OneEyedRobot

>White has come to mean everyone of European descent

I'd be surprised if anyone in Europe even thought of themselves as 'white' until (perhaps) the post-WWII era. Wogs begin at Calais.

>Africa is also very diverse when you take into account Northern Africa.

I suppose that you could consider North Africa as a separate continent given the bordering desert. My understanding is that sub-Saharan Africa has more real-deal genetic diversity in human populations than the rest of the world put together (which makes sense given it's age).

Obviously race is a real thing. Either a giant tree of relatedness with clusters of appearance + small construction differences or simply a way to form self-interested groups (go to any prison for 10 minutes). The fascination with it as of late is unfortunate, but I'm not sure if it's a reflection of resource depletion/overpopulation, a wave of quasi-religion, or people simply forming up teams for a big fight.

They always call for 'further investigation'.

Looking at this: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2107.10356.pdf

My general impression (no more than that) is a whole bunch of people crowding into a paper. The paper is mostly applying trivial image processing functions and seeing how some software they don't understand is responding. The main aim is pearl-clutching about 'bias' rather than any kind of understanding. God knows what they're going to do when any medical exam includes some kind of deep dive into the patient's genetics.

No surprises. It's the nature of the era.

Put the logic and profit motive of a slot machine in everyone's pocket. What could go wrong?

I used it in a design. What I remember (it was a while ago) was the lack of OS and driver support from third party software houses. It was a mistake to use it.

I just think that's such a clever idea. It doesn't take a genius to go to JC when you're 15 years old and a lot of high school bullshit disappears.

It's the sort of system that works only so long as not too many people use it. If a junior college was 1/2 high school aged students, it would become, well, high school (to the cost of the other students).

I'd warm up to that concept if the article was: "We don't know what in the hell is going on here. Here's our source code and data set of x-rays and race. What do you think?"

It could be that in the realm of machine learning, most of what is going on is people turning random knobs on a big machine and getting mysterious results. It's the birth of science without understanding.

>If you consider it from the perspective that race and culture are typically conflated into just race...

I'd say that that only occurs in the odd case of 'Latino'. For some reason Spanish-speaking got amalgamated into a thing it didn't belong.

If anything has changed urban design, I'd say that it's the huge growth and normalization of homeless populations. You'll see a disinterest in building urban parks, so-called 'hostile' architecture, less interest in things like downtown libraries, etc. etc.

The GIANT PILE OF CHEAP-ASS MEAT BURGER

That was exactly my thinking. I wouldn't publish anything until the pixellated versions were better understood.

>At the time in California, you were able to select a community college as your high school.

Seriously, that's brilliant. Was there some local school apparatchik that made sure that your course picks were reasonable?

"Perished on commenting under posts about social change or doing something meaningful instead of actually doing something meaningful. "

You know, I think we'd all be better off if everyone took a break from that one for a year or two.

Just to throw this out there. https://c19ivermectin.com/

It's a pity that the whole issue has become politicized, but that's modern times for you. That's why ivermectin is called 'horse dewormer' rather than simply a medicine for parasite infections with a number of human applications. It's a term like 'XXXX denier' which is used to tie a political adversary to concentration camps by playing on our disgust or fears.

Does it do anything for COVID? Dunno. Should it be a discussable matter without internet censorship and crazy people twitterstorms? Maybe. Am I sick of being propagandized by everyone? Yes.

That's a good answer, although the neo-Nazi groups appear more dangerous in terms of what they might do not what they do.

It seems to me that the real threat here isn't so much terrorism (or things that rhyme) but given the amount of surveillance in the UK just which sorts of terrorism are allowed by the government.

Groups that are allowed to do bad things become a sort of defacto government paramilitary. That's the case where there's a real force multiplier.

So you are suggesting that the per-capita material well-being in Nigeria has gone down all this time?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Nigeria#/media...

I don't doubt that wealth can be a factor, but those systems are a whole lot more complicated than that. Money+Low Gini = Low birthrate is a meme as much as it is a primary driver.

>Once you answer those questions, is there a number of people you'd like to propose as optimal?

That's a good question. I'll take a shot at it even though you're not really asking a question but making a point.

Let's say that the one thing that people bring to the table is intelligence and the ability to design complex systems, it's something of an end-run on evolution.

How large a population do you need to build modern semiconductors, discover exoplanets, solve physics problems, do a passable version of the arts?

I would guess something on the order of 500M-1B which is roughly the number in 1800. You get most of the good and lose most of the bad if you're even slightly careful. The edge conditions of atomic war or a truly large nuclear incident still exist but the rest of our sins cover up well over time with that population.

It might as well be 1000 corporations. The problem remains a version of the village commons.

>It is not currently run in a sustainable way.

which creates something of a tautology. Ability to maintain a population in the long run implies 'sustainable'. I guess that given nutrient vats and fusion power we could have a sustainable population of one trillion.

It's worth considering what the point of having so many people is....

>If you want fewer people, then you want to improve the material well-being of as many people as possible.

I'd genuinely like to see that model applied to sub Saharan Africa.

I just assume that any population level that can't be maintained on pre-20C. technology is probably dangerous. You'll either see a crack-up in terms of society and/or resource depletion at some point.

While I agree with you on overpopulation, I would guess that the 17B number comes from 8B * 2.something years.

Back of the envelope, it's odd that air pollution is around 100x as bad as cigarettes (which admittedly not everyone smokes).

Is that a problem there?

Looking at this long list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in...

all I'm seeing is "a neo-Nazi with paranoid schizophrenia carried out nail bomb attacks over three weekends" in 1999.

>How many people can someone lead?

The average person? I'd say 0.

Can it be taught outside of a highly organized situation? I'd say no.

Can it be taught from a book? I'd say no.

Hey, I've written those before. It's an interesting SIMD exercise if you've got that opportunity in the processor. The DSP versions can become a little odd looking.

Can a thing with no mass ever go less than the speed of light? Does it have a concept of time?

Good site.

I like to watch the current wind reports.

Add that together with twitter reports and flightradar24 and you can actually get some idea what a wildfire is doing. It's an area where government and the local news are essentially useless.

I think my fingers still know edlin.

If for no other reason, I can see the point of righting shorter because people are losing their ability to read anything longer.

I've decided to do all business correspondence as haiku from here on.

--------

Regarding your code

I would replace all the tabs

With happy faces

I always thought it was grocery delivery or mail-order pet supplies.

There are honest-to-charlie geniuses out there. I think that the founder of Pixelon needs a giant trophy.

Is Apple surprised?

It seems to me that the current model for tech companies is..

. Do something clearly sketchy to build your market. It might be copyright violations, it might be lock-in.

. Grow/profit until someone cares.

. Hold off the court cases for as long possible

. When they finally go against you, it's probably too late since the new thing has come along.

. Wash rinse repeat.