ulyssessword
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User ID: 308
ulyssessword
2mo ago
A) CICO necessarily follows from the Second Law of Thermodynamics,
The naive version of CICO compares your meal plan to your gym time. The normal version compares all the food (including drinks!) you consume vs. all your planned or incidental physical activity. The true version compares the bioavailability of all the nutrients you consume vs. all of your metabolic activity, whether that's moving your muscles, thinking, growth, healing, generating heat, or anything else.
I have yet to see any diet plan that uses the true model of CICO. The closest I've seen is a single number for "base metabolism" that you back-calculate from your weight trends.
I think you're pushing a strawman, but I'm open to seeing a diet plan that uses the "true CICO" model I described. Anything less precise can't follow from raw thermodynamics.
ulyssessword
2mo ago
The proper way to do things is first reach the moral high ground, then attack your opponents for not being there. They skipped a step.
If the Right has to own up to this (at this point only alleged) failure, what does the Left have to own up to (or better yet: What has the Left already owned up to, to serve as an example)? The closest Scott gets to answering that question is through a link that contains a link that links to resources for thinking critically about Social Justice. I assume that there are object-level criticisms in the resources listed there, but I haven't actually checked.
ulyssessword
11mo ago
There's a problem with this inability to recognize evil as evil that is endemic here.
A felony is a kind of serious crime.
A felony is words on a page. I don't let the Word of God bypass my moral reasoning (I'm not a very good Catholic), and I definitely won't let the US Criminal Code bypass it either.
Let me turn the question back on you: If/when Trump successfully appeals that verdict, will your moral judgment change? He literally would not be a felon, and you are placing a lot of importance on that. Assuming that his felony-free status wouldn't change your mind, why would you think that his felony-convicted status would change anyone else's?
For a lighter story about how the law can be misaligned with morality, see this article:
And even though it might be the morally right thing to do, Der said breaking into a car is still considered property damage, which is a criminal offence — even if the person's intention is to save a pet.
There's a certain debate strategy that gets on my nerves. I'm sure there's a formal term for it, but I call it a "prohibition on reason".
I see it here, with "felon = evil". I saw it during the pandemic, where public health measures were treated the same as risk factors ("The virus knows if you're sitting or standing, so it's only safe to sit unmasked in a restaurant"). I saw it in cancellation campaigns where an activist NGO is treated as infallible ("The 'okay' handsign is a white supremacist dogwhistle. The trucker should be fired.")
ulyssessword
11mo ago
You're literally waging the culture war.
"Cunthair" is bog-standard slang for the smallest perceptible distance on construction sites (and, I've heard, in many other red-tribe blue collar industries), and language policing is one of the classic culture war tactics.
If my guess is correct, you would defend the use of African American Vernacular English, and object to most attempts to suppress it. I think that's a decent policy, and also apply it to Construction Worker Vernacular English.
ulyssessword
3mo ago
How far can it stretch before it stops being "this weapon", and shifts to being a different one? If the standard is "...her[/his] presence in the United States hinders the administration’s foreign policy agenda.", then campus protesters (or rally organizers, or similar) are pretty much the only valid targets.
The right-wing base doesn't generally shout their opinions from a soapbox in the same way, and therefore isn't as vulnerable to this.
ulyssessword
10mo ago
A missing mood in development news: Environmentalists pin hopes on tiny fish to stop Highway 413.
From a plain reading of the article, the logic goes:
- Activists don't like the proposed Highway 413
- They searched for a way to stop it.
- They found these fish, and the strategy may be effective.
In a sane world filled with people arguing in good faith, you might see a similar situation:
- There are endangered animals in an area
- Environmentalists discovered development posed a risk to them
- Therefore they oppose that development
If you trust the CBC's reporting, then the activists would be better described as anti-development rather than environmentalist. The discussion is centered on the highway, the political situation around it, the promises that Doug Ford (bad!) made, and the actions the Federal Liberals (good!) took which slowed it down.
ulyssessword
3mo ago
I don't think "fake it 'til you make it" is a very good basis for a legal system. Continuously breaking the law for years is worse than breaking it for days, all else being equal.
ulyssessword
2mo ago
Polls closed in Newfoundland two hours ago, and it's not looking good for the pollsters. CBC has called two seats for the Conservatives and they're leading in a third, while three have been called for the Liberals and they're leading in a fourth. The prediction was 7-0 Liberal (two "toss up", five "Lib. Likely").
The Maritimes are closer to the prediction, with the Conservatives leading/called in 8 ridings vs. the prediction of 7.
ulyssessword
4mo ago
The reason this is being done so crudely is because every less-crude attempt made in the past was stopped.
My thoughts throughout this Presidency (all three weeks of it) has been a mix of:
-
Damn, Trump is reckless, unprofessional, and vain.
-
How the fuck does he have so much ammo?
There's a plane crash? Air Traffic Controllers were hired under a racist system. Foreign aid? Transgender operas in Colombia. Funding basic science? >60% "administrative overhead" tacked on. Threaten Canada with tariffs? Suddenly our border security is a valid issue. Random whatever? $20M in subscriptions to the Associated Press, and another $1.6M to the NYT.
It feels like a weird mirror to the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy: He gives every indication of shooting blindly, but there has actually been a bullseye where he hits all along. That could be luck or good spin, but the most compelling story is that everywhere is that bad.
(Related joke: There has been a shooting at a peaceful protest! A child molester, a sexual assaulter, and a convicted felon illegally carrying a gun are the only people injured.)
I still don't think he's doing a good job, but damn does he have a strong narrative.
The body cam footage shows...
Link's down for me. Here is the canonical source.
Right before she is shot the body cam just barely picks up Massey throwing the boiling water toward the officers,
EDIT: I didn't realize there were two perspectives posted. This is the first bodycam only, and I haven't edited the following paragraph.
