Joe-Z

The places you choose to live in sound pretty interesting. And diverse!

May I ask: Is this work-related that you live country-side in so many different places, or are you a restless soul? :)

I decided to look for a new job after our management only very reluctantly let us all work from home (it was very obvious they just don‘t trust their employees to still do their job when not on site). My productivity has gone up due to no more walk-ups distracting me with questions whenever they like and I don‘t have to waste an hour in the subway every day. My next job will for sure be remote, or at least for a company with strong remote support.

Well, a survey usually tries to extrapolate numbers from a sample smaller than the total. They do this by trying to get a representative sample. Also if you were to ask each and every American about their stance on remote work I think that would be called a vote and not a survey.

Here‘s an argument: The US is supposedly the land of the free, where everyone is allowed to live life according to their beliefs. It would be against this principle to force this re-education program you‘re proposing on someone.

A way simpler argument would be that it‘s unrealistic to expect this level of discipline for a stretch of time like this from people who couldn‘t even stop themselves from killing someone.

However, if you‘ve ever read „Papillon“, I think the methods he describes as using in dealing with his sentences seem to me to be pretty close to meditation.

> a one sized solution does both good and bad

Not necessarily. Who says morning people have a problem with later school start times?

They can still get up earlier if they like and use those hours for something productive (e.g. doing homework in the morning vs. in the evening / at night)

>but... that type of program doesn't exist.

I was thinking of Unix command line tools. Every one of them comes with a buttload of parameters and some of them make me think 'why would you ever need this?!' :)

Sounds nice, except programming is difficult and akin to magic for most people. Achieving what‘s proposed here, namely wanting to get a job done, but your requirements for it are different from how your friend uses it, is usually achieved by having a program that takes a lot of configuration parameters and then does the job according to them. IMO that‘s the more fitting analogy.

Oh sounds like everything is fine then!

Seriouy doesn‘t your hair stand up in horror when you re-read this?!

„You can always choose to die when you can‘t afford treatment“. WTF?!

I see what you‘re saying and have been wondering the same thing for a while (although I don‘t have Jesus to back me up :D).

The way I see it is, there‘s only so many hours in a day and most of them I spend at work anyway. So, instead of clinging on to shallow forms of connection like commenting on the latest political scandal I try to take the time out of my day and get a good talk in with people I care about about topics that actually matter to both of us in the real world (friends, family, plans, problems, maybe some of the latest office gossip, etc.)

I wish you a happy weekend!

Greed and hubris is masquerading as reason and „telling it like it is“ on the Right but many have convinced themselves that the masquerade is genuine.

Just doing some balancing here.

For some reason now I have a reply button again. I want to use it to tell you that I find your suggestion based on the remarks I made here very rude. The driving skill you infer on my part probably says more about your interpretation of my comment than on my actual ability to navigate a vehicle safely. That said, I detest cars and wish cities were free of them. THAT said, I never posted this to take any stance on the "global speed limit on the Autobahn"-topic, so this will be it for me.

Thank you for the discussion!

Fair point. I guess the best solution would be to just further develop both: Manned and unmanned missions.

Also I think the psychological effects of having actual humans doing this stuff on the people staying back home should not be underestimated. Would we have an Elon Musk today[0] hadn't we landed Neil Armstrong on the moon in 1969?

[0]Or at least SpaceX, this guy's endeavours are all over the place :D

I didn't mean to criticize living in a democracy in any way, just highlighting the effects of it. But you expanded quite nicely on that point, thank you!

Sadly, I think the goal of implementing policies in support of "the collective" largely got replaced with populism and catering to and never ever doing anything to anger our holy cow "the economy"[0]. IMO the politicians in my parent's time where held to a higher standard than the general populace and that's why they could implement policies that, while maybe frustrating to people in the short term (remember when seatbelts weren't a thing? I don't!), lead to a positive outcome in the long run and people instinctively knew this and trusted their elected representatives.

Today... well Donald Trump sits in the White House and populists are flooding european governments, so of course nothing can get done if nobody is willing to make principled decisions.

[0] Maybe I should make it clear that the people who speak for "the economy" are oftentimes a small minority of leaders of very big organizations not actually representing the bulk of what makes up the economy of a country.

I guess the point was that for a people that react very strongly to even the slightest hints of decreasing individual freedom, it's kind of ironic to have so many podcasts financed by corporate interests, which decreases their constitutional right to freely express their opinions on whatever subject.

@FDSGSG: That's why I said "from seemingly kilometers away". Like, I base my decision on if I have enough space to take over by assuming reasonable[0] speed levels and suddenly someone comes along going 250 km/h

[0] I guess reasonable in this case means what I'm used to from driving on other countries' highways

EDIT: Sorry, I changed my response while you were actively responding it seems! You can call me a bad driver all you want. The fact is that the rules should be made to accommodate bad drivers also. Survival of the fittest is not a good rule when it comes to traffic law!

I don't really have a stake in the matter, but as your response clearly shows even just mentioning the topic triggers vehement defenses. You clearly have done your research though, so I respect your argument.

