I would find it less click-bait-y and trolly to say: "Rapes of men in the US jails are incredibly numerous" - maybe adding "to the point of outnumbering the rapes of women".
Why is it problematic? Because it echoes a large incel, masculinust, far-right discourse against feminism. Each time women (and "woke" men, to use their vocabulary) denounce something, there are always troves of righteous men pretending that the issue is true for all sexes alike (since in their views, sex and gender are the same thing).
The formulation "Most rapes victims in the United States are men" is a way of saying that all genders are equally victims of rapes in general. But they are not. In the world, and probably in all countries except the US, rape victims are overwhelmingly women and girls. The US exception is not related to a gender equality but to the abnormal rate of incarceration.
I don't know if there was an intention in the formulation or not. Maybe not, so I'm not at all in an accusatory mode. I'm just saying that this formulation offers ground to misinterpretation.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/prison-population-f... https://www.statista.com/statistics/203718/number-of-prisone...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds like multiple PhD theses/journal articles could be mined from CFS + modafinil.
I know what you mean, but I don't know how the heck you could arrange for just the right combination of large doses of modafinil and profound exhaustion at just the right times. To give you some idea of how profound my fatigue was, let's start with the fact that I've been extremely sensitive to stimulants of any kind since I can remember. A can of coke past 8PM would keep me awake half the night. It's a trait that I…
I've found sugar to be way worse for my insomnia than anything else. Caffeine does play a role but excess sugar really revs me up ironically.
Take a few minutes to learn the NATO phonetic alphabet Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu Gotta spell anything over a voice line? Use it. No more screwing around with "B.. like Bryan, and then U, like .... under". s-c-r-o-l-l-a-w-a-y: sierra charlie romeo oscar lim…
A few minutes? Ha, no way. I think it'd take me at least a few days of short deliberate practice sessions to actually memorize this from scratch. Also, useless outside of the US. (I'm whining, but I do think this is cool.)