SkittyDog

Most of the wilderness FA certs have a 3-year expiration. IDK if this was always true, but it's definitely a thing now.

If you're using your certification to qualify for a professional or volunteer position, then they usually defer to the expiry period set by the issuer of the certification.

In my experience, basically nobody gets any first aid practice, in between re-certifications. And these are perishable skills, so I wouldn't trust in the ability of most people to execute anything complex after even a year has gone by... But that has to be balanced against the cost of re-training. WMR is usually an 80-hour course (IIRC) and re-certs more like 30-40? That's an absurd time investment for most working people.

> ...because surely nobody would be stupid enough to make new SARS virus strains on purpose. They’re worthless as biological weapons, and the risks are insane.

If we wait until the next pandemic hits, we will be months or years behind the curve, trying to understand it and develop treatments. Millions more people will die because we'll have been caught on our back foot.

Lucky for the human race, viruses are statistically more likely to mutate, over time, in particular ways. So it's possible to make pretty good guesses about where future would mutations might occur. So if we deliberately create those mutants in a laboratory, we can study which strains look particularly virulent and/or dangerous.

Yes, there ARE risks to this strategy, in terms of lab leaks. But the vast majority of virologists and epidemiologists have known for decades that deadly worldwide pandemics of novel Coronaviruses are an inevitably in the 21st century... It's just a matter of time. We will definitely see several more pandemics, at least as damaging as COVID-19, befor the century is out.

So even without a lab leak, we would only save ourselves a couple more years before nature did the job, itself... And it will keep happening, over and over with new Coronaviruses, for the foreseeable future. The human race can do very little to slow it, let alone stop it.

Primordial black holes are another possible way (besides star collapse) that BHs could form.

The theory is that during the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang, the distribution of mass-energy became chaotic, with local hotspots where mass-energy was more dense, and other spots where it was less dense.

GR says that if ANY amount of mass-energy comes to occupy a small enough area, then that is a black hole. Star collapse BHs have a lower mass limit because their own gravity is what forces their mass into a region small enough to become a BH.

So primordial BHs could have formed with arbitrarily small mass, because they didn't have to rely on their own gravity to attain BH density. The Big Bang did it, for them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primordial_black_hole#Theore...

"...but I don't share the government's concerns about things like laundering."

I get that you, personally, aren't concerned about money laundering... But can you at least understand, in principle, why governments are concerned about money laundering?

FB friends sometimes turn into more, over time. If not, there's no real cost to having another one... If they're noisy, it's as simple as clicking a mute button.

Also, this is a PERFECT example of those social skills I talked about, in my earlier post... Valuable relationships don't just magically appear out of thin air, when you just happen to meet the right people. You have to meet (a LOT) of people, then spend time & effort to cultivate a common context, figure out their character, decide whether you want them in your life... It's a winnowing process, wherein you might only build ONE truly significant relationship out of meeting hundreds of people. The very first stage of that pipeline is just getting in contact and observing the person. Facebook is a great tool for that part.

But the knowledge of this whole process isn't some kind of inbuilt human instinct. Some people are lucky enough to learn it while they're young, but the rest of us have to figure it out as adults. It's a very complex skill set, so it can be a long,frustrating, frightening learning process.

This is a ridiculous distinction. Both examples are highly idiomatic language, with no fixed definition that's even remotely close to what you claim. The original statement was perfectly understandable, and it's obnoxious behavior for you to try to pass your preference off as a "correction".

I've never once used a dating app, and I frequently meet new people, make new friends, and date new women. I'm in my early 40s.

Prior to ~10 years ago, different story... I was miserable, depressed, and socially isolated. I had a series of LTRs, so I was rarely alone. But I couldn't make friends to save my life. I always felt like an outsider.

I'm actually poorer than 10 years ago... Definitely in better shape, fitness wise, but also my face is 10 years older.

The thing is, I devoted a lot of time, energy, and attention to becoming a better person. Therapy, 12-Step meetings, volunteering, and spending a TON of time doing physically and mentally challenging stuff outdoors... And I actually AM a better person for all of it. Not perfect, but I used to be kind of a piece of shit.

At first, I was just meeting new people in my hiking & climbing circles... But after a while, with practice & effort, you develop real skills at talking to people. Nowadays, I can chat up random strangers at a grocery store, if I feel like it, and end up with at least a new FB friend, or maybe a date if we have anything in common.

But brevity at the expense of clarity is not widely considered a good thing.

If anyone lacks the time or patience to parse my comments, I would welcome them to skip reading my comments... Why should any of us feel obliged to read everything on HN? I sure as hell don't.

Personally, I find your comments to be far too simplistic and reductive, to the point that you lack the ability to do more than snipe and quip at a single idea at a time... But some ideas are complex enough to benefit from longer, more thorough treatment, in order to avoid miscommunication.

Or maybe some people just have more patience, or better reading comprehension skills? Ya know, so we don't mind reading a longer comment that does a better job making the point than a half-baked, single-sentence hot take?

