Hemingways_Shotgun

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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 7th, 2023

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  • Basically it’s related to the uncertainty principle; the cat is both alive and dead until you look inside the box.

    Let’s say i’m about to roll a dice. The result of that dice throw is in a state of superposition until it’s thrown. Meaning that until it is thrown, all results exist. And it’s only when the dice is thrown and the result is observed that the wave function collapses to a number from 1 thru 6.

    From there, there are two camps of scientists:

    One camp believes that all other superpositions dissipate once the roll is made. So if you roll a one, then the universes in which you rolled a 2 thru 6 just kind of evaporate, for example.

    The Second camp that believes that all superpositions exist, and branch off into 6 different universes (one where each number was rolled) and they all continue unaware of the other universes existence (Multiverse theory)


  • Progressive, and Conservative are all nouns.

    Not in the context in which we’re discussing, they’re not.

    • The Liberal Party of Canada (not “The Party of Liberals”)
    • The Conservative Party of Canada (not “The Party of Conservatives”)
    • The New Democratic Party of Canada (not “The Party of New Democrats”)

    and then back in the early 90’s,

    • The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada (not “The Party of Progressive Conservatives”…which, FYI…THAT would be the oxymoron by definition that you are trying to argue.)

    In the context of party names, which is precisely what we are discussing, these words are adjectives.

    Which brings me all the way back around to “The Socially Progressive Fiscally Conservative Party of Canada” being too long to fit on a sign, and so it’s shortened to just Progressive Conservative. Which YOU seem to think means that Progressive is being used as an adjective for Conservative, which yes…WOULD be an oxymoron if that was how the words were used in the party name.

    But…they’re…not… They are two adjectives describing two separate things (Fiscal policy & social policy)

    You want to talk about English competency? How is the difference between adjective and noun and when to use each so difficult for you to grasp?

    Good lord. I’m done. I tried being respectful, but you’re beyond hopeless.



  • It is an oxymoron whether you admit it or not

    Military and Intelligence are nouns. So they are comparable things and can therefore be oxymoronic to one another.

    Progressive and Conservative are adjectives and can only be oxymoronic if they’re describing the same thing.

    They’re only function is to describe the noun that comes after them. In some cases, that is an unspoken noun, as is the case when someone describes themselves as “Progressive Conservative”. Really, what they’re saying is they are “Socially Progressive Fiscally Conservative”.

    But that has trouble fitting on a lawn sign.

    If they say “Socially progressive and Socially conservative” THAT’S an oxymoron. But as long as those two adjectives are describing different concepts (fiscal and social), they have nothing to do with each other and therefore not an oxymoron, whether you admit it or not.

    If you want to go an a pedantic well actually battle royale in regards to the english language and proper nomenclature, bring receipts.


  • And also, finally, coalitions in our government are a reality. In Canada, minority/parliament dynamics make “vote + apply pressure” a real lever.

    A-fucking-men to that. It frustrates me to no end that people (conservatives) don’t understand that that’s precisely how a minority goverment is supposed to function.

    You’d watch Pierre Poppinfresh get on his stump about “collusion” between the NDP and the Liberals like it’s some kind of conspiracy when in reality it’s just how shit gets done. Negotiation and compromise.

    The conservative party (at least those that are on the MapleMAGA spectrum) have a binary view of governning; if they’re not the ones in power, they would rather not contribute to the government by negotiating and having a hand in shaping policy, because doing so would give the Liberals a “win” and that is anathema to a modern hard-C Conservative.

    So instead of actually actively taking part in government, they stump around shouting at the other parties that do.


  • Niether concepts nor humans are monolithic things. It’s possible to be conservative in some areas of your life (finance, relationships, etc…) but progressive in others (equal rights, healthcare, etc…)

    This notion that all conservatives are hard-C conservatives in every facet of their life, and all progressives are radical leftists in every area of their life, is frankly stupid and a major contributor to the polarization that we see all around us.

    The reality is that with the exception (edited for spelling error) of maybe 5% of crazy people on either side (far right or far left) the VAST majority of us are a mixture of conservative and progressive opinions depending on the particular issue we’re talking about.

    Thinking otherwise is frankly not helpful. But as I said, you’re welcome to your opinion.




