ilinx

Which “liberals” are you talking about? My circle of leftists complained about the CIA just as much during the Obama administration.

I understand that some people have trouble apologizing to children, but could someone help me understand why? I’ve been a parent for almost a decade now, and I can’t count the number of important teaching and bonding moments that have started with me making a parenting mistake and apologizing for it. I rely on it pretty heavily to teach my kid about emotional regulation. It’s such an important opportunity to just throw away. Is it an ego thing? Do people struggle to see children as people? I promise those are good-faith questions. I know some people struggle more with that sort of thing, and that’s fine. We all have our strengths.

How much is that needed? There was very little text on those buttons to begin with. Are there significant cultural differences in the iconography associated with them?

Why not address the actual problem: ability to drive responsibly? Otherwise you’re just creating another privilege for the wealthy. Licensure is already an established practice.

Edit: I do want to clarify that I’m not entirely opposed to taxing them if needed. There should be fewer of those vehicles on the road. I’d just rather explore ways that don’t further exacerbate wealth inequality.

With Roku built in as well as whatever ad pipeline(s) the TV manufacturer wants. These days my AppleTV is allowed to talk to the internet. My television is not.

I submitted a request for exactly that to my city clerk a few days ago. They confirmed receipt from the clerk and the local PD, but still waiting for anything substantial.

I’m not sure how to say this, so please know that I’m not trying to downplay the experiences you’ve had or the strength of the people involved:

I don’t think it’s fair to characterize parents of special needs kids that way. I guarantee they are not happy as they meet every challenge, and I worry that claiming that they are could discourage people from looking for ways to help. I know you’re sharing a story about personal friends, and I absolutely believe that they are wonderful people. At the same time I’m reminded of when people referred to retail employees as “heroes” during Covid. Many people seemed to hide behind that sentiment so they could stomach forcing those employees to work in unsafe conditions. Most of those employees would absolutely not have been there if they could afford not to.

I’m not trying to judge you. It’s important to acknowledge and respect the strength that people bring to tough situations. I also think it’s important to spend the bulk of our effort on helping and preventing tough situations where we can. We just be very careful about implying that those people have some innate, uncommon strength. In reality many of them are in a tough spot and barely getting by, but putting on a brave face. Treating them as fundamentally better people can make them feel like failures when they eventually need help or are at their limit.

I’m realizing now that I’m probably projecting some personal baggage here, but I hope my intended message is in that rant somewhere.

It’s sad that pragmatically adjusting quotas is never the loudest argument in the room. I’m in favor of greatly increasing legal immigration, providing paths for safe work and citizenship (when that’s the goal). I’ll admit that my idea of an ideal system is probably not palatable for many. But if we could start from anywhere near a sane baseline, I’d understand wanting to gradually find sustainable quotas that take all factors into account. I’m done with purity tests and letting perfect be the enemy of good.

I suppose by “all factors” I mean all factors aside from exploitation and xenophobia, but I hope we could at least move the Overton window back that far.

It’s a cool concept, but I can’t imagine what would make me want to frequent a message board that was explicitly designed to give wealthy users more of a voice. The wealthy have enough ability to project their influence as it is. The idea is considerably too capitalistic for my taste.

I believe whoever solves the emotional dysregulation that leads to some persecution complexes will genuinely deserve a Nobel Peace Prize. While I doubt this will solve the problem completely, I do see potential for it to prevent discourse from spiraling quite as badly as it tends to.

I predict that a feature like this would probably chase off some undesirable community members, while genuinely helping some people improve their ability to engage in good-faith discussion and debate. And if it eases the burden on moderators and the community at large who currently police these things, it seems like a clear win. I’m sure it could be mis-calibrated to tone policing, but I’m not one to let perfect be the enemy of good.

That’s a solid point. I guess profiteering probably isn’t the best impulse.

Honestly it feels more like setting up a lemonade stand along a marathon route that goes right through our collective vegetable gardens. LLMs are on a quest to scrape and steal as much as they can with near complete impunity. I know two wrongs don’t make a right, but these ethical concerns seem a bit mis-calibrated.

I would argue that UPS has the right to know the location of its packages and trucks, but not its drivers. If a driver has to leave for a few hours for a family emergency, UPS no longer has the right to track that driver, as long as they are not using company equipment for travel.

My rule of thumb is that if you’re not measuring anything you’re not engineering. It’s not the whole picture, but to me the engineering part sometimes means being able to explain (and even quantify) why one solution is better than another.

I’ve been coaching my son’s team for the last four years, and this sounds like the breath of fresh air the program desperately needed. Keeping the kids engaged and invested has always been a struggle. Having distinct roles and more robust success criteria sounds like a great way to address that problem. Previous years have mostly centered around a very simple core project that essentially amounts to assembling a LEGO kit and adding a simple motorized part (e.g. making something spin). We usually finish that within the first couple weeks and then ditch the very tedious workbook the program provides.

I’ve been bringing in bins of my own Technic parts and some of Yoshihito Isogawa’s idea books[0]. I try to explain basic mechanical concepts like gears, levers, differentials, and rack and pinion steering. Then the kids explore and create a second project of their own. At the festival (non-competitive at the k-5 level in our area) we present both our projects side-by-side (usually trying to integrate them and stick within the overall theme). We’re the only team that does it that way, but I would much rather focus on inspiring the kids than coloring inside the lines.

