andrewla

23 ms·

331.
by andrewla 2y ago
The shallow response here is that use is important. The hammer on your shelf is an effective tool for hammering in nails. Is the hammer on your shelf an effective tool for influencing public opinion? It can be used for that -- you can smash
332.
by andrewla 2y ago
To be a tool it has to be able to be directed towards an end. Hurricanes are effective for coastal property destruction, but they can't be used as a tool
333.
by andrewla 2y ago
Are you implying that this was a deliberate attempt by an agent to create tourettes-like tics? Are you also asserting that this hypothetical boogieman can do similar attacks on demand because of their understanding of social contagion [1]?
334.
by andrewla 2y ago
Let's just be clear on what this is. Supporting a TikTok ban has several valuable benefits to politicians. 1. You look tough on China 2. You look like you're being tough on "misinformation" 3. You get to look like you ar
335.
by andrewla 2y ago
> Social networking platforms are among the most effective tools for mass influence, second only to religion. There is no evidence for this belief. Really for either religion or for "social networking platforms". You could mayb
336.
by andrewla 2y ago
Maybe this has evolved, but the version of this I was exposed to was in the context of French, where you would play these "ecoutez et repetez" things and the class would say things out loud. Pimsleur has a most likely well-deserve
337.
by andrewla 2y ago
noahpinion is generally very insightful but I don't think his analysis holds water here. ByteDance is a major Chinese company -- if the EU tried to force the sale of Google you can sure as shit expect "Washington" to have str
338.
by andrewla 2y ago
I have a theory about language acquisition that I've never had the time to fully explore, that developing an ear for a language is the critical first step. To that end, my theory would be that a program of imitation & mimicry would
339.
by andrewla 2y ago
I guess what I mean is for a typical "influencer", you want to be that person to both be famous and also be rich and have cool stuff like they have. But if you want to grow up to be MrBeast, you want to just be famous. Maybe you w
340.
by andrewla 2y ago
In general I'm in agreement that they present a life where being an "influencer" is a goal in and of itself, but I think it's mostly harmless, like kids wanting to be a rock star or a professional athlete. These are unob
341.
by andrewla 2y ago
I'm perhaps too online, but this is not the author's coining. There was discourse ages ago about how some people are "shape rotators" -- that is, they could reason about complex stuff in their heads, and their counterpar
342.
by andrewla 2y ago
I’m going to confess to some aggressive ignorance here because I haven’t gotten a clear answer. Are HFCS (any variant!) chemically identical to sucrose or only “metabolically” identical. I don’t think they are chemically identical because a
343.
by andrewla 2y ago
I see a number of suggestions here for alternatives to Sonos but I'm not sure they meet the requirements or expectations of what I have for Sonos. I basically want anyone who is on my network to be able to use the music services that I
344.
by andrewla 2y ago
> from the standpoint of human metabolism I mean ... is this serious? "Chemically identical" means something meaningful, but "from the standpoint of human metabolism" does some heavy lifting. If you had said "fro
345.
by andrewla 2y ago
Right -- and that I don't agree with. My concern is laws that make it illegal to modify products you own or to offer advice or tools to people who wish to modify products they own. Similarly, arrangements like leases and limited licens
346.
by andrewla 2y ago
I'm not entirely aligned with this article, though I think the principle is correct. I do think that it should never be illegal to tamper with a device that you own in any way that you find acceptable. But I do not feel that manufactur
347.
by andrewla 2y ago
The timeframes are fuzzy, but it looks like the current Finnish mental health regime was enabled by a law passed in 1990. Since that point, given the 5.6M population times the 214/100,000 rate, we get a total of ~12,000 people committe
348.
by andrewla 2y ago
I don't think of this in terms of "causes of homelessness". These are different categories. The "visible" homeless, ironically, are extremely difficult to measure. They often don't carry or won't present i
349.
by andrewla 2y ago
Do we have any numbers on the number of people that are in this system? I'm frankly curious if the numbers in the original article can effectively be completely explained by this system rather than the policies listed in the article. I
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by andrewla 2y ago
Without digging too deep into the nature of the statistics they use, I'm a little skeptical of this. The transition to using the word "homeless" has resulted in transforming something we can't easily measure -- "dru
351.
by andrewla 2y ago
Same -- much harder to get them to go the other way. I'm surprised that cross-eyed random dot stereograms never took off; so much easier to do.
352.
by andrewla 2y ago
I'm generally a little skeptical about approaches that treat infinitesimals in a symbolic computation. The approach typically is to solve traditional analysis problems but throw in some infinitesimals and show that you can get the same
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by andrewla 2y ago
That's remarkable! So much of the PRC Constitution [1] seems very consistent with what liberal democracies expect in terms of rights. I guess there's a whole area of discussion as to whether the way that rights are expressed are a
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by andrewla 2y ago
I would dare to say that National Security should beat the First Amendment. But the argument that TikTok bears any relationship to "national security" is ludicrous on the face of it. They're not posting nuclear secrets, the
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by andrewla 2y ago
This is not a meaningful argument. China does not have any freedom of speech encoded in its foundational documents. The US does. This is like saying that we're going to get rid of trial by jury until China adds it in.
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by andrewla 2y ago
The bill mentions ByteDance and TikTok specifically -- doesn't that make this a bill of attainder, and thus de facto unconstitutional? The terms of the ban are incredibly broad too -- if you can post reviews on AliExpress that other us
357.
by andrewla 2y ago
Tangential, but I think I speak for many when I say that we no longer need to specify "X" as a name for twitter -- just call it twitter and tweets and ignore the abysmal rebrand until the day that it gets reverted.
358.
by andrewla 2y ago
And what then do I do with the RSS links? The last time I dealt with RSS at all was in the Google Reader days. Are there cross-platform solutions that maintain any context? Is there any way to reply or give feedback through RSS, or particip
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by andrewla 2y ago
Your "following" feed contains content liked or retweeted/replied to by people you follow. At least, it used to -- since likes went private I'm not sure that you see this any more.
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by andrewla 2y ago
Sorry, ignorant question -- how does one us RSS to keep up to date on news? With Twitter, I can see content from people I follow and from content referenced or highlighted by people I follow. People in this case can also include news organi

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