sien

Fair point. I didn't mean to imply people's politics means they are creative or not.

But surely the bar to being creative is higher than putting stickers on your laptop. No doubt many of the people here are creative and code creatively, write creatively, draw creatively or make music.

If you said to someone who is a comedian or a writer that you were 'creative too' because of your laptop stickers. Well. C'mon.

The politics shown is interestingly similar. No doubt many and probably most lean left. But not all. I've been worked with many people who code and a significant number are conservative. But I've never seen anyone with a right leaning laptop sticker. Tattoos you see exhibit more variety than these laptop stickers.

I should have added that I have stickers on my laptop. But that is orthogonal to whether I'm creative or not.

It's interesting that these are labelled 'creative'. They all look the same. They all reflect similar taste. Quite a bit of politics, but is there a single right wing sticker? I couldn't find one.

I was at SIGGRAPH many years ago in a line behind some artists. They were talking about how all the engineers dressed the same. This is true. But was also true was that you easily tell the artists as well, they all dressed carefully and differently, within the bounds of their style and were just as easily distinguished.

The US attacking Venezuela before 2026 is now at 31% on metaculus.

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/39336/us-attacks-venezue...

I've played football (soccer for Americans) with people who were very good who didn't watch the game at all. Similarly for basketball.

People watch sports because it gives them an emotional investment in something that has a new result each week, is not scripted and shows incredible skill and fitness.

It's also a lot healthier than the people who follow politics like sport. They get moral when their team loses.

Do you watch TV, Internet videos, film, or read books ?

That's just another form of entertainment.

The economic aspect is also worth considering.

The subsidy per passenger mile in the US is :

0.019 for road transport, 0.021 for air transport, 0.710 for Amtrak and 2.300 for transit.

From : https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=22592

Just also as a note, you can create suburbs pretty easily where bikes use paths or whatever. I live in a suburb where I can ride 15 kms to work without riding on roads. The subsidy for bikes would actually be really low.

It's interesting to contrast to food trucks that are another method for more profitable places by reducing costs.

Food trucks seem to be pretty popular and work well.

Perhaps the difference is that food trucks are all about establishing a reputation for good cheap food that you can verify where as ghost kitchens wind up being the opposite.

There is a BBC Audio drama of Neuromancer that is 1:56 long.

It is excellent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S89BHnaxULo

I haven't listened to the audio book of Neuromancer but I re-read it a few weeks back. The audio play I still go back to once in a while as well.

You can do this in Python now with :

https://github.com/tcsenpai/pybooklid

here is an example that plays a sound via Pygame

https://github.com/Petess/MacLidPythonSound

This avoids having to deal with Xcode.

There is data for Australia as well that shows a similar decline.

It's worth looking at the road deaths data in wikipedia at :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...

The road toll of 1266 in 2023 and 4.8 fatalities per 100K residents is and comparing it to 1970 where it was 3,798 and 30.4 per 100K residents.

Even the trend on deaths per 100K residents is down from 8.15 per 100K residents in 2003 and has declined to 4.4 in 2023.

In terms of road fatalities per billion kilometres driven it's down from 44 per billion kilometres traveled in 1971 to 4.4 in 2020.

It's really interesting to see how many single vehicle accidents there were and the breakdown of who was killed.

From : https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-news/australias-catastrophi... "48 per cent of deaths recorded were drivers, while 20 per cent were motorcyclists, 16 per cent were passengers and 12.5 per cent were pedestrians.

304 women were killed over the 12 months, while the report recorded 956 male deaths. 792 deaths occurred during weekdays and 474 victims were killed over a weekend."

The breakdown on where the crashes happened is interesting

"A total of 326 people died in major cities across Australia, with 581 deaths in regional Australia and 63 in remote or very remote parts of the country."

Given that the vast majority of Australians live in major cities it's surprising.

It's really surprising how many accidents are single vehicle :

"Out of 1266 deaths, 490 victims were involved in multiple-vehicle road incidents, whereas 776 people who died were involved in single-vehicle crashes."

On top of this it should be added that in a review of fatalities in Victoria ~52% of the crashes involved a driver who tested positive for alcohol or drugs or both.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00014...

41% of fatalities are estimated to involve speeding.

https://www.transport.nsw.gov.au/roadsafety/topics-tips/spee...

Article :

https://archive.md/SP5lq

Interestingly by the time it came into service the Me-262 could reach it.

