whaaaaat

"Spell backwards, forwards"

Both "backwards" and "forwards" could be correctly interpreted as the adverb in this one. It could be asking you to "Spell the word backwards, in a forwards manner" or "Spell in a backwards manner, the word forwards".

It's ambiguous enough that someone grading the test who wanted the disqualify you could make the case you got it wrong, no matter if you wrote "backwards" or "sdrawrof".

Agreed. This test is not reasonable.

Even "who is the first president" knowledge shouldn't be a bar to voting. Do you think they offered this literacy test in the native languages of all taking it? Do you think all people in the US had the opportunity to learn, in their language, the history of the country?

At the time there were systemic barriers to education that meant that many folk were probably not even taught who the first president was. Let alone how old you have to be to be president.

Are One Plus z2 hearing aids with a hearing test app? Because that's the notable thing under discussion here...

You have made a subtle misalignment of figures here. Yes, these existing diatoms fix 20% of the Earth's CO2 and are present throughout the entire ocean. However, we don't need to compete with that volume. We don't have to do the same order of magnitude to meaningfully impact the carbon cycle.

The Earth's carbon cycle manages about 750 gigatons of CO2/year and humans are emitting ~30 excess gigatons a year on top. The diatoms in the ocean are happily out there processing 150 gigatons of CO2/year, but what we need to engineer is only 30 gigatons (to completely eradicate human emissions).

If we engineered diatoms to fix, say, 0.3 gigatons/year, we'd eradicate a whole integer percent of our emissions.

Heck, if we got it in the 0.03 gigatons (30 megatons/year), we've probably built something scalable and created a useful entry in our portfolio to capture carbon, sinking about 0.1% of our carbon/year.

So, don't despair, we don't have to compete with the ocean! We only need to compete with ourselves! Or maybe do despair? Because we have to compete with ourselves... fundamentally, climate change isn't a technology problem, it's a political problem.

Imagine thinking a genocide was not relevant to you... "[Country Name] is eradicating [type of people]" requires a level of state power that is globally impactful. The US, for instance, is party to some of these genocides. If you are a US citizen, you are directly affected -- your taxes, your representatives, your opportunity costs, etc. are being used to eradicate [type of people] rather than something beneficial. Same if you are basically anywhere in the world.

You aren't disconnected from those things.

Can I recommend increasing the text contrast a little for the metadata under the links for accessibility?

#666 on #ddd is a contrast ratio of 4.2:1, which might be difficult for some readers. Even moving to #555 on #ddd would move you into passing WCAG AA. Moving #454545 would pass WCAG AAA contrast ratios, and you could be pretty confident that nearly all readers would find it much easier to read!

> Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says X

> a senior Ukrainian intelligence official says Y and Z

Do you doubt the veracity of these two claims? The headline there actually reads as very clear statements of fact -- two people made several claims. The headline, notably, does NOT make any claims about the veracity of what Zelenskyy or the intelligence official said.

Every news outlet is a biased source. You cannot have a news outlet that is unbiased. Being an editor necessarily implies making choices about what gets published and what does not -- it's fundamentally a human judgement call.

Human judgement calls cannot be free from biases.

There are several genocides happening in the world, hearing that people die during genocides shouldn't be particularly surprising, right?

Given the magnitudes of those involved, it seems likely they'd fill the headlines.

That said, perhaps you meant, "I would prefer to not know" or "I would prefer to not be reminded" about these genocides?

Let me throw out an idea I haven't seen elsewhere here yet -- this corrects for a part of who I am in a way I find uncomfortable and negative.

I'm autistic. I do not make eye contact easily. That's part of who I am, and a useful signal for the people I interact with that I might be neurodiverse.

Something like this could mask or hide that autistic trait, and make me appear allistic. And, for some autistic folks, maybe that's desirable. However, I find the traits that I have around communication to be a deep part of me. Not making eye contact is nothing to be ashamed of, because being autistic is nothing to be ashamed. The introduction of tools like this could lead to pressure to use them to conform to some standard of "normalcy" that people expect.

While the technical achievement here is neat (and other commenters pointed out places where it's struggling to look good), but there's a sort of meta impact that it can have on people who fall outside of normal ranges.

> During the 2016-2020 era especially, telling people you worked at Palantir was unpopular. The company was seen as spy tech, NSA surveillance, or worse.

I mean, it is those things. I think just because it's listed on a market doesn't change those things. People are just like, "I value the money it makes me more than the ethical qualms I have about what Palantir is".

> may be opposed to same-sex marriage, but it doesn't specifically make them anti-gay.

It absolutely does make them anti-gay. "Gay people should have fewer rights than we do" is fundamentally an anti-gay stance.

To be clear, I believe both parties are anti-trans. Malcom X was spot on with the Fox and the Wolf -- they both want to eat the lamb, the wolf is just a lot more honest about it.

I regularly argue that Biden has been specifically and materially awful to the trans community. Do not mistake me saying that Republicans want to do worse as somehow saying the Dems are good.

But anti-trans legislation, particularly at the state level, is rising dramatically. (With almost 700 bills introduced this year, compared to merely 10-20 10 years ago.)

The follow states passed anti-trans bills last year: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Wyoming

I think, looking at that list, it's pretty clearly predominantly right-leaning states who are actually enacting legislation to make access to education, healthcare, mental health support, services, name changes, etc. more difficult. Like, I don't think that's even subjective. 87 bills passed in those states, and those states are the only ones who passed anti-trans bills.

I don't think it is. I think this person might genuinely believe that there aren't trans lives at risk. Which is unfortunate. Maybe they'll use this as an opportunity to learn, but my money is on them responding angrily to me elsewhere after their post gets flagged.

