Any discussions about Parler aren't going to be non-partisan, but I wasn't intending to add slant to the discussion. Taking a step back in scope and history, political divisions and news sources used to be much more decoupled than they are today. That they are so tightly coupled now is extremely problematic (disastrous really), and that to me is the whole topic here.

When I think of "mainstream" journalism, my mind goes to the "journalism" part of the phrase, and I think of news organizations like BBC, AP, PBS. But to be honest, if you look at cable news only, the top three are Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC. CNN has slid a lot in recent years, as has MSNBC, into the partisan-so-called-news domain. What's "mainstream?" I'm sorry I even used that term.

Why do people *watch* the news? To be entertained, to feel like they are informed, and to feel a little bit self-righteous. (I'm basing this observation on my elderly father-in-law who has become a CNN junkie.) The cable news networks all feed into this, and provide that entertainment. The economics of broadcast network news have pushed the political wedge even deeper. More entertaining news-feels give more viewership and more income. But if you want to be actually informed, you don't turn on a TV, you actively seek out good news sources. That's a totally different industry, with its own (struggling) economics.

For me, *journalism* means reading articles from sources that feel to me like they are written by journalists, not entertainers. Organizations like the Society of Professional Journalists will post a Code of Ethics. These are what mark authentic journalism, and it can be more or less apparent when you read an article whether or not this code is followed. This code requires them to be essentially non-partisan observers and reporters. There will always be biases, but these should not overwhelm the reporting.

I think that like most paradoxes, this goes away when you tighten up your language. Popper was pretty specific himself, and probably just coined "paradox of tolerance" to be a little bit cute or memorable. He does defend the need for freedom of speech -- not silencing dissident opinions unless we've lost the ability to have a rational discussion.

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."
(Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies, as quoted by Chris Hedges, American Facists)

The first salvo of today's Republican movement is saying "all mainstream journalism is hopelessly corrupt and biased, and so you can't trust the non-Republican-sanctioned press or the so-called fact-checkers." For me, that sentiment is the 21st-century version of Popper's "begin by denouncing all argument."

I'm not saying I know the answer, but a lot of the content on politically-aligned sites like Parler, Breitbart, Epoch Times, and ... what's on the right? The Jimmy Dore Show maybe? Anyway what's dangerous about these sites isn't just hate speech. It's the spin, disinformation and agitprop. In a sense these, too, create intolerance because they preclude rational dialogue.

Hate speech has been defined in various ways by various groups. Google is pointing me to the UN, which defines it as “any kind of communication in speech, writing or behaviour, that attacks or uses pejorative or discriminatory language with reference to a person or a group on the basis of who they are, in other words, based on their religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, colour, descent, gender or other identity factor.”

There's still a lot of wiggle-room there, and much more grey surrounding what constitutes disinformation. In any case, it sounds like Parler is doubling-down on their mission to enable manipulators and make the radicalization of people as easy as possible.

All the euphemisms in Abode's ad/blog make me nauseous. And for good reason!

Examples: "Return free-loaders to available market" (from TFA), "optimal monetization" (instead of "maximized subscription revenue"), "optimize actions," etc.

This kind of greed-based optimization usually serves short-term goals for a company while sacrificing long-term viability. Instead, maximizing the value provided to customers by providing good content, reliable service, helpful features, and low prices, would help companies like Netflix maintain their strong market position. Customers are increasingly fickle, and the landscape of streaming services is constantly changing. Seeking short-term revenue growth would be a great way for Netflix shareholders to pump & dump their company.

I guess this is the main problem with PoW systems. If mining consumes so much power (and/or dedicated hardware) that very few "average Joes" want to get involved, then the whole point is somewhat defeated. The system is meant to be robust against small numbers of bad actors, but the total number of actors overall is kept small by the value prospect of mining. Thus the move to a proof-of-stake system? Does PoS make small-scale mining profitable enough? I'd expect a reward system to be something like ln(W) or sqrt(W) where W is the transaction-validation work done.

