domain:amphobian.info
quiet_NaN
6m ago
I think that this is related to an inflation of alerts. For the forecasters, the incentives are to always warn, no matter if it is "there may be ice on the road, drive carefully" or "a hurricane will flood 90% of the area covered by this cell tower in minutes".
Basically, I would be fine with being woken up by an alert which has a 10% chance to save my life. For a typical user, this will perhaps happen once in their lifetime, probably less. However, I do not care about weather alerts which may kill a handful of people in an area of a few 100k. Send me a text if you must, but if I die due to ice on the road because I did not bother to check my phone in the morning, that will be on me.
But as the incentives are structured in a way to always exaggerate alerts, you run in the "boy who cried wolf" problem -- nobody wants a phone which wakes them up whenever a weather event which might theoretically kill someone happens in their general area.
Of course, the outcome this would excuse is if you had a bunch of people who drowned after randomly deciding to camp at the river bank. What happened here was instead that the organizers of a summer camp for kids dropped the ball. A level of care which might be tolerable when you are out drinking and fishing with your buddies is not necessarily tolerable when running an organized event. Of course, for all I know, the safety concern level of the organizers was above average. "Site specific disaster kills your charges" is an exceedingly rare outcome, and was probably not even on the radar of most camp organizers a week ago.
faceh
13m ago
Rich countries tend to suffer from Cost Disease and overregulation which stops a lot of things that ought to be easy to do from happening.
I agree that after you get this many wildfires, there should be incentives to throw money at the problem until it stops. But if people are willing to throw money without limit, someone will be willing to soak all those funds up and deliver as little as possible.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
19m ago
Oof, sorry to hear that you're not enjoying Dungeon Slayer, and I'm afraid this is where my "cheap date" reader self doesn't necessarily do me any favors when I talk about series that I've enjoyed. It's a low bar! It's been maybe a couple of years now since I read the first few books and what I remember really liking about it was, in fact, the fight scenes and also the world-building, not just
On the 12 Miles front, yeah, developing To'Wrathh's character was annoying AF to me, too, though I understand the major plot points that revolve around her character making that necessary to a certain extent. A lot of her early stuff was just bloody annoying to me, though it did get better over time. To me, 12 Miles is at its best when it's exploring its world, particularly the underground sections, and at its dreariest when it's doing its developmental/consolidation bits. I can tell you that book 5 to me was largely one of those so I'd say there's no need to rush in picking up the audiobook when it becomes available. Regardless, I'm glad you're enjoying that one!
I appreciate the Seth Ring recommendation, Kindle pimps out his Battle Mage Farmer stuff to me semi-regularly because of a similar series that I read in the past. I have another series or three that I bought to make me immune to wanting to read another one of those but I might check out Iron Tyrant--it sounds interesting and more up my alley (that whole what will he do with the premise thing) than another "exploit the farmer class" style of LitRPG.
faceh
19m ago
Its kinda funny (not in the 'haha' way) that government and citizens alike ignore this market signal of "IF YOU BUILD HERE, YOUR HOUSE WILL LIKELY BE DESTROYED, (AND YOU MAY DIE).
That said, I also note that we just build things way more densely than ever before, in terms of how much expensive infrastructure we pack into each acre in some places.
I sincerely assume that there is no chance that Insurance Cos. and their underwriters can stay solvent if a serious earthquake hits the Los Angeles area, or a Cat 5. Hurricane rips through Miami.
If the insurance was charged at the actual market rate, I would also guess that many places would only be inhabited by the uberrich who can self-insure, or by the poorer folks who go without insurance, build cheap, and don't quite understand the risk they're assuming.
I live in Coastal Florida so I've seen a mix of both happening.
pigeonburger
29m ago
I don't know about them coming back, I've had one most of my adult life, at different levels of kemptness (as of now, decently trimmed). At first it was because I was conforming to hipster fashion. I've experimented with my facial hair a fair bit, I've had handlebars even at some point. But now my wife would divorce me if I shaved my beard, and it conforms to image I have of myself, as a gruff and stern looking.
I'm also a sysadmin, so it's basically a uniform for me.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
40m ago
People would rather spend time attending a safety seminar or working than reduce their lifespan and spend an equal amount of time being dead
I'll trade safety seminars 1:1 for shortened lifespan any day of the week.
Quantumfreakonomics
44m ago
Use good photos of yourself. Digging any deeper than that will make you go insane. Most people here are reasonably-high decouplers, but it hits differently when it’s your appearance and your social status and your geneline at stake.
pigeonburger
44m ago
Great advice list! Couldn't have said it better myself. Ultimately the overarching goal is communicating that you're a well-rounded and well-adjusted guy, everything you do on these apps should be done with that in mind and your advice goes a long way towards giving tips as to how to do so.
sodiummuffin
47m ago
People would rather spend time attending a safety seminar or working than reduce their lifespan and spend an equal amount of time being dead, so you can't trade off QALYs for time worked 1 for 1. Instead it's just another adjustor to quality-of-life, roughly equivalent to time spent working without being paid (the actual workers get paid, but it destroys the value they would produce doing something else). You could also compare the cost to the standard "economic value of the life" calculations derived from the premiums on risky jobs, and indeed certain safety measures require risky construction work and thus are partially paid for with the deaths and disabling of the construction workers you have implement them. Your calculation is still useful as a sanity check though, even though the actual tradeoff in time spent wouldn't be 11 minutes.
Could be. The other thing is that I lived in a lot of other places (including East Asia) for a few years at a time and in retrospect a lot of those memories are from there and also getting conflated with typhoons e.g. And we'd travel a lot in the DC area which seems to have a lot more storms.
Just recalled that some of the 'majestic primal thunder' I'm recalling may have been that time a windborne dumpster fell out of the sky next to my car in Japan.
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