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wigl

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As someone who plays a lot of online multiplayer, there's a few issues. A lot of games do have skill based matchmaking systems (aka SBMM) in place.

Ideally, this would lead to people having a 50% win rate which is just unacceptable to some. Those people resort to smurfing or cheating to get their fix--they don't really want a fair and equal match. Just look to the Call of Duty community crying about SBMM. Those people want to farm clips and play with those worse than them--not people at or above their skill level.

Additionally, many multiplayer games at all but the highest skill levels have most matches determined by the side that plays the fewest number of mistakes. This is especially true of team based games. At most skill levels, both teams will be making many obvious (and less obvious) mistakes. This can frustrate some who believe that they're held back by their team and just need to play with higher ranked teammates. So people will boost or buy accounts or resort to cheating.

Dog Mode 3 years ago

There's been enough follow-up on this case to come to the conclusion that he fabricated the data. The Hartford insurance company's statement contradicts his claim. The PNAS study was retracted after the Data Colada article and there are anomalies in his other work.

[0] https://openmkt.org/blog/2023/everyone-involved-in-dan-ariel...

[1] https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2021/08/19/a-scandal-...

[2] https://www.npr.org/2023/07/27/1190568472/dan-ariely-frances...

It is clear the data was manipulated inappropriately and supplemented by synthesized or fabricated data.

We never quite did enough in NYC. One gym in Williamsburg stayed open even during March and just kept paying the fine. There just hasn't been that much enforcement. We came to the conclusion that we experienced a real lockdown instead of a short stint of heightened delivery use. It's absurd that indoor/outdoor dining is still allowed (also that restaurants can't get support). In my experience as a 20-something, most of my friends have been hanging (even house-partying!) indoors maskless, and it too leaves me at a loss for words. The "well I already tested positive" mentality is pretty common. Meanwhile my partner and family in Asia participate in heightened levels of lockdown when getting a fraction of the cases we get on a good day.

+1 to pandering in mining/oil. The field really felt like a fraternity (House SPE), where ideas only moved as fast as the old guard felt like it. I also felt like a necessary skill as an academic in the field was vetting ideas early for clear financial gain.

Drake meme: 1. NN's for classifying micro-seismic events a la Oklahoma 2. Coming up with something new to blast shale with

Not sure if the vibe is different elsewhere, but my department was similarly unhappy. At the very least, I'm glad that the experience gave me a taste of shoddy research enough to hate it and develop my own preferences.

9-10 years ago. Spanish Harlem during peak stop and frisk era/doctrine.

What I remember most was how routine it all was for everyone involved. Driver would sometimes pull the car up on kids drug raid style, swerving into the sidewalk. They'd turn on the high-beams and within a few words and seconds, it was a pop-up police lineup.

The only description of the suspects was this: a group of kids, one of them was wearing a bright hoodie. No one had even seen their faces. I was adamant about this as well but these cops didn't believe me. They instead kept asking me to "be real" with them and that I shouldn't "feel the need to be PC" around them. They acted as if I was self-censoring for virtue signalling instead of being honest. I just wanted them to log my IMEI and keep a lookout for my phone on CL/eBay because they had been doing press releases about it at the time. Apparently that was the less accessible option.

It scares me to think how much negative impact that one group of police might've had. When I think about how frustrated they became when I told them the truth over and over. Maybe they're used to more central park Karen type of crime reports.

Grew up in Harlem though not black.

While I'm sure there are good police out there, broken windows policies effectively act as a safe haven for a subset of cops to enforce arbitrary (usually racial) bias whenever they feel like it. There's no impetus to actually do the neighborhood policing they claim aspire to--just a universal excuse to allocate resources and attention in the name of making neighborhoods "safe".

Metric gaming is real. Ex. strapped for money or not meeting your quota? Stop some drunk teens on a weekend night before the end of your shift and you can make time and a half because your lookup is "still processing" well past 5 PM. End up writing a citation for the kids, tell yourself that they can afford it, tell them that they should be grateful, and wash your hands clean of it all because you're doing "neighborhood policing".

What if there's an actual crime to report in these neighborhoods?

Two squad cars pulled up to my building. The first thing said to me: "OK who was it? Black? Hispanic?"

They have me ride with them as they stopped every non-white group of kids, at least 30 over the course of ~2 hours despite my repeated remarks that no one had actually seen the perpetrator(s). I wanted to back out at this point, but they had to have a case to justify their time. Frustrated, they took me back to the station and had me go through a photo book of juvenile delinquents in the neighborhood they had compiled. It was photos of entirely black and hispanic youth captioned by their name, address (at which they could be arrested), and some minor crime that was enough to put them in the book. They were practically begging me to just point out any dark face. I just wanted to report a stolen phone.

