testfoobar

"The Plastocene – Plastic in the sedimentary record"

https://blogs.egu.eu/divisions/ssp/2019/01/09/the-plastocene...

I walk my dog twice a day every day rain or shine. I've picked up his poop 100% of the time - as do most other members of my suburban community. Our parks and sidewalks are mostly dog poop free.

Having said that, I've observed four cases where dog poop is more likely left behind.

1. Small dogs - owners of small dogs seem far more likely to leave dog poop behind. Perhaps because they think the poop is itself small?

2. Older owners (often owners of small dogs, but not always) - seem to care less.

3. Off leash dogs in parks - will often poop at the far edges of parks while their owners chat. Edges of parks and near bushes are minefields.

4. Rainy days - people just want to get home, clean off their dog and be done. So they seem more likely leave poop behind.

Yes - USPS should behave like a layer 3 network: moving mail pieces to destination addresses independent of source & destination.

Where elections probably matter to postal services is that they represent a particular shape of mail volume and network usage that may require management to reorganize pickup/delivery resources to meet delivery commitments.

Our culture has definitely changed from when Google Glass wearers were referred to as Glassholes.

It appears that more people have just accepted that they will be filmed anywhere and everywhere.

I miss the old days.

I really do worry for our younger students - and I don't envy your job at all.

It seems as if all of teaching and student evaluation needs to be rebuilt from the ground up with AI as a default assumption.

Local high schools have added in class timed, hand written, essays for classes like AP US History.

I particularly like Chicago Law School's policy on AI.

E.g. Law students writing a "Substantial Research Paper" will have to defend it orally: "We will be adding one additional requirement, which is that all students will be required to engage in an oral discussion of their SRP with their supervising professor, in an in-person setting. This discussion will occur after a complete draft (or final version) of the paper has been submitted to the professor. The discussion could take place one-on-one, or as a class presentation in the style of an academic workshop. Either way, the oral exchange will involve the student answering questions that probe the reasoning of the paper and the implications of its arguments."

https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/ai-strategy-statement

This is a bunch of fluff. I hope at least the snacks and lunches during the discussions were good.

"Guiding principles: Be bold. Be humble. Put humanity front and center. Lean into learning. Teach with intentionality. No one size fits all."

"Recommendations: Adapt educational processes for an AI-aware world. Center people, community, and the residential experience. Build processes, teams and tools for continuous reflection, iteration, and improvement"

Alternatively, creating incentives for plastics to never be deposited in rivers to begin with...

"The results, published last November in Environmental Science & Technology, show that rivers collectively dump anywhere from 0.47 million to 2.75 million metric tons of plastic into the seas every year, depending on the data used in the models. The 10 rivers that carry 93 percent of that trash are the Yangtze, Yellow, Hai, Pearl, Amur, Mekong, Indus and Ganges Delta in Asia, and the Niger and Nile in Africa. The Yangtze alone dumps up to an estimated 1.5 million metric tons of plastic waste into the Yellow Sea."

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas...

Why does it work for weather at all? Is there something that the mathematical models are over-simulating? Is weather easier to predict than we thought? Just curious what the intuition is to regarding the success of ML weather modelling...

> "The happy suburbanite cares about convenience and quantity above all else, from what I can tell anyway. They don't really have a varied sense of taste, they just want stuff, and they want easy access to that stuff. They like a "haul" that they do once a month, and buy vehicles that will fit it."

This is not reflective of the Costco shoppers I know and the place Costco fits in their lives.

Bi-Rite and Erewhon or Citarella and Eataly are not Costco competitors.

To understand the appeal of Costco to suburban families, you have to understand their caloric needs. Costco is the best solution if you need to buy 48 eggs and 4 gallons of milk a week along with 8lbs of chicken, 4lbs of turkey, and pounds of broccoli, green beans, spinach, sweet potatoes, onions accompanied with apples, peaches, mangos, avocados, blueberries, strawberries and oranges.

From families I know: food is the reason. Athletic teenagers consume a lot of calories. Proteins, fruits, and vegetables along with milk, eggs, cheeses and snacks are easy to buy in bulk at Costco. These items are replenished weekly.

Your comments have two standout points for me:

1. Boring Orwell: Continuous surveillance is already present in the form of cameras in streets, shops, schools, cars, buses, homes, etc. AI can and absolutely will be used to continuously monitor these feeds.

2. Accountable power: Surely you're joking?!

Any individual layoff is truly awful.

