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DaveZaleon The Native Americans Before the Native Americans

Conclusions from DNA evidence change over time, as more data rolls in from various ancient sources, and existing populations. Fascinating prehistory here!

There have fringe publications for some time now that discuss the surprising discoveries of copper tools found in places like Wisconsin. I've seen some articles claiming that ancient copper trade routes existed for export to faraway places. Who knows?

DaveZaleon Criticisms of “The Body Keeps the Score”

https://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html

It's proactive introspection. Stoicism can provide freedom because you can be master of yourself.

Not to say that epigenetic effects aren't real.

DaveZaleon The Dragon Hatchling: The missing link between the transformer and brain models

Housing could still be a bubble. Many homes on wheels in addition to the stationary ones in my neighborhood. But sure that's another topic.

DaveZaleon Instant coffee just beat drip

I tried it yesterday after seeing this study. The drip coffee we brew at home is better, fwiw. But the jar of instant won't go to waste for sure.

DaveZaleon The Internet's Too Fast

Ditto here. I quit the "for you" feeds a while ago, because they box me into past passing interests. The internet needs to know how to forget, too. We all move on to new things.

DaveZaleon Americans can't afford their cars any more and Wall Street is worried

that- that ppl go elsewhere- like with the aws rto demands- have serious repercussions, true

DaveZaleon Americans can't afford their cars any more and Wall Street is worried

Well, it is a perfect storm of factors. First of all lack of maintenance. Secondly, people gunning it with the gas pedal. Thirdly, lower income folks in a rush to get to a second or even third job, gunning it for reasons other than just sheer frustration.

DaveZaleon Americans can't afford their cars any more and Wall Street is worried

hehe good question. But I believe that we are addicted to AI hopium at the moment. You know the drill, circular financing a la Enron, smartest guys in the room stuff. Your intuition will play out but there may be a delayed effect. Seriously I owned TSLA stock for many years. It was boring and frustrating, and I sold. So the Muffler Noise Index may be predictive of what happens years from now ;-)

DaveZaleon Americans can't afford their cars any more and Wall Street is worried

I use the Loud Muffler Index for judging the economy. Traffic gets louder when working people are under financial stress. It's easily measurable.

DaveZaleon [dead]

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DaveZaleon Frugal Living

Poor Richard's Almanac for the digital age?

DaveZaleon An experiment: how long would you live if life were pure probability?

Wow.

I saw a snippet of an article once on a professor's office door, saying that the most dangerous thing we do everyday is driving in a car. It will be great to have AI driving for us. Can't come soon enough

DaveZaleon Australia and its peoples is vast and deep

beautiful content and design

DaveZaleon America's Rare Earth Delusion

Molycorp was active 15 years ago. As I recall, it was owned by a Canadian magnet company at the time, with talk of a big investment by US based Carlyle forthcoming, which never happened. As a small investor, it was a painful time. They could not obtain certain acids, due to conpetition from the demands of the fracking boom. At one point their bond value dropped and that was the clue to get out Now. I've worked among engineers in another field and all of the proper engineering scale up I've seen just never happened at Molycorp. I might also note here that rare earths come with radioactive impurities. That's okay, if you safely return tailings to their source, but that too complicates the engineering.

DaveZaleon Excessive planning is a fools game

"done is better than perfect" - sheryl sandberg

really?

DaveZaleon Instructions help you remember better than emotions or a good night's sleep

What a coincidence, just a few weeks ago, Arnold Schwartzenegger had advice to jot down notes about what to do tomorrow before going to bed at night. Just a few weeks ago in his Pump Club newsletter (it's free).

