No one said cheap alcohol except you. I brew beer, discuss brewing beer, and very much appreciate the culture and history of brewing. I also enjoy reading about classic cocktails, and occasionally having some. I’ve read entire books about the history of distilling, the origin of terms like the angels share, etc.
The opinion posed wasn’t that we should get rid of cheap alcohol, but that all alcohol should be banned everywhere.
There is not a single reason for any human to get access to alcohol.
But there is. Because people enjoy it. Because it is a carrier of culture, tradition, and history. There are many things that people do that have risks, negative health effects, etc. Should all of that be illegal? Rock climbers sometimes need rescue, whose cost is often born by the public. Cell phones cause distracted driving. Processed foods make it easier for people to overeat, become obese, die, and create costs for society along the way.
Your premise is that there isn’t some transactional, functional value of alcohol. But people aren’t robots and we get value from the emotion and experience of things.
Tax alcohol to cover negative externalities, enforce drunk driving laws, force disclaimers about the health impact, and let people make informed, but free, choices.
Good unpopular opinion though. Good discussion! Have a great day!
With coffee all things heart palpations are possible. It took me about a year and a half between work and studies. Definitely not a day. 😀
That’s awesome, but no, they made something far more useful, lol. I’m glad to see projects like that though; it’s a lost art!
I gave my kid a BB gun, but it stays in a safe. I also gave my son a pocket knife for camping that stays in my night stand unless we are camping.
You can give something to a kid without letting them have unsupervised access. I gave my kids steam decks, but limit their screen time.
I agree the original comment lacked specificity. You could gift a gun in a responsible or irresponsible way, and I’ve seen both.
Edit: and the comment about gifting a rifle also mentioned that in their personal situation they had to have a parent to use it.
There’s a huge difference between giving a child unrestricted access to a firearm, and taking them sport shooting in a controlled environment. I’ve helped with beginner shooting courses for kids in scouts. There is an adult with each kid, one round loaded at a time, etc. You can similarly control the environment hunting by using blinds, etc, where you oversee the use of the firearm, loading of round etc.
I’m not big into shooting, but from a safety perspective there are ways to hunt and sport shoot with kids in a very controlled way.
Years and years ago I built my own 16 bit computer from the nand gates up. ALU, etc, all built from scratch. Wrote the assembler, then wrote a compiler for a lightweight object oriented language. Built the OS, network stack, etc. At the end of the day I had a really neat, absolutely useless computer. The knowledge was what I wanted, not a usable computer.
Building something actually useful, and modern takes so much more work. I could never even make a dent in the hour, max, I have a day outside of work and family. Plus, I worked in technology for 25 years, ended as director of engineering before fully leaving tech behind and taking a leadership position.
I’ve done so much tech work. I’m ready to spend my down time in nature, and watching birds, and skiing.
Minimum wage is an absolute measure: a fixed amount not pegged to inflation. Taxes are a percentage, a relative value that adapts to inflation.
I’m all for a relative measure for the minimum wage.
Also, in this scenario the people would be left with $1,620,000 after selling their house, which hardly leaves them without options. I get that they want to stay in that same neighborhood. But the problem they are facing is an enviable one for many less fortunate people.
Yeah. I’m not hating on these people, but they would have $1.4 million in taxable income, and 37% would be owed as taxes, leading them around 900k. If they planned it over a few years they could actually avoid some of that.
So I don’t know their situation, but walking away with $882k doesn’t leave you without options.
Edit: I forgot that you only pay the normal income rate on assets held for a short period, so they would have $1,620,000 after taxes.
Some suggestions, either online or local;
Bookclubs
Walking groups
Chess, board games, table top
Theater groups (meetup groups to go to the theater as a group)
Escape room group meetups.
Depending on if you are in a city or a smaller town the locals options will vary. I’d look at meetups site and browse local activities. For most any activity you will find a range of ages, but some will skew more one way than another.
Best of luck!
