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LaLuzDelSol

@ LaLuzDelSol @lemmy.world

Posts
1
Comments
462
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Duolingo is dying celebratory thread

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  • Right. The point I'm making though is that for the majority of Duolingo users, if you take away Duolingo you don't get something better. You get nothing.

    Only on lemmy would people be cheating the demise of a language learning app, no matter how gameified.

  • Duolingo is dying celebratory thread

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  • I feel like people criticizing Duolingo for being inferior to talking with native language speakers or a traditional language class are kind of missing the point. It's like saying 10 minutes of slow walking is inferior exercise to an hour of HIIT every day. Yeah true but people actually use Duolingo. The whole point is that it is fun and doesn't feel like a chore. It's probably why so many people around the world have learned English by watching American and British TV shows. Is that an optimal learning method? No, but the best exercises are the ones you actually do.

  • Why nor????

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  • Well it's interesting that it makes regular ringing/metallic sounds when it's dropped(at least in the movies), so it is not inelastic. Which means it could be deformed if placed under extreme force but it would always spring back into shape. So I think it might be the world's most powerful spring.

  • Do you still have faith in humanity?

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  • .......well that is unfortunate humanity is cooked haha

  • Do you still have faith in humanity?

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  • Ah, so SHE was responsible for my low GPA!

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  • That's a fair rebuttal. Thank you for engaging with me civilly, it makes these discussions a lot more productive and enjoyable.

  • Ah, so SHE was responsible for my low GPA!

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  • My point was, and is, that you should always be skeptical of feel-good facts shared in image format on social media. The worlds oldest continuously operating university being founded by a Muslim woman is pretty cool - so why have I not heard it before? If you told me it was actually founded by [random European guy], I would probably just believe you because there isn't really any reason for misrepresent or make up that story. However, there is a pretty clear incentive to distort or embellish the story of Fatima because it pushes back against the narrative of Islam being misogynistic and anti-science. I'm not really trying to be pedantic here, just skeptical of the whole story in general. If a black inventor did something... at least we can agree they did it, and I don't really care about semantic arguments. I agree that people disputing black people being inventors based on pedantic arguments may be motivated by racism, but that's not what I'm trying to do here. If there was clear evidence that

    a) Fatima was a real person, and

    b) There was any evidence that, at the time of its founding, al-Qarawiyyin mosque was a center of learning,

    I wouldn't really care about whether or not you could really consider it a "university" or not, and would be happy to consider her the founder of the oldest continuously operating university. However, the reality is that there aren't any historical records of Fatima until 500 years after her death, which makes her seem more like Dido of Carthage or Romulus than a real person. (Also, they literally found an inscription, believed to be 9th-century, within the mosque that says it was founded by someone else). Also, while madrasas were definitely centers of learning, all the sources I could find say the transition to a madrasa happened after the mosque was founded.

    So idk man. It's not outright misinformation but it is disputed by historians for several reasons.

  • Ah, so SHE was responsible for my low GPA!

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  • I don't think that's an accurate summary of the authors findings. He says she likely founded a mosque, and there is zero evidence from midevial sources and earlier, that she did anything more than that (it's worth pointing out that her very existence is disputed by some historians because there are no references to her until centuries after her death). It's impossible to prove a negative, but there is no evidence the mosque operated as either a library or a university at the time of its founding. So again, I can't debunk this- nobody can - I just think it's pretty flimsy. I could claim the world's first university was an Egyptian temple, because they probably taught things there.

    I dont think it's fair to say people are being overly pedantic because she was a Muslim women when the only reason this is getting shared in the first place is because she was Muslim woman.

  • Ah, so SHE was responsible for my low GPA!

