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Cake day: January 21st, 2024

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  • Redfox8@mander.xyztoCurated Tumblr@sh.itjust.worksLiving my dream
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    6 days ago

    We’re only more complex in that we have language systems so can assess situations in a more detailed way. The majority of the time we have pretty much the same instincts and responses to stimuli to many other animals because, in short, it takes less energy/effort. Being able to conceive society, something canines can do, doesn’t stop other natural instincts. There is a level of simplification, yes, but this is a social media post, not a scientific study so it won’t explain every minute detail!



  • Pretty much all religions provide a basis for a social belief system/set of principals and morals by which a society should be and behave. They often also provide the meaning to life. Organised religions, e.g. Christianity, then provide a regular means of contact to teach this, e.g. via church services, for people. Many people who need structure and security, or the answer to why they exist, seek this out. Others engage with it as a point of ego boosting (e.g. social figurehead within the religion) or power (leader) or money (albeit moreso historically). In summary it provides individuals with a major part of their life, livelihood and welbeing.

    So, when these people learn of all the horrendous crap associated with THEIR religion, they either cannot, or refuse to, accept it as their religion teaches the perfect way to be and therefore cannot possibly be fallible. Or they’re culpable in the deceit, abuse and hypocrasy. Or they can’t face the idea of loosing their religion (and therefore life as they know it/want it) so choose to lie that everything is ok and good. Everyone who disagrees or opposes is a heathen and must be shut down or worse, killed.

    To add, as they replied as I was typing; Infamousblt makes the good point that there are still good people within these societies, which is true of pretty much all societal groups; there are good and bad people in all of them.








  • That’s a good point, but it also drives population growth through less famine/starvation, which creates land scarcity, which creates (more) land ownership, which limits or stops individuals being able to forrage for themselves - which is what the meme is referring to. As you say, it’s complicated, but the way human society has developed has resulted in the majority of individuals not being able to feed themselves for free and, amongst other factors, now needing a credit score to survive!


  • Thanks for your reply, nice and clearly described for my amateur physicist brain to follow! ;p I’ll reply in full when I’m less tired, but intrigued by your reply about time! In summary I think of it as a way of describing how something changes, rather than time actually existing. I.e. it’s relative to the energy the object has…so is a way of describing how much energy it has. I see you talk about black holes in a reply to someone else and my first thought is - the idea that time slows as your get closer (or is that a popular misconception?) relative to my thinking is that actually the particles are loosing energy, not time actually changing - and therefore would any particles actually catch up with each other as you describe? Let alone be observable to be moving.

    And thinking about your last paragraph - are you not simply describing that object A which entered the black hole before object B, is simply is closer to the centre than B at any given ‘time’ which err doesn’t exist. And neither does space come to think of it. Space is the nothingness between something, so also just a way of describing how something changes or interacts with something else. E.g. 2 particles exert a force on each other and move closer together through an exchange of energy - space is simply part of a description of how much of the interaction has been completed, similar to time, hence why they’re thought of together and also as one and the same.

    The distance thing is therefore how much force, what force and how strongly a force is being exerted rather than a physical thing.

    Which (now a bit of side thought I had half an hour ago!) makes me think that black holes have no centre and the singularity is rather like the surface of a sphere, at which point all matter has no energy left to move - or perhaps its better to describe it that all matter’s energy is now potential energy due to the immense forces at work, a bit like a compressed spring.

    Erm ok so I replied a lot in the end! I hope it makes some sense, I could probably ramble on some more but I’d better stop fir now! though I do realise there may be some concepts that I’m ignorant of that could destroy my thinking, so feel free to deconstruct!








  • I think someone else said the same, so those don’t appear to be an option.

    Visa appears to be the most common in the UK as far as I have seen. It is disappointing, but I guess it works for the banks etc kinda like the national grid for electricity.

    I looked a little into open banking and Money Savings Expert say "Technically, banks share your information securely via technology called application programming interfaces (APIs). APIs simply allow two providers to ‘talk’ to each other and pass the information you’ve given permission to share, such as your bank balance and regular payments. " which doesn’t sound like Visa or others are involved to me.

    There’s also https://www.openbanking.org.uk/what-is-open-banking/ which says much the same with no mention of Visa etc.

    Banks do have systems to transfer money that doesn’t involve Visa etc. It looks to me like open banking uses this or is a new system.

    I had a look at Stripe also, this appears to be for businesses with customer’s requiring to use debit or credit cards so that’s ruled out!

    Online banks: Starling bank uses MC but Revolut doesn’t say what system they use with their cards.

    There’s Skrill, an e-wallet company. You can transfer in using open banking and can pay online without a card but I suspect the number of businesses that facilitate payment from them may be low. You can get a physical or virtual card, but that uses MC.

    I found reference to a number of other e-wallet compnies but you’ll have to do you’re own research from here!


  • Re your 1st question: no, not strange (welcomecto banks and capitslism 101!), but I agree that it would be better to have more alternatives.

    There’s not any quick and easy alternatives as all UK banks use Visa as far as I’m aware, but here’s some thoughts/possibilities.

    Shops, cafes, pubs etc: cash

    You could possibly use a cash card account rather than current account with debit card. I have seen that they don’t have Visa on them, but maybe you can only use them to withdraw cash so it may not be an option beyound cash in hand.

    Pay for bills: direct debit, bank transfer or at the bank with cash.

    Online shops etc: Paypal, Apple, Google pay etc (though not really a better option given the likely reason for wanting to avoid Visa & MC)

    Other online payment services such as Stripe, Venmo and digital wallet providers exist but I’m not sure how all of these work and I wouldn’t be surprised if some are owned by or subsidiaries of Visa/MC so look into them first. There’s also Gocardless which appears to use the open banking system.