ggreer

> The nicest (and second most expensive) place I have lived at had the worst locks.

That's because in nice places, locks are vestigial. There are no criminals around, so they'll never be tested. And few criminals try to pick locks. They just smash a window or kick a back door open.

I'd guess that CTE rates for football kickers are lower than for professional soccer players, as the rules forbid tackling or even running into them. A soccer player who becomes a football kicker will probably transition in high school at the latest. The total number of times they hit the ball with their head will be much lower than a career soccer player, and they'll stop doing it before players get stronger and kick the ball harder.

Kickers do kickoffs, extra points, and field goals. Besides that they're not on the field. The only time hitting a kicker is allowed is if it's some sort of fake play where the kicker ends up running with the ball. Even then, there tends to be a gentleman's agreement where teams won't rough up the opposing kicker, as doing so means their own kicker is fair game.

I knew one guy who was a kicker for a PAC-12 team (back when it was the PAC-10). He said he was hit only once in 4 years. Earlier in the game he'd insulted someone on the other team, and the next time they were both on the field, the guy hit him from behind long after the whistle blew. That's not really a football injury as much as it's a violent crime.

As far as I'm aware, no kicker has ever been found to have CTE (though the sample size for them is very small), and their concussion rates are much lower than average. I think the studies on kicker concussion rates overestimate how often they sustain head injuries, as they likely incorporate data from less competitive colleges and high schools where kickers also play other positions.

Here's a link to the study.[1] Since CTE can only be diagnosed by slicing up the brain, and former NFL players only tend to donate their brains to study if they're experiencing cognitive issues, there's obviously a bias in the sample. They tried to adjust for this by looking at rates of cognitive impairment in NFL players who donated their brains versus those who didn't. The ratio varied from 1.8x to 4x depending on age at death.

Unfortunately the number of brains studied isn't large enough to determine whether different positions have different levels of CTE. I'd guess that kickers would have very low risk compared to other positions, as they are rarely involved in collisions. Their stats hint that is the case, but the p-values are ridiculously high due to the small sample size.

1. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

Models are trained on ridiculous amounts of human-written text, but their outputs are pretty easy to recognize as not human written. Pangram explains some of the reasons for this in a blog post.[1]

The problem with using Pangram in a feedback loop is that Pangram only reports whether it thinks the text is written by AI or not. It doesn't report whether the text makes sense, or whether it contains errors in spelling or grammar. So when people try to pair AIs with Pangram, the quality of the output tends to degrade to the point where it's not useful.

Basically, it's a harder problem to get an AI to accomplish some goal (such as writing a blog post) while also having its output mimic human text. To use an analogy, it's like building a stealth aircraft with the same speed, maneuverability, range, and payload as a non-stealthy aircraft. Even with a much larger budget, it's not always feasible.

1. https://www.pangram.com/blog/no-llms-dont-just-mimic-human-t...

Selling fraudulent goods & services is a violation of copyright or contract law, not free speech laws. Putting a UL logo on a product not tested by UL means you are violating their copyright. And you can claim your product does almost anything, but if someone buys it and it doesn’t, and it can be shown that you deliberately misled them, then you can get in trouble.

Both of these examples are nowhere close to the power given to the government before Citizens United: a censor who chooses what people are allowed to read or hear in the months before elections. Unlike copyright or contract law, the punishment was before the fact, not after. And it applied to films people paid to see, not just ads.

Yes, he would have won. Clinton & PACs spent almost twice as much as him in 2016. In 2024, Biden/Harris spent 2.5x more than him.

If one accepts your claim that elections are manipulated by the wealthy, then it makes no sense to give the government the ability to restrict what people are allowed to see or read before an election. Doing so would cement current power structures, not subvert them.

If you don't think people can decide whether statements made in ads are true or false, then why trust them to decide who makes & enforces laws? Either they're rational adults or they're not.

You're saying you want Trump's FEC to decide what ads can be shown during a football game. Do you really think that would be an improvement?

