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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 9th, 2023

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  • There definitely are rules to language, which are determined by how the language is actually used. The issue with prescriptivists is that they invent their own rules which often go against how the language is used, i.e. the rules are nonsense.

    Take the “less vs fewer” argument. Everyone happily uses ‘less’ in pretty much the same way for nearly a millennium, then some prescriptivist asswipe comes along and says they don’t like it so now there’s a rule. Prescriptivists spend the next couple of centuries yelling about their new rule and creaming themselves over how they’re now ‘better’ at the language than other people while everyone else just doesn’t give a fuck and continue to speak normally.

    In the end language is just a tool to communicate ideas. If you clearly understood someone but whine because they ignored your made up rules you’re the asshole.





  • You clearly didn’t bother to read anything I wrote (or you completely lack reading comprehension), but I’ll give it one more shot.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zucchini

    This article is about the vegetable. For other uses, see Zucchini (disambiguation).

    In cookery, it is treated as a vegetable, usually cooked and eaten as an accompaniment or savory dish, though occasionally used in sweeter cooking.

    A 1928 report on vegetables grown in New York State treats ‘Zucchini’ as one among 60 cultivated varieties of C. pepo.

    In France, zucchini is a key ingredient in ratatouille, a stew of summer vegetable-fruits and vegetables prepared in olive oil and cooked for an extended time over low heat.

    In 2005, a poll of 2,000 people revealed it to be Britain’s 10th favorite culinary vegetable.

    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vegetable

    1
    : a usually herbaceous plant (such as the cabbage, bean, or potato) grown for an edible part that is usually eaten as part of a meal
    also : such an edible part


  • https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vegetable#Terminology

    Posting this link again because you didn’t read it.

    Culinary vegetables unarguably exist since we’re referring to a physical thing which indisputably exists. I have seen a courgette before, I can confirm vegetables do in fact exist. You’re arguing that they don’t exist because you disagree with the words used to refer to them, which is also wrong. The fact many people use the culinary definition of vegetable when referring to courgettes means that the culinary definition of vegetable is correct; language is defined by how it’s used.

    Vegetables exist. The culinary definition of vegetable also exists. The fact you don’t like that definition is irrelevant.






  • A little ham-fisted, sure, but if you think it’s irrelevant you evidently didn’t take any time to actually think about it (you did also reply instantly, so I’ll take that over you lacking reading comprehension).

    I’ll simplify.

    Digital piracy is illegal copying of unlicenced content.
    Alice creates content.
    Alice licences the content to Bob.
    Bob decides to distribute the content with advertisements from Charlie.
    You download the content.
    Charlie does not pay Bob.
    You did not breach any licences.
    You did not pirate the content.

    And just to further clarify, Alice is the person who made a video, Bob is Youtube, Charlie is an advertiser. Your argument is not an ad is piracy if “the advertisement company [hasn’t] paid the content creator.” The advertiser pays the distribution company, and the relationship between those two companies is irrelevant. The advertiser failing to pay does not retroactively turn you into a pirate.

    The whole argument is pointless in the first place, it’s irrelevant whether or not you consider ad blocking to be technically piracy. A sensible adblock argument would be around the ethics of manipulation versus payment, or security versus whatever it is advertisers want. Arguing semantics doesn’t matter.




  • Dark matter might not even exist, all we know is that gravity-based predictions break down after a certain point. Dark matter is the just the most popular proposed solution where you essentially just add extra undetectable mass until it works. The distant second is Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) or some variation of it, which is where you try to tweak the theories to fit observations instead. It has the same problem as dark matter where we keep coming up with better experiments which always fail to find anything.

    There’s a similar problem at the opposite end of the scale spectrum too; quantum mechanics doesn’t play nice with our current understanding of gravity leading to the search for the “theory of everything”. This is why I personally lean towards the idea that it’s our theories that are wrong and not an undetectable mass, but this isn’t my field so my opinion isn’t worth much (especially since a majority actually working in the field lean towards dark matter as far as I can tell).




  • There’s a lot of replies here about why US citizens are in the situation they are but not how to fix it, which was the question you asked. You have two political parties in a first past the post system with largely similar corporate focussed policies, people primarily vote against a party rather than for one that represents them. If you really want to change things you’ll need to overhaul your voting system to break up your two party system and encourage competition from parties that actually represent what people want.

    Unfortunately there is no safe and easy way to do this; it means the two parties in power giving up that power which they will not do willingly. You’ll need large scale consistent and actually disruptive protests, ie not just meeting up for a day then returning to life as nornal, but the US has a history of responding to protests the same way they do everything; with violence.

    So more practically, you can contact your representative at the appropriate level of government and hope they don’t completely ignore you this time.