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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • Nah, the roman system developed from even older systems.

    They’re tally marks, with a twist.

    You take a stick and cut a notch, that’s one. This works up to a point, and that point is 4 or 5, when it becomes unwieldy, and our brains have trouble using the groups of notches.

    So you need a new mark to denote a grouping. The v notch is basically adding a / to the already present \ or | tally mark, denoting that the new symbol represents a group of the previous ones.

    Different methods have 3 base marks, with the fourth being the new one, others do it at five.

    Roman numerals stop at 3 individual marks, and there’s no record of why. But avoiding 4 repeating symbols is consistent with the higher numerals as well.

    Basically, once you hit |||, the next number with be the | subtracted from the next higher digit. It works with IX, as well as XL, XC, etc.

    But, the idea you suggest is sometimes presented as a possible origin for the earlier systems. Thing is, other tally systems that originated separately follow the same basic concepts, without using the same V symbol, but using other cross marks. Not that it matters because nobody knows. Nobody back then passed the information along.

    It does kinda make sense, but the idea that it’s the simplest way to make marks on sticks and stones does too


  • The problem answering this is that there’s an uncrossable barrier involved.

    We can’t, at this point in time, accurately and definitively detect the internal perceptions of animals.

    We can, to a limited degree detect how their brains change during a given events. We can observe behaviors as they exist. And, it is possible to compare those to human equivalents.

    But they are, at the end of the day equivalents. There’s simply no way, at present, to ascribe human concepts to the way they think. The best we can ever say is that animals seem to respond and change in rewards ways that are similar to, or even identical to, the way humans respond to a given stimulus.

    “Cute” is a pretty vague concept to begin with, and it’s a concept that refers to a complex series of internal reactions we have to external stimuli.

    With all of that said, some animals do seem to respond to humans in a similar way we do to animals considered cute by most humans. That’s the best we can do until someone cooks up something that lets us more fully track what’s going on inside an animal’s mind.

    Thing is, mind is a concept in the first place, and it isn’t exactly defined in measurable and totally objective ways as of yet. So, we’d first have to find a way to “read” human minds before we could start to try and compare that to animal minds. So, that some seem to is likely the best answer we’ll have in our lifetimes







  • It’s mostly an English language forum. But there’s instances that are set up in German, and I wanna say Farsi (don’t hold me to that, I’m going off what someone else said it was). There’s communities that are Spanish and Portuguese based, though I can’t recall if there’s instances in those or not. I’ve seen Cyrillic posts and comments, though I couldn’t tell you anything more than that.

    So, it’s not totally western world, just damn near it.

    There’s a decided lack of Asian presence in years terms of instances, but there are users that have said they’re from japan, korea, and thailand (iirc).

    I’ve yet to run across anyone saying they’re from anywhere in Africa.

    South America, I’m not sure if you count as western or not, but there’s definitely some folks from Brazil, and I wanna say Venezuela? But it’s been a few months since I ran into that conversation, could have been something made me think Venezuela when it was somewhere else.

    But, tbh, lemmy started out as, and still is, a reddit offshoot. Reddit was not only predominantly western, but predominantly american in user base. Lemmy seems a little more diverse than that, and also seems to be shifting at least more European than reddit ever has been.

    I’m pulling all this from memory of seeing people talk about where they’re from, over mostly the last two years, since before the reddit debacle in 23, I maybe used lemmy a handful of times, just to keep track of how it was going.





  • Well, depending on who you ask, vanity or capitalism.

    Women’s sizes were chosen.

    Men’s sizes are typically measurements, usually waist × inseam and neck × sleeve × chest

    Women’s sizes are harder because they have a wider range of measurements needed to get a good fit. Bust size, waist size, and hip size can have different ratios to each other, even when the waist size is the same. So, Wanda might have a 20 inch waist, a 58 bust and a 36 hip measurement. But her sister June might be 20 waist, 36 bust and 58 hips. Obviously, clothing measured the way men’s is wouldn’t give as reliable a guide.

    So, way back when mass produced clothing came onto the scene with standardized sizes, something needed to be picked.