BTW, if you made it this far... Why ARE you compelled to keep reading my comments, anyway? Just ignore me, and be happy with the existence you choose

The boy who cries wolf is definitely in the wrong, that much is true... But that doesn't remove blame from the townspeople who ignored his cries. It's not a binary absolute, where one person being wrong absolves the other of any wrongdoing.

Intelligent, moral people aren't obligated or forced to jump into action when someone makes an accusation of racism. We can take a moment to consider the available facts, the context, and decide whether the charge of racism seems credible.

It does take effort, so there's a limit to how much attention we can give to these things... But we can also respond to the false accusations, and push back on them for being distractions and wasting the patience of people.

We get the society that is as good as we choose to put in effort to make it.

By you. Some things are called "racism" unnecessarily, and that causes some harms... But there is still plenty of actual, bona fide Racism that causes bigger harms.

To disregard legitimate concerns about racism because you've grown frustrated with false positives is evidence of a weak morality. It's prioritizing our selfish frustrations over significant harms that other people (the victims of racism) are experiencing.

I'm curious why you're skeptical... is there some reason why you don't think the most likely explanation is that there is a community of experts who are legitimately concerned?

I've heard the exact same sentiment as yours about a lot of things... Climate Change being the main one that comes to mind. Do you feel the same way about all the "opinions" in the media recently, and are you skeptical of the attention it's getting?

I realize that I may sound glib, here, but I am legitimately trying to understand your thought process, and assess whether you have a broader tendency toward suspecting a conspiracy behind a cluster of news stories.

If you shoot at something that is falling... it's still gonna fall, even if you hit it, brrak it up, etc. Whatever matter is there before will still be there after the hit, but on a less predictable trajectory.

If you break it up into pieces before it re-enters the atmosphere, you may get a higher proportion of burnup, because small chunks means lower overall ballestic coefficient per mass... But hitting stuff in orbit is difficult, and we would have a very hard time predicting the results.

It helps to find valuable, rewarding ways to spend your time that specifically require you to not have a phone in hand ... I do a lot of outdoors stuff (hiking, climbing, mountaineering) which takes me outside of cell coverage, and mostly occupies my hands & attention.

Other people just do regular sports, closer to home... Cycling, tennis, basketball, soccer, whatever. Any decent sized town or city should have some kind of options.

Indoors, I like craft skills that require your hands & attention... I give myself a bit of repairing climbing/hiking gear, assorted home improvement projects, etc.

The point is, this is all stuff that intrinsically feels good, so it's rewarding on its own. I think the best choices also have a social option, so you can connect with people, at the same time.

Instead of linking to Slashdot (which is itself a link aggregator), why not just link directly to the Bloomberg story that the Slashdot post refers to?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-19/tether-de...

Neither the Slashdot post, nor the comments I can see, seem to contain any original analysis or insight beyond the Bloomberg piece.

The post you're responding to was pretty obviously sarcastic... Note their use of quotes around "socialism" and "the free market, and the phrase "any day now".

So the other poster was making the exact same point that you made (unsarcastically), but it sounds like you may not have realized that? At any rate, you both seem to be largely in agreement about the current state of affairs.

Do you live in a place where carjackings are common enough to justify making it impossible to give a random friend a ride, somewhere, on short notice?

If you do live with that kind of fear of violent crime in your life, I legitimately offer you my deep sympathies... I've had the privilege of living most of my life in physically very safe places, and I can only imagine how awful this would be.

That said... Individually authenticating passengers in the car would require some extensive, invasive technology. I cannot imagine an effective way to do it... Here in the US, people convicted of drunk driving are often required to install ignition-interlock Breathalyzers as a condition of keeping their driving privileges. But even those systems are pretty trivial for a somewhat determined problem drinker to defeat.

Also, the major loss of functionality (giving rides to people on short notice) would make it a hard sell, except in place where the crime problem was truly terrifying... And at that point, I'd assume that it's easier/cheaper to just hire armed bodyguards to escort you, rather than any kind of technological solution.

No, the decision to protect the plane wreck as a burial-in-place had nothing to do with it being a national park.

In 1946, simply setting foot onto the Tahoma Glacier required a highly technical mountaineering expedition. There were no helicopters at that time to bring in search & rescue personnel or to remove bodies. Park rangers and the Navy determined that a huge team of mountaineers would be required, and it would take them several weeks to extricate the bodies, by hand and on foot. A recovery could only have taken place in the late Summer/Fall, when the snow was at it's lowest level--but that would also require exposing the recovery team to the worst dangers of rockfall, crevasses, etc while they worked and camped on the glacier.

The risk to rescuers was simple too great, and there were no feasible alternative options at the time.

https://www.historylink.org/File/7820

Listen, this is the THIRD time in row that you've asserted something that's just factually false, on this topic... Don't you think it would be a good idea to do some research and educate yourself about this topic, before you make any more comments about it? I mean this with respect... We all have gaps in our knowledge, and I assume that growing your knowledge is important to you?

https://www.historylink.org/File/7820

Also, not true... See my sibling comment to yours about the Marine Corps transport that went down on South Thomas Glacier on Rainer in '46. Most of the plane and the bodies are still up there, buried in the glacier, and the area has been permanently closed to recreational climbing, as a resting place for the dead Marines onboard.

