I suspect it is because he believes he can con Trump into giving him control over the entirety of NASAs budget

The cyber truck is, at this point, a malfunctioning status symbol. I suppose a 100K truck that sucks at being a truck is intended to communicate the driver is a successful tech guy but, whenever I see one, I think “there goes a rube”. I have a similar reaction when I see those gaudy designer bags or “luxury” branded tee shirts. I don’t think “there is someone who is successful” I think “that person is an idiot.”

There should be a catchy term for status symbols that communicate the opposite of their intention. Stupidity symbol? Status irony? Status error? None of these really roll of the tongue.

When bad people do good things they are generally seen as sinister, as if they are concealing a horrible action behind a facade of good will. So if you believe the government is fundamentally evil, and you see it trying to do something good (which is the whole purpose of FEMA) then its actions are going to look sinister to you. So stories about FEMA having camps (at their core, these are stories about the government using the facade of aid and assistance to hide something evil) will make sense to you because they are consistent with your sentiments about the what the government is. So too would stories about FEMA using disasters as a pretext for land snatching or stories about FEMA ignoring people in peril because these are all stories about an evil government. To the extent that they are consistent with your sentiments about the government, they are easy to accept as true, even if they contradict each other.

I often have the opposite experience when looking for technical documentation about programming libraries. For example I will be dealing with a particular bug and will google the library name plus some descriptive terms related to the bug, and I get back general information about the library. In those cases, it seems google often ignores the supplemental information and focuses only on the library name as If I were looking for general information.

What is worse is that the top results are always blog-spam companies that just seem to be copying the documentation pages of whatever language or library I was looking at.

Former CEO of the river poisoning company says there is no way to meet our river poison reduction goals, so we might as well build bigger river poisoning machines because they might help us figure out how to stop poisoning the river. /s

I feel like there was a time when the tech folks in silicon valley had a lot of credibility, and we are now living in a period where most of the world sees them as a joke but that fact has not yet entered into the culture of silicon valley.

longer version that includes defense and prosecution arguments as well has her bananas defense of her conduct.

Starting at 42:31 and going for about 2 minutes is a really stark example of how conspiracy theorists just do not care about the truth and will ignore evidence no matter how obvious.

Starting at around 1:45:12 and going on for about 2 minutes is a really good example of what not to do if you are speaking to a judge at your own sentencing hearing.

Used get my haircut at one of those “no appointment needed” haircut chains. Then they got an app, and every time I went it was “Why aren’t you using the app? You need to use the app. Next time use the app. Download the app on your phone. It’s gonna be an hour wait because you didn’t use the app.”

Now I just go to a local place.

Even if you accept the claim that they were duped at face value, what does that say about them? These folk’s whole pretense is that they can “see through the media’s lies” and that they are able to tell what is really going on. But they were not smart enough to recognize that they were part of a propaganda campaign? They want you to believe they have a sophisticated ability to recognize media manipulation but also now want you to believe that they were hapless stooges that were tricked into participating in a media manipulation campaign.

I went to one for a candidate for the House district I lived in a few election cycles ago, It was mostly stump speeches and other “rah rah we’re gonna win!” style pontificating. But one thing I did not expect and I actually found interesting was the house candidate spent a lot of time introducing other local politicians that were in down ballot races in the district. City council seats, education board seats etc. That turned out to be really useful, because it meant I got to meet/ hear from candidates who I either had no idea existed or who were just a name of a flyer before then. I suppose that experience may not transfer to a national candidate rally though.

The NYT ran an opinion recently where the author pretty clearly was using the NYT along with other outlets as part of a voter demobilization tactic in which the author lied about not voting. The NYT was skewered on twitter, and had to alter the opinion after the fact. It seems like some basic fact checking would have been useful in that situation. Or really, just any amount of critical thought on the part of the NYT in general.

My HOA manages communal property (trails, playgrounds, the pool and tennis/basketball courts) and does grounds keeping. They have some rules I find annoying but most of their rules are sensible (like don’t build a fire pit below your deck and don’t block your neighbors driveway with your cars). Ultimately, my HOA is just not that big of a deal. You don’t hear about HOAs like that because they are not interesting enough to post about online.

The court concluded that the POTUS has presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for all official acts–those that fall within in the outer perimeter of his duties-- or acts is that are “not manifestly or palpably beyond [his] authority.”

The court goes on to say that if the government wants to prosecute the POTUS for a crime, they have the burden of proving that the prosecution would "pose no dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.” Such a ruling seriously hamstrings any effort to hold a criminal POTUS accountable since much of the evidence for criminal conduct is going to involve interactions with government officials.

It is just wrong to say that this ruling does not immunize the POTUS from criminal acts, that is exactly what it does. As it stands now, the president can order parts of the executive branch to engage in criminal behavior, like murdering political rivals or seizing voting machines, and he would be immune from prosecution because his actions (giving an order to executive officers) are “not manifestly or palpably beyond [his] authority.” All he would need to do, as the law stands now, is come up with some argument about how his prosecution for a crime interferes with executive function. An extremely low bar.

