384 karma · joined April 30, 2015
Storied Alaska wolf pack beloved for decades has vanished, thanks to hunting
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FYI: if you went to Denali NP, your chances of seeing a wolf used to be 50% or so. Now... the Park says 2-3%.
POCATELLO — The family of a teenage boy sprayed by a cyanide explosive that killed their dog is outraged they weren’t told the device was planted near their home.
M-44s are spring-activated devices that release cyanide when they are activated through upward pressure or pulling. The US Department of Agriculture uses the devices to control coyotes and other predators.
http://www.publiclandsranching.org/book.htm
"Welfare Ranching: The Subsidized Destruction of the American West"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Session_(computer_science)#Ser...
This existed since the Perl CGI times. "Bizarre practice", wow.
Soaking is a great idea if done carefully. There are several places in YNP where it is allowed, officially or semi-officially.
In fact, every time I visit Yellowstone NP (like 5 times a year) it strikes me how silly it is that people are kept and are happy to stay on boardwalks and paved roads. They might just as well watch the BBC documentary and save everyone the trouble. If you are outdoors you should hike, swim, wade and sense the warm thermal waters. YNP is the most regulated and civilized park I know. I think this is sad.
Driving to Yellowstone on an interstate is probably more dangerous anyway.
Personally I did not find distractions to be a problem and problem worked more hours from home than when in the office.
Another problem with working from home is lack of human interaction. After a few months you start to want to talk to people (other than your family).
The stories I hear about are very often the IT departments being outsourced. This will happen with or without H1-B. These jobs are being replaced because they are relatively low skill and easy to replace.
The whole narrative of low skilled and cheap foreign H1-Bs taking American jobs exists somewhere in a parallel universe. In reality, it is hard to find even simply qualified people, regardless of their origin.
So, stop whining and leave H1-B alone, or better increase the cap, like the article suggests. The real danger is your job simply going overseas and being done remotely.
That's the economy. The geography is not favorable either. Salt Lake sits in a bowl surrounded by dark hills with little vegetation. The hills are all dug by mines and open pits. They have the whole range ("on the other side") that is essentially one big mine. The winter is cold and the temperature inversion traps cold air in the bowl and the air quality becomes worst in the nation (you can't even run outside). There's no chinook winds in winter, so it's colder than the other side of the Rockies.
The political landscape is very bleak. This is the most conservative state in the nation. Utah hates their environment so much, that they are working on shrinking or destroying several National Monuments (Escalante and Bears Ears). Their congressmen are loathsome Trump toads like Chaffetz (who investigated Park Service for making a folder with maps for a new monument, but refused to investigate anything about Trump).
The anti-environment stance in Utah has become so bad, that the Outdoor Retailer Show (the prime event for multi-billion outdoor industry) has left Salt Lake. Patagonia, Arcteryx and many others initiated it.
The only redeeming quality in Utah is the ski areas nearby. 15 miles vs 40-60-70 in Colorado. And the snow is better.
BTW, the Salt Lake is empty in winter, in prime ski season. Never seen motels and hotels so empty and so cheap. Good for skiing, not good for the economy.
Mormons are nice people for the most part.
I have worked for a number of old generation US companies and some were a part of the military-industrial complex. The employee population in them was significantly biased to the right (white, male, middle aged), up to the point that it would be "Trump crowd" today. Yet, I have never heard anything like this. Uber as any other tech company is full of younger and more liberal people. So this particular allegation (open expressions of racism towards Asian Americans) just seems extremely unlikely.
Unless... Well, there are indeed some countries that are culturally very casually racist. Ex-USSR comes to mind. Yet, even ex-USSR crowd is not that stupid and by now there enough self awareness to not say things like this out loud.
This is fishy.
In fact, once you start to service your car, that's where the problems start. We are not paying enough for mechanics to pay attention or care. The cars are not always designed for serviceability, some things can simply never be put back together the way they were done in the factory. There are no shops, official or not, that will use the recommended by vendor procedures or swap out all the required parts when doing some work.
Modern Japanese cars seem to last quite fine with zero service (again beside oil changes, brakes, fluids and such) for 200K+ miles/15+ years, after which they are worth so little and work costs so much that donating to NPR is the only practical option.
The Americans is a cool show, but the real life illegals could not fool anyone.
These days Russia probably has no need for this type of presence, since there are enough Russians living in the US and enough of them support Putin that a small percentage may choose to work as spies. Same for China.
Another interesting detail that came out of the 2010 illegal bust was that America is so diverse and people are so respectful of privacy, that one of the spies was doing just fine with an American name ("Jack Ryan" or "Patric Foley" or something like), fully American "legend" and a heavy Russian accent. People wondered but nobody asked any questions.
P.S. And who needs spies when you can have a whole administration? :)