    Turns out that a size 6 sells better than a size 20, even if the actual measurements are exactly the same. Not that men’s clothing is immune from vanity capitalism, you should see the clusterduck that is XL sizing.

    But, with “dressy” clothing, mens shirts are usually going to be measured. Women’s sizing, particularly dresses and pants, they go by the fairly arbitrary numeric system based on ratios. Just don’t ask me how it was calculated originally, I never cared enough to find out.

    Thing is, while those sizes were originally meant to standardize things, that no longer works. You go get a size 6 in one store, hold it up against a size 8 from another, and they’ll be the same measurements. Why? Because they’re playing a numbers game based on vanity. Some places, a size 6 is unrecognizable as an actual size, it’s just so far off from the median.

    Also, I use size 6 a lot because it was, at one point, the “default” size for models and mannequins. I think that’s changed, but it stuck in my head, so I tend to pull it up as a baseline example. I know it’s usually what’s used for fitting models, which is a whole thing of its own. It varies a lot more nowadays for runway and catalog work though. Height is more important in catalog work afaik.

    Anyway, tangent aside, shoes are a bit more practical. Women’s feet have a slightly different set of angles, so just a toe-to-heel measure wouldn’t work exactly the same between men’s and women’s feet. I can’t recall the exact points where measurements occur to get the different sizes, but that’s what it comes down to. You have to measure the feet differently to get a good fit.

    Which is the overall why none of the clothing sizes will cross over well.

    Yeah, a men’s XL is going to fit a woman with a given bust measurement about the same as a women’s xxl (iirc, don’t hold the exact conversion as fact, I’m just pulling from memory here), but they may not fit the same.

    A men’s dress shirt is going to fit a woman horribly, even if it’s the right chest or neck diameter. It’ll be cut for a bigger waist, with longer arms. But a woman’s dress shirt will fit z better*, because that’s taken into account.

    Funnily enough, men that lift a lot of weights end up having trouble fitting men’s clothing sizes as well. You get something that fits your chest, it won’t fit your waist (unless you’re a power lifter, where you tend to see less difference between chest and waist than in bodybuilder circles), and it may not fit your neck worth a damn. Buy for the neck size, your sleeves can be baggy.

    The patterns used don’t scale up the same as the human body does as it puts on muscle. It’s still not as big of a pain in the ass as it is for women with significant differences, but it is a pain in the ass lol. I’ve never been able to buy a suit off the rack. I’ve only had a few, but they all had to be tailored.


  • Make plenty of sound so they aren’t startled by you coming up on them suddenly.

    If you do encounter one, step slowly away until they either run off, or you’re far enough away to change your route a little to avoid the specific skunk.

    Skunks are pretty damn versatile. Like raccoons, and possums, they adapt easily to urban and suburban settings. They’ve been in and around most cities for a long time, but you don’t know about them because they’re typically shy and avoid high traffic areas.

    If you do see one, chances are that moving to the other side of the street is plenty of space for them to not feel threatened.

    But, they don’t spray willy-nilly, so you’d likely have warning before it got that far. They’ll typically try to avoid confrontation at all, and just keep the business end pointed at you. If you aren’t coming closer, they’d much rather avoid wasting their spray.





  • Well, back in the day, a doughnut cost a lot less than a donut.

    So, betting dollars against donuts would be a bad idea.

    Not that it was ever a betting term, it just condone contains a reference to betting.

    It’s like saying “hey, lets get dinner. You give me a twig for every dollar I put in.”

    You’re either exchanging something of unequal value, or making an “investment” where you get very little return on it.


  • Yeah, in a historic setting, use something readers will recognize, as well. Arsenic, Mercury, that kind of thing. They’ve been used as a poison, and have accidentally poisoned, for so long that they’re tropes of their own. Both of those in specific were available in the region you’re using.

    Plus, they’re going to be really easy to describe the actions of, and don’t require medical knowledge to understand the effects of. Well, the stuff that’s going to be useful to show on page anyway, the stuff that happens inside organs might take a little.