The first gunshot is at 14:19 and 16 frames. The water splash becomes visible beside the counter at 14:19 and 28 frames. Half a second of lag doesn't require that she was in the middle of throwing it as she was shot (but that's still possible), and it definitely wasn't before they fired.
EDIT: and the second...
Dammit. From 28:21-28:22 she's throwing the pot. She left it on the counter (with potholders on her hands), then reached up and grabbed it and threw it. There's no sound, but amateur synchronization puts 14:19.28 at 28:22.15, which puts the first shot in the middle of her throw.
ulyssessword
2mo ago
all the beauty filters
You sure it isn't makeup?
For some reason we've decided that manipulating peoples' perceptions by changing the physical objects they're looking at is acceptable, while manipulating peoples' perceptions by changing the images directly isn't.
See also fast food commercials. They are (or at least were) genuine footage of actual objects...which were only superficially related to the food they sold.
ulyssessword
2mo ago
That's exactly what I'm talking about: It's a Calories In, Calories Out, Body Weight system and that third variable is essential.
Skimming through the paper, it appears that the difference between cold and hot is about 100 Calories per cold day, or about one pound per month. A pure CICO system couldn't explain why one person gains a few pounds every winter while an ostensibly-identical person (but fertilized in cold weather) doesn't.
ulyssessword
4mo ago
If you think HIV does spread readily from heterosexual sex, then why hasn't it?
Last time I ran the numbers (several years ago. It might be time for an update), gay men got HIV at >80x the rate of the rest of the population. This was reported like "20x the general population" or something, which neatly hides the fact that people-who-aren't-gay-men get HIV at less than half the rate of the general population.
I don't think your mechanism of action can dismiss such stark differences.
ulyssessword
9mo ago
I argue against a lot of things that are in the actor's best interests. Theft is the most obvious example: it gets you stuff, why wouldn't you do it?
Their fight against automation is anti-social, so opposing the unions is justified IMO.
ulyssessword
8mo ago
We had a tiny coding project at work last week, and one part of it kind of struck me.
My coworker's half of the project was to show the user a simple form where they would input two lines text and click the "submit" button. It would then write that info to a text file and launch my half.
My half of the project took that data, stuffed it into the middle of some XML, then launched the newly-created file.
Try to guess the spoiler. My coworker's half was
ulyssessword
11mo ago
See also Alberta Premier Marlaina Smith bans kids from going by their preferred name:
“Demanding everyone around you call you by a new name one day out of the blue is not a viable option,” said Marlaina Smith, who goes by Danielle.
“We have to respect the given and family names our ancestors carried for generations,” added Premier Kolodnicki.
ulyssessword
11mo ago
Yeah, sometimes security really is that bad.
For a less serious example, "somebody" walked into the phone store, asked for a replacement SIM for my account (providing the phone number and possibly my name, but no other information), and walked out a few minutes later with the old SIM deactivated and the new card in their possession. That person was me, but they had no way of knowing that because they never asked or checked.
I think elections should at least be protected against that level of fraud.
ulyssessword
1mo ago
flatly unwelcome at our various employers' pride networking corporate events.
Is that your moral barometer? I've heard of people using the Church's approval as a proxy for moral behaviour, but this might be the first time I've seen someone use corporations in that role.
ulyssessword
6mo ago
I've never understood the argument the US customary units are "human-centric".
Is 0.00731x the weight of an average man really that much more intuitive than 0.0161x? How about 0.588x the historical average height vs. 0.0149x (or was it 0.179x)? Is 2.63 just-noticeable-temperature-difference-intervals worse than 1.46 of them? (I'm not going to bother questioning the zero point of Fahrenheit. Freezing is much better.)
I can tell the difference between 1/4", 5/16", and 3/8" head hex screws from across the room, but that's just because I've seen tens of thousands of each of them. There's nothing intrinsically human about any of my intuitions, it's just what I've learned (and no, I haven't learned metric to the same degree).
ulyssessword
8mo ago
Prediction: "Generation Z" and "Zoomer" will be given a false entomology of "person who used Zoom to attend school during the COVID 19 pandemic" within the next couple decades.
Yes, an agent(?) said the shooter was dead before they left the stage. As far as I can tell, there still hasn't been official confirmation, but anonymous officials are repeating it.
EDIT: adding more
video link, just before the shots
6:50-6:58, 7:07 Shots fired
7:32 "he's down", "Shooter's down."
I'm curious if the agents shot the would-be-assassin with that last shot. It sounded the same as the rest, but I don't think gunshots are that distinct based on angle and caliber.
ulyssessword
2mo ago
The literal meaning is kind of useless. Is a truck with duallies "four wheel drive" just because its drivetrain is connected to four wheels?
ulyssessword
6mo ago
Space is a black void with a few resources we can mostly find on earth. It can never replace the Wild West, the frontier. It is empty, and it can never be home to us. This is where we have evolved to live, and to die.
The Earth vs. Moon and African Plains vs. far Arctic are differences of degree, not kind. Both the moon and the arctic are inhospitable environments that will quickly kill unprotected humans, and lack easy access to essential resources. And yet, with sufficient adaptation and technology, we've managed to create self-sufficient populations in the far north.
We've gone beyond "where we have evolved to live, and to die" once already. I wouldn't count us out yet.
ulyssessword
10mo ago
I don't want to spend an an extra hour (actually 0:58 by Google Maps) getting to work every day. Do you have a way to resolve that issue, or will I just have to deal with it if you have your way?
It does seem like a sound argument, but it'll probably take the ACLU or a million dollars and a private lawyer to convince them. Spending $50 on a court-ordered name change is probably the simplest way to proceed.
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