A little over a year ago, a guy tried to ask me out and I’m the process said a few dumb things in an attempt to impress me. The dumbest of them all was that he was planning to buy a Cybertruck as his next vehicle. By the time he’d said this, I’d already long made up my mind about this guy. Mind, this was the period of time when Elon was just an asshole and hadn’t gone full Nazi yet, but even then, this dude’s choice of vehicle told me I’d made the right choice.

Theseadays I wonder if that guy ever got his idiot truck, and, whether he did or not, if he’s changed his mind about it.

I don’t believe nothing will change. I do believe Musk will capture communications and use it to monitor people he believes are his biggest enemies, then use it to best-case blackmail them, worst-case have them arrested in trumped-up (no pun intended) charges.

Random unknown people are being kidnapped, tortured, and sold internationally as slaves by the government. These are the cases we know about because they are getting to the media. How many are not getting through the Right-supporting media? Do we really think actual opponents aren’t just waiting targets?

Librarians go to school to learn how to manage information, whether it is in book format or otherwise. (We tend to think of libraries as places with books because, for so much of human history, that’s how information was stored.)

They are not supposed to have more information in their heads, they are supposed to know how to find (source) information, catalogue and categorize it, identify good information from bad information, good information sources from bad ones, and teach others how to do so as well.

I had to tell a bunch of librarians that LLMs are literally language models made to mimic language patterns, and are not made to be factually correct. They understood it when I put it that way, but librarians are supposed to be “information professionals”. If they, as a slightly better trained subset of the general public, don’t know that, the general public has no hope of knowing that.

I never really got into tea because I always found the flavour disappointing compared to its aroma. But I recently tried yerba maté, which isn’t a tea but definition, but is similar. It’s made from the leaves and stems of Holly and has a strong, bitter flavour that definitely does not disappoint. It’s enjoyed in places like Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Brazil. Now I start my day with a mug of coffee, then sip on maté the rest of the day.

Dogs taking away jobs from humans? What a disgrace! Surely dogs are DEI hires, if I ever saw one. They’re not even people!

There are very many normal human sounds that are not speech, including, but not limited to: laughter, crying, yelling/screaming/yelping (in surprise, pain, fear), groaning, moaning, yawning, sneezing, coughing, vomiting, singing, whistling.

What constitutes human speech? There are languages that have sounds that don’t exist in other languages (said as someone still trying to get a hold on rolling my Rs).

In any case, we should all learn some sign language. Seriously, it’s useful to be able to communicate silently or just visually (e.g. Across a noisy room), plus it makes life way more inclusive for Deaf people.

I understand your point generally, and would agree with you under most circumstances. However, you’re talking about the guy who came out swinging from Tariff Town before he was even inaugurated, which has already made for negative economic movement. Under his watch (if you would even be so generous to say he’s “watching” at all), there’s already been all kinds of administrative chaos for the USA by wanton firings and other cuts and more EOs than you’ve ever seen in your lifetime.

So, yes, absolutely the country can blame Trump, at the very least for putting all his attention to causing chaos and not on the things he campaigned on. (Not that I ever believed he had any intention to ever pay attention to them.)

The best use, for me, is asking ChatGPT to give me five (or however many) scholarly, peer-reviewed articles on a topic. Then I search for said articles by title and author name on my school library database.

It saves me so much time compared to doing a keyword search on said same database and reading a ton of abstracts to find a few articles. I can get to actually reading them and working on my assignment way faster.

AI is a great tool for people who use it properly.

I don’t understand what you mean by Firefox’s development is driven by the community? It’s not a community contributed open source software; my friend worka on Firefox and is a Mozilla employee.

The problemo see with this construct is that it only benefits current actors. There won’t be space for a new generation of actors.

Thank you so much for taking the time and effort to answer my question and helping me understand this (or at least understand it better). The world is fascinating!

I have a question with my very limited knowledge of biology:

Currently, pathogens “use” certain resources in a host, and then the host’s immune system creates antibodies that eventually kill the pathogens (or the pathogen kills the host).

The arguments are: mirror pathogens would require mirror antibodies, which is not possible for natural bodies to produce. However, this is not really a problem because our physical selves as resources would be incompatible with the needs of a mirror pathogen.

My question is: mirror or otherwise, could a pathogen “hijack” something other than usual as a resource?

