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Cake day: June 27th, 2023

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  • nelly_man@lemmy.worldtomemes@lemmy.worldThat would be quality
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    25 days ago

    You can read more about the scam they were referring to from Colonel Parker’s Wikipedia article.

    Presley had been showing signs of rebellion against Parker, and Parker believed that a stint in the Army would cure him of this. Parker was looking ahead when he persuaded Presley to become a soldier. Presley had wanted to join Special Services, allowing him the opportunity to perform while at the same time getting a more leisurely ride than other soldiers. Parker, on the other hand, was fully aware that any particular treatment given to Presley would instantly be used against him in the media and by those who disliked his style of music. If Presley could show the world that he was treated the same as any other young man, Parker told him, then more people would accept him and his music. Parker was also afraid that any attempt to block Presley from being drafted would result in a more detailed look into Parker’s own service record. He also realized that it would be an excellent opportunity to promote Presley by having the media witness his induction day, including the army haircut that would see the shearing of Presley’s iconic hairstyle.

    While Presley served in West Germany, Parker appeared to be in complete control, but he was worried about the outside influences that Presley might encounter there. Parker had declined to travel to Europe to visit Presley, denying that he spoke any language other than English. He sent Presley’s friends to keep him company, arranged for business associates to watch over him while working in Europe, and maintained regular contact with him. He was reportedly afraid that Presley would realize that other managers were prepared to sign contracts that did not require as much as 25% of his earnings.


  • I’m not an expert in the Bible, but I don’t think it really ascribes omnipotency to God. I think it’s better to understand it as God being able to do all that can be done. So He may have limitations, but they are such that no other being can do something that He is unable to do.

    From that sense, He is not able to save humanity freely, but he can set forth a process through which He can achieve this goal with some cost. I.e., He can create a divine being (that is either Himself in whole, Himself in part, or a direct descendant of Himself depending on your interpretation) that is able to spread His message and display an act of extreme self-sacrifice.

    I don’t really understand exactly what the sacrifice did or what needed to be fixed, but I do think the stories make a lot more sense if you accept that God has some limitations. For instance, I assume that Noah’s flood was his first attempt to fix the problem (by killing everybody except for the most righteous of His creation), but it failed because He can’t do everything and doesn’t know everything. And the story of Jesus was His next attempt to sort things out.

    But that’s just me thinking about them as fictional stories that really need to be edited rather than a divine and infallible truth.



  • It has already metastasized in his bones, so it’s much more aggressive than most prostate cancers. After metastasizing there, three 5-year survival rate is about 33% with a median survival time of 21 months. But it’s also very rare for it to have already spread elsewhere before being caught, so I’m assuming that means that this is even more aggressive than normal and that 21 months would be optimistic. But I’m not a medical professional, so I can’t say how valid this assumption is.


  • nelly_man@lemmy.worldtocats@lemmy.worldSneaky sneaky
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    2 months ago

    Are you not aware of the different forms of English? There are several differences between American English and British English, “spelled” and “spelt” being one example.

    Collins and Merriam-Webster are both American English dictionaries, and the Oxford English Dictionary is a British English dictionary.





  • Also, William Seabrook.

    In the 1920s, Seabrook traveled to West Africa and came across a tribe who partook in the eating of human meat. Seabrook wrote about his experience of cannibalism in his travel book Jungle Ways; however, he later admitted that the tribe had not allowed him to join in on the ritualistic cannibalism. Instead, he had obtained samples of human flesh by persuading a medical intern at the Sorbonne University to give him a chunk of human meat from the body of a man who had died in an accident.

    Seabrook might have eaten human flesh also on another occasion. When his claim of having participating in ritualistic cannibalism turned out wrong (and he hadn’t yet dared reveal the Sorbonne story), he was much mocked for it. According to his autobiography, the wealthy socialite Daisy Fellowes invited him to one of her garden parties, stating “I think you deserve to know what human flesh really tastes like”. During the party, which was attended by about a dozen guests (some of them well-known), a piece of supposedly human flesh was grilled and eaten with much pomp. He comments that, while he never found out “the real truth” behind this meal, it “looked and tasted exactly” like the human flesh he had eaten before.


