this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 160 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What makes them think that the library of Alexandria did it any other way? Nerds have existed long before the internet…

[–] [email protected] 78 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Nerds were invented by Charles Nerd, when in 1948, separated from the Poindexters and the eggheads after disagreement.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You can only call then Nerds if they're from the Nerdeaux region of France. Otherwise they're just sparkling smartasses

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

umm ackshually this is false, the concept of nerd originates from a viking ship that docked at Lübeck in 873, whereupon the crew got into an extended argument about the precise value of their cargo, leading to the Lübeck merchants exclaiming "Fücking Nörds!" and that quickly caught on and eventually the term started generally referring to anyone that was annoyingly pedantic but technically correct.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can I cite this on Wikipedia?

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[–] [email protected] 108 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That's literally what the library of Alexandria was all about.

They told all of the nerds that the best nerd paper would get into their nerd building, and nerds traveled there from around the world and dedicated their lives to correcting and one-upping the other nerds.

I love the fallibility of humans and our consistency, it makes me much more comfortable to live in a world that seems comprehensible, because I know underneath all of it are like three dumb existential complacencies that any human part of the species can't deny.

[–] [email protected] 96 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Just ignore the 150M a year they spend managing finances, contributors, tech, moderation, etc. Takes a lot to maintain an accurate library.

[–] [email protected] 70 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

i dont think anyone is ignoring that. the meme is talking about how it was built, not how it's currently maintained. it definitely didn't start off spending that much. all that spending is a consequence of it's popularity, not the reason for it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Some would say that most of the spending is based on greed. Individual salaries doubled to tripled in the last decade, with their head earning three quarters of a million now.

It was a tenth 15 years ago.

They started out right, like they all do. Then personal money catches up.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I wanted to fact check you on this, and you speak true.

https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salaries

Makes me question my willingness to donate money to them.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I think you should consider the opportunity cost of what they would be making elsewhere. Salaries need to be competitive, otherwise you are at the mercy of those who are willing to work for less and hope that the reason is benevolent.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You thinking a $750,000 salary for the CEO of one of the top ten visited websites in the world and arguably one of the most important knowledge resources we've probably ever created is 'greed' is pretty hilarious.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

150m a year doesn't seem that much, honestly. I know people think "oh, it's just a website" but it takes a lot of work and money in salaries and infrastructure hosting to keep a web application as popular as Wikipedia up and running.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I used to work for them. It was weird and wonderful and I miss it and I don't. Lots of mission driven folks working hard to keep things going getting very little respect. But a lot of respect. But sometimes none.

Iirc a lot of their budget is spent doing charity stuff. Encouraging contributions for tiny languages. Trying not to cave to Russia or the US or France. Trying to make it less of a boys club. Trying to get local organizations going.

I remember once they sent an email that said "if the French government asks you to delete this page please just delete it. It's not worth going to jail. Someone outside of France will revert the delete."

I wasn't qualified for the work. No one was. But it was honest work.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Thank you for your work, though!

Very curious about the page French govt wanted deleted.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (10 children)
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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

150m a year for one of the most trafficked websites on the internet is a bargin

[–] [email protected] 62 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Dammit he correctly used the apostrophe.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why damn it? That's a good thing.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago

Nerds needing to correct each other lol

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

They said it as an interjection, in this case to express astonishment.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Here: it’s nerd’s, not nerds’.

You’re welcome.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

But... it's plural, it already ends in s.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (2 children)

All human advancement was created by nerds. Spears were invented by weaklings too slow to kill with their bare hands. Fire was tamed by the people who were scared of the dark

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think fire was tamed because the food poisoning killed those without it. We are supposed to just sleep at night.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Assuming primitive people would make the connection between gross food and people dying.

https://ebookslib.org/sf/12898-eurema-s-dam.html

Fun little story that makes my point.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

That's what it should've been. In reality anything even remotely political on it is heavily biased towards imperial core and NATO countries, and against their geopolitical rivals.

This happens partly because most of these "nerds" are also westerners and rate their own outlets as more reliable, thus enforcing western propaganda.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Lemmy.ml

Sur-fucking-prise.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

lemmy.world user

Sur-fucking-prise lol

Wikipedia was founded by a self-admitted ancap who supported "israel's" bombing of Gaza in 2018, and its most prolific editor (edited an entire 1/3 of wikipedia articles) is a fascist. The vast majority of its editors are indeed westerners with an extreme pro-imperial core bias, particularly the US and UK.

