On a drive when I was ten, I asked my dad why the tall, skeletal towers had blinking lights. He said so planes wouldn’t crash into them. So I asked what the towers were for, and he said to hold up the lights.
The second half of this experiment is far less wholesome:
To verify their findings, these scientists reran the experiment by cutting off ants’ legs at the knees. Those ants consistently undershot their targets, showing definitively that ants do actually count their steps.
I’m a user experience designer. My favourite story is from aviation engineering. I don’t remember the year or all the details, but the US Navy had put stupid amounts of money and time into engineering a new fighter jet. It was worked out on paper and built to exact specifications. Then, during the first human test of it, the pilot ejected on the tarmac before it took off. The plane crashed, obviously, but the pilot couldn’t explain what happened (apparently he had a concussion from his unscheduled landing).
The plane was built again, and shortly after takeoff, the pilot again ejected without explanation.
What the fuck was going on?
In the retelling I heard, someone finally noticed the design of the cockpit was to blame. In trying to cram all the standard controls plus new ones into the smallest amount of space, the designers had moved the eject lever right next to the lever to adjust the seat position – they’d coloured the eject lever red, but the pilot couldn’t see that since it was below and slightly to the right of his ass, and both levers were the same size and shape. Nobody noticed this was a problem until at least two pilots accidentally ejected on takeoff.
This might be apocryphal, I don’t know, but I learnt it as an example of how things might look good on paper, but you can’t really know until a user fucks everything up.
A Republican hoping to represent Michigan in the U.S. Senate suffered a setback to his campaign this week after facing allegations that he lives in Florida....
If you’re from Michigan but living in Florida, you, sir, are a moron. I barely care about jurisdictional laws you’re breaking; your lack of judgement is already disqualifying. To be so close to Canada and choosing to spend time tucked beneath America’s ballsack is in very poor taste.
Transgender Catholics — as well as a priest who welcomes them to his parish — expressed disappointment Monday with a new Vatican document rejecting the fundamental concept of changing one’s biological sex....
Elon Musk‘s erratic posting on X, formerly Twitter, has come back to haunt him once again as a 22-year-old Jewish man pursues a defamation case over tweets in which the tech mogul baselessly suggested the recent college graduate was an undercover federal agent posing as a neo-Nazi during a street fight between far-right...
When his name first became popular, I was like others thinking, hey, this guy sounds like a genius, maybe I should pay attention. Then I did pay attention and he ventured into my industry: comp sci and user experience. That’s when I realised he was an utter moron. When you know more about what he’s talking about than he does, it becomes obvious.
Why would they? They know they have the nearly 30% support it takes to overwhelm a society and, crucially, they know roughly 30% are complacent enough to allow their takeover and whatever atrocities they think are required to ‘fix’ society.
Remember that when fascism threatened to overwhelm us in the 1930s, only about 30% of society were onboard with it; 30% were actively against it, and roughly 30% were in denial, didn’t want to talk about it, or were just hoping it would go away somehow if they just ignored it.
Those of us who grew up without it literally can’t imagine scenarios like this, though I’ve heard disturbing things from people who seem otherwise sane that make me understand what drives some to do these things. When you’ve internalised fables of good vs evil and that’s how you define reality, it’s a small step to think you have to commit atrocities to save the innocent. You don’t have to have a very divergent mentality to convince yourself of this.
We will all be better off when the vast majority of people give up these fables and begin to live in the real world.
Religion isn’t a scapegoat, and it has nothing to do with IQ. Very smart people are roped into it, and that’s what I mean by it being a social cancer.
Very smart people are raised with stories that they take as reality – that supplant their ability to judge reality for what it is – and it at best colours how they interpret everything for the rest of their lives, and at worst amplifies and gives focus to mental conditions they already have.
Religion is a warped lens through which people are forced to see reality from such a young age, they are incapable of seeing actual reality, and in some cases it just amplifies the otherwise mild mental illness they’d likely have had already.
Without it, some people would already have been disturbed, but with it those people are given a purpose for their delusions.
My point is that religion is uniquely capable of taking the delusions of the mentally ill and nurturing them into violence.
Even for the mentally stable, it often leads to fantasy. But when mental illness and religion coincide, people who would otherwise be relatively benign in their delusions very easily become convinced their delusions are divine and their violent instincts are justified by scripture. It happens so often, we need to begin acknowledging it.
Psychosis PLUS organised religion. That’s my point, friend. Psychosis alone is a tragedy we should work to address as a society. But many of these stories would not end in senseless violence if there weren’t an underlying system of fantastical belief that bolstered people’s delusions and convinced them their delusions were divinely inspired.
Of course there would still be people like that. What I’m saying is there are exponentially more people like that when they’ve been raised from birth to believe in nonsense that warps their sense of right and wrong.
Take the story of Chad and Lori Daybell. She was a normal, successful woman who wasn’t a psychopath. She fell in with a pastor who convinced her of extreme religious ideals, after which they murdered their own children in a misguided belief they’d be safer in heaven than on earth.