It's the "doubled-down after criticism" part that gets me. Have you ever worked with someone who does that? I have, and each time it was a disaster. It must be some kind of ultra-self-empowerment ideology, pitched as advice for management: Every problem can be boiled down to an issue of perception, and the self-made man owns all of their problems. Thus being wrong is personal failure, a weakness. I don't know, but something like that anyway. Trump is an archetype of this mentality, but of course it's not just him.

As a scientist-turned-engineer, I'm wrong a lot. If I'm not making mistakes. identifying, and then correcting them, then I must not be in a productive mode. Doubling-down on my own mistakes would be self-destructive.

Is this "being wrong is only a problem of perception" BS something taught in ivy league business admin programs, or is it charlatan self-help advice? Where does this come from?

This may be true of a fresh, clean Windows 10 install with almost no other software loaded. But after installing a half-dozen programs or more, and after maybe a week of use, it's back to the usual suckage we all know and expect. So many things scale with installs in Windows that do not in Linux. Registry size, filesystem GB used, desktop icons, and more I'm sure, perhaps update history or app data -- these all seem to load Windows down with O(N) or worse even when the data and apps are not in use. The registry is a database with severely-worsening performance as it fills up. And file indexers and antivirus scans sometimes make a system unusable. There may be something kooky it's doing with interrupts or scheduling, since often any disk activity creates mini lock-ups or extreme unresponsiveness. That makes Windows almost unusable on magnetic hard drives, but much better on SSDs. Still agony, but not completely intolerable once you've given it half an hour or so to quiet down.

It's nice to see here that I'm not the only person who looks at happy Windows users, scratches their heads and wonders "Why? How even?"

This article brings me back to thinking about choosing government representatives by lottery -- sortition.

• Campaigning causes people to focus on party, not policy.
• Campaigning emphasizes populism -- basing policy on simplistic arguments and vague ideals, not on what policies produce desirable results.
• Proportional representation is more easily obtained by lottery.
• Elections select the worst of us for office, not the best. Good politicians would be humble, and in many ways would not even want the job.

Sortition probably works best with short terms in office (2-4 years max I'd think), and by removing the popularity contest it should also lessen the effect of power damping out empathy.

My main thesis here is that a random citizen would, on average, be a better representative than our elected reps. I'm thinking more about congress here than president. A president has more need of charisma than average, but on the other hand their role was intended to be that of unification and communication. So they also have great need of humility and empathy. By my standards here, it is simply not possible to elect a good president.

But I won't even pretend to know how to make sortition work in practice. There has to be reasonable compensation for the disruption in one's life. There has to be a short preparatory period. There have to be some loose eligibility requirements. And there has to be a way of declining office. That and fairly strict anti-bribery measures. I don't know what else.

The 2nd paragraph discusses casualties per capita.

The nerd inside me must speak: kg is a unit of mass, and pounds are units of weight (force). kg converts to slugs, and pounds converts to newtons.

I get that you're trolling, but I'll bite. See https://www.pewresearch.org/sc...

All the evidence I've seen suggests the opposite. I'm not a Democrat personally, so I can't say what "they" think though I have voted that way in recent elections. I certainly support nuclear energy as an important part of a good energy economy. I think many (most even?) Democrats feel the same. I guess that's another question for Pew research.

This is a little simplistic from what I can tell. It doesn't take into accounted accelerated melting rates, among other things. But the high-level statement here is still correct: While the arctic ocean may be ice-free by 2050, the Greenland ice sheet will persist much longer than that. That it too would melt by 2050 is a misconception, and not something that I think climate scientists are claiming.

Here's a somewhat current statement/warning about the state of the Greenland ice sheet: https://www.theguardian.com/en...

But even the current rate of melting is worrisome, because (1) there are positive-feedback effects (this article calls them tipping points, which I suppose is accurate?) and (2) the ice-melt affects other systems like the gulf-stream current (global conveyor belt) and more. The Earth is a complex system which scientists are continuing to learn about.

