• 0 Posts
  • 15 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 21st, 2023

help-circle




  • This is one possible answer to the Fermi paradox.

    I think a tendency for intelligent life to destroy itself would make it more rare than it already is, but doesn’t do enough to account for the unlikelihood of never encountering it. Once a species is spread across more than one planet, I would think it would be very unlikely for an extinction event to wipe all of it out before some survivors can bounce back. So all you would need is one or more civilizations beating the odds up to that point to become basically unstoppable.

    Also, intelligent life might frequently kill itself off, but that doesn’t mean intelligence is a disadvantage to long term survival. The vast majority of unintelligent species also go extinct. It’s more that reaching stability is quite hard, with or without intelligence.


  • That doesn’t get him off the hook financially though. If the mother put his name on the birth certificate, he’d probably have to take a test to prove he’s not the biological father. And if he is, tough.

    I looked into it more and realized I misunderstood how it worked. You’re right, a mother can add a man’s name to the birth certificate without his consent, and then the burden of proof is on him to prove that he is not the father, which typically means a paternity test. Obviously that is unfair. I think the better solution is to require the father’s consent before adding their name in the first place, or else making it tentative until it is “ratified” by his consent (or a court order in either case). And only in special situations like the father being dead or unreachable would it resolve without him.

    This is why I support legal paternal surrender. As long as women have access to abortions (legal, easy, free), men should have the financial equivalent. That’s only fair.

    Well, women don’t always have access to safe abortions, and regardless I don’t think this needs to be tied to that. I think this shouldn’t be treated differently between genders. Either parent should be able to surrender legal responsibility for the child, and if both do so then the child is surrendered to the state. If only one does so, that one should be forced to still financially support the single parent similar to alimony. I don’t think either should be able to voluntarily shed financial responsibility though. At least once they are born, a child has a right to a certain amount of support from both their parents, unless both agree the state would be a better custodian for them.



  • Covid definitely had a strong immediate negative impact on kids’ education, but the trend of children struggling more in school over time is older than that. Until recent decades, there was an observed increase in children’s IQ over later generations, called the Flynn effect. Children were on average expected to be 3-5 points higher in measured IQ than those born a decade earlier. But we have reversed that trend after peaking somewhere around the 80s. There are likely a lot of contributing factors, but they should all be environmental rather than genetic. So hopefully later generations will be able to reverse the trend again and support their kids’ development in ways their own parents had neglected.



  • I’m a software developer, so there’s a lot of WFH positions at least compared to other fields. But unless you have particularly good connections you would probably need to get a related degree if you wanted a job at most places. I’ve also heard it’s not a good time to be applying unfortunately. You might be able to try for some WFH consulting work related to your current job. Big software companies will hire contractors for temporary work too I guess, but they would probably still want experienced candidates. For me, this was just a position I applied to a few years ago and was lucky enough to get an offer. I don’t think there’s a secret to it, sorry.


  • I’m vegan but really missed ice cream so I started getting Ben and Jerry’s almond milk version when it’s on sale. It irks me that they charge for a pint what I could get a gallon of the dairy ice cream for, but there isn’t much selection for dairy-free. For whatever reason vegan versions of foods are pretty much always priced like premium brands. I’d be happy to buy generic brands of stuff in bulk, but instead I look at the price of something and often decide I don’t need it after all.


  • Yes. I have worked at both and I feel much more comfortable at home. It gives you a level of flexibility that is hard to describe. I can start my day early, take a break for an hour, and resume it when I feel I can give it the proper level of attention. When I was in office, there was a pressure to look like you’re working all the time. It felt hard to concentrate when the expectation was on dedicating the expected time to work rather than getting something done. With WFH, it’s more about getting your tasks done and generally no one cares when you do it. And I can slouch and prop my feet up and have videos/music/audiobooks playing and whatever else I want without anyone knowing, let alone caring. I don’t need to worry about a commute, and all my food and comforts are available when I want them. I can easily handle things like being at home for a package delivery or a technician repairing something or walking the dog or just doing laundry.

    That being said, I will admit it is considerably harder to get help with a task in office. You can’t just have someone pop by to look at something for example. You can still do a call or message, but it’s a bigger barrier to overcome. With WFH, collusion for a group more often needs to be scheduled, and you don’t have an analogue for water cooler talk.

    Many places that offer work from home also have an office somewhere, so I would recommend new employees go in while learning the ropes, then switch as they become more independent. And some people like having different locations to help switch between work and relaxation mentalities. And it can be nice to get out of the house too. But overall, WFH is much better for me.



  • It sounds like that comment chain is discussing two different things. First is the piefed default block list, which admins can edit as they please for their instance. Hexbear and lemmygrad are on there.

    Second is the lemmy slur filter, which used to be applied across all of lemmy and was not configurable. That may have changed, but it isn’t clear how. But regardless, that doesn’t seem like a complaint about piefed, unless I am misunderstanding.


  • I had similar feelings. I knew I would miss my better, ad-free apps, but I could recognize it would be unreasonable to expect Reddit to pay for competitor access when it uses ads to support itself. I wouldn’t even hold it against them if they removed third party access entirely. But the way they did it was just so slimy.

    Lying to developers, then lying to users about their discussions. Then insisting their unviable price was reasonable just so they could claim to not actually be killing them. And during the protests, threatening and replacing mods of subs for literally implementing the rules their communities voted for simply because it hurt their bottom line. They were volunteer workers maintaining the platform for years because they love their communities; until they do something the company doesn’t like, then suddenly they were employees to be fired and replaced. It really was the principle of the thing that disgusted me.