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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • See, the priest happened to make a very human mistake: identify yourself with your ideology.

    I would say the priest’s mistake wasn’t merely having (or displaying) and ideology, but associating it with mysticism disjointed from any empirical or rational inspection.

    You run into this problem where now, you’re concerned with what should and shouldn’t be censored.

    Every system has its gray areas and decision points.

    That said, I see a lot of anti-censorship absolutists who seem zealously in favor of open debate until… they get swamped by spam posts or drowned out by monied interests or sea-lioned by people who are just being annoying.

    Hell, Charlie Kirk died with a debate on his lips. And TPUSA’s love of campus debates appears to have died with him.

    How do you have a conversation about whether or not the person you’re talking to is a human worthy of the dignity of discourse? How do you have a debate with someone who shows up wearing boxing gloves (much less an AR-15)? At some point, censorship is a kindness. It means ending the conversation before we hit the point of fighting words and irreconcilable differences.



  • Why can’t the boy ask his priest about his most serious doubts regarding god, and receive an honest answer back?

    Why is the priest allowed to just make shit up with nothing more than a bronze aged poorly translated manuscript to back him up? The boy should be able to ask away. It’s the priest that should be censored.

    There is so much fear, so much bias, so much identity tethered to ideology

    Crazy factoid I learned recently. Children younger than 18 are prohibited from participating in religious activities and receiving religious education, even in schools run by religious organizations within China. If you’re too young to consent, you’re too young to be indoctrinated into a religious tradition.





  • If censorship is what’s being criticized, it’s no different.

    Paradox of tolerance

    I hate when censorship comes for people I do like.

    I love when censorship comes for people I don’t like.

    it’s just become such a nanny instance that jumps on everyone’s shit.

    Admins are fighting a flood of instances and users more interested in getting attention than participating in the community. Consequently, you’ll have power users ballooning the front page with click-bait. You’ll have instances choke full of reactionary content specifically intended to bait a flame war. You’ll have spammers plugging their own brands or working on behalf of some third party. And you’ll have the odd bot-farm or other automated account that’s just probing the Fediverse for gaps.

    “Ah, but the individual users can always block what they choose”

    Sure. Technically. But nobody wants to wake up every morning to a front page that’s full of shit. The spammers can bloat your inbox faster than the individual can flush it out. So Admins who step in and do a little public house cleaning - the Nanny work you hate - makes the website cleaner and friendlier for lay users that pop in now and then.


  • Is it easier to secure, monitor fewer, bigger reactors or thousands of* small ones?

    A moot point when we don’t build new ones anymore.

    But the big appeal of the molten salt reactor is that it doesn’t require continuous manual interventions.

    Solar, batteries and long-range transmission infrastructure just makes too sense I guess.

    Sure. Obviously.

    But that’s WOKE, so we hate it.

    Nuclear definitely has a role to play. Integrating SMRs into our global shipping fleet would eliminate the enormous waste and emissions of bunker fuel, for instance.

    And areas that don’t have reliable sunlight or wind (far north/south regions) or that require high steady output in confined areas (large factories, urban centers, major metro arteries, etc) can see real benefits, relative to gas or coal power.

    It’s a technology we should have invested more heavily in 60 years ago. Obviously, Texas will fuck it up. But that’s not an indictment of the technology, just the capitalist dipshits that run the state.


  • The school’s primary selling point is its “2 hour learning” philosophy which promises to give students their required education and prepare them for necessary standardized tests, AP tests, and the SATs in just just two hours of learning.

    Real “Eight Minute Abs” tier pitch work.

    Former Alpha School employees and internal documentation don’t disprove Alpha School students’ high test results, but show that students often have to study more than two hours a day, that they sometimes arrive at Alpha high school classes unprepared and below grade level reading skills, and that some students had to go back and fill holes in their education before they were prepared for high school level classes.

    :-/

    This is an enduring refrain with pilot program education systems. Your initial crop of students get bespoke treatment (to match the astronomical cost - $60k/yr is more than most colleges charge). Then their performance is tied back to the gimmick - AI, SmartBoards, School Uniforms, Montessori style teaching, Jesus classes - that’s rolled out to the hoi paloi at a cheaper price but absent all the personalized, expensive tutoring.




  • SMRs are a new scam needed because old nuclear scam has worn out.

    Idk about that. Consider the Linglong One (ACP100): Developed by the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), it is the first SMR to pass an independent safety assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2016. Construction began in 2021, and the core module was installed in 2023.

    Definitely a challenge of materials sciences, but to call it a scam? Come on. Coal sticking around as long as it has is the scam.





  • it hasn’t been a problem since that event 5 years ago.

    We’ve been spared any serious natural disasters affecting the grid during that time. No major hurricanes. No big freeze.

    The worst event was the 2024 derecho, and that definitely knocked out power here and there. But it was high enough above the treeline to really wreck infrastructure at the ground level.

    I’ll note that a huge increase in wind and solar capacity means we aren’t exposed to the same kind of economic pressure from five years ago, either. The '21 freeze came, in large part, due to gas power plants locking up when they were needed, because they hadn’t been weatherized. With less acute demand issues (thanks to new green energy) we haven’t been in a position where gas plants could casually wait for prices to spike before turning on.