To be fair, ICE apparently prefers ramming cars to pulling them over

Let’s say I believe you. If that’s the case, why are AI companies still scraping everything?

As someone who makes and uses software, I feel it is not okay to steal source code. I wouldn’t feel okay with myself getting something for free when it’s based on the stolen work of tens of thousands of people

AI companies aren’t respecting crawler blocking. They’re actively working to ensure their crawlers bypass any anti-crawler protections

As a side note, these efforts help AI in the long-term. If we can poison LLMs, then you can guarantee a state actor can as well. AI needs to be able to weather training data attacks, otherwise they become an easily manipulated propaganda tool

How about the fact he used his status as a conservative voice to skip the line and get priority experimental cancer treatments? Not only did he die, but somewhere out there there is another person dead or dying because they got bumped from the treatment

It became worthless in 1973 when they awarded it to Henry Kissinger

Kissinger was a war mongering piece of shit. Untold number of people died horribly violent deaths because of him. Small pox is more deserving of a peace prize than Kissinger, because at least it kills everyone equally. Kissinger targeted the poorest and most vulnerable

I look forward to someday pissing on his grave

There is a fundamental psychological difference between Trump and me. I can’t imagine getting any joy out of a trophy I did nothing to earn

Putin, at least, I can kind of understand. It was a power play. He did it to prove he could rob someone of their most prized possession in front of their face, with zero consequences

US surveillance is far more effective than North Korea or Russia’s domestic surveillance

Only China is in the same realm in terms of ability to surveil citizens. They’re just more open about using it for low-level offenses

The choice does exist, but it gets harder and harder to go without a phone

Many jobs expect us to be available at all hours. Younger generations cannot navigate without maps. Phones are also the primary way we record/observe ICE. They’re also our calendar/organizer, notebook, and many other things

Sure, we can have an independent GPS, camera, calendar, and notepad, but the barrier keeps getting higher

We need to develop counter measures, and long-term pass strong laws banning this level of government surveillance

This is fascism.

People are dying. People will continue to die. I’m saddened and scared by what is happening

Anyone who agrees with this should not post that opinion online in a way that can be tied back to them. It can be used to remove you as a juror

Really salting the wound for anyone working in US oil production, which is a lot considering the US is the world’s largest crude exporter

It looks like this chart is based on mass, rather than number. By number hydrogen is >90% by itself

Banned from community

Apparently the mods disagree lol

I remember that being a big debate among Japanese news outlets in 2016, whether or not to directly translate, or translate the meaning, comprehensively. Unfortunately many outlets fell on the “comprehensive” side of the argument

Why would they blame the poor? The need the poor to be their excuse for getting a bailout. Not sure how they’ll sell it yet, but somehow all the AI companies will get bailouts to “help the poor” through our upcoming difficult economic times

Considering the human eye is basically backwards, I always found it funny people would try to use it as an example of an intelligent creator

Like we seriously have all the working bits in the path of light, permanently blocking our vision in spots. We just hide it with some post-production brain magic, and I’m supposed to believe that’s evidence of an intelligent creator?

The more likely explanation—related to tech—is that we don’t need kids anymore

While that’s certainly a contributing factor worldwide, I think the data contradicts it quite a bit. Japan, as an example, has the elderly heavily rely on their children as a retirement plan. Far more so than countries like the US that has a higher birthrate. Also include that while undeveloped countries like Kenya have some of the highest birthrates in the world, it’s far less than similarly developed countries had 100 years ago

that’s a much lesser concern because I seriously doubt humans of the past thought that hard about such things when living to 40 was considered amazing

There is a bit of a misconception there with average life expectancy. Once you made it to adulthood, your life expectancy was far higher than would be expected from an average life expectancy of ~40. It was brought down heavily by all the young deaths

Now we have birrh control and—in Western societies—stability/safety is much more likely if you don’t have kids. We’ve basically flipped the script on our evolution.

I don’t doubt this is a strong factor, but if it were the largest factor, wouldn’t we expect countries with strong social programs like Norway to have much higher birth rates? I suppose those social programs would tend to correlate with birth control

Right, which is why I specified most important factor. I put it in the hypothesis to be more prominent, but perhaps I should have bolded it?

Did you read that article? I think you’re misunderstanding the situation

What he’s describing is very real. The Frontline documentary about it, referenced in the article, is excellent

With countries as homogenous as Japan and South Korea, I don’t see racism having a statistically significant effect

Sexism is an issue in both cultures, but if that is a major factor why is Japan’s fertility rate right between Spain and Finland?

Work culture in South Korea is certainly problematic, although I would again bring up Spain and Finland. I would also note Japan’s work culture has had a massive shift over the past couple decades. The average Japanese worker works far fewer hours than the average American worker, and fewer than the OECD average. The '90s stereotypes about Japanese work culture are no longer true

Why would you want to have kids in South Korea‽

Here’s a better question: Why would you want to have kids in North Korea?

The fertility rate in the north is more than double the South, but here’s a more interesting fact: The birthrate in the North has been steadily declining for decades in almost lockstep with the South (note: there is a bit of wonkiness with a couple years in both data sources. Ignore the outliers), just at a slightly slower pace

I used this site to compare country pairs. With the Koreas you can see shared inflection points, such as in 1981, and a general trend line that looks the same

Then compare Russia and Ukraine. A much more volatile fertility rate. In 1986/1987, both countries share a local maximum, followed by a very sharp decline that continues until a local minimum right around 2000. We don’t see this pattern with the others (although they all seem to follow the same trend)

Finally you have the US and Canada. Shared local maximum in 1990/1991, and again in 2008. Both closely follow each other in terms of fertility rate inflection points, but not at the some times as other pairs

Also of note: All the lowest fertility rate countries (South Korea, Taiwan, and China) are geographically near each other, with very similar primary industries - high-tech manufacturing

My hypothesis: The most important factor is environmental. Likely an air pollutant of some kind (maybe several kinds)

I don’t have much evidence for this other than correlated fertility rates, but it’s the only thing I can think of that fits the data