IHeartBadCode

I think what’s wild is that particular group’s incredible thought process of “oh yeah, the current guy is just doing a hit job on this other guy because he’s running for President. He’s sending all these various agencies after him. blah blah blah…”

And I’m just like. Or you know, simple answer is that guy is doing crime stuff and ought not to be doing crime stuff. To really over simplify the most recent crime stuff. The crime was he wrote the wrong thing on the sheet of paper. You look at the paper, it says it’s for lawyer stuff. You look at the receipts shows the money went to hide sex stuff. Lawyer stuff ≠ hide sex stuff. Ta-da!

And a bit more detail. The whole argument that hiding sex stuff wasn’t political money. Literally a letter between crime guy and other person handling political stuff was, we need to hide this sex stuff otherwise that could hurt us in election stuff. Like I get it that there’s some folks wanting to believe that President guy is just mad at crime guy and wants to whatever him so that President guy can stay in office. But crime guy literally admitted crime stuff in letters he thought no one else would ever read. Crime guy is not a very smart crime guy.

I don’t like current guy, don’t get me wrong. But crime guy is an idiot. I just don’t want an idiot back as President. There’s just way too many people hitched to an idiot here and willing to go down with the ship. Crime guy is an idiot and he’s getting smacked with a lot of the crime shit he’s done because he’s an idiot. There’s not any other way to slice this. Crime guy is just not good at anything and is coasting on mom and dad money still. If anything, that Crime guy is still floating on some money is a testament to Crime guy’s book keeper.

Do you use autocomplete? AI in some of the various ways that’s being posited is just spicy autocomplete. You can run a pretty decent local AI on SSE2 instructions alone.

Now you don’t have to accept spicy-autocomplete just like you don’t have to accept plain jane-autocomplete. The choice is yours, Mozilla isn’t planning on spinning extra cycles in your CPU or GPU if you don’t want them spun.

But I distinctly remember the grumbles when Firefox brought local db ops into the browser to give it memory for forms. Lots of people didn’t like the notion of filling out a bank form or something and then that popping into a sqlite db.

So, your opinion, I don’t blame you. I don’t agree with your opinion, but I don’t blame you. Completely normal reaction. Don’t let folks tell you different. Just like we need the gas pedal for new things, we need the brake as well. I would hate to see you go and leave Firefox, BUT I would really hate you having to feel like something was forced upon you and you just had to grin and bear it.

Preheat and homogenization were not testing in these processes. Both are steps used in most US milk that would likely inactivate the virus. Moral of the story is still you are an idiot if you are drinking raw milk.

Fragments of the virus that are being found in about 20% of all milk sampled. These fragments have not been shown to be enough to make anyone sick. The fact that we’re finding fragments and not intact viruses in store bought milk is a good indication that the various processes used for milk in most locations is doing the job it was intended to do.

And most important of all: This is the current state of evidence gathered on this topic, that state could change with various factors at play and/or the addition of new evidence. Because apparently for some people they have forgotten that “things change as time progresses”.

For instance, this includes minerals for battery and other components to produce EVs and wind turbines – such as iron, lithium, and zinc

I found nothing within the IEA’s announcement that indicates a shortage of those three elements. Iron is like the fourth most abundant thing on the planet.

In fact, this story literally reports this whole thing all wrong. It’s not that there’s a shortage, it’s that the demand for renewables is vastly larger than what we’re mining for. Which “duh” we knew this already. The thing this report does is quantify it.

That said, the “human rights abuses” isn’t the IEA report. That comes from the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC).

Specifically, the BHRRC has tracked these for seven key minerals: bauxite, cobalt, copper, lithium, manganese, nickel and zinc. Companies and countries need these for renewable energy technology, and electrification of transport.

These aren’t just limited to the renewable industry. Copper specifically, you’ve got a lot of it in your walls and in the device that you are reading this comment on. We have always had issues with copper and it’s whack-a-mole for solutions to this. I’m not dismissing BHRRC’s claim here, it’s completely valid, but it’s valid if we do or do not do renewables. Either way, we still have to tackle this problem. EVs or not.

Of course, some companies were particularly complicit. Notably, BHRRC found that ten companies were associated with more than 50% of all allegations tracked since 2010

And these are the usual suspects who routinely look the other way in human right’s abuses. China, Mexico, Canada, and Switzerland this is the list of folks who drive a lot of the human rights abuses, it’s how it has been for quite some time now. That’s not to be dismissive to the other folks out there (because I know everyone is just biting to blame the United States somehow) but these four are usually getting their hand smacked. Now to be fair, it’s really only China and Switzerland that usually does not care one way or the other. Canada and Mexico are just the folks the US convinced to take the fall for their particular appetite.

For example, Tanzania is extracting manganese and graphite. However, he pointed out that it is producing none of the higher-value green tech items like electric cars or batteries that need these minerals

Third Congo war incoming. But yeah, seriously, imperialism might have officially ended after World War II, but western nations routinely do this kind of economic fuckening, because “hey at least they get to self-govern”. It’s what first world nations tell themselves to sleep better for what they do.

Avan also highlighted the IEA’s advice that companies and countries should shift emphasis to mineral recycling to meet the growing demand.

This really should have happened yesterday. But if they would do something today, that would actually be proactive about the situation. Of course, many first world nations when they see a problem respond with “come back when it’s a catastrophe.”

