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ArbitraryValue

@ ArbitraryValue @sh.itjust.works

Posts
2
Comments
730
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Deleted

    What do you love the look of despite it being impractical, uncomfortable, or high maintenance?

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  • Relatively old cars. I'm not talking about antiques. I just don't want a screen or an automatic transmission in my car. Right now I need to buy a car and frankly the only ones I want are a manual-transmission BMW or a late-90's pickup. Either one would be a rather impractical choice.

    I used to own a 2008 BMW 328i with a manual transmission and sport suspension. It broke down, fixing it would have cost more than it was worth, but I think I should have just paid for the repairs because at least then I would have the same car I had been driving for 14 years rather than a car with the same problems of old age but no nostalgia value. (2018 was the last year than BMW made a manual 3-series, and also coincidentally the year that backup cameras and therefore computer screens became legally required in US cars.)

    Edit: I accidentally wrote that I didn't want a manual transmission. Totally wrong!

  • What things should I do in NYC next weekend?

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  • Take the commuter ferry on the East River from Brooklyn to the Bronx. It's far cheaper than the tourist ferries and the views are wonderful.

  • Anti-homeless architecture

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  • Benches are in neighborhoods where people live and work. There are a few (with the dividers that make it impossible to lie down on them) in front of the building where I live, so I'll accept that someone isn't a hypocrite if he has homeless people camping right outside his house.

  • is this a cockroach? SE Michigan, USA

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  • That's a roach but keep in mind that there are hundreds of cockroach species in the world and most of them aren't pests. A roach you see in nature probably couldn't even survive in your house. When I lived in rural New Hampshire I frequently saw cockroaches in the forest but never indoors.

    (If you're in an urban area, then chances are it's a pest.)

  • Anti-homeless architecture

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  • Three options:

    1. You support putting spikes where people might sleep.
    2. You have a homeless person camping in your living room.
    3. You're a hypocrite.

  • Man it hurts.

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  • I'm back in the U.S.S.RYou don't know how lucky you are, boyBack in the U.SBack in the U.SBack in the U.S.S.R

  • Man it hurts.

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  • Things that I wish web interface devs would just let me type, for God's sake:

    • years
    • months
    • state abbreviations

    Just validate the input after I type it in. Don't make me scroll through 50 different states or 100 different years.

  • New executive order puts all grants under political control

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  • I know people whose grants have been put on hold and these people don't even know if they have health insurance anymore, since grant money pays for that too. This is wild.

  • Donald Trump and Andrew Cuomo secretly talked on the phone as Trump weighs endorsement in N.Y.C. mayoral race: report

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  • If Trump wants Cuomo to win, then Trump should try endorsing Mamdani.

  • Beto O’Rourke’s Message to Blue-State Governors on Redistricting: “Quit F—ing Around and Waiting”

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  • The American tradition of democracy is exactly that - a set of traditions built up over centuries. It is more than just the law. Republicans have done and continue to do serious, permanent damage, and the main way in which they do that damage is by violating those traditions. If the goal is to stop the damage, the means of attaining that goal has to include the defense of traditions.

  • Beto O’Rourke’s Message to Blue-State Governors on Redistricting: “Quit F—ing Around and Waiting”

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  • This is the game now. There are no refs; no fouls are going to be called. There’s no consequence or penalty for Trump redrawing the maps in Texas mid-decade. Stop pretending like there is.

    The danger is not that Republicans will win. The danger is that the American tradition of democracy will be permanently damaged. Democrats can't avert that by becoming part of the problem. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that the only victory possible is a victory won despite refusing to resort to tactics of this sort. Anything else is a defeat.

  • Where did she go?

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  • A friend's husband keeps his phone on silent but also expects to be notified if plans change.

  • Palantir: The Most Evil Company

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  • I don't see why someone would need advanced technology in order to target civilians. Civilians are all over the place. They're hard to miss even if you try. I suppose the author would respond that the technology is being used to specifically target journalists but even that doesn't seem to be very useful when so many people have cell phones.

    Historically technology that made weapons more precise has reduced civilian casualties. One might argue that Palantir's technology is not yet good enough to do that but it is being used as if it is (which I suspect is true) but my bet is that in the long run technology like theirs will be like a modern precision bomb as compared to WWII-style carpet bombing.

  • ‘Grow up’: Conservative senators, economists slam Trump for firing labor stats chief

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  • It's a form of investment in the colloquial sense, but the relevant difference is between paying for physical objects that are completely outside of China's control once they're delivered to you and paying for shares of a Chinese company which may be fake and which the Chinese government might take away from you at any time.

    There's a tragedy of the commons going on with manufacturing. Moving all US manufacturing to China is a big risk for the entire USA, but moving one company's manufacturing to China is good for that company (or even required to be competitive). Meanwhile investing in Chinese firms is risky for each individual investor.

  • Trump Says He’ll Fire Labor Statistics Head After Weak Jobs Data

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  • I seem to recall that there is a proverb about how doing this is a great idea. Or is it the other way around?

  • Teaching

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  • I actually failed my molecular biology course, and I'm still a little salty about that. I understood molecular biology. I didn't memorize stuff like the order in which subunits bind to assemble the pre-replication complex.

    After ORC1-6 bind the origin of replication, Cdc6 is recruited. Cdc6 recruits the licensing factor Cdt1 and MCM2-7. Cdt1 binding and ATP hydrolysis by the ORC and Cdc6 load MCM2-7 onto DNA.

    Note that they're numbered but the numbers aren't related to the order in which they act. I don't need to know that. No one who doesn't do research specifically on the pre-replication complex needs to know that.

    (Excuses, excuses...)

  • Teaching

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  • I had an organic chemistry class in college where the average grade was a C. I was a chemistry major and I passed with a D. A couple of other would-be chemistry majors dropped the class. The professor actually told us that we were the worst group of students he had ever taught (and it was his last class before retirement).

    I don't think he was a bad teacher, because I certainly was a bad student.

    Also he talked about the need to cut down on burning fossil fuels, but less due to environmental concerns and more due to the lost opportunity to make plastics and other interesting substances out of them.

  • So true

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  • I write my texts like I'm writing a cover letter or a wedding invitation to flex on the less erudite and meticulous.

  • The Substack app sent a push notification promoting a Nazi newsletter to several users.

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  • I get permitting these blogs as part of a commitment to avoid censorship - someone with non-mainstream but far less extreme opinions can look at them and say "If Substack doesn't censor even these guys, it definitely won't censor me." With that said, I'm still surprised that Substack apparently doesn't manually curate its push notifications.