VoodooJuJu

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It also ignores the particular size of the figs that should be consumed. And it ignores the season that they should be consumed. And it ignores the weather conditions that you should consume them in. And it ignores the hour at which they're consumed. And it ignores the gender of the person that should consume them. And it ignores the eye color of the person that should consume them. And it ignores the hair length of the person that should consume them. And it ignores the precise composition of nitrogen in the soil with which the fig tree has been grown in. And phosphorous. And potassium. And it ignores the day of the week in which the fig should be consumed. And it ignores the material of the utensils used to consume the fig. And it ignores the age of the person that consumes them.

Just enjoy your figs, Paul.

We have plenty of strong evidence for the safety of tons of things. My ancestors have been consuming cow's milk, mache, and wine for thousands of years. If these things were not safe for consumption, we wouldn't be consuming them to this day. My bloodline wouldn't have made it this far. We don't add poison hemlock to our mache salads because thousands of years ago, some poor souls gave us strong evidence that it's not something you should eat, and that knowledge was passed down to us.

It's an aphorism suggesting the importance of the Lindy effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect

The longer something has been around, the longer it will continue to be around. The longevity of something also validates its efficacy and resiliency.

If people have been eating figs and drinking wine for thousands of years, then it's probably good and safe for you to do as well.

If traditional salad recipes avoid the use of conium maculatum, then you should probably avoid it too.

If your ancient ancestors didn't cook with margarine, then you probably shouldn't cook with it either.

In the absence of any strong evidence, a wise man would be well-served in treating the ingestion of a novel chemical as deadly.

No, the wise man doesn't have strong evidence to the contrary. And no, he's not interested in finding out either. The consequences of ingesting a novel non-Lindy chemical is an unknown unknown that the wise man is not interested in discovering.

Of course, if the potential upsides are great enough, the risk of downsides might be worthwhile.

In the case of the chemical spatula, the downsides are uncertain, but there's the possibility of cancer. The upsides are...greater corporate profits?

The wise man is going to have to pass on that one.

Moderns would do well to try and be more like the wise man. Scientific studies are not the holy grail of knowledge. New studies are coming out all the time, both negating and reaffirming old conclusions. Is this schizophrenic flip-flopping not enough to convince the modern that Scientism isn't the end-all-be-all?

Unknown unknowns emerge at the tails of novel changes introduced to complex systems. Scientific studies are unable to account for these long-tail events. When it comes to your environment and your body, be more Lindy, and stop deferring to the myopicity of Scientism to guide you.

Eat no fruits from the past one thousand years; drink nothing from the past four thousand years.

Can you name some specific sites where this is an issue for you? I've had nothing but good experiences buying online, in the US at least.

Every single site I've bought from has the same boring and functional checkout experience, whether it's Stripe Checkout, Google Wallet, or Shopify. They're practically all the same, and they all work fine.

TANSTAAFL

what?

Bits are a unit of measurement we use in relation to computers. Humans are not computers. Do not use bits to measure anything in relation to humans. Stop thinking of humans as computers. It's dehumanizing, unhealthy, and a very narrow way to think of people. Using a computer model for humans is useless at best and misleading at worst.

I see several comments coming down hard on this man's suggestion that 60 is unusually old to be starting a business, but keep in mind that he comes from a different culture than you.

In my culture, as well as that of the critics, we agree that 60 is not old, and it's also quite normal to be starting a business at such an age. But his culture, which makes berth in Bengaluru, India, obviously has different expectations regarding age, and so that's why it's unusual (but elating) to see his father do this at such an age.

Just remember that, and cut him some slack.

The social sciences are not science and good riddance to them.

They are religious rituals with only the trappings of the scientific method. These rituals are often purely performative, but the outcomes can be useful for effecting political goals, as the studies have historically given authoritative weight to bureaucrats and their designs.

The ruse is failing though, and I think New Zealand's actions here could be evidence of this trend. No longer is "studies show..." a sufficient enough deception for enacting political ends. People are demanding sounder reasoning in politics than what Scientism has to offer.

Most invocations of Scientism are directed at these social sciences, due to its egregiousness.

Could it be that animals, like humans, aren't just sacks of chemicals? Could it be they're not computer programs, but that they are, in fact, animals?

This is why I despise practically every discussion of "why" when it comes to talking about observed traits and evolution like this. People invent this bizarre deterministic model of life as it it were purely chemical or computational and could be controlled & understood as such. As if every single little trait has design intent.

You have one guy in this thread that's like, "Would this imply that humans’ propensity to keep pets is also an association error in the brain?". Like holy shit dude, I don't know, but maybe people just like pets. Maybe pets like pets. Maybe pets like us. Maybe we aren't computer programs whose nature is defined by scripts and wiring. "Association error". The fuck? We're not computer programs. We don't have "errors".

Like what a dull and inhuman lens to view the world with: "We're all just computers", or "We're all just a bunch of chemicals". I wonder, do you also think of me as a computer or a chemical sack? Do you view my child that way? My cat? If you do, that disturbs me, because then you may be tempted to treat us as such, when we're all so much more than that.

A deer can feed a family of four for four days

Stopped reading here. You get like 50-60 pounds of meat per deer. A family of four is not eating that in four days.

If you compare the Assad regime to your own western country, you'd think what happened here was a good thing.