I'm writing about this as if current findings are what are most relevant. They aren't. It's important that we take seriously those results that have now been firmly established, while at the same time supporting further study. Remember, the time the world should have first reacted to global warming concerns was 1979 when the US actively participated in the first World Climate Conference. Or by 1990 at the very least!

True but we know that various tipping points exist, and we're heading toward them. The original article mentions this further down, as it describes that the model presented is biased to be very conservative: "These are events such as ice sheet collapse, sudden changes in ocean circulation, or catastrophic wildfires," Watson said. "These 'known unknowns' are scarier still." I'd guess in the next few years we will get more precision on ocean circulation deadlines. But probably once we can accurately predict it, it'll be too late to avoid it.

Another kind of tipping point I don't hear people talking about is the economic capacity to create the changes needed. Limiting climate change is (increasingly) going to be expensive, and taxes the economies of nations. But limiting climate change requires more investment in "green" energy and sequestration. As damage to society from climate change increases, world economies suffer and our ability to slow global warming weakens. Part of that ability is political. As economies suffer, anarchy gains greater traction.

Simplistically, taxation is a reasonable way to handle this issue. The problem is that CO2 emissions incur a large cost to society. The cost is realized at a distance and with a time delay. The people buying coal, oil, and gas are not the ones who realize the cost, and neither are the ones burning those fuels. So a market economy fails to optimize, since no purchaser can really take into account these hidden costs. Instead we have been driving ourselves (globally) toward extreme economic losses. We are barely even beginning to feel the effects of climate change, and it's already costing billions USD or more of damage.

So part of the solution is completely obvious: tax fossil fuels (and grown fuels like ethanol but with a break according to the relative amount of recapture done by the crops) based on the money needed for future sequestration. That causes purchasers to realize the hidden costs.

What should the tax rate be? Where do proceeds go? Obvious again, sort of. Somewhere around $100 per ton of CO2, or about $360 for ton of carbon. Admittedly we have a problem here. Even after about 3x price inflation over the past year, coal costs only about $140 per ton. So an additional $360 somewhere is going to have too large an immediate impact. Still, the math is absolutely correct -- this extra price is the hidden cost that the purchaser is effectively stealing from others. And obviously, the proceeds must all go to carbon sequestration efforts. Today that's mostly research, but it will soon need to shift toward production. I'm pulling the $200 figure (which is very crude) from this article. But there are many others. And I'm over-simplifying the situation. As we research sequestration technologies, we are not addressing present emission and present CO2 concentrations, and the damage this has done and is doing. But at the same time one would hope that sequestration becomes cheaper over time.

What exactly do you tax? Here it gets even murkier. Ideally, as high up the chain as possible, and just once. That affects the rest of the supply chain equally. Or does it? And if you tax the producer, then oil refineries can burn their own oil for energy to produce gasoline, plastic, etc. But the plastic (which has its own problems) is basically sequestered carbon already. In any case, this is where my original naivete really gets punished. But the basic idea is still a sound one. It's just that a fair implementation is extremely difficult.

And many objections to this current legislation are valid ones. That's how our government (fails to) work. Take a necessary idea, make it political, and beat it into something that, if it passes, is a total embarrassment.

Regarding "the science" here -- It appears to be difficult to disentangle mask-wearing and different kinds of masks from other factors in any real-world study. But several studies have been done showing that mask-wearing of any kind does probably protect the wearer by some amount. One study claims over 70% effectiveness of masks-as-PPE.

But I think you're right in the first place on this thread, that masks are measurably more effective as a form of OPPE. That has always been the reason for me wearing one. I don't want to get infected of course. But if there's any practical way to reduce the chance of me committing involuntary manslaughter, I'll take it! If it happens to protect me a little bit, that's fine but it's a distant-second-place reason. Same logic applies to the vaccine, even though that offers better personal protection than protection of others.

And a third reason for all of masks, distancing, and vaccination: sending a signal to others that you want to be a member of a society that values human life and care for others over personal convenience. How this became a political issue, and especially one in the US where the ones against protective measures also claimed to champion "Christian" values is dismally, head-shakingly depressing.