The crime stats and stories in this case are so bad they’d be comical if it didn’t represent desperate people.
Since 2019, police have logged 1,335 incidents in the vicinity of the restaurant on Oakport Street — more than any other location in Oakland, the newspaper reported.
That number includes nine robberies, two commercial burglaries, four domestic violence incidents and 1,174 car break-ins, according to Oakland police data shared with the Chronicle.
I saw elsewhere that a guy got robbed there, came back to do a news interview, and got robbed again. The crime stats mean basically a crime a day at that location.
The article says that steam showing a notice on snap installs that it isn’t an official package and to report errors to snap would be extreme. But that seems pretty reasonable to me, especially since the small package doesn’t include that in its own description. Is there any reason why that would be considered extreme, in the face of higher than normal error rates with the package, and lack of appropriate package description?
My Costco photo is 20 years old and looks nothing like me anymore, but when I asked for a new photo they said no. So obviously they aren’t looking closely at pictures.
Ants are the OG cooperative agent algorithms. Simulating ants use of pheromones to implement stigmergy path finding is a classic computer science algorithm.
Yeah, this is one of those situations I have mixed feelings on. On the one hand, in a perfect world what consenting adults do on their own time wouldn’t change perceptions of their competency or leadership.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world and executive leaders do carry the expectation to keep their private lives private, and if something is public it shouldn’t be controversial.
My two cents is that the guy was naive in thinking this wouldn’t undermines his executive role as leader of a campus. And naivety isn’t a great trait in a leader. But the president shouldn’t have made disparaging remarks about him and should simply have left it at a vague “differences in judgement.”
I read a NYT article on this and the videos included them having sex with the pornstars and they also published their own porn videos.
In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Gow and Ms. Wilson said that they believe they were fired over the videos, which included sex scenes together and with others under the username Sexy Happy Couple. Both said they felt it was wrong for the university to punish them over the videos, arguing that doing so infringes on their free speech rights.
Mr. Gow, 63, said he and his wife, 56, have made videos together for years but had decided recently to make them publicly available on porn websites and had been pleased by the response. They said they never mentioned the university or their jobs in the videos, several of which have racked up hundreds of thousands of views. The couple also has made a series of videos in which they cook meals with porn actors and then have sex.
The article also includes some basic legal history that doesn’t make it seem like they will have much recourse.
I look at the long arc of history and see that progress is not monotonic (always increasing or decreasing). We are experiencing setbacks to overcoming our challenges, as have those who came before us. But while we can read about years passing in a paragraph in a history book, we have to live and experience those years. And with all the challenges comes new technology and drive and awareness to solve problems. As unfortunate as it is trouble breeds innovation and commitment to change far better than comfort and easy times.
I highly recommend Stephen Tetlock’s book, super forecasting, who is the sponsor of the project you mention.
One method of forecasting that he identified as effective was using a spreadsheet to record events that might occur over the next 6-18 months along with an initial probability based on good judgement and the factors you quoted. Then, every day look for new information that adjusts the forecast up or down by some, usually small percent. Repeat, and the goal is you will trend towards a reasonable %. I omitted many details but that was the jist.
Now, that’s for forecasting on a short ish timeframe. There is a place for more open ended reasoning and imagination, but you have to be careful not to fall prey to your own biases.
This particular forecast of OPs feels like it is ignoring several long running trends in technology adoption and user behavior without giving events that would address them, and forecasts something they care about doing better in the long-term, a source of bias to watch. I tend to agree with you that I think elements of this forecast are flawed.
In that case, never mix business and family. 😂
I’m not sure about what the article is referencing, which is probably a little more exotic, but relay attacks are very common against keyless cars. Keyless cars are constantly pinging for their matching fob. A relay attack just involves a repeater antenna held outside the car that repeats the signal between the car and the fob inside the house. Since many people leave the fob near the front of the house, it works and allows thieves to enter and start the car. Canada has has a big problem with car thieves using relay attacks to then drive cars into shipping containers and then sell them overseas.