RoyalHenOil

GOG might disappear, but your games won't.

If Steam disappears, your games will become inaccessible.

90% taxes on people with only 200% of the median wealth seems awfully excessive. For someone with $16,000 in assets, this would leave them with $1,600 -- just 20% of median wealth. I strongly suspect no tax system in history has ever worked like this.

Not to mention that taxes are collected and spent at the national level, not at the global level. If you are proposing a global government that administers taxes worldwide, that is an interesting idea, but it's not exactly a place to "start" a new tax policy, given that there is no political infrastructure in place to support it and likely couldn't be for decades even if the world made a concerted effort to make it happen.

I used to work on a farm producing hybrid seed. It is indeed very, very expensive compared to non-hybrid seed — in large part because it is a LOT of work to produce, depending on the crop.

You have to maintain a separate "father" line and "mother" line. You must prevent the mother line from self-pollinating, which in some cases (like tomatoes) requires you to physically remove the anthers from every single flower, ever single day.

You must also prevent it from cross-pollinating with the wrong crop, which (for insect-pollinated crops) means you may need to grow it under insect-proof netting and then provide your own pollinators. That's easy enough if it's a honeybee-pollinated crop, but some crops are only pollinated by wild insects, so you need to hand-pollinate every flower.

In most cases, the father line needs to be grown intermixed with the mother line to ensure good pollination. These are usually two wildly different varieties (otherwise, why are you hybridizing them?) with different physical features, care requirements, planting times, etc. This means you typically can't use standard farming equipment (which is designed for monocropping at scale) and must plant and care for the crops using a lot more physical labor.

Once the mother line is pollinated, the father line must removed to ensure it doesn't produce seed that could get mixed up with the hybrid seed. While removing it, you have to be very careful to not the damage the mother line crop. In some crops, you must not even jostle the mother plants too much or they'll drop a lot of their seed.

For this reason, F1 hybrid seed is very expensive, especially for crops where hybridizing is particularly painstaking. For example, the tomato seed I hybridized sold for approximately $1 per seed. It was extremely worth it to or customers, though, because it meant they could grow several times the amount of fruit in the same space with the same inputs.

You don't even have to go that far.

I went to school in south Atlanta, where both student body and teaching staff tended to be overwhelmingly Black. The school had a policy of hiring a certain percentage of non-Black teachers, including white teachers, and it had programs designed specifically to attract students from white and Hispanic communities.

The goal was not to give non-Black students and teachers a leg up; it was to promote diversity and ensure students graduated ready to meet all kinds of different people in the workplace. These policies were popular and uncontroversial, at least while I was there — though I dare say they would be deemed illegal now.

It didn't stop in the 70s. In many countries in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere, it's still common for businesses to retain employees over the arc of their career.

This was my general experience as well. The very best quality education I ever received was in my 7th grade math class, followed closely by my 7th grade English class.

I did have some very excellent university classes (including ones that were so good that I audited them without receiving credit), but I also had a lot that were positively abysmal, taught by professors who were experiencing severe mental health issues (one who'd had a stroke and could no longer comprehend the material, another who was going through a mental break and stopped teaching us altogether, etc.) or extremely stressed grad students who were not fluent in English and spent class time trying to catch up with their PhD workload.

My best university-level education actually came after I graduated and got a job working in a lab at my university. During that time, I worked closely with the professor and grad students, and it was such an amazing learning opportunity that I will never forget for the rest of my life — sadly cut short by the 2008 financial crisis.

I would agree if it were applied equally across the board. I see no clear reason why "transgender rights, immigration or homosexuality" should specifically be spared from moderation, while other speech remains subject to censorship.

I am a dual citizen, and I have not found this to be the case in either of my two countries. Neither of them will accept photo IDs issued by the other, except for passports.

Introversion level is really just a measure of how much social stimulation you require on average. Everyone has some level above which they feel exhausted and below which they feel lonely/bored.

The difference between introversion and shyness is the difference between exhaustion and fear. They can influence each other (being afraid all the time is exhausting, for example), but they are ultimately separate emotions that need not coexist or have any relationship to each other.

Over my life, I have made plenty of friends both at work and outside of work — but NONE of them had no interests outside of work.

That's not to say that I've never had coworkers whose only interest was work. I just didn't become friends with them, because what is there to talk about? I greeted them and made basic small talk with them while we worked together, but that's not friendship.

And that's not to say that my friends' interests have nothing to do with the work they do. But their interests in those areas go above and beyond what they are paid to do.

