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Comment We didn't let them do anything (Score 1) 36

They spent 60 years getting us to this point starting when Barry Goldwater lost. Right wing extremists have been gradually taking over every single aspect of American culture and civilization and the economy.

I mean yeah we indulged in pointless moral panics and bigotry and racism so there is a little bit on us.

But frustrations about bigots aside you're blaming the victim. Especially when so many people just do not have the education and critical thinking training to see past propaganda and moral panics.

Comment Re:Small business owner types (Score 1) 36

Yeah, any sensible human being is against the concept of work. Work should be viewed as a necessary evil. Not as some bullshit puritanical means to its own end.

Keep in mind when a scientist sits down and learn something or a surgeon does the same they're not working the same way you and I are. They're doing something that they find tremendously interesting and fulfilling.

The problem is the English language is shit on a shingle so we don't have a word for doing something that is simultaneously useful to civilization as a whole and fulfilling to differentiate it from something that's just a stupid bit of drudgery that is physically necessary.

So we use work to cover both of those things. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that billionaires who never do a lick of work in their entire life benefit from that quirk of our language.

Also I'm sure I completely lost you there's no way you're going to follow a conversation this complex and it frankly isn't all that complex. Why are you wasting your time here? Did you get kicked out of Reddit or something?

Comment This (Score 0) 72

Also to clarify, there is a difference between being taught the general skills and knowledge needed to do a job and being taught specific tasks needed to make someone's business profitable.

Back when I was a kid there was a line between school work and on the job training and you got paid for on the job training. I am pretty certain the old farts floating around this forum also got paid for actual on the job training.

Now not only do kids not get paid for on the job training they pay for the privilege and they don't have a choice because that's the only way into a middle class life assuming you're lucky enough to even get a shot at that anymore.

It seems like my kid just barely squeaked in but it's hard to say. From what I can tell anyone five or six years younger than my kid is get screwed in the current job market even more than my kid could even fathom.

Our entire system and civilization is collapsing around us. And we're too much of a bunch of pissy little 12-year-olds to do anything about it

Comment Re:Honest man (Score 0) 45

I doubt it has anything to do with honesty and has more to do with the fact that he's at risk of costing billionaires a lot of money and if you do that you usually go to jail and you don't get to bribe the president for a pardon.

My guess is he's getting out before that.

I do find it hilarious that he's famous for predicting the housing market crash that every single sensible and honest economist was telling us was coming.

We really really hate listening to experts. There's a reason that stupid movie Forrest Gump is so popular and Homer Simpson so beloved. For some reason we really love the idea that you can be a completely ignorant fool and still be tremendously successful.

Comment Re:What about top speed? (Score 1) 62

Also, the only realistic way to create a true "unintended acceleration" without pedal misapplication is something getting stuck in the pedal or the pedal getting stuck down, which is not actually a subtle thing (again, these things have happened, but they're dwarfed by how often people hit the wrong pedal). Just sensor readings alone don't cut it. As a general rule, pedals have multiple sensors reading the pedal position (typically 2-3). They have to agree with each other, or the target acceleration is set to zero. A sensor failure doesn't cut it. Also, Hall-effect sensors are highly reliable.

Oh, and there's one more "failure mechanism" which should be mentioned, which is: creep. Some EVs are set to creep or have creep modes, to mimic how an ICE vehicle creeps forward when one lifts their foot off the brakes. If someone forgets they have this on, it can lead to "unintended acceleration" reports. There have been cases where for example the driver gets in an accident, but not intense enough to trigger the accident sensors, and the car keeps "trying to drive" after the accident (aka, creep is engaged). People really should not engage creep mode, IMHO - the fact that ICEs creep forward is a bug, not a feature.

Comment Re:What about top speed? (Score 3, Informative) 62

All the person in these "runaways" had to do was lift their foot off the accelerator. Or even leave their foot on the accelerator and just press the brakes, as the brakes can overpower the motor (think of how fast you accelerate when you slam on the pedal at highway speeds vs. how fast you slow down when you slam on the brakes).

Regulatory agencies the world over are constantly getting reports of "runaway unintended acceleration". Nearly every time they investigate, the person mixed up the pedal and the brake. When the car starts accelerating, in their panic they push said "brake" (actually the pedal) harder, and keep pushing it to the floor trying to stop the car. In their panic, people almost never reevaluate whether they're actually pushing the right pedal. It's particularly common among the elderly and the inebriated, and represents 16 thousand crashes per year in the US alone.

If your car starts accelerating when you're "braking", get out of your panic, lift your foot up, then make sure you *actually* put it on the brake, and you'll be fine.

Comment Re:So is it... (Score 1) 58

1) 1850-1900 is not "The Little Ice Age"
2) The Little Ice Age was not global, while you're talking about global climate reconstructions. The planet as a whole was not cold in the Little Ice Age.
3) You're talking about the basis of a particular climate target, not what the science is built on.
4) The mid 1800s is around when we started getting reasonably good regular quasi-global ground climate measurements, hence it's nice for establishing a target. That's why HADCRUT, which is based on historic measurements, starts in 1850. The first version of HADCRUT started in 1881 when the data was even better, but as more old data was recovered and digitized, it was extended to 1850. You can go further back, but you not only lose reading quality, but also are more confised to mainly regional records (Europe).
5) 1850-1900 was not a global cold period.

There's not some sort of conspiracy theory. The target is based on relative to when we have actual comparative data, and variations in modern preindustrial levels are a few tenths of a degree, not "several degrees" as per climate targets.

Comment Re:tell me you haven't tried this (Score 1) 28

steve@hotmail.com made all the sense in the world...

And them spammers, they nail first-name addresses. All of them. All the time. Complaining about your 'name' being a spam magnet shows you do not well understand the methods spammers use to get mail out the door.

Naturally this reeks of the problem being solely on the email victim and never on the spammers who should have been legally beheaded in the town square by now. In order to permanently fix the problem of 98% of ALL email being spam.

As if History needs to prove actual enforcement actually fucking works.

Comment 996 (Score 5, Insightful) 72

These are the kind of nasty little services you see in Asian countries where people are working 12 hours a day 6 days a week.

Basically you don't have time for anything so at some point if you have an errand you need to run you end up having to pay somebody else to do it even if it's something as simple and stupid as this.

You justify it by saying that you're getting paid at your job enough to cover this but you're actually massively overworking yourself and you will eventually burn out. Meanwhile the company you work for is using you up and eventually when you're dried up they will throw you out like used toilet paper.

When you see stuff like this it's a sign of a failing system.

Comment Re:Phone numbers are scarce Re:Never used emails (Score 1) 28

"Short, easy to remember" email addresses are also scarce, but you don't need a "short, easy to remember" email address to function in society. Most people do need a phone number.

Wrong. Everyone needs an alias, not a number to remember. Most people know everyone by a contact name, not a number.

Most people couldn't even tell you their own parents cell phone number. If their life depended on it.

Comment Re:So is it... (Score 2) 58

When they say "pre-industrial levels", when do you think they mean? The 19th century (even though the industrial revolution was well underway), usually 1890 specifically.

What year is used depends entirely on the study. Some start at the advent of satellite measurements, some at the advent of modern ground-based measurements, some with the era of semi-reliable ground-based measurements, some incorporate further back with more fragmentary measurements, and others use proxies - some recent proxies from 200, 300, 400 etc years ago, others thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds, millions of years ago or more. There is no single timeframe that is examined. Numerous studies evaluate each different source, and the different proxies are commonly plotted out relative to each other.

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