This actually brings back memories, lol.

So I’m a surgical tech- I set the OR up for surgery before a case with all the supplies and instruments that specific case calls for; am the surgeon’s bitch during the operation; and tear down once it’s all done. When I first started this job, I had to write up a case report on every new surgery I did to show familiarity with the anatomy we were working around and be able to anticipate the types of instrumentation we needed, and getting info for those case reports was kind of a pain in the ass. Everything is either directed at patients (lots of detail on preop, “and then you’ll be asleep for the surgery” and lots of details on postop), or to the surgeon, which goes into WAY more detail than I needed using terminology I didn’t understand.

Enter YouTube. One of the best ways to get that data was to just look up a recording of the surgery on YouTube and just write down what I saw.

I’m also a nerd, so when I wasn’t looking up videos on surgery, I was looking up videos on things like physics or sci-fi.

Turns out that did some weird things to YouTube’s algorithm… it basically poured ‘surgery’ and ‘weird nerdy shit’ into the same cup, and started making some of the most fucked up video recommendations I’ve ever seen… one of which was a video of a guy giving anesthesia to a cockroach with ice water, and then sticking a diode or something into its little roach brain that connected to a circuit board backpack like the one shown in the OP. He could then use a remote to stimulate two different parts of its brain or something, and if he did this while it was running, it would reliably turn left or right, so… remote control cockroach.

Tbh, the pic on the OP might actually be from that same video.

[/storytime]

I’m probably the least tech savvy person on Lemmy. If my dumb ass can figure it out, the subset of Reddit’s population who we’d actually want in Lemmy’s community should have no problem.

That said, onboarding could have been better, and you’re right about the potential hangups: “fediverse” sounds like some kind of federal government function like a hub website that links to all the different .gov agencies, and “Lemmy” sounds like a cartoon character. Choosing an instance was more stressful than it probably should have been; ultimately went with .world by blindly following the advice of a YouTube video, but on day 1 I was pretty oblivious to the extremist shit that’s associated with instances like .ml and had no clue what ‘tankie’ even meant.

That was two years ago though - no idea if that reflects what getting started is like today.

And again, that’s all coming from a relatively tech-dumbass, so I’d imagine it’s probably smoother for people less prone to starting a fire when they turn their computer turns on.

Edit: sorry to anyone who had to read that before the edit… when I’m tired I have an annoying tendency to think a word as I’m typing and then just skip to the next one. And I’m tired all the fucking time, so my posts have a lot of holes Q_Q

Banana for scale?

Judging by your post history, it looks like I agree with you on nearly everything, except apparently when it comes to splitting hairs over how much faith we have in the average American to actually get up and get their hands dirty to take our country back.

…and honestly, I’m a little jealous of that optimism. The past decade has made me cynical as fuck. You’re right to call me out for defeatism. This all seems so fucking hopeless to me, but I really ought to keep that shit to myself - not like I’d be doing anyone a favor by ‘winning’ them over.

Well, I specified the majority of voters for a reason. When a third of population looks at the possibility of someone as evil as Trump taking power, and are so unmoved by that possibility that they can’t even be bothered to so much as color in a quarter-inch rectangle in opposition to it, that’s a fucking problem.

Militias to protect protesters is one thing; militias to enforce the demands being made by the protesters is what we need.

Look at current events here: we’ve got the 50501 protests happening nationwide and frequently - nothing changes. There were protests constantly during Trump’s first go at raping the Constitution - nothing changed. There were protests against Biden and Harris over their support for the genocide on Gaza - nothing changed. This has been a recurring theme for the almost 4 decades I’ve been stuck in this fucking dumpster fire.

You know what did get shit done? Luigi put three bullets into a malicious healthcare CEO’s back, and we immediately saw some reform (nothing huge, but some). Teslas and Tesla dealerships started getting burned to the ground, and now (supposedly - hasn’t happened yet) Elon is backing down from his role as chief Nazi. The republicans carried out a literal insurrection; they now control the presidency, Congress, and the Judiciary. Any semblance of checks and balances, and they just arrest the judge.

Point being: good or bad, violence is the only thing that works here. We’ve dipped our toes into it, but we haven’t gone full guillotine, which is what desperately needs to happen. Protests aren’t going to accomplish shit until the ruling class has a healthy fear for what happens when the protesters’ demands are ignored.

…the fuck are you talking about? The majority of US voters wanted this shitstorm. This isn’t like two people oppressing the country - the problem is that the majority of us land somewhere on the spectrum between stupid and evil, and that’s a MUCH larger problem than just Trump.

Protests in the US have lost their teeth ever since the civil rights movement. Nowadays we don’t have the Black Panthers standing by with rifles to enforce the efficacy of broader non-violent side of the movement; and so long as they remain nonviolent, they’ll continue to be ignored. We protest all the time - it doesn’t accomplish shit here.

