His last name is hard to pronounce, apparently even for him.

In his initial interview they ask him “what is your name” and he responds “Kepa Areethabelao”. I’m curious about whether the name means something, or what the origin is, and it’s interesting that the “correct” pronunciation has fewer syllables than it might seem.

Also, bought by Chelsea in 2018 for €80m, sold 7 years later for €6m? Chelsea sure is good at this player trading business.

The bigger issue is that somewhere near half the US is OK with this. Sure, maybe some people could have done more to prevent it. But, there were also untapped voters on the other side who fully supported this kind of thing, but were too lazy to vote.

The US is in a crisis not because of who is in charge, but because roughly half the population supports this kind of thing. It could be that some of them are actually not horrible people, it’s just that they’ve been misled by Fox News, right-wing echo chambers, and other sources of information that have blinded them to the truth. But, a lot of them are gleeful participants in this new world, and will fully support it until they’re the ones being sent to the camps.

its

Also the search parameters are undocumented internal things that can change or be disabled at any time.

Except that may have been a fluke:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-019-09528-x

And when it did it also altered the results, making them worse, because it was trying to satisfy “fuck” as part of your search.

Worse is Google that insists on shoving a terrible AI-based result in your face every time you do a search, with no way to turn it off.

I’m not telling these systems to generate images of cow-like girls, but I’m getting AI shoved in my face all the time whether I want it or not. (I don’t).

I’m betting crocs.

Ok, you’re both psychos.

4 minutes isn’t going to turn a normal hot dog into something cold. It’s going to take at least a minute or two just to be cool enough not to burn your mouth if it just came off a grill, frying pan or out of boiling water.

But, if you’re eating a hotdog that has been sitting around for an hour and it’s still warm, it most likely contains unacceptably high levels of plutonium.

It’s bizarre that our society expects us to work 9-5, but also expects us to somehow get every necessary appointment done within that same time frame.

Sure, but anything offered outside the 9-5 window is someone who has to adjust their hours so that it’s more convenient to people who work the standard 9-5. That’s why the places that tend to be open outside the 9-5 window are the ones that tend to employ the lowest-paid people. Gas stations, convenience stores, etc.

The best paid 9-5 jobs also offer employees the freedom to visit the doctor, dentist, kid’s school, etc. whenever they need to, no questions asked. It’s basically a perk that you only get if your skills are rare enough that employers have to offer it or the talent will go elsewhere. If we wanted more people to have those perks, the way to achieve it would be the same way that the 9-5 workday was created: powerful unions and violent strikes.

Wow, my comment was removed for just a mild hint that Chinese communism isn’t free from corruption?

It can happen, but often you can predict when someone will be utterly unwilling to change their mind, despite mountains of evidence.

If it’s something that someone doesn’t really have a stake in, they’re likely to follow the evidence.

But, it’s different when something is a big part of someone’s identity. Take an American gun nut: Someone who spends a lot of free time on gun-related forums. Someone who goes shooting sometimes with buddies. Someone who listens to podcasts about guns, and has a gun safe filled with favourites. That’s the kind of person who is never going to be swayed by rational arguments about guns.

Too much of their self-identity and too many of their social connections are gun-related. Changing their mind wouldn’t just mean adopting a new set of facts, it would mean potential conflicts with all their friends. It would mean leaving a social group where they spend a lot of their free time. They’d not only have to accept that they’re wrong, but that all their friends are wrong too.

Of course, there are ways to change the minds of people who are in a situation like that. Unfortunately, it mostly happens due to tragedy. Like, a gun nut will change their mind, but only when a family member kills themselves with a gun, either on purpose or accidentally. That new, and incredibly personal data point is enough to compensate for all the social difficulties related to changing your mind.

If you’d like to abandon society and escape into nature

Where, exactly, can you do that? There’s really no unclaimed nature out there anymore, at least none that can let a person survive on their own. And if you’re not surviving on your own, you’re part of a society.

Do they show shoes or do they show sandals?

Normally not a big difference, footwear is footwear. But, if we’re talking about socks, then the difference becomes relevant again.

How to spot Americans on topics not related to America.

And, while it’s good to challenge dumb social constructs, you should pick your battles. Nobody can fight all dumb social constructs at the same time. Is wearing socks really where you want to focus your energy?

Ouch. Good to know it’s possible though.

You… I like you.

You’d really have liked it if I started talking about how the winters in Ontario, CA are much more pleasant than the ones in Ontario, CA.

Recreation just switches to an early morning or post-sundown schedule.

Ah, right. I hadn’t considered that. It’s interesting that the places with the most brutal heat are the ones with a relatively early sunset. In 2023 Oslo hit 32 degrees, not that hot by international standards, but combine that with the fact it happened on June 15th and the sun never fully sets at that time of year, and it’s hard to find relief.

I usually still get 3-4 hours of sports activities on a saturday or sunday.

Do you live somewhere where the mid-day heat is 35+C? 40+C? To me, those are the only ones where it’s truly brutal and I might prefer long, harsh winters. OTOH, human culture hasn’t really found a great way to deal with brutally cold winters. There are winter solstice celebrations, but no adjustment of the schedule of life to avoid the worst of the cold. But, in places with really hot summers there’s often a tradition of mid-day naps, and I could really get on board with that lifestyle.

For some of them it’s “if you don’t want to risk your life in the armed forces, but really, really want other people to go and murder children and steal land so you can benefit, go study the Talmud”.

The Tragedy of the Commons was popularized by a man who was anti-immigrant and pro-eugenics, and it’s not good science. The good science on it was done by Elinor Ostrom who won a Nobel-ish prize for fieldwork showing that various societies around the world had solved the issues of the governance of commons.

The thing is, Ostrom didn’t disprove it as a concept. She just proved that with the right norms and rules in place it doesn’t inevitably lead to collapse. IMO it’s not about capitalism or communism, it’s about population. A small number of people who all know each-other can negotiate an arrangement that everyone can agree to. But, once you have thousands or millions of people, and each user of the commons knows almost none of the other users, it’s different. At that point you need a government to set rules, and law enforcement to enforce those rules. That, of course, fails when the commons is something like the world’s atmosphere and there’s no worldwide government that can set and enforce rules.