What I will say however, whenever I drive on the german Autobahn at some point it happens to me that I'm in the left lane to take someone over and another car comes speeding towards me from seemingly kilometers away at the speed of a damn rocketship. Whatever the hard numbers may be, this causes high amounts of stress and makes me feel very uncomfortable on the road every time. Not a good state to be in while operating high-velocity death machines!

I've seen these kind of stops in the Netherlands and can totally understand your point. I am all for separate bike lanes but why you would do it in a way to have this separate "bus island" I couldn't see.

I'm not exactly sure what you're hinting at here:

Is it that China is underreporting new infections for the neighboring provinces now, or that they mis-reported stats of Hubei before?

Anyways, I must say I find it a little disconcerting to see such a statement (which I can only describe as fear-mongering) from the director of the WHO on a public plattform. Does he not have the means to contact officials directly and tell them what they should prepare for? His "call for calm" is 3 tweets in ffs

>almost anything a human being can do, a robotic probe can do far cheaper

... and far more inefficiently. I can't find the article right now, but a while back there was a submission on here which argued that sending robots into space instead of humans is a bit of a fallacy. Because the state of robotics and their capabilities is far from what could be achieved by sending a human. There were comparisons like the Apollo astronatus bringing back half a ton of moon rocks whereas Mars probes can only sample tiny amounts of soil. Also one of the Mars rovers (Opportunity? I can't remember the names) in its years of service only covering a few kilometers, something a human could do within a day.

EDIT: It was Opportunity and its mission lasted 15 years. Impressive nonetheless, but boy is it slow ;)

Well, to be fair, it's very very hard to take away any conveniences for cars because of the strong opposition by pro-car people.

Just recently there was a proposition in Germany to enact an absolute speed limit on the Autobahn. The german Autobahn is famous for having no upper speed limit (in reality you only have that in some parts though), so you can imagine how well that went...

It's one of the "drawbacks" of living in a democracy I guess: Revolutionary changes are basically impossible to implement, because the disadvantaged side also has a right to be heard.

>Punctured lung, ruptured spleen, broken ribs etc.

What in the hell was going on there? I mean, I get GP's point about aggressive cyclists. I noticed them in Berlin especially (straight, wide roads on flat terrain), but even then people will usually try to brake before they run into you. This kind of damage sounds insane. Was the cyclist hitting him at full-speed? If so, how???

Just goes to show how many motorists drive around with a „the road is mine“-attitude.

If that doesn‘t change and people have no actual interest in the well-being of their fellow humans (which exceeds their interest to be home 10 seconds earlier) you can tout 0-fatality plans all you want, they will never pan out.

Ha, funnily enough I was just thinking about looking up a technical museum in Vienna 2 days ago. Thank you!

I'm also a big fan of the Deutsches Museum in Munich:

https://www.deutsches-museum.de

>here in Vienna, we also have museums devoted to such things

Can you provide a link of which museum you're talking about specifically?

Just in case someone reading this happens to be living in Vienna... ;)

I was planning on finally visiting Rome this year :)

Everyone who's already been tells me it's really impressive

>Imagine working in a 5000 year old skyscraper...

Living in Europe and having ample opportunity to visit them, I'm always fascinated by the old cathedrals that just stand around in our city centers. I almost can't believe how people hundreds of years ago managed to erect these structures. And not only that but the level of detail and craftmanship that went into all of its components is mind-boggling. To me it also signifies a connection to previous generations which you don't often get anywhere else. Of course they are not nearly 5.000 years old, but it just sprang to my mind when I read this line.

Because that's literally what buying shares is?[0]: Giving money to the corporation so they can finance future endeavours. Yes, you may not buy shares from them directly but from some other gambler. Still, to be able to sell you shares they need to have given it to Chevron first.

[0] Please correct me if I'm unknowingly bullshitting here!

Okay, the point about free charging is fair, I didn't know that. But as far as I understand Tesla Superchargers are so superior to conventional charging in terms of speed that not having them available is a huge drawback to a Tesla owner. Maybe I'm wrong on this as well.

>Somebody could buy a Tesla charger circuit, install it to another car, and get free charging for life. The same happened with 3G enabled Kindles.

That sounds like the way it's supposed to be. It's how cars have been handled for decades and the tinkering and experimenting I'm sure lead a whole lot of people to find fulfilling interests, hobbies, maybe even carreers. It's funny, on the one hand companies seem to have no interest in funding the education of their employees anymore but on the other they also want to completely control access to their tech and how it's used.

EDIT: Made the same mistake again. Of course I don't advocate for people just mooching off of Tesla's superchargers, but the ability to be able to do with my property as I please.

But they still sell the car for a whole lot of money. The more honest approach would be to only offer rental/subscription cars, if essential features such as charging your friggin electric car can't even be guaranteed after purchasing the damn thing.

Using an apologetic tone for the scummy and exploitative business tactics employed by these companies is exactly why people like GP don't have faith that "...the modern moral system of the United States will provide sufficient protection..." anymore.

So you're proposing the Ecuadorian government should've given a whole lot of money to Chevron to be able to have a say in the matter?

At this point I would be fine with them sending in their army and raiding the place. If some of the higher-ups get collateral-damaged during the raid that wouldn't be a huge loss to the world.