AKC golden retrievers are very badly inbred (they are 27.3% inbred, according to the raw data from this study: https://cgejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40575...) — two random "unrelated" golden retrievers are more closely related to each other than human siblings are — and they are prone to serious health problems, especially cancer. It is not a breed I would ever recommend due to these issues, especially from AKC lines — which are bred for competition and therefore have a very limited stud pool.

But that doesn't mean all dog breeds are equally inbred and equally prone to health problems.

Poodles are in MUCH better shape than golden retrievers.

Golden retrievers are twice as inbred as poodles. And unlike golden retrievers, poodles have not been bred toward an unhealthy type; they have a slim, primitive body shape and a non-brachycephalic head shape that is associated with good health and long lifespan in dogs.

If I were seeking an example of a pointless, harmful breeding program in dogs, I would not have chosen poodles. There are endless other breeds (pugs, Cavalier King Charles spaniels, etc.) that have been wrecked by thoughtless breeding practices.

My mom is obese because she developed an autoimmune disorder while she was pregnant with me that attacks her thyroid. She has extremely abnormal thyroid cells that have to be biopsied twice a year and she has to take daily thyroid medication or she will die. She is about to start on Ozempic as well because the thyroid medication is not enough.

To manage her disease, she eats much less and much healthier (e.g., steamed kale for dinner every night) than everyone else in my family, and yet she is the obese one amongst us.

Please stop acting like life-saving drugs are evil and everything can be managed through willpower alone. My mom would be dead without modern medical science, and I would have died in the womb with her.

Did you have any withdrawal symptoms after stopping alcohol so suddenly?

I am aware that this is the norm. It's not just language production; lots of things we do are done by seemingly unconscious parts of our brains, even though they feel like conscious choices we make.

I am open to the possibility that these "unconscious" things we do are not actually unconscious, but are actually done by parts of our brains that are separately conscious — i.e., other entities that live in our bodies with us.

No, I have never had any experience like this. I have intrusive emotions sometimes, but I don't really have intrusive thoughts or imaginings (outside of dreams).

My workplace offers both WFH and in-office work (our choice). Before COVID, most people worked in the office, but COVID forced everyone to get set up for and used to working at home.

One of the funniest changes that came with this is that, even when everyone is working in the office now, we still communicate primarily through our WFH chat program because it is less intrusive.

It's also very handy for referring back to later — to the extent that when we do have an in-person discussion, we usually summarize it in the chat afterwards so that we can search for it in the future.

Mind you, we don't have the issues you describe (questions going unanswered for hours or not at all). With very few exceptions, such as when someone was out sick and I didn't realize, all of my questions have been answered within minutes. I imagine that is is because we are a relatively small team (albeit stretched across several timezones these days) and the chat is mostly pretty quiet.

My only complaint is that it has made the separation between work time and leisure time a lot more fuzzy. We all basically act as if we are on call all the time to answer questions, and it is common for my coworkers to even attend video call meetings from doctor's offices and overseas vacations just to say hi.

Competing very effectively in many cases.

I personally have not seen that workaholic employees get consistent preference in workplaces. Often they get shafted the hardest, particularly in highly competitive workplaces (where, for example, supervisors may undermine their best employees who might threaten their own ambitions).

And the hardest workers are also prone to burnout, which often leads to catastrophic career failures: quitting suddenly with no backup plan, changing careers, having a breakdown and ending up nonfunctional for months at a time.

I have worked in a variety of workplaces, some that were circling the toilet, some that were leading their industries and nonetheless still shooting higher, and some that thought/hoped they were the latter but just didn't have what it takes.

The most consistently successful companies I've worked for have their employees work like tortoises, not hares. They want us to work hard, but sustainably. They discourage all that hypercompetitive nonsense that rewards backstabbers over hard workers, and they encourage us to have a life outside of work to keep us sane. They do this not out of the kindness of their hearts, but because they are insatiably greedy and focused: they want our next 20+ years of productivity and experience.

If you wish to maximize A, you will need to lower your standards for B, C, and D. This is the nature of any selection process: choosing a home to buy, breeding crops, writing legislation, etc. It us no less true for hiring employees.

There are a very limited quantity of perfect employees, and you are unlikely to ever have the opportunity to hire one. The vast majority of employees have a mixture of good qualities (e.g., being hardworking) and bad qualities (e.g., expecting a higher salary). Your best strategy is to prioritize those characteristics that are most important to the role you are hiring for and be flexible on characteristics that are less important.

If you get your priorities out of order, even if inadvertently (e.g., by asking unverifiable interview questions that select for better liars), you will make suboptimal decisions.

Unwashed eggs can also be refrigerated, and they last an absurdly long time that way — much, much longer than either refrigerated washed eggs or unrefrigerated unwashed eggs.