Let’s say, I don’t know, Prime Pathogen A normally uses Prime Protein A, Mirror Pathogen A would require Mirror Pathogen A. Is it possible for a host to have a Prime Protein B that meets Mirror Pathogen A’s requirement–perhaps not perfectly, but “good enough” to sustain Mirror Pathogen A?

I enjoyed this because it took me a second to think what a not-dried prune is: a plum.

School shootings are just a matter of course now, they’re not even newsworthy anymore unless there’s an Uvalde-level of utter incompetence involved. And even then, what happened? Nothing, nothing happened to the cowards who were complicit and accomplices to the murder of children by actively preventing people from around the killer. We’re told to get over it.

So, you know, if I had to choose between school children being murdered as a matter of course and evil profiteers who revel and flourish on the pain and suffering of everyday people being murdered as a matter of course, I’d definitely chose the latter. I wouldn’t then tell people to get over it, I’d tell people the system obviously need to be dismantled and rebuilt entirely.

My real preference would be that there are no evil profiteers who revel and flourish on the pain and suffering and that systems be functioning for the people in the first place, but unfortunately that’s not an option.

Perhaps someone can help me understand the difference between an anthropromorphic animal mascot (which as a tale as old as time) and a furry? When does one cease to be one and becomes another?

There are animal mascots all the time in sports. Why is that not weird, but it’s weird to have a sporty animal mascot for coins?

I feel this so much. I got into stamp collecting, and I totally enjoy stamps and mail and all, but (old) people are so pretentious about it. The worst are the total hypocrites about it, too.

"I got into stamps when I was young, but I stopped when I went to university/started working/had a family because I didn’t have time for it, and came back to it after I retired.

"Philately is supposed to be academic and scholarly. You’re not a real philatelist if you’re not doing original research.

"Young people just don’t have the patience for stamps!

“The hobby is dying, why don’t young people want to collect stamps anymore??”

Actually, a lot of people do and share lots of stuff online (where the old people are not seeing it and thus is not happening). We’re just not writing 16-page papers about them (which is the standard a expected thing to do in “philately”).

Ask a local to show you some of their winter clothes or to take you winter clothes shopping. Your warmest clothes right now are not warm enough. Capacitive touch gloves will let you use your phone.

If you have a car, get a snow brush and ice scraper (for windshield and windows). There is winter windshield fluid, get and use it when it’s snowing. Get winter tires, it makes a difference. Insurance companies give a discount for having them. If there’s snow on the road, go slower than you think you should, and start braking at least twice as early as when it’s dry. Accelerate and brake slowly. If your car is sliding on ice, resist the temptation to keep pressing your brakes, try your best to steer the slide instead.

If your car gets stuck in snow and you need to run it to keep it warm, make sure the tail pipe is well clear of snow (carbon monoxide). Keep an emergency blanket, hat, gloves in the car in case of breakdown. If the wheels are stuck in a snowbank (just spinning in place), some sand or non-clumping cat litter can give you traction. You can sacrifice your floor mats for this, too.

If you walk instead of drive, consider crampons for your boots for if it gets icy out.

There’s different textures and density to snow. Wet snow is dense and heavy, dry snow is light and fluffy. Shoveling can be very different depending on the snow. Lift/push with your legs, now with your arms or back. Take breaks if needed.

If you wear glasses, they will fog up when you go from outside to inside. Sorry. You could get anti-fog stuff used for snow and ski goggles, but most normal people just wait for them to warm up.

A scarf makes a big difference.

Wool can keep you warm even when wet.

Be prepared for power outages especially if the area does not bury power lines. Heavy snow, or worse, ice, can make tree branches heavy and fall and snap power lines. If this happens, be mindful of carbon monoxide. People, families have died trying to keep warm by running generators, stoves, etc indoors without proper ventilation.

Snow reflects sunlight; wear sunglasses if the sun is out and there’s snow on the ground.

Go outside and listen when the snow is falling. It makes everything quieter and it’s really ice to hear.

Snow that’s warmed slightly then frozen again is crunchy and fun to walk on.

If you’re north enough, the sunlight will not be sufficient for creating vitamin D. (Plus you’ll probably be indoors more, less daylight in general.) Consider a supplement.

Consider a SAD light if lack of daylight affects your moods.

Let’s be honest, most people who learn Tai chi as an exercise also don’t realize that it’s joint locks and throws.

I literally did not recognize him, even with the headline. I’ve only seen fake smiles in pictures, but this looks like a genuine one.