Oh, almost forgot the famous wreck on Mount Rainier's South Tacoma Glacier...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Tahoma_Glacier#History

Crashed in December 1946 with 32 US Marines aboard... This was before helicopters and GPS, so the wreck wasn't located quickly enough, and got buried by the early Winter snowfall. Some recoveries in the following years, but the bulk of the wreck and the bodies were left in place, as a permanent monument.

I believe the area is now off-limits to climbers, as well.

> So, how many liters of seawater can in process before it needs an "electromembrane" change?

It doesn't need regular changes, because it's not a filter.

That's also why it's called an "electromembrane" and not a "filter"... Because (can you you hear me in the back) it's not a filter.

If you want technical details in how the device operates, you should probably not be consulting pop sci news articles that are written from press releases... Maybe Wikipedia has an article about it, say https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromembrane_extraction ?

> We don't leave plane crashes out to rust.

That's not actually true, although I don't blame you for not being aware of this... Here in the US, there are plenty of identifiable, unsalvaged plane wrecks left in the wilderness.

I hike a lot around Southern California... The San Gabriel Mountains alone have at least a half dozen wrecks with significant portions of the fuselage & engines.

Some of them are remarkably accessible... IIRC there is a T-6 Texan from the 1950s along the Mt Baldy summit trail (~9500' elevation) which is hiked by thousands of people a year. In Joshua Tree National Park, there are two wrecks on Quail Mountain... Plenty of others besides those.

Ocotillo Wells may be a bad example, because it is adjacent to the Salton Sea. There is an ongoing conversation about building the world's largest lithium extraction plant at the Salton Sea, which would massively increase development in tbe surrounding area, and permanently raise land values in Ocotillo Wells (among other towns).

I'm not saying you're wrong, just that OW may be a bad example because there is a separate local phenomenon going on.

If these relatives are already publicly acknowledged to be working for or assigned to those organizations, there's nothing malicious or harmful about citing those already public sources.

Put this another way... If a news reporter published a story about this person, would you call that "doxxing"? Probably not... That's just what "reporting" is.

Doxxing requires malicious intent, and an attempt to cause harm to the subject by placing their personally identifying information in the path of some kind of expected public shitstorm. Unless there's reason to believe these relatives are going to suffer, then it seems like a stretch to call it doxxing.

No, WP specifically doesn't want birth certificates or military ID cards, which are a form of primary source. WP wants you to cite other published works (ideally a URL to another reputable source) that document the facts in question.

For military or government officials, their office or command often will have a web page noting the names of their current/former executives, COs, XOs, etc. They might also have issued a press release when a notable person joins their organization, or which quotes the person in question.

If there are zero public sources documenting where your relatives are employed or assigned, then it's arguable that these relatives are not actually notable enough to warrant mention in the WP article.

WP ia not intended to be a directory of all facts or people.

For all those people calling it a clickbait headline... You're not wrong the headline is a deliberate scare tactic.

At the same time... While Tesla is marketing it's "Full Self Driving" terminology, I'm actually glad that someone else is also using misleading language to grab attention, and remind the public that the state of the art is still quite limited.

I believe he's implying that your embryo would not have passed the fitness tests, and so would have been destroyed. So you wouldn't exist.

Your parents might have conceived again, and had another child who did pass, to whom they gave the same name. But that child wouldn't be you.

No, I don't believe it's the DoJ's job to track law enforcement. There is some Federal-level recordkeeping of crime statistics... training... intelligence sharing.

Could you explain what you mean, or give some examples?

The United States couldn't do either of those with NASA's budget... And the SLS is not NASA's entire budget.

I believe that space exploration is an incredibly important national priority, even if only as a means of maintaining our space-related military capabilities. Anyone who believes the US can abandon space travel and still be secure against present and future global threats is just a goddamn clown.

But generally we shouldn't pay $2 for a bullet that we could buy elsewhere for $1. We could buy a lot more bullets if we bothered to try to contain our unit costs.

I'm an atheist, and I've attended years of AA meetings. I've never even remotely experienced anything like what you described. But I live in a big city on the West Coast.

AA reflects the character of the people and culture who are implementing it... If those people are judgy religious assholes, then I can't expect their AA meetings would be much different. But it would be a mistake to assume that your local sample defines the entire movement.

With respect, I believe you have a common misunderstanding of 12-step programs... AA is not an inherently religious organization, nor does it require any religious/supernatural beliefs.

I'm an atheist, and I've been to years of AA meetings. There is no requirement of religious belief for participating. The concept of a "higher power" is an important part of dealing with our narcissistic ego defenses, but it's not necessarily a religious concept. God just happens to be a convenient implementation of a "higher power" that works for a lot of folks.

Now, there are plenty of people in AA, attending and running meetings, who DO have religious beliefs. A lot of AA literature is written by people who have religious beliefs... The people who founded AA had religious beliefs. So I think it's understandable that religion appears a lot in the mix.

Plenty of modern AA groups explicitly address the "God not required" issue... Maybe it helps that I live in a big city, but I've never had a problem with being an atheist and participating in AA.