Once you refrigerate unwashed eggs, though, they need to stay refrigerated thereafter.

The size of the nestbox can be a factor as well. If the nestbox is too large for the breed of chicken you keep, it encourages them to hang out inside it, and they walk on the eggs and get them dirty.

If a nestbox is the right size, it will only be used for laying eggs (and occasional brooding).

I don't experience any voices in my head. I am a visual-spatial thinker, not a verbal thinker. It certainly doesn't feel like there is anyone else in here with me.

That being said, it is clear that our brains are very complex and do many different tasks without our conscious knowledge. For example, when I do formulate words (while writing this comment, for example), I have no awareness of selecting vocabulary and applying grammatical rules; the words just pop into my head fully formed.

It is clear that some other part of my brain is doing the task of language construction, and I have often wondered if that part of my brain could have a separate consciousness of its own that I (referring to the consciousness that is trying to express itself to you now) have total ignorance of.

Perhaps many different brain tasks are done with isolated consciousnesses, and some people have a stronger sense of that than others.

Kmart stores are still doing very well in Australia and New Zealand, with 325 locations serving a population less than 1/10th the size of the US.

However, Australian/New Zealand Kmart stores have had no connection to American Kmart stores since the 90s, when Kmart Corporation sold them off to an Australian company that has managed them much more effectively.

Another potential factor are estrogen-mimicking endocrine disruptors that are found in many widely used plastics.

If you or your partner are the sort of person who might cheat, then sure I guess. But I personally wouldn't want to be in a relationship where cheating was on the cards and we had to regulate our social lives to prevent it. I don't think that's healthy.

My husband and I have been in a rock solid relationship for over a decade, and we don't have any issues with opposite-sex friendships. It would be weird if we did because it would mean that we couldn't have any mutual friends and share a social life together as a couple. That seems really unnatural and unhealthy to me.

In my experience, being in a stable monogamous relationship makes it easier to be friends with the opposite sex because it reinforces that it is strictly platonic.

It works especially well if they are also in relationships and if your partner is also in your social circle. Couples hanging out with other couples is a really strong basis for friendship.

I think this is a good policy, but keep in mind that addictive tendencies vary a lot between different people. This talk may not be enough for a lot of kids and it will be unnecessary for other kids.

For example, my parents never discouraged or curtailed my gaming in any way, yet I never had any trouble self-regulating — not because I'm just that good, but because the vast majority of games just don't scratch my itch.

To give you an idea, I tried super hard to get into WoW when I was a university student with a lot of free time, because that's what my friends were playing, but I just couldn't. There was just way too much grinding. I forced myself to play for about an hour a day, but I couldn't keep it and stopped playing altogether after two months. I made a few more stabs at trying to get into it of the next few years, but it never held my attention.

That game definitely had some really great gameplay moments (I LOVED doing instances with my friends, for example), but it was interspersed with so much grinding and fluff that it overwhelmingly felt like a chore to play.

This has generally been my issue with video games. Whenever I find a game that actually makes me want to play for 2 hours straight, I get excited and specifically set aside time to indulge myself as long as I want. It's such a rare and precious joy to get that much sustained pleasure out of a game.

Why is the effect concerning? If you pour water on undyed cloth, it has the same effect and makes the cloth much more transparent, but that doesn't mean that the water is damaging to the cloth.

I guess I am just picky, but I have a very hard time finding books that I want to read. I find the great majority of books either tedious or eye-rolling, and sometimes both.

Unfortunately, the books I like reading the most tend to be the hardest to write, so they are not released very frequently. I like the sorts of books that authors spend several months or years thinking about and planning for.

When I like a book, I almost always find value in re-reading it several times because it gives me an opportunity to dig in and analyze it. I will typically read a good book 2-3 times, and I usually like the second reading the best. My first reading is just a general impression, but my second reading is where I see everything in context and can really savor the author's clever plotting and writing style.

This is my general approach to a lot of other media as well. I dislike most movies, but the movies I most like are the ones that are sufficiently dense and interesting that they merit a re-watch or two. For every good movie I have re-watched and greatly enjoyed myself, I have watched dozens of completely forgettable movies that I immediately wished I hadn't bothered with.

Reading a book isn't much of time investment, either, depending on how quickly you read. I read most novels in just a few evenings (sometimes just a single evening if I'm really into it), and then I'm out of books I'm interested in reading for a while. Even though I re-read all the books that I like multiple times, I still have more reading time than reading material.

When I'm out of books I want to read (which is most of the time), I just switch to some other activity — like watching YouTube or reading my phone — in the hour or two before bed. But these are a lot more disruptive to my sleep than books are.

If I had a policy of never re-reading books, this situation would be a lot worse.