TheAdamAndChe

Current evidence shows that Mars was habitable and had a lot of water for billions of years. It was only after their magnetosphere disappeared that their atmosphere got stripped away from solar winds. I could easily see complex forms of live adapting and surviving from that time.

We also assume that the 'fungus' seen here has any genetic similarity to fungus on Earth. It could be quite different, only seeming similar because of convergent evolution[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution

Few areas pay as well, and someone's gonna do it. This is a rational way to maximize his capacity to influence his world as much as possible.

Let's not blame engineers for what is effectively a political issue. If ads are an issue, let's get the law to handle it.

> We don't blame current political decisions (including stuff like what Isis did) purely on circumstances.

People who study politics absolutely use circumstances to explain political outcomes. Historians discuss the economic impacts of WW1 when talking about the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany. People discuss the complex political history of the middle east and its long history of resisting superpowers combined with the power vacuum when the US left the region when discussing the rise of ISIS. Power vacuums and food/water scarcity are often the root cause of political instability.

Crazy individuals do crazy things, but those crazy individuals gaining power is always a result of the political system in place at the time.

Wrongness has no bearing on the strength or stability of a nation. There are plenty of strong authoritarian regimes around the world. Political structures care about stability and relative strength, not morality.

None of what I stated contradicts what you said. But limited resource availability and geopolitical instability made that political decision to remove slavery much more difficult than it is today.

> it was a time when all major powers used slaves

This is really key here. There's a trend to hold people of the past up to standards of the present, but the world was extremely different then. Before the advent of farming machines and nitrogen fixation, labor dictated the power of a nation, labor relations and unions weren't a big thing, and a huge majority of the population worked in agriculture. Because there were no nuclear weapons capable of destroying the entire planet, superpowers commonly fought for resources, meaning the surviving nations had to be strong. The world is different.

> It took me years of being outside of SV to realize how brainwashed I was by comparing myself to the media and people around me.

The media doesn't represent normal people, and there are different regions of the country with very different norms, cultures, and beliefs. I know we are social animals heavily influenced by those around us, but it's also important to reflect and try to determine if those influences are right or productive.

Humans only discovered the utility of carbon-based energy stores(oil) a couple hundred years ago, and already we've landed on the moon, harnessed nuclear fuel for various purposes, and purposefully fixed nitrogen en masse to allow our population to explode. We only recently connected several billion people on a common communication platform(internet) and discovered how to modify our genetic code in any arbitrary way we want.

Do you honestly think that our current limitations will be the limitations of our species going forward? Imagine a species that has been undergoing such technological advancement for 10,000 years(a geologic blink of an eye) instead of 200. Even if we are fundamentally limited by the speed of light, stasis technologies and resistance to radiation exposure could be developed that make interstellar travel possible. Our closest star is only a few lightyears away.

I'm absolutely convinced that Tor was compromised around late 2012 or early 2013. It used to be the wild west on steroids. You could find deviant material everywhere and had to do no digging. Then the dominoes started falling around the time of the Silk Road shutdown. Hosting companies, hidden wiki's linking to twisted stuff, video sites, bomb-making sites, drug sites all shut down in swift succession.

My experience convinced me that any network that advertises itself as anonymous and is actually anonymous will swiftly be filled with deviant material. That will be my litmus test for anonymous networks going forward.

Here[1] is one, Ctrl+F "our traits and abilities tend to be distributed normally, in a bell shaped curve."

[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-therapy/2011...

It's a generalization about social trends. These traits often show on a bell curve, with some outliers on each side, but those outliers don't mean that the trend isn't real.

Same as anything: tell her not to, teach her why it's important, and tell her that there will be repercussions and a loss of trust if she is caught breaking the rules, then kind of keep an eye on her. A certain level of deviance is normal and expected in children, and she will eventually be caught and punished.

My goal as a parent isn't to enforce a way of life with an iron fist, but to guide her and shape the way she lives her life while letting her learn about living it herself. I could install apps that monitor her usage, but I want to give her a sense of autonomy and freedom within a stable environment with clear expectations.

> The problem is eventually she'll be left out if she's the only one of her peers without social media.

My thinking here is this: its not necessarily the social communication aspect of social media that's the issue, it's the engagement-driven algorithmic feed that presents the addiction potential. Their feed becomes tuned to whatever gets them hooked, even if it's vapid or harmful. Because of this, I'll still let her text friends and probably use Snapchat or other IM apps. But anything that uses feeds is a hard "no."

It still leaves the potential for bullying, but that potential will always exist.

What makes this so common in Asia? The vast majority of undocumented people in the US is from illegal immigration. Is that what drives it there too?

What I see very commonly(and what I experienced growing up) is that kids nowadays are given very, very little autonomy nowadays. Kids are confined to a very small amount of space where they aren't allowed to play, explore, or be out of sight of a caregiver. At school, they are expected to behave like little adults. Rambunctiousness and energy are shamed. Socialization is relegated to a small period of recess or extracurriculars, both of which are monitored. Exercise isn't done on a regular basis. In this environment, it's natural for them to escape to a digital world where they can actually do what they want.