B-29 service ceiling was 9710 m.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-29_Superfortress#Spec...

For the Me-262 the service ceiling: 11,450 m

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_262#Specifica...

The B-29 was an absolutely insane technical achievement. But it's also completely crazy to think that as soon as it was in service the Me-262 had made it obsolete. Also the German development of guided surface to air missiles. The US immediately had to build a pressurized jet bomber that would operate in a considerably tougher environment.

The US had began working on what would wind up as the B-52 that would fly 6 years later in 1951.

By that point you'd think that everything would keep changing.

Yet here we are almost 75 years later and the B-52 is still a US combat aircraft that is expected to stay in service until the 2050s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-52_Stratofortress

The pace of technological development is so crazy.

It's not solved in real life. It's a huge ask that it should be solved on the internet.

Where are good discussions between really different viewpoints anywhere?

Existentialism.

Post-modernism.

Accidentalism.

Perhaps the difference is that these isms didn't think they had thought up everything themselves.

Rationalists have not read or understood David Hume.

You cannot work out what out to be from what is.

To want to be alive is irrational.

Nietzsche and the Existentialists understood that.

Arguably religions too.

Errrf. That was poor writing on my part.

I meant use the AI to critique what you have written in response to reading the suggested authors.

Yes, a particularly smart critic would be better. But an LLM is easily available.

Trying to do a bit of formal philosophy at University is really worth doing.

You realise that it's very hard to do well and it's intellectual quicksand.

Reading philosophers and great writers as you suggest is better than joining a cult.

It's just that you also want to write about what you're thinking in response to reading such people and ideally have what you write critiqued by smart people. Perhaps an AI could do some of that these days.

How would you power it?

Solar sail or nuclear?

How big would the payload be?

Nullius in verba.

For a substantial hindrance and costly compliance to be introduced then the burden of proof is on those trying to apply new law. The government has not done this.

If there is a 'mental health epidemic' caused by social media it really isn't showing.

https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/children-youth/mental-illnes...

Australia's Prime Minister did an interview where he was asked 'What would you do if you could pass one law' . His response was 'ban social media' because people are so mean on it.

You mean when Google, Nvidia, Amazon and Netflix were formed ?

The case against social media is pretty weak.

https://www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/the-case-against-soci...

Meanwhile Australia has the largest per capita losses on gambling in the world.

https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-welfare/gambling

Which the government doesn't care about. This may have something to do that people don't criticise the government when they are just losing their life's savings.

Kuro5hin was far less about technology though.

It was interesting in a different way though.

Like Adequacy.

Did you also move over to MetaFilter ?

The number of unicorns was 39 when the term was coined in 2013. Then there was 119 by 2018 and then there were 1284 unicorns by May 2024.

From :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicorn_(finance)#History

So not only is there no data to back up the authors claim but it is wrong and could be checked by looking at wikipedia.

You don't have to be right, you can make claims, but when you make grand claims you should at least check wikipedia.

The EU does something impressively crazy burning 23 million tonnes of wood pellets in 2021.

https://unece.org/media/press/372591

It's labeled as 'renewable' electricity.

The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande is well worth a read.

Gawande is a crazy smart surgeon and writer. The book is pleasantly short and makes its points really well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Checklist_Manifesto

Archive :

https://archive.md/B6cXh

Cars are the worst spending many, perhaps most people make.

It's remarkable in Australia how many people are borrowing and paying much more for them as well.

Driving a Corolla, Mazda 2, Kia Rio or something can save so much money.

These days these are remarkably good cars too.

The technology plays a huge role.

Why watch local soccer in most of the world when you can watch the Champions League on the internet ?

In the Soviet Union people were watching Dynamo and Lokomotiv on TV rather than going to local games too.

There are at least 70K public domain ebooks.

There are sources that say there are 1 M public domain ebooks.

https://libguides.library.umkc.edu/OER/PublicDomainBooks

Also there are thousands and thousands of DRM free ebooks to purchase. Possibly millions.

https://www.tomsguide.com/tablets/e-readers/no-kindle-no-pro...

There was a crime decline in many rich countries from the 1990s as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_drop#Decline_since_the_e...

Maybe they were doing similar things with lead or something else is a big factor. Perhaps the rise of ever more cheap entertainment for young males who are most likely to commit crime. That's a global thing.