jfengel

36 ms·

961.
by jfengel 11mo ago
As an American, I am surrounded by people who are so convinced that their country is awful that they want to basically abolish vast swathes of the government. Their elected representatives say extremely negative things about my beliefs, lit
962.
by jfengel 11mo ago
Like security, the Internet doesn't tolerate half measures. You either have perfect privacy or none. A lot of our intuitions about both are based on obscurity: nobody is interested enough to devote their lives to you. That's not t
963.
by jfengel 11mo ago
I don't entirely understand where that comes from. The Standard Model and General Relativity are both tested to extreme precision. Any experiment unifying them will have to involve insane energies. It's not as if there is some oth
964.
by jfengel 11mo ago
TFA was written in October. Since then, there has been a (rather ugly) ceasefire. So it is no longer the worst time to release such a report. We are now stuck reconciling ourselves to a situation where both sides behaved atrociously -- lite
965.
by jfengel 11mo ago
Basically zero. The DEA Administrator is a Trump appointee. If for some reason he decides to fight it, he'd be gone immediately. They might try to slow-walk it, but there's really no point. This isn't a fight anybody wants to
966.
by jfengel 11mo ago
An awful lot of the things hanging in museums look "bad" to me. I'm not just talking about the easily-mocked contemporary art. I mean things like Medieval paintings with Jesus painted as a baby-sized adult man. Everything bef
967.
by jfengel 11mo ago
The Federalist Papers is not "the founders". It's Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. There were numerous factions running around the Constitutional Convention, and they negotiated the final document together. I don't
968.
by jfengel 11mo ago
One of my most important jobs as a Shakespeare actor is to find ways to enunciate some of his over-long sentences in a way that allows the audience to follow them just by listening. In this case, it's not too hard. Shakespeare likes gi
969.
by jfengel 11mo ago
I wouldn't say it was easy. It took about 30 years of planning to get us to this point. Getting the agent to be in charge was the very last step. They had to spend decades building up resentment of Europe, among many other things. Dest
970.
by jfengel 11mo ago
It's referring to a successful political overthrow. The quote really needs the first two lines: Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by the sun of York. The verb in the sentence is "is made", no
971.
by jfengel 11mo ago
Unlikely, since our labor costs are still considerably higher than elsewhere. For a very long time our economy has rested on developing high margin products and letting others do the low-marginal-overhead of making it. We assumed that they
972.
by jfengel 11mo ago
Most of Trek's tech is just a way to move the story along. Transporters were introduced to avoid having to land a shuttle. Warp drive is just a way to get to the next story. Communicators relay plot points. Stories which focus on them
973.
by jfengel 11mo ago
Lobbying is tightly regulated, and the FEC really does keep a close eye. This is just flat out bribery, using the thinnest of legal fig leaves. Which would not possibly pass muster if he hadn't also packed the court with supporters.
974.
by jfengel 11mo ago
No Theory of Everything is going to make realistically testable predictions. That's a problem of the domain, not the theory. The unification energy between the graviton and quantum field theory is on the order of 10^19 GeV, over a doze
975.
by jfengel 11mo ago
Neither. The goal is to scare people off of criticizing the US in the first place. If you're not going to absolutely and irrevocably boycott the US, then you're going to think twice before posting anything negative. We don't
976.
by jfengel 11mo ago
Wow, that is really cool. As a stage director I touch on choreography a bit. It would be really cool to pre-plan blocking with something like that.
977.
by jfengel 11mo ago
If your ideology has differential effects on people by race, then you may well be participating in a racist ideology even if you detest it. Most notably: current policies are addressed at punishing illegal immigrants, but it's clear th
978.
by jfengel 11mo ago
I see him as a clever person. It points out that the very title of the piece exhibits exactly the same behavior that it pretends to call out. That's a time-saver: if the author is that un-self-aware, then the article itself is not wort
979.
by jfengel 11mo ago
See also: women.
980.
by jfengel 11mo ago
Modals are different from toasts. Modals take over your screen; you go into a separate "mode" for them. Toasts are non-modal; they just take up screen space but you don't have to interact with them. "Toast" usually
981.
by jfengel 11mo ago
Why would they? They elected this administration by a fairly wide margin, and everything it has done is in keeping with its campaign promises. It's been more effective at that than any administration I can think of. Sure, it's hor
982.
by jfengel 11mo ago
I've been looking to get into audiobook narration. I've been searching for the mastering tool to comply with ACX submission requirements: https://help.acx.com/s/article/what-are-the-acx-audio-submis... D
983.
by jfengel 11mo ago
I'm not sure what you mean. Unicode doesn't have fonts. It has code blocks and code points. Fonts are how your computer chooses to render those code points. On my browser, I don't see anything special about C, H, P, or Q on t
984.
by jfengel 11mo ago
As far as I can tell, being born here is the only reason that I'm considered a citizen. My parents were also considered citizens for the same reason. But if we go back a few generations, I don't think the paperwork exists to prove
985.
by jfengel 11mo ago
The meaning of "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is flexible enough for them to decide whatever they want it to mean.
986.
by jfengel 11mo ago
Dandelions are really, really hard to eradicate by pulling. The roots grow very deep, and if you don't get them completely, the plant can re-grow from what's left. Even if you do successfully get it out, it really is going to be m
987.
by jfengel 11mo ago
I really wish we'd stop citing early quantum physicists as if they were prophets revealing wisdom from on high. A lot of what they said concerning the interpretation of quantum mechanics was Just Plain Wrong. That's no shade on th
988.
by jfengel 11mo ago
Sounds like they were testing just for safety, rather than effect. It would be interesting to see if they tried holding their breaths. In the image, the "self directed excretion" looks distressing.
989.
by jfengel 11mo ago
No, 8 km/s doesn't make sense. It's really hard to tell from the press release, but it sounds as if they're talking about a railgun kinda thing. Which has been discussed before, and it keeps not working out. The strains
990.
by jfengel 11mo ago
It actually doesn't have to. There's a fairly straightforward fix: eliminate the salary cap. Right now any salary above $184,500 is not subject to social security tax. That's "fair" in that there's also a limit

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