sk2020

Most rental agencies won’t let anyone under 25 rent a vehicle. I can’t imagine trying to insure an 18 year old for a $100,000+ truck and it’s cargo.

Facebook causes terrorism, murder, and rape? What evidence was the basis of that conclusion?

I’m guessing the solution is a global network of unaccountable mandarins to institute a global Clockwork Orange style brainwashing campaign targeting people with the audacity of having bad opinions? In the populations where this has been implemented, say North Korea, China, Cambodia, Russia and friends, were the populations worse or better for the experience?

Programmatically generating geometry is very cool, but I don’t know of anyone doing real work with it. OpenSCAD is probably the best power-hobbyist software I know of for this purpose. AutoDesk seems to be trying this approach with DyanamoBIM, which I’m excited to experiment with (I just don’t get visual programming though).

Personally, I would never consider a web-based software for professional use. An opaque profit model makes me think you’re looting my intellectual property to resell, mining crypto with obfuscated JS or WASM, or you’re snatching up market share to get bought by Google who will just kill the service and leave me hanging.

There’s a lot of room for better software in AEC but CAD is pretty robust and very affordable at this point.

If there are disputes about consumption and production across national boundaries, who resolves that? Different parts of the world don’t even have similar objectives within the energy market. I also think an unaccountable international power utility that can control if I survive the winter or not is a terrible idea.

For 20-30-somethings that probably read a pop-dev news aggregator? Probably not. Or are most of us in our 80s? There is also substantial variation in reported IFR between political jurisdictions per the CDC (1-9% I think). Seroprevalence based IFR estimates tend to be consistent across national boundaries (and is a much lower number), but I wouldn’t make so bold as to tell you to believe research studies over political appointees at the CDC.

I don’t think there are many wheel guns that would give you 249,999/250,000 odds of survival. The number of people killed or injured by mRNA treatments is also not zero.

Are populations with large majorities of people who’ve received 2-3 injections seeing total or near eradication of coronavirus? I’m not aware of any examples.

I think the hope is to market pharmaceutical products to people who do not currently see a benefit to them given their naturally acquired antibodies. Large quantities of product is expiring soon, and market share must be expanded as quickly as possible to avoid that cost.

I’ll invest in some black and white Nikes. Will punch be served?

You’re thinking about Peter the Great. The Czar. Also, if you think you can get credible reports from Pravda, about a country with Potemkin villages of all things, then I don’t think you’re looking very critically at that information.

60 million people die of some cause every year. What is your threshold for global despotism to be an acceptable response?

"How can we put a meter on it?"

-JP Morgan (he/him)

There is a data indicating masks are not effect source control for respiratory illnesses.

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article

I think the single study that supported cloth face coverings of no particular standard of performance was a mechanistic study that depends on the belief that respiratory illness spread is a direct function of the distance water droplets of an arbitrary threshold size travel from a simulated sneeze. Which, of course, is so obviously true it needs no supporting evidence.

It seems like someone makes a “novel” discovery about Roman concrete every few months. I’m curious what the real reason for that is.

Regulation is going to be particular to your municipal or county government. Unless you’re in a major city, the permits desk will probably be approachable and will take the time to explain what you can and can’t do. They will probably entertain a variance unless you seem like you’re really out of your depth. They may be able to tell you about other bale construction in your area.

Nuclear bomb shelters were an irrational response to unjustified fears stoked by the media.

We need to have a talk about COVID-19…

Well 20% of US uranium production capacity was sold for charitable donations to the benefit of a certain former Secretary of State. I’m not sure how much has been plundered during more recent administrations, but I wouldn’t count on anybody with real authority to do the right thing. Time to join team Visigoth.

Only about 16% of Maine has active agricultural operations. Or if you want to take out the guesswork, buy some downtown blight in some city, demolish it, vegetate the site and donate it to the municipal parks and recreation department.

Or maybe buy land, plant some clovers and stick some bee hives on it.

The pervasive attitude of dealing with problems real or imagined with “who can the state punish?” rather than “what can I do to can I fix this?” is disturbing.

Urbanites in their concrete jungles inflicting punishment on farmers for having destroyed bee habitat is so absurd on its face that it’s completely plausible.

In many jurisdictions in the US, interfering with criminals in any way is itself a crime, even if it’s with cool LTL tech. If you’re fortune enough not to live in one of those places, firearms are a solution that have worked for the last few centuries.

There is also a really slick website for capturing sweet VC bucks: https://photonicsentry.com/

Real. Soon. Now.

I don’t know how you can look at the telecom market and make the determination that it’s “unfettered capitalism”. AT&T has an extraordinary amount of special market privileges that shield them from competitive forces. Almost all utilities are quasi-government. That they are allowed to own private infrastructure on public land, sometimes at no cost, is something you or I could not do. Am I unaware of an important counterpoint where Soviet telecoms were high functioning and free of perverse incentives?

Some people forcibly entered the Capitol to protest during Justice Kavanaugh’s nomination. A few people got arrested. Life went on.

Personally, I think the mortal fear politically active leftists have of any sign of opposition, no matter how trivial, speaks volumes about how they feel about their own position.

Wait, are we talking about FOX or NPR?

3. When pharmaceutical companies denied the risk of novel gene therapies for inoculation against a family of cold viruses.

How? We could invite the Taliban to govern the USA. Degeneracy in your home town? Start the beatings! Gambling, porn, and inebriety? Haram! They do seem to be able to manage challenging political situations much better than the US in Afghanistan. Think about it :)

Everything you stated suggests that News Corp is better at producing content consumers actually want. Maybe I’m just out of touch with the modern, dystopian total-state, but that seems to be a result of market incentives.

That the author is peddling the absurd “Russians hacked muh servers” popular myth makes the comment all the more poignant.

Social networks tolerate fake traffic because it increases their perceived value. The real crime is the fictive usage and engagement metrics they use to set ad pricing.

Amusingly, if you state that the political process in the United States is corrupt, then most listeners will nod in agreement. However, if you give a concrete example of such corruption, then everyone recoils in horror and disbelief. You must be a misinformation agent on foreign payroll.