I had a conversation with a friend. A well educated friend, who has devoted his life to the cause

He thought he was fighting for his children or grandchildren. I told him no, we’ve been saying that for two generations - this is our problem. We will feel the hurt. Your water supply is not guaranteed, our food so supply could run dry one year. Our parents were told this was a future generation problem - we’re that generation… This is already happening

In the US, in the EU - some places are already feeling it, but we will all feel it soon

Uh huh

It’s more than that - he failed to create PayPal so his group bought a competitor, he didn’t found Tesla or spaceX - he claimed he did, then reached settlements with the actual founders to not contest his claims. He did start the boring company. It didn’t get off the ground because he can’t build a team

NASA doesn’t have effective control of their budget anymore. Congress holds the purse strings and uses them like a harness

NASA gets funding to do something - like go to the moon, or track CO2 emissions. But it comes with strings - sometimes you have to build a certain component in a certain congressional district, sometimes Congress chooses the design you have to use

It’s a problem of politics and corruption. When the public supports NASA, they have more autonomy. When NASA gets a blank check, they do more with it - reusable rockets aren’t a new idea, and when they cancelled the shuttle program NASA had brain drain. Some of those people founded spaceX - Elon didn’t start it, he came in when they were getting off the ground, just like with Tesla

That’s not what arbitration is. This doesn’t stop valve from reaching a settlement, it stops them from using fake privately funded bench trials

Binding arbitration means the results are legally binding, non-binding arbitration means a judge needs to approve the arbitration results before it’s final. Sometimes it’s with an off duty judge, sometimes anyone can be the arbiter

Regardless, on one side you have a repeat customer, on the other you have someone who will probably never be back - there’s a built in conflict of interest

I read the Bible as a child, because I believed what l was taught.

Now, Jesus is my one and only role model - Jesus sacrificed his life to spread a message that is only more valid 2k years later

Jesus was the shit. He’s my only hero - everyone else I’ve ever looked up to let me down… Jesus died so he would never be the villain.

He never needed to be magic - he was just in harmony with the creator. Be was in harmony with existence lol. His every appearance was to deliver a message

His message was bastardized. Read the new testament - without the assumption of magic. Read it for yourself - as a child, I got through it all on the toilet. - and I read it cover to cover, you can read the new testament in few hours

Just gonna say, I find this kind of thing adorable

I will relentlessly make fun of them, but it’s endearing and I’ll go off on anyone else making fun of them

That’s it exactly. You’re asking why they didn’t pick a greener car. I’m telling you the problem is that you need to drive across Los Angeles

My mom likes the idea of hybrids, but is scared to even rent an electric car because she’s heard things like “range anxiety” and doesn’t understand the technology. I’ve explained the technology, the availability of charging stations, and the options for charging at home. We ended the conversation with her saying she’s had her car for a decade, and doesn’t see the need for a new car - I told her “absolutely, your car has good fuel efficiency and safety features, there’s no reason to get a new car”

The waters are muddy by design, but the true problem is car centric infrastructure. Electric cars aren’t a solution - they’re a lesser evil. My mom cares - not because she understands, but because she trusts me and my siblings to understand things she doesn’t. We all are much more passionate about health and climate change, she just does the best she knows how. When we all told her “it’s bad to eat meat everyday, let alone every meal”, she listened. If I took a stand and told her to get an electric car, I could wear her down - but driving her car into the ground is better. She recycles less because I’ve taught her what can’t be recycled - recycling is a lie, “if in doubt throw it out” is good public communication

Our choices are limited. People overwhelmingly care - they also have to live their lives. Choices won’t make a dent in climate change - it’s a systematic issue that must be solved systematically

I’d argue it’s the opposite. NFT’s are an actually useful technology - it nicely creates a distributed open leger to track digital ownership. But the technology was basically used to run a scam before anything else - now every use of it has to convince people it’s not a scam before you can get to the idea itself

These people are literally just taking money to release pollution and telling customers that it’s fighting X units of global warming.

They’re not testing the technology - there will be no measurable results at this kind of scale. They’re not perfecting the technology - they’re literally just releasing it out in the desert

This is just a scam - I don’t think it’s a particularly good concept to start with. But even assuming this is a good approach, they’re not boosting the technology, they’re using it illegally and irresponsibly

Think of it like this - companies are contaminating everything with lead, because it’s slightly cheaper for them

People get concerned for good reason

So some companies pay to make lead free products and sell them at a premium. They put it all over the packaging

Other companies see this, and start putting it on their packaging, despite still having an unsafe lead content

All of them do media campaigns and lobby the government, further confusing the issue

People need to buy food, and are working with limited information. They don’t have the time to educate themselves over every purchase - you’d need experts dedicated to testing and compiling the data

So, for the good of everyone (the companies included) we made that. You can go to the grocery store and buy food, confident it doesn’t contain large amounts of lead.