When I was a kid in such an environment, I played video games for hours and hours. I once stayed up 40+ hours playing GTA. When I moved out and controlled my own life, the appeal disappeared overnight.

With that said, there's definitely something to the claims that social media is addictive. Reddit had me hooked for years. They are like skinner boxes. But it's only part of the story, and different technologies will probably cause different outcomes and levels of addiction. I don't mind my kid playing a Switch, but I don't plan on letting her have a social media account.

The spike protein from the virus bands to ACE2 receptor, messing them up. The vaccine primes our bodies to attack the spike protein, preventing it from binding to ACE2 and thus preventing it from messing up ACE2 receptors.

I actually am not sure that this summer will be more violent in the US than last year, which was absolutely full of cultural and political stressors. The economy was massively shocked as the pandemic lockdowns caused people everywhere to modify their life, especially the lower class in dense urban environments. We had the most contentious election since the 1860's, which was prepended by country-wide riots and protests over police brutality and racial issues. Tribalism risked turning into sectarianism, and everyone I knew made plans in case widespread violence broke out.

Now, it's a completely different situation. The economy is swiftly recovering, and with so many people on unemployment still, the labor market is swiftly becoming tight, meaning lower class wages may spike soon. While the election was contentious, the leadership of the political parties have been focusing less on contentious social issues and more on infrastructure and fast economic recovery. The fringes of both parties have been tamped down. Masks and lockdowns are in the rear-view in most places, and everyone who wants a vaccine can get one(for the most part). I bet with this stability and increased hope will come a reduction in violence.

Have murders increased in other countries? That may hint whether it was caused by our unique stressors or if it was more generic.

When I used to complain about the dearth of jobs in my region of the country(Midwest US), people would often say something along the lines of "well duh, the jobs are in SV and the coasts, you've gotta move." This means that I would have to move halfway across the country to one of the most expensive cities in the planet just to have an opportunity for a good job?

There's no way. My family is here. They don't work in tech, they couldn't afford the insane cost of living.

From a life sustaining perspective, the most important thing the ocean does is absorb CO2 through oceanic churning and phytoplankton. Some might say that the ocean currents are important too because it transfers heat between the north and south, but it has stopped before and only caused greater temperature gradients, but life was still sustained.

How would undersea mining put any of this at risk?

It's also somewhat risky to focus your whole career on learning a product that a single company makes. In 10 or 20 years, it may be depreciated.

There are plenty of Crystal Reports professionals who found that their skills didn't transfer as the software declined.

So we're in agreement that regional cultural differences need to be embraced and allowed in the legal system. Good! Now what do we need to do to make this a reality in our justice system?

Why not just live in a state with more strict gun laws and let people of other states live like they want? As someone in the rural US, guns are part of my heritage. Police response times can be 40+ minutes in non-urban areas, and removing legal guns would just make us vulnerable.

> It's not enough to produce something objectively good?

Sure, as a hobby. But as a full time job orchestrating such a massive project while being a public figure? That's a bigger ask that is better justified when rewarded though other means too.

In our economic system, those who produce the most value to other people are able to eek out profits while still helping the purchaser. That incentivizes people to produce value and focus on things that help people the most. Linus undoubtedly has produced incredible value and efficiency gains for the world, and those who want to see such efficiency gains continue want people like him to be rewarded for their behavior.

But if it's completed late and over budget, your company won't get the bid in the future because of your soiled reputation as long as there are enough competitors. Hence the reference to markets.

This is called speculative investing(gambling) and happens in frothy markets. Such speculation occurs in bubbles, and they pop eventually. Its like a game of musical chairs: someone will be left out and hurt by it.

YouTube doesn't support the content creators I watch, they've mostly been demonetized or had their viewership hit by random algorithmic changes. I use patron or streamlabs to support the people who make what I like, not the monopolies who control the infrastructure and try to influence the overton window of society.

For those who don't want to support YouTube or Google, an app called NewPipe can be installed with F-droid that lets you watch videos without ads.

Dating apps and websites depend on proprietary technology, network effects, economies of scale, and branding in order to lead. As such, they are very prone to becoming monopolies, and a market leader wouldn't be likely to use someone else's SaaS app. I'm just not sure there is the demand for 1000 semi-large dating apps unless tech isolationism somehow becomes the norm, and it that happens then it would include SaaS isolationism.

> The obvious fix would be a permanent funding stream for the UN via its own taxes - say, for example, a 0.5% tax on all individual incomes (no matter if from employment or capital gains) of all membership countries

I wouldn't appreciate this at all. The UN isn't comprised of elected officials. Many of the members represent authoritarian regimes. I don't want them collecting taxes (and enforcing it) or making decisions for and around my country.

The original goal behind the UN's creation was to maintain lines of communication between superpowers during tense periods and to create basic standards like defining basic human rights. I would like that to remain its purpose.