Comment Re:Next test should be (Score 2) 58
To see if people will be more devious and evil if the joker is present
They tried to do Jesus, but passengers kept calling security about a hippy boarding the plane.
To see if people will be more devious and evil if the joker is present
They tried to do Jesus, but passengers kept calling security about a hippy boarding the plane.
A new study has found that people are more likely to act kind towards others when Batman is present â" and not for the reasons you might assume.
[...]
Psychologists from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Italy conducted experiments on the Milan metro to see who, if anyone, might offer their seat to a pregnant passenger.
The kicker? Sometimes Batman was there â" or at least, another experimenter dressed as him. The researchers were checking if people were more likely to give up their seat in the presence of the caped crusader.
And sure enough, there did seem to be a correlation. In 138 different experiments, somebody offered their seat to an experimenter wearing a hidden prosthetic belly 67.21 percent of the time in the presence of Batman.
That's a lot more often than times the superhero wasn't around â" in those cases, a passenger offered a seat just 37.66 percent of the time.
[...]
"Interestingly, among those who left their spot in the experimental condition, nobody directly associated their gesture with the presence of Batman, and 14 (43.75 percent) reported that they did not see Batman at all."
The article goes on to speculate about what is causing people to be more generous.
Let's work with the argument's load-bearing phrase, "exploration is an intrinsic part of the human spirit."
There are so many things to criticise in that single statement of bias. Suffice it to say there's a good case to be made that "provincial domesticity and tribalism are prevalent inherited traits in humans", without emotional appeals to a "spirit" not in evidence.
and peppered the public with constant lies.
That skill proved useful in his later career.
That's my opinion too.
Unfortunately, after a certain amount of actual progress we are now regressing again.
Yeah, we have a long history of not practicing what we preach.
Remember when the USA took pride in being a melting pot?
Trump guts nuclear safety regulations
“The president signed a pair of orders on Friday aimed at streamlining the licensing and construction of nuclear power plants — while panning the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its ‘myopic’ radiation safety standards.”
We now have industry capture of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Who here knows about Admiral Hyman RIckover? All of this is worth reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover#Safety_record
I would be.
The Department of Energy is selling off more than 40,000 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium from the Cold War arsenal to nuclear reactor startups. All of which I’m sure will be thoroughly vetted and monitored, because this is done under the direction of a former board member. Yikes!
Christopher Allen Wright (born January 15, 1965) "12) is an American government official, engineer, and businessman serving as the 17th United States secretary of energy since February 2025. Before leading the U.S. Department of Energy, Wright served as the CEO of Liberty Energy, North America's second largest hydraulic fracturing company, and served on the boards of Oklo, Inc., a nuclear technology company, and EMX Royalty Corp., a Canadian mineral rights and mining rights royalty payment company.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Wright
Who IS Oklo, Inc. the "private nuclear reactor builder/operator"? Oklo is Sam Altman:
Trump Administration Providing Weapons Grade Plutonium to Sam Altman
"If there were adults in the room and I could trust the federal government to impose the right standards, it wouldn't be such a great concern, but it just doesn't seem feasible."
We're in territory where weapons-grade plutonium is being given at fire-sale prices to billionaires who's ethical boundaries include creating their own demand for otherwise unnecessary, high-risk energy projects. Guys like Altman, who get their ideas from Wikipedia articles about Ayn Rand — because they are one rung lower than people who actually READ that garbage.
But I'm sure no inventory of hot nuke metal will ever go missing.
There really was something, that began with Jobs and Woz. It wasn't perfect, and Jobs had a way of twisting ethical stances in ends-justifying-means sophistry. But Steve Jobs would never have prostrated before Trump, proffering a solid gold token.
If Apple won't monetize a user panopticon and partner with governments to do it, OpenAI will be right there, to take the cash.
...the desktop apps are better than just about anything you will find on Linux or the BSDs.
I will argue against strict adherence to this statement. Gnome applications written to the project guidelines have become very fine, since the introduction of GTK-4 and libadwaita. I prefer many of these to their equivalents on MacOS.
It's true that most of these fall into a general category of "utilities", and that Windows enjoys a broader ecosystem driven by commercial incentive. But Windows programs are hardly "better' for this, and the widely varied usability is generally sub-par compared to level that's become norm for Gnome/Adwaita software.
The typical page layout program is nothing more than an electronic light table for cutting and pasting documents.