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Can we settle this: how many holes does a straw have?
  • I see a lot of folks referencing topology, but clearly topology is not a particularly good go-to for how to talk about holes.

    • From a topological perspective, a hole in the ground isn't a hole... But you can still fall into it.

    • From a topological perspective, a hole in your logic isn't a hole -- but you can still have one.

    Clearly we're talking linguistically, not topologically.

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    Can we settle this: how many holes does a straw have?
  • I'm seeing a lot of this kind of taxonomical argument relying on material being removed, but it's not convincing. A taxonomical argument that relies on commonly accepted definitions, but does not include commonly accepted examples, is logically flawed.

    It's normal, accepted usage to describe your anus and so forth as holes, despite no material having been removed.

    Similarly, it's normal to describe Cheerios as having holes in the middle, or bagels as having holes in the middle, or a pool noodle as having a hole through it, or any number of similar things that are formed without any material being removed. It extends to the metaphysical, in fact; one can have a hole in their logic, for instance, without the implications that their logic must once have contained this item, until it was somehow removed.

    A hole is an entirely contained negative space; I don't think it requires anything to have been removed.

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    Can we settle this: how many holes does a straw have?
  • A hollow cylinder has a single hole, with two openings. A hole can be open on one end only (e.g., a well is a hole in the ground), or it can have multiple openings (e.g., a straw has a hole with two openings).

    If one cannot immediately tell whether two openings are connected to one another, then one assumes they are not; e.g., if you see a well in Florida you don't assume it is the opening of a hole that extends to connect to another opening in Australia.

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    Lemmy rn
  • Yeah Jerboa is more or less useable, but I've switched to a different instance for now so I can use connect

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    How many lemmy instances have you signed up for?
  • Two! One on Lemmy.world a day or two after it was started ... that one is now painfully too slow, and a second that was originally going to be just for porn but now is my main, at least till world is sorted out

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    Lemmy resembles the old reddit experience so well that they even emulate the old reddit server performance
  • Or even simpler, a feature that lets you aggregate history, posts, comments and subscriptions from multiple instances in a transparent way.

    Sort of a meta-account / fedacount that tells all Lemmy instances that accounts a, b, c, and d are all the same user.

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