SilverElfin

I guess if you start an absurdly high number that makes no sense, then somehow group think only brings it down a bit and it’s still better than aiming for “true” valuation?

Given how many reports there are about sloppiness in Anthropic’s products, I would find it very hard to trust them with student data.

Why wouldn’t this apply to every animal then? Shouldn’t the courts order all the cow farms in Argentina to shut down?

You wrote all that to make a nearly worthless semantic argument about how an act of invasion, genocide, and theocratic authoritarianism is different from what you’re calling colonialism? Okay.

Indians and Hindus were obviously subordinated under Islamic rulers who arrived from elsewhere. A simple five second search would show you they imposed different taxes if you were not a Muslim. What are you even arguing about here?

Yes prosperous. Minus the brutal and barbaric genocide, oppressions, etc. Obviously such colonialism destroys culture and wealth even if a few powerful outsiders extract wealth for themselves. You’re whitewashing Islamic colonialism for some weird reason.

Probably not one thing but the sequence of Islamic colonialism, followed by European colonialism, followed the splitting of India, the introduction of consumerist lifestyles (plastic crap), globalism, etc.

I imagine any society where the existing stable system is violently destroyed will have issues with people not having their original culture and way of life, but also they probably had to just survive, and didn’t have time for environmental concerns.

Yep. A lot of snark and shallow dismissals. And no acknowledgment of the fact that even if DOGE was unsuccessful, that doesn’t mean the government is efficient or without fraud. There probably still is a lot, and DOGE didn’t receive the support and cooperation it needed either.

Wrong. Cars are high utility and should remain on roads. They increase quality of life by giving you a fast way to get to exactly where you want on your own schedule. And designing for cars IS designing for people, obviously. Who do you think is inside cars?

They aren’t dangerous. Road fatalities are still very low per mile driven and are falling over time. Cars are getting safer all the time with their sensors and intelligent features like automatic braking. The war on cars is an irrational safetyism campaign driven by selfish bicyclists more than anyone else. And the goal vision zero proposes makes no sense because it doesn’t account for the benefit of cars.

I’ve done that and those areas change over time. A town becomes more like a small city. A small city becomes more dense. Etc. Then all the urbanists move the goal posts and ask why you didn’t live somewhere else.

Do you have kids? I feel like apartment living as a family is worse than a spacious single family home and yard and all that. I suspect that preference holds true for most people.

One way is to stop the war on cars. I see many cities basically making driving purposely bad. Super low speed limits, speed bumps, unnecessary bike lanes, poorly timed traffic lights, no right turn on red, etc. It’s all the typical pro bike anti car stuff but it hurts traffic. They never measure travel times in a transparent way as they make these destructive changes.

Apple colluding on no poaching agreements was far worse and more damaging. So I don’t feel bad for them.

Anything controversial will have this issue. But COVID, BLM, and things relating to the current administration often have those biases. To see how rules get weaponized, see the talk pages. You find that a lot of reasonable editors are basically blocked using one technicality or the other, and it is used to keep balanced views out of Wikipedia. The rules sound benign until you see how they favor one side.

Low earning degrees aren’t economically valuable to society. Why aren’t they cancelled outright? What makes them different from learning something on your own for fun?

I wish they would also do something about state-level bans. It’s ridiculous that people can be banned from buying a gas range for cooking or from using a wood based heating system or whatever else. But that’s where things are going in some places.

Yep, this has long been an issue. Wikipedia articles on even slightly political topics are very one-sided. The rules that govern Wikipedia reinforce a certain set of views, and those who hold power in that community also share certain sets of views. Larry Sanger has talked about this trend for many years, but I am not sure there’s a way to stop the increasing bias in Wikipedia. The activists running it have too much time.

Given all the bad press around things like the millennium tower, I think once you have an issue like this, the building is done. No one will want to live there. And given structural problems with load bearing beams, I would expect the building has to be demolished. But maybe they can demolish it top down partially and rebuild up from the compromised area if the city and engineers deem that safe.

Most of the time you’re giving that info to stripe or Shopify. But also credit cards are protected - you can dispute charges - so it’s not a huge risk IMO

Terrible, and this will one day bite conservatives as well.

Laws are laws, and they still exist. Being anti social means acting in ways that affect others in society negatively. That’s what setting off fireworks late at night is. Yes, they need to follow OUR rules because we live in a society. And they should share my priorities. If they were doing things that ONLY affect them, that’s different. But we’re talking about waking everyone else up. Spare me your virtue signaling.

There have also been incidents of people being hit by those bullets. It’s just so reckless and dangerous for people to do that. But there’s always someone doing it …

My city did not have these issues. Population changes and cultural changes have brought in a large enough number of anti social people that then make things bad for everyone else. It’s not about being in a city, but the fact that a small number of selfish people think they have a right to disrupt everyone else.

In a lot of states, Indian reservations can also sell them. And they’re basically completely unregulated. It’s illegal to bring them or set them off into other towns but people do it. Hundreds of people. And tens of thousands have to be repeatedly woken up because of their selfishness.

I see way too many trashy people setting off commercial grade illegal fireworks in the middle of crowded cities and neighborhoods. It is incredibly disruptive and damaging. Vets are traumatized. Dogs are traumatized. And sleep deprived parents have to repeatedly put babies back to sleep. It is insane that police do not enforce laws against these criminals.

I’ve also noticed fertility is high among certain immigrant demographic groups. Near me, it’s refugee groups (asylum applicants) where families very typically have 4 or more kids. In a couple decades I can see the demographics being very different in America, but especially Europe. It’ll probably look more brown, more Islamic relative to today.

What’s interesting to me is that these groups are very effective at making use of programs we have to help families and subsidize costs. But I feel like Americans generally are less aware of these programs or decide they can’t afford children without considering this help.

Why not emphasize the issue of civil rights and make it disqualifying as a single issue for any politician? At least online it feels like people care about chat control a lot but when it comes to voting, the type of dystopian control EU bureaucrats are building isn’t in anyone’s mind. So politicians can get away with supporting those policies since there isn’t a consequence for them.

Seattle Times is left leaning. Just because your pet measure of transit was opposed doesn’t make it otherwise. Calling it conservative is simply unmoored from reality. It’s also a display of what Seattle politics are like and why it has declined so much on so many facets in a short 20 years. The rampant progressive extremism is the root cause of the issues affecting Seattle. There is no balance or practical governance.

Governments don’t work for people. Yet they use terms like democracy all the time. The repeated attempts at chat control are so blatantly anti civil rights but also disrespectful of democratic principles. Why do EU citizens tolerate this? Are they okay being made a fool of or is this just not an issue for them after all?

Are these arena sites gamed? If China and their companies are pushing so hard that they regularly perform distillation and cross other boundaries, why wouldn’t they also try to influence scores here?