Gene5ive

I've always hated trucks for all of these reasons. Thanks for doing the science to help me explain why, NYT.

Up Next: A McSweeney's article where McSweeney's takes the debates about it on Hacker News as seriously as Hacker News takes McSweeney's: way too much

I agree that that behavior is not acceptable. We wrestle between moral drift and frozen tyrant as an expression of the Value Alignment Problem. We do not currently know the answer to this problem, but I trust the scientific nature of change more than human druthers. Foundational pluralism might offer a path. A good example of a drift we seldom consider is that 200 years ago, surgery without anesthesia wasn't "cruel"—it was a miracle. Today, it’s a crime. The value (reduce pain) stayed absolute, but the application (medical standards) evolved. We must be philosophically rigorous at least as much as we are moved by pathos.

I would be far more terrified of an absolutist AI then a relativist one. Change is the only constant, even if glacial.

Nope, also humans.

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/explainer/2023...

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/resources/human-righ...

https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/16/6074

https://apnews.com/article/climate-science-europe-united-nat...

Ice caps? Try human beings.

Increased Mortality: Projections indicate an additional 14.5 million deaths by 2050 due to climate-related impacts like floods, droughts, heatwaves, and climate-sensitive diseases (e.g., malaria and dengue).

Economic Losses: Global economic losses are predicted to reach $12.5 trillion by 2050, with an additional $1.1 trillion burden on healthcare systems due to climate-induced impacts. One study estimates that climate change will cost the global economy $38 trillion a year within the next 25 years.

Displacement and Migration: Over 200 million people may be displaced by climate change by 2050, with an estimated 21.5 million displaced annually since 2008 by weather-related events. In a worst-case scenario, the World Bank suggests this figure could reach 216 million people moving internally due to water scarcity and threats to agricultural livelihoods. Some researchers predict that 1.2 billion people could be displaced by 2050 in the worst-case scenario due to natural disasters and other ecological threats.

Food and Water Insecurity: Climate change exacerbates food and water insecurity, leading to malnutrition and increased disease burden, especially in vulnerable populations. For example, a significant increase in drought in certain regions could cause 3.2 million deaths from malnutrition by 2050. An estimated 183 million additional people could go hungry by 2050, even if warming is held below 1.6°C.

Mental Health Impacts: Climate change contributes to mental health issues like anxiety, depression, and PTSD, particularly in vulnerable populations and those experiencing climate disasters or chronic changes like drought. Extreme heat has been linked to increased aggression and suicide risk. Studies also indicate that children born today will experience a significantly higher number of climate extremes than previous generations, potentially impacting their mental well-being and sense of future security.

Inequality and Vulnerability: Climate change disproportionately affects vulnerable populations, including low-income individuals, people of color, outdoor workers, and those with existing health conditions, worsening existing health inequities and hindering poverty reduction efforts.

One of my favorite short stories

I don't know but In Portland there's a ton of them, the venues are great, and in the summer we go do it in the forest. And now that the RA app has it's shit together, I no longer have to get on Instagram to find out about stuff.

Great book. Great game. I treasured the time I spent reading it and playing it. Head's up: the game does not follow the same characters as the book. It's sort of a different story that's taking place at the same time and very nearby.

They don't work, and it's a poverty of the imagination to have no clue of or understand the value of supportive, preventative, or rehabilitative policies.

No, it's real. It's commenting on the article by John, on old coworker of mine. I applied for Ignite but was not accepted and ended up getting into SE a different way. Anyway, I recommend reading the post by John and then reading this for the additional commentary.

https://djspinmonkey.github.io/2023/07/10/ignite-hiring/

So much this. I've noticed it and talked about it for years. Glad someone wrote about it. I definitely think the "dress and act your age" thing was a big factor and I'm so glad that went out the window. Not so that people will get to be immature (that was already there, just buried), but so that people finally get to really define themselves and how they will age gracefully.

I don't know why this was hidden. I find it interesting.

I wouldn't trust a CATO study.