But that's the wrong comparison to make. The rosier Dutch government won't be taking over control here. The rebels will be.

And if you compare the Assad regime to the actual alternative, the rebels, you'll instead realize: the hard times have only just begun [1].

[1] https://medium.com/opacity/the-syrian-war-condensed-a-more-r...

It feels like Europe is asleep at the wheel

Obviously not, because a European court literally just overturned the results of a democratic election due to foreign influence on the voting population.

How is it possible that a low level professor with pro-Russian leanings that no one’s ever heard of suddenly place 2nd in nationwide presidential elections?

Why don't they even try to hide their disdain for plebs?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was also an unknown pleb who quickly became an elected official. We don't question that, and in fact, we celebrate it. It's a great American underdog story. We love it. It's the spirit of our culture.

Why is Georgescu's rise disdained like this? Is it because he's on the "other side"?

- ink is better for photo quality prints (color quality, thicker paper, longevity)

- laser toner is bad for your health

- laser has a larger upfront cost

It's completely ideal to get an average person's opinion on something as primal as poetry.

Poetry is for everyone, not just poetry connoisseurs. It's a simplified primal expression of language, taking the form of pretty soundbites & snippets, pristine, virginal, uncorrupted by prose and overthinking. Poetry is not the domain of middlebrow academics.

Why would torturing and killing animals NOT be permitted today?

Because many people today would prefer that animals NOT be tortured and killed. Good people don't torture animals at all in general, and when we do kill them, it's for a definite end like food or to end suffering, and they are killed in such a way that they do not feel pain.

Increasingly, people don't want to see animals tortured and killed for some unknown or arbitrary end, like "let's just see what happens when we drown this rat dude, for science! lol".

Imho, the only viable/main solution is to acknowledge that we all aren’t equal

How do you do that though? How do you knock down an idea that:

- has at least hundreds of millions of subscribers, for many of whom the idea is an unassailable religious tenet

- has survived and endured for centuries (Lindy)

- manifests itself in the form of laws, businesses, and NGOs, and is propped up by violence, and also by the hundreds of billions of dollars behind those organizations

Even if the idea is wrong, with all this momentum behind it, with all this skin people have in the game, all they've invested into it, how do you get people to abandon the idea?

Trust your instincts and a grandfather's wisdom. Don't waste time reading anything. Eschew any and all academic or scientific takes on parenting. Fathering is like breathing. We've been doing it without thinking about it for millions of years. Seriously: just trust your instincts.

My dreams.

Well that would just make it too simple and not blog-worthy.

I think it'd be a shame if engineers were the ones to make the decision in this case. The decision needs to be made by people with a more serious understanding of risk and fragility, like the military generals, and especially by the people who will bear both the upsides and downsides of the decision, a.k.a. the local community who will be consuming the water.

These are called exonyms and there's nothing wrong with them. The Italian city of Firenze is anglicized as Florence. The anglicized Jesus Christ is latinized as Iesus Christus, hellenized as Iesous Christos, aramaicized as Yeshua Mshiha. People do this all the time with tons of words and especially with proper nouns. It's completely normal and okay.

Bernie Sanders just put it perfectly:

It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.

While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change.

And they’re right.

Anyone here who is still confused about this election result need only unplug their fingers from their ears and open their eyes.

Still refusing to listen to us plebeians. I can't afford groceries. I'm not looking for a scholar-bureaucrat reframe of my problem. I'm looking for a solution.

Well done, Python… for finding yet another way to confuse us all.

Would have liked to see some humility from the author, especially since he's an interviewer, but instead he deflects the fault onto Python as being confusing, rather than attributing the fault to himself and his own lack of understanding.

Unfortunately, this kind of blame game is par for the course with enginerds. I say this all the time: engineers really should do a sales or customer service job before getting into engineering. This will help you build empathy, which will build your social skills and kindle some humility within you. These traits will give you an edge over other nerds and take you further in your career.

Could be simultaneously unhealthy for Westerners and fine for East Asians.

Per the Lindy effect, we should all be eating foods that we're adapted to eating. You are likely adapted to a food if you and your ancestors have been eating it for thousands of years. The longer the better.

East Asians seem adapted to rice and its arsenic content. Northern Europeans, maybe not so much. The former has had thousands of years to adapt and select for rice-eating. The latter, again, not nearly as long. Another example: dairy. East Asians can't digest it, Northern Europeans can.

Notepad++ is so based. It's a traditionally well-made native app, fast and lean, with a dense and useful interface, which is a breath of fresh air amidst a sea of Electron & Co. bloat that comprises modern apps.

Also has a nice logo for a FOSS app. Branding is important, even for FOSS, which so many unfortunately fail at. If your software creation is associated with a foot or a rat, then you're doing it wrong.

It's fine to criticize facets of a culture, but this isn't a very intelligent critique, it's just rude.

On the "war" thing - the culture of many Americans has a martial bent to it, which is why things like "war" made its way into a lot of our idioms and phrases and way of thinking. It's not bad writing just because your cultural mode of thought doesn't consider "war" as an acceptable metaphor or idiom.

Martial cultures don't need to "get a grip" any more than scholarly or pastoral ones need to. Culture is self-preserving and so the martial aspects of ours aren't going away anytime soon, so I suggest you find a way to be more tolerant and understanding of it.