Had Citizens United gone the other way, do you really think the Trump administration’s FEC would fairly decide which movies are allowed to be shown in the months before elections? Because that’s the power that law granted the government.

If you think voters’ minds are so feeble that they can be swayed by propaganda, then the problem is the voters, not the propaganda. Anyone so easily manipulated can’t be trusted to decide who is in power. It is incoherent to endorse restrictions on free speech while also supporting universal suffrage.

> Totally different subject.

Yes, I was using an analogy.

I don't know what's going on with you today. You get hung up on language even when you know what I mean. You argue from authority, eg: "former gas station owner here" and "I use Lithium Ion batteries in volume", as if those experiences refute statistics. You don't address my stats about vehicle fire fatalities. You don't explain why you think my conclusion doesn't hold up. And you won't say what would change your mind.

We're not having a debate. You're just contradicting me.

It's true that diesel is harder to ignite than gasoline, but statistically they're not much safer than gasoline, and EVs have a lower fire risk than both. Last year, diesel vehicles accounted for 11% of vehicle miles traveled in the US and were responsible for around 12% of vehicle fire deaths. EVs were 3% of vehicle miles traveled and less than 1% of vehicle fire deaths.

Diesel vehicles usually have much larger fuel tanks than gasoline vehicles, so while the chances of a crash causing a diesel fire are lower, the consequences tend to be worse. If the stats are to be believed, the two factors balance each other out.

I'm pretty sure you're reading the paper wrong. Of the 29 tests they did, 5 were in air, and all of those were with fully charged batteries. The 5x ratio is the difference between electrical energy stored in the battery and energy released in atmosphere. They did not measure different states of charge versus energy released in atmosphere. That's why the figures for the nitrogen and atmosphere tests are bar charts instead of line charts.

The relationship between energy stored and energy released was mostly determined by how big the batteries were, not their state of charge. Only 4 of their tests varied state of charge, and those were all in vacuum (with cells #1 & #6), and state of charge was never below 60%.

Yes, I know that petroleum refers to the raw material that is used to make gasoline and diesel. I needed a term that was less cumbersome than "diesel and gasoline", and "petroleum" seemed apt. If you have a suggestion for some other term, I'm all ears.

I did correct for installed base. I'm using fatalities per vehicle mile traveled. As I said, diesel vehicles are 11% of vehicle miles traveled in the US and responsible for 12% of vehicle fire deaths in the US. EVs are 3% of vehicle miles traveled and less than 1% of vehicle fire deaths, so they're safer than diesel. The only way this could be false is if battery fire deaths are grossly underreported. That seems unlikely to me, as deaths caused by any new technology tend to be overreported. It should also be surprising that battery fire deaths are so rare, because we have little experience dealing with them. Over time, we should expect the danger of battery fires to decrease as technology and emergency training improves.

At this point, I don't know what would change your mind on this topic. I would change my mind if stats showed higher fire fatality rates per vehicle miles traveled for EVs, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I feel like I'm arguing with an anti-nuclear person. Statistics show that nuclear is extremely safe, but anti-nuclear activists ignore stats and point to nuclear accidents and the dangers of radiation. Meanwhile they ignore or discount the harms caused by alternatives. I don't see how your line of argument is any different.

If we're going to count industrial accidents, then oil kills way more people. There are deaths from disasters involving wells, refineries, pipelines, tankers, and gas stations. But because they've been happening for over a century, we accept them as a fact of life. Even correcting for the much smaller install base of EVs and lower number of vehicle miles traveled, fossil fuels are far more deadly.

By petroleum I mean gasoline and diesel.

Diesel vehicles are 11% of vehicle miles traveled in the US, and around 60 people died in diesel vehicle fires last year (12% of vehicle fire fatalities). So they seem to be as dangerous as gasoline vehicles. This is probably because while diesel is more difficult to ignite than gasoline, diesel vehicles tend to have larger fuel tanks, so the harm caused by a diesel fire tends to be greater.

