NickM

Hang on though, this part has nothing to do with repair costs. This just sounds like an accounting issue, right? If anything I would expect this to benefit Hertz since they could write off the higher loss in their taxes immediately, instead of waiting until future years to write the value off via depreciation.

On the other hand, I can see how this would make their numbers look worse at a glance since it shows up as though they lost money, but in fact no actual assets have been lost; they have the same car, it was repaired, and the repair was paid for by insurance, but now it looks like they took a loss because an arbitrary accounting rule forces them to adjust their balance sheet in a different way than they would otherwise.

Not sure if I'm understanding this right but it sure sounds like Hertz is flat-out admitting that they're making sub-optimal business decisions to make their numbers look better. Wouldn't that be a blatant violation of their fiduciary duties?

I guess depending on your political agenda they were either trying to be inclusive and promoting gender diversity in STEM, or they were being subtly misogynistic by implying that women aren't as careful as men.

Or maybe it was just arbitrary and maybe we don't have to read anything into it? But what do I know.

But this is just basic economics. Supply and demand. Are you implying that that doesn't set the prices, and that landlords are leaving money on the table out of the kindness of their hearts? That seems unlikely to me.

I wasn't really aware of this, but was just wondering about it the other day, as it seems like logically they should be cheaper; economies of scale ought to help for both housing and infrastructure, I would think. Interesting to hear that expensive cities aren't necessarily inevitable.

There's no reason the headline couldn't have read something like "Tesla Issues Software Update at Request of NHTSA", which would be less likely to confuse the average reader, but also less attention-grabbing.

Are you running an old software version? You might try bringing it in for service because what you're describing definitely doesn't seem right.

There’s no plausible reason to use a blockchain instead of a traditional database, and many possible risks/downsides. So either the company is incompetent, or they’re not really using a blockchain and their marketing is misleading, but either way it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Are you sure it’s really just conditioning? Impressionist paintings are obviously a lower fidelity reproduction of reality than photorealistic paintings, yet people tend to like Impressionism more, and I don’t think that’s necessarily just cultural conditioning. Sometimes less is more.

Religion wraps it all up in a nice package, and plenty of folks do still choose religion and reap plenty of benefits from it, but there are other options out there.

I agree it is interesting that ketamine seems to work very quickly for some people. Re: your placebo comment, I also agree it's hard to separate it out.

One of the tricky things with the placebo effect is that there are really multiple distinct types of placebo effect; on the one hand, you have objective measurable biological changes that placebos can trigger, but on the other hand placebos can also affect peoples' subjective perceptions of the symptoms they're experiencing.

In the case of depression though, the subjective perception of misery is the core problem we're trying to fix. Hence why treatments that have no biological effect (like, e.g., therapy) are still considered valid approaches. So, then the question is, does it matter whether ketamine is just a placebo? Maybe all antidepressants are placebos, in which case the important thing is to find the safest, most effective, fastest-acting placebo we can.

Really though I do kind of think peoples' subjective experiences matters in a more concrete way than folks give credit for. Even though it's not directly modifying your brain chemistry, I wouldn't call therapy a placebo, for example. Maybe sometimes medications help people because beliefs like "someone is trying to help me" or "I've found an explanation for why I feel bad and there's a treatment for it" actually help people break out of their self-destructive patterns, regardless of the actual efficacy of the meds. It's more questionable though whether those beliefs actually help with long-term root-cause fixes though, or if they just trap people in a local maxima.

An alternative explanation for this is that if you keep giving people different drugs and different diagnoses eventually they will feel better for unrelated reasons and will assume the current diagnosis/drug combo is what “fixed” them.

They’re often not permanent, but particularly with sexual problems there is a significant minority of people who do not get better after they stop the drugs. The term to search for is “PSSD” (post-SSRI sexual dysfunction).

Source: https://pi.lilly.com/us/prozac.pdf

I’m not familiar with much of PKD’s works or his life story, but I honestly can’t tell if he had mental health problems or if this essay is supposed to be a sort of self-aware self-referential story about reality breaking down.

(Disclaimer: I used to work for them, but don’t anymore. It’s all available for free on GitHub though for anyone interested: https://github.com/readysettech/readyset)

Funny you should say that - I’m an Erlang dev and Grindr has tried to recruit me in the past. Apparently they already use it.

Nobody seems to actually be confused into thinking these products came from an animal, though, and the labeling does not seem to be designed to fool anyone. If the taste is designed to mimic a cow burger, then calling it a burger is genuinely descriptive.

When I point this out though, people just switch gears and start making up other arguments instead. The emotional response seems to be coming from somewhere else, but I haven't figured out where.

It’s not. I know a lot about EVs and I’ve owned a Tesla myself for years, and I don’t know what they’re talking about.

The trouble is, this can become a feedback loop, because the only way to dispel the stereotypes is if more normal folks speak up.

I've seen this same phenomenon affect other subcultures too, and I suspect there's probably a name for it, but I don't know what it is.

Not sure I follow what your point is about sleeping. Some folks may indeed rub their eyes unconsciously while they sleep, but that doesn't mean it's healthy.

Humans are great at finding patterns in randomness like this; this is exactly why superstitions are so prevalent.

I’m not saying the blue light thing is or isn’t real, but I see this kind of argument made all the time, and I can’t tell if people just don’t understand what the placebo effect is or if everyone just thinks they’re special and the placebo effect doesn’t apply to them or what.