The French do it all the time. Are you saying you’re not as capable as those you call “cheese eating surrender monkeys”? You keep making fun of them, but if you don’t act, they’ll be making fun of you.

Again, what the actual fuck are you talking about? I haven’t made fun of the French a single time. 100% we’re not as capable as the French - the French are absolute badasses who respond to oppression by literally making heads roll. That’s why protests there work - the ruling class knows what happens next if they ignore the protests. And cheese is fucking delicious. I’d love if we emulated the French - we should start with the guillotines and end with fondue.

Telling the passengers of the Titanic to grab a bucket after it snapped in half is not as helpful as you might think.

Where I disagree is that someone having a quote from a religious thing is invalid, when it’s not actively pushing to convert. Just kinda existing showing religion is there. But I guess we just have different perceptions of what passes for “down-your-throatism”.

I mean that’s something we can explore… the post is about some of the cool euphonic examples you can run into in nature or space. The top level comment I took issue with just popped in out of the blue with ‘yay god!’ …like, does the Quran or Bible or w/e say anything about the sound of the cosmos? By all means, share that - it’d relevant to at least some extent, even if it isn’t scientific.

Another approach - role reversal! Let’s say you’re really into knitting and you find some cool new design that you wanted to share with the internet; so you do. Then I pop in and say “Man, that reminds me: isn’t Satan just the coolest?! Freedom from tyranny and all that - everything just reflects back on what a quality god he is!” …your reaction would probably be akin to “…what the actual fuck? What does that have to do with knitting?” So even if I was a satanist, that wouldn’t be an appropriate time to bring it up; nor could I accuse you of being anti-satanist for pointing that out.

But that’s what I mean by religious down-throatism. I’m not calling for a ban on religious content, I’m asking that religious people use the same discretion you would with any other topic. Like, I really enjoy old-school RPGs, Symphonic Metal, Indian food, (and, and, and,) but that hypothetical thread about knitting isn’t an appropriate place to post about any of those either.

I’d wager that vast majority, if not all, of the negative response this comment chain started with was from that angle. As opposed to targeted religious bigotry, which is not and should not be tolerated.

My beef is with religious down-throatism. I don’t care if it’s Islam, or Christianity, or Satanism, or the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

If you want to talk about your favorite ghost story, make or visit a community for it - it has no place here.

Edit-

railing on Islam

Just to be clear, since my original post was removed: my initial comment here was literally just the text on ‘the one ring’ from LoTR and Frodo’s line about not being able to read it: mild snark just to illustrate the off-topic-ness. The mods took that down for some reason, so then I dropped the irrelevant Quran quote, which was way more aggressive, but if Quran quote are what’s allowed to stay, then that’s what I’ll work with (which has also since been removed, so fuck me I guess). Had someone come in with a top-level post with a Bible verse, I probably would have replied with the Bible verse about the daughters who got their dad drunk and fucked him.

Again, the opposition is to religious down-throatism, not Islam specifically. They’re all the same as far as I’m concerned.

…just in case you’re feeling targeted.

That verse is used to justify rape. Not just rape, but entire slave trade networks that revolve around rape. (and that’s in today’s world, not some ugly footnote in distant history)

That you personally interpret it differently is moot: people’s actual lives are destroyed over a fairy tale, and that shit is absolutely evil.

I don’t think you’ll find any slavery where rape was in practice forbidden.

Yeah no shit, that’s because slavery, and the people who engage in slavery are and always have been abhorrent, as are systems that enable slavery regardless of religious vs secular context.

That verse is used to justify rape. Not just rape, but entire slave trade networks that revolve around rape.

That you personally interpret it differently is moot: people’s actual lives are destroyed over a fairy tale, and that shit is absolutely evil.

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You know those apple slicer things that look like a wagon wheel pattern blade with a circle in the middle so you can core it and slice it in one swoop? We found one for watermelons. No shit. In hindsight, I’m guessing it was supposed to be more of a funny novelty than something actually used, but… we used it…

It made it about half an inch into the melon, then shattered like it was some kind of ACME explosion. Bits of plastic went EVERYWHERE, my melon was now wearing a crown of blades, and I was just standing there with a handle still in each hand trying to process wtf just happened, like Wile-E-Coyote still holding the steering wheel of the car that just blew up around him looking straight at the camera like “well that just fucking happened…”

0/10

In English it’s usually “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU–…” (trimmed due to character limit per post)

Meaning varies with context, but it’s most often an assessment of current events.

Antz.

…idk, that one guy kinda killed it for me.

One of my profs described the nucleus as the “power house of cell operation”. You could just about measure the speed of sound by tracking the wave of students’ faces transitioning to pure confusion.

Some chaotic evil shit right there. That mofo knew exactly what he was doing.