Used to be in the oil and gas space. One of the biggest issues with orphaned wells is that local enforcement is so comically lax.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/11/orphaned-oil-wells-...

For example, the article says PA has 200k abandoned wells, but the number is likely 500k-750k, according to Mary Kang's work. https://www.pnas.org/content/113/48/13636

Why you ask? There is NO required security for unconventional wells (most wells on the Marcellus) and only $25k required as a blanket security. You bet that that's going to be factored into the P/L. Abandoned wells are defined by the fact that there is no existing LLC left on the title.

http://iogcc.ok.gov/Websites/iogcc/images/Publications/2019%...

"The average cost per well ranged from $3,700 to $101,000, with most in the $10,000 to $80,000 range. The overall average for the states is $18,940."

What if you own a bunch of stripper wells like in PA? Well when they only produce <15bbl a day each for a short life time, why bother when you can dissolve eventually and start anew? If the PA DEP's permit surcharge is only $50-200, do you really think they'll make any progress?

I noticed that and I do think it is nice. I have to extract and transcribe long sequences, so it would be nice to have the audacity label track feature to bookmark/label a bunch of sections and then output them as individual files named by their label along with a .txt. This is audacity's format:

start end label_name

1.02302 2.23193 label_1

You could take it further and have some numeric labeling (audacity doesn't autofill) and that'd be even nicer. This would be super helpful for working with speech processing data. Regardless, keep up the good work!

This works if you're close enough to the rich farmer's markets and suburban customers around NYC.

Absolutely, or if you already have some sort of distribution in place. Non-essential workers have more time on their hands to go to these markets. These markets tend to sell better in wealthier areas to begin with and their customers, faced with fewer options online and at the supermarket, are willing to pay extra. I wonder if the markets in Elmhurst are as flooded with people.

A co-op I used to work for has trouble keeping up with their demand but mostly because they focused on supermarket distribution. It seems that farms with a semblance of a retail presence or trusted brand are doing well (e.g. Central Milling, these stalls). I have little sympathy for certain farms that are suffering right now (e.g. CAFO's). I do worry for the now unemployed workers that are not present in this article, the animals, and those in processing.

My experience was similar to the author's in that I grew up around family members who were in advanced stages. The possibility of inheritance stares you in the face whenever they're around.

If there was a conclusive test, I would definitely take it for the sake of future offspring. Otherwise, it would likely give me more anxiety than useful information.

The parent states:

"no evidence of efficacy" does not imply evidence of no efficacy, and in fact the uncertainty in this study is quite large. The sample size is small enough that it would be very hard for this study to detect the effect of hydroxychloroquine unless that effect is very, very large.

What you're saying might be correct but misses the point of the parent (and perhaps statistics) completely.

I'm so sorry for your loss.

Dementia and schizophrenia are present in my family as well and caring for those in the later stages has been really hard.

I found myself torn by the same question of whether to test for genetic predisposition. After reading The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee, whose author is in a similar position, I have found some comfort in deciding not to test for now. As he says in an NPR interview:

There's no one-to-one correspondence between a genome and the chances of developing schizophrenia. And until we can create that map - and whether we can create that map ever is a question - but until I - we can create that map, I will certainly not be tested because it - that idea - I mean, that's, again, the center of the book. That confines you. It becomes predictive. You become ... a previvor (ph). A previvor is someone who's survived an illness that they haven't even had yet. You live in the shadow of an illness that you haven't had yet.

https://www.npr.org/2017/05/12/528097708/the-power-of-genes-...

When you get around to milling the buckwheat, see if you can get some coarse ground flour from both the kernel and husk. With it you can make inaka (country style) soba, which is really quite special. Buckwheat makgeoli is also easy and tasty.

Hot water encourages hydration of the flour and gluten development, resulting in a more elastic/homogeneous dough. IMHO, the hottest water from the tap should be good enough for that purpose.

Norway is an outlier in that the Government Pension Fund Global was founded explicitly to avoid rent-seeking behavior and corruption. Every other system to date was initially created to facilitate the opposite, US included. How many oil companies have a council of ethics dictating conflicts of interest for investment?

What is also terrible is that many multinational resource giants (not just oil) actively encourage corruption in countries without stable governance, further advancing their resource curse.