swalling

“The enormity of their stupidity is just overwhelming”

https://youtu.be/QhMo4WlBmGM?si=RLmmOCX43l0nOq_q

The population-level version of this is the Dutch, who only relatively recently became the tallest people on Earth through natural selection.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2015.021...

One interesting fact is that Darwin directly referred to Bakewell in the first chapter of On the Origin of Species:

“a kind of Selection, which may be called Unconscious, and which results from every one trying to possess and breed from the best individual animals, is more important. Thus, a man who intends keeping pointers naturally tries to get as good dogs as he can, and afterwards breeds from his own best dogs, but he has no wish or expectation of permanently altering the breed. Nevertheless I cannot doubt that this process, continued during centuries, would improve and modify any breed, in the same way as Bakewell, Collins, &c., by this very same process, only carried on more methodically, did greatly modify, even during their own lifetimes, the forms and qualities of their cattle.”

The board governs a mission-driven nonprofit, not a profit-focused enterprise where Microsoft has board-level influence as investor. This tension (operating as if it is a startup when it is not) is why Altman was fired.

You can't escape it, but if you pay for an enterprise plan you typically have huge amounts of advance notice (monthly or quarterly roadmap updates, plus an account team at your service and the ability to demand face time / feedback with the product managers). This makes a big difference to your process of change management in handling redesigns, and influence over even relatively minor UI updates.

"One of the two "slacks" I'm a member of recently got a UI update - and the other didn't."

This is because major changes at basically all business software companies are rolled out on a team-by-team basis, rather than per user account.

Also note that from the screenshots that he is on Free tier Slack teams in both instances. When you do not pay for a business communication tool, you should not really have expectations of stability or coherence. You're getting a free sample of a product that is meant to be paid for. What he was experiencing was a beta or gradual rollout where Free teams were being used as test subjects to see how the redesign impacts user engagement. If you don't pay for a product, you are the product.

"While Pathfinder 1 can carry about four tons of cargo in addition to its crew, water ballast and fuel, future humanitarian airships will need much larger capacities."

For context, a C130 can airdrop 21 tons of cargo. So if the use case is delivery of humanitarian aid in zones without landing strips, Pathfinder is still really far from a viable replacement of current aircraft.

Deregulation to allow building more of all housing types is the only answer. Funding more public housing will just add a trickle of liquidity to a market that has been in drought for decades.

Take San Francisco. A huge proportion of the housing stock is rent-controlled (everything pre 1979) to try and make it accessible price-wise to low income renters, effectively forcing a ton of housing stock to lock in artificially low prices the same as public housing. This hasn't fixed it, and may have made it worse due to perverse incentives for landlords / building owners. Meanwhile it remains arguably the most difficult major city in North America to build new housing in, especially infill on existing residential properties.

I moved back to Portland, OR the last few years, and the pace of housing development and policy is dramatically better. Single family zoning is illegal. You have people in rich neighborhoods adding ADUs like crazy, and developers knocking down outdated single family homes to increase density in desirable neighborhoods. New mixed use buildings are springing up all along major transit corridors in walkable/bikeable neighborhoods. Prices for new homes and luxury apartments are inaccessibly high, but all of this takes pressure off the low end of rental stock. There is also public housing being built, but it is monumentally dwarfed by private development.

Your entire framework is capitalist voodoo.

The US education system can stand to spend way more money compared to other budget areas like defense that are massively overfunded. Teachers are paupers for absolutely no good reason. Furthermore, what are you measuring outcomes against? We don't even have a holistic universal measurement of positive outcomes. Standardized tests are a joke and everyone knows it.

Education is not a market, efficiency is not the primary goal. Quality and equity of outcomes for students is the goal.

The system today is optimizing for standardization federally in order to try and fight the natural entropy toward a highly unequal system where rich kids get dramatically better education and there is a downward spiral for poor kids. It's not achieving this goal today, but decentralizing the system would most definitely reinforce unequal outcomes, not avoid it.

Not only is it a hot button issue, but the US still has a large number of creationist "museums" you can tour with your kids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationist_museum

I deeply crave the ability to create finished software like the author talks about, but he skips over a major cause of never-ending updates: business model.

The web and mobile both enable a cycle of extreme optimization where ad-based or subscription-based models are continually squeezed for every last dollar of possible value. This is why if you’ve worked at a tech company that is thriving, a ton of your work just goes poof over time.

The best modern pieces of finished software I use are either free, donation-based, or a one-time paid price. My favorite modern app like this is a little utility called Simple Pacer, which solves distance, pace, or time calculations for runners. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/simple-pacer/id1273474255 It’s perfect and the version history on iOS is sparse. I’d bet it makes only a little money though.

