Another post from betting market company Polymarket read: “BREAKING: Zohran Mamdani to require all New York elementary school students to learn Arabic numerals.” The post has almost 14 million views.

  • mlg@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    People making jokes about dihydrogen monoxide, and imma be honest, I feel like it should have been the gold standard internet stupidity filter that disqualifies your credentials in any form of discussion because of the insane amount of people that fell for it back when the internet was still new.

    If you couldn’t handle H2O, you can’t be trusted to use the internet seriously lol.

    • NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml
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      9 hours ago

      I had a high school teacher my freshman year play the “dihydrogen monoxide” joke on our class. this was before i had any chemistry knowledge so i sadly fell for it. -It was still funny.

    • greedytacothief@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      14 minutes ago

      So, what were you reading in the sixth grade? My memory isn’t that good, but I think I was past reading Captain underpants, maybe I was up to reading Percy Jackson (sorry got a bad case of CRS). I definitely gave Harry Potter a pass through, didn’t like the main character.

      Anyway, I feel like in 6th grade I was good at reading the text of a book, but not much beyond that. Symbols, themes, subtext — those are hard for a 6th grader.

    • NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml
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      9 hours ago

      That wasn’t a study AFAIK it was the official report from the U.S. Department Of Education. -The department run by the spouse of a professional wrestling magnate.

    • Infinite@lemmy.zip
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      13 hours ago

      Naw, my 6th grade was on the ground floor and so is my house. I read at the same level.

  • BigBenis@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    Next he’ll be forcing us all to drink dihydrogen monoxide, a chemical that’s known to be fatal to humans under certain conditions!

      • Burninator05@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        Dont forget it is a key component in both hydrochloric acid and making nuclear power plants operate.

      • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        I’m sorry but as a technicality none of the power used in a steam engine is derived from the dihydrogen monoxide. The chemical compound is used as a medium to turn thermal energy into kinetic energy. The thermal energy, likewise, is usually obtained from another source such as chemical, nuclear, or photovoltaic.

        • potoooooooo ☑️@lemmy.world
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          10 hours ago

          Good luck running your steam engine without it!

          Also:

          tidal

          Pretty sure there aren’t moon-powered trains, bro, but nice try.

          • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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            9 hours ago

            A steam engine can also be used to generate power, as a stationary device, but in hindsight the tidal power probably never gets that hot. The engine for moving trains could also be powered by electricity from wind or tidal, though I don’t think there are any practical examples.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    In Germany, we have a right-wing party en par with the US Republicans: The AfD. Just as Nazi, just as nuts.

    Some time ago, someone riled them up with the “Did you know they teach Arabic numerals in school now?”, and quite a few of them blew a lid…

    • petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      8 hours ago

      You know what’s funny, the dihydrogen-monoxide bit works in part because when you tell someone “ha ha, you’re anti water” they should get embarrassed. Like, it’s impossible for them to continue arguing, you know?

      But if anyone is going to take hidden-agenda numerals at face value and still insist that we use a new, much stupider number system to get away from centuries of Arabic influence, it would definitely be nazis, lol.

      • greedytacothief@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        9 minutes ago

        Hear me out, maybe base 10 isn’t the best counting system. Base 6 or 12 could be pretty nice. Not worth Nazis being in charge, but could be a nice change of pace.

    • Adulated_Aspersion@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      Well, the dihydrogen monoxide that is in your Zuchini is literally an industrial solvent!

      Have you seen what dihydrogen monoxide does to pure, strong iron?!? It corrodes iron unbelievably fast! And people just…consume it in most of their “healthy” foods!

      Wake up, sheeple! Stop drinking dihydrogen monoxide!

      ~/s - this message brought to you by Brawndo, the thirst mutilator~

      • zergtoshi@lemmy.world
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        18 hours ago

        FWIW this is by far less dangerous and aggressive than oxygen, which caused the first global mass extinction when it started to amass in earth’s atmosphere (and plays a major role in the corrosion of iron you mentioned).
        And yet people tell you to breathe in and out…

      • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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        18 hours ago

        My son just told me there is a complete wiki about DHMO. Something I’ll investigate later…

      • Aganim@lemmy.world
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        19 hours ago

        And stop plants from drinking it too!

        Brawndo’s got what plants crave. It’s got electrolytes.

    • quick_snail@feddit.nl
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      23 hours ago

      I dont understand this. When I was in Palestine, they definitely used different numerals.

      Like, I guess they invented base 10? Or math? But the characters they use for numbers are absolutely different

      • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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        20 hours ago

        Basically, what we call “Arabic Numerals”, including the number 0, have their origin in India. Europe got them from Arabic scholars, and therefore called them “Arabic”.

        The main factor is the decimal system of writing and having the concept of a zero in contrast to the odd, additive and subtractive writing of the Roman numerals, which didn’t even know a 0, and made multiplication a pain and division nearly impossible.

        What glyph is actually used for a one, be it a 1 or a ١, is absolutely secondary.

        • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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          15 hours ago

          I want to correct something. They knew what nothing meant. They just didn’t conceptualize the absence of things as a number. And honestly, it’s a bit weird, but it is useful. You can’t have 0 apples, but the concept is useful for math.

          • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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            4 hours ago

            Of course they knew what nothing meant. They even had a word for it: nullum. Sounds familiar, somehow. But the key is to apply this to math, and having an actual symbol for it.

            • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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              5 hours ago

              Arguably, sure. The way they’d understand it is you don’t have apples though, not that you have zero. With our understanding, it makes some sense, but I’d say even today that’s odd to say. It isn’t wrong, but it is strange to say you posses everything in the universe (and anything else too), just in quantities of zero. It makes more sense to say you don’t possess them.

