onecommentman

For context, 739 people died during a five-day heat wave in 1995 in the City of Chicago in the State of Illinois in the United States.

I’ll throw in my pet theory. American football is rooted in infantry maneuvers Civil War through WWII. Soccer is closer to cavalry, a Second Millennium European experience.

Cavalry was never that important in the military experiences of Americans since its founding a mere 250 years ago, whereas lots of folks served in the infantry — Civil War through WWII. The US, moreover, is essentially a 20th Century country; infantry, tanks, air forces, etc. is 20th Century warfare; and American football echoes those 20th Century technologies.

The romantic ideal and practical effectiveness of cavalry over many centuries, ending in the 20th Century/WWI, made it much more deeply ingrained in the European (Old World) psyche. Soccer is cavalry, thus Europe and past colonies gravitated towards it.

Then again, there is more to life than increasing its speed. (Gandhi). When I read a physical book, especially an early (hardback) edition, I’m reliving the experience of all the early readers of that book. A mug of tea, a warm light, perhaps a candle or oil lamp, a period chair — and I’m recreating the experience the Author imagined his/her readers would be experiencing. Digital for work, analog for pleasure.

Boy, that’s not just a “data-driven” view, that’s a purely transactional view of “romance”.

A few decades ago, sales training made the distinction between transactional connections and relational, suggesting a relational connection between you and your clients was far superior and more powerful than a mere transactional one. I’d imagine that would be even more true if you are considering a (lifelong) marriage with your “client” and perhaps children in the offing.

Gave up on the video halfway when the notion of an actual emotional, much less spiritual, relationship didn’t pop up once. AI slop? I’d downvote if I could…

And be homeless, if you are truly not thinking (and assuredly acting) about it. It’s not “just another subscription” in many ways. The idea of renting being the “peace of mind” choice rings false with me.

35 years, .75% per year, newish home when bought, high desert

But at varying rates determined by use, design and location. I recommend desert living if you want low maintenance, or even a graceful manageable decline. Maybe not true adobe that requires regular remudding, but frame-stucco or stabilized adobe. Becomes more charming with age. Taos Pueblo has been around for 1000 years…

Maintaining your own home is a great hobby for guys 40 years old and older. The house may age, but your engagement and knowledge of your house steadily grows. Even contracting out the work has its interesting elements. Keeps you active as you age, both mentally and physically.

The key for older homeowners is finding your querencia, the place of your heart. If where you live is your querencia, then countless options open up for you. Simply living in your home and community becomes a joy. Your community becomes an extension of your home and your heart and you become a vital part of that community. In your golden years, that community provides deep meaning and grounding when your work life quickly fades. Building that connection takes time and energy…plopping yourself somewhere else in your 60s, you may not find it. Building it now and in your 50s guarantees it’s there when you want it.

And having a grass lawn is actually quite expensive (water) and borderline illegal/immoral (water) in the American Southwest. Having a grass lawn is only mandatory in a few gated communities with out-of-touch HOAs. We’ve gotten used to the xeriscaped look…blends well with the brown stucco/adobe exteriors. When you don’t have much green, it becomes a (cheap) accent color (e.g. shrubs, evergreen trees) rather an expensive-to-maintain background color (e.g. lawns).

The student learns by daily increment. The Way is learned by daily loss, Loss upon loss until At last comes rest.

By letting go, it all gets done; The world is won by those who let it go! But when you try and try, The world is then beyond the winning.

為學日益，為道日損。損之又損，以至於無為。無為而無不為。取天下常以無事，及其有事，不足以取天下。

道德經, Tao Tê Ching, 章 “poem” 48, (tr.) R B Blakney From The Teachings of the Mystics, Walter T Stace, 1960

老子, Lao Tzu…2500 year old 21st Century foreign spy.

You can do better with corn in bulk at a grain elevator. Takes about 8 bushels (56 pounds, 25.4 kg) to provide the calorie requirements for an adult for a year. Current price for corn in USA is $5/bushel plus transport. So $40/person/year (modulo transport, cooking, dying of pellagra, etc.).

Look at Richie Rich paying $200 plus prorated membership for his subsidence calories (in white rice, no less, which is a premium starch in some Asian countries)…

To a college friend from a Canadian academic family who was in senior management in a large tech firm, a period copy of Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich by Canadian professor and humorist, Stephen Leacock, published in 1914.

US nuclear power whispers to solar: welcome to the club.

This is a book review about a book about a book reviewer who reviewed books. Essentially writing about writings about writings, some of those writings presumably are themselves writings about writings. And people wonder why the humanities have become irrelevant to the lives of people today.

You touched on a pet idea of mine and, since you made the mistake of actually intelligently responding to online forum comments, now I get to make a pitch for it.

Thesis: every student accepted into medical school must complete 9 months as a medical scribe (financially compensated at some reasonable level) assigned to various medical team(s) prior to their actual entrance into med school.

They are formally trained on the latest and greatest scribing tech (which clinicians probably deprioritize).

They get exposure to what it means to work as part of a medical team. A heads-up before they pursue a medical career.