  • If they can guarantee that they’ll finish the story, I’m on board with the shows. But most of the time, the story is either cut short or it’s extended indefinitely. In film, you can usually bet that by the end, the major plot points will be resolved. You can’t say the same about television (at least when it comes to series that explore a single storyline throughout as opposed to sitcoms that have more self-contained episodes).

    There are obviously exceptions in both cases, but I’ve been bit enough times by good shows that raised a bunch of questions right before being canceled.





  • My point is that Fahrenheit is not like our other units of measure. 12 inches to a foot, 3 feet to a yard, 1760 yards or 5280 feet in a mile is ridiculous. There’s no benefit to these units with arbitrary scaling factors for conversion. That lack of consistent scaling factor is the primary difference with metric, and it is also precisely why metric is superior. The image’s assertion that these units are stupid is valid.

    But for temperature, there are some aspects of Fahrenheit that work out nicely, and learning 32 and 212 for the freezing and boiling points of water is not that bad. It’s not as nice as 0 and 100, but this difference leads to certain other temperatures being in the range of 0 and 100. My enjoyment for which temperatures fall between 0 and 100 feels about as arbitrary as your enjoyment for water being liquid within this range. At the very least, the difference here is not as clear cut as it is for other units, so I don’t buy into the idea that Fahrenheit is a bad unit of measure.

    To put it simply: I don’t see any redeeming quality for our other units of measure, but I do for Fahrenheit. I’m not saying that Celsius is bad or that Fahrenheit is better. I’m merely saying that the phase changes of water are not enough to convince me that Fahrenheit is stupid.


  • nelly_man@lemmy.worldtomemes@lemmy.worldI'm afraid we've been bamboozled
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    7 months ago

    Right. You learn two numbers for the phase changes of water, and we do as well. It’s easy to remember two numbers and understand when you’ve crossed a boundary. Sure, learning 0 and 100 might be easier than 32 and 212, but I don’t think that understanding whether a number is smaller or larger than 32 is really harder than understanding if it’s smaller or larger than 0. Both are pretty much instantaneous recognitions for a numerically literate person.

    My point was merely that the Fahrenheit defines these two points in such a way that the ambient temperatures that we experience generally fall nicely within the range of 0 to 100, and I don’t think that this fact is any less compelling an argument than having nicer numbers for the boundaries of liquid water. I’m not saying that Celsius is bad. I’m just saying that the range of liquid water is not a convincing enough argument for me.

    For other units of measures, the ease of converting units in metric is a clear win over imperial (or US customary). For temperature, there are benefits to both scales, and neither has as compelling an argument as we see in the meter vs the yard or the kilogram vs the pound. The only really convincing argument for me is that the rest of the world uses Celsius, and I think that is a good enough argument.


  • Fahrenheit is also based on water’s phase changes, but the 0-100 range just falls nicely around the range of common ambient temperatures. The basis in water is nice because it’s abundant and thus makes calibration of a thermometer easy. My contention is merely that the specific values of the phase changes are not so important that it makes the Celsius scale inherently better. I like that the ambient temperatures outside fall nicely throughout the 0-100 range in Fahrenheit, and I think that is just as valid an argument as water being liquid within this range.

    And perhaps I’m particularly swayed by this argument because I live in a place that has cold winters and hot summers, so I see the full range of 0 to 100 in the weather. I’m also not going to pretend that growing up using Fahrenheit is not the main reason for my continuing usage of it.

    I just wanted to point out that I’m convinced by the arguments in favor of the metric system for everything except Celsius. For that one, I just don’t think water is as compelling an argument as is always presented.


  • nelly_man@lemmy.worldtomemes@lemmy.worldI'm afraid we've been bamboozled
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    7 months ago

    I’m in agreement with everything except temperature. I’m not saying that Celsius is bad, but I do think that using the phase changes of water as the sole point of comparison is a bad argument.

    For most people, the interaction with temperature is through the weather, and I don’t think Celsius is inherently better for that. I like that in Fahrenheit 0 is a cold winter’s day, and 100 is a hot summer’s day. I find that more relevant in day-to-day life than the phase changes of water. The big argument I see for preferring Celsius is that everybody else is doing it, so we may as well jump in.

    However, in regards to the other systems of measurement, metric is best. The imperial system was nice when manufacturing measuring tools was difficult, so using easily divisible numbers allowed for easier creation of accurate measuring devices. But it has been quite some time since that was a reasonable argument (and that’s only really relevant for some of the units anyway).