coffeecat

9 ms·

31.
by coffeecat 3y ago
This topic is one of my biggest pet peeves. The hypothesis that sub-clinical lead exposure _causes_ IQ loss is, in my opinion, much weaker than most people realize. Observational studies (which are more or less all we have) tell us that Pb
32.
by coffeecat 3y ago
I think the impact of AI will be too pervasive and complex to be understood in terms of a simple winners/losers dichotomy. My prediction is this: Software developers and lawyers will probably have significantly lower incomes, and so to
33.
by coffeecat 3y ago
Therein lies the problem. Most people are apathetic and incompetent. Winning rat race points requires some amount of competence and "oomph", so rat race points will always correlate positively with applicant quality. Most rat-race
34.
by coffeecat 3y ago
It sucks that leaded aviation fuel has persisted so long, but the resulting Pb exposure is insignificant relative to what people were exposed to from leaded gasoline in cars back in the day. Mean BLLs in the mid-70s were ~15 mcg/dL; no
35.
by coffeecat 3y ago
There are better causes to donate to, in my opinion. Pb is nasty stuff, but the purported risks have been inflated beyond what's actually grounded in solid evidence. The term "Pb poisoning" has two different meanings: traditi
36.
by coffeecat 3y ago
> The PinePhone Pro is another smartphone designed for Linux, that's an upgrade from the original PinePhone. It has a faster processor, more memory, and improved storage. The display is larger and has Gorilla Glass 4 for scratch res
37.
by coffeecat 4y ago
This article makes the mistake of conflating open source and free software. Open source software may be distributed under licenses that prohibit use by orgs/industries that the developer finds unsavory. But the resulting software is pr
38.
by coffeecat 4y ago
> The same thing has happened to Linux which was ok as long as it was chasing commercial Unix, spawning POSIX even; but look what happened with systemd, wayland, snaps/flatpacks, Docker, k8s, and all the other erratic developments -
39.
by coffeecat 4y ago
I think this is the correct answer. Guns enable these incidents, but they're of course not the root cause. Bullying is a common motivation, but I don't think it's exactly the root cause either. It can be seen as a mental heal
40.
by coffeecat 4y ago
The free market should be thought of as an optimization algorithm. Ideally, the government's role should be to set up a constrained optimization problem, which attempts to align profitability with human well-being (e.g., "provide
41.
by coffeecat 4y ago
> God help us if "rejects inappropriate word recommendations" is being added to people's ad profiles. I tried to reproduce the "landlord" warning in Google docs, and I was unable to. So perhaps Google already mak
42.
by coffeecat 4y ago
Please define "extremely rare". They're found in many products including dental floss, clothing, furniture, carpets, pizza boxes, fishing line, and only-God-knows-what-else. It's certainly small as a mass fraction of hou
43.
by coffeecat 5y ago
Where do all the nasty fluorocarbons end up? As far as I can tell, the answer is that they're simply emitted out the smokestack and into the environment.
44.
by coffeecat 5y ago
I'm sure that applies in some cases, but it doesn't seem universally true. Personally, I hate exercising but I do it because the epidemiologists say I should. And I love drinking, but I don't because the epidemiologists say I
45.
by coffeecat 5y ago
The followers of QAnon presumably don't see any major contradictions between its claims and their {experience, assumptions about how the world works}. If they did, then they wouldn't be followers. What's unsettling about QAno
46.
by coffeecat 5y ago
> Right but if the premise is a critique of traditional media not doing a good enough job by, say, focusing on made up narratives or 'both sides-ing' an actual position vs a caricature position, how is this addressed by basical
47.
by coffeecat 5y ago
There's already been a pretty significant correction this year. Short of an escalation of the war or an unexpectedly aggressive interest rate hike, I find it hard to imagine that stocks might hit a lower low this year than the botttom
48.
by coffeecat 5y ago
> The window of what is considered beyond the pale has grown quite a big larger than it was in the past. I'd say it's worse than that. Our information diets are so heterogeneous, that with respect to certain topics, it's p
49.
by coffeecat 5y ago
What are some examples of jokes/bullying that you've encountered?
50.
by coffeecat 5y ago
Scott Alexander pointed out on his old blog that compared to other recent Republican candidates (Romney and McCain), Trump performed about the same among white voters and over-performed among non-white voters. The notion of Trump as the &qu
51.
by coffeecat 5y ago
This seems about right. For most endeavors nowadays - music, art, science, technology, business - the process of reviewing what's already out there is just overwhelming. Then you actually review the existing stuff, and find that five o
52.
by coffeecat 5y ago
PinePhone + mainline Linux. Obtaining freedom isn't easy - it requires hard work and sacrifice - but it's absolutely possible.
53.
by coffeecat 5y ago
Librewolf applies a few very small patches to the Firefox codebase (to remove Mozilla's VPN promotion, etc), but I don't think they have the resources to maintain dropped features, or any other significant deviations from the offi
54.
by coffeecat 5y ago
I think this is a fundamental flaw in the platform. Shared context is the key to having productive conversations, and twitter is a massive decontextualization machine. Traditional forums allow messages to be disseminated widely to readers w
55.
by coffeecat 5y ago
So if Windows/MacOS/Jack all lack support for buffer rewinding without noticeable latency, does that imply that Pulse encourages the use of abnormally large buffers compared to what all other audio systems use?
56.
by coffeecat 5y ago
> A truck will cost you what, US$ 50k? I paid $600 for my first truck back in high school, drove it for a couple years, and received something in the ballpark of $100 from the scrapyard I sold it to in the end. In the current market wher
57.
by coffeecat 5y ago
When you make the purchase, you're exchanging $x for resalable equipment that's presumably worth $x. Your bank account balance goes down quite a lot, but the only decrease to your net worth is from the taxes and title transfer fee
58.
by coffeecat 5y ago
I recently worked out the cost of owning a truck (including insurance, maintenance, and expected depreciation, but excluding the cost of the truck itself) versus renting from U-haul/Penske. I found that for more than 4-6 trips per year
59.
by coffeecat 5y ago
This is a difficult topic for me to articulate, so the below explanation is merely my best effort to express the experience in words. The perception of my own heartbeat is something that I've always been squeamish about, but for most o
60.
by coffeecat 5y ago
Strongly disagree. There's more to meditation than just sitting quietly. I'd say it's more analogous to breaking out of a sandboxed VM and gaining read/write access to the underlying OS and kernel. My personal anecdote -

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