jfengel

37 ms·

871.
by jfengel 9mo ago
It's a good observation, though many of those are also food for poor people. Wealthy food is often a refined version of what everyone else eats, usually requiring a lot of extra effort and time. Lobster is a famous example (though I am
872.
by jfengel 9mo ago
(2019)
873.
by jfengel 9mo ago
True, but any re-reading will let you pick up a lot of the typos. If you write it once and ship it unedited, then you weren't interested, and the reader likely won't be either. Typos clue the reader into that early.
874.
by jfengel 9mo ago
Agreed, because it's not very actionable advice. At best it provides some examples of what not to do. The example leads to one classic bit of writing advice: tell only the very most important things and omit everything else. Start the
875.
by jfengel 9mo ago
The US will keep issuing debt as long as people are willing to buy its debt at a reasonably low price. Which people keep doing. For a long time that was because people were justifiably convinced that the US would honor those debts, which it
876.
by jfengel 10mo ago
He's also frequently mean. I don't get the love for him. That is another aspect of humor that Brits and Americans share, but also do very differently.
877.
by jfengel 10mo ago
Sorta. The whole point of the strip is that they don't talk or act like children. "Schultz" is German for "brown". He's very much the author's adult POV, using a child-looking character to disarm the cynic
878.
by jfengel 10mo ago
It does seem that they are often unaware of the the social spending on them. Some of it is surely economy of scale: it's diffuse so everything costs more. Delivery of social services is much more efficient in urban settings, and its fa
879.
by jfengel 10mo ago
Subsidies for farmers ensure surplus capacity. Lead times are long and you can't risk even a temporary failure. So you spend more money than current supply and demand would justify.
880.
by jfengel 10mo ago
The Republican party has a well polished message assigning blame to anyone else: gays, Muslims, illegal immigrants, trans people, feminists, government employees, etc etc etc. If only they can put those people in their places, prosperity w
881.
by jfengel 10mo ago
According to the OSC: https://osc.gov/Documents/Public%20Files/Press%20Release/OSC... Violations are sent to the President for disciplinary action. So, no.
882.
by jfengel 10mo ago
When lawyers abandon fact, evidence, and law, and turn their craft toward suppression instead, they corrode the foundation of public trust on which the entire legal system depends. That is a ship that sailed a long, long, long time ago.
883.
by jfengel 10mo ago
There have been mumblings about mineral wealth, and about strategic bases. None of them really make a lick of sense. It does not look as if it's serious. But this is a deeply unserious administration, so it's hard to guess.
884.
by jfengel 10mo ago
For what it's worth, I use Vistaprint. That's not based on an extensive comparison, just that it always works for me and seems comparable in price and quality to other services.
885.
by jfengel 10mo ago
Ah yes. The American left, which controls zero of the branches of the federal government and a minority of states, is yet somehow still running things behind the scenes. It spends vast sums on elections, which is somehow important even thou
886.
by jfengel 10mo ago
I'm not sure of the degree to which the two party system is a problem for state legislatures. It's an obvious problem at the federal level, but you do still stand a chance of knowing your local legislator to the state. When the co
887.
by jfengel 10mo ago
You really can't, not without also swearing off a ton of genuine content. You can swear off the Internet entirely, and maybe that's a net win, but other than that you're almost certain to encounter slop. And it may take longe
888.
by jfengel 10mo ago
No, of course not. But the question is, do you need a database? A database is a big proposition: transactions, indexes, query processing, replication, distribution, etc. A fair number of use cases are just "Take this data and give it b
889.
by jfengel 10mo ago
Not a curse word, but a target of automoderation algorithms. It's hard to know what actually is and isn't included -- they don't really use simple keyword matches. But it's a kind of affectation to say "Hey, I know
890.
by jfengel 10mo ago
The current government can still claim to have a democratic mandate. At least for the moment, it relies on the goodwill (even of its opponents) to at least pretend that elections matter. If it loses a large number of supporters, and is forc
891.
by jfengel 10mo ago
Does anything really need to be built for that? From the first moment, you were only interested in a fraction of the Web. There has been a constant arms race between the search engines and the optimizers. We have always relied on suggestion
892.
by jfengel 10mo ago
Are the Greenlanders really up for a guerilla war? Resistance in Iraq and Afghanistan was driven by a common religion and a long history of wars. If Greenland really did become a state, they'd actually have a fair bit of political powe
893.
by jfengel 10mo ago
I doubt it raises the costs of invasion very much. I don't expect the Danish to fight to the last man. If shooting starts, they will evacuate quickly. But it meant that the US will have fired shots at NATO soldiers, rather than just wa
894.
by jfengel 10mo ago
Probably not higher than in my lifetime, because I lived through the Cold War and nuclear annihilation seemed like a serious possibility more than once. But definitely higher than any time since 1990. With a possible exception for the days
895.
by jfengel 10mo ago
I'm not sure I understand the quip. Is it meant to say, "Please send us cannon fodder, but we can't/won't make use of any of your tactical units"?
896.
by jfengel 10mo ago
There is concern that the US may also go from chronic concerns to acute ones. Opponents of the government accuse it of serious crimes, and are already perceiving violence used to suppress dissent. The administration is not popular and may l
897.
by jfengel 10mo ago
Tl;dr it's MOND again.
898.
by jfengel 10mo ago
Are string theorists any less employable than other physicists? I gather that most physicists end up doing something other than physics.
899.
by jfengel 10mo ago
Because, unfortunately, a terminal degree is not always a guarantee of future productivity. String theory came into the public consciousness about two decades ago, followed by a backlash from a relatively small but persistent set of profess
900.
by jfengel 10mo ago
You presumably don't run an overall trade deficit. You have a positive balance of trade with your employer, who pays you money for your services. That is probably slightly higher than the total trade deficit you have with your purchase

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