  • At this point there is nothing that they could do to make Creation Engine feel “new”. I don’t understand why they keep beating that dead horse.

    A couple of months ago, I had some extra money, so I bought Starfield because I had an itch to go back into my Crimson Fleet character.

    The problem was that a couple of weeks before that, I had also purchased a game that I had wanted for years, but could never justify spending the high price of new games on, Red Dead Redemption 2. In comparison, Starfield just felt so…lazy… in ways both big and small, beyond the common issues like repetitive dungeons, barren worlds, loading screens, etc…

    The biggest thing I noticed immediately was the effect of bumping into people as you’re walking. If you compare a Rockstar Game (Or even an assassin’s creed game), where npcs will make a comment, will move out of the way, get upset, etc… Whereas in Bethesda can’t be bothered to do anything except slide you to the right when bumping into a character, who doesn’t react or flinch in any way.

    I started noticing those little things fucking everywhere. And I have to believe that little limitations like that are because it’s running on an engine that is older than dirt.



  • Up here in Canada there used to be a thing called “Progressive Conservatives”. Fiscally Conservative, but socially fairly liberal. “We need to keep spending down, etc… but we still need to build hospitals, maintain healthcare, etc…”

    The modern hard-C Conservative party drove them out because a hard-right, Alberta asshole with nothing more than a bachelor of Arts, named Preston fucking Manning merged his “reform” party with the Progressive Conservatives and steered them hard into the “let’s give all the money to the oil and gas sector and let them trickle it down to the peasants as they see fit.”

    Ironically, the Progressive Conservatives that didn’t like that, basically all went to the Liberals, who shifted a little bit more to the centre as a result.

    I’m assuming that other countries must have a similar group of “progressive” conservatives of some ilk. Ones that are educated and intelligent enough to have empathy, but skew conservative fiscally.




  • What pissed me off the most about Lost is that, very early on, I pegged onto the fact that they were naming a lot of characters after prominent social philosophers; all of whom wrote about things like inequality, the social contract, human nature, etc…

    • John Locke (John Locke, Liberty and the social contract)
    • Desmond Hume (David Hume, treatise of human nature)
    • Danielle Rousseau (Jean-Jacque Rousseau, discourse on inequality and the social contract)
    • Boone Carlyle (Thomas Carlyle, the importance of belief)
    • Juliette Burke (Edmund Burke, Philosophy of Conservatism)
    • Mikhail Bakunin (Mikhail Bakunin, Russian Anarchist)

    And a few others. As they introduce these characters, they set them up in opposition to each other and I’m thinking "okay…this means something. They’re trying to say something about society in a Lord of the Flies type of way.

    I remember myself and a friend of mine discussing the show endlessly after each episode wondering what it all meant in that context. And then…nope…they were all just dead all this time. It meant…precisely…jack…shit.

    And it couldn’t have been an accident that they so many promininent social philosophers showed up. They CHOSE to name those characters that…for no other reason than a fuck-you-red-herring.

    I can’t even begin to describe how much that angered me. I’ve despised JJ Abrams ever since.





  • Does alien life exist somewhere? Yes. Absolutely. It would be impossible for it not to given the size of the universe and the laws of probability.

    Is that alien life multicellular? Again. Yes. For the same reason as above. In a functionally infinite universe, the roll of the dice is going to come up at least a few times.

    Is that alien life intelligent? Maybe. But in my opinion, probably. Intelligent life arose here after many many stops and starts. It’s probably that given enough kicks at the can, multicellular life can evolve intelligence on any planet where it arises if the conditions are right.

    Has that intelligent life visited us? No. No intelligent life has ever left their own solar system except possibly in the form or a one-way generation ship.

    Life evolves, either biologically or technologically, because of competition for resources. From the most basic amoeba competing for the heat from a steam vent at the bottom of an ocean, to humans competing for oil and minerals, life is about resources gathering.

    So what happens when we finally are able to access the resources of the solar system, which are effectively limitless (at least from a human perspective)? Nothing. We stagnate. There’s no impetus to go further than that. Scientists may want to. But pure science is a myth. People paying the bills are what drive us forward. and it’s reasonable to assume that any life that evolves would do so facing the same pressures.