silent_water [she/her]

  • 7 Posts
  • 583 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: October 26th, 2021

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  • yeah, I was lucky to have already taken Classical Mechanics prior to Quantum Mechanics (it wasn’t a prereq so most of my classmates jumped straight into QM), so the math was all perfectly sensible. but the second any prof started trying to use English to interpret the math, I started having these moments where I’d have to sit back and think about the words coming out of their mouths, and sitting with how it was all actually gibberish. Feynman’s “shut up and calculate” started to feel incredibly valid really fast, whereas prior to QM, I was under the impression that physics was natural philosophy. it’s not and QM was the breaking point, at least for me, personally.


  • they don’t actually spin but they’re little bar magnets as if they do. if you charge a sphere and spin it, you’ll generate exactly the same kind of bar magnet, but they don’t actually spin. and just like bar magnets, like repels like. but they’re neither bar magnets nor spinning. why don’t they spin? because they’re point masses, which don’t have any extent. but actually, you can’t really observe them as point masses because they’re waves.

    ^^ this was the exact point at which I said quantum mechanics wasn’t for me and I’m done with physics, after completing most of a degree. it sort of all makes sense but at the same time it completely doesn’t. it all makes sense as pure math but the second you try to make sense of the math, sense goes out the window.







  • yup, you got it. comms are communities, which is why it’s /c/comm_name on lemmy. an unfederated/local-only comm is only visible through the instance that hosts it. you can access it without logging in but only via the hosting instance.

    e.g. people from other instances don’t need access to the instance feedback comm and shouldn’t be able to participate in internal discussions about instance policies.




  • So, would official acts as president be legal by definition?

    yes, and further that any exercise of constitutional authority is an official act.

    Would there be such a thing as an official act as president that may otherwise be criminal?

    in the prosecutable sense? no. the president is no longer bound by congressional authority.

    And how does the ruling protect against treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors (specifically, the past part)?

    courts won’t do shit about it, congress will have to (lmao)

    How is this ruling not in direct contrast to the constitution?

    the constitution is toilet paper and always has been. scotus just wiped some diarrhea with it.



  • yes, this is true. no, this isn’t why wages haven’t kept up with productivity growth or why you must work 40 hours to sustain yourself. you have to work because profit earned must increase and paying you even one iota more than you need to be able to show up to work again tomorrow is a loss of profit. if they could make you work 80 hours a week or 160, they would in heartbeat.

    thankfully, this is outlawed because labor movements of the past fought to enshrine in law a limit on how much you can be forced to work and set a minimum bar for how much they can pay you. these laws are under fire - I explore why in the rest of this reply - and will be repealed eventually if labor does not resist collectively.

    however, the rate of profit always decreases on a long enough timescale because of dead labor (technology, machines, etc), inter-capitalist competition - capitalists will steal profit from each other if there’s more to be had - and because infinite growth is impossible so eventually externalities will always overcome the creation of new capital.

    consequently, capital accumulates in the hands of the capital-owning class - an ever-shrinking group of them, at that - and this continues until you, the worker, make so little that you cannot actually show up to work the next day - the loss of social reproduction. reproduction here doesn’t only refer to progeny but also feeding, clothing, housing, etc. yourself and your family, the meeting of the basic necessities that allow you to continue working, including your health - physical and mental. capital eternally strives to reduce what it must subsidize on your behalf as ensuring you can take better care of yourself reduces profits. a capitalist that makes more profit outcompetes and drives out of business all others who choose to make less profit, eventually.

    this is also why capitalism has cyclical recessions, a fact predicted in the 1870s and termed crises of capitalism, when capital has accumulated in too few hands, profit can no longer be made, and workers struggle to feed themselves. you’re just noticing Marx’s second law - the law of capital accumulation.



  • I mean, if you’re going to pretend this is the first election of all time and the last election ever, sure. or you could take history into account and make a longer term plan so that you don’t have to keep making choices about who the “lesser evil” is. if you abdicate any possible collective power, the ratchet will keep turning the dial further and further towards fascism.





  • it’s not a strategic vote! it’s an abdication of strategy that pretends only the current election matters! it assumes the present is eternal and that no electoral strategy could ever consider the future. an electoral strategy would admit the left has no real power absent a dedicated bloc and would work on creating one. to do so, you must be willing to sacrifice a few elections, because you must withhold votes and force the democrats to the bargaining table. otherwise you will forever be trapped in a cycle of voting for the “lesser” evil. FPTP does not preclude a long-term electoral strategy.