              • sem@piefed.blahaj.zone
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                2 hours ago

                It definitely makes sense in the same way that the famous experiment on abstract thought makes sense. Iirc, The experimenter a hundred years ago or more asked various people in different parts of Germany questions like, if a bird flies 20 miles an hour, about how long would it take to fly from Berlin to Frankfurt, and most people just couldn’t entertain the question and would say that makes no sense a bird would never fly between those places.

                It’s only with our education system today that more people could entertain the question, how long a bird would take to fly from Frankfurt to Berlin, even if no real bird would ever do it, or not bat an eye at possessing everything in the universe in quantities of zero.

      • neclimdul@lemmy.world
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        22 hours ago

        I think your confusion is the other side of what the article was discussing.

        The problem is, there have been a lot of number systems in the past. The one we currently use is based on the Arabic system. In common usage you would simply call them numbers. But in a technical sense, to distinguish from other numbering systems past and present, they’re also called Arabic Numerals because that’s their origin.

        Clearly this ignores the fact Arabic is still around and using real Arabic numbers and that is both confusing and maybe problematic. But I think the technical reason it sticks around is to acknowledge their source and have a more specific term when there is a need

        • SlurpingPus@lemmy.world
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          20 hours ago

          called Arabic Numerals because that’s their origin

          While the origin of Arabic numerals is actually Indian.

        • quick_snail@feddit.nl
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          20 hours ago

          Arabic Numerals is ambiguous. We don’t use eastern Arabic numerals in our schools.

        • quick_snail@feddit.nl
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          22 hours ago

          Ok, well, this article is trying to call people dumb for not understanding a concept that is incredibly confusing to everyone

          • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
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            19 hours ago

            They’re not calling people dumb for not knowing, they’re calling them dumb for not investigating. If you hear a wild claim, you should investigate. This shouldn’t still work because most of us here know it’s been a running joke for at least 20 years in the US with continuous anti-Muslim and anti-middle-easter/Arabic sentiment and bills post 9/11.

            It shouldn’t be incredibly confusing, either. It’s fine to not automatically know that Amerocan/English refers to “western Arabic numerals” as simply “Arabic numerals” in shorthand. I didn’t. That’s why I briefly researched it when you said you had a different set of numerals in a region. Since I don’t know exactly what to look for to validate my own searches, I genuinely asked you if what you learned matched what was in the Wikipedia page. I have no direct experience.

            People use shorthand all the time. It makes things confusing. I didn’t know a “convection oven” was actually a “forced convection oven” until this year. In my head, it wasn’t something I ever questioned because all my ovens have had the primary heater at the bottom, meaning convection would carry hot air upwards. Turns out, FCOs have a fan at the top to force better circulation. Surprise, this revolution of air fryers? They’re just countertop [forced] convection ovens. Similarly, I have a gripe with people customizing cars with “coilovers”. The majority of cars already have coil[spring]-over-[shock]s, but what they mean is “adjustable coilovers”. It’s a carryover from when cars did NOT have the various coilover designs as standard. Shocks outside coil springs, leaf springs, torsion springs, etc.

          • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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            21 hours ago

            incredibly confusing to everyone

            Is it? I think your confusion may come from living or studying abroad, which is understandable. But only the ignorant ones who passed school while asleep on this side of the world would be confused. Everyone is told that these are Arabic numerals as opposed to Roman numerals very early on.

  • Aelis@lemmy.ml
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    21 hours ago

    No, ain’t no way, how can this be NOT the onion ?! Come on ! 😂

      • otp@sh.itjust.works
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        17 hours ago

        They were angry before this and they’ll have been angry if this was never mentioned.

        For those willing to learn, there’s an opportunity for a teachable moment

    • Bjarne@feddit.org
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      1 day ago

      I love that too, but I feel like we have to make them smart and not angry :(

  • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
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    1 day ago

    So, there WAS an onion (or similar) article stating exactly this like the day after he won. So it looks like some of these idiots just ate the onion

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      Whole thing is just media hyping up an obvious prank so that the stupidest people start freaking the fuck out, which gets more media attention, which makes us click on links way out here in backwater Lemmy.

      This is the uroboros of media that has wrecked our whole society, where all of our impressions about just about anything are being dictated by the smallest, most ridiculous outlier reactions. Remember the kitty litter boxes in schools?

      This is what launched flat-eartherism and trumpism and the whole massive “incel movement” that has become a tidal-wave of depressing idiocy, which get more attention for being so disgusting and stupid, which makes people on the other extreme end of the bell-curve over-react, which gets more attention, which leaves normal, passive readers thinking this is how people are really interacting and treating each other, which leads to them also taking up radical or stupid ideas about the world.

      It’s not that The Onion can’t compete with reality, its that The Onion can’t compete the vast media empire built on deliberately turning every possible unusual reaction or hot take from random nobodies into headline news. Before panic was monetized, most outlets ignored pranks.

    • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      An easy way to sort out the idiots who probably did not learn Arabic numerals in school, and therefor are so useless they can only be employd as MAGA heads…

  • notabot@piefed.social
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    1 day ago

    I just checked with my local school, and they’re not just making them learn these arabic numbers, they’re forcing them to learn AL GEBRA!!! Sounds like foreign nonsense to me, so I’m starting a petition to have the head fired, and possibly flogged.

    You should check with your local schools too. Keep this policically correct woke DEI rubbish away from our kids!