Would I rather live in a regressive petro state with a medieval patriarchy enforced by law where women are little more than chattel slavery and legally regarded as less than a toddler boy? No. I like women as people equal to me in every respect, thanks. That said, I'm also not really fond of 'corrective' sexism where women are a 'favored victim class' long past the point of equality; it's been pretty solid for years that more girls go to college than boys - have the preferential admissions ceased? No? Why?

That said, I think it's delusional to not recognize that men and women approach things differently. Not better or worse, generally, just differently. In 2024, we've all been deeply programmed to never question some things, so it's anathemic if not outright heretical to point out that women:
- tend to care about the rights and feelings of others as well as their own
- tend to be accomodative
- tend to seek group consensus and approval
- tend to be risk avoiding and stability seeking, ....and the inculcation of these approaches as priorities are not necessarily completely positive for larger issues in our democracy nor (especially) in geopolitics.

It's 2024, I expect that if you've read this far (and depending on your age) you'll be reacting in shock and no small anger to these generalizations but they ARE largely proved.
https://www.andrews.edu/~tidwe...
As a VERY broad assertion, I'd state that those feminine qualities undercut democracy by trading things I value like liberty and choice, for things are are less important like comfort and stability.

Hell, I saw a recent study that testosterone actually leads to positive feelings when rejecting authority.

I think women are generally more easily emotionally manipulated. "Look at all the sad little families just trying to cross the border. Look at all the poor children in Gaza."
(Men were too, for sure, but the effeminization of the electorate has led to the deprecation of patriotism generally, so ironically this has left men LESS easily manipulated by that historically very-strong lever on them. Skinny-jeans wearing soyboys aren't going to take to the streets if someone waves a US flag. Well, maybe to protest against it, lol.)

In the same generalization, men can also be TOO uncaring, TOO disruptive, TOO independent of necessary consensus, of course. I just think we've swung way past any sort of rational center today.

Yes, stifling intellectual expression is in principle a bad thing.

Otoh, to suggest that all printed matter is sacrosanct is stupid.

What the screeching here fails to note is that a vast array of the books banned are things like graphic sex manuals being pushed into elementary school libraries for, let's be honest, political or sexual goals, neither of which are admirable.

  No reasonable person believes a kindergartener should learn to read by reading the captions to "a guide to Asian anal hardcore" or "how best to suck a co co".

To be clear, I do NOT believe such things should be banned. I personally think they're valueless, but that's irrelevant.

To suggest however that children should be provided unfettered access to them is ridiculous and if you believe that, you're a kook or a pedo.

That's worked out so well for the west.

Waves of people invade shops, take things freely, and if anyone interferes, THEY get arrested.
Otherwise, nobody gets arrested, and if they are, they're let go immediately without bail and if they fail to show up for their hearing, well, nobody cares.

Yes, of course, knowing their *faces* is the solution.

Anyway, we all know that this will be discontinued anyway when the pictures turn out to be disproportionally "racist".

So how is that any different from the "safe" drivers paying more for insurance because of all the people who are looking at their phones instead of driving, or driving cars with no tread on the tires, or no brakes, etc.?

That's the whole point of casualty insurance: you are spreading the risk across a larger cohort.

If you don't like paying the companies "making a profit" off their service, you can (in most US states anyway) post a bond for self-insurance with enough funds in it to cover the required minimums for personal injury and property damage liability and then self-fund your vehicle replacement portion.

I wish more people recognized this!

When people talk about "hottest summer" or whatever they are not talking about highest highs. They are talking about highest average. It's total energy content, not peak temperature, that is being discussed.

If the general population can't understand this, we need to be better as a people about basic education.

Let's be consistent here. If agricultural property isn't part of humanity's footprint, then neither are solar and wind farms.

Non-dispatchable energy sources cannot function as base load.

An energy source doesn't have to be dispatchable to function as baseload as long as it provides constant power. For example, coal and nuclear plants take hours to startup so they aren't as dispatchable as a bank of grid batteries, but they provide constant power and that's good enough for baseload.

As for folks' not moving, why is it so wonderful that people move away from their family and friends UNLESS THEY WANT TO DO SO?

That's a strawman argument because nobody actually said it's wonderful that people move away when they don't want to.

I live nowhere near where I was born, nowhere near family and that's fine, it was my choice. But I moved to places I wanted to live, not just to places where I could get work I wanted.

You're like the rich person who says money isn't everything. They do this to maintain social order as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and I can't help but think that's why you wrote that.

I'll happily make a choice to help a poor person and I don't care wha this or her skin color is.

I know your type. You like to give the poor small amounts of charity because it makes you feel better about yourself, and you so resent government taking away their poverty. So you want to keep people poor, because your self-worth depends on feeling superior to others.

I remember the joy when I discovered you can change YT to 1.25x or 1.5x.
Honestly, some of the presentations are so lethargic I put them on 1.5x before they even start and they SOUND NORMAL. I have to double check the setting is even right.

I haven't watched a non-musical video at less than 1.25x for years.

I would be surprised if higher efficiency was used to maintain compute at reduced energy consumption.

The much more likely result is increased compute at even higher energy consumption. The more efficient things get, the more of it is used, not less. Credits to Mr. Jevon.

In my meager experience, most actual work is NOT appropriately delivered or communicated in video - it's far too linear, unsearchable, not amenable to note-taking, monologue, and ultimately relies on presenter charisma, beauty, and professional voice and presentation talent - something that's in vastly shorter supply than most people believe.

I hate to imagine what Tufte's opinion of this would be. Buy them, read them, absorb them: https://www.edwardtufte.com/tu...

....but I doubt it, unless "smarter than" is defined by how quickly they can look stuff up on the internets.

ChatGPT and its ilk are great language and imagery resources but they're not even faintly intelligent.

I don't know where you get that they were illegal before Reagan - they were less common. What happened under him is dividends stayed taxed at the marginal tax rate while capital gains (long term) became taxed at 15% rather than the (normally) higher marginal rate. As a large shareholder I would much rather take my gains as a long-term capital gain than a fully taxable dividend.

"Engineers who raised technical doubts were told: 'Follow the plan. If you can't do your job, I'll fire you and get someone who can.'"

Shouldn't any engineer who goes against their professional ethics be delicensed? Even better would be if the employer could be banned by the engineering guild for making such a threat.