nkrisc

After accounting for miles driven, fatal crash rates start increasing around age 70, peaking at 85+ near a level equal to the rate of 16-19 year old drivers, based on a preliminary skimming of the data I could find.

Based on anecdotal evidence and experience, I absolutely believe that. Just a few weeks ago near me an elderly driver caused a crash that killed herself and a passenger in another car when she failed to follow a curve and drove head-on into opposing traffic on a road with a 40MPH speed limit.

What about them? It’s good there will be less traffic so they can get to their jobs on time.

As opposed to sitting in their car for an hour and a half?

That makes sense. We definitely weren’t going to eat random plants, but we could have easily accidentally grabbed some for firewood or kindling.

Surely airlifting supplies to a carrier in a war zone is not totally comparable to airlifting supplies to a base in a US territory?

They mention the toxin comes from the rhododendron flower. I remember camping in North Carolina once and one of the people I was with warned against burning anything from the rhododendron in the area, as supposedly the smoke would give you the runs.

I mostly thought they were joking, and I have no idea what specific type of rhododendron would be there (if any), but maybe there’s a glimmer of merit to it? Or maybe they were thinking of a different plant?

This was somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains, if I remember correctly.

There are plenty of easier ways to make money than becoming a doctor.

I remember being at a tech-oriented summer camp for teenagers at a university and one of our classes was about networking and included practice making Ethernet cables so we made a bunch of different length crossover cables so we could connect the Xboxes a few of the kids brought to the dorms and play Halo.

And those meanings are generally true in English as well, and yet, people use them interchangeably all the time nonetheless.

IKEA is great for stuff where I'm willing to sacrifice some quality for a proportionally large price discount.

But for furniture where quality is more of a concern, and I'm willing to go up a rung on the price ladder, I've been very happy with both Crate & Barrel and Room & Board (noun & noun) here in the US. I have a C&B sectional sofa and quite a few pieces from R&B such as our king size bed, dresser, nightstands, kid's dresser, dining room sideboard cabinet.

They're not $5000 for a single chair range, but $5000 for bed + nightstands + dresser, though you can certainly get stuff for less.

But for "young people or people of modest means" I agree that you probably can't beat IKEA. There certainly are other cheap furniture retailers but you don't really know what you're getting and the style leaves a lot to be desired.

I don't mean that the two party system we have is due to first-past-the-post, it almost doesn't even really matter why we have it. But first-past-the-post is the mechanism which currently entrenches it and is the most likely to change. I think that (3) is a result of the system, not a cause.

Ah, you must live in Paradise! Really though, I'm sure there are some drawbacks in your living arrangement that you have adapted to. Nothing is perfect.

English is not some objective, natural thing which exists outside of its usage by people. English is only how it's used by people.

I would wager that for the majority English speakers, the words "theft", "robbery", and (to a lesser degree) "burglary" or more or less fully interchangeable.

They may not be interchangeable in law, but the usage of English in law is famously not always in line with common usage, which is why we have "legalese" which many completely fluent and native English speakers may have trouble understanding without specialized legal training.

In my UX jobs where we did actual UX research with participants in the office the UX research team would go around before each session and find any available developers to come with and sit behind the one way mirror to watch.

You could always tell when it was someone’s first time watching a real user attempt to use our website.

And the other key theme of the book is that our current trajectory is seemingly heading us straight toward ecological disaster, regardless of how comfortable our current way of life might be.

Besides, his point is not that we need to return to barely living off the land, but to live with the land and with nature, not against it.

This makes me think back to Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Whether or not you agree with all his points I do think he has one very good point that’s worth reflecting on: the way we currently live is not the only way to live.

I think another important point to take away from the book is that even if we are not currently on the right path, agriculture and civilization are not inherently exclusive to living in such a way that is in harmony with the world.

There is a world that is possible where we live as good citizens of nature while still retaining civilization and agriculture.

So tying it back to article I think a middle ground is possible, but whatever that might look like, there are other ways to live.

Have you spent lots of time out in the wilderness before? Those you describe aren’t pleasant, but you learn to accept and deal with. I’m sure the are all kinds of unpleasantness in a “civilized” lifestyle that you no longer even notice because you’re just so used to accommodating them: traffic noise, pollution, artificial light, etc.

I once spent a week hiking and camping in a rain forest. The first day I was trying to keep dry and comfortable as much as possible, and I was miserable.

The second day I realized I’m just not going to be dry, and I accepted it, and being wet didn’t bother me again the rest of the week. At the end of the day you hang you socks and clothes up near the fire and dry your boots.

Being hot and sweaty and dealing with bugs are irritating, but it’s just part of being outdoors and if you spend significant time outside doing stuff you stop noticing it and just accept it as a part of life.

Don’t let a little discomfort stop you from enjoying nature. You might even start to notice the discomforts of modern life that you’ve accepted as a part of life.

First past the post doesn’t explain historically why we have only two parties, but it explains why we will continue to have only two going forward unless something changes.

> Did we not watch every single supposedly powerful US tech CEO immediately drop in supplication and kiss Trump's ring as soon as he became president?

Because they know it will work. You don’t have to watch Trump speak for very long to know he’s not very intelligent. Similarly, you don’t have to be much smarter than him to know how easily he can be manipulated with adulation.

Easier to focus, perhaps, but for me it doesn’t really make any difference.

Perhaps I’m the odd one then. It’s certainly a difficult topic to discuss with other people.

No, not necessarily so. But arguing for the existence of objective morality that stretches across the entire universe seems to be a huge stretch.

For what it’s worth, my subjective sense of morality is opposed to torture.

It does seem kind of misleading to ask someone to close their eyes to visualize something in their mind. It has nothing to do with your eyes.

I can visualize my house in my mind while simultaneously seeing whatever is in front of me. Though the “mind’s eye” description is apt because it is like seeing with a totally separate set of eyes that has zero awareness of my real eyes and sight.

It’s almost like remembering the experience of seeing it, or inventing a new memory of seeing it.

We have made ourselves dependent on cars because we have cars. There is no natural reason we must be so dependent on cars. It is a choice.

Our dependency on food is not a choice.

Comparing it to car safety does put it in perspective, but at the same time the safety of cars has nothing to do with food safety. Considering the necessity of food for life, and the fact our current population size is dependent on industrialized farming, I think it's worth to scrutinize food safety and hold it to a high standard.

You don’t need information about its past. Everything you need to know to predict its future state is contained in its current position and velocity at the moment you measure it.

I would not go out of my way to live near where I work when my employer can fire me on a whim.

If the office was in a place where I could reasonably expect to find other jobs as well, then that could be part of my consideration, but I would never choose to live somewhere based primarily on whatever my current job is.

I never thought about paying staff via tips being a tax dodge for the restaurant if it lets them avoid raising prices and thus taxable revenue.

Those are the ones better left unsaid.

Which is pretty absurd because twins aren’t even that uncommon. I would bet most people on the planet know or are related to twins.

That’s been happening long, long before even Figma existed.