Viewing profile — thomas_howland

I have no idea why an American should care one iota about some abstruse ethnic conflict literally on the other side of the world. You are spectacularly unlikely to be able to figur…

That ignores the role of actual social networks and social proof in the construction of consensus reality. "Our" AI says it's real, and "your" AI says it's fake, and one can debate…

The other thing is that because of CAFE standards, there is convergent evolution towards maximally aerodynamic blobs.

The point is that after you have requested a lawyer they are obliged to refrain from questioning you.

It appears by "safety concerns" the author means "right wingers might be able to chat on the platform". I'm not sure Discord wants to put themselves in the position of weaponizing …

Depending on how underwithheld you are, you can avoid tax underpayment penalties.

Be less sensitive. The role of manichaeism in art is underappreciated.

The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.

Approximately zero of those are unlawful. "Off-year elections"? Really? A high vote count is not an unmitigated good.

Single family homes are historically how populations insulate themselves from the consequences of the policies the NYT advocates. On a macro scale, they're a defensive architecture…

Not that surprising; can you recognize random Bollywood stars?

Exactly. "We don't store your picture, we store an abstracted entity that allows us to recognize your picture in the future." The latter part is what people are concerned about any…

There is also the fact that Tesla purchasers tend to be from high socioeconomic classes, even more so than the baseline (extremely predictive) education / occupational category / c…

Source? Noncompetes are disallowed in CA, and federal (and probably state) law prohibits a ban on employees sharing salary information amongst themselves. But AFAIK there is no dir…

How is "software to run dollar stores" different from generic retailing software?

It's far from "government barely existing". They exist in minimal form solely to extract resources from any remaining piece of value in the city. Eg: "Then earlier this year, he go…

Hand-harvestable-only crops like lettuce and tomatoes. Basically the CA Central Valley.

We are absolutely not. Productive farmland in the USA is fairly expensive and farmers are extremely interested in preserving its value. Most "destroyed" topsoil is due to eg suburb…

The amount of labor involved in grain crops like barley per dollar of output is minimal already - the guy running the tractor/combine/etc is mostly making sure nothing breaks and k…

So do most contractors.

There is a huge difference between taking a loan "on someone's behalf" (as their representative, eg by someone with power-of-attorney) versus via impersonating them. The former is …

This is very silly. FFLs are already prohibited from selling to abusive spouses (if there is any sort of domestic violence conviction or restraining order) and the mentally ill. Th…

I don't see this in terms of whether tech co's should "ban hate speech". I see it in terms of whether they should decide to turn themselves and their employees into political targe…

Temporarily at best. They have been active targets for Dem takeover for decades and absent massive population shifts the demographics will fairly shortly ensure that occurs.

I would be extremely annoyed if my mortgage or credit card company actually tried to foist some advise on me.