Everything is political.

Sigh

That's only true in an academic sense. When a layman uses the term "political", they refer to discussion pertaining to things like how a formal government is run, comparisons between types of governance, government policy, etc.

While deciding what cookie to eat or what color your cat's litterbox is might technically be political in an academic sense, you're just going to annoy people if you try to tell them that those are political decisions. I have found that trying to force academic definitions into common use is confusing at best, annoying on average, and infuriating at worst.

An example of where a word's academic definition has no place in common speech can be found in "information". The informal definition of "information" typically is seen as referring to knowledge and the transfer of said knowledge. This definition allows you to gain information from a lack of something.

However, it is my understanding that the scientific definition of "information" does not allow for the aforementioned action, as "information" refers to the properties of physical matter. The result is that you cannot gain "information" from a lack of something. You might be able to come to conclusions based on a lack of "information", but you cannot actually gain "information" from a lack of something because "information" is inherently linked to matter.

Now. All of that said, this meme is related to something said at an engineering school, so on the one hand, it isn't entirely out-of-place to expect the academic definition to be used because it is an academic setting. Yet, on the other hand, it is an engineering school, not a political science school. As such, while OP should be aware that the academic definition of "politics" may come into play, it's also reasonable to expect that their professors and peers would mainly be using the common definition of the term.

However again, in my experience, trying to force academic definitions into casual discussion is confusing at best, annoying on average, and infuriating at worst. Please stop trying to do it. Thanks.

(Also, imo, genocide is like Schrodinger's Cat; it is both political and not political at the same time. Personally, I think it mainly depends on the depth of the discussion; but its "political" nature varies from person-to-person. Imo, saying that genocide is happening shouldn't be considered "political", but talking about why it is occuring is political.)

Edit: whoops, somehow my comment doubled, within the comment. The fuck happened there?

Edit 2: I swear I need to find a new phone keyboard, and I need to read over my comments before submitting. I'm finding a lot of stupid auto-correct errors, and it seems like they're becoming more common.

Then get a steam deck or something. While it's nice to hear that cars generally won't let you play games while driving, it's still really concerning to me considering I've seen people watching videos on their phones while driving. Like, I honestly don't get why I was downvoted.

Fucking good, lol. People shouldn't be able to play games on their cars infotainment system unless the screen is positioned so the driver can't see it. Recently I've seen people watching videos on their phones while driving, which is fucking terrifying. People don't have the self-control to not watch movies while piloting a multi-ton hunk of metal, they're not gonna have the self-control to not play Skyrim on their cars infotainment system.

Are there any benefits to having a static IP, aside from self-hosting purposes? Is it somehow faster or more responsive? I'd think dynamic IPs would be better (ignoring self-hosting) because at the very least, they'd allow you to dodge (d)dos attacks (which can happen with games, people sometimes get salty enough to attack other players IPs if their IP is exposed).

Is it possible to diy a headlamp? I've always thought it'd be kinda cool and silly to have an obscenely bright flashlight, but I prefer headlamps because it leaves my hands free (and it's automatically pointing at whatever I'm looking at, for better or for worse).

Ah, well. Still pretty smart, though I'm a bit less interested now.

The way Native Americans have been treated in the US is absolutely disgusting. I do wonder if there's a compromise that could be reached, like no open pit mines and ore has to be refined off-site (which would hopefully reduce the mine footprint and pollution caused by it); however, in the event that a compromise is impossible, I hope the tribe wins and is able to stop the destruction of their holy site.

puts on tinfoil hat

The asymmetrical internet speeds are intended to keep hobbyists and small businesses from self-hosting, thereby driving traffic to larger companies. I wonder if ISPs get any kind of kickback from large companies like AWS, cloudflare, or digital ocean. Like, reduced hosting costs for their websites and internal cloud services.

Takes tinfoil hat off

The reality is that it's probably a lot cheaper for ISPs to make connections asymmetrical because it effectively lets them pump up their download speed numbers for free. However, ISPs really should give customers the option to custom allocate bandwidth. Instead of saying X upload, Y download, you get X Mbps maximum and can choose the upload/download split.

Google might not care, but if enough people install it, their advertisers sure will.

and the plugin dev is also using the clicks to make money via affiliate

That's actually kinda brilliant and I'm jealous. I might actually install it just to reward his intelligence. I can't blame him for doing it, I'd do it too if I was in his shoes; I wish I'd thought of it first.

It's like the sad clown from the Sims, except gay.

Just call the clown catcher.

I looked it up, it's actually in excess of 1,000G(-forces), which is kinda fucking insane.

Sure, lemme just waltz over to my money tree and harvest some cash.

I didn't say it wouldn't still be obscenely expensive.

They've come up with a way they could do it. I dunno why you're mad about that, I was just wanting to share an interesting tidbit I'd learned.

My understanding is that the reason why scientists like playing with the idea is that it's more feasible than it immediately seems, and it'd solve some of the issues that a Mars colony would have (increased solar radiation due to low atmospheric density and weak electromagnetic field as well at very low gravity).

Would it be expensive? Yeah. We're talking about colonizing another planet though. It already is going to cost hundreds of billions if not trillions to do.

I wonder... does anyone know how many shares in a company you have to own before you can call-in during shareholder meetings to ask questions? I'm wondering if we could push back against this by """asking questions""" that make majority shareholders aware of the damage companies are doing to their own brands. I know modern capitalism is all about "money today, fuck tomorrow", but I wonder how many shareholders would be happy knowing that companies would probably make more money if they'd stop cannibalizing studios and franchises.

You know, play into their greed and make convincing arguments about how their decisions are ultimately robbing them of money.

I have a cracked version installed on my steam deck via proton and it worked just fine the last time I tried it.

A lot of these are funny, because (as a young millennial), they'd eliminate Biden from the picture and force the Dems to run a different candidate. This on the other hand:

Develop A Fursona

Now, I can't speak for the furry community as a whole, but most of the furries I talk to would probably be royally pissed and claim that he's just doing it for brownie points while also painting a massive political target on our backs. We've been able to mostly avoid getting dragged into the culture wars and mostly dodge legislation that'd kill the community, however, since it's technically a hobby there are no legal protections except the freedom of speech, unlike LGBT, POC and neurodivergent communities. Biden making a fursona would probably destroy the community because it'd put furries under the conservative spotlight and prompt them to make legislation targeted against the community.

In other words, stop giving him ideas.

For letters and punctuation though? Seriously? Like, okay, lesser used punctuation like carets, tildes, lesser/greater than, stuff like that seems reasonable to stick behind a layer. Letters though?

Yep, yet it's my understanding that it'd be easier to colonize Venus than Mars. Venus is closer, Venus' gravity is similar to Earth's, the air is extremely dense which means balloons would be very effective, iirc Venus has more opportunities for inter-planetary transit, high-altitude temperatures (where the balloons would float) are more similar to Earth's, etc.

Remember kid, at some point in the far future, every star will burn out. There will be no more light, no more warmth. The universe will become an infinite void, without life. That is our future, dear child. That is the reality of our existence. All life, all light, extinguished by time.