It has an opportunity cost. It's not burdensome to be challenged, per se, it's burdensome to repeat that, "Yes, I think trans people are humans with complex interior lives who mostly want to be left alone. No, they are not coming into bathrooms en masse to molest you. Yes, they deserve to just get on with their lives. No, we shouldn't mock them for who they are" etc. etc.

It takes someone 3-5 seconds to "just asking questions" and it takes me much more than that to respond. There's an obvious imbalance there that leads to:

a) It's a lot more exhausting to respond than to ask

b) It's vulnerable to malicious askers abusing my good faith answering time

So while, with close friends, I'm happy to answer questions. Or with well meaning allies who genuinely want to learn and just don't understand. But like, random folks? On an internet forum? Nah. They can ask and I can say, "Sorry, let's just not engage."

I'm with you. There are hard lines. But I also have hard lines in who you support. Like, if you vote for a politician who supports, e.g., the eradication of trans people, then even if you say, "I don't believe in that" you've furthered that cause by issuing your vote. I can't abide someone who is willing to compromise on some things.

I think you need to spend some time learning about India. The US is FAR more of a monoculture than India is.

> We did just fine associating with people of different political perspectives...

We most certainly did not. Point to an era where there wasn't political violence in the US.

Jim Crow? Civil rights era? WTO Protests? Vietnam war protests? Rodney King? Stonewall? Like... this country has been violent about politics since this country was a country.

Growing up I was afraid to be even remotely "non-manly" because I was so worried I'd be dragged behind someone's truck.

I don't refuse to interact with people of the wrong "tribe", I make sure to ask for their political positions on, e.g., "should interracial marriage be allowed? Should we allow trans people to change their birth certificates?"

If someone is like, "Nah, those things are bad" then I'm happy to not associate with them because I find their beliefs abhorrent. It has nothing to do with tribal affiliation and everything to do with policy.

Practice is important. And being able to say, "I disagree, and discussing it further won't change my mind" is important.

But many of the current political topics are life or death for parts of the community. Like, I know plenty of trans sysadmins for whom politics isn't just "well, one party advances ideas I support and the other less so". For them it's "One party will make my every waking moment a nightmare".

I understand why, even with practice, some political positions are simply intolerable for them. (And to me, this feels different than, say, "I have opinions about which rate I should be taxed" though I admit tax rates could be life or death for some people.)

You can just type MS. I understand that it was cool to use M$ in the 90s, but like, all the tech giants are bad at this point and M$ looks silly.

Improving efficiency sometimes comes with other externalities. See, for instance, massive CAFOs where cows basically live on mountains of their own shit. Or gestation crates, where pigs cannot even turn around.

These things are more efficient, but many people consider them inhumane.

Efficiency is always a tradeoff, it's not always better. It needs to be considered, and done with intention, not with mindless drive towards efficiency for efficiency's sake.

I like to remind people that the Lord of the Rings is about a villain named Sauron, who was a wizard/angel/god whose domain was crafting. He was originally a beautiful person, who just wanted to build more and more. But he wasn't satisfied with the efficiency of the humans, elves, and dwarves. Convincing them was much slower than just telling them to do what he wanted. So he made some rings to control them. And he started breeding orcs who would do what he wanted without question.

Sauron became highly efficient, but he lost his beauty. I'm not anti-efficiency, but I am "think about the tradeoff you are making first. Understand what you are giving up."

I can't see the flagged post, but if you think "Elon Musk owns communications infrastructure he can turn off selectively" isn't political, I think you might need to reconsider what's in bounds for political. He's already done it to interfere with a war and he's widely meddled with what "free" speech he'll permit on his X platform.

His ownership of cellular signal is deeply intertwined with politics.

You are getting mad at an imaginary poster. The person responding to you isn't coming after you or your lifestyle at all.

Ok. You can live where you currently live and eat some more plants. I recommend pulse crops like peas, beans, lentils, soybeans, and chickpeas! Those things are regenerative and quite healthy, while still packing a decent dose of protein.

You mean... a field? I get that farming has gotten industrial, but there's not like, a "alfalfa factory" out there pumping out silage.

> would we risk Kessler Syndrome for a war?

I mean, yes, absolutely! I wouldn't trust world leaders to understand Kessler syndrome, let alone care about it. If a world leader is comfortable killing hundreds of thousands of people to make their nation "safe", targeting civilian infrastructure, I have no doubt that they'd blow up some stuff in orbit.

To be clear, I don't want to risk it. I'd prefer we didn't live in such a warlike world. But the current world leaders are out here bombing nuclear plants and residential districts. A few satellites will feel very, very far away to them.

So, on top of the GHG generated by the livestock themselves, which are large, as well as the GHG to generate fertilizer and grow the feedstock for livestock, the food we store for them also significantly generates GHG emissions?

It seems more and more like we might want to collectively reduce the amount of meat we're eating. I'm no vegan, but like, maybe eating meat only sometimes is a good idea. (Also, probably leads to less CAFOs and other questionably ethical practices if we, say, halve the amount of livestock we need.)

> It’s beyond confusing to be constantly told it doesn’t

I don't think I've seen any assertions here (or elsewhere) that FSD doesn't work in rogerrogerr's car. I've seen LOTS of assertions (and plenty of video evidence) that it doesn't work in other cars, and that it behaves unpredictably.

This is why data over many samples is important. Maybe you've got an environment where it happens to work really well. Maybe it's probabilistic and you are the person who keeps rolling well on your random dice rolls.

There's plenty of evidence the system is not generally safe, even if your personal anecdotes are that it is.

The car should not have entered the intersection if it could not exit the intersection, and it pretty clearly shows it waiting to enter the intersection. Note the dashed red line showing it was correctly waiting to enter, and only choosing to enter after the lights were red.

It was not already in the intersection.