DaveZaleon First long-acting hair regrowth pill hailed as 'new benchmark'

extended release by intestinal absorption isn't hard to formulate, but requires special equipment

caveat: alcohol ingestion can result in dissolving some enteric coatings, resulting in rapid release

DaveZaleon I wanted to work on a newsletter but I realized I was building a cage around it

FWIW: I started a blog/website on neocities.org a few months ago, and found some webcrawler blockers- at least a couple dozen there at the time, but they needed to be uncommented. So I am using them to block the various crawlers, presumably. I still have not put that to the test. By deactivating the blockers, and checking the site traffic states, one might be able to determine whether they are working or not. You might want to build a test site to try yourself. Neocities is free for up to one GB of space.

Years ago, I used google blogspot quite a bit. After every post was published, the first hit came from a server in Germany. Maybe a mirror or surveillance bot? I'll never know. But sure, it's a little spooky to be training AI with every post, and not knowing whose AI, and it's annoying to not be compensated. I've trained a lot of technical people over the years and it paid well. With the AI we get nothing.

Hey if you have enough interesting material, why not write a print book?

DaveZaleon The Great Feminization

thank you. I almost posted earlier but stopped myself, thinking, this discussion could be very divisive, you did it better.

I just read a book about civic action, where a comment was made that suggested not thinking about left and right, but of top and bottom... but even that is dualistic.

DaveZaleon H-1B Visa Holders Disappear from US Housing Market

agree. E pluribus unum, for sure

DaveZaleon H-1B Visa Holders Disappear from US Housing Market

exactly. the talent was already here! Just more expensive.... less billions for CEOs the horror!

DaveZaleon Bringing AI to the next generation of fusion energy

okay. I didn't read it, because of the title. Did we even have gen 1? Anyone?

DaveZaleon Our plan to build bottom-up resistance to billionaire technology

Amazing go see this here!

I just read the book "Civic Self Respect" - which strongly encourages civic action. I'll be sure to reread this post and study it's recommendations. Signed up.

Thanks

DaveZaleon Show HN: LinkedIn Job Scam Detector – Catch fake recruiters and job scams

maybe you could sell it to microsoft, don't they own l/i ?

DaveZaleon It's Giving Enron: On the AI bubble, and the various echoes of the dotcom crash

Yes, Enron. Beware of "the smartest guys in the room" ... try to corner the market and monopolize it all while producing no tangible goods. No doubt AI will succeed in many areas. But what happens when stable quantum computers obselete all the binary code? Not saying it will happen soon, but...

DaveZaleon Americans Need to Be Richer Than Ever to Buy Their First Home (2023)

my single family home went up 40% in market value during Covid. More property tax should be great for local govt coffers, right? Wrong! Now local govt is cash strapped again. So we have new ballot measures for providing kids with meals, but only from taxes on those making $300k+ annually. Where is the money going?

Meanwhile, the number of vehicles that need mufflers is increasing. It's audible. That is a reliable sign of economic distress.

Nobody can buy a house without a down payment and reasonable job security. The economic gulf widens.

DaveZaleon Cheap DIY solar fence design

what are the current tariffs on solar panels?

I've wanted to install home solar for years now. It's difficult in my area. At first, the salespeople would ghost me after learning I didn't want or need financing. Then they lied about waived connection fees for use of a battery to sell power back to the utility during evening peak hours. Then the Federal incentives vanished. Now... the tariffs.

So our approach is to remain in the bottom 2% of electicity consumption for our area.

Stability in government is something we don't appreciate until it's gone.

DaveZaleon Cory Doctorow: Reverse Centaurs

first time I've clearly heard that, "hallucinations are just errors." Why are AI errors anthropomorphized like that?

DaveZaleon Preparing for AI's economic impact: exploring policy responses

you are talking high cost emvironments, at least for the moment?

Come on... show me a robot that can run a farm that grows organic produce at an affordable price. It is the lowest wage job out there. Automating it would make prices far out of range for the 99% - but the billionaires could care less?

DaveZaleon Preparing for AI's economic impact: exploring policy responses

Agree for almost all jobs, but some, like my fathers, was about crawling inside huge metal pieces to do precision machining. For unique piecework, it might not be economical to train AI. Surely equivalents to this exist elsewhere