ulyssessword
No bio...
User ID: 308
ulyssessword
3d ago
I knew that Mercatus Center graph looked familiar: Does Reality Drive Straight Lines On Graphs, Or Do Straight Lines On Graphs Drive Reality?
TL;DR: OSHA may be one of the steps which contributes to lowered workplace fatalities, much like laser photolithography may be one of the steps which enables smaller and smaller transistors in microchips.
ulyssessword
7d ago
...and arguing that this fear is entirely reasonable.
I would like to take this opportunity to reiterate that the available evidence points in the opposite direction:
I'm not sure if you're interpreting that review correctly. Specifically, I think you're flipping around the numerators and denominators, and the "rates" that the studies look at aren't the "rates" that affect women.
As an illustration of how that can lead your reasoning astray, consider a toy model where a playboy has sex with 1000 women and assaults four of them (a 0.4% rate), while a group of 1000 no-longer-incels has sex with 1000 women (one each), and assaults 10 of them (0.01 each, or a 1% rate). By my reading, the studies included in that review would conclude that playboys commit assaults at 400x the rate of no-longer-incels. However, a women looking only to avoid assault would look at the per sexual encounter rate, and (under this model) there is 2.5x the risk from the incel group.
ulyssessword
7d ago
ulyssessword
9d ago
(Said without any pauses)
What's the hardest part about telling a joke timing.
ulyssessword
10d ago
That doesn't answer the core contradiction. Why is sexual assault the only topic that "victim blaming" is used for?
Over the years, my local police (and a few nearby and/or related organizations) have put out information on protecting yourself from break-and enter, carjacking, bike theft, scams, mugging, and incidental gang violence. None (or at most a few) of those were paired with substantive actions, and none drew serious accusations of victim blaming.
Given that the organizations in charge of societal-level policy proposals (or implementations) routinely give individual-level advice with negligible pushback, what makes sexual assault so special?
ulyssessword
10d ago
"What Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away"
Having ultrapowerful processors, high-speed unlimited data plans, and expansive storage saves programmers from the horrors of optimization.
(As an aside, I've installed Linux on my Android phone. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it, but it should be a perfectly capable computer nonetheless.)
ulyssessword
10d ago
It's in the article you linked (among other places):
After initially telling Axios earlier Tuesday that a player installing a game, deleting it and installing it again would result in multiple fees, Unity'sWhitten told Axios that the company would actually only charge for an initial installation. (A spokesperson told Axios that Unity had "regrouped" to discuss the issue.)
They said one thing, then they had a meeting, then they said a second thing which is incompatible with the first. You don't "clarify" a statement when you completely negate what you said.
ulyssessword
11d ago
That's a policy change, not a clarification. At launch (and as recently as yesterday), they fully intended for each installation to be charged and made clear statements to that effect. Afterwards (2023-09-13), they changed their mind and will implement a slightly different policy.
ulyssessword
11d ago
It actually is. That statement may have been superseded by a more recent one alluded to upthread (I haven't looked into it in depth), but they definitely did say that.
ulyssessword
12d ago
I kept my 2014 model year until recently, for an amortized cost of <$100/yr. I'm expecting to do the same with my new phone, for a similar cost.
You can get bring-your-own-phone plans that are identical to the normal contracts for ~$30/month less (or at least I can), so by my reading you're paying net $30/mo + ???/2yrs = approx $400 per year for having a phone, in addition to the cost of the connection plan.
ulyssessword
12d ago
ulyssessword
13d ago
ulyssessword
13d ago
I'll always point to ProPublica's Machine Bias as the example of lying with statistics and stories. Compare their pair of graphs "Black Defendants’ Risk Scores" and "White Defendants’ Risk Scores" to the Washington Post's article's graph "Recidivism Rates by Risk Score".
Maybe don't include that example in your assignment, though.
ulyssessword
13d ago
WD-40 is not even a lubricant, and I wish people stopped calling it that, because some people will take it to mean that it can be used to lubricate moving parts, when in fact the opposite is true
WD-40® Multi-Use Product Classic does claim that it "lubricates almost anything", so perhaps the WD-40 Company should be the first target of your ire.
what it will do is that it will strip any lubricant that might have lingers there, and then evaporate, leaving dry surfaces behind.
Now I'm curious. Did you reach that conclusion from personal experience? If so, in what country and year? I'm wondering if that claim applies to the 25% VOC formulation that's sold in the US right now, or only the (soon-to-be-discontinued) 65% VOC formulation.
ulyssessword
14d ago
Looking into it more, I believe this Youtube video broke the story last Wednesday.
Also: Google's date ranges lie, but DuckDuckGo's don't. Google gave multiple relevant-looking results when I searched for "WD-40 ban Canada" and restricted the date range to before Sept. 6. They either had the date listed incorrectly, or they had it listed correctly but decided that a page from "6 hours ago" deserved to be in a search that specifically excluded it.
ulyssessword
14d ago
Presumably if there was a big difference in performance you would have heard about it by now.
By my understanding, the volatility of its organic compounds is a core feature that distinguishes WD-40 from normal spray lubricants. It dissolves gunk, penetrates through cracks/threads, and spreads over surfaces because of the relatively small molecules (which are also volatile).
Also, where are you getting your news from, that you would expect to hear about things in a tiny niche like this??
This is somewhat tangential to the culture war, but WD-40 will soon be banned in Canada, despite what the headline of the linked article says.
At issue is a 2021 piece of legislation that comes into force on January 1, 2024. It limits the amount of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in many products, setting the limit for "multi-purpose lubricants that are not solid or semi-solid" to 25% (Listed in Schedule 1, Item 26(i)). Needless to say, this is much lower than the 65% VOC concentration listed on WD-40's MSDS pages (website link) for the classic product.
