sometimeshuman

Why do so many prominent admirable people age so poorly ? When I think of Musk now I think "silly culture-war shit-kicker". Lately when he communicates I gain no insight and actually feel dumber. Most recently:

"Kids learn that George Washington was a slave owner and nothing else."[0] -- I don't know anything about this but it sounds like total bullshit.

"Soros hates humanity."

It's even dumber in context...

"reminds me of Magneto."

We have a surplus of silly/entertaining tweets these days but a shortage of intelligent insights. I want the old Musk back, the man who used to raise the bar on discourse. What a loss.

[0]recent interview with Bill Maher

Worse, it's high trust in certain contexts and low critical thinking overall. Here are comments recently told to me in personal conversation:

The U.S. doesn't produce oil any more.

The U.S. spends $1.232 trillion dollars a month on the war in the Ukraine.

The U.S. has open borders.

Californian politicians want to abolish the police.

The BLM movement killed thousands and thousands of people.

Southern California cities are already below sea level.

The New York Times is owned by Mexico.

There are no police in California and you can commit pedophilia without punishment.

5Million migrants from Honduras are marching towards our border.

The Governor of Virginia want to legalize infanticide.

The luxury tax applies to tampons: "The same rate as a yacht, you mean?", Yes.

The only thing kids learn about George Washington in schools is that he was a slave owner.

The last one was something not heard in conversation but said by Elon Musk in an interview with Bill Maher.

Whenever I hear someone say the above I usually respond "I don't know much about that story, but that sounds like total bullshit". What I don't understand is how people claim low trust in the media but believe anything a culture-war shit-kicker says on Twitter.

You are right, I saw what appeared to be a 10X lower value in Wired and posted my misunderstanding prematurely. Here's the the blog post that appeared on HN's top 30 from yesterday. But I still can't find a reference to a paper with the 13.8C number in either the BBC article or the blog post. It may be in my blindspot.*

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35747417

*Sorry HN (and BBC), I had surgery recently and am taking narcotics. I won't post for a while since I'm not sure my thinking is clear and I may be criticizing unfairly.

Related, days ago the BBC reported what I assumed was a typo that the ocean temperature has risen 13.8C the past ~30 years. After reading the article I tried to double check the source but couldn't easily find it.

Yesterday HN's top 30 had a similar story from some blog I had never heard of. Their source was the BBC and a paper that didn't show 13.8C. Now we have a typo(?) spreading like a virus.

The chart in this Wired article shows a ~1.38C difference which is alarmingly high. What troubles me is how many people, even HN'ers, just ran with a 13.8C number without question. Am I missing something ? Is there any scientific paper showing 13.8C, which would likely kill a significant portion of marine life ? I'll do a time-boxed (2 years) boycott of the BBC until proven otherwise.

I lived in a high and dry mountain area and dry-eye disease was making me miserable. It affected the quality of my life and sleep. I ended up spending about $1000 on 3 Venta "air-washers" and the relief they provided were worth every penny.

I have since moved to a low and humid city and my dry-eye went away a few weeks after moving here. I hope it never returns.

This video explains hypersonic weapons in the general sense. But the threat is from the newer advanced hypersonic weapons that are steerable at low altitudes. There is no "I know where it is going and can intercept" as the speaker claims since where it is going changes dynamically.

I hope I am the one who is misunderstanding the technology but every time I see someone talk with absolute certainty or with an appeal to authority they are often wrong some way.

In 1st grade it was an unspoken understanding that Latin kids are put in the slow class. It's understandable since most of us didn't speak English at home. But my teacher realized that I was advanced for my age so she put me in the back of the class with another classmate who didn't know any English. An hour or two a day we would sit in the back and I would read to her, translate words, and practice spelling. She seemed happy that someone was helping her and I felt great helping a classmate.

One day I mentioned this to my parents. They didn't understand/believe it at first. But the next time I mentioned it they understood and instead of feeling proud they were clearly upset. Then a few months later I wrote a poem that impressed the school teachers and at that point they moved me to the "fast" class and I never tutored again until college.

Why couldn't I have done both? Would I have learned more if I had been forever in the slow class but tutoring half of that time ? That seems better than where it we are headed -- where everyone is in the metaphorical slow class and the advanced kids likely become numb and disinterested.

Perhaps. But then we should not let anyone vote who has hit escape velocity. The person you described might be very well off at which point they are a single issue voter -- low tax rates.

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"Are you still doing Intermittent Fasting?" Yes.

"Are you still saying Intermittent Fasting?" No.

Out of respect to people who have the discipline to go 24hours or more without eating I can't bring myself to say I am "fasting" simply because I had a late breakfast and early dinner. "Time restricted eating" (TRE) is the phrase I personally use.

Adopting that phrase might free you from feeling like an imposter if that is partly the reason you are troubled by not adhering to it on weekends. Just do TRE weekdays if that is what your lifestyle will accommodate. It's what I do and I consider it a personal win.

"I thought bleach and alcohol were thought to not create pressure for resistance because of their nature."

Agreed, and I missed if this article stated otherwise. Also we have been adding chlorine (the active ingredient in bleach) to our water supply for over 100 years ago and that experiment hasn't produced resistant microbes AFAIK.

"that goes stale when you'd expect it". Super dumb question, but would fresh baked bread placed in the freezer last a few weeks ? I don't buy fresh baked out of concern most of it will get thrown away.

