gsk22

So the alternative is what?

This is a natural consequence of a two-party system: you will be forced to choose between two parties that both deviate from your political preferences. Casting a ballot for a third party, or abstaining from voting, are both effectively the same as voting for the party you hate the most.

You may feel some semblance of true choice by participating in primaries.

Otherwise, the only path to installing politicians you truly believe in is to change the system -- be it by reform or revolution.

Did he cheat at other games too? I knew of the Path of Exile 2 incident, but I'd hardly call that a zero-skill game.

The problem is Google's AI results get even simple factual questions wrong all the time.

Earlier today, I searched "pixel 10 wifi 7" because I was confused that GSMArena showed my Pixel 8 supports Wifi 7, but the Pixel 10 only Wifi 6. Gemini confidently claimed that the Pixel 10 does support Wifi 7 -- but that's not true at all. Only the Pixel 10 _Pro_ supports it, as I discovered when actually reading the non-AI search results.

And this is a question about a Google product!

> Libraries that were made independently usually fit together like a glove because they are all just maps/vectors in -> maps/vectors out.

This is also the biggest weakness of Clojure (IMO). When everything is "just data", you spend a lot of time digging deep in libraries trying to figure out exactly what shape the data should take. Additionally, the shape of input data is almost never validated, so you spend lots of time debugging nasty type errors far from the place where bad data entered the program.

There have been some abortive attempts at solving this with things like spec, Prismatic Schema, etc, but nothing that has taken hold like TypeScript did with JS.

I'm still waiting for my dream language with the flexibility and immutability of Clojure, but without the pain points of an anything-goes attitude towards typing and data shape.

This is so sad to read. Knowing that the people actively making every aspect of life more monetized and addictive are acutely aware of the harm they create, yet are motivated by such base selfishness that they can ignore all that for the paycheck.

To be fair, risk calculus does not appear to be this administration's strong suit.

I think you would be hard-pressed to find any human who has been 100 pounds overweight for any amount of time that doesn't have an obesity-related comorbidity.

Hypertension, sleep apnea, high cholesterol, etc are all common in the general population and exacerbated or even caused by the physical and lifestyle conditions that beget obesity.

If you haven't used it, how can you judge its quality level?

A top "5 in the world" city is obviously an outlier.

It seems self-evident that simply turning off street lights in the vast majority of cities will not cause them to become world-leading bastions of calm and safety.

That's heavily dependent on regional/cultural factors. Among a younger and (mostly) gayer demographic, the once-feared "C-word" is very commonly used, especially in its adjective form.

Physics is the poster child of a discipline that knows its foundations are wrong. Basically every physicist understands that our current theories are full of holes and a new way of thinking is needed. So I don't really buy the idea that physics in particular is stifled by a rigid adherence to the status quo.

Anyone from Portland who can explain the dirt/gravel roads shown in the Eastmoreland/Errol Heights area? For example, on Malden between 45th and 52nd.

Street View shows these are residential roads mired in mud and muck -- surprising for being in a built-up populated area of the city.

During a trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in my youth, we portaged through Party Lake. I am sad to report no revelry occurred.

However, Mud Lake definitely lived up to its name.

Right, I didn't mean to imply it was a US-only phenomenon -- plenty of countries have fundamental rights enshrined in their constitutions, with varying degrees of difficulty to amend. I was specifically responding to the claim about countries that instead have "hard to change" laws, since laws are typically much easier to repeal than constitutions.

> Many democratic countries have similar fundamental laws that are explicitly hard to change or bypass.

What exactly constitutes "hard to change"? In many countries, fundamental freedoms are regular legislation which can be overturned in the usual manner. Even a threshold of 2/3 or 3/4 to change is much easier to overcome than the federated constitutional amendment process in the US.

The snippet you quoted does not support that objection, though. It is clear from context that the "book bans" referred to are in the realm of public education.

I don't follow your objection. Banning books on sexuality from public schools threatens sexual education in those same schools. That is true even if individual parents can purchase such books for their children on the open market.