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  • From Wikipedia:

    According to the widely circulated narrative, the school linked with al-Qarawiyyin ultimately became the focal point of the present-day University of al-Qarawiyyin. The assertion that the university was founded by Fatima al-Fihri alongside the mosque is not clearly rooted in historical evidence.[22] The university library, linked to Fatima's story, was restored and reopened in 2016, gaining attention from influential sources such as The Guardian, Smithsonian, TED, and Quartz that claimed that the library was the world's oldest continuously operating library, and that it was founded by Fatima herself. According to Ian D. Morris, a historian of early Islamic societies, there is no empirical evidence to support claims that Fatima founded the library.[23] The lack of historical sources and consultation with historians by commentators, including think-tanks, NGOs, social scientists, journalists, and bloggers, has resulted in numerous "sourceless, baseless" iterations of the Fatima story. As the story is useful to present-day discourses about women and sciences in Islamic history, Morris concludes that the speculation repeated by modern writers "says more about the current value of Fatima as a political symbol than about the historical person herself."

    Idk if it's true or not but it checks all of the boxes for misinformation spread in liberal circles.

  • Why are we not getting stress relief games where we take our stresses out on normal people?

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  • Untitled Goose Game is what you are looking for :)

  • It's already getting tiring

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  • You're downvoted but you're right. AI slop will never replace the world's best musicians, artists, writers or actors-but it can definitely replace entry level, unimaginative, stock-footage type stuff. And then the creative arts die from the bottom up. In a few decades the artistic world might look a lot more like how it did centuries ago, with the content makers largely being privileged and connected people because it's so much harder to work your way up from the bottom.

  • Which Animals are the worst, and why so?

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  • They are mean but I like them and hornets because they kill pests. As long as they're not making nests in my yard yellow jackets are cool with me.

    Bald-faced hornets have a really bad reputation but I had a nest under my roof overhang and they were awesome. Built a beautiful hive and never gave me any trouble even when I walked right below them. There were a couple days last year where invasive June bugs were swarming around my house and I saw a hornet snatch one right out of the air which was pretty badass.

  • Twenty four US states are now considering legislation to allow small, plug-in solar power systems that connect directly into a wall socket.

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  • Yeah batteries are cool, especially if you've already got them (i.e. an EV). I could definitely see that happening. A real-time market for individuals/homeowners is a really cool idea, but people just have to be cognizant of the fact that in a pure free market the prices they get aren't going to be as good as the prices utility-scale generators get. To the current administration's credit while they did gut a lot of subsidies for renewable energy they left the battery ones intact (for utility scale). I'd like to see the same subsidies for individuals as well.

  • Twenty four US states are now considering legislation to allow small, plug-in solar power systems that connect directly into a wall socket.

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  • No there is a real concern there. Suppose you have a daisy chain that goes breaker - PV panel - load. Say you have 20A draw on the load - enough to trip a 15A breaker, but the PV is providing 10A. In that case you only have 10A at the breaker, but your wires will be significantly over-current.

  • Twenty four US states are now considering legislation to allow small, plug-in solar power systems that connect directly into a wall socket.

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  • As an electrical engineer in renewable energy, it's a lot more complicated than that unfortunately. To trot out the often-used water analogy, net metering is a bit like pumping water back into your water main and then billing your water utility for it. The grid isn't really designed to allow power to flow backwards and it causes all kinds of problems when it does. Distributed generation CAN work, but because of its challenges net metering isn't realistic. Even wholesale power prices aren't realistic, because utilities would much rather buy that power from conventional power plants. Requiring net metering or the market rate for rooftop solar is fine to promote solar, but it's a market distortion and at that point I would rather they just have a conventional subsidy.

  • I fully read/watch all advertisements on a webpage to earn the privilege of viewing its content.

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  • I actually agree with not disabling ads for sites you want to support, but fully watching ALL ads? That is actually insane

  • School speed limits shouldn't exist

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  • Is that just, like, if you see a kid?

  • School speed limits shouldn't exist

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  • I don't think that would work. How are you going to pick up your kids? They would have to walk to where cars are allowed to go, which defeats the purpose.

  • School speed limits shouldn't exist

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  • Thats pretty arbitrary. I don't think you need to be slowing down for kids around a school in the middle of the night. The thing about schools is they aren't like parks or something, kids aren't hanging around schools for fun. Before school opens and after after-school closes you are almost certain to NOT see a kid at a school.

  • Showerthoughts @lemmy.world
    LaLuzDelSol @lemmy.world

    The window for a convincing UFO video has closed