It weighs heavily on me, to say the least. It's nearly impossible to have an even slightly tangentially political conversation with them that doesn't leave me deeply disturbed and/or infuriated, so I pretty much avoid it altogether. Now the deepest conversation I allow is "how's the weather" and "what are you having for dinner tonight?", and that's sad.

But it's absolutely the case that engaging with them on political stuff is destructive to my psyche. And even worse, they have a way of turning otherwise entirely non-political topics into something political. These are not the people who raised me or the values they raised me with. And there's no real logical consistency to any of it other than it's definitely going to be in agreement with whatever the latest opinions are on Fox News and Facebook.

As a kid, the only particularly "conservative" view point they shared was on immigration. They absolutely believed the whole "Mexicans are taking our jobs" bullshit. I remember even asking them why they aren't mad at their bosses for giving their jobs to the "Mexicans" and never getting a satisfactory answer for why that was given a pass.

And then from that one little common thread, the rest of the conservative/Republican agenda has wormed its way in. So, naturally as the conservative agenda morphed into a more fascist agenda, so have my parents' beliefs. With age and health related mental declines, these ideals have become more cemented. These are people who will never forget or forgive Democrats for NAFTA, but also believe that Republicans wanted universal healthcare for all yet Democrats gave us Obamacare instead. They grew up growing and selling weed to make ends meet, and yet still believe it should be illegal and people deserve to be in jail for it. They have a gay kid but believe gay marriage is wrong, because the Bible says marriage is only between a man and a woman, and the government shouldn't be involved at all.

They honestly buy into the idea that police officers and pastors are infallible. If someone is arrested, it's because they are guilty of something. No pastor would ever sexually abuse a child, they are a pastor after all. If the president says something is true, it must be true. And again, none of this is how they raised me or the ideals they expressed when I was growing up, so it's definitely like living in some kind of bizarre reality that's tough to come to terms with.

Some infinities are bigger than other infinities

Is this actually true?

Many eons ago when I was in college, I worked with a guy who was a math major. He was a bit of a show boat know it all and I honestly think he believed that he was never wrong. This post reminded me of him because he and I had a debate / discussion on this topic and I came away from that feeling like he he was right and I was too dumb to understand why he was right.

He was arguing that if two sets are both infinite, then they are the same size (i.e. infinity, infinite). From a strictly logical perspective, it seemed to me that even if two sets were infinite, it seems like one could still be larger than the other (or maybe the better way of phrasing it was that one grew faster than the other) and I used the example of even integers versus all integers. He called me an idiot and honestly, I've always just assumed I was wrong -- he was a math major at a mid-ranked state school after all, how could he be wrong?

Thoughts?

My favorite is "let me yell sit the fuck down at you while I shove you to the ground and plant drugs next to you so I have reasonable suspicion to arrest you".

Next time tip the scales in your favor with a more positive approach. Little less coelaCAN'Th, little more coelacCANth.

A kilogram of piss is about a liter, give or take.

No, it's because money is green and money is the root of all evil so since plants have roots, plants are also green. Except for all the myriad different species and cultivars that aren't green at all, they ain't got no money. They ain't got no car to take you on a date. Tthey can't even buy you flowers.

Since this is Science Memes, I'm feeling emboldened to geek out a bit.

In my part of North America, there are a lot of pollinators besides bees "sexing up" the apple trees. I'm guessing it's that way in many other parts of the world, too.

On the coolest days, you might not see any bees at all, but the flower flies (aka hover flies) will still go for it. On the warmest days, bees may even be in the minority of pollinators. I see all kinds of different fly species, a multitude of different wasps, many types of beetles, and sometimes even moths and butterflies -- weather depending. Plus, even that time of year, there are often other bee species which are active besides just the invasive non-native honey bees.

How do you know if someone owns a Steam Deck? Don't worry, they'll tell you.

So anyway, a couple years ago I bought a Steam Deck. And since I bought it, virtually all of my gaming is on the Deck. Prior to that, virtually all of my game time was on a Windows PC. So, for me personally, there's been a big shift towards Linux for gaming.

The other big change that's coming for a lot of people I know: end of Windows 10 support. Honestly, the majority of people I know who still have a traditional Windows PC are using machines that can't be upgraded to Windows 11. These computers are perfectly functional and do everything the users need them to do, and they have no inclination to go out and buy a new computer just because. Especially in this economy. Additionally, there are quite a few people with computers that are capable of running Windows 11, but they have no desire to upgrade to a worse experience and an experience that is randomly different in a myriad different ways for no good reason. Both groups are ripe for the picking in terms of a switch to Linux. No, the year of the Linux desktop is not here, but the conditions for such a change are building. And this Steam data may present a picture of the larger trend. Who knows?

I'm a purist. The stable and persistent main branch, regardless of what you want to call it, should always and only ever be exactly the same as the code that's currently deployed to the production server. Generally the only exception is for the short duration between a push and deployment under normal circumstances.

But every job I've ever had, there's at least one maverick who knows git way better than anybody else and is super advanced, so they do their own thing which is totally better in a million different ways but essentially fucks everybody else over. And I'm not even here to say they aren't smarter than the rest of us and I'm sure that somehow their process is better than what we currently do. But with version control, my anecdotal experience has been that the most important things for running smoothly are: consistency and having everybody on the same page. Process doesn't need to be perfect, maximally efficient, bleeding edge, etc to achieve that.

If I'm being completely fair and objective, not all birds eat "bird seed" and not everyone is well-informed about the diets of various types of bird. But also, at least where I live, some parks have signs that specifically say not to feed the ducks/geese at all, and I can totally understand how that might lead people to conclude that it's not safe to feed them.

On the other hand, I'm reminded of the time that I was at an insect exhibit when one of the educators running the booth referred to "these animals" and the woman behind me asked something like "bugs is animals?" And it still leaves me perplexed that otherwise seemingly fully functional people make it to adulthood thinking that insects are not animals.

I have doubts that any credible and serious scientific discovery would involve this degree of anthropomorphism when it comes to assigning motivation to an animal's behavior.

But let's say I ended up with a hecking case of brain worms who devoured the vast majority of my critical thinking skills and was able to completely ignore that first point, this still doesn't quite compute. If you've ever had cats and/or dogs in your life, then you are probably also aware that each one has its own unique personality and behaviors. Even if we assume that they have human-like rationalizations and emotional capacity, does it even make sense to believe that they all uniformly perceive people in the same uniform manner?

Welcome to mental illness. Many people are perfectly functional, yet still deeply sick.

I had an uncle like this. He definitely held it together okay-ish (though that's up for debate) for most of his life. But the conspiracy bullshit was a consist sign that he was not well.

And then when his wife passed, he also lost his ability to be functional, so the sickness took over entirely, eventually even took over his body. Nobody could help, not even his children.