Hell, the current CEO literally attended a US state department briefing in 2017 with a former CIA/NSA director and is currently on the advisory board for the CIA offshoot OTF.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (10 children)

Least braindead .world user

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

At least that is the PR.

It all goes out of the window as soon as politcal events are concerned, then it is just western naratives all over. With things as sources, good sources, multiple viewpoints all forgotten. What the west says is treated as gospel. While paid editors up to and including state actors rule the site. The system of nerds correcting each other is then used to prevent corrections.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

The other day I used the term weaponized a*t*sm in a positive way, and I got site banned for a day for ableism.

I'm on the spectrum. I'm also the one that ended up going into weaponizrd detail in that thread.

Semi-related, only because if you used the title you actually wanted to, you probably would have been banned too.

Mods are weaponized.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I realize autistic people often have trouble with tone and having people interpret things the way they meant it to come across -- lord knows it took me took long enough to develop that skill -- but good grief. I'm on the spectrum, and if I were a mod who had just read the comment in your screenshot, I'd've banned you too.

Now that you've explained you meant it in a positive way, I completely understand what you meant, but nothing in the comment you wrote makes it clear that you think of autism in a positive way or, in fact, as anything besides "lol nerd emoji". The fact that you had just finished going on a seven paragraph infodump (I'm guessing) unfortunately does nothing to prove otherwise: an unfortunate number of undiagnosed autistic people spend their days getting into online fights, writing said seven paragraph comments, and calling anyone who disagrees with them autistic because they want to feel superior and "autistic" is a handy epithet. I don't think anyone would argue these people should be welcome in our communities just because of autism they themselves don't know about.

To be clear, I'm not saying that last statement applies to you. I'm saying if I didn't know anything about you except that you had written the comment in that screenshot, I would have assumed it did and not given it a second thought. I can almost guarantee that's what that mod did.

While that term is slowly but surely being reclaimed, and I'm glad that it is, at present, it still holds the status of "insult unless explicitly stated otherwise." Now that you've told me what you meant, I can see where you were coming from, but as that comment was written, "spread some weaponized autism" implies you're prepared to call anyone who disagrees with you a slur. Your comment seems to be saying "only an idiot autistic person would miss the sarcasm in this comment and bother to respond." It's not what you meant, but it's how I (and no doubt plenty of other people) probably read it.

Please learn to use qualifiers and/or tone indicators, for the sake of your own reputation. If you'd said "Can't wait for all my autistic friends to chime in with a seven paragraph sales pitch for their niche chat platform of choice" or even just replaced "weaponized autism" with "weaponized autism (affectionate)" and left the rest of the comment as is, I guarantee you'd have been fine.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I get that you're trying to use it in a positive way, but in my country that first word you used is a slur that has not even attempted to be reclaimed, so it instantly makes me start reading your comment with an ableist tone.

Now that I know you're trying to frame it in a positive way, I can force myself to read your comment in a positive tone. But it's difficult because the language chosen still makes me read it like you're annoyed that autistic people will miss the sarcasm and take it too seriously.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, I do, every time there's seventeen exceptions on a statement that used to be simple. 'This was their last album with this drummer, until he came back, except for this other time, before he left again.' Just rewrite the damn sentence.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Wikipedia is not a library neither is it a reliable source of accurate information.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's definitely not 100% foolproof to misinformation, but I've always found wikipedia to be reliable. Why do you feel it isnt?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wikipedia's reliability in it's own words - check out the holocaust misinformation from last year!

US congressional staff editing controversies as documented by and presented in wikipedia

A ten year long hoax running until two years ago

Wikipedia's own list of its controversies - pay special attention here to the 2023 exposure of an administrator pretending to be a spanish folk singer as a sockpuppet of another administrator who was banned in 2015 for making "promotional edits".

I want to be clear: i do not feel that wikipedia isn't reliable. I can clearly observe that wikipedia is unreliable.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Info on Wikipedia shouldn't be taken at face value, check the sources given! A lot of the examples you gave likely didn't have any citation. The blame for misinformation partly lies with the people accepting information with no sources given. Also, any example of known misinformation just means that it has been caught and corrected. Everyone should know wikipedia is not right 100% of the time but it is always getting better. There millions of articles and I don't think the examples you listed should lead anyone to believe it is overall unreliable. It is good however to not blindly put your trust in whatever you read from it, and if you do come across something that isn't correct, you have the opportunity to fix it.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

It's as accurate as any university textbook and way more accurate than any school textbook.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

And still, even with a do-over, somehow failed to call it "M'akshually". 🤷🏼‍♂️

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