BryantD

Loved the Thunderscan back in the day. In college I worked at a little computer store in Harvard Square that didn’t bother to stock real scanners — students who could afford them had better places to buy gear. One day this nice guy came in looking for a scanner and I did my absolute best to sell him on a Thunderscan based on the price point. “I’m not telling you the quality is as high as a flat bed scanner, but it’s so affordable!”

After he left and after the store owner stopped laughing, she explained that I’d been trying to sell Robin Williams on the basis of price. I like to think he enjoyed being treated like a guy off the street.

To be fair, that’s McHayle’s stage name too.

Regardless, I think it’s a fair observation that French 75 is cartoonish at times. This is not a movie about how great revolutionaries are, although it is a movie about how necessary they are. PTA also certainly makes some odd choices around minority characters.

I think you’re mistaking the review for the movie. The review is written for people with that deep context and with an interest in peeling back all the layers PTA put in his movie. The movie itself works well as an action movie, and works very well as a meditation on the way parents burden their kids, and so on.

One small note -- what got you an interview before 2020 will often not get you an interview now. The market (as you obviously know) is much tougher. The last two managerial roles I've opened have gotten literally thousands of applications within the first week and it's harder to stand out. If you've done a few rounds already, there's probably not much incremental value, though.

Absolutely ask for referrals. You gotta painfully get on LinkedIn for maximum effectiveness -- if you're looking at a company and an ex-coworker you got along with knows someone there, ask for the introduction. It feels awkward and weird but it increases your chances somewhat.

Yes. I agree that many of the announced and currently shipping features should be just fine from a security perspective with only a local agent.

I think the "local results" assumption is not completely accurate. This line: "You tell Gemini in Chrome what you want to get done, and it acts on web pages on your behalf, while you focus on other things" implies that the local agent will perform in-browser actions, which in theory enables data exfiltration.

It said it could be delayed with some pretty specific parameters. Quoting the Congressional Research Service report on the bill:

"The President can grant a one-time extension of up to 90 additional days when a path to a qualified divestiture has been identified, there is evidence of 'significant' progress toward executing the divestiture, and there are legally binding agreements in place to enable the divestiture."

One could argue all day about whether or not there was an identified path or evidence of significant progress, but certainly there weren't legally binding agreements in place at any point, and the deadline has been extended far more than once.

Trump is ignoring the law. The DoJ has asserted that Trump can ignore the law because it would interfere with his duty to "take care of the national security and foreign affairs of the United States." It is unclear what, if any law, could not be ignored under this doctrine.

Ah! Fair enough and thanks again for a great comment from an informed position.

My wife worked in an aerospace museum for quite some time; I've heard a lot of similar stories.

Good feedback. I wouldn't put "taking care" in quotes, however; my wife is a former museum worker and has graduate degrees in the field, and preservation is a key part of the role. Exhibits aren't just for the now, they're for the future. People would love to sit in the cockpit of the Bockscar bomber (little bit morbid, but true); allowing that would result in serious damage over time.

This is less important for educational spaces like the one the OP describes -- strictly speaking, science museums often aren't museums in the classical sense. Preservation is less important there, although not unimportant.

Yes. When I say tag, I mean specifically "small town sheriff" as a tag. Saying "small town sheriff" is technically inaccurate but understandable in context.

It's an American English idiom -- "small town" as a synonym for remote rural areas. Not incredibly common but not unusual. It shows up as a tag in TMDB (movie database) and Goodreads, and I believe there's at least one romance novel using the term.

You know, you’re right and I totally missed the point.

If we want to assess the chances of a US intervention in Latin America producing good results, we should probably include the results of Operation Condor in our analysis.

I would not say that Venezuela is currently having orderly rotations of power. Since the 2015 parliamentary elections, we've seen at least one constitutional crisis and the most recent election results are disputed.

I do not particularly think it's a good idea for the US to invade in order to overthrow Maduro, but I don't want to pretend he's more ethical than he appears to be.

If you use Letterboxd, https://letterboxd.samlearner.com/ is good for this purpose.

Only as a percentage of GDP. Pandemic recovery was not cheap. However, yes, Biden and/or his economic advisors did a pretty good job of managing the economy.

I went to a Waldorf school and I’d recommend being really wary. The woo is sort of background noise, and if you’ve raised your kid well they’ll be fine. But the quality of the academics may not be good at all. For example, when I was ready for calculus my school didn’t have anyone who knew how to teach it so they stuck me and the other bright kid in a classroom with a textbook and told us to figure it out. As a side effect of not being challenged, I didn’t have good study habits going into college, which hurt me a lot.

If you’re talking about grade school, interview whoever is gonna be your kids teacher for the next X years and make sure they seem sane. If you’re talking about high school, give a really critical look at the class schedule.

Waldorf schools can vary a lot in this regard so you may not encounter the same problems I did, but it’s good to be cautious.

Coming up on five months now! Thank you very much for your comment -- I've been hoping based on research and talking to people I know that you do rewire eventually, and you reinforced all of that. Appreciated.

