Razor sharp and refreshingly honest. Touches on cultural issues that restrict supply side of a diversified candidate pool in "elite" professions, exploitation of diversity by culturally parasitic groups, and much more.
Blaming racism (an abstract bogeyman that can never be defeated) and focusing on equalizing outcomes (or meeting a diversity quota) is a problem because it sabotages the real efforts necessary to improve things that have very little to do with race: deeply dysfunctional governance, across justice, education, policing, and in policy-making.
It's easier to say "silent whites are complicit" than it is to ask how we can lift everyone up without tearing others down.
In US, fed vs local state split -- is also making reforms more difficult, but on the other hand -- it probably prevents monopolization of political opinion + economic will.
So over all the separation is good.
I would like, however, federal laws to be updated to protect people from discrimination due to criminal past.
I think a federal law that prevents employers of asking/using criminal past in hiring decisions -- would go a long way of re-integrating previous offenders back into society.
Probably there are specific federal charges that should be hidden -- but majority must not be used for employers, and must not be asked during job application.
I am a sure if such a law would be in effect, a number of people who resource to additional criminal activity, after previous conviction -- would drop at least 10 fold.
These kinds of changes is a must on a road to a more just society.
I agree. Let me reproduce the last paragraph of the top level comment I submitted above:
Finally, as someone trained in the physical sciences, I used to look down on social scientists. I no longer do this. At least they're brave enough to tackle a complex monster with the limited tools at their disposal, stumbling and even enduring ridicule from the hard sciences. We ignore the human mind and collections thereof, because it's too complex and prefer the relative comfort of simple, predictable systems. I don't believe that's good.
Other replies have some useful ideas, but I think it's important to strike right at the heart of the issue: lack of accountability and redress.
Something _like_: make police leadership legally accountable for the actions of their officers. I say something _like_ this because it's in the right direction, but probably not the exact solution necessary. Another similar approach is something _like_ forbidding police unions or otherwise completely neuter them [with respect to Officer's actions].
Ideas like community service are good, but I think it's important to have clarity of approach (drop racism as the driving force and focus on accountability) and efficacy (make real changes).
This issue is very murky even to Americans, but everyone will say they know what the problem is or they will deny that there is a problem. If their description of the problem aligns with predictable political leanings, they're likely taking an emotionally driven perspective.
We have a different problem in my country of residence in that policing is a federal/national function. There are two arms of police, crime is handled by national police and enforcing of city by laws is done by the city/metro police. It just feels like police don't have enough local leadership. I always thought the US system where the police report to the mayor enables the mayor (read local person) to have a fair say in how things are run. I guess mayors have enough on their plates and it must be hard to change a large body as big as the police. I am extrapolating my experiences moving large organisations to new IT systems which is often easier said than done.
In practice how it works in most large cities in the US is the mayor ends up deferring to police leadership because the police hold so much influence over local political conditions. Mayors that get tough on dirty cops find themselves riding a wave of crime atop the police deciding to simply stop policing certain sorts of calls or in particular areas.
Ah now that makes sense. Like most management jobs you don't really have as much power as you think you have. You need developers to be on your side otherwise you no going to achieve much with your team fighting you.
UV is a spectrum. UV-B is responsible for vitamin D production. Very little UV-B reaches us, even during the summer in the northern hemisphere. UV-A does damage, and reaches us much more strongly. You can receive damaging UV exposure while producing little to no vitamin D.
I don't know the details of the code, so I'm left with questions.
Is the only difference between using this library and using Instagram's mobile app the fact that the library is not the "right" web browser?
Isn't the library simply a different web client accessing a publicly available API? And requests from the library are properly authenticated / authorized by Instagram's servers through normal means (the library isn't bypassing some mechanism, it's just not the official app)?
If it's true that it's just a different API client, then there may be some TOS violation, but isn't DMCA an overreach? Is there any validity to the claim?
A TOS violation is an unauthorised access which is a federal crime. See, for example, the case of Aaron Swartz. Using the DMCA seems preferable. Changing these laws would be better still.
I know it's been interpreted as that under the CFAA, but I know there was a recent case regrading scraping so sounds like that that interpretation isn't true anymore. There was an debate between lawyers saying that sharing passwords for streaming services like Netflix, HULU, Spotify, etc with family could be seen as a federal crime too in theory if companies wanted to push it under that law but no actual lawsuits as far as I know.
So if I put "If you visit the website, you owe me 5 USD" in my Terms of Service, I can have them arrested? Something feels very fishy here, has to be more conditions than just "TOS violation === federal crime"
I felt the same about Google alternatives up until about 3 months ago. Google's results have been declining in quality for a decade, with much more rapid decline over the past year or three.
Google's results are uglier and blatantly revenue based. They have now lapsed behind DuckDuckGo in usefulness for me. I fall back to Google a few times per week, with inconsistent results when I need a "second opinion."
I'd suggest giving DDG another try.
I plan to remove Google from my life this year, at least as a central dependency. Search is already behind me. Mail, calendars, docs, and drive will be taken care of throughout the year. And my Android phone will be replaced with an iPhone.