Some engineers and designers simply cannot stomach the idea that they aren’t actually geniuses. This guy comparing great visionary engineers to Picasso immediately sounds like one of those people that pretty much anyone (in any role) hates working with due to their massive ego.

There are many many bad PMs who are either dead weight or actively drag down their teams. But most eng and design teams are so much more inept and slow without any PM that even a mediocre one clearly improves velocity (if not effectiveness).

Yes. My root comment is not giving medical advice, but stating the unspoken truth in the original article that people are reaching for psychedelic therapy because existing standard medications do not work for everyone. Real medical advice should be tailored to an individual's history and needs, which is what any good physician or psychiatrist would actually do.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

I think in my part my negative reaction is, like many people, having observed the effects of SSRIs on young people. It's well known that risks like suicidal ideation are actually higher among those under 25, and in general it is awful to see the mental health crisis among young people dealt with primarily via instantly reaching toward semi-permanent medication, rather than considering other treatments.

What's missing from this article is that people are reaching for this because the standard medical treatment for these disorders, SSRIs, are pretty terrible. In the mild case, the common side effects are blunting of your emotions and sexual dysfunction. So you don't have panic attacks, but you live in a gray fog and your relationships suffer. In the worst case, they cause suicidal ideation. Psychedelics also have psychiatric risks that can be severe and unpredictable, but they don't require prolonged, daily dosages to be effective.

It really sucks, but the reason why review happened is because there is an onslaught of people who show up to write promotional articles, many of them paid by PR agencies and reputation management firms.

The previous system of doing post-publish review of new articles had an even worse backlog because it let a huge volume of shit into the front door.

The root cause of this is Wikipedia’s huge influence in Google SEO and knowledge graph. As the open web is dying, it’s one of the few reliable ways to dump information straight to the top of Google SERPs. When I write new Wikipedia articles it is often indexed to the first page of results in minutes.

If it is moral fashion to acknowledge and measure the obvious racial and economic discrimination in America then that’s a fashion which is morally good.

All too frequently laws in the US are completely out of step with the culture. For instance despite broad support for many reforms (abortion rights, term limits in Congress, marijuana legalization) nothing happens just because the culture has evolved.

One important thing that the NPR story completely glosses over is the component of race and class that permeates this issue. It’s not an accident that the prototypical mom of the “free range kid” movement is white and lives in a relatively wealthy neighborhood like the one mentioned in the story.

Poor black and brown women are disproportionately targeted by child welfare authorities starting literally from birth. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7372952/ This makes it particularly important that we actually change the laws around what constitutes neglect or endangerment, not just create a culture shift.

Loom does not have a moat, which is why they were purchased by a platform that does have one.

It’s a very well-done feature, but there are increasingly other platforms (Slack, Dropbox) that offer features 80% as good for free.

This is a key assumption of the classic book (and box office bomb movie adaption) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Princess_of_Mars

Many of the plants mentioned in this story are no longer rare or expensive, depending on how easy they are to propagate. For example, the article mentions a “Pink Princess” Philodendron. These are not difficult to grow, but the pink variegation is notoriously unstable. In 2019 I sold a small one of these plants for $125. Today you can buy a similar plant for $20-40 on Etsy from a reputable US seller.

Given that the $100 Timberlands only last a year or two, the Red Wings already have lasted 5X longer.

There are several brands of boots like this. I have a pair of Red Wing boots that I purchased new in 2013 (I don’t remember the price but today they are $350). Unlike most other modern sneakers or boots, they are made so that the soles be replaced, which I have done once for $100. Other than this, the only consumable part is shoelaces. With maintenance of the leather, it is completely expected for these boots to outlive me.

Seems obvious that the reason bagged liquids are less common is because it's awkward as hell to hold and carry, especially at larger sizes?

Even with some kind of handle, a soft, floppy bag is less ergonomic to carry than a hard-sided container with a molded handle. The only use case for a soft-sided liquid container that makes design sense are the flasks that fit inside a running vest and therefore flex to the shape of your chest along with the vest material.

This is a solved problem. When using an icon that isn't universally understood on a given computing platform (desktop, web, or mobile OS) you have to use a text label. When it doubt, don't use an icon alone.

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/icon-usability/

The models not only were trained on copyrighted works, but when prompted will substantially and repeatedly reproduce copies of creative work (not just facts). That's infringement. https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/9/23788741/sarah-silverman-o...

Fair use only covers very limited circumstances which probably does not include selling a subscription (ChatGPT+). If you’re selling a repackaged reproduction of someone else’s copyrighted works, that’s never protected by fair use.

Yes, big government is bad! Unless it’s federal deposit insurance and bank bailouts. Or the space program. Or the interstate highway system. Or a universal social safety net. Or food and drug standards preventing adulterated foods and fake medicines from killing people. Or a strong national military defense. Or… well the list goes on.