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Joined 25 days ago
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Cake day: October 20th, 2025

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  • TBH in the past, I’ve argued both for the -um ending, and for the -ium ending. It really annoys some people. It’s even more annoying, when they realise that you’ve managed to annoy them with such a pedantic point.

    Another one is skeptical/sceptical. “I think you’ll find it comes from the Greek, so it should be with a k.”

    Or the plural octopus. “I think you’ll find it comes from the Greek, so it’s octopodes. Octopi is certainly wrong, because it doesn’t come from latin.”

    I think I may be an energy vampire.


  • You’ll probably hate me for saying this, but when I worked in an office, I often pretended to be stupid when it came to IT stuff.

    Sometimes it’s nice to have a little break on the company’s dime. I get that it’s annoying, but on the plus side, it helps prevent management from making unnecessary and existentially threatening cuts to the IT department.

    Boomer boss gets the importance of the IT guy replacing the deskjet printer so they can print off a 100 page colour manual on how the company’s ‘going green’. They don’t understand the IT department fixing something like sievelike data security. That’s a problem for after the shareholder meeting, if anyone ever finds out.

    It’s a bit like how I’m not great at scanning stuff at the self-scan tills and make mistakes. Don’t want it to be too profitable to replace a cashier with a machine. Everyone’s got bills to pay.

    I used to do IT support, so now I sometimes pretend to be an idiot outside of work too. “Mom’s friend Sarah has an issue with windows and wants me to help fix it for free? Sorry, I only know how to use the apples.”




  • I’m honestly a fan of having the option to use standardised/latinised chemical element names.

    Cu = Cuprum = Copper.

    Hg = Hydrargyrum = Mercury. Hydrargyrum is still sometimes (very very rarely) used in English.

    Pb = Plumbum = Lead. The French for lead is plomb, for example. Would clear up a lot of confusion with homographs. We already use plumb in English, as in plumb line. (The fact that it’s plumbum, not plumbium, does undermine the whole aluminium>aluminum argument obviously).

    Argentum instead of silver. Plenty of languages use a variation of that already. English already uses argent in some contexts, like heraldry.

    Same thing for natrium instead of sodium, also common to have a variation of that in plenty of languages.

    IRC Silicium was the originally proposed name for silicon. Plenty of languages also use a variation of that.



  • I could see it being written about a lot of straight men. The world is full of deeply insecure emotionally stunted man-children, bullied at school for being supposedly ‘feminine’ or ‘gay’, who now overcompensate by riding around in huge trucks, being right-wing douche canoes, and pretending to be ‘alpha’. It’s no coincidence that plenty of those types end up killing themselves too, despite supposedly being in a position of privilege.

    Society is patriarchal and heteronormative. This hurts almost everyone to a certain degree.

    Not that I’m discounting the very real predjudice the LGBTQ+ community faces. It has cost me a job or two. Fortunately I’m bi and look stereotypically masculine, so I’m able to fly under the radar most of the time. And coming to terms with my sexuality has really opened my world and broadened my horizons, which has helped me immensely.


  • All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.

    Look at all the straight men, who are performatively masculine. Look at how angry and insecure they are, because they’re unable to be honest about their supposedly ‘feminine’ characteristics and interests.

    Look at tradwives and performatively feminine women. Often unhappy because they can never conform fully to an artificial and socially constructed female ideal. Look at how they often project that frustration on other marginalised groups.


  • Potassium (K) is called Kalium in New Latin and a variation thereof in plenty of languages. It makes far more sense. The symbol’s K in the periodic table an the eymological link with alkali is in the word. The Brits don’t have a leg to stand on.

    Then again, Americans are stupid about the metric system. Think they can’t visualize what 1 meter is, but almost every American can visualize the length of an M16A4 just fine.





  • Hyperrealism@lemmy.dbzer0.comtoThe Shitpost Office@lemmy.dbzer0.comOh no
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    8 days ago

    Yep.

    And it doesn’t even have to be something they find particularly interesting. People are social animals. The socialising is less important than the subject of discussion.

    Hell, people will watch/do stuff they find boring, just so they can have something to chat about with colleagues or friends on a monday. A bit like that IT Crowd episode, where they pretend to care about football/soccer.

    In this case, the guy picked something he guessed they probably both played as children and had some nostalgia for, resulting in a low stakes conversation while they figure out if they’re attracted to each other.

    It’s actually a good flirting/bonding tip. Talk about something you both enjoyed as children, so the first interaction has positive associations and is relatively low stakes. Having differing opinions on some aspect of roblox isn’t ever going to be a deal breaker, is it?



  • Bit of tangent, but IRC the thing with depictions of Jesus, is that the bible doesn’t really describe what he looks like. In early Christianity, depicting Jesus was still considered idolatry. When depictions do become more common, they’re often not meant to be an accurate representation of what he looked like.

    So when they did started depicting him, they were likely inspired by Greek/Roman gods like Orpheus, Hermes and Apollo. Often with a Zeus beard tacked on and wearing the robes of a Roman emperor.


  • I’m Dutch. The article mentions this, but I think it’s important to reiterate that the idea the Netherlands is especially progressive has always been a bit of a myth. It arose partly because people mistake tolerance for acceptance. The Netherlands has long been a tolerant country. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s an accepting country.

    For example, the Nazis were able to murder 75% of the Dutch-Jewish population in the Holocaust. Statistically, you were arguably safer being a Jew in Nazi Germany. My countrymen tolerated their Jewish neighbours. But they didn’t care enough about them, to not look the other way or prioritize their career when the Nazis came along. The Dutch are often in denial about this, a bit like how the country still hasn’t fully come to terms with its colonial past.

    Anyway, it’s not a huge surprise that right wing populists and Russia have had such success in the Netherlands. They’re exploiting a nasty seam that has always been there.