341–349 of 349 posts
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Fungi, like plants and animals, are eukaryotes. However, eukaryotes and bacteria occupy the same rung in the taxonomic divisions (they are domains), so it's the more appropriate correction. The third domain is prokaryotes.
My wikipedia fact checking tells me that the third domain is archaea which together with the bacteria are prokaryotes. Or did I read sth wrong?
Im thankful to have a job and a roof over my head and a little bit of savings. Not having to really worry about money still blows my mind now and then. Looking across the street every day in California and seeing the homelessness crisis in full swing is an ever present reminder of what this economy and this society can do to you if you slip up for even a second and / or have even a minor run of bad luck. Working in s…
I was lucky enough to have spent my youth in one of the five least expensive places to live in the United States, and I stayed. I can easily buy a home for $30,000 here, and I have done so a few times. I was fortunate enough to find a company where I live that wrote their major systems in assembler in the late 1960's; they use UNIX/Linux to glue modern systems to a vertical wall of technical debt. This is an endless…
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> Becoming one is a choice under your control To an extent. Some people are predisposed to addiction and the poor are much less likely to have the knowledge or support required to recognise or battle addiction.
I know that some people are predisposed to addiction. It's harder for them, sure, but becoming an addict is still a choice for them. I know some who chose to get and stay clean, too, despite being predisposed. I wager that poor people are far better at recognizing addiction than non-poor. I hired a stoner once, not recognizing it. He robbed the company blind to pay his dealer. Social workers are always trying to get…
In the end, you can say it is a choice, but what is a choice worth, if you don't know anything about preconditions (the knowledge, the impulse control, the education, the emotional point of reference, earlier experiences, etc). Not talking about how drugs affect your ability to choose and execute what you have chosen to do.
I'm thankful for existence itself. Sure, it's not always pleasant, but the mere fact that we perceive reality as we do is a fascinating rabbit hole, one that I wish I had discovered decades ago. The subjective experience of existence is one of the big unknowns left in this world, one that I don't think we'll ever truly understand. That's good though, because human curiosity is one of the wonderful, amazing things we…
I wish more people were aware that we are likely the only radio-using sapients in a 4'ish light year sphere around us [1] (4.4 ly for a 1MW broadcast, where the most powerful radio transmitter in the world is at 2MW). And that we're roughly in the center of the KBC Void [2], about a billion light years from the nearest "normal" baryonic density of the currently-known universe. We might not be alone inside the KBC Voi…
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I wish more people were aware that we are likely the only radio-using sapients in a 4'ish light year sphere around us [1] (4.4 ly for a 1MW broadcast, where the most powerful radio transmitter in the world is at 2MW). And that we're roughly in the center of the KBC Void [2], about a billion light years from the nearest "normal" baryonic density of the currently-known universe. We might not be alone inside the KBC Voi…
Maybe other sides of the universe is teaming with complex life but we live in an isolated island?
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Would we? It seems possible that some other sensation could be overloaded as well - ie seeing red where others see only blackness...
I mean, it seems clear we don't have any real consistent definition for qualia. I'd argue that every distinct color you can see is a different qualia, although an argument could be made for a single "color" qualia which takes on different forms.
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London really cleaned up in the 90s. There is still visible homeless, but nothing like US cities with homeless camps. Officially, there are a lot of "homeless" but far fewer "unsheltered"
I've lived in Seattle since the 70s. I never saw tents until recently.
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If you have talent, show up, and a clean criminal record, you can make it in the US without a problem. There’s more money than talent, meaning if you have talent, there are people ready to give you plenty of money. It’s not hard in and of itself. It says something that many people’s problem in the US is getting in their own way. People in other places in the world have far less mobility opportunities than we have her…
If you compare globally sure, if you compare with Europe, the data tells a different story. The US are 27th in social mobility behind all of the northwestern European nations with high taxation (data from the WEF, infographic from the site I link to). While Germany and the other European nations are far from perfect and I like some of the business aspects of the US, coming from money matters more in the US than in Eu…