And yeah, caloric intake is a concern. The diabetes means I'm also changing my diet a fair bit which doesn't help; I haven't had ice cream in months. I am pretty sure I'm overcompensating and have recently pushed myself into more experimentation with food; the availability of real time glucose sensors is huge even if I feel weird walking around with a Bluetooth device plugged into my arm.

Very good article.

As someone who is currently on GLP-1 drugs, I will say that if I didn't need to be on them to control my diabetes, I would seriously consider stopping. I am undoubtedly healthier and have lost substantial weight, but the effects on my quality of life are substantial -- I simply don't enjoy food right now. This is in part psychological, because what I used to enjoy was the psychological effect of eating, but not completely. I hope this will ease out over time and if it doesn't, well, I'll cope.

I'm still very interested in the ongoing research.

In the interests of gathering these pre-release impressions, here's Ethan Mollick's writeup: https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/gpt-5-it-just-does-stuff

Thank you to Simon; your notes are exactly what I was hoping for.

It is slightly worse than that. The provision was changed by Republicans… but set to kick in after Trump’s first term, so the negative effects landed on Biden. Now that Trump’s back in office, it’s safe to improve the economy again without the wrong party getting credit for it.

I tend to agree here, with the caveat that the prompt doesn’t just say “consider multiple sources.” It says that subjective opinions from media should be considered biased, while giving a pass to other subjective opinions. Also media is left undefined which I think is potentially an issue.

There was lots of debate in the Senate during the passage of the 14th Amendment; much of it revolved around birthright citizenship. Both those who wanted the Amendment to exclude people who were born to those temporarily in the US and those who did not acknowledged that, in the form passed, it did not.

Sen. Edgar Cowan of Pennsylvania said "I am really desirous to have a legal definition of ‘citizenship of the United States. Is the child of the Chinese immigrant in California a citizen?" He didn't think that child should be.

Sen. Conness of California said he thought it should cover "the children begotten of Chinese parents in California, and it is proposed to declare that they shall be citizens. I voted for the proposition to declare that the children of all parentage whatever, born in California, should be regarded and treated as citizens of the United States, entitled to equal civil rights with other citizens of the United States." And let's remember, as Conness was certainly aware, that many of those Chinese laborers had been imported illegally.

They knew what they were passing, and they knew it included birthright citizenship. Senators who wanted to alter the Amendment to exclude some people failed.

CASA Inc. in Maryland is in fact refiling its broader lawsuit as a class action case, and has asked for a wider injunction on that basis. So we'll see.

It's incredibly easy to demonize the outgroup. More so if the outgroup is easily identifiable visually. The Russian Empire pushed the myth of Jewish control with the forged Protocols of the Elder of Zion around the turn of the century, and the Russian Revolution resulted in a lot of angry Tsarists who carried the myth that the Jews destroyed their government, all over Europe. Undoubtedly didn't help that Trotsky was Jewish.

Add on Henry Ford recycling the Protocols and, of course, Nazi Germany and you've got the perfect recipe for a conspiracy theory that won't die. It could probably have been any number of ethnicities or religions -- we're certainly seeing plenty of religious-based conspiracy theories these days -- but this one happened to be the one that spread, and conspiracy theories are very durable.

To be fair, Minnesota is getting it right and Washington is reluctantly stumbling in the right direction. However, I’m forced to agree on the general sentiment.

California is a bit embarrassing. We’ll see how the Builder’s Remedy and laws like SB 1123 play out, I suppose.

Yeah, the really interesting thing there for me wasn't what you did, it's the clarity with which you presented your options as you saw them at the time. I am firmly pro-rehabilitation and that means I've got to be aware of the obstacles to getting out of that culture.

Oh, I have no interest in going around and around about it -- that's not a good use of anyone's time. I think it's a somewhat understudied field, and was legitimately interested in your cites. Your material is way better than surveys about how many people feel like they've been falsely accused; relying on self-reporting like that is clearly flawed.

I also, for what it's worth, think that "did you talk to the wife" is too high a standard in this case. For one thing, the wife didn't bring a complaint, as I understand it.

Sincere thanks!

Some notes: in Connecticut, restraining orders can be granted for a variety of reasons, not restricted to domestic violence alone. Fairly close correlation but it does include, for example, stalking.

It seems unwise to assume that restraining orders alone represent the entire count of domestic violence complaints that reach the legal system. For example, surely domestic violence arrests should be counted? Which seem to be a much higher count than restraining order applications -- 24,850 DV arrests in 2011 vs. 9033 DV applications. I'm not sure how to count the 32,111 "Family Violence Protective Orders" in 2011; are they the result of arrests? Are they yet another possible outcome of law enforcement involvement, separate from either a requested restraining order or an arrest?

There are way more reasons a restraining order might not make it to a final order besides "the requestor was proven wrong." I'd want more detailed data here before reaching a conclusion. Otherwise, this assumes that failure to grant a restraining order proves lack of DV. I am not sure that it would change the percentages you've shown significantly -- we're all aware of cases where restraining orders weren't granted with very bad results, but there's always a tendency to report on the most clickbaity outcomes. Still, worth digging into that one a bit more.

Again, appreciate the cite.

Cites, please? A quick skim of the literature doesn't support this and I'm dubious, but I'm willing to be proven wrong.