Hehe, right! (technically). Context matters! When talking about fruit, people usually don’t include stellar objects when weighing their options. Still true when taking in consideration that “apples to oranges” is usually metaphorical and not really about fruit.

I like that, especially this insight:

when two things have very few attributes in common or the attributes they can be compared on are very broad, general or abstract, it is harder to compare them.

A melon and a pogo stick are harder to compare, for their defining attributes hardly overlap except on a very abstract way.

Good on you to say “harder to compare” :D

it’s all semantic subjectivity. Poetry compares dissimilar things and equates unequal concepts all the time.

Another thing worthwhile to point out; subjectivity. I guess that part bothered me too. “cannot be compared” attempts to establish some kind of objective truth, whereas it only can be a subjective opinion.

The reference to poetry was nice, too.

My point works just as well with an arbitrary amount of options. Someone could say “These quintillion things cannot be compared”.

The number of options is irrelevant to what I tried to address. Though my examples were only pairs, so sorry for causing confusion.

Thanks for taking the time to write this detailed reply. I guess you’re right about the equivocation and I can see the irony :D

Though I have not fully understood yet. Following your example, the two different concepts are …

• in case A, we compare the value of a property (different top speed)
• in case B, we compare the purpose or context-dependend usefulness of an attribute (different types of liquid container holders)

What blocks me from fully agreeing is that still, both are comparisons. And they don’t feel so different to me that I would call them different concepts. When I look up examples for equivocations, those do feel very different to me.

I still guess you’re right. If you (or someone else) could help me see the fallacy, I’d appreciate.

Agreed, yeah. Guess I was taking the word too literally.

Gripen sounds like a perfect fit. From the little I know about it, I got the impression it can be operated, just fine, under non-ideal conditions. Like using roads as runways, easier maintenance with less personel than usual and so on. I learned that from watching very short videos, so you might want to double check.

I think it makes sense: Gripen was developed by a small country close to Russia, with no reason to fear anyone but Russia. So kind of designed for the defensive underdog role.

The F-16 and even more so the F-35, are more demanding on organisation and logistics, I believe. Great when you have the capability to double down on it, not so useful when your Hinterland is constantly bombarded. Like I heard they have trouble keeping electricity and water going. Not sure if maintaining a fleet of 35s is possible under these conditions. Fingers crossed they can make good use of the 16s.

That’s a self fulfilling prophecy, isn’t it? The effect you describe would not be there if it wasn’t for comments like this. Or at the very least, these comments make the effect bigger.

Because religion evolved to thrive in us.

It’s like a parasite, and our mind is the host. It competes with other mind-parasites like other religions, or even scientific ideas. They compete for explanatory niches, for feeling relevant and important, and maybe most of all for attention.

Religions evolved traits which support their survival. Because all the other variants which didn’t have these beneficial traits went extinct.

Like religions who have the idea of being super-important, and that it’s necessary to spread your belief to others, are ‘somehow’ more spread out than religions who don’t convey that need.

This thread is a nice collection of traits and techniques which religions have collected to support their survival.

This perspective is based on what Dawkins called memetics. It’s funny that this idea is reciprocally just another mind-parasite, which attempted to replicate in this comment.

What do you mean? Of course they do. It’s not a contradiction, because they are adversaries.

Japan’s coal imports are overwhelmingly local – AUS and Indonesia.

That’s roughly as local as France or GB to US east cost, similar distance and similar other differences. IMHO both connections aren’t even regional anymore. But yeah, it’s fairly short what coal import routes concerns.

In Germany, whenever the discussion about wether to deliver a specific weapon system or not extends to a “new” weapon system, this usually is an argument against. Hurr durr, it could be used to poke too deep into Russian-held territory, or beware, even strike native Russian soil. Russia might not like that and pull Germany into the war or throw a nuke or whatnot.

The day this country’s tensions between conservatism and liberalism die is the day the USA ceases to exist. That tension is at the core of our republic, literally since its founding, and it’s what makes us great, unlike any other nation on Earth.

That sounds as if this tension was somehow unique to the united states. It’s not, it’s everywhere. Even worse, the US have less of a political spectrum than most other nations, just shy of dictatorships.

An (intuitively) working search would be a great step ahead. It should find and show things if they exist, and only show no results if they do not. That a plethora of external tools exist to meet these basic needs shows both how much this is needed, and how much it is broken.

I also feel I have more luck finding communities if searching for ‘all’, instead of ‘communities’. Don’t make me add cryptic chars to my search to make it work. Do that for me in the background if necessary.

It’s been long since I’ve been using it, but iirc, it’s impossible or painful to search for a specific community in your subscribed list.

I like that it comes in a can, not a plastic bottle simply because it gets colder faster and stays colder longer.

If it feels colder in your hand, it means the opposite of what you assume: It absorbs heat from your hand faster, so the stays colder shorter.

Imagine instead you hold a perfectly insulated container. You could not feel wether the inside is hot or cold, or else the insulation would be faulty.

So if you really want to have a drink that stays colder longer, grab something which does not give away how cold it is, quite literally.

From the title, I had a question and found the answer in the FAQ:

What’s an unconference?

An unconference is a conference in which the participants – rather than the organizers – decide which sessions happen each day and on which topics. In the many years we have been organizing unconferences, we have found that for complex subjects like the Fediverse, attendees get more value (and fun!) out of unconferences than from traditional conferences. Sounds disorganized? It did to us, too, until we actually experienced our first one. So don’t worry, it will be fine :-)

Here are some suggestions for how to prepare for an unconference.

Nice! The market and climate need clear signals like that.

And this is another issue which hinders discoverability. It’s nice there are tools and workarounds but their existence also signals the issue exists.

I didn’t say able to locate I said there being a list.

Are you confusing comments?

I see this in the referred comment:

having the capability to locate

While the word “list” does not appear.

But mostly I think we should try to read the message, not focus on single words.

I think that’s fine. Unless we’re talking about greenhouses or urban indoor gardening, food grows in the environment. If you want to protect the food, you implicitly have to protect the environment, which makes you an environmentalist driven by food. There are lots of hazards which have little to do with climate (or at least which also have other, climate-unrelated causes), which can affect food. Invasive species, plastic, overfertilization, corporations, general socioeconomic disparities, just to name a few.

While continuing to tap new oil fields and failing to make sufficient progress. Also, this one isn’t about climate, but healthy and sustainable food. Connected issues, but still.

All that aside, to come back to the somewhat dodged question, what would make things go faster?