braingravy

Sounds good! It was a waste to begin with. They can handle first-class.

Video in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJnkikcrHA0

It’s not crazy… the wages are below food prep. What would be crazy is paying to help someone else’s career. That’s why a well known rule of thumb for graduate program evaluation is whether or not they pay their grad students.

If they pay their grad students, then at least the time the grad students spend creates enough value to offset the cost of paying them.

If not, stay far away from the program.

Also, regarding the career comment: If graduate school is not at least the first step in a given career (it should the second, undergrad being the first), how/why do you expect gifted intellectuals to spend their prime wage earning years doing it?

Most people do not have access to enough wealth to spend prime wage earning years toiling to help someone else’s career with no return on investment.

The chemical differences between PFAS and vitamin A and B6 are beyond vast.

Comparing them betrays a complete ignorance of the molecular properties that, in combination with biological system processes, make A and B6 healthy at small doses and poisonous at large doses on one hand, and those that makes PFAS linearly poisonous at any given doses on the other. (And yes, you can be exposed to small amounts of toxins and be fine. That doesn’t change the toxicity of a given substance.)

Struggling to see how this could be anything but a bad faith argument.

They really are… and it’s just one person too, right?

They’re doing the lord’s work.

If you have to make that trade off you’re already in trouble.

“…reverse-engineering the computational dynamics of a biological brain and reproducing them in real time…”

Is not an anti-AI argument, it’s an open and unsolved question. Your optimism is appreciated, but the dismissal and assumption this is already solved is foolish and naive.

Mid-tier or not is a judgement call.

Regardless, Lia went from not being in the front of the pack, to being in the front of the pack:

“By the conclusion of Thomas's swimming career at UPenn in 2022, her rank had moved from 65th on the men's team to 1st on the women's team in the 500-yard freestyle, and 554th on the men's team to fifth on the women's team in the 200-yard freestyle.”

65th to 1st in one category, and 554th to 5th in another.

It is fair to say there was a significant increase in rank post-transition.

I use GP, would recommend as well; it generates great color codes tree maps of your storage. Once you get used to navigating it that way, you won’t go back.

Isn’t it more of a reflection of the current law? Age gates have long been self service (e.g., “enter your birthday”), and we have laws on the books for quite some time barring minors.

There is certainly a risk of what you’re describing with KYC tech that coming online, but I don’t know if that means it will happen.

To play devils advocate; It’s a reasonable demand from parents to control what their children are exposed to. This seems to support that.

So, the premise is high drug costs in the US subsidize drug prices in the EU.

Presumably this conclusion was arrived at because pharma companies sell drugs at a higher cost in the US than they do in EU, Canada, or anywhere else. Therefore elevating profits in the US relative to profit margins in other nations. (Note: they reportedly use the profit to develop new drugs, so this is where the subsidization comes into play, as higher profit markets will drive increased revenue and future drug development.)

And your argument against the premise is: 1. The EU is not at fault, and 2. Drugs cost more in the US because of the poor healthcare system.

Argument 1 does not attack the premise: Undoubtedly the EU is not at fault, the EU does not set drug prices in the US. Pharma companies do, within the context of the US economy, of course.

The premise does not assign fault, it’s an assessment of where profit comes from.

Argument 2 is more direct in addressing the premise, but still misses the point: you might be right, mostly right, or you could be wrong. I lean toward agreeing with the point you made (US healthcare system sucks), it doesn’t address the profit differential across different nations.

So, what about the premise is weak and incomplete?

Pharma shareholders want profit, and the US supplies that at a greater rate than the EU (likely due to the regulatory environment). They’ll take a lower profit margin vs. no profit at all, so they operate accordingly.

None of that goes against the premise that the extra profit from the US market is subsidizing the research costs for drug products that enter the EU market.

That’s a great question… Currently we’re in the main Chinese holiday period with the Lunar New Year/Spring Festival/Chinese New Year, so perhaps people traveling back home from foreign lands might use the service more during this time?

America great? Lol… I didn’t say it was a good thing.

Regardless, most EU nations do spend relatively little on their military compared to the U.S., hence the reliance.

Sorry to break it to you.

That would require a military arsenal. The EU outsourced that to the U.S. a long time ago.

For Power BI + AI work, you can use the JSON formatted .pbip report and semantic model files. Just fyi.

“almost nothing” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.

Stalking someone from your desk vs. IRL is a whole different ball game. Not sure why this needs explanation… anyways, the main difference is how easy it do things from your desk. For example, no one see you when you’re stalking someone from your desk. Think of the success of 4chan investigations vs. those in authority to actually do so. It’s empowering.

We live in a world of strangers, and unfortunately a % of those are the type to kill/rape other strangers. Why enable them?

Not sure who else would be empowered by making all public camera accessible at the click of a button, but I’m interested in who you think that population is.

Certainly we can agree most normal folks will not spend their time looking camera feeds of strangers?

I’m fascinated by people who stick to their theoretical principles (‘all data should be public’, etc.) no matter the real world implications, but we all have our own interests :).

It’s anonymity of the viewers combined with mass open-access surveillance that enables an unheard of level of stalking capacity.