Also, this is new law. Most of the cites you give deal with civil immunity, not criminal immunity, this law immunizes the POTUS from crimes.

This article is a very good example of why current media is terrible.

This article is a summary of someone else’s work. It does not contain any news. Literally. It contains no new information, no original reporting, and adds nothing to the understanding of the situation in Florida one may glean from reading the CNN article the New Republic is ripping off. What is does is take the reporting done by CNN, which was far more even-keeled, and dresses it up in more incendiary language to outrage media consumers who want information that is consistent with what they already believe.

If you didn’t read the CNN article, this is what it did: A reporter at CNN interviewed several lawyers who had cases before Cannon. Those lawyers were asked what they thought about the judge and offered the following opinions:

1. She is very detail oriented
2. She is rigid and provincial when it comes to procedure and local rules.
3. She is indecisive.
4. She sometimes seems overwhelmed.
5. She focuses on abstract issues, or otherwise obsesses over elements of the case that seem irrelevant to trial lawyers rather than making decisions about factual questions.
6. She is not going to defer to the prosecutor automatically, even in situations where the defense and prosecutor agree.
7. One lawyer felt she was harsh towards defendants in general but was less harsh towards Trump in this particular case.

The CNN article suggests that a a combination of some or all of factors 1-7 have made it easy for the defense in the Trump case to gum up the works and slow the progress of the trial down.

Most of these opinions are fairly anodyne. Many of them could describe almost any federal judge. Some of them even seem like good characteristics for a federal judge. (I think it is good, for example, that a federal judge requires prosecutors to back up their assertions and motions with specificity, rather than try to justify motions with generic claims.) Whats more is that none of these opinions would be particularly surprising to anyone who has been following the news surrounding Trump’s Florida trial. Nothing in the CNN reporting is particularly “damning” as the New Republic characterizes the report. The New Republic focuses on the strongest criticism of Cannon, but that criticism is the opinion of a single lawyer, and only represented a small portion of the overall report offered by CNN. If you only read the New Republic’s version, you would be forgiven for thinking that was the focus of the CNN article. In that case you would have an inaccurate view of the article, which is itself mostly a summary of opinions. I will also note that, when the New Republic was copying CNN’s homework, they ignored the praise defense lawyers had for Cannon. But I suppose if they had included the praise it would have been harder to call the article “damning”.

To put it plainly, the New Republic article is trash. It is a summary of someone else’s reporting that hypes up the most negative opinion about a federal judge, while ignoring the bulk of the same reporting.

Unhelpful Linux User Archetypes:

The Configurator: All problems are configuration problems. The fact that a user has a problem means they configured their machine incorrectly. All help requests are an opportunity to lecture others about configuration files.

The lumberjack: Insists on logs no matter how simple or basic the question. “How do I get the working directory in the terminal?” -Sorry, I can’t help you unless you post your log. “What does the -r flag do?” -You need to post a log for me to answer that question. “Is there a way to make this service start at boot?” -We have no way of knowing unless you post your log. When a user posts their log, the lumberjack’s work is done. No need to reply to the thread any further.

The Anacdata Troubleshooter: Failed to develop a theory of mind during childhood. Thinks their machine is representative of all machines. If they don’t have an issue, the user is lying about the issue.

The Jargon Master: Uses as much jargon as possible in forum posts. If a user doesn’t know each and every term, that’s on them. If you did not commit to mastering every aspect of a piece of software before asking for help, were you even trying to solve the problem?

The Hobby Horse Jockey: All problems are caused by whatever thing the contributor does not like. Graphics driver issue? Snaps. Computer won’t post? Obviously, Snaps. Machine getting too hot? Snaps. Command ‘flatpack’ not found? Oh you better believe snaps did that.

The Pedantfile: Gets mad because everyone asks their questions the wrong way. Writes a message letting the user know they asked their question wrong. Message usually appears within a minute or two of someone providing a solution to the user.

Carnap’s statement is false, humans find all sorts of non-verifiable beliefs and experiences cognitively meaningful.

I think Carnap’s conception of “meaningful” differs from the “cognitively meaningful” term you use here. Which from context, I gather means something like “personally fulfilling” or “socially important”. Carnap along with the other logical positivists were trying to develop a philosophy of science that didn’t depend on metaphysical claims and was ultimately grounded in empiricism. Carnap’s use of the term “meaningful” is more akin to saying that a concept can be connected to the empirical world. Meaningless claims, then are the opposite, they cannot be connected to the empirical world.

Imagine for example that you and a friend were the victims of an attempted mugging turned violent, but to you and the mugger’s surprise you discovered that you were impervious to attacks with lead pipes and laser guns. As you are searching for an explanation for these newfound powers your friend suggests that the reason you have these powers is that you both, without your knowledge, are wearing magical rings that give you super powers, but the rings are invisible and cannot be felt by the wearers. Carnap would say that is meaningless because the ring explanation cannot be connected to the empirical world. The explanation requires an imperceptible entity.