First woman killed by dog falling on her. Second woman killed by bus while gawking at first death with gathered crowd. Third man dies of a heart attack after witnessing both events.

How do people live with themselves charging 20 times the production cost of an essential medicine?

Finally

There is an underrated approach to solving problems - assume at the outset that the solution is simple and obvious. If it is, you've just saved massive amounts of time and effort. If it isn't, then at least the rest of your deduction process is calibrated.

Isn't that just called a depression? Do words mean anything anymore? "The worst thing ever" pops up in headlines all the time and the world still chugs right along. Maybe I'm desensitized.

The amount of time it would take to edit these to remove the subtle AI nonsense/artifacts/dysmorphia is a fraction of that time it would take to make the images from scratch. There will still be art departments but they will be 10x smaller.

Yeah, I've heard about a classist element in Europe that might make the path I took unlikely. I dropped out of college, toiled in the service industry for 10 years, got sick of it, went to code school, got a tech job and 6 years later earn $130k. Still no degree. Is it true you can't do that there or is that just a stereotype?

I find this perspective interesting. I'm 36, have no kids, don't go to church, don't live anywhere near where I grew up or my biological family, and haven't been in school for a very long time but have no shortage of friends or even deep friendships. I think culture is a huge reason. I live in close-in Portland, Oregon and I think the main thing we all have in common is that we all enjoy going to see live music and DJs together. Urban living and music can have a huge ability to replace everything on that list. In fact, my partner and I will be throwing a vaccinated-only music festival this summer and we have about 100 people invited, the vast majority personal friends and only a handful have kids. However, I think working in tech helps. Most of my old friends who never made the jump from the service industry into tech by going to code school or something like that had to move away because the city got too expensive. In short, music + tech + urban makes finding and keeping friends easy, at least in Portland.

It's reasonable to expect 17 million relatively well off people to make some concessions when hundreds of millions of others have asked them to through the diplomacy of their elected officials.

They should do it because elected officials will sign it into law. It will be signed into law because people asked for it. People asked for it because they benefit from it. People benefit from it because they need stuff the government pays for.

There is no reason to sympathize with governments that depend on clever paperwork for their nation's success because that is not a tangible good. There is every reason to sympathize with governments that are trying to raise money to invest in their citizens because that is a tangible good.

Eliminating tax havens is no more objectionable than closing an account with a bank that has lost your trust. The bank will adapt and learn as it always does.

I decided to read the comments on the linked article and got depressed. It's a similar feeling to what Ethan Hawke portrayed in First Reformed. Caring about nature is a lonely and foreboding state of being.

This has some interesting ideas but is too opinionated. I usually finish a book before starting a new one and usually only read one at a time. There are exceptions but none of it speaks to how much I love reading.

Shoulda done this on January 10th, 2013

Everything about banking is devoid of aesthetic. Banks don't care how things look. My nearest BoA has fake plants and dinged-up furniture. This is the kind of culture that would put up with horrendously bad UI/UX until it bit them in the ass and then they would probably just fix the problem with lawyers instead of finding or demanding a better software. Design matters.

Now let's talk about Flexcube. Oh, it's an Oracle app! Guess who else is rich, has no interest in aesthetics, and loves lawyers. I'm seeing a pattern here. Design. Matters.

They were about to. I'm pretty sure they were using the drone to get ahead of that problem. Seems like it happened to fast.

Get your key knowledge holders to dedicate 20 percent of their time to documenting what they know. However, most of them are so used to knowing stuff that they aren't sure where to start or what the need is, specifically. Therefore, make them take requests from people who want to know what they know. Then what you end up with is really knowledgeable people spending 20 percent of their time asking everyone around them what they can document and documenting it. Check in every now and then and ask to see what they've come up with.

"The Apollo Program cost roughly $25.4 billion, unadjusted.

That makes the total Apollo Program cost $163 billion inflation adjusted to 2008. That's our total cost to go to the moon. Consider, however, that this was for a project spanning from 1959 to beyond 1970 with six successful missions."

This is not going to happen again unless China decides they want to get there first but, hey, it never hurts to hope.