This is a little aside from the topic at hand but do you have any links or literature to expound on the 90s media blitz you mention? I was born in 87 and so grew up with only a faint impression of the 80s through what was lingering into the 90s. From talking to people older than me and looking at various media I can't help feeling like society took a hard turn in the 80s and through-out the 90s to where we are today. I've largely thought that it was due to a combination of technology and corporations/consumerism but I've never read or heard anyone else make that link until your comment.
Well, I think it's probably that we live in an economy that has been exponentially expanding for centuries. Workers are producing more, information is flowing faster, and everything is just moving more quickly.
I think what we have is the result of trying to optimize for sales and profits. You must always sell more this quarter than last quarter. It's just picked up, year by year over the decades.
Besides, I've always heard that society took a hard turn after WWII. All those factories had to keep producing something, so they reconfigured to producing consumer goods.
About 5 or 6 years ago towards the end of my undergrad my professor picked up on this and we held some mock UN Climate assemblies using this tool.[1] The class divided up into first world, developing, and poorer nations and each had to bring their needs to the table while trying to compromise. I got to actually lead a session at MIT for some incoming freshman which was fun.
The dashboard is super handy to drive home the numbers on our energy production/use and its effect on the climate but the workshop really drives home the political implications and how hard it will be to actually implement these changes.
> The class divided up into first world, developing, and poorer nations and each had to bring their needs to the table while trying to compromise.
Modeling the debate on the dimension of national wealth seems like a good idea. I'm curious, was there any discussion about potential value in modeling on other dimensions, such as political affiliation?
Not that I know of. We were just running off the materials En-Roads provided. From what I remember, though, each bloc is given cues as to what industries and population they represent which then plays into their arguments. So it isn't outright said that someone should argue a conservative or liberal angle, but knowing you need to defend your nation's industrial production or vulnerable communities lends itself towards some political talking points on one side or the other.
I dunno, on the other hand, I got a B.S. in Ecology and have about 5 years of experience doing field work, long term monitoring, and data analysis and report writing on said research. Ostensibly that should be plenty of experience to prove I know my field and can learn new methods and skills related to it. Despite that I can't seem to find anything that isn't more seasonal work below my worth now or wanting a Masters degree even though I have plenty of real-world experience.
I agree that there's some serious gap between steps 1 and 2, but I did alright in finding internships and experience and still can't find squat.I admit I knew going into my undergrad that a Masters would be needed to find a /good/ job, but I didn't think I'd need one to find any job at all. I'm sure there are a multitude of reasons to explain it, but this job market blows. I never want to hear someone tell me they can't find good employees or fill positions fast enough when I apply to five or six jobs at a time every week and don't even get a rejection email from half of them, let alone an interview.
The real sad state is why is that site uploaded as a reddit video? Instead of linking to the original content it's a video of someone else clicking through? As for the Smithsonian site, I've got AdBlock, uBlock, and ScriptSafe running so I didn't get anything too obnoxious, but it is pretty pitiful that we need that many add-ons just to browse the web.
Super fun to play with! The first time I messed with this a week ago I had no clue what I was doing and didn't accomplish much. Giving it a second go I'm starting to get the hang of it and coming up with some weird and fun stuff.
I think my two immediate ideas would be 1) a line type that might be a sustain or held open gate and 2) maybe a mixing list with all the lines on it so that you can selectively mute/unmute paths.
I played a little bit with Slang a week ago too, looking forward to messing with the more options in there. Seems like you're into a lot of cool stuff, thanks for making this all!
Given what you say about wind farms being placed on traditional farms, I wonder if the localized warming the paper discusses would actually be a benefit to the crops. It could extend growing season just a bit more and maybe help buffer against frosts and cold-snaps.
A lot of farms already use wind turbines to keep freezes away as long as they can. They’re all over California, mostly in orange fields. Some places used to even burn oil at night.
Advice on a good mail service? I've got one foot in the door of really increasing my privacy online but one is still stuck behind with Google products.
I think cockmail would reflect poorly on my professional image, and I'm not really confident my friends would be able to take me seriously with that domain, but sure.
Seconding Fastmail if you want a good mail provider. They also provide calandars, contacts, notes and file storage in the package, but obviously can't match the level of integration that Google products have with everything.
