Beestie

I love my country but omg do we have so many shameful episodes. These things need to be brought out to the light of day so we can confront, admit and heal. The letter is the 2nd crime. The first crime is the tolerance of the hate behind the letter. The 3rd crime is concealing the facts till those responsible are out of the reach of justice.

Impressive - definitely favorite worthy.

New ideas aren't fragile. The folks who come up with them need to have the conviction and strength and indifference to peer disapproval to nurture and cultivate them. If a creator finds that easier in isolation then great. But isolation is not a pre-requisite. Some outlandish ideas spring out of interaction with others (peers, skeptics, laypersons, etc.). Isolation has its place and its function but, in itself, it is neither a nursery nor a cemetery.

So I read the article and a good many comments and surprised no one has mentioned overharvesting by the fish oil pill industry as a major reason for the decline in culinary sardines.

This shortage has been discussed for years - long before overconsumption was even a drop in the bucket compared to the fish oil supplement industry.

omigosh - this is an internet classic that never gets old!

Two observations: one - return to the library. After years of not visiting, I started going back. My favorite spot are the new books and librarian's choice sections. I'm not into going thru the catalog or the aisles, so I just go to the new/recommended shelves and grab 3. Figure at least one of them will be good.

Two: I think the internet is shortening everyone's attention span. Reading a whole book helps address that. At least for me, its helping.

Permit requirements must be consistent for all applicants. I don’t find that fascist.

Hi Alan, good to see you again.

Another valuable creator I follow on a different platform went through the same thing about a year ago. I strongly recommend you reach out to him for guidance - he’s a good dude and will share how he broke out of the same death spiral.

Fraser Cain of Universe Today on Patreon.

There is a way out of this and the quality of your content is easily good enough to sustain a susbscriber-supported model.

TLDR: EPA policy does not require microplastic monitoring. Mr. Tyler decides to require it and doesn’t ask his boss. Boss says remove the requirement. Mr. Tyler publicly calls out his boss and gets fired.

So what about any of this is news?

Yes, microplastics are a big concern. But Mr. Tyler doesn’t get to make policy all by himself then accuse his employer for being bent when they say Hold Up.

Imagine 3 states of a potential customer: 1. They have no knowledge of your product/service; 2. They are aware of it and consider it valuable and correctly priced; 3. They actually buy it.

Digital media (email/LinkedIn/Insta/X/etc.) moves people from 1 to 2.

Moving people from 2 to 3 ain't gonna happen with "awareness." You have to get in front of someone and close the sale. There is a lot of stuff in the store that I think is good and fairly priced. But I don't buy the entire store every time I visit. But, if someone in the store shows me one item and gives me a good story, pretty good chance I'm walking out with it. One item out of thousands. Why? Because a human moved me from 2 to 3.

Water doesn't boil at 100° - you have to add a little bit more energy to initiate a phase change. No different.

Eliminating Fannie and Freddie would constrain the funds available for mortgage loans and prices would skyrocket.

Until about 20 years ago, both were great and valuable institutions. Long story.

Shutting them down would be a catastrophic disaster to housing affordability.

Well dangit - there go all my favorite crime solving shows.

This is gold, mate. Much obliged.

I don’t know where to start with this other than to point out that there is no way in hell these two clowns had the security clearance necessary to access a prod DB at DHS. I can only assume they stole creds from another employee who had that level of clearance. Also, tax records are not stored in a DHS domain .

I think this story has been sanitized to mask some details which is ok I guess but I ain’t buying the back story.

I want that tie with the storage pockets. Take my money!

it gets easier but not by much. I wouldn't have it any other way. Been 15 years and I don't want to ever forget. My Mom is showing your Mom around and they are trading stories of what brats we were :-)

This is really cool. I took a couple guesses as to which team had the most states represented (Colorado, Notre Dame, USC, K State) but it was too close to call.

So easy to use. Bravo.

Interesting timing - just days after the announcement that Nicole Ozer will be taking over for Cindy Cohn as the Executive Director of EFF.

This site was helpful in documenting the spread of lantern flies (invasive critters that damage trees on the U.S. East Coast) - the more folks that report sightings (of anything not just problem critters) the better for all concerned.