The point of universal education is to provide for all students, _especially_ those whose parents are unwilling or unable to provide a quality education independently.

> The drivers don't trust the apps, and the app doesn't trust the drivers, so the thing has to be held together by surveillance and micromanagement.

Exactly. And a large dose of gaming the system (or trying to), which reduces trust even further. Why play fair with an unaccountable algorithm?

Heat pumps are something like 5-6x as efficient as resistive electric heaters. So no surprise that your bill would be lower.

Of course, heating an entire house with (non-heat-pump) electric heat in a cold climate is kind of crazy. Natural gas is way way cheaper. But I've seen it in old houses here in the Upper Midwest, so it's not _too_ out of the ordinary.

Microbial growth on wood is really only an issue when conditions are right -- namely, when the wood is wet for an extended period of time.

Washing wood utensils immediately after use, with some soap if needed, and drying quickly and completely, should eliminate 99%+ of the risk.

The "decent reasons" just sounds like snobbery or a reason to feel superior. Cars are cars, whether manual, automatic, CVT, whatever. Why should bikes be any different?

I'm a big fan of two-wheeled transport in all its forms, but wow is there a prevailing toxic attitude among a large group of "true motorcycle" riders. Instead of welcoming people into the fold, it's just tribalism -- you drive a scooter, you're not a true biker; you ride a cruiser, true bikers only drive super sports; you drive an e-bike, but only loud pipes make a true rider!

Except scooters are literally motorcycles? From Wikipedia:

> A scooter (motor scooter) is a motorcycle with an underbone or step-through frame, ....

Scooters are often legally motorcycles as well. For example, I had to get a motorcycle endorsement on my license for a scooter I owned, because the engine displacement was too large for the extremely restrictive "moped" category in my state.

Just because something is obvious or inevitable doesn't preclude it from being newsworthy.

It almost makes it more newsworthy: "look, it finally happened!"

Sure. I was necessarily speaking in generalities. There are always exceptions.

To add to this, all it takes is one piece of legislation or one court order for the private registry to end up in the government's hands.

Gun owners who fear a government-run registry should fear a privately-run one just as much, if not more.

The interesting thing is that some of the "new" taboo words are only taboo for certain groups of people.

The N-word has been reclaimed by people of color, but remains taboo for others to say.

The F-slur is in the process of being reclaimed by gay people, but remains taboo for everyone else.

I can't think of any parallels in past English curse words -- "fuck" was taboo no matter who you were.

Setting aside gerrymandering (which is a huge issue), the reelection rate doesn't tell the whole story. By what margin are House candidates typically winning? I'm sure there are plenty of landslides, but also lots of districts that were decided by a few percent -- and those who don't vote could be a deciding factor in those races if they chose to vote.

Or if we analyze this from an opportunity cost perspective, IMO voting is always the right choice. Maybe there's an 80% chance your vote "doesn't matter", but the cost is only 15 minutes of your time every 2 years. Isn't the 20% worth the risk? (OK, I am lucky enough to live in a state where voting lines are short. I understand it takes more than 15 mins for some people.)

> I'm right eye dominant, though, so I throw, swing, shoot, use scissors, play instruments and use a mouse right handed.

Dominant eye and hand don't have to match; in fact, they often don't. To quote Wikipedia:

> ...the side of the dominant eye and the dominant hand do not always match. This is because both hemispheres control both eyes, but each one takes charge of a different half of the field of vision, and therefore a different half of both retinas

The presidency is not the only election on the ballot.

And if you ask people who don't vote why not, very few of them are going to mention the electoral college. I would wager most people who don't vote couldn't even explain what the electoral college is.

This might work, but it also guarantees you will be first on the chopping block when layoffs come around. I have seen this happen first-hand multiple times: any employee with a special arrangement that doesn't meet what the executive team desires will be let go at the first chance, even if they are a huge asset to the company.

Not to say you shouldn't try that approach. Just that you'll have less job stability.