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Cake day: June 4th, 2023

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  • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.catoScience Memes@mander.xyzOwl Pellets
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    5 hours ago

    I think most if not all tetrapods should have the 1-2-3-4-5 hierarchy for their arms and legs (although the later branches often fuse together).

    I just checked, and mice have the 1-2 pattern for front and hind limbs. It’s just the arms that are weird, but this mouse’s arms have always been weird.

    Edit: I just saw the legs again, those are definitely screwed up too.



  • Some cells are getting 47%, which is ridiculous for a generator! The theoretical maximum efficiency for solar cell from the sun as it appears in the sky is about 68%, so that’s pretty good!

    However, how expensive is that cell going to be? How much maintenance does it need, and how fragile is the system once deployed? It’s very obvious that PV efficiency has beed skyrocketing recently, and I don’t thinks it’s stopping soon, but a commercial PV panel available today is just breaking 20% efficiency. Luckily, sunshine is quite abundant.








  • rather destroy all life on earth than hurt The Economy.

    Oh don’t worry, I have have issues with that too.

    Thor summons lightning with Mjolnir

    If you believe Thor is the cause of lightning, you might be more willing to ignore meteorology. If you believe the Aesir are actually divine and walk between the worlds, you might be more willing to believe that some people are descendants of them and thus superior.

    Jesus needs to sacrifice himself on the cross in order to satisfy the Old Laws and get everyone into heaven

    If you believe that blood sacrifices hold power, you might think that some people are performing them when they aren’t, or even perform them yourself.

    If you believe the world will end, you might not be so concerned with maintaining it or even living in it.

    My point is that making a habit of denying reality makes it easier to deny reality in the future, and even if one denial of reality is innocuous, later denials may not be. Bigots love to use religion to push racist, discriminatory, and abusive ideas, and the best way to defend against those ideas is to see how they align with reality. We can’t identify harmful acts if we can’t agree on the effect of an act, can we?

    Anyway, the original topic was putting words in anti-theist’s mouths. There’s not even a generally accepted definition of anti-theism, with some being against organized religions, and others against monotheism specifically. To paint them all as opposite-christians is using a Zamboni as a brush.



  • I wouldn’t describe myself as an anti-theist, I’m not against the idea itself, it’s rather neat and might have been an important step in the development of human culture and thinking. I’m particularly interested in the old gods, like at gobekli tepe, or proto-devi and deva, or the bears and other beings that populate the oldest stories of the night sky. I might describe myself as a non-theist humanist: So long as it does good to the world, I don’t care in particular.

    If you take a definition of religion that places something above the demonstrable world --the sacred supernatural-- we run into the issue of the world being sacrificed to intangible ideas, which is bad. This idea of the world being pointless in the face of something that cannot be proven is pretty central to most sects of western religions, and the ability to move people for an idea unconnected to reality is a fantastic way to gain power over them.

    It’s this concept of unprovable authority that I find dangerous, and I think this is what is referred to with the theo in theism; the tyrant gods and political religious institutions of the west. It’s a very rough definition which may or may not apply elsewhere, but it’s probably what most english speakers are thinking about when you say god.

    This is certainly what I’m thinking of when someones wants me to accept even the existence of a god: that they defy the limits of the world and thus deserve attention. The problem is that none of these beings have ever had any notable effect on the world, universally being spoken for by their followers.

    You could argue for less-than-supernatural gods, like kings or pharoahs, or particularly respected people, or even certain animals, plants, or locations. In these instances, their effects can be directly investigated, and if any effects beyond those given by politics and popularity be found I would have no problem accepting them. I accept that we live in a shared reality, and thus I also accept anything that comports with it.

    The opposite is also true; I’ll reject anything that doesn’t comport with reality. I consider anything that can make one ignore parts of reality to be dangerous and likely to cause harm, so I find myself at odds with most religions and directly against the idea of most gods, western or otherwise. It doesn’t matter how good the acts of a being are, I will not hold them as more than what is evident. A system of belief on the other hand, I might accept, if it doesn’t hold itself superior to reality or the world.

    I can’t find any reference to antheist, but by your definition I am not one. I’m not anti-theist by your definition either. My belief is not guided by the supposed goodness of a being, simply their existence. It would be more accurate to call me an anti-delusionism-ist: against the practice of denying reality. That’s quite clunky though, and stops being true if a god is found to exist, although a lot of definitions and beliefs would change rapidly in that situation. Thus non-theist: I don’t care as long as you’re not hurting anyone.


  • I think Drag should ask more antitheists about their reasoning.

    I am of the opinion that any willful ignorance of reality is dangerous, and most religions are organized and ritualized ignorance.

    Most of them were just speculation when they were founded, and no one could fathom exactly how they were right or wrong. The difference is that now we can know better; we can fathom the depths of the universe and plot the edges of our ignorance.

    This leads to a conflict between the intensly held beliefs of entite cultures and the systems we use to progress society. Thus the anti-intellectualism movement and conspiracy thinking, theocratic movements, and the willingness to deny truth.

    I do not have the same issues with spiritual systems and religions that are willing to accept what we know about reality; but sadly those are in the vast minority. It’s less about being against gods in general, and more about being against the tyrant gods and authoritarian organizations that are willing to sacrifice reality on the altar of control and power.

    So go ahead and make rituals, worldviews, and sacred meaning, but don’t let those cloud your vision of the world, and remember to love each other.





  • There’s still miles of countryside between cities in the Netherlands, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, and Denmark. Many of Canada’s cities have fantastically walkable neighborhoods and light train services, and Canada has even more unreachable rural areas than the Sates. Urban solutions are almost completely unaffected by the size of the rural areas.

    These solutions can all happen in individual cities and even towns. How many hours of car driving away the next urban center is doesn’t affect where parking is placed, or zoning density, or where the highways are routed, or how fast the busses are, or whether a light train could be viable.




  • Also, the cooling effect sulphate aerosols can cause only really happens at high altitudes. At low altitudes the reflected light is less likely to escape to space, and the aerosols fall out of the air faster.

    Even if they reached high altitudes, one of the effects of being in the atmosphere is moving with the wind, across entire hemispheres. And at tropospheric heights, sulphates, their products, and other byproducts of combustion may destroy ozone at significant levels.

    There may come a day where aerosol-based geo-engineering becomes a part of climate management, but it’s definitely not with bunker fumes.