jfengel

34 ms·

751.
by jfengel 8mo ago
He did try to rewrite The Hobbit in the literary style of LotR, but it just didn't work and he abandoned it after a few chapters.
752.
by jfengel 8mo ago
It is organic; it's mostly carbon. The presence of a metal atom doesn't make it inorganic. To be inorganic it has to have no carbons (or at least, not in the backbone of the molecule).
753.
by jfengel 8mo ago
Indeed: the intro to The Lord of the Rings explains that previous editions of The Hobbit, where the ring was a gift rather, were Bilbo's original lie to cover up the theft. Perhaps that was all the influence of the Ring itself.
754.
by jfengel 8mo ago
Tolkien made significant changes to the Gollum chapter. In the first edition Gollum gives up the ring willingly. The ring was not yet the Ring, and Gollum was not yet a Hobbit. The man took retcons as an intellectual challenge. Sometimes th
755.
by jfengel 8mo ago
The world was pretty well developed, but The Hobbit isn't really set in it. The Hobbit was retconned into his broader Middle-earth as the sequel grew in the telling. He'd been re-writing the material that became The Silmarillion f
756.
by jfengel 8mo ago
Even if it were volatile, you likely wouldn't be able to smell it. The olfactory sense is complicated and weird, and targeted at organic chemistry. You can smell a few inorganic things (notably, elemental osmium, whose name literally m
757.
by jfengel 8mo ago
You may be right, but a lot has changed in the last quarter century. The 9/11 attacks came at a time when the Cold War had just ended and the dotcom boom had just given us a strong economy. There was a lot of resentment over the 2000 e
758.
by jfengel 8mo ago
I agree, but coding that up in law turns out to be tricky. Americans are reluctant to pass laws about how you can spend your money, especially if that money is being spent to express your opinion. We used to have some limits on it, but now
759.
by jfengel 8mo ago
Before CU, "issue ads" were constrained not to mention a candidate. They could talk about the issues, and strongly hint at which candidate did what they wanted, but it couldn't instruct you on who to vote for. Now all that&#x
760.
by jfengel 8mo ago
It's bizarre seeing the outright bribery. A lot of things that people call "bribery" is really just ensuring that your preferred candidate gets in office. You couldn't give money directly to the candidate for personal us
761.
by jfengel 8mo ago
European wars now all feel like a throwback to the 19th century. Even the maximally horrific wars of the 20th century feel outdated in light of trade being so much more efficient. Economic aggression is a whole new kind of warfare and plent
762.
by jfengel 8mo ago
The Senate is wildly unpopular, but individual Senators get re-elected overwhelmingly. The problem is always other people's Senators. Everyone would like to term limit other people's politicians but they like experience for their
763.
by jfengel 8mo ago
The jury is selected randomly. They try to weed out obvious kooks, but there is no attempt to make it either reasonable or moderate. The hope is that twelve of your peers will at least avoid being able to persecute you for political goals.
764.
by jfengel 8mo ago
Ok, fine. Israël is threatened by Iran. Iran has been working on nukes. There have been negotiations but they haven't been definitive yet, and Iran has never been a trustworthy negotiating partner anyway. That is why this President dit
765.
by jfengel 8mo ago
A bunch of rich white slave-owners wrote the rules over the space of a few months in Philadelphia. One of the rules is that it's damn near impossible to amend the rules. It hasn't been done in a half century. (Setting aside one od
766.
by jfengel 8mo ago
They may be the top stories, but they have never appeared on any list of voters' top concerns. It's always crime, jobs, the economy, inflation, and health care. People can say whatever they want to journalists, but they say differ
767.
by jfengel 8mo ago
Good luck with that. I just don't see either Google or OpenAI listening to their employees on this. They might have their own reasons for not wanting to help build Skynet, but if they don't, I'm sure those employees can readi
768.
by jfengel 8mo ago
I have no doubt that they would follow the law. But the law allows a lot of things that are extremely dangerous. These things might well be made illegal, but we haven't gotten around to it yet. Surely that's obvious.
769.
by jfengel 8mo ago
Congratulations. You've reinvented the souffle.
770.
by jfengel 8mo ago
They're not going to prescribe anything serious for those conditions in the US, either. You might get as much as codeine with acetaminophen. But there's a good chance you'll get nothing more than ibuprofen and local anesthesi
771.
by jfengel 8mo ago
They might, if it kept their customers coming back. They don't care about users' safety but they do want them to keep paying.
772.
by jfengel 8mo ago
They don't mind. "Small government" was always about the things you care about, not what they care about. It's why they've always talked about "states' rights": because they're not individual r
773.
by jfengel 8mo ago
The best way to compare crime rates across countries is to look at murder rates. No, it isn't. It's the easiest, but not the best. America has more murders because we make murder easy. No other country is awash in guns. Other c
774.
by jfengel 8mo ago
Not all of the people, to be sure. But a very large minority -- well over a third. And that third is pretty enthusiastic about it, despite (and even possibly because of) his crimes. The bar to removing him from office is extremely high. It
775.
by jfengel 8mo ago
What has Tesla accomplished lately? I mean, within the last decade? They certainly have accomplished amazing things. They had a lead that even five years ago was considered insurmountable. But they've made at best incremental progress,
776.
by jfengel 8mo ago
To defeat an authoritarian project, people — in courts, legislatures, the military, business, civil society, and the mass public — must choose to fight rather than collaborate in democratic decline or ignore it altogether. I feel like we
777.
by jfengel 8mo ago
Campaign web sites often sell merch. But the money belongs to the campaign, not the individual. And it's treated as a donation by the FEC, so you can't use it to get around campaign finance limits. I recall that there was a lot of
778.
by jfengel 8mo ago
When libertarian means liberty for everyone, it's anti-authoritarian. Too often libertarian means liberty for me and not for you. That's authoritarian.
779.
by jfengel 8mo ago
Interesting that the runners-up were much more conventional choices, Pride and Prejudice and To Kill a Mockingbird . I've never read Mockingbird ; I gotta say that it doesn't sound like a fun read. I really admire Jane Austen,
780.
by jfengel 8mo ago
I concur that it's sexual harassment, but note that in a lot of cases, the person behind the account is not the woman depicted. It is a man using pictures stolen from elsewhere.

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