I can’t imagine even the skinniest fit and thinnest 100% cotton denim fabric to mold to the legs enough to differentiate between toned and untoned calf muscles. I can’t even imagine the new 98% cotton, 2% elastane jeans to be that tight.
I can only conclude OOP’s definition of toned leg ∨ definition of jeans differ significantly from mine.
This misleading content will be ruinous for the world! I have a very large position on the population of indigenous peoples in the Amazon in 10 years time on MataMarket!
Counterpoint: can’t be horny on main if there’s no main
I’m much more familiar with those terms being used in the active present tense sense than in a past tense sense. The elastic interval on the strain axis tends to be surprisingly short and plastic deformation can be difficult to detect with the naked eye.
Holding that rubber band and having it stretch due to gravity is almost certainly an elastic deformation. I would be very surprised if there was no plastic deformation from that disposable spoon bending.
A good rule of thumb is: if I cycled this change a bajillion times, would I eventually detect a difference? If you answer yes, then plastic deformation is occurring.
I think being sieged is probably the worse option. Being the defending side in a siege generally accompanies local force inferiority. If they do take the fortress, things will suck a lot for you.
I think a better formulation might be: When one army is assaulting a fortress, and the other defending, try to be in neither of them.
Yay! A chance for me to link to my favorite blog: https://acoup.blog/2025/09/12/collections-life-work-death-and-the-peasant-part-ivc-rent-and-extraction/ (may require reading part IV.a and IV.b first).
A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry is right now doing a series on how peasants lived. Arable land is limited, people really don’t want to watch their family members starve, and the entire economic system is maybe kind of reliant on squeezing peasants to do the things necessary for society to function, so there’s strong incentives of all kinds to work a lot
I found it super helpful to have the Sun’s center of mass labeled!
I only wish Jupiter’s center of mass was also labeled in this graphic. I’ve been trying to puzzle it out myself, but I’m stumped!
I know of a short story on becoming a mouse, but that one’s focus is something euthanasia adjacent.
thank you for your service
Honestly, I just dislike other people’s dogs. They’re off leash, aggressive, and slowly bleeding into every space. Having a neighbor that encouraged anxiety and barking was an exceedingly unpleasant experience.
That being said, I’m uncomfortable with the idea of animals being created for and existing for humans. The situation is definitely better than the livestock industry and there’s also the complication that the pets seem to be happy and humans seem to be happier with pets. It would also be exceedingly cruel to take away service dogs from those that have them.
But, pet ownership is rising world wide. Given the demand, they’ll be bred. Pet QoL is going up. Now that they’re family, their environmental impact is going to grow.
Yes, rescues are better than the alternative. Spaying and neutering reduce harm. I wish that the default pets would instead be cold-blooded terrestrial animals and rodents. I wish pets were unable survive outside of captivity.
I think it’s generally immoral to own pets and that if one does, one should strive to maximize the human happiness:externality ratio. It’s a minor immorality, but the OP asked for controversial moral opinions.
I’m not touching the first one
I see Big Pet has gotten to you 😔
There’s a danger of power accumulating in any system. But there are mitigations. The greatest threat to this fantasy system are barriers to entry. If everyone has their needs met, then there can be a minimum wage of 0. With the minimum wage at 0, I think barriers to entry will drop dramatically and it’ll be that much harder to protect “your” market share.
If we get rid of “intellectual property”, barriers to entry drop even further. Switching costs can be minimized by open standards. But then we run into the harder questions of the physical barriers to entry (rent, commodities, factories) and regulatory barriers to entry.
With a reasonably low barrier of entry, I hope that there will be enough centers of power that are intrinsically opposed to one another so that they cannot combine and oppress us all.
And for any government, what’s to stop them from oppressing us instead? The people always will have some mechanisms of control but every system will have its own difficulties and weaknesses. And the relationship isn’t just companies becoming governments, but there are also governments becoming companies. In fact, I’d argue it is more common for governments to become companies than vice versa. Cuba’s GAESA is in hotels, while Myanmar’s Junta and the IRGC are pretty well diversified.
One for the world:
I think dog / cat ownership is immoral. There are huge energy and material costs to supporting those animals.
Cats when allowed outside will decimate ecosystems and are literal invasive species. As for dogs, I can’t help but feel that they’ve have been weaponized into a deniable tool for harassing other people.
One for Lemmy:
I think capitalism can be good. I think in an ideal world where everyone’s needs are met, there will still be a market and people getting ludicrously wealthy. And I think in that ideal world those ludicrously wealthy people can translate that wealth into political power.
This seems insane for those of us trapped in this present, but I think it is good for there to be a mechanism where understanding some reality that is tied to physical phenomena gives people power.
I think large organizations can get by for a very long time inculcating in their members strange philosophies. If the only path to power is by acquiescing to your superiors and parroting dogma, I think that would be bad.
Of course, conditions in the real world look nothing like those in that ideal world.
Edited away: I think dog / cat ownership makes you a bad person.
I thought it was unnecessarily inflammatory and regret choosing that inflammatory language
☝️🤓 erm akshully samurai are generally agreed to have first emerged around the time of the kamakura shogunate (12th century CE), thus there could not possibly be a samurai fighting in the background of any scene in the 10th century