Also in the news today: “I am a big fan of yours!” - Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin
That bit is important. A quick glance at Wikipedia: Persuading people to make small sacrifices for the greater good is a crucial challenge of our times, both with pandemics and with environmental problems. Meanwhile, good old Donald continues his streak of coming up with the most damaging policy possible in every department of life: US calls for shower rules to be eased after Trump hair complaintsbuy yea it's not evenly divided.
A mere 0.014% of all water on Earth is both fresh and easily accessible. Of the remaining water, 97% is saline and a little less than 3% is difficult to access. Technically, there is a sufficient amount of freshwater on a global scale. However, due to unequal distribution (exacerbated by climate change) resulting in some very wet and some very dry geographic locations, plus a sharp rise in global freshwater demand in recent decades driven by industry, humanity is facing a water crisis. Demand is expected to outstrip supply by 40% in 2030, if current trends continue.
A couple I am friends with in the UK had it. He got sick for about a week then started feeling better, but she has been sick for months and is still weak. They were not admitted to hospital so this is still considered a mild case, but it has been quite incapacitating for her. They are in their 40s with young children who didn't seem to get sick (or only got sick very mildly) from it. My uncle and aunt, who are in their 70s, also say they have had it but it did not hit them as hard. I don't know that their cases were confirmed though. They may be mistaking another illness for it.
To pick up on a very old thread... I've been reading David Abram's The Spell of the Sensuous lately. He has a chapter in there about how in oral cultures stories are very closely bound up with particular places, so that it makes no sense to tell a story without saying where it happened. The powers of the place are actively involved in the story. Only in cultures with alphabetical writing, he says (roughly), do we find being treated as a neutral setting (space) for action. I wonder if part of the issue isn't a prejudice against science fiction, but that we naturally need to understand stories in terms of relatable places - that we relate better to the story when the setting is relatable and naturally absorb it more deeply? Presumably most of us don't have much familiarity with spaceships and airlocks.
This was a refreshing read, though disappointing that we let something really interesting get away from us. I particularly liked his comments on science at the end: “The right way is to persuade the public that the scientific process is a normal human activity, that it’s no different from what a police detective does or a plumber who comes to fix a drainpipe. Scientists are considered an elite, because they themselves create that ivory tower artificially. They say, ‘The public doesn’t understand, so there’s no need to share with them. We’ll decide among ourselves what’s right, and then we’ll tell the politicians what needs to be done.’ But then the populist politician says, ‘Only the elite say that, they are hiding other things from us.’ Because there’s a leap to the stage of conclusions and policy. The differences of opinion in the scientific community are what lend humanity to the scientific process, and humanity lends credibility." Crazy world we live in, where the guy who thinks we might just have been visited by aliens is one of the most rational and intelligent voices I've come across lately."The populist movements in the United States and Europe rest in part on the fact that the public has lost faith in the scientific process. That’s why people deny global warming, for example. One of my interviewers in Germany said, ‘There are scientists who maintain that it’s a mistake to go public when you’re not yet certain.’ Those scientists think that if we reveal situations of uncertainty, we won’t be believed when we talk about climate change. But the lack of credibility is due precisely to the fact that we show the public only the final product. If a group of scientists closet themselves in a room, and then emerge to deliver a lecture on the result as though to students, people won’t believe them – because they won’t have seen the doubts, they won’t have seen that there weren’t enough data in the earlier stages.
Absolutely plausible - thanks. It seems there are only 3 music files in use in the marketing business these days: the one you mentioned, the upbeat quirky fun one with the acoustic guitar strumming and claps, and the one that sounds like an endless intro to a lost U2 song circa 1987 that never quite arrives. Honestly, these folks should have gone with number 2. Or Yakkity Sax.
I can't tell whether the video here is supposed to be absurd or whether people who spend their lives developing a burger-flipping robot have lost all sense of absurdity.
Also CNN.
An alternative would be to charge users for entry to the site. If the charge were set low enough it might work. But I don't know how many people consider social media sites to be enough of an enhancement to their lives to be worth paying for. It's hard enough to get people to pay for music, art, movies, books, etc. Also by charging a fee you'd be skewing the demographic towards wealthier people, which would suck.
Time to update those Facebook politics quizzes: Hitler or Stalin, which one are you? Since by the new rules of political debate, anyone to the left of Literally Hitler is Literally Stalin.
That is truly impressive. Particularly how they don't recycle the individual letter images, but use a different one for each instance of the letter. And the meticulous positioning.
Can we contrive for him to have a big public Twitter argument with Donald Trump? I feel it would be entertaining, for a few minutes. Then onto the next thing.
Her whole new album "Shelter" is kind of great.
I think I see the problem here...Trump people
simple bayesian analysis
“If you are a college guy, or a college girl, and you are on a college campus, if you have three or four fashy goy friends, you can take over your school’s College Republicans group and move it to essentially being an alt-right club,” Allsup said. “You can easily do that and it gives you access to so many more resources. It gives you political credibility. It gives you all of these things that come along with the name of being a Republican.” And one of his buddies: Republican politics today, folks.A month after Charlottesville, Allsup told white nationalist podcast Fash the Nation that he tried to take over WSU’s College Republican club with “fashy goy” (fascist, non-Jewish) friends.
“I work in HR firing n----rs and spics all day,” he said during a March 2016 podcast. “Before that, I was in the army and I got to kill Muslims for fun. I’m not sure which one was better: watching n----rs and spics cry because they can’t feed their little mud children or watching Muslims brains spray on the wall. Honestly both probably suck compared to listening to a kike’s scream while in the oven.”
Nick Drake's mum:
Can't be a good fascist unless you practise the scowl!
I've made politically incorrect gaffes in very politically correct left-leaning academic circles and felt everyone's stares bearing down on me. I felt kind of mortified. I said sorry, that was insensitive, and I learned something about my own instincts there. Surprisingly, society didn't collapse.
Tough news. I hope things go well for her.
Holding websites responsible for what users post is a hard thing to implement without undesirable side-effects: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/house-vote-fosta-win-censorshipUnless or until FB is deemed to be a utility, they should be held to account for the havoc they cause globally. I don't know what that looks like, but clearly the status quo isn't working.
You had a rougher than usual welcome, and it surprised me. Stick with it - the conversation here is so much better than on any comparable site, and people are generally good to one another.
The question you quote and ask in your post title isn't the same question the article is discussing. One's about previous human civilizations and the other's about pre-human (so non-human) civilizations.
Huh. Oh well.An accredited investor has to meet certain income and net worth standards, however, such as having $1 million in net worth or an annual salary of $250,000 for two years.
Who knew Uber had hearts?Our hearts go out to the victim’s family.
The best two things i have watched recently: - True Detective, season 1 (HBO) - Dark (Netflix) - watch with the German soundtrack and English subtitles because the English voice acting will put you off!
I've been enjoying C.A.R.'s new album, Pinned:
I need to watch that film again now. So funny.
That is insane and depressing. Honestly, I'm surprised you guys in the USA are still allowed to have municipal water coming out of your taps, when some private company could be charging ten times the price for worse service. Won't someone please think of their God-given right to a huge profit?I would say that the future is municipal broadband, but that's going to be illegal shortly in the few areas it's not already prohibited.
Pi-hole, Privacy Badger and UBlock Origin here. I recommend this combo.