Right, because buying the newest model of laptop and phone from the same company and neither one comes with a cable that connects the two together, is "the start of the new normal." In what fantasy universe is that even remotely justifiable? That the iPhone doesn't come with a USB-C cable is proof that the claim that USB-C is the future is flawed and that Apple isn't putting its money where its mouth is. If they truly wanted to have people adopt USB-C, they would convert their entire product line over and flood the market with natively operating cables, all for relatively low cost. One could even argue that they should do away with packaging USB-A connectors in their products.

...as long as Apple expects us to keep using dongles, I'm not buying a new laptop no matter what they're putting inside it. My computer is for real work. Not for dicking around, and not for fiddling with dongles. A pro-level machine needs pro-level connectivity, not some Jony Ive masturbatory fever dream of a glorified iPad Pro with a keyboard attached.

Agreed. When the National Security Agency claims they are unwilling or unable to obtain the kind of evidence that JOURNALISTS were able to obtain regarding Russian interference in US elections without resorting to panopticon tactics and pervasive domestic surveillance, that is either an outright lie, or a display of egregious incompetence. Which one is it, then? Is the NSA really saying they are too stupid to figure out how the Russians have infiltrated the US government? Because that's exactly what they're saying with this claim. The conclusion to be made is not that the American public should accept the renewal of authorization of draconian surveillance powers, but rather, that the US intelligence agencies are grossly incompetent.

Simply attributing the difficulty in implementation to cultural differences is, to put it mildly, a threadbare excuse. It amounts to throwing up one's hands and saying that because "this is how Americans and Japanese are different, consequently there is no way for Americans to learn from the Japanese model." And such an attitude reflects the kind of entrenched, defeatist, brainwashed thinking that permeates all kinds of problems that American society faces.

Read the WaPo article on this subject: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/on-japans-school-lunch-menu-a-healthy-meal-made-from-scratch/2013/01/26/5f31d208-63a2-11e2-85f5-a8a9228e55e7_story.html

Here's how this comment thread has played out: I posted about the problem and why it exists, largely ignoring the partisan politics on the issue. Someone responded saying how the goal of cheap, healthy, and delicious school lunches for kids is unattainable. I provided direct evidence that contradicts that belief. Now you say that such evidence is not valid due to differences in culture. And I reject your claim, because Japan's approach proves that the original goal is attainable. Moreover, what it also suggests--but does not in itself prove--is that what needs to change is not only the school lunch model, but American attitudes, specifically the tendency to make excuses and whine about the perceived lack of freedom and individual choice.

You've never seen a Japanese school lunch. It is not a coincidence that, despite the higher rates of smoking (which, along with obesity comorbidities, is the most significant lifestyle choice that affects lifespan), Japanese life expectancy is higher in both sexes compared to Americans? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Teaching kids about food is not simply about telling them what they can or can't eat. It's about leading by example and modeling good dietary choices.

School lunches should be balanced in nutrients. They should be available to any student regardless of income level. They should be fresh. And students should want to eat them, to enjoy eating them. I think these are core principles that any reasonable American can agree to.

The problem is that this is not what school lunches are: they never have been, nor should anyone with a brain have any illusions that the Trump administration's rollback would do anything meaningful to solve the problem.

Do you really want to know why school lunches suck? Because Americans are hypocrites. They talk about caring about education. They talk about caring about children. A balanced diet is a critical part of those priorities, yet when it comes down to the putting the money where their mouth is, nobody wants to pay to feed them real food. Oh, you will hear how parents say they want the freedom to choose what to feed their kids...but let's be brutally honest: Americans are fucking fat and they didn't get that way by making good dietary choices for themselves, did they? So if they can't stop guzzling sodas and calling frozen pizzas "dinner," what do you think their kids will eat?

But how dare I question the inviolable rights of a parent to choose whether to give their kids cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes? Because we live in the Land of the Free...free to gorge yourself on Chick-fil-A and Burger King, that is. And with the fast food industry essentially using an addiction model to sell their poison, is it any surprise that kids (and their parents) would choose to eat a high-fat, high-salt, high-sugar diet?

Americans are hypocrites: they howl at the idea of being told by anyone else what they can and can't do, but when it's time to pay the consequences of their own poor choices--the millions of dollars spent on their cancer, diabetes, and heart disease--suddenly, it's someone else's fault, someone else's responsibility.

