zipwitch

26 ms·

211.
by zipwitch 8y ago
Given that there are people walking around living perfectly normal lives who have only a small fraction of normal brain mass, I'm always skeptical of definitive pronouncements regarding conciousness.
212.
by zipwitch 8y ago
Maybe he's just human and rationally wants himself and his family to get out alive? Anyone with a brain and a little knowledge of history can see how easily things can go badly for a dictator and his family. If Kim Jong-Un can pull thi
213.
by zipwitch 8y ago
>The only significant thing to change was American policy. The North Korean government has a small but credible nuclear deterrent in the form of a warhead stockpile + ICBMs. That's only happened in the last year or two.
214.
by zipwitch 9y ago
Many if not most politicians (and those pulling their strings) passing the laws to enable this crackdown absolutely understand what they are doing. This is about control, at a very basic level. Access to sex and control of sex are a huge le
215.
by zipwitch 9y ago
I read that as meaning risks like "if my product isn't caught killing anyone in the next year, I'll be a billionaire!" type risks, not personal risks.
216.
by zipwitch 9y ago
I'm not much of a social network user. A few forums and a barely-used Google account are as close as I've been willing to go. But it seems to me that they're just crying out to be regulated as a utility, if they're going
217.
by zipwitch 9y ago
It makes me uncomfortable too. I think it's because it's a real world trolley problem. We all make similar decisions all of our lives, but nearly always at some remove. (With rare exceptions in fields like medicine and military op
218.
by zipwitch 9y ago
Interestingly, the Gothic rebellions that lead to the sacking of Rome twice in the 400s AD was a direct result of the Romans abandoning their traditional policy of integration, dispersion, and resettlement in favor of abusing and exploiti
219.
by zipwitch 9y ago
I seem to recall one essay I read (long ago back in college and which a modicum of google-fu fails to locate) that argued that average caloric intake went sharply up in the territories of the Western Roman Empire in the decades after it&#
220.
by zipwitch 9y ago
Large, white and fast you say? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaled_Composites_Stratolaunch
221.
by zipwitch 9y ago
Assuming for a moment that you're serious or even a little accurate, consider for a moment the cost of the infrastructure the human race has built over centuries based on traditional climate patterns. Now imagine build all that again,
222.
by zipwitch 9y ago
Climate change denialism has more in common with Flat Earth Theory than religion of any stripe. (Which makes so many Americans buying into it all the more frighting.)
223.
by zipwitch 9y ago
And here I clicked expecting Bowditch's. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowditch%27s_American_Practi...
224.
by zipwitch 9y ago
I suspect what you are seeing is a reaction, or over-reaction, to how Americans have long censored our own history. Once you figure out the official (accepted, schoolbook, popular) depiction of history edits out the nastiest bits in favor c
225.
by zipwitch 9y ago
You are making the completely unwarranted (and demonstrated false by modern history) assumption that decisions coming from capitalism are made objectively and rationally.
226.
by zipwitch 9y ago
Worse, it is teaching a generation (or more) that our justice system is stupid and broken. That in turn erodes ideas like rule of law that a essential to modern civilization.
227.
by zipwitch 9y ago
While not exactly what you're looking for, Torrentfreak does an annual review of VPNs. Here's last year's : https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-services-anonymous-review-2017-...
228.
by zipwitch 9y ago
SF author Charles Stross has a couple of damning criticisms of He3 mining on the moon, found here: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/08/moonshin... In short: Nobody's built any useful
229.
by zipwitch 9y ago
And let us not forget those who ended up working in wildly different fields from their degree or degrees. Such "cross-pollination" between different fields can be very productive.
230.
by zipwitch 9y ago
Several of these remind me of James Nicoll's old quote from Usenet: "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion
231.
by zipwitch 9y ago
A similiar idea has been around since the 1980s. Put a cloud in retrograde geosync and within a few days there will be nothing functional left, just a mini-asteroid belt. http://www.jamesoberg.com/pearl.html
232.
by zipwitch 9y ago
Pure anecdote and likely shaded by the Cold War, but I remember my WWII veteran grandfather (European theater) telling me how after the war he had talked to fellow US and British officers responsible for turning POWs over to the Soviets. (I
233.
by zipwitch 9y ago
Install Cthulhoid Overlord?
234.
by zipwitch 9y ago
My memory is that ~20 years ago or so bottom-tier cable networks would get to that point during off-peak hours. I had to be tremendously bored before even contemplating watching them, but it happened a time or two - and I discovered that th
235.
by zipwitch 9y ago
We are currently paying the costs (both monetary and otherwise) for the apparatus you describe, but looking at the last decade, the benefits appear to be absent. Perhaps we need to consider the possibility that an organization like the NSA
236.
by zipwitch 9y ago
Because they're not keen on people whose business model is: "having laws is a cost we don't need to pay".
237.
by zipwitch 9y ago
Some procedures are impossible for human beings to follow with high nines levels of accuracy. (Look at attention blindness, for example.) All that is done with harsh punishment in such cases is damage to morale. Or worse, it causes people
238.
by zipwitch 9y ago
If we want to search Mars for life before we contaminate it then we need to launch a crash program to do so now , because our window is swiftly expiring. Right now a small group with minimal resources (on the to build and launch stuff into
239.
Extraordinary boulder transport by storm waves(sciencedirect.com)
2 points by zipwitch 9y ago|0 comments
240.
by zipwitch 9y ago
I've seen discussion floating around of dazzle camouflage for the face - a sort of blend of WWI meet 80s glam rock.

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