People definitely care, but systematic problems can only be solved systematically

I eat the joints of bones - further up they tend to splinter and taste more chalky, but the joints are delicious and satisfying once you get past the ick factor. I thought even the cartilage was gross as a kid, but at some point instincts kicked in and my body told me it was a great idea. I knew marrow was nutritious and some people ate it, but I still don’t find it that appealing - joint bones are one of the most satisfying things ever though, I highly recommend gnawing on the end of a chicken wing

Just because of your comment, I grabbed some tree bark to try… Cinnamon sticks. And holy shit, I just wanted to try it out, but I couldn’t stop. It just splinters at first, but once you start grinding the flavor kicks in and it just melts - 10/10, it’d be easy to eat enough to make yourself sick, but I’m going to be trying this again

And FWIW, I’ve never had a cavity. I brush my teeth every morning but otherwise only if I feel I need to. I slightly cracked a tooth once, but my dentist was great and told me to use fluoride toothpaste and hold off on a crown - it’s been a decade and it hasn’t bothered me in years

Trust your body. Yes, gnaw on bones and tree bark - not all of it, your body knows what is edible and what isn’t. If your instincts say “gnaw on this”, and it’s not made of plastic or metal, give it a try… If you take it slowly, what’s the worst that can happen? Probably a tummy ache

I really don’t get how people so easily accept this. This is an engineering problem, not a law of the universe… How would someone possibly prove something is impossible, particularly while the entire branch of technology is rapidly changing?

We can it climate change because all we know is that the balance of the Holocene is over

It will be less hospitable to humanity because we’ve long lived in ideal conditions. Will it benefit Canada and Russia? I’d argue “no”, because the polar vortex is no joke. Stable climate is good, unpredictable climate is bad

I don’t agree with that at all - that’s how art works. You take ideas and techniques and copy them, adding your own twist in the process. Art is about more than the aesthetic - the backstory is what gives it value. Stealing that is plagiarism, everything else is artistic inspiration… If you add nothing new you’ve made a cheap knockoff, which is very different from plagiarism

Palworld has its own lore, its own type system, its own battle mechanics, and as far as gameplay it’s nothing like Pokemon. All it has in common is many creatures you capture in a ball, with designs largely based on IRL animals and Japanese folklore. They’ve made something new no matter how you slice it

No, no… That’s how they got into statehood in the first place, you can’t be taken over by billionaires if they already own everything. And there was nothing defacto about it, I’m pretty sure Dole kidnapped a princess and everything

…are you implying that mass gas chambers aren’t an effective way to kill people?

The way I see it, it’s just a form of therapy. People don’t walk in and sit silently, they talk about their problems and get vague reassurance that everything is going to be alright - or occasional advice when they’re way out of bounds

I don’t think it’s unethical to do that, so long as you operate in good faith with good intentions

Yeah, it sounds great, I want this to be true…

This is just unbelievable. I don’t believe it. Numbers are too easy to play with, you can make projections or look at rate of growth rate and say that’s a tipping point. I want to see CO2 emissions diving on a bar graph, because physics doesn’t use creative statistics

I loved that the Gameboy was designed to survive a fall from the average shirt pocket. I love that the Wii controllers pushed gyroscopic technology so far that it allowed the explosion of quadcopters. I loved the idea of 3d through rapid aspect switching.

I loved when Nintendo pushed boundaries, not just through hardware but through gameplay. I enjoy and appreciate the Nintendo polish

I agree with your sentiment wholeheartedly - good gameplay is much more important than flashy graphics. But the polish was nice - pushing boundaries is what made the difference

Oh, I said that as a programmer all right. And that’s how I’ve approached AI - I ran it locally, and kept poking it until I began to get a feel for it. Until I could see patterns. Until I could put together a methodology

They exist. Word choice matters greatly. Shorter is better. Varied word choice is better. Less “orders” is better. Strange combinations of tokens can convey something in non-obvious ways. They all seem to have a very strong attachment to the name “Luna”

They’re as deterministic as any software is, if you run it in the same state with the same input you’ll get the same result, sometimes with minor wording changes

And software isn’t as deterministic as we pretend it is. Programming doesn’t require it either, luckily. Every program you’ll ever write is interacting with complex systems no one fully understands, and it will sometimes act unpredictably

Programming is about finding patterns in the chaos, then using them to get the result you want. You need consistency - not deterministic outcomes. You can program with anything you can find the patterns in - even human behavior or the physical world. You can program yourself.

You can treat AI like something unknowable, or you can find the patterns and put them in your toolbox