At some point, you have to decide to make a stand and say, "I the taxpayer, am willing to pay more now to ensure that your kid eats right, so that I don't have to pay more later to subsidize the lifelong health consequences of the shitty lifestyle and dietary choices you made for your kids because you're too fucking stupid to be a parent." Freedom doesn't mean freedom from responsibility.

If you doubled the school food budget and cut out all the factory farm subsidies and waste, and hired real cooks to make lunches, these kids would be eating real food. And the cost savings would be enormous. And if you have even the slightest bit of intelligence you'd know that the food industry drives these policies: their profit relies on addicting each new generation on junk food.

This too is one of my favorite movies, and one reason why I like it so much is because of its distinctive visual style; the choice to not rely on elaborate sets or visual effects, as is typical of much of the sci-fi genre.

Many people interpret this film as a cautionary tale, and rightly so. But I also saw it as an inspirational story, in which the depth of Vincent's aspirations and sheer determination in the face of overwhelming societal and biological pressure, nevertheless triumphs. It isn't that the naysayers were wrong per se--he was in fact physically inferior, both to his brother Anton and to Jerome, the man whose identity he borrowed. It's that he succeeded because there is no gene for the drive to succeed. And that, I think is the most central message of the movie, rather than the warning about letting genetics decide our destinies, and why this movie is so great.

Chris Tucker's performance in this movie was well worth the price of admission.

The hotels are dirty: they pay extremely low wages to cleaning staff, while charging exorbitant prices for rooms, and AirBnB is of course a threat to that business model, so their solution is to force them to compete under the same regulatory environment.

AirBnB is dirty: the company doesn't give a shit about party houses popping up in desirable neighborhoods that regularly violate noise ordinances. In their view, that's a local law enforcement problem. That's the next door neighbor's problem. They profess to care, but only pay lip service. AirBnB turns a blind eye to developers and landlords (who are already insanely wealthy) turning their properties into unofficial hotels, causing rents to skyrocket for people who actually live in the area. And let's not forget: AirBnB lobbied--HARD--against initiatives to prevent this kind of abuse of the housing market. And they won.

Local government is dirty: politicians lie, cheat, and do backroom deals to get on whatever side of an issue that brings them the most campaign money. In San Diego, the city is proposing yet another "transient occupancy tax" hike to finance all kinds of projects that they should be financing by taxing the entities that stand to gain most from those projects. But they won't because it's political suicide, so they always pick the easy target: out-of-city tourists. Comic-Con is a huge draw and the city milks the attendees for everything they can. Hotel costs are out of control, and that just pushes more people to use AirBnB. Why rent a $400/night hotel room when you can get a whole house for less than half that rate?

The landlords are dirty: they only care that they can rent out their properties with AirBnB at over twice the prevailing monthly rent in the area. They don't give a fuck about noise complaints. Not their problem as long as the city keeps saying they have no enforcement power. They just see the money rolling in because it's completely unregulated.

And as always, who suffers? Regular property owners and renters. Middle class people who are priced out of the rental market because $2500 or more per month for a 1 bedroom apartment is obscene.

Fuck all of you: hotels, AirBnB, greedy landlords, the city.

The appearance of competence is not the same as actual competence.

Actual competence is difficult to assess when the outcome measures are subjective.

Incompetent yet successful people are more likely to be proficient at masking their incompetence through lying and psychopathic manipulation.

The real reason why healthcare is so expensive in the US is because Americans want the "freedom" to have everything they want, but expect that someone else should have the responsibility of paying for it. This leads to attitudes such as:

"I want to eat the cheapest and unhealthiest food and drink as much soda as I want, and expect my health insurance to pay for my diabetes, heart disease, morbid obesity, and metabolic syndrome, because it's my right to decide what to eat."

"It's my right to feed my children whatever food I want. How dare the government suggest guidelines for what my kids should and should not eat. How dare they suggest I'm setting them up for a lifetime of poor dietary choices and health problems."

"I want the best health care possible, because I paid my insurance premiums and taxes for decades."