Do you (or anyone else) have any recommendations for an email service? I've cut pretty much everything Google out of my life, minus Gmail, mostly due to not wanting to go through all the trouble of transferring everything over to a service that I end up not liking. I've heard ProtonMail is good, but other than that, I'm not sure.
I've used Fastmail for many years now, and I have nothing but good things to say about the service. In particular, it's insane how well notifications work in Fastmail, especially compared to Gmail (which I use at work). (Honestly, you'd think Fastmail was the giant multi-billion-dollar super-advanced tech company, if you look at the quality of their email experience vs. Gmail.)
However, some folks are a little spooked by the privacy implications of it being ran out of Australia, so be sure to research that if you're interested in Fastmail.
I'm leaning toward Tutanota, but I can't claim to have experience with them yet.
Proton has appeared somewhat bumpy to me -- I can't say for sure why, but they give me some spidey tingles.
Migrating / transferring is indeed a problem. I would suggest using Google Takeout, their data export tool, and permanently archiving your data with a third party service and / or physical backups. See https://takeout.google.com/. You probably won't be able to import into your new provider.
If you own a domain through Gandi (possibly others) you get email included for free. This is what I use. I don’t know why I don’t see this recommended more often?
I would do this through bluehost but it just straight up doesn't work. No matter the tutorials followed or time spent with support, I can't receive emails at my domain.
Incredibly digestible and thoughtful non-ideological exploration of great thinkers in philosophy. Excellent as a starting point for further exploration.
Many of the thoughts and perspectives that have shaped and currently shape the modern world are discussed.
Much of psychology (at least in the non-behaviorist arena) and self-help deal with ideas that are really grounded in philosophy proper. Philosophy is the original psychology and the original self-help.
Philosophy is no luxury. It saves lives. It's a deep failure of culture that it isn't a core area of primary and secondary curriculum.
Nah, Neurolinguistic Programming. The "guy" is Dr. Bandler.
> Much of psychology (at least in the non-behaviorist arena) and self-help deal with ideas that are really grounded in philosophy proper. Philosophy is the original psychology and the original self-help.
A close friend of mine who suffered from a severe autoimmune disorder was unable to receive proper care from literally dozens of different doctors over the course of fifteen years of suffering. No experts could provide a useful diagnosis or safe drugs to treat symptoms. It was either tramadol and other potent narcotics or immunosuppressants, which have severe side effects.
Kratom was one of the only medicines that allowed him to function and it was getting more difficult to reliably source due to regulatory pressure.
He died abruptly 3 months ago due to rapidly progressing infection secondary to immunosuppressant / chemotherapy drugs prescribed to help him control symptoms.
He was 34.
Pay attention to the FDA's leadership. It's a revolving door with industry. Access to safe, effective medicine is not the FDA's goal in practice.
I'm torn between the need for effective regulation and the often dysfunctional real-world implementation of those controls.
Culturally, scientifically sanctioned pharmaceuticals are usually the only option provided to patients who are left to either seek alternative therapies or become dependent on treatments that often do not improve their well-being. "Non-traditional" medicine is often demonized as anti-science and lumped together with nonsense like homeopathy despite long successful histories in folk medicine.
This is unfortunate, because I believe that by treating medicines outside the mainstream -- medicines that are widely accessible, sometimes illegal, but primarily are not commercially viable (and thus are excluded from much scientific research) -- as akin to snake-oil means that a large and growing body of people are susceptible to things like anti-vaccination silliness. "Correct think" -- a culture of fetishism of scientific expertise that isn't actually scientifically motivated -- is responsible, in my opinion, for reactionary movements that are harmful to everyone. We live an an age of a narrow definition of scientific and off-load our critical thinking to experts who, in the best case, do not have the resources or data to look beyond the recommendations they learn in medical school, or in the worst case, produce phony medical trial results that exaggerate benefits and overlook harm. I would call it scientific myopia, but it's a cultural illness and not a problem particular to science.
It's possible to approach non-mainstream medicine rationally and not be casting bones in search of omens. But not according to our current cultural outlook.
Authenticity is orthogonal to expression. Authenticity is about owning your values and understanding your self.
Authenticity is not sharing your political opinions with the world. Sharing opinions is about controlling your image.
You can hold political views of any stripe and be well accepted by people whose opinions clash with yours.
Authenticity is not broadcasting your opinions about the world, it's not compromising on your values in order to fit in. Political views are imperfectly derived from values; they're derivative and less important and should be freely modified as you acquire experience, new perspectives, and more information.
Values and authenticity, in contrast, stem from internal discourse and exploration.
Blaming racism (an abstract bogeyman that can never be defeated) and focusing on equalizing outcomes (or meeting a diversity quota) is a problem because it sabotages the real efforts necessary to improve things that have very little to do with race: deeply dysfunctional governance, across justice, education, policing, and in policy-making.
It's easier to say "silent whites are complicit" than it is to ask how we can lift everyone up without tearing others down.