That's only true in an academic sense. When a layman uses the term "political", they refer to discussion pertaining to things like how a formal government is run, comparisons between types of governance, government policy, etc.
While deciding what cookie to eat or what color your cat's litterbox is might technically be political in an academic sense, you're just going to annoy people if you try to tell them that those are political decisions. I have found that trying to force academic definitions into common use is confusing at best, annoying on average, and infuriating at worst.
An example of where a word's academic definition has no place in common speech can be found in "information". The informal definition of "information" typically is seen as referring to knowledge and the transfer of said knowledge. This definition allows you to gain information from a lack of something.
However, it is my understanding that the scientific definition of "information" does not allow for the aforementioned action, as "information" refers to the properties of physical matter. The result is that you cannot gain "information" from a lack of something. You might be able to come to conclusions based on a lack of "information", but you cannot actually gain "information" from a lack of something because "information" is inherently linked to matter.
Now. All of that said, this meme is related to something said at an engineering school, so on the one hand, it isn't entirely out-of-place to expect the academic definition to be used because it is an academic setting. Yet, on the other hand, it is an engineering school, not a political science school. As such, while OP should be aware that the academic definition of "politics" may come into play, it's also reasonable to expect that their professors and peers would mainly be using the common definition of the term.
However again, in my experience, trying to force academic definitions into casual discussion is confusing at best, annoying on average, and infuriating at worst. Please stop trying to do it. Thanks.
(Also, imo, genocide is like Schrodinger's Cat; it is both political and not political at the same time. Personally, I think it mainly depends on the depth of the discussion; but its "political" nature varies from person-to-person. Imo, saying that genocide is happening shouldn't be considered "political", but talking about why it is occuring is political.)
Edit: whoops, somehow my comment doubled, within the comment. The fuck happened there?
Edit 2: I swear I need to find a new phone keyboard, and I need to read over my comments before submitting. I'm finding a lot of stupid auto-correct errors, and it seems like they're becoming more common.
Edit 3: the reason I got hung-up on it, and I should have mentioned this, is because I often see "everything is political" used to justify bringing heavier topics into places where it's inappropriate (like chatrooms where people are trying to just hang out and have light hearted discussions).
A Belgian broadcaster interrupted its coverage of the Eurovision Song Contest semi-final on Thursday night to display a protest message condemning Israel's war on Gaza. In an act organised by a trade union, the screen briefly went black ahead of the semi-final coverage on VRT, Belgium's public-service broadcaster in Flemish....
When it comes to extant tribes, many of them have web pages with info about them. The depth of information varies from tribe to tribe, I think typically encapsulating whatever the tribe feels comfortable sharing publicly. However when it comes to extinct tribes, much of what you'll find will probably be spotty and questionable, as what is known is likely the result of archeology and accounts from nearby tribes.
It's really frustrating how difficult it is to learn about the native cultures as someone on the outside. It gets glossed over in school and what you hear in pop culture is often heavily skewed or butchered to put on a good show for the audience. Then, because of how much of it gets butchered, chopped and screwed, the people who actually know the real stories become understandably protective and reluctant to share them. It'd be nice if there was a central, wikipedia-like site run by the tribes where you could learn about their stories and traditions.
sigh I posted this elsewhere in the thread, but it sounds like you might need to hear this too:
We would have had [the storage of nuclear waste] solved a long time ago if it weren't for a few factors.
The first is that a significant amount of radioactive waste is short-term. Like, literally inert after a couple years. The reason for that is because the vast majority of radioactive waste isn't actually inherently radioactive. Most of it has become radioactive as a result of coming into extended contact with highly radioactive sources. However my understanding is that despite being short-lived, you must dispose of it the same way you'd dispose of nuclear fuel rods. This is an issue that could be resolved by separating the short-lived stuff from the fuel rods and returning the short-lived stuff to a landfill once radioactivity drops to background radiation levels.
Factor 2: paranoia. We had a potential permanent waste site in the middle of nowhere, in an extremely geologically stable area in the US that has virtually no chance of flooding, however people thought that radioactive waste buried beneath a literal mountain would somehow still poison them. So Yucca Mountain was never fully completed. Afaik it's technically still on the table but it's been completely defunded thanks to NIMBYs, so instead nuclear waste is being stored across the US at various nuclear plants which are less geologically stable, have a higher chance for flooding, etc. This also hampers state and national efforts to clean up decommissioned plants and nuclear accidents. The waste has to go somewhere; if you have no where to safely store it, you can't clean it up.
Factor 3: if I understand correctly, we could hypothetically design nuclear plants with reactor chains that produce dead fuel rods (fuel rods that are completely spent). However, a lot of weapons-grade material would be produced during the intermediate stages. For sooome reason everyone freaks out when they hear you're making weapons-grade radioactive material, even if you promise you're just using it to generate power. I can't imagine why /s
The problems with nuclear storage are actually pretty easily solved, it's just that no one wants to because they'd rather pretend nuclear doesn't exist to begin with. I swear, we could have a one-time pill that makes you fully immune to every radiation-induced disease and people would still freak out about nuclear. Hell, there was an article I saw a month or two about how a bunch of researches discovered that turning used graphite control rods into diamonds resulted in low-power batteries that could be used for things that require a small amount of power over long durations (like SSDs or RAM). Iirc something about the diamond's structure meant it contained its own radiation as well, meaning it didn't need any radiation shielding either despite generating energy via radioactivity.
Also,
the waste management is done by the state
Maybe in Germany, but afaik in the US it's done by the company until it's time to move it to a permanent storage facility. Because permanent storage facilities don't exist in the US, that means the company has to take care of it indefinitely. I don't know about you, but I'd much rather have it in the indefinite care of the US government than in the indefinite care of a company.
Decentralized, local networks of Solar Power are the future.
You're partially right imo. Those would be great, but you're offloading cost on the individual, who are already being squeezed by capitalism. Additionally, iirc centralized wind and solar can cause a significant disruption to the local ecosystems. Are they preferable to coal and gas? Hell yeah! But you cannot convince me that miles of turbines and solar panels are less disruptive than a properly maintained nuclear plant.
Ideally we'd be building fusion plants at this point, but I feel like I haven't heard any major fusion-related news lately which makes me worried that funding might be falling off.
Respectfully mention that it's kinda insensitive, kinda like, "hey man, don't you think that's kinda insensitive?" and you'll probably figure out fairly quickly which one is the answer. Additionally, if they legit don't know why it's insensitive, then you can educate them!
Just remember that tone can be difficult to convey on the internet, and sometimes you have to exaggerate the intended tone for it to be understood. Additionally, in my experience, asking the question from the other person's perspective ("don't you think that's kinda insensitive" vs "I think that's kinda insensitive") seems to help a lot.
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Belgium broadcaster interrupts Eurovision semi final to condemn Israel's war on Gaza ( www.middleeasteye.net ) Englisch
A Belgian broadcaster interrupted its coverage of the Eurovision Song Contest semi-final on Thursday night to display a protest message condemning Israel's war on Gaza. In an act organised by a trade union, the screen briefly went black ahead of the semi-final coverage on VRT, Belgium's public-service broadcaster in Flemish....
Pov: You criticized the first Crusade ( lemmy.ml )
History ( lemmy.ml )
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When someone makes a crude joke on the internet ( lemmy.world )