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The video reference the common ChatGPT "in the style of" prompt. Is there a list of what "styles" ChatGPT's model has been trained on ? Or is this information not disclosed since it would be an admission that ChatGPT has been trained on copyrighted lyrics, etc. by which is produces these derivative results ?

I wonder this too. I tried scraping iOS App reviews from Apple's server and I didn't get far before my IP was blocked.

While the photo might not be a good example, in the animal kingdom exposing your neck, like exposing your belly, in an overall non-assertive way would indicate submissiveness. It's in your interest to be submissive if you doubt you will win in combat. I'll leave the though experiment to the reader as to whether females or males do better in combat and why this might be predominantly nature not nurture.

I often cited example is to write something in the style of "Dr. Suess". Doesn't this imply that Dr. Suess's books are in the training data set ? How can one find out what other books, screenplays, magazines, etc. are in the training data.

Sorry for the tangent but a surprising number the general public doesn't know the meaning of percent[1]. So even if a teacher is told those percentages many wouldn't know what to conclude.

[1] Me, giving young adults that worked for me a commission rate. Then asking if their commission rate is 15% and they sell $100 of goods what is their payment. Many failed to provide an answer.

In case you want to filter by country, run this admittedly ugly code, in the console. Change 'US' to your country of interest.

var jq = document.createElement('script'); jq.src = "https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.5.1/jquery.mi... document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(jq); setTimeout(function() { $('table').find('tr').each(function() { if ($(this).find('td').first().text() != 'US') {$(this).hide()}}); }, 1000);

"The wealthy are ... the only people who have a reason to".

IME what matters more than wealth is having health and energy. Exploring ways to reduce your exhaustion might be the best use of your time. You can increase your energy by getting a "win" in some way. That can be as simple as successfully introducing one new good habit in your life.

> I can't make myself do that.

Then don't. Or maybe you subconsciously don't want to do the work or have no good ideas. That's OK. But I can't see how this cynical attitude serves you otherwise.

As a reminder YC's mantra is "build something people want". There are plenty of now wealthy people on this forum that did that. Some never even had to do marketing because customers were so happy.

My money is on Y'all Queda. Maybe they are angry the "illegals" you mentioned "t'k err jerbs!"[1]

[1] practically every season of South Park

The founder of this company claims that the air speed is 120km/h in a PC-World video interview. It is surprising with such high airspeed that this device is "quiet". Is it possible that most of the sound energy is ultrasonic which is why they state their noise level as 21dBA and not 21dB. From my understanding dbA is weighted according to human hearing. Your dog might hate this invention.

The specifics of anyone's path will not be repeatable. Nevertheless I'll share specifics and a general conclusion at the end. 10 years ago in my late 30's I had destroyed my previous career by being out of the industry for too long. I was living off less than $20k a year and lived in the poor area of a poor city. I was lost and then heard the following challenge, "YC is harder to get into than Harvard". I had no real coding skills at the time and the chance of getting accepted were near zero.

I created a youtube video because YC's application asked "what have you hacked lately" and I had no answer. Because that video's audience was expected to be one or two people and I didn't care about the number of views, the DIY-video was authentic. I put a lot of time into it out of respect for YC as an institution. No one would put that much effort in to their first video since it is usually a throwaway. But so many people surprisingly watched it that the hack idea transitioned to an actual product and then company. That alone has netted me $1M+ in addition to Youtube paying me for views (about 1million views).

At the same time I released the youtube video, I taught a class at a local tech space just for the joy of it. I was totally incompetent but believed that someone in the process of learning a skill can teach effectively from the perspective of "here's what I found confusing". A manager from a local tech company walked into the tech space one day and asked around if anyone knew with experience in the framework/library I was teaching. They mentioned me assuming I must be an expert. 10years later I still contract for that company and netted again $1M+.

So three takeaways:

1) I had a north star so to speak. I never got into YC but just trying for it lead to a purpose and direction.

2) If the gig jobs are keeping you above water then just work on something that you enjoy and that is hopefully useful, and do it without any expectations.

3) Remember your network. The only reason I shared a link to my Youtube video was so that it wouldn't have 0 views when YC looked at it. But it turns out one of those people in my network cross-posted it to reddit and it changed my life. I now live in the rich area of a rich city.

This is the first comment I have read where "Gen X" is dragged into the generational culture war. The generic brand of that generation made me think it would fly under the radar and we'd break this tired pattern.

Humor may apply here since the best way to kill this is to pronounce it la-tinks instead of Latin X. My parents are from Central America so feel free to say a latinks person told you it's pronounced that way.

This got dark quick: "basket case" Originally referred to one who has lost all four limbs and therefore needed to be carried around in a basket.

I've only heard of basket case from the context of barely ridable motorcycle in a constant state of repair with its random parts in a basket.

I wish it was my job to make this sort of document. I'd make up all sorts of crazy backstories for slang no one has ever heard of.

To follow-up: I heated a skillet until water sizzled when dripped on it, then added long grain basmati rice and kept it at medium high heat for 2m30s. The grains moved, crackled, and browned.

Since they didn't pop or puff the result doesn't provide much food volume and it's about as crunchy as crushed pecans. Given its neutral flavor, which is unsurprisingly like Rice Krispy cereal, it would function well as a topping but definitely not like the main carb portion of a meal. Probably won't make it again.