The "I'm not sure" referred to road damage. The "definitely" referred to risk to people.

The fact that some people have died in lithium battery fires doesn't tell you if they're a greater risk than petroleum vehicle fires. Around 500 Americans die in vehicle fires every year. Last year, EVs were around 3% of vehicle miles traveled in the US, so if they're as dangerous as petroleum vehicles, we should expect 15 battery fire deaths in 2025. The actual number seems to be 2 or 3.

I'm not sure, but diesel fires are definitely more of a risk to people. Fuel can quickly spread and ignite before people in the vehicle (or bystanders) have a chance to escape. Lithium battery fires are more contained because individual cells spew flame, which heats up nearby cells, which then undergo thermal runaway. This means that battery fires take longer to release their energy, which is annoying for extinguishing them, but good for anyone who needs to get out of the wreck.

Lithium battery energy density is much lower than petroleum, so the difference between a fully charged 100kWh battery (which weighs over half a ton) and an empty one is less than 3 gallons of diesel. Most of the energy expended in a battery fire is from the electrolyte reacting with the cathode material.

Over/under-charged batteries are a safety hazard because they can generate hydrogen gas which can initiate a fire, but the energy released from the fire will be pretty much the same.

Modern metallurgy does allow for significantly higher chamber pressures, and this has been done in firearms such as the M7 with its 80,000psi .277 Fury.[1] Pistol cartridges can also be made smaller for the same effectiveness (allowing higher capacity in the same form factor), as has been done with .30 Super Carry.[2] But your guess is correct: They don't really catch on because a small improvement in capacity or effectiveness isn't worth changing all the manufacturing and logistics for new cartridges. 5.56mm and 9mm are good enough, and they're cheap due to their large volume of manufacturing. Any replacement would have to be much better to be worth the cost of changing over.

Most improvements have been in things like modularity, sighting systems, and standardization for mounting accessories such as lights and laser aiming modules. Better metallurgy does mean that modern firearms tend to last longer than older ones, but even a firearm from WWI can fire thousands of rounds before the bore erodes enough to hurt accuracy. I doubt we'll see any significant change in small arms unless something revolutionary comes along, such as portable energy weapons or mass drivers.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.277_Fury

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.30_Super_Carry

I think the oldest cartridge that would still work in a modern firearm would be .22 Short, which is from 1857.[1] It was developed into .22 Long, which was developed into .22 Long Rifle, which new firearms are still chambered in today. It wouldn't cycle a semi-auto though. Another contender would be .38 Long Colt, which is from 1875 and will work in firearms chambered in .38 Special or .357 Magnum.

The main causes of incompatibility were the transition from ball-and-powder to rimfire cartridges, then the transition from rimfire to centerfire. It's surprising how little firearms have changed in the past century. 9mm Parabellum is 125 years old. The Browning short recoil action (used by most handguns today) is over a century old.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.22_short

That user is not Greg Egan.

That's not true. In 2025, Australia's auto theft rate was 241.4 per 100k people.[1] In the US last year, the rate was less than 200 per 100k people.[2]

1. 66,625 vehicle thefts divided by a population of 27,600,000. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/crime-and-justice/r...

2. 659,880 vehicle thefts divided by a population of 341,784,857 is 193 per 100k. https://www.nicb.org/news/news-releases/us-vehicle-thefts-ex...

That's not correct. Immobilizers are not common in Japan or South Korea, both of which have extremely low auto theft rates. Canada has mandated immobilizers since 2007 and its auto theft rate is 248.5 per 100k per year, which is only slightly lower than the US, but still 17 times higher than Japan and 50 times higher than South Korea. Immobilizers have also been required in Australia since 2001, but its auto theft rate is the same as Canada.

If you measure auto theft rate per vehicle (not per person), then the US has the same rate as Canada. There are 16% more auto thefts per capita in the US, but the US also has 17% more cars per capita than Canada.