For a while now I've felt like I've just been trolling the same stale corners of the internet while learning nothing and not really being entertained but out of boredom keep refreshing the same junk. (Probably says more about my own habits and life and use of time than the web, but that's another story) I really enjoyed reading this more than anything else I've come across in a while and it's given me a bit to think on now. Thanks for posting it!
Personally I (30 years old now) went to Catholic school (K-12) and learned cursive somewhere around 2nd or 3rd grade and was forced to write in cursive until I graduated 8th grade. Most of the time as a kid I hated it and wished I could write in block letters and once I hit freshman year of high school I never looked back. Fast forward through four years of high school and three gap years when as a freshman in college I realized I really missed writing in cursive. After a pretty rocky few weeks of abysmal looking script I got back into the groove and took four years of notes in handwriting and continue to journal and write notes and letters in cursive.
I've always been somewhat artistic and take a lot of pride in my handwriting as I would a drawing. I look at others' writing to see how they draw letters I like and try to incorporate it into my own style. I take my time writing each letter and word and try to make it as consistent and beautiful as I can (and while others compliment me on my writing I'm always a bit dissatisfied) and generally take a lot of pleasure in the simple act of writing. For me it's a means of expression for myself.
Despite all that, I've tried really hard to come up with defenses for teaching it in schools much like I was taught and I generally come up pretty empty handed. Other than reading some random bits of cursive here or there in our society there really is little need for it. I'd like to think that its artistic merits are enough to justify it, in giving kids a chance to express themselves, but I doubt most kids appreciate it for that - even I hated it as a child. I'd like to say it will help improve people's writing, but frankly most people's writing I see, cursive or otherwise, looks like, as Sister Anne back in 7th grade would say, chicken scratch. As a piece of tradition which unites us as a thread through previous generations I do like it, in a way it's a cultural link to my parents, grandparents, and beyond, but that doesn't necessarily stand as a great argument against more practical skills that could be taught in that time. If the opportunity cost of teaching it can be ignored, though, it doesn't seem otherwise harmful to keep teaching it for the sake of tradition. Maybe keep teaching it but not spend as much time on it to satisfy all camps?
I'd rather just have junior high and high schools offer a calligraphy elective. That'll allow people to learn it for its artistic merits if they want to without having to bog down the elementary school curriculum.
And instead of teaching people pure block letters, teach them some form of italics or D'Nealian. That offers some of the aesthetic advantages of cursive without the unreadability.
(interestingly enough, my elementary school in the early '90s taught D'Nealian and cursive, but no pure block letters)
I write in block letters since the senior year of highschool. I need it to be able to understand my own writting.
I didn't like it then, but now with my sons I see the use of it. It teaches them attention to detail, observation, patience, fine hand dexterity, spatial references.
Even if they don't ever use it again I find is an extremely useful and powerful tool for a 5 year old.
Ever since I took a technical drawing course the sophmore year of high school, I haven't wanted to write in anything other than draftsman's block letters. I always had atrocious handwriting, cursive or otherwise, but at least now I and others can read what I write.
I'm curious when self-driving cars become common place how the law will react to it. It's my assumption that the law will still require a driver to be sober in the event that manual control is needed, though I suppose if the car is driving itself perfectly fine police would have no reasonable grounds to pull anyone over and discover they're drunk in the first place.
> though I suppose if the car is driving itself perfectly fine police would have no reasonable grounds to pull anyone over and discover they're drunk in the first place.
I can't speak for America, but here (Australia) I'd guess the vast majority of drunk driving tickets are from booze busses. I can't even remember the last time I saw somebody pulled over and breathalysed.
Could you elaborate? What's a booze bus? In the US, It's a pretty common occurrence to see someone pulled over and breathalyzed if they're driving erratically.
A booze bus is a random breath test - the police have labelled busses that they park on the road. I believe if you blow over the limit then you get on the bus and are tested again in 30 minutes.
This may be the case in Melbourne - in Sydney cops aggressively breath test anyone who looks "suspect" (eg. P plates, any visible modifications, male w/ long hair, athletic wear) or who is "the right person at the right time" (say, if you're driving a utility around 4-5pm - many tradeworkers have a beer or two after work before going home).
Very soon. Some countries, such as Germany, already discussed rules around self driving cars. In countries with a strong car lobby it won't take long until laws are in place that provide self driving cars without human interaction (once this is safely possible). Otherwise it's not much of a selling argument.
Insurances are also very active developing models around it, so it shouldn't take too long from when we first see that car manufacturers can actually demonstrate the capabilities.