Conversely, its also beneficial to report sightings of helpful bugs/birds/bats/etc. so can get an early warning when a population starts to thin out.

I rather suspect the information was siphoned to linkedin from the payroll company the consulting firm was using. While there are a zillion small consulting firms, there are a small number of firms which process their payroll (whether to employees or independent contractors like myself). I have no evidence to back this up but after thinking it through, it made more sense than every little mom/pop/medium size niche company all cooperating with linkedin vs a hand full of mega payroll consolidators selling aggregated lists to linkedin. Again, speculation on my part.

I don't have a linkedin acct. So imagine my shock when I "googled" myself and found a linkedin profile connecting my name to a company I presently have a consulting arrangement with (1099 not W2). I went ballistic and fired off an email to the consulting firm to take down the profile immediately or face legal action (a bluff). Couple days later, the company forwarded an email they received from linkedin confirming the profile had been taken down.

So this is just a heads up that even if you don't have a linkedin account, they will create one on your behalf so might better check (assuming you neither have nor want one).

Fascinating idea. Since the board starting position never changes, I'd skip the initial table and pivot and just go straight to loading an 8x8 grid with the pieces. I would also make a table of the 6 piece types and movement parameters. So, for ex, the bishop move restriction is dX=dY, the rook (dXdY=0), knight (dXdY=2), etc. Then a child table to record for each piece, the changes in X,Y throughout the game (so the current position of any piece is X = (Xstart + SUM(dX)) & Y = (Ystart + SUM(dY)) and a column to show if the piece was captured. Any proposed "move" (e.g., 3 squares up) would be evaluated against the move restrictions, the current location of the piece and whether or not the move will either land on an empty square, an opponent piece or gulp off the board and either allow or disallow it.

I'm still working on an idea to have a "state" check to know when checkmate happens but that's gonna take a wee bit more time.

But, the idea is very novel and very thought provoking and has provided me with a refreshing distraction from the boring problem I was working on before seeing your post.

Not really. Individuals who can build a company are under no obligation to sell it to anyone placing unreasonable conditions on the sale. If I'm buying your company, I have a concern that you might pull of of the customers back (having started a new company) but the price I'm willing to offer you compensates you for the book of business you are selling to me. That's where non-solicitation clauses come in.

I think the operative principal here is that employees are at a disadvantage w/r to employers. Buyers and sellers are not presumed to be at any disadvantage w/r to each other.

A clause I frequently see (as one who performs a lot of contract work) is a restriction on accepting an offer of employment from the client of the consulting firm I'm contracting with. Whenever I see this clause, I redline it out and advise the consulting firm to fashion a buyout clause* with the client. I'm very firm that the consulting firm cannot restrict my employment opportunities.

* The buyout clause is between the client and consulting firm and roughly compensates the consulting firm for the lost profit of the rate diff over the remaining term of my contract with the consulting firm.

Non-competes are restrictions on employees by their current employer. A non-compete agreement between a seller and buyer is perfectly fine.

Stopped reading not long after noticing the title of the paper in question.

The very hypothesis is laughable. It is completely irrelevant if the hypothesis is supported or not.

That paper is like flypaper for anyone seeking affirmation of sustainability policies.

I could write a paper tomorrow claiming that [insert conspiracy theory here] is absolutely true and why Big [insert hated industry here] doesn't want you to know the truth and it would be cited until the earth crashes into the sun.

It's not about the truth anymore. It's about opinion validation.

I could write a paper about that but wouldn't hold my breath on getting any cites.

Well age verification works so well to keep alcohol, tobacco and weed beyond the reach of minors so....

I, for one, welcome our new alien overlords.

I'm just glad that the dumb idea that Neanderthals were dumb, club carrying knuckledraggers is finally being laid to rest. I hope we eventually learn what happened to them. They survived the choke point of 75,000 years ago only to disappear 30,000 years later. So cool to put a face to the name :-)

Neanderthals are a distinct species. If "human" in the context you are using it is confined to Homo sapiens then no, Neanderthals are not human. If your definition of human is anything in the genus homo then yes, Neanderthals are human.