iisan7

I appreciated the parallels in this idea to the concept of wu wei (無為), or achieving by doing nothing. The idea appears in writing attributed to Confucius and Lao Zi, that regarding political leadership, the best leaders can order their group or society even simply by the strong example that they set and correct judgments that they execute. This isn't meant to be carried to its extreme of course, a leader doesn't do nothing all day, and may indeed pitch in to work, but they should be making time to think and reflect. I read it as an ideal (you know when things are good when you can do nothing), not as an instruction (do nothing).

It paid off for PARC, iirc the laser printer justified lots of other things that Xerox didn't profit from but turned out to be incredibly important.

Except for one thing ... Schools tend not to fail many people. When an entire cohort has a different level of ability, standards adjust. Possibly some proctored, standardized exams might be more comparable over time. I have read that, controlling for student demographics, SAT scores (frequently used for US college entrance) were increasing until the mid 2000s and then flat since then.

Readers should be dubious of her moral authority on this issue. When given influence, her advocacy of the war on Libya resulted in endemic violence and showed that she was as misguided as anyone else in American politics when it comes to intervention in world affairs.

I think it's still brave to attempt a mission with significant chance of failure that risks resources, careers, and reputation. And had it been a _manned_ mission to Venus, the adjective that comes to mind is not brave but pointless, foolish, or sadistic.

my understanding/recollection is that it was necessary for surveillance to note when decedents had COVID; it was listed as a (contributing or underlying, not sure of the jargon) cause, and so depending on how you cut the data you could count it either way -- tally all deaths with COVID as deaths from COVID (bigger), or only those where COVID was the main cause (smaller).

Would be great to have the option to input a major city and have it in a lookup table instead of requiring gps to be on and additional permissions.

VDQI explains why chartjunk is bad, and if it reduces the amount of chartjunk in the world, that is good. Many maintain a soft spot for VDQI probably because it's their first a-ha moment in terms of appreciating graphic communication. Certainly there are other directions one could go but most people are not designers. Although, I don't see the same contradiction between DOET and VDQI, I'm curious what you mean about that.

Unlike Pascal's Wager, those who take Kerrick's Wager (and it seems a good one) each contribute minutely to the probability of the outcome under consideration.

straight to the source code: https://images.gatesnotes.com/12514eb8-7b51-008e-41a9-512542...

and the music! I remember saving snippets of the music that were posted online well before the soundtrack was available (and taping some of the background music). Great stuff, capitalizing on the San Francisco music scene. Great wikipedia page on it now (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_Grim_Fandango)

True if the process of selection favors projects that produce the greatest social value, which is far from certain. Specifically in the case of projects with significant environmental impacts, I suspect you are right -- because Earth doesn't usually get a chance to present its counter-argument.

I generally agree that the government often hamstrings itself. But consider also that you can't terminate state employees easily, and their benefits packages often cost more than 100% of their salary. The salary itself and the working conditions often don't attract the best talent. Thus it's not always so cut and dry in terms of what's the best outcome for the public interest.

I would argue it continues to be elusive, because it's hidden from plain view. For example byzantine ruins are often not restored, and not in demand by tourists. They are often removed to get to the classical bones beneath, or restored to a pre-byzantine state because that's where the interest lies. Western European funds and institutions have played a large role in archaeological activities in the eastern Mediterranean, and the byzantine period has little resonance with the philhellenes.

Also "Jmmortel" in the following sentence (unless that J character was chosen for stylistic reasons).

Right, my language was sloppy but I meant two things-- the quality will still be dependent on the hardware chain, and I should expect that a 'bit perfect' capture of a VHS tape will usually be inferior to one captured from a vintage pro deck. And then regarding processing, I'm not a professional, but I've done several successful restorations using virtualdub and avisynth, and on some degraded tapes I couldn't do nearly as well as whatever magic was going on in the vhs to dvd section of the JVC SR-MV50.

No, I'm thinking of proprietary hardware or software in the decks that perform tbc, noise reduction, filtering of artifacts, etc. If given a choice of a perfect copy of a spotty VHS and all the virtualdub and avisynth filters, or the mpeg2 output from a JVC SR-MV50, my experience has been that the latter is better. However, I grant that a video preservation professional might get better results from treating a direct capture than I.

Best at capture/preservation, but only theoretically best at playback someday. Currently the best software processing algorithms are imo not on par with video playback quality from the best hardware of the era, especially for damaged tapes. It's hard, although certainly not impossible, to imagine that changing. I'm 100% glad it exists though.

no problem -- it was just a throwaway comment to the effect that "Phenibut" in reference to the other drug mentioned the parent comment sounded much more like a gay D&D centaur to my ear.

You had "Phenibut" right there and you went with Promethazine?

It's the English long s. I'm not aware of any OCR that recognizes it. Distinct from the letter F by it's lack of a horizontal bar.

I think you're implying there is a supply problem but I think it's a demand problem. I could go to a cafe right now. But when I get there, there's going to be mainly (1) people waiting for orders to go (2) people working on laptops and (3) if it's Sunday morning, just maybe a group of old folks chatting. None of those groups (except maybe the last) would react well to someone sitting down next to them and saying, "hey, so I read about X, what do you think?" It's too bad, but I don't see how we could bring that back. I don't think anyone wants to listen and talk and be challenged, they'd rather be affirmed, literally rather listen to a podcast on the same topic than to discuss anything. I don't know how to invigorate a culture of debate and deliberation except by normalizing it among schoolchildren.

And couch surfing, which OED found a citation for from 1987. Still, applying it in a new context is worth something.

I agree that lawyers shouldn't fix coffee machines, their time is certainly more valuable. But they should know how, in a pinch. Flexible, adaptable analog thinking is an important human trait. I'm reminded of a related quote by Heinlein: "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." I don't agree with all of Heinlein's views, but on this point, "lowering oneself" like a lawyer fixing a coffee machine provides a certain humility or awareness of one's shared humanity that is helpful for social cohesion.

I heard they did it for $3.50

As I was watching it, I was thinking that if I were responsible for planning the scripts, I would have been kicking myself for not recording one for an ambiguous circumstance, or incomplete success. As it was it was a little disjointed.

(Otherwise known as pathological lies). To do as the saying says, and "know thyself" is difficult. People are prone to be overly harsh or generous when evaluating themselves.

well, if some of the reasoning in this thread is correct, maybe you need to take off your clothes to prevent yourself getting angry!

good points. driver advisory ("possible slowdown/disabled vehicle ahead") or closed systems (cargo road trains) make a lot of sense.

Park at a convenience store. Go in to get a coffee. Leave friends in car. Friend decides they want a coffee too. They open the door-- car alarm goes off. I'm sure some cars are better programmed but this has happened to me in several cars. (For the record, I still prefer keyless!)