The broader issue here is not that orphan drugs are expensive--to be clear, they are very, very expensive--but that Americans are ignorant and uneducated, distrustful of science yet reliant on science for life-saving medications, smartphones, self-driving cars, nutritious food, clean renewable energy, and so on. They think vaccines are a government conspiracy, believe climate change is a hoax designed to prevent them from getting rich, and believe in a divine Creator that will grant them their wish to be personally wealthy if they simply have enough faith, and that if one does not have their material wishes granted, it is because they didn't give enough money to the televangelist who told them God would answer their prayers. These people complain that Obamacare is too expensive but when they get cancer, expect Medicare to pay for the chemo, radiation, and surgery.

In that context, is it any wonder that health care is expensive? Americans are hypocrites: they preach endlessly about "personal responsibility" but when it comes to actually being personally responsible, suddenly everything is Somebody Else's Problem And I Had Nothing To Do With It.

Drug development is expensive. It costs insane amounts of money to discover candidate compounds, then run through preclinical and clinical trials, then jump the pivotal Phase III hurdles. Orphan indications would never be addressed without giving the pharmaceutical industry an incentive to treat them. If one insists on applying a capitalist economic model to orphan drug development, this is how it looks. You can't claim to be in favor of free-market principles and in the same breath claim that this is the cause of crippling health care costs. This is what Americans ask for when they say that health care should remain a privatized system.

I for one, welcome our new teledildonic overlords. Make America Vibrate Again!

The real root of the problem is that people are either unwilling or unable to live within a short distance to their workplace. Many large cities were not designed to handle the volume of commuters that we have had for at least 20 years. People live in the suburbs (for a variety of reasons; some due to economics, others due to a desire to live in areas with lower population density), and commute to the city centers to work. This was okay when suburban sprawl was not as extreme as it is now. In the Bay Area, people can't afford to live close to work due to the insane real estate market. And they don't want to live in shoebox apartments, either.

The problem can only be solved by reducing the need for people to commute. There are a lot of ways to do this:

1. Encourage employees to work remotely where possible.
2. Decrease the cost of living in the city center or areas close to work.
3. Provide financial incentives for employees to live near their job site.
4. Allow more flexible working hours so that traffic volume can be distributed over a longer period of time.
5. Self-driving cars have the potential to reduce accidents and increase traffic flow efficiency.

Notice I did not include public transit. Public transit is only good for people who already live sufficiently close or do not need the flexibility of traveling by car. In Los Angeles, public transit is a complete joke. To commute from a suburb to downtown can take over 90 minutes, whereas driving by car--even in traffic--is at least 30 minutes faster, simply because train frequencies and network densities are too low. Sure, it's great if you only need to travel two or three stations and the trains run every five minutes...but for the vast majority of commuters this is not realistic. Commuters want and need to drive cars.

The article makes a very persuasive case, one that I think many of us can apply in our work as well. You don't have to be a graphic designer or work in graphic design to be able to extract these principles and apply them to your profession.

1. Mitigate the chance of error across every step in the process. Build in fail-safes. The media has placed the lion's share of the blame on the PwC accountants, and it's fair to say they were largely responsible ("you had ONE job"). But there are other steps in the process, ways of building in fail-safe mechanisms, as this article demonstrates.

2. Anticipate the impact of human error. Having two accountants, two sets of envelopes, having them memorize the list of winners, is a good thing, but we see here that this failed because when the awards ceremony is live, people might not be as level-headed as they would normally be. There's a lot going on, and the possibility of error as a result of distractions is greater. Ironically, having multiple sets of envelopes is part of the reason why this error occurred, so there must be careful thought toward building the aforementioned redundancy in a way that doesn't inadvertently create additional modes of failure.

3. Good communication design always places the most important piece of information front and center. This is true whether you work in traditional print, or new media design, or user interface design. And the need for effective design is very frequently underestimated or overlooked entirely.

You can argue that this was just an awards ceremony, rich people patting each other on the back, yadda yadda. Fine. But what I'm interested in is how we all can use this event as a learning experience in our own lives.

The same level of incompetence has also been my experience with AT&T. The reason for this kind of dumbfuckery is simple: it is cheaper to not have to hire and train intelligent salespeople; the cost of their errors come out of your pocket unless you raise a stink, and not everyone does; and their business thrives on clueless customers who buy the upsell.

AT&T is a bloated and parasitic corporate machine that has suckled on the teat of consumer and government excess for so long they have no reason whatsoever to provide anything but the bare minimum level of service. They don't care if the savvy consumer leaves; they know they can't compete for that market.