My only concern is that making the final challenge more actively competitive will force us back into that limited situation. If the builds are too simple and the challenges too basic (which I expect, because the program leans toward expecting all teams to hit the mark) I doubt we would have the same freedom to expand on the program. Side by side competition is going to have more restrictions than a private presentation to a panel of judges.

On the whole, if this helps more kids stay engaged and having fun overall, I’m happy to figure out new ways to let the kids express themselves. This sounds like a positive change. Now I really hope our program leader lets me buy some of the old Spike kits.

[0] https://archive.org/details/legotechnicideab00isog

The former. I didn’t realize how few of my projects have even had an intentional architecture. So often they go from feature designs to mockups to tickets to code without any real discussion about how the pieces fit together. There’s certainly never been an attempt to create a common “language” that is shared across the org. On a project half the company might refer to a catalog item as a “product”, and their definition may or may not align with what another team refers to as an “item”. I’m starting to understand that situations like that are why everything gets so complicated.

I don’t understand why you’re bringing up Obama. Nobody is defending him, and I think you might be inferring some sort of tribalistic defensiveness without any evidence. I see that sort of thing a lot, and I’ve never understood it.

Please correct me if I misunderstood the point you were trying to make.

I buy mine from VCoins. They’re pretty inexpensive if you don’t need them certified or anything, and many sellers are very above board and professional.

Thanks for the recommendations! I’m actually getting to the end and wondered where to go next. Perfect timing! I’ll go ahead and order those today :).

> Where did you acquire cheap ancient coins? ebay? May be cool to get some for my dnd group

I bought most of mine on VCoins. The few I bought weren’t certified or anything, but they have lots of very well established sellers. I got a few bronze and silver coins from the Middle East and India. They were in good shape at about $10-20 US (plus international shipping). I also got some nicer Byzantine and Roman coins in the $50 US price range. I tried to group my orders from each seller to save on shipping. So far everything I’ve gotten is exactly as pictured, and the transactions have been very smooth. I got a couple more from a local dealer. The prices were a bit higher, but he was a lot of fun to talk to, which more than makes up for the price difference.

> requiring little to no government/regulatory involvement

I think you lose this battle as soon as you start providing residences to people. I’m not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure that once people are living and sleeping somewhere you’re subject to zoning laws and fire codes and stuff.

With that said, the current housing situation in the US is a mess, so I’m all for reform. I’d like to hear ideas too. I personally can’t think of a solution that sidesteps regulation without becoming a slum full of desperate people, though.

I’m reading Domain Driven Development and learning why so many of my projects have been tough to maintain.

I also recently learned that you can get ancient coins for very little money if you don’t care about resale value or need them to be in pristine condition. I bought some coins from kingdoms that I’d never heard of. Many are thousands of years old! It’s fun holding a piece of history like that.

Didn’t you just reinvent the trailer park? What you’re describing sounds like an urban trailer park, and that sounds less than great.

I’m a recovering alcoholic. I’m almost positive that the effects of alcohol are wildly different between the two of us. When I drink my brain spits out more reward chemicals than I know what to do with. It makes me feel extremely energetic and creative. It inflates my sense of self-worth and gives me confidence. It’s genuinely more enjoyable than sex.

And that’s how it dug its claws in, because almost all of those go away after binge drinking for a while. Then you’re just left with the addiction. And getting sober means having to learn to want whatever is left of your life.

In my experience the higher up you get on the corporate ladder, the less you’re going to be held accountable for anything. Executives only stick around until they get bored or can cash out. Five years down the line it might as well be a totally different company.

Let me know if you find a good privacy-focused alternative. I’m absolutely replacing mine after this.

Interesting. I didn’t have any issues. Could you elaborate a bit more?

That seems like a strange judgement to make for another person. While I agree that it’s typically better to get updates in person, it may be very difficult to do so based on their circumstances. And judging the importance of someone else’s family events feels even more inappropriate.

I know virtually nothing about architecture or structural engineering, but I imagine all the weight isn’t necessarily going down from floor to floor, but a lot of the weight is attached to support columns, and the floors are built out from that.

All the weight is still on those support columns though, and I also have a hard time wrapping my head around how something like that is possible. Engineering is amazing.

Comics aren’t typically my genre, but I love this concept. I’m not really qualified to comment on the historical plausibility of anything, but I did have one thought: In many cases there were more complicated reasons why a technology took so long to develop. For example, the difficult thing about wheeled carts wasn’t inventing the wheel, it was the ability to manufacture a straight axle long enough. It might be cool to see some of that explored. For example, the steam engine you teased would be really interesting to me because it necessitates a boiler that can withstand that kind of pressure. Or, I’d also probably enjoy it if it took some liberties and just had fun with the concept. It’s the sort of thing I daydream about all the time. I just think the idea is fun. I don’t know how much it’s been done before, but it’s a cool idea! I really think I would read this.

I’m biased being from the state, but the more I visit Detroit, the more potential I feel like it has. The art scene is blossoming there, but the metro area feels dormant (not dead). I imagine there are a lot of institutional issues to overcome, but I’m confident that Detroit will make a comeback in my lifetime.