• Thorry84@feddit.nl
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    2 years ago

    While the general message of this meme is true, almost none if the internet actually goes through satellites. There are huge cables all around the world connecting the whole thing. And while launching rockets and deploying satellites is really cool, I think ocean crossing cables are impressive all on their own. Image a cable not only long and strong enough to cross an ocean, but also resting on the ocean floor, exposed to the environment and expected to work for decades. And to think the first of these cables was deployed back in 1858.

    • Emi621@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 years ago

      It does, having all the humanity knowledge in your pocket is amazing and you can learn a lot which people do use to learn and get smarter. Sadly not everyone uses it that way and some just refuse to learn but that’s just loud minority (I hope).

      • NegativeLookBehind@kbin.social
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        2 years ago

        I would argue that it’s contributed to the collective stupidity of humanity on a global scale. It’s had a lot of positive impacts as well, of course. I guess the negative ones just seem more palpable.

        • LinkOpensChest.wav@lemmy.one
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          2 years ago

          Has it, though? I grew up in the 80s, and I feel like I simply didn’t have a clue how ignorant people were or what batshit things people believed behind closed doors. Even when people disclosed to me their inner narrative, I feel like I just assumed they were joking or using extreme hyperbole.

          The internet has made me realize … they weren’t joking. At all. They really believe that shit.

          • averagedrunk@lemmy.ml
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            2 years ago

            I’m approximately your age. I assumed the same thing. Hell, I thought crazy conspiracy theories were just people pretending “What if…” together.

            In my younger days I would have been on a lot of bandwagons just to joke about the people who “didn’t get the joke”. It turns out I was the one that didn’t get it.

      • SnuggleSnail@ani.social
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        2 years ago

        I would look at it from a different angle. Before the internet you had to have a lot of knowledge in different areas to be able to sound and behave smart, and also to make good choices.

        Now you have knowledge readily available everywhere and there is much less incentive to learn things you don’t currently need, just to have it available in case you talk to someone about this topic.

        This has become even more evident with AI, where you don’t have to skim through a lot of context to find your information, you just ask what you need and it is presented the way you need it right away.

  • Storm@lemm.ee
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    2 years ago

    I honestly don’t understand how people can think the Earth is flat in 2023. You can see it for yourself. Go to the coast of a sufficiently large body of water, and try holding a ruler up to the horizon.

    • gandalf_der_12te@feddit.de
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      2 years ago

      I think at this point, it’s more a lifestyle and less a theoretical argument.

      Yes, a flat earth doesn’t stand up against science. But also, for most people it doesn’t make a difference in their day-to-day life. So they have little to no incentive to ever tackle that notion.

    • Evilsmiley@sh.itjust.works
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      2 years ago

      I’ve seen them say that things fall “because of density”.

      Like we fall down because we are heavier than air.

      Like they think they’ve avoided the problem but they haven’t.

    • r00ty@kbin.life
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      2 years ago

      Wake up sheeple! Gravity is an obvious lie from the NWO illuminati lizard people! We’re actually all implanted with small steel sheets in our feet at birth, and everything on the planet has a small amount of iron filings in too. The flat disc we live on is completely magnetic. That’s how we don’t fall off.

      I thought everyone knew this!

    • DarkenLM@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      If the disk had the thickness of Earth’s diameter and through some black magic fuckery made it so that only the mass directly below you affected the force of gravity on you, then yes.

      It’s probably easier to make an FTL engine than to make any sense of flat earth theories.

      • LostXOR@kbin.social
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        2 years ago

        There’s probably some distribution of mass that would result in uniform gravity across the whole disk. I’m guessing there would need to be more mass near the edge to counteract the diagonal pull of the mass near the center on the area near the edge.

        • DarkenLM@kbin.social
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          2 years ago

          The problem is that in a flat plane with any amount of thickness, there will be always more mass diagonally than vertically, and it would still require a curve to evenly distribute the mass. I am by no means an expert on the matter, but from what I can recall, the only geometrical shape that allows for it is either a sphere or some complex hyperbolic curve, which is still not a plane.