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porknubbins

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The Vespa at 80 18 days ago

Ive been riding scooters and motorcycles for 20 years and I to this day I have no clear image of what a moped might be. I always imagined a theoretical spectrum from pure bicycle -> gas motor equipped bicycle-> moped -> pure motorcycle, but have never encountered a moped.

Its not how bad must other areas be when NYC is this bad- its bad because its NYC. Corruption, aging infrastructure, enormous construction costs, diverse building types and complex ownership interests etc etc. The fastest and most competitive internet is in places like wealthy suburbs where you just roll it out without any issues.

Keeping children off social media, or to a very limited children only social media seems obviously a good thing.

My issue is the UK “free” speech standards seem to be something like free speech as long as its reasonable, doesn’t offend or excite too many people, cast aspersions on those in power etc, in other words not very free at all. And any form of internet registration could be used to tie more people to their posts.

Of course restricting posting some benefit exists as we seen in the US with robust free speech and twitter being overrun with third world posters attempting to influence domestic politics.

Are mechanical keyboards becoming a way to show off like the programmer equivalent of loud truck exhaust?

The sound is satisfying yes, but with other people in mind I am looking for the quietest mechanical keyboard I can find these days. I have become self conscious about typing quietly during phone calls or meetings in case I am unmuted.

Those billionaires are not hoarding cash like a dragon in a lair, their wealth is mostly in stock in productive (FB is debatable at this point) companies many people use.

Boomers (only people I know receiving pensions) use pensions to fund lavish lifestyles without having build major companies.

My employers who are introducing AI are not laughing evil supervillains hoovering up all the excess profits, they are normal people who wanted long careers and are as nervous as anyone about competition amd what AI will do to organizations if people become truly redundant.

Where I lived we knew a few neighbors but didn’t really interact every day or feel like they would watch out for other people’s kids.

That didn’t stop me from biking and exploring all over from age 6-7, which seems unthinkable now. I think it was mostly just more risk tolerance and less flashy warnings about danger. Like my dad biked around the same block so why not let me and there was not much more thought given to it.

Your suburb sounds nice but I guess Im just saying that level of community wasn’t necessary for kids to have freedom.

I do the same thing but with two physical desks, not just partitioning one desk into two logical desks.

Aside from the obvious advantage of more space it really helps put your mind in a different context when you are at a different location. In his example just moving over slightly would do nothing for me with the computer just arms length away and still in full view.

I once was accused and brought before the honor counsel for a really stupid innocent mistake.

Basically it was a history worksheet requiring written paragraph answers and I swapped around answers under the wrong questions so the teacher thought I cheated. It was a careless mistake I made because I had lost the original worksheet and was working off a loose leaf copy in the cafeteria at the last minute but it made it look like I copied someone else’s work.

I don’t known if the committee bought my story or was feeling lenient but I am very thankful for lax prosecution of these cases and think a lot of the value is in scaring people straight.

Yes this is obvious if you think about movies where people become friends or romantic partners- they are usually cold or unfriendly to each other in the first meeting which makes their later connection seem more authentic. I cannot imagine a movie post 1950s in which a man uses these tactics and gets the girl or the sale without difficulty. Of course movies are not real life but they do rely on some verasimilitude.

This would be a violation of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty act of 1975 which requires they show the work done directly caused the failure.

If this were a widespread policy I bet class action lawyers would be all over it without you having to pay for it.

Say a tanker truck has a roughly 300 gallon fuel tank and a 10,000 gallon payload tank (per google). Thats roughly 3% loss to cross a lot of the US, which is by no means insignificant but assuming ships are not any worse and the pipeline to the ship is minimal, around a manageable 6% loss.

If you look at gas prices in Saudi Arabia, some of it is subsidised to be lower but clearly its much cheaper to be consuming your own energy vs purchasing it internationally for a variety of reasons. The size of the effect is a messy economics question, not a black and white thing.

I feel the same way. I really enjoyed bonsai when I lived in a small rental, and now that I can plant actual trees it just seems so much more exciting to watch something big and healthy that has a real presence compared to a small tree on life support in a tray.

Maybe its being older already but I don’t feel super changed having a baby like people told me I would. I don’t do work or hobbies or socializing any differently. Everything else in my life didnt suddenly seem unimportant.

The one big difference is up to now I though crying babies were annoying and subconsiously somehow blamed parents. Now I see how foolish that was as babies are born knowing nothing and are just adorable little people trying their best to get their needs met and handle emotions.

As a millennial my whole life has felt pretty Malthisuan. I haven’t personally really benefitted from productivity increase, I have seen any competitive edge I had by being smarter or early to things erode away rapidly again and again. The only real defense is accumulated wealth or connections possibly.

If elites do not provide a social safety net why would the masses respect their elite status and resource endowments anyway?

Unless you are suggesting billionaires build private armies in some sort of neo feudalism, there are no elites who are not dependant on the existing social structure.

Fiber is so inconvenient to get in adequate quantity. We cook all our meals using tons of vegetables and none of it has much fiber if I remember. Occasionally I’ll try to start eating oatmeal but get burned out after a week or two.

If I ever get to build a house I’m using that high density drywall they have in hospitals everywhere but the ceiling. It doesn’t cost that much more compared to the labor and it would be enormously satisfying to know your walls can’t be easily dented or damaged.

I came across Burton on forum discussions of polyglots. In addition to the above he is supposed to have been fluent in some impossible number of languages like 50. Of course no one was around to check and many of these could have been dialects or much smaller languages than the major world languages.

Another great Victorian translator was Arthur Waley who translated the Tale of Genji and lots of Chinese poetry without ever having visted Asia. Its absolutely mind boggling to me, having barely learned a few languages how one would tranlate from handwritten kanji scrolls with no reference materials or even bilingual dictionaries.