Most people don’t like the idea that strangers could easily stalk their child remotely.

It’s the easy of access to surveillance technology that is different. Has nothing to do with the park being safe or not.

Try to think like an evil person with no life and very specific and demonic aims if you’re still having trouble seeing why this would be an issue.

Yep. Until we start holding decision makers responsible for the consequences of their decisions, they will always choose the selfish option.

Yeah it seems silly.

Why is college the primary group factor…? Is there some sort of health effect of sitting college classrooms for 5 years? Seems unlikely.

College education is highly associated and predicted by income/access to wealth.

Wealth inequality seems like a more likely explanation. Not seeing how they controlled for that across college vs non-college groups.

The blood vessels in the brain prevent cholesterol from passing through due to the blood-brain barrier.

The first part of this abstract breaks down the current understanding nicely: https://www.mdpi.com/1467-3045/47/2/115

Are banks breached at the same rate as bitcoin brokers? I think that was op’s point.

What a hilarious world view that humanity majors are running the U.S.

The U.S. is ran by wealthy elites, who run the U.S. in such a way to make themselves more wealthy.

Of course they would outsource every job and business related resource mining operations if that meant more profit in the short term. It’s just good business!

In the richest country that has ever existed? The one that sends 1/3 of food into the dump? (https://refed.org/downloads/refed-2025-us-food-waste-report....)

Yes, obviously yes. If someone can’t pay for food, we clearly have enough to go around.

Found the NK IT worker :)

Worth noting the restricted range of the model sample: 76 people ages 14-68.

Different markets are made of up different people, who (‘s leaders) may want different things…

The car market is a great example. The US market has decided it doesn’t want EVs from the biggest EV producer in the world (China), so people are indeed buying cars with older technology than what the new global standard has become thanks to China’s successfully state-sponsored EV market.

It may very well be that the US leads globally in AI, while some markets handicap access and development for internal reasons.

Only necessary for those who carried out those actions and want to live afterward without remorse.

Justifying the existence of horror and evil is not necessary.

It is possible to accept that things happen that you don’t endorse or control, horrible things, without providing a justifying reason for those events.

Unless, of course, you are the one knowingly carrying out those acts. In that case, a level of nihilistic justification is necessary from both leadership and those doing the dirty work.

Death, vile and evil behavior are a part of life. This doesn’t justify their existence.

Nihilism promotes the idea that life is meaningless. Perhaps an attractive idea in a complicated world with countless examples of suffering, horror, and death. I would urge you to consider an alternative conclusion when faced with these realities: The presence of death is necessary for life itself to have any distinct meaning. Once you accept that death is a necessary element for any “life” framework ever evidenced or argued for, vile behavior like systematic genocide can be understood as an outgrowth of the intertwined nature of life and death.

This still doesn’t justify a nihilistic conclusion. For example, if I dropped my cup and it broke, I might be tempted to provide a reason for the destruction of that cup (I was distracted, the coffee was hot, etc.). These explanations might be appropriate, or they might not. Since we are examining the event after it happened, we won’t ever know the exact causal reason (though we might get really close!).

The post-hoc rationalization of past events can only go so far. The causal reasons cannot be fully sussed after an event. (You can get pretty darn close! So it’s worth rationalizing explanations for the possibility of prevention of something like that.)

Regardless, these explanations are not necessary to accept the reality of my broken cup. I may dearly want to know why my cup broke. Perhaps because I liked that cup, or because I simply don’t want to break another cup in the same way, but knowing the reason my cup broke is not a necessary or sufficient element for me to know that I miss my cup and, all things considered, would have rather not had it break.

In the same way, the suffering you see in the world does not need to be justified for it to be condemned.

So, because nihilistic beliefs are (a) unnecessary for condemnation of suffering and evil (bad things are bad, A = A), (b) highly useful for justifying suffering and evil (as you noted), and (c) naturally lead to (at best) inaction in the face of suffering and (at worst) acceptance or even endorsement of suffering (“Well, life has no meaning, so I may as well accept the suffering, and maybe even go so far as to fuel a bit of it for my own benefit. After all, there isn’t a meaningful moral difference between those two options.”)

With those three outcomes as just a few of the natural consequences of practicing nihilism, I fail to see either the logic or utility of nihilism in anything other than providing a very shallow justification for the suffering in the world. It’s an easy puddle to splash around in, but I would encourage you to keep thinking through it: You don’t need to reject morality and ethics simply because immorality, unethical behavior, and unethical people exist.

As a final note: If you want to keep your nihilistic beliefs, you must reject the stated premise above that bad things are bad (A = A in symbolic logic). However, I’d suggest you be very careful about rejecting what you feel to be true (i.e., that destructive and horrible events are indeed destructive and horrible).

Hope this helps. Try not to get trapped by nihilism. It doesn’t lead to anything meaningful, as it’s logically impossible to do so under that framework.

It can also be explained by corrupt markets and societal coercion that perpetuate cycles bolstering cooperate profits.

Financial aid is given for cost of living, books, equipment, etc. Not just to pay tuition.

Additionally, tuition aid isn’t given directly to school: It goes to the student, who pays the school.