my_hat_stinks

If the coins are 100% gold or copper then you're in one of two scenarios: the value of the coin is the scrap metal value, in which case swapping between gold and copper makes little difference; or, the mint buys your scrap gold and converts it in-house, pocketing the difference. A mint has no reason to convert your gold to significantly higher value coins for you, that only loses them their economic and political power in the form of currency control.

The only way it would work is if you specifically build a world where everyone else is incredibly stupid just to make yourself seem smart.

People are always praising that fanfic for some reason so I tried reading it a while back. If it's the one I'm thinking of then hard disagree, the protagonist is a self-insert Mary Sue clearly written by a kid who thinks they're the smartest person alive. One part that still sticks in my mind years later is their fundamental misunderstanding of how fiat currency works, it was some ridiculous get-rich-quick scheme like melting down wizard currency into pure gold to sell to non-wizard community then using that money to buy silver which they'd trade up to magic society gold coins. It was some years ago so I may be misremembering the details, but there should be a ton of issues that immediately jump out to you there.

I trudged through and got as far as the first meeting with Malfoy where the author realized they were being too friendly with each other, but since Malfoy is supposed to be a bad guy they decided he should randomly blurt out something about how he wants to rape some girl.

Maybe it's just because I don't have the context of other bad fanfics, but that's a solid 0/10 from me.

The question reads like an XY problem, they describe DB functions for data structures so unless there's some specific reason they can't use a DB that's the right answer. A "spreadsheet for data structures" describes a relational database.

But they need rectangular structure. How do they work on tree structures, like OP has asked?

Relationships. You don't dump all your data in a single table. Take for instance the following sample JSON:

  "users": [
    {
      "id": 1,
      "name": "Alice",
      "email": "alice@example.com",
      "favorites": {
        "games": [
          {
            "title": "The Witcher 3",
            "platforms": [
              {
                "name": "PC",
                "release_year": 2015,
                "rating": 9.8
              },
              {
                "name": "PS4",
                "release_year": 2015,
                "rating": 9.5
              }
            ],
            "genres": ["RPG", "Action"]
          },
          {
            "title": "Minecraft",
            "platforms": [
              {
                "name": "PC",
                "release_year": 2011,
                "rating": 9.2
              },
              {
                "name": "Xbox One",
                "release_year": 2014,
                "rating": 9.0
              }
            ],
            "genres": ["Sandbox", "Survival"]
          }
        ]
      }
    },
    {
      "id": 2,
      "name": "Bob",
      "email": "bob@example.com",
      "favorites": {
        "games": [
          {
            "title": "Fortnite",
            "platforms": [
              {
                "name": "PC",
                "release_year": 2017,
                "rating": 8.6
              },
              {
                "name": "PS5",
                "release_year": 2020,
                "rating": 8.5
              }
            ],
            "genres": ["Battle Royale", "Action"]
          },
          {
            "title": "Rocket League",
            "platforms": [
              {
                "name": "PC",
                "release_year": 2015,
                "rating": 8.8
              },
              {
                "name": "Switch",
                "release_year": 2017,
                "rating": 8.9
              }
            ],
            "genres": ["Sports", "Action"]
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  ]
}

You'd structure that in SQL tables something like this:

Usually no, unless I've left a reply disagreeing then someone else comes along and downvotes them, makes me look like an ass who downvotes anyone I disagree with. I also check my own comments to see if people agree with me but I'll keep the comment up either way, if I do change my mind I'd rather leave a new comment or add stuff in an edit.

It's not too difficult to bot votes on lemmy so they're even more pointless than they are on reddit.

A sect is a sub-group of people unified by beliefs or practice, a denomination is essentially just a large named sect. Christianity is not monolithic and organises into groups, it by definition has sects.

Even if you were right it's such a ridiculously pointless and pedantic argument, it does nothing to further the conversation. You're just trying to use cheap gotchas as a thought-terminating cliche. The only thing you've done is to force us to literally argue semantics, that is not a good look for you.

For completeness, here's a Christian source using the word sect to describe Christian groups, one of the top search engine hits when I searched.

Aphantasia is a spectrum, but even when you can visualise a full realistic scene it should be easy for most people to tell the difference between that and seeing something physically. When you can't tell the difference that's a hallucination.

It's only total aphantasia if you can't visualise an image in your mind at all. I believe then you'd get more a concept of an apple than an image or other depiction of an apple but that's only my understanding from hearing other people talking about it.

This specific case isn't really to do with the evolution of language, more just ineffective linguistic prescriptivism. Some guy 200 years ago decided they didn't like how "less" had been used for the past millennium so they made up a guideline for what the preferred (like what you just said) then people decided to treat that as an actual rule. Obviously it's still common to use "less" that way even after a couple of centuries of people trying to enforce that rule, it's a good demonstration of how prescriptivism is a waste of time.

Strangely enough, in my experience many prescriptivists who rely on etymological arguments are fine with language changing for this one rule. Makes me think they never really did care about historic usage of a word.

Alice: So, how do you identify?
Bob: Normal.

What's the odds Bob's a bigot? Someone asked how to describe their sexuality, "normal" is not a useful answer.

Fuck that, that's implying any other orientation is abnormal. People should have the right words to describe their sexuality.

Thanks for downvote, but your response is still somewhere between unhelpful and a dog whistle.

I disagree with that framing, someone not buying your shit is not the same as you losing money. Inkscape saved millions for graphic designers, which is very different. Adobe was not entitled to that money, you can't lose something that was never yours.

The British monarchy primarily "provides" money by owning land and other assets which would otherwise be government-owned. They also "earn" a shitload of money just for existing and still dump significant expenses onto taxpayers.