I can list examples like that until the cows come home. Normal people who have become convinced to commit atrocities after being drawn into religion to extremes. It’s a psychological virus that can infect anyone. Most large-scale wars have a religious basis. All the biggest genocides have been committed in the name of religion. The best and fastest way to control people and warp their reality is to make them believe in a god.
I abbreviated their story to keep my comment short, and linked the full thing for people who want to learn more.
In truth, the reason she was so susceptible to his offshoot of their religion was because she’d been raised believing in the mainstream religion, which he warped a bit in order to gain followers to his cult. She was primed for it because she couldn’t imagine a reality outside of the belief system in which she was raised, and his cult was only slightly outside that and built upon it.
Look up the story yourself, if you like. That’s why I linked it. My quick summary wasn’t ‘too tidy to be true’, and I can give you links to many, many more stories exactly like that one. Loads of normal people have committed atrocities – often against their own children – because their Christian faith told them to. A great many of them weren’t mentally ill until they became religious. Many committed those atrocities because they became convinced heaven was a better place for their children, that demons were real and trying to corrupt their kids, etc. Google it yourself; I’m not trying to filter knowledge here. These were normal people until they became religious.
Like I said, we should be talking about the damage these fables are doing. We should be talking about the damage done by indoctrinating children so they can’t discern reality from fantasy and right from wrong. We should be questioning our leaders when they say morality only exists in their stories, when the opposite is true. This shot is causing us irreparable damage as a society.
This bullshit has convinced non-psychotic people to commit atrocities. It’s not a leap to think it convinces actually psychotic people their delusions are true. Especially when they say so themselves.
You’re right, and I don’t disagree with you at all. Yes, we’ve had an emotional need for stories – more for connection with one another than for individual understanding, which cultural stories provide.
I’m saying there’s a difference between cultural stories and organised religion. The former is benign and can translate our questions into a semblance of meaning, and the latter which becomes dictatorial dogma that amplifies the worst of us, turning our basest instincts into abhorrent action.
I don’t think we disagree that much, you and I. I used to think organised religion wasn’t something I could get behind, but I thought to each their own.
The more I learned about it and the more I saw the bad influence it did to people I loved, the more I realised it’s nothing but a terrible influence in the world, holding us back as a people, and causing needless suffering and death.
Once you’re old enough, there’s no difference. My doctor’s admin keeps calling me to schedule a colonoscopy, and we’ve been playing phone tag. That’s the closest I’ve come to foreplay in years.
Members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol have warned America for three years to take former President Donald Trump at his word....
Jokes aside, if the US falls to fascism, it’s gonna be a massive problem for Europe. Imagine fascists in charge of the biggest nation with a history of colonialism, and the world’s largest stockpile of nukes.
It would be awesome if the other first-world nations started taking this threat seriously, before it’s too late.
I’m not talking about trump, actually. He’s just a carnival barker. If he wins the next election, he’ll do whatever his handlers want him to do, which will hasten things. But him losing will not stop the fascist movement in progress. There’s a group of actual fascists who have been working on this for decades. Some are in Congress, some are high up in organisations like the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society (writing bills and selecting judges), and others are consultants and advisers.
I’m actually concerned that when trump loses, people will think the threat has passed. His loss will mitigate it somewhat, but it won’t stop them. A large part of the threat is Christian nationalists in Congress, the Supreme Court, and in many other seats of power throughout the country.
Fatherly hazing (lemmy.world)
Antybooties (mander.xyz)
Soup: *After Dark* (lemmy.world)
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Michigan Republican candidate caught living in Florida (www.newsweek.com)
A Republican hoping to represent Michigan in the U.S. Senate suffered a setback to his campaign this week after facing allegations that he lives in Florida....
seize the means of production (slrpnk.net)
Women-only social media app Giggle for Girls taken to court by transgender woman Roxanne Tickle after her account was restricted (www.abc.net.au)
In short: Transgender woman Roxanne Tickle is suing social media platform Giggle for Girls after she was excluded from the women-only app....
Transgender Catholics say new Vatican document shows no understanding of their lives (apnews.com)
Transgender Catholics — as well as a priest who welcomes them to his parish — expressed disappointment Monday with a new Vatican document rejecting the fundamental concept of changing one’s biological sex....
Musk Admits He Doesn't Fact-Check Himself and Has Two Burner Accounts on Twitter (www.rollingstone.com)
Elon Musk‘s erratic posting on X, formerly Twitter, has come back to haunt him once again as a 22-year-old Jewish man pursues a defamation case over tweets in which the tech mogul baselessly suggested the recent college graduate was an undercover federal agent posing as a neo-Nazi during a street fight between far-right...
Saying prosecutors should focus on Antifa, judge frees white supremacist in beating (www.usatoday.com)
In his sentencing memo Thursday, U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney made it clear why he was letting Tyler Laube off lightly....
Florida woman shoots interstate drivers, says God told her to because of the eclipse, police say (abcnews.go.com)
Thousands of years ago *smoke machine activates* (lemmy.world)
Trump says he’ll jail his opponents. Members of the House Jan. 6 committee are preparing (www.seattletimes.com)
Members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol have warned America for three years to take former President Donald Trump at his word....
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