But at the macro level, it is not really a big number so far. From ~2.48 million in 2023 to ~2.37million now. Or a 5% drop in employment in 3 years.

Fred: All Employees, Computer Systems Design and Related Services (CES6054150001)

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ces6054150001

Ha ha. I can't imagine any Ferrari dealer would want this on their lot.

Tax dollars really don't pay for things in the US Federal Government.

Deficit spending leading to an ever rising debt is the source of continued spending. When Debt/GDP grows, we're spending ever more money that we don't have.

Total Debt:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN

Total Debt/GDP

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S

I would be concerned about transcription error perhaps (e.g. non native speaker) where precision matters: engineering, compliance, regulation, legal, etc.

No doubt they were delicious - fruit picked while walking is always special.

But here in California, we have tremendous strawberries in our markets: Camarosa, Albion, Gaviota. Each is different in size, texture, flavor-profile.

I usually buy a "flat" of strawberries from the local farmer's market during peak season every weekend. They go in my oatmeal, my smoothies and in my lunches.

E.g: https://www.ocregister.com/2024/07/13/farmers-market-pops-up...

Perhaps you haven't had the pleasure of eating fresh-picked strawberries from Watsonville on your drive down PCH 1. Strawberries that are shipped across the US (Watsonville produces something like 40%) are picked under-ripe and will not sweeten more along the way.

Ripe, Watsonville farm-stand strawberries are something else entirely. They can indeed be fist sized. I encourage you to try them yourself.

Alternatively, you can go to pick your own places along the way - also fantastic.

I feel truly sorry for older folks navigating apps/logins/passwords/etc.

Their experience is often utter shit.

Two examples:

1. Often older folks have their screen zoom maxed out for readability. Extreme zoom will often place critical fields and buttons off-screen - making the app useless.

2. Fingers and hands of older folks often tremble. So imagine holding in your trembling left hand your phone, while you're trying to hit a target with your trembling right finger. All while standing in line to get a discount on your groceries.

Definitely need this - I have a grocery store app with an embedded QR code linked to my account for discounts at point of sale. Opening the app is slow - so I've screen shotted the QR code. I have to pull my pinned photos at checkout to scan the code. This is also slow - but less slow than opening the app.

Looking forward to adding it to Apple wallet.

As an aside, does the Jenny number still work at most stores?

Populism is effective because the proverbial rising tide is not lifting all boats. AI is currently driving yet another extreme wealth inequality inflection point. Founded just five years ago, Anthropic is going to be a trillion dollar private company maybe this year! This is a staggering outcome and will further divide the gap between the wealthy and everyone else.

So whether populist outrage is expressed through fears of job losses, higher energy prices or concerns over water usage, IMHO, wealth inequality is the cause.

People just liked it better that way.

"How did we get here?" - No one really wants to ask this question. We've had decades of tax policy, trade policy, health policy that created tremendous wealth inequality.

In Q4 2016 (upon Trump's first election), the bottom 50% owned just $1 trillion out of $90 trillion.

The system failed them. Trump is a populist.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...

Full tweet: "A friend is renting a house and the application requires connecting your bank account (via login) to pull 90 days of purchases and balances.

Seems really invasive for a rental or any purchase for that matter.

Is this really becoming a new standard?"

Or high speed switching between a dozen workspaces across multiple monitors and 100s of chrome tabs.

Give it back?

>If I have evidence that a crime has been committed based on my layperson understanding of the law, I will surely inform others before the case is even brought to courts. Journalists can and should do the same.

In the US, careful journalistic organizations follow ethical and legal guidelines that often split hairs.

Have a look here: New York Times - Ethical Journalism A Handbook of Values and Practices for the News and Opinion Departments

https://www.nytimes.com/editorial-standards/ethical-journali...

By researching, writing and publishing this article both the reporter and the news org believe there is significant public value in publishing this information.

But it is a higher and more restricted standard to say a crime has been committed. Journalists can uncover and publish evidence that a crime has been likely committed.

Journalists cannot make a legal determination that a crime has or has not been committed. This is left for courts.

This would require a Constitutional Amendment - a pretty high bar.

https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S2-C1-3...

Allegations of insider trading are not the same as convictions of insider trading. No publication should be in the business of allocating criminal responsibility in advance of legal proceedings. If a crime is suspected then it should be reported to the authorities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence

I remember being dazzled by Xeyes.