gsk22

> Not only is it thinkable, it could be done responsibly, today.

How?

You have a metro area of 1.3 million which is totally economically dependent on the river. A huge volume of freight moves through the delta daily. Billions of dollars of port infrastructure have been built in New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

Even disregarding the social cost -- which would be huge, given the high levels of poverty in New Orleans -- the pure economic cost would quickly rack into the tens or hundreds of billions. And tens of billions more would be required to make the new course navigable, rebuild port infrastructure, build new cities to serve the port, relocate workers from other parts of the country, etc.

And even then the river could just change its course again in two years or twenty or fifty.

I assume you're referring to the Old River Control Structure?

I know it's a controversial project, but the alternative -- to let the Mississippi divert itself away from New Orleans and Baton Rouge -- would be an unthinkable economic (and social) catastrophe. So I don't think it can be chalked up to mere incompetence.

(Yes, I know and agree that the ORCS has been environmentally destructive. But what's a workable alternative?)

Even the assertion that humans aren't naturally anything is absurd. We're naturally many things: social, food-motivated, curious, horny. Those traits are not cultural, and are common to humans as far back as we can trace (many shared with our ape ancestors as well).

Surely there are trees smaller than that, unless they just pop out of the ground 40 feet tall?

> On the contrary, I find it immensely irritating when others change/delete their messages

And yet, you edited your comment. How irritating :)

When were we ever talking about flow restrictors?

You were defending a market-based solution to water usage, which I asserted would be inequitable and therefore immoral.

Flow restrictors are pretty anti-market, and I think they're a great solution to penalizing those who repeatedly break the rules.

For other natural resources, sure. But without water humans _die_. That's not subjective.

Markets solve problems efficiently, but not equitably. In the case of water, an equitable solution is a moral prerogative, no?

How is that related? That book is about educational policy, not student mental health?

Or YouTube? The homepage and literally every video are full of recommendations.

Weird, I've seen some of those exact names on delivery apps in Minneapolis.

Ghost kitchen chain?

Well if you want to follow that line of argument, the Supreme Court is irrelevant since the executive branch or military can just choose to ignore its rulings.

But assuming the rule of law still exists, there is no way the Supreme Court would be able to "interpret" the Constitution to allow amendments in another way. The Constitution is very explicit about the amendment process, and it has been performed by that process 27 times to date. No way to "interpret" your way out of that.

(OK, yes, I know constitutional conventions are another route. But that has never been tried.)

All I meant is the only way we would allow our water to be taken to feed unsustainable growth in the West is if it was taken by force.

> cant your government just change it?

Short answer: no. The federal government (Congress) can propose amendments, but ratification requires the approval of a 2/3 majority of the 50 states' legislatures (38/50).

And remember that in the US, the governments of each state are not just sub-divisions of the federal government, but totally distinct entities with their own constitutions, legislatures, elections, etc. The federal government has no direct control over the states, and thus can not force them to approve an amendment.

So, to change the US Constitution, 39 separate governments need to agree, and that's a pretty high bar.

Some of those are fair, but he loses a lot of credibility by comparing an opinion article and a news article as evidence of the NY Times distorting the facts to fit some preconceived narrative.

It's hard to see that as an innocent mistake; rather, it seems in this case HE is distorting the facts to fit HIS narrative.

On the flipside, I wish I lived in the EU so there would be rules about what your company does with my data.

I don't know why anyone besides company owners would disagree with data practices laws.

> It's very nature is without-meaning and without-originality.

That's a pretty bold claim. What are humans but statistical models that generate based on pre-existing training -- and yet, are humans not with-meaning and with-originality?

Of course, human brains are some large order of magnitude more complex than the neural nets that underlie most AIs, but we can already see areas where these "simplistic" AIs outperform humans on specific tasks. So what prevents the arts from being one of those areas? If not now, in some not-too-distant future?

Isn't every "new style" just a novel combination of pre-existing concepts? Nothing new under the sun and all that.

Either way, I feel like your view is an exhaustingly pessimistic take on AI-generated art. I mean, sure, most of what DALL-E generates is pretty mundane, but other times I have been surprised at how bizarre and unique certain images are.

You seem to imply that because an AI is not human, its art is not imbued with meaning or originality -- but I find that an AI's non-human nature is precisely what _makes_ the art so original and meaningful.

That's fine for you, the adult, but the kids are gonna wanna go to Disney.

I remember going to the state fair growing up, and it was excruciatingly boring waiting for the adults to finish looking at cows and trinkets. Whereas our family's trip to Disney was tailor-made for kids from start to finish, and honestly features pretty prominently among my favorite all-time memories.

> Substitute 'Nazi pride' (whatever the hell that actually means) with 'being black' and tell me you still support this.

I mean, the difference is right there: one is an ideology, while the other is a state of being. Being a Nazi is a choice; being black is not. Seems pretty reasonable to me to say you can turn people away based on their convictions, but not their immutable characteristics.

Which question in the parent are you even responding to?

Ctrl-F "miracle" 0 results. Kinda feels like you're the one exaggerating...

Of course he shouldn't get 100% of the credit, or perhaps even a majority of the credit, but it's clear from the article that the project was languishing when he took the job, and he quickly made several improvements to get it back on track.

> However, Slack isn't that much better. It still gaslights Firefox users and tells them their browser is not supported.

Where do you see that? I exclusively use Firefox and have never seen such a message from Slack.

Unless you outer join, in which case NULL values pop up out of thin air...

> I do have a solution to this conundrum - I think we should give leaders a bonus that is a percentage of savings. For example, if an agency has $200 million budget, give the director 10% of all money saved every year. So if they successfully shrink their budget by $10 million, give them a $1 million bonus.

Wouldn't that just incentivize individuals to gut their agencies for personal profit? The day after a rule like that was put in place, the FDA would stop regulating every drug just so the director would get a $30m payout.

Also, with inflation (especially high as it is now), why would we ever expect an agency's budget to shrink a meaningful amount? Surely we would expect an 8% increase in every agency's budget just to maintain the status quo.

Isn't an expanding regulatory state an inevitability as population growth explodes and companies gain ever-greater power?

More people and more powerful companies means more abuses of power, which we solve (or try to solve) with regulations. And deregulation is often a simple power grab by unscrupulous companies with the help of crony politicians.

These aren't universal truths, but I think it does start to explain why regulations expand more than they contract.

Not as of 4 months ago: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-approves-50-billi...

> That's a bit different than claiming time theft, isn't it? That's more of a suspicion that someone couldn't possibly be doing a good job if their attention is split.

The reason employers would not approve isn't because the employee's attention is split, but because the employee would not be meeting the conditions of employment!

40 hours is the commonly accepted definition of "full time" in the US, and this is often written into employment contracts as well. Additionally, employers generally have expected working hours where the employee is available for meetings, mentoring, pair programming, etc.

So, how can you fulfill the expectations of multiple "full time" jobs while only putting in the time for one?

You can still "double-bill" in an exempt position.

Most employment contracts I've seen stipulate an expected work week of 40 hours. If I sign 3 contracts like that, now I would need to work 120 hours to fulfill the obligation. And as long as someone collects the paychecks from all 3 jobs without fulfilling the contractual requirements of those jobs, well, that is sort of the definition of theft. Money gained without performing the work necessary to earn it.

Are you really claiming that all 3 companies would have approved the situation if they knew?

Of course not, which is why overemployed people hide this information from their employers.