Our thinking can be so twisted by religion. Imagine someone long ago wants to build a really tall tower. Nobody knows engineering, material science, etc. They just start stacking rocks on top of each other like they do when they made short buildings. Eventually it’s so tall and heavy that it’s no longer stable, one side sinks into the ground, and the whole thing falls over. And what’s their takeaway? Is it about learning from their mistake and trying again? No, it’s “God is punishing your hubris!” Religion just poisons the mind.

If it’s not causing any issues, don’t worry about it. If it seems to be causing a dependency or increased anxiety around sleeping alone, then maybe it’s not a good idea. There doesn’t seem to be any consensus among psychologists. Some like it, some hate it. So the best you’re going to be able to do is keep track of how it affects you both and change things up if it becomes a problem.

You’ve posted an article at a paywalled website. It appears to also be paywalled at archive.org. If you don’t want to get downvoted, provide some way to read the article for those of us who don’t subscribe to the atlantic.

I don’t know if these bills would help, but there is a need for something to be done. The daughter of a friend of mine was raped by a Lyft driver a few years ago. Going home from a party, she didn’t want to drive because she had been drinking. She thought Lyft was the safer option. It wasn’t.

Good to know. Also an easy problem to fix. Just use phenol free paper.

Huy Fong Sriracha. Just don’t even bother buying any other bottle of “sriracha” sauce. It’s not worth it. Your disappointment will be immeasurable and your day will be ruined.

Ukrainian flag - not political. Russian flag - political.

Israeli flag - not political. Palestinian flag - political.

I think that’s the point of the lawsuit. You can’t claim you’re “completely apolitical and non-biased” when you actually support one side of a conflict and punish your employees who support the other side.

A fact that I hadn’t realized. TIL.

I mean, orange was right there…

Really been enjoying Fallout London. Incredible work for a group of modders. The occasional bug doesn’t bother me much. My only complaint is it’s sometimes very hard to get from point A to point B on the map, and no explanation is given for why.

If one of our billionaires decided to dress up like a bat and beat up thugs it would be an improvement. Instead we get a dozen Lex Luthors and no batman.

For real. Who would have guessed the most realistic prediction from Star Trek was talking directly to the computer. Whereas the least realistic one is that a post-scarcity society would benefit average people.

Dr Borus? Is that you?

From Old World Blues in case you’re wondering.

I had a few tomato plants do well in the garden this year. With a pretty good amount of San Marzano, Cherry, and Early Girl tomatoes, juicing and reducing was the only practical way to deal with them. To do it efficiently I like to use a tomato juicer (mine looks something like this). I put the juice in a pot on the stove for an hour or two to reduce it to a sauce. It takes a little time, but if you have a bunch of ripe tomatoes you can make a banger of a sauce. Throw in some Italian herbs, salt, and a few hot pepper flakes and you’ve got my favorite sauce. I’ve been eating that on ravioli for a few weeks now and I think it’s great: sweet (from the cherry tomatoes) and full of flavor.

As far as efficiency goes, it does take some energy if you just evaporate the watery part on the stove. You could also let the water separate out from the tomatoes and just drain it off. That should make the reduction much faster.

Honestly, I just feel sorry for the little one. Life is unfair enough, but to get such a shitty start? I mean, these very early life experiences can set the tone for your whole life. Hopefully he gets placed with a family who can help him through that.

It’s a way to infantilize and ridicule the red team candidates that’s really hard for them to dismiss. They want to be perceived as strong, noble, divinely-appointed saviors of the morality of the country. Using ‘weird’ as an attack takes the wind out of their sails. And the only effective way to counter it is to embrace and transcend it, something the red team is incapable of doing.

From an article in WP

A central pillar of Trump’s campaign is the idea that liberals are perverted misfits who want to tear down American values. … [Trump supporters] were strong; libs were weak. They were right; libs were wrong…

“Weird” intrudes on that narrative. It doesn’t entirely upend it, but it does plant a seed of doubt. What if, instead of being admired or feared, they are instead being laughed at? What if, instead of edgelords, they are actually just the kids in the corner eating glue off their hands?

also

“He’s just a strange, weird dude,” newly-named vice presidential nominee Tim Walz (D) told an assembled group of 60,000 “White Dudes for Harris” at an online fundraiser last week. The Minnesota governor has been, if not the inventor of this tactic, its most skilled proponent.

(attempting to answer the question instead of shaming the questioner)

It might have helped solve the problem if we did it 50 or 60 years ago, along with global EMP strikes to disable all the vehicles and industrial equipment, and a global commitment to return to an agrarian low-energy lifestyle. And if you prioritized the most highly industrialized cities that produce the greatest carbon per capita. But the sad truth is that, right now, it’s already too late. We have already released so much carbon into the atmosphere that we are more or less guaranteed to see 4 degrees C above pre-industrial. And if you aren’t already retired you will probably see it in your lifetime. Along the way that triggers a series of cascading feedback loops which, all-told, will likely take the planet to about 10C above pre-industrial. We continue to release something like 40 billion metric tons per year. And the best CCS facility we have, in Iceland, can sequester about 4,000 tons per year. We are racing toward the cliff with the throttle at full speed and no corrupt government scientist is going to take away my truck or make me eat bugs.

And questions about who should die, who should be killed, and such don’t even really matter now. They sound immoral, but if the projections are right it looks like all of us who aren’t already old are going to die from climate change anyways. So pontificating on things that aren’t ever going to happen is just academic onanism.

Funny thing is, no matter how you arrange to do that it becomes a de-facto death ray. Stick a terawatt of solar panels in space, use the power to shine a laser/maser down to earth, then build a station to turn the laser power back to electricity? Great, until some hacker figures out how to control where the laser is pointed. Then you get Dr. Evil holding the world for ransom.

Did they train this chatbot on Donald Trump speeches?

one user asked the chatbot: “who would win in a fight, Howard the Duck or Batman?”.

The answer from the chatbot, verbatim, is:

Howard: I don’t think so. I think it’s just a matter of time before we get to the point where we’re going to be able to say, “Hey, you know what, we’ve got to do this. We’ve gotta do that.” And then we’ll have to figure out how to make it work. And that’s what I’ve been doing for a long time now, and I’m really excited about it. It’s a really exciting time for me, because I have a lot of friends who are in the UFC and they’re all fighting for the same thing, so I feel like I can do something really special for them. So I want to go out there and make sure that we do what we can to get the best out of each other. That’s the only way I know how. e’ve got to do this. We’ve gotta do that.” And then we’ll have to figure out how to make it work.

Thanks for the correction. I remembered seeing that number but didn’t analyze it in any depth. A more detailed analysis of the market, by Freddie Mac, concluded that there were four main drivers for the recent surge in prices, and investors weren’t on the list.

1. record low mortgage rates in 2020 and 2021, and the race to beat future rate increases;
2. limited supply from underbuilding and below average distressed sales;
3. an increase in first-time homebuyers due to favorable age demographics; and
4. increased migration from high-cost cities to areas that already had a housing shortage.

Institutional investors apparently even reduced their purchases in 23 - some of them were even net sellers - because of prices and interest rates. That doesn’t mean they aren’t still villians in this scenario. I don’t think big investors should own single family homes at all. But still they aren’t as big a force as my previous comment indicated.