WD-40 Company responded to talk of the ban by evoking the spectre of Fake News, and didn't mention how they would comply with the regulations. I've sent them a message asking if the MSDS info will be valid into 2024 (because I don't trust journalists, particularly when they can't find the "VOC" entry in a table and don't understand that "low vapor pressure" means less volatile.), and I strongly suspect that it will be reformulated by replacing at least 40.1% of WD-40's composition with substantially different chemicals. EDIT: They've answered, and it will be reformulated.
This ties into the same issues as @some's top-level comment on food names: I don't think that breaded tofu is "Chicken" (or even "Chikn"), and I don't think that a >40% new lubricant is "WD-40".
See also: PYREX vs. pyrex
ulyssessword
17d ago
I wonder if there are more ways I can take on "writing obligations."
There's an opportunity just a few threads down from here: https://www.themotte.org/post/659/the-motte-moddes-highspace-september-2023
ulyssessword
19d ago
I just read up on Dutch labor law, and one part stuck out at me:
[A collective bargaining agreement applies] if you are not a member of an employer’s organisation, but the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment has declared a CAO binding to your sector;
That's about as far as possible from "a bunch of employees can agree to bargain together". At least in North America you can shut down your entire business and build a new one from the ground up (on different ground, of course) to escape your union. Dutch labor law is firmly in the realm of "If you don't like it, build your own government" rather than true free association.
Given that baseline level of coercion, of course the entities-which-the-Dutch-call-Unions look completely different than North American Unions: All of their most important functions have been outsourced to other entities, not removed as I had thought.
ulyssessword
19d ago
This feels like a reflection of Against Murderism.
My examples are central to the category (obviously, because they're mine) like UAW and CUPE, while yours are weird fringe groups that barely deserve to be in the same category. It's like arguing that taxation is theft, therefore theft is pro-social.
ulyssessword
20d ago
A bunch of employees can agree to bargain together and walk out together if they'd so enjoy.
Sure, they can give up a vast majority of a union's powers and survive without government backing. Let's compare what a theoretical non-government-backed collection of employees could do relative to a union (under my local laws).
-
On inception, a collection of employees that got buy-in from 51% of the employees would consist of 51% of the employees. A union would consist of 100%. (Technically you have the ability to refuse membership, but you are forced to pay membership dues regardless.)
-
If the company doesn't like working with the employees (for whatever reason), it can fire them. If it doesn't like working with a union, it's stuck. Similarly, it can hire replacement workers if they stop showing up for work (It can also do that against unions now, but couldn't before 2008).
-
If the company shuts down its location, the employees get laid off. If the company shuts down a unionized location, then the union hold power over the vacant building and must be reinstated when someone else buys it.
Some type of unions being able to exist without government backing isn't much of an argument that the currently existing ones could. Heck, I'm not sure if your "bunch of employees [that] agree to bargain together" even deserves to be called a union.
ulyssessword
25d ago
There's no conspiracy to conceal information, there's just no duty to report on any of this stuff generally.
The law is intended to change that.
I had to get my parents' permission to watch a couple of movies, go on any field trip, or add/drop classes. In addition, they were informed about any disciplinary actions, some course content, and general impressions of my time at school.
Even if that wasn't true wherever you grew up, teachers having a duty to inform parents about the goings on in the classroom is nothing new here.
ulyssessword
25d ago
You should listen to stories from educators who deal with these issues in reality.
I should! Do you have any links handy? Preferably about the exact scenario I outlined (Attempting to keep it public+secret was positive over the long term, regardless of whether or not it succeeded), but I'd take anything short of a human-interest fluff piece. The ones I've seen have been mostly split between "I was scared for nothing, I should've come out to my parents sooner" and "I was not ready for what happened. I should've had a better plan before coming out in public."
And even if they find out eventually, buying 6 months or a year or three years of time can be very important for a kid trying to build a secondary support network.
Coming back to the policy rather than abstract questions, do you think that 15-year-olds are mature enough to decide to cut ties with their home (even if the plan would culminate at 18ish)? Granted, they might be correct. In that case, the appropriate response is a call to CPS and/or the police to deal with the serious situation.
How do you ensure that a piece of information is simultaneously public and secret? I have no idea, but I hope that someone can explain a reliable strategy because this story makes no sense in its absence.
EDIT: link to the policy in question.
TL;DR: The government of Saskatchewan just enacted a new policy that affects "preferred names" and pronouns for younger students (along with some other changes, which I'll skip over). It requires that teachers obtain parental consent before using new names/pronouns for students under 16 years old. The criticism is focused on two claims: First, being "out" is important. Second, it can be unsafe if a parent learns that their child is transgender.
The first claim has already been argued to death, and there's nothing new in this story.
The second claim is just bizarre in this context. What do they expect would happen in the absence of the new policy? Everybody starts using the child's new names/pronouns in everything from casual conversations to official reports...and the parents don't notice for >2 years?
If I knew that a child had information that could be dangerous if it got into the wrong hands, I wouldn't encourage them to spread it far and wide. In fact, I'd direct them to a professional that would help them to develop a strategy that minimized the damage from its release, or else cope with maintaining the burden of secrecy.
But maybe I'm missing something, so I'll repeat my question: how do you ensure that a piece of information is simultaneously public and secret?
Another one: Tim McGraw- Don't take the girl TL;DR: Don't take the girl fishing with us. Don't kidnap my girlfriend. Don't let my wife die in childbirth.
Also, tvtropes is a fantastic resource. I followed the trail from that song to the artist then to Dual Meaning Chorus which contains dozens of examples.
More options
Context Copy link