They get exposed to operational ethics, formality of ops, etc. in a role where they probably aren’t going to kill anyone.

They learn useful operational jargon and the lore of clinical practice to motivate the unending hours they will spend memorizing metabolic pathways and general trivia in med school.

They provide a friendlier, more humane “UI” for clinicians who loathe automated scribing systems, but love the fact they get to actually go home at a reasonable hour instead of charting til the wee hours. They should be actually, visibly and directly making the clinician’s job easier and more pleasant, so will be more likely to be treated with respect, perhaps even be coveted, and ultimately view the experience as a life-affirming one.

They make some decent money, less than a permanent professional scribe but more than flipping burgers, enough to secure decent med school student housing, maybe even pay for their books.

The program fits nicely into the concept of interning already part of medical training, being a sort of “data intern” with no access to the more physically impactful elements of medical practice.

The OP title isn’t clickbait. The actual article has a title that is somewhere between clickbait and excessively biased. The positive correlation between high vitamin intake and lung cancer has been studied, reported and cited in the professional literature for many years now. Using the word “absurd” in the article title is biased and unprofessional and downright silly. AI?

Looks vaguely like the Karmarkar algorithm idea for Linear Programming where you rescale the feasible region to look spherical to make the search more efficient.

The death of boarding schools is not an absolute good. Boarding schools helped my uncle in educating and caring for his children when his wife suffered from schizophrenia.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/06/a-fertilizer-shortage-worsen...

Let me vu that déjà for you. Prior recent experience makes potential impacts easier to forecast, understand and manage.

“the production of critical thought – what is collectively referred to as the “humanities””

This is a rebranding of the humanities, but a good one. When people continue to talk of a “crisis in the humanities” for several decades with no resolution, this is a logical next step. “Humanities” as a term is broader than critical thinking, but narrowing its focus to just critical thinking would be a wonderful thing for students and professors alike.

But it is one objective indicator in the right direction.

Agápē, érōs, philía, philautía, storgē, xenía…

But only 8% of the baseline US adult population have a felony record.

https://legalknowledgebase.com/how-many-us-citizens-have-a-f...

And only 18% of those 8% baseline US adult felonies were violent felonies.

https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/vfluc.pdf

So that suggests 2% of the US baseline population have violent criminal records, versus 14% of those arrested by ICE. Precisely what case is the reporter trying to make?

Thank you for posting that cheap crack. If you hadn’t, then I would have been duty-bound to sacrifice karma with a similar post. BTW, Cheap Crack was one of the stage names I considered when exploring a career in the lucrative adult entertainment industry.

So, to paraphrase Kate McKinnon from her alien abduction sketch on Saturday Night Live, it wasn’t her worst Wednesday night.

Obligatory mention of the linear time analog sorting algorithm known as the “spaghetti algorithm”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_sort

https://every-algorithm.github.io/2023/11/25/spaghetti_sort....

The equivalent for positive link weight shortest paths is the “string algorithm” — build the network out of string and pull taut between the two knots/nodes, the resulting set of taut links is the shortest path.

“A standard internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle requires roughly 3,000 Multi-Layer Ceramic Capacitors (MLCCs). A modern Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) requires up to 22,000.”

From another site

https://www.inkwoodresearch.com/multi-layer-ceramic-capacito...

“In contrast to a typical car with an internal combustion engine, which utilizes approximately 2,000 Multi-Layer Ceramic Capacitors (MLCCs), the Tesla Model 5 boasts a significantly higher count, nearing 10,000. Similarly, the transition from the iPhone 6s to the iPhone X marked a substantial increase in MLCC count per handset, jumping from 500 to 1,000 units.”

I don’t know a diode from a dipstick, but how can an iPhone fit a thousand of any discrete component in its case? A quick search found the smallest MLCC from one vendor (1515) to be .15x.15x.10 (in.).

https://www.circuitfunctions.com/mlcc-capacitor-size-chart/

A thousand of those seems to be 2.25 cu.in. That’s lot of real estate for an iPhone. I’m an idiot when it comes to these sorts of things…can someone explain?

I’ve always thought the hippie protests in 1968 are what guaranteed Nixon his second term. It provided an “other” whose appearance to the majority was so off putting/repulsive that, even during an unpopular war, they were willing to re-elect Nixon just to attempt to purge the National consciousness of the buffoonery presented as the Left (and actually was, to some extent). The Democratic Party was only able to reclaim leadership when they found an anti-hippie (Jimmy Carter, Navy nuclear sub guy) as a spokesperson. Democrats who continue, and who will continue, to struggle under the anti-woke backlash should take note.

“Damage your reputation”…for a very narrow definition of reputation over a subset of people whose “positive” opinion and influence may actually be detrimental to your goals, your nation’s goals, and the world’s well-being, both long-term and even short-term. Meh.

Point of clarification: Silicon Valley is not the entirety of the “tech world”. Not even the majority of the tech world. It’s a significant, very noisy minority, focused on Information Tech World.

Even on HN, that distinction needs to be made…maybe especially on HN. That sort of conflation will eventually lead to inane arguments that waste everybody’s time.