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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • Bilingualism is a bit overloaded nowadays, which I find kinda annoying given that word “polyglot” exists.

    Anyways, if you can freely use another language in an informal exchange with a few people of different sobriety levels while failing to remember key words and recovering from that - you’re a fluent polyglot. Ability to exchange information is a key part of what language is, and that’s how you measures your proficiency.

    Bilingual can also mean “natively proficient in two languages”. And if you’re older than three years old and are not native speakers of multiple languages already, the chances of you becoming one are slim.

    Native proficiency is a result of a language acquisition ability that is not well understood and disappears early into child development. It results in a level of effortless mastery that seems to be impossible to achieve as an adult, i.e. a dedicated or merely attentive native speaker will be able to recognize that you are not one.


  • It’s not “people vs persons” but “those people vs they”.

    Conversationally, “those/these” distances you from the group you are talking about, which is humorously weird when it’s your family you’re talking about.

    It’s not the meaning of the words, but habitual (and often fleeting) attribution around them that tripped you up.

    PS: “People” are uncountable, “persons” are countable. That’s basically the whole difference between the two plurals. Although it’s rapidly disappearing, as “ten people” won’t raise a single eyebrow in a conversation.






  • Teeth cannot produce enamel. Enamel is not a living tissue and it was produced by cells outside of the tooth in a coral-like manner. In order to grow a new tooth, you need it to be fully surrounded by specialized living tissue for the whole growth cycle.

    PS: I honestly expected something like this to come out of bioelectric computation research, but progress seems slower there. Or rather knowledge and techniques in other fields is reaching critical mass, giving us these advances.




  • Slotos@feddit.nltoMemes@lemmy.mlWorst day
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    9 months ago

    Don’t compare someone’s highlight reel to your behind the scenes.

    I once convinced someone that they are actually doing a great job by sharing my struggles and showing that they are not an impostor. They now outshine me and will go to even greater heights.

    And while that one episode of dealing with burnout and impostor syndrome is a drop in the ocean of their persistence, it’s a great illustration to how misleading comparison to others is.

    PS: Also, if you have ADHD, you’re nearsighted in time. That doesn’t only mean “you can’t plan well”, it means “your life looks like a hazy blob, where others see a complex scenery”. And that can be devastating when doing a comparison. Be kind to yourself, be kind to others.



  • Sorry, but you don’t get to claim groupthink while ignoring state of Apache when Nginx got released.

    Apache was a mess of modules with confusing documentation, an arsenal of foot guns, and generally a PITA to deal with. Nginx was simpler, more performant, and didn’t have the extra complexity that Apache was failing to manage.

    My personal first encounter was about hosting PHP applications in a multiuser environment, and god damn was nginx a better tool.

    Apache caught up in a few years, but by then people were already solving different problems. Would nginx arrive merely a year later, it would get lost to history, but it arrived exactly when everyone was fed up with Apache just the right amount.

    Nowadays, when people choose a web server, they choose one they are comfortable with. With both httpds being mature, that’s the strongest objective factor to influence the choice. It’s not groupthink, it’s a consequence of concrete events.





  • Slotos@feddit.nltoADHD memes@lemmy.dbzer0.comEvery day baby
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    11 months ago

    That’s not how evolution works. Traits don’t evolve “to be useful”. Anyone who claims a goal to evolution has failed to grasp evolution.

    Evolution converges on local maxima by selecting for traits that are good enough to continuously propagate through the filter of individuals death. For sexual reproduction, if a trait is not bad enough to continuously reduce carriers’ presence in a mating pool, it can and will remain.

    It’s survival of not inadequate enough.