BostonFern

The famous Oracle of Delphi in Ancient Greece was said to be the center of the universe in its time. Kings, generals, and officials from poleis across and from without Greece would seek the Oracle’s counsel on important decisions.

Stories of Apollo’s favor and hallucinogenic gases abound, but I think the late Yale professor of Ancient Greek history, Donald Kagan, explained it best:

“Now, you can bet when these folks came and consulted the priests and said, ‘could you please put us down on the list, we want to consult the oracle’, the priests said ‘sure, have a beer, let's talk about your hometown, what's going on out there’. What I'm suggesting to you is that this was the best information gathering and storing device that existed in the Mediterranean world. These people knew more than anybody else about these things, and so consulting that oracle was a very rational act indeed.”

It’s not open-source, but I enjoy using Affinity, especially the updated version after it was acquired by Canva.

Then present your evidence, so we can have a substantive debate and draw informed conclusions.

See retired test pilot Robert Johnson’s analysis of what led to the crash for a different perspective: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrtfUZRk5h4&ra=m

In Scandinavia in particular, there’s a tendency of pescatarians to refer to themselves as vegetarian for social convenience, but that hasn’t changed the definition of “vegetarian”.

No idea? Really?

You’re an intelligent mammal, your biological makeup encoded in DNA. So are all other people, who largely share that same DNA. You’re conscious. It’s not a big leap to conclude that so are other people, too.

This kind of solipsistic sophistry is not productive. It might be entertaining if you’re contemplating the underpinnings of epistemology for the first time in your life, but it’s not an honest contribution to the debate.

You might as well claim that you have no idea if gravity will be in effect tomorrow.

Tougher adblocking is the best argument I’ve heard.

Are we talking about laptops in grades advanced enough for students to waste time on Reddit, or smartphones in the hands of young children?

My contention is that it's feasible to use laptops in classrooms productively, especially considering the value in applications like word processors. Of course it's necessary to balance the educational value with the potential for distraction. A way to minimize the latter is to extend classroom management to address device use, e.g., instilling discipline. I've personally seen it done well and done poorly (often not attempted at all), and given an otherwise healthy classroom setting, it comes down to discipline and ethics that address device use. That comes after tailoring the specific device format (e.g., tablets lending themselves more to entertainment, socially and habitually) to the appropriate grade level (maturity, responsibility, and technical potential increasing with age).

Some classrooms are too disruptive for device use, but that's not inherently a tech problem, even if you blame disruptive classrooms on broader cultural problems stemming from tech's role in society. Other classrooms exist in cultures that reject the necessary classroom management strategies.

It's not my contention that any device format should be used at any grade level and that distractions can be managed by simply saying "don't" and expecting success.

To address your other point above, yes, reading a book is different, often better, than reading on a screen, even for adults, so I'm also not arguing that devices should replace books.

That anecdote sounds like a problem with discipline and ethics, not with technology.

That’s a fair objection. Having ruminated on it some more, I’ll admit it might be tenable.

As for achieving an effective ban, occupational collapse might be the stronger motivator once workplace adoption broadens and accelerates, but risk of epistemic collapse might register sooner among the general public, already broadly suffering slop.

Like Bill Gates, I wonder why it’s not yet become a theme in mainstream politics.

Get this point across to those leading the charge, if not every person everywhere.

The challenge is that enforcing a ban would presumably require strict incursions into personal freedoms organized at a scale where AI-based solutions would be particularly effective and thus tempting, paradoxically.

On the other hand, assuming the dangers are real, you lose by default if you do nothing.

That's interpreting a failure to fight to preserve ethics as an internal rejection when it could be explained by a lack of fighting spirit, either because the fight seems impossible or the given hill not worth dying on. Another interpretation would be a comfort-oriented, avoidant, and possibly cynical culture facing a power imbalance.

Contra proferentem or caveat aleator? That is the question.

The testimonials on the landing page, where are they sourced from?

Officials have made announcements that tie the alleged drone sightings to “capable” (e.g., foreign state) actors. How would stricter laws address that?

It’s also already illegal to fly drones above airports.

If this comment is an indication of how you approached the conversation, maybe you failed to convince your colleague due to a lack of specific arguments and an abundance of scornful conceit.

I need to start hanging out in more lucrative forums, apparently.

The follow-up attempt in 1999 where the team succeeds in raising a large obelisk by slowly draining sand out of a pit underneath it is a great watch.

First of all, the WTC towers did withstand the impacts but collapsed due to the ensuing fires which weakened the remaining core columns (notably not due to collapsing floors, which did not in fact occur, according to Thornton-Tomasetti who have modeled the impacts and ensuing collapses as part of their forensic investigation commissioned for the insurance claim litigation).

Leslie Robertson, who lead the WTC structural engineering team along with John Skilling, is on tape making the 707 claim, but no surviving documentation has been uncovered to reveal the specific scenario that was modeled or the calculations used.

An important reason why the towers survived the impacts at all was the presence of the two hat trusses, which allowed the increasingly unsupported loads to be redistributed to the surviving exterior columns. Najib N. Abboud of Thornton-Thomasetti has given a detailed account of the findings of the forensic investigation that's available on Youtube[1].

[1] https://youtu.be/b2wimsBPmYI?feature=shared

Functioning, presumably.

That conjures up memories of Joel Spolsky's cautionary tale about lava flow from his talk at WeAreDevelopers 2019: https://youtu.be/tWKh95Kio38?feature=shared&t=311

Won’t .esm.js work?

I had forgotten about that story. Maybe UC Berkeley would reconsider given modern closed captioning tools, not that this would address the broader societal issue.

Above the testimonials carousel on the front page it says “real stories from real businesses”, but none of the three company names bring up anything relevant on Google.

Nothing on Michael Lee from SmartGadgets, John Smith from TechVision, or Sarah Johnson from Trendy Styles.

“Switching to Rolly was the best decision for our business. The platform is incredibly user-friendly, and the one-click setup made launching our store hassle-free. The built-in marketing tools have significantly increased our customer engagement.”

> one of the key ingredients that in my experience really call for a framework: coordination between a large number of people

Keep going, you might just end the whole debate in this thread.

See Josef Albers’ Interaction of Color or the recent and more approachable Interacting With Color.

The title refers to the banners, not any laws.

Low B12 (and folate) levels are also a symptom of tropical sprue, a chronic condition which is treated with B12 supplements/injections and antibiotics. It’s believed the disease is caused by an infection, but the pathogen responsible has not been identified.

A hallmark of tropical sprue is villous atrophy, a symptom usually associated with celiac disease (sprue), so it’s often overlooked.

It’s almost a shame, considering all the effort that went into Moment and Luxon, which will largely be superseded. Luxon especially is a joy to work with.