If lack of immobilizers was the main factor, Canada would have significantly lower auto theft rates than the US, and countries that mandated immobilizers would not have theft rates 15x higher than countries where they were uncommon. Neither of these are true, so immobilizers are most likely not the main factor in auto theft rates.

Auto theft rates are mostly determined by car ownership rates and the number of auto thieves on the street. The number of auto thieves on the street is determined by how quickly they are caught, and how long they are locked up for. Auto theft recidivism rates are higher than any other crime, including drug offenses. Around 80% are re-arrested within 3 years of being released. Considering the clearance rate for auto theft is around 10%, that means the average auto thief is stealing a lot of cars before being caught again, and the actual recidivism rate is higher than 80%.

I'm pretty sure Apple does use CRLs, but for some reason your phone has a problem fetching them. Yesterday my iPhone SE running iOS 15.8.8 did connect to the sites, but refused to connect about 30 minutes later.

The same Kias & Hyundais were sold in South Korea, but their auto theft rate is 60x lower than the US.[1] Car theft rates are mostly determined by how effectively car thieves are caught & punished, not by how secure the car is.

1. 4.7 per 100k people per year vs 288.5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_theft#Motor_vehi...

That data is from an online survey of people who got insurance quotes using QuoteWizard, so hardly an unbiased sample. It’s not even data on insurance claims, just what people reported in the questionnaire. Also it claims that BMW drivers are the worst, not Tesla drivers. And both Ram & Subaru are more accident prone brands than Tesla. Oh and unlike you claim, it has no info about injury or fatality rates. Obviously an online survey would have difficulty getting accurate data on fatalities due to… survivorship bias.

Lastly, are you admitting that your first link was incorrect since you didn’t respond to my points at all?

Your link is to an article that references an iSeeCars study from two years ago. They got their crash data from NHTSA FARS, but got their mileage data from sales of used cars on their platform. At the time I noticed some issues with their mileage data.[1] It's very likely that Teslas sold on their platform have very low mileage compared to average, because people either sell a car quickly after buying it, or they hang on to it for years. This also lines up with the fact that the other cars in their unsafe list were all released recently.

Working backwards from their stats & FARS data, I calculated that for their claims to be true, each Model Y would need to accumulate only 4,300 miles per year. This is far below Tesla's reports of 13,000-14,000 miles per year. Also iSeeCars claimed that an average of 2.8 vehicles were involved in fatal accidents for every billion miles traveled. But at the time the US had 13.3 deaths per billion miles traveled. So for their data to be correct, the average fatal accident would need to have five fatalities.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42209142

It really depends on how flat the terrain is and what the weather conditions are like. If it's often rainy, windy, or snowy, you might not have many opportunities to use the plane.

At some point, I think electric VTOL aircraft will make economic sense. Companies like Vight Aero are working on two seaters with decent range and speed.[1] Then you'd just need an area the size of a tennis court to take off and land. You also wouldn't have to ship fuel in, as you could charge the aircraft with off-grid solar. If that happens, I could see a lot of people moving away from cities.

1. https://vightaero.com/

It seems to not find quite a few properties that border public land. For example, if I scroll around Zillow to find stuff that borders the Gifford Pinchot national forest, I can find properties like this one.[1] But I don't see anything matching it on the Unfenced map.

I bought 20 acres bordering the national forest a couple years ago. The seller made sure I had some idea of what I was getting into. Due to the isolation and terrain, everything is more difficult. It's been a lot of work to build a road, level an area to build on, construct a shed, and set up off-grid solar power. But it's also very rewarding. The views are spectacular, and at night you can see the milky way. There's still a lot more work to do before it's worthy of being called a vacation spot, but I'm very happy with my decision.

1. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/Snag-Mountain-Rd-110-Wash...

Opus 5.5 medium effort tells me there are 30 rs in that string. Did you change the effort level or something? Also Opus 5.5 isn't a frontier model. Anthropic's frontier model is Mythos/Fable.