crackercrews

That might fly in temperate parts of California, but it sure doesn't work in places with less pedestrian-friendly weather.

I know where to stop. I stop before the crosswalk What is less clear is what the word intersection means in a technical sense.

Complicated or ambiguous rules are a part of life. If the idea is to get rid of anything that requires lots of rules, then we'd all still be on foot. No cars, no horses, no bikes. Would that be a net improvement?

> designed with cars in mind, not human beings

This is a bad faith framing. The cars are driven by humans. Or in the case of autonomous driving, are driving humans around.

I've come up to plenty of lights that had the pedestrian signal lit even though there were no pedestrians. This happens during the day and at night, and is frustrating. Just happened the other day when I was driving around midnight. Not a pedestrian in sight!

The second car definitely entered on yellow. It doesn't matter if they could have stopped. They have the right to enter on yellow.

The first car passed the first line when the light was yellow, but not the second line. The area in between is the crosswalk. I can't tell if "enter the intersection" means "enter any part of the area past the line where you're supposed to stop" or "enter the part past the crosswalk, where the roads actually intersect".

Does anyone know what the rule is?

The VP famously used it half a dozen times in this short clip. [1] It was apparently well-known enough of a term that she didn't define it.

IIRC usage didn't really drop off until 2020 or after. That was when conservatives started using the term in a negative way and progressives abandoned it.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53A6wcgbxEM

Can also be helpful for names that are commonly male or female. Or foreign names. But there's not really a need to list multiple pronouns like "they/them/theirs", is there? Doesn't "they" say it all?

Only would make sense when it's "she/they" or similar. Otherwise it's just redundant.

The article has been updated with several edits. It no longer claims that CA fast food employment rose at a faster rate than the nationwide average. This drastically undercuts the claim that the new law didn't hurt employment. All it shows is that employment continued to go up at a time when it was going up faster in other states.

I wonder if they would have run the article had they known these facts all along. It seemed like interesting new perspectives when I first read it. But now it seems very weak compared to the opposing perspectives.

Alternate perspective:

https://reason.com/video/2024/12/19/no-californias-20-minimu...

Is this an opinion piece or news? It's categorized as "ideas" at the top of the page. I do not know what that means. But the advocacy at the end makes it seem not like straight news.

Especially when some other outlet reports "Scientific American says XYZ". Readers will absolutely treat this as if there are scientific underpinnings. They will give it more credence than a regular opinion piece. The vast majority of them will never know it was even an opinion piece in the first place.

I would guess that if you asked 100 random people who had heard of Scientific American, many/most would say that SA publishes science and has no Opinion section. Before this dustup, I would have been in that camp.

> by publishing these opinion pieces, they implicitly support them

This would seem to be true if they tend to run opinion pieces that are all from one "side". If they ran pieces that espouse conflicting viewpoints, it would not imply that they support all of the opinion pieces they publish.

From the look of it, they stick to one team. They wouldn't be taking this heat if they had a broader diversity of thought.

> Did you do any research on this or just throwing out random guesses?

As I said, I said it was a guess. I tried chatgpt, but no help there. I was hoping that people here who are more regular SA readers than me would have a sense of this.

It is well-known that people do not discern reporting and opinion coverage. IMO this barrier is exacerbated in scientific publications, where science-like language is used throughout. It gives the sense that "science" is behind the opinion.

This may not sway science-savvy readers of the magazine, but when it is reported elsewhere ("Scientific American magazine says XYZ"), it surely misleads people. I'd rather science magazines stick to science, but that's just me.

Why does a scientific magazine have an Opinion section in the first place? Has it always? I would guess the number of Opinion pieces has gone up dramatically in the last decade.

The funniest part was when she claimed the posts "do not reflect my beliefs". Her allies seem to know that isn't true. On BS there are plenty of congratulations for her willingness to say what so many others are thinking, etc.

1: https://www.npr.org/2024/11/15/nx-s1-5193258/scientific-amer...

I used the plural. Have there ever been any NBA teams with more than one Asian on them? Certainly not starters.

If end users can't access the model without going through the prompt system then that distinction doesn't matter.

There's a difference between inserting bias and allowing a real-world pattern to exist in AI. There may be reasons to dislike these real-world patterns, but that doesn't mean that allowing them to exist in AI is inserting a bias.

For example, if you ask AI to write a realistic story about an NBA team, and it comes back with a team with stereotypically Asian named players, that would be unrealistic. If it came back with a team with stereotypically Black named players, that would be fine. Does it reflect a real-world pattern? Yes. But not changing the algorithm to generate diverse names isn't inserting bias. It's letting AI reflect the real world, as it exists.

Good question. For a start, don't pretend that Nazi soldiers were a multiracial bunch. And don't do whatever Google did to generate clearly-incorrect output like this.

> I think a lot of our current problems, especially wealth inequality, racism, and wars

How are "dreamers" who see their own vision driving racism? We're talking about jobs and entrepreneurship here. In that context how has someone's vision been the driver of racism?

What's the point of a time of use plan if it only varies 4 cents? Does that change behavior?

Please name someone who is remotely close to Ronald Reagan's politics and who is in charge in California. The left is in charge. They have a supermajority.

Batteries charged by natural gas?

What is the current composition of the city council? Are any of the members actually conservative, or just not-progressive? Why do you think things are so bad in the PNW compared to other places, if not the governance?

California said they want no ICE vehicle sales by 2035 or something. They're also restricting ICE 18 wheelers. This has a huge impact on the viability of manufacturing these products for nationwide purchase. My guess is the goals will not be met. California may even have a backlash. But in the meantime markets will have been collateral damage.

Other states can free-ride off of some of these innovations. But we also have to put up with the ways in which California regulations regarding fuel efficiency or whatever else hurt our markets. It's not clear that California's subsidies outweigh these effects.

I hear it is 2x to 3x that much depending on time of day in Santa Clara. Also, people built solar when there were different rules. The new rules make it much less advantageous.

People are leaving California because it's too expensive. It's nice to internalize externalities. But if the result is that people leave then it's not really solving the problem. You've just shifted the emissions to Texas. Same for manufacturing that goes to China.

They use natural gas to charge up their batteries. [1] This is a different use case than California.

1: https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-storage/texas-wi...

What parts pay normal rates? Are they heavily dependent upon solar, wind, and batteries? Or are they using gas or nuclear?

This probably includes states with abundant hydro power. That's a much cheaper reliable source of renewable energy.

Doesn't California pay way more for energy than other states? Not sure it makes sense to look at what they're doing and call it the future. It would be nice if it were free but the cost is something like double neighboring states.