Trying to draw a bright line between empiricism and metaphysics is not scientism, in the pejorative sense that you mean here. I think to qualify as such Carnap would need to dismiss all meaningless (in Carnap’s sense of the term) propositions as totally lacking in personal value. I don’t know his writing well enough to say whether or not he holds that view, ( a brief reading of his entry in the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy suggests, no he did not hold those views) but I don’t think that conclusion is a particularly charitable reading of Carnap’s criticisms of metaphysics.

It can see two reasons why it matters.

Reason 1: The policies required to prevent mass shootings (as most people understand the term) are going to be different from the policies required to prevent violence of other sorts, like domestic violence, or violence perpetrated in the furtherance of other crimes. These are different kinds of social problems which require different kinds of solutions. Conflating them will not help develop policy to combat them.

Reason 2: People generally understand the term “mass shooting” to mean a rampage shooting where someone targets strangers, typically in public spaces, for reasons that either have no clear motivation (the so-called mental health shootings), or have abstract ideological motivations (e.g . racist terrorism). The definition being used to make the claim in the headline “Second worst year on record for mass shootings” runs the risk of leading people to believe that this year was the second worst year on record for rampage shootings, when that might not be true. You don’t even have to leave this comment chain to see people making the assumption that this about school shootings, but it is not, the overwhelming majority of the cases that support the headline are not rampage shootings, but I’d wager most people would assume that is what the story will be about. Do you really think that fact was lost on the people who wrote that article? Do the people who develop these databases not understand that most people think “mass shooting” is the same as “rampage shooting” as I have described it? It is difficult to believe that the equivocation is an accident, and that has the effect of making people who promote these kinds of stories appear disingenuous.

For all the problems of violence I have raised here, gun control probably has a role to play, but gun control policies are unlikely to be exhaustive of the possible solutions and gun control solutions in one context are not guaranteed to be effective in other contexts. conflating these obviously different types of violence–rampage killings are different from organized crime, which is different from domestic violence–makes policy advocacy more difficult. When advocates of gun control conflate these kinds of violence in ways any reasonable person would immediately recognize as misleading it makes them seem like they are liars, and so untrustworthy. If you live in the US, then you live in a place where gun control is a controversial idea, if your argument for more gun control involves equivocation, or otherwise relies on misleading statements, you are shooting yourself in the foot.

Thanks for reaffirming my bias that new cars suck.

I am really concerned the next car I need to buy, which is probably 20 years off, is going to be this trend cranked to 11. With software and hardware I can find alternatives and hack my way around the “you paid for it, but we own it and can do whatever we want to it” mentality that tech companies push, but cars seem like a whole different world when it comes to the “you paid for it, but we own it” mentality.

Or you only consider your expenses after savings and think that you are “living paycheck to paycheck” because you use up all your non-invested money by the end of the month.

This really isn’t a study, so much as a lit review. Sort of. Anyway, in the fully remote section they cite three studies that argue show a fall in productivity. The first (Emmanuel and Harrington (2023)) found an 8% drop in call volume as a call center shifted to fully remote work at the onset of the pandemic. But their comparison group was a group of call center employees who were always remote. So even if you buy the argument that the change call volume is solely attributable to a drop in productivity, you cannot conclude that the productivity shift was caused by working from home, the group that shifted from on-location to remote work did 8% worse than the group than the always remote work!

The second study (Gibbs, Mengel and Siemroth (2022)) is, again, an analysis of call-center employees (this time in India) who shifted to remote work at the onset of the pandemic. They find no change in productivity, but that employees are working longer hours at home, which they argue means a real 8-19% drop in productivity.

The final study (Atkin, Schoar, and Shinde (2023)) is another firm from India which involved a randomized controlled study which finds an 18% drop in productivity for data entry work.

So, just taking their lit review at face value, one of their studies directly contradicts their argument, yet they somehow present it as if it is evidence of a causal relationship between working from home and productivity. Another study shows no effect, so they break out some razamataz math to try to turn no effect into a negative effect. Only one of the three studies shows a plausible effect.

Since these are the only three papers they cite to support their argument that fully remote work causes a drop in firm productivity, let’s look at them in more depth.

If you go to their references section, you find that there is not a Emmanuel and Harrington (2023) cited. Hey, that a bad sign. There is an Emmanuel and Harrington 2021, but its an unpublished paper. Maybe it got published and they just forgot to update the cite? I plugged the title into google scholar, and find one result, with no copy of the working paper, and no evidence of any sort of publication record from any journal. Plugging the title into regular google returns a “Staff Report” of the federal reserve bank of NY. So not a peer reviewed article. They employ whats known as a difference-in-difference design to compare employees who shifted from fully in person to fully remote. They report a 4% reduction in productivity for these workers, not the 8% reported in the original article. I just skimmed the article, so maybe they get their 8% figure someplace else. What is interesting to me though is that their DID models seem to show there is not any difference between the different groups for most of the periods of observation. IDK. I’d have to read more in-depth to make up my mind.

It seems like these conclusions, whatever you make of them should really only be applied to call-center work during the pandemic.

Meh, its not a perfect correlation (and the time series for the poverty map and the diabetes map are different), but most chronic diseases tend correlate with poverty pretty well. You should look at a map of obesity. It follows the same form.