OVERALL This article is attempting to highlight that recycling is a very doable thing if governments actually invested in the infrastructure to do so and that if we actually recycled things, we could literally save ⅓ the overall cost for renewables. It’s just long term economic sense to recycle. But of course, that’s not short term economic sense. And so with shortages to meet demand on the horizon, new production is going to be demanded and that will in turn cause human rights violations.

They really worded the whole thing oddly and used the word shortage, like we’re running out, when they meant shortage as in “we can’t keep up without new production”. They got the right idea here, I just maybe would have worded all of it a bit differently.

I’ve submitted this before the International Criminal Court in The Hague. As to which protocol of the Geneva Convention this violates, all of them.

I mean I’ve been trying to formally request that ISO change the C API for send() to yeet() for sockets where connection reliability is not required at the network interface level.

Maybe I’m not Rusting enough.

It might run into some troubles along the way though.

When you’re against something you should stop financially support it.

Yes. But it should be said, it cannot just stop there. People need to indicate to their various governments that union busting should be prosecuted no matter the billionaire doing the busting or the third party they hired.

I think too often people rely on the “you should vote with your wallet” that they forget, we cannot buy our way out of social ills. Spending our money on the “correct” product and not spending it on the “incorrect” product isn’t a panacea. And worse it can breed superficial support in companies to simply convince you to buy more of their shit. I think we’ve made enough memes about Eddard Stark warning us that with Pride month, the rainbows are coming to social media.

I think that’s the key point. Not going to Starbucks is one thing BUT it cannot stop there, otherwise no Real ™ change is actually going to happen. Lots of people are just tangentially caring about the issue for lots of various reasons. We need to implement change at every level. People should talk to their mayor, their city council, governor, State assembly, and what not.

Starbucks spends money so they can see results quickly, and since us common folks are not wealthy beyond belief, we’ve got to take the long and time expensive route. It cannot just be “just stop spending your money there” that alone is never going to work and breeds even worse results, with ads just pretending they’re buddy buddy with you.

It’s a motion to dismiss that was granted under rules of the court. The rules cited by the defendant (The Secretary of State) in the motion to dismiss:

• Rule 12(b)(1) — The plaintiff did not present enough evidence to show that they have standing to bring the matter before the courts.
• Rule 12(b)(6) — The plaintiff did not present sufficient factual matter to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face .

The court sided with the plaintiff that sufficient evidence was indeed presented before the court to indicate that the plaintiff did indeed have standing, BUT their argument brought before the court failed to state a claim under either the APA (the Administrative Procedure
Act) or the First Amendment. Thus the court has accepted the motion to dismiss the case, citing:

A concrete injury is “foremost” among the standing requirements

Plaintiff could state in concrete terms the injury to be suffered by those affected by the two avenues of injury they (the plaintiff) had indicated. The plaintiff is the one who brought up the first amendment and the APA but failed to follow through on the argument before the court in terms of actual injury (a court CANNOT assume injury even ones that sound pretty obvious).

More importantly the first amendment issue brought before the court couldn’t be held. The court indicated that the Government has a vested interest (in the name of national security) to be all up in the business of people traveling here for work. But that the plaintiff did bring up a point about how that might also hurt their ability to work here, but failed to qualify it in their original argument (that basically means, “I don’t think this is a first amendment issue but you’ve got a point if you want to try something else.”)

The motion to dismiss is granted with perjury. The plaintiff cannot bring it back before the courts and cannot usually appeal the decision.

So yeah, the Judge sounds like he was interested in the issue being brought but the arguments that were critical to their case fell apart at the whole “for foreigners traveling here, the US has every right to monitor your social media accounts”. The argument that seemed to pique the judge’s interest was how that information might be used to remove business opportunities from people traveling here. Which is a good point because once a person is approved to work here in the US, the information obtained by the Visa application cannot be used to taint the work environment the person works in.

However, the plaintiff wasn’t able to provide a concrete way of how that would happen (that was outside of the “we’re arresting you and kicking you out” which the Government has a right to do). The thing is the plaintiff would need a way to connect the dots on how information obtained in the Visa might get back to their employer and then the employer keeps the person but alters their job based on that information released by the Government. If there is a manner by which that might happen, then yeah, that’s a no-no.

As a GenX myself, yes, I am a donkey.

You know really at this point, I blame God. Don’t blame the ants, blame the person who picked out the location for the picnic.

The US is #1 in spending as a percentage of National GDP on healthcare.

Also the US: is #47 in life expectancy.

The US is getting fucking robbed by their medical industry. Of course I expect nothing less from the nation that had AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, etc steal $400B for Internet they never built. Which is also the nation that spent $700B on banks to “save” them.

Damn, I need a loan from the bank of the American taxpayer.

Oops all rope.

Moral qualms about bringing a frivolous ambulance chasing lawsuit? Get a lumpy pillow and you’ll sleep better at night.

but this is Google, and they control Chrome, and this probably still won’t make people switch to Firefox

Yeah. People just simply will not do things that are in their best interest. This is literally the biggest issue that was had with IE. Inertia.

Except they are also selling it for $139.

So it isn’t “you’re the product” it’s them double dipping.

Does this really solve the ethical wicket of human embryo testing?

Subjectively, no. Objectively, yes. Just because it has enough properties to do things similar to an embryo, it has been shown that it is in fact NOT an actual embryo.

Is tricking stem cells into forming an embryo really that different from fertilizing an egg with a sperm cell to form an embryo?

Yes, very much so. Sperm and egg method is you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit. Which is less than ideal if a very narrow line of cells is all that you were interested in. Think of the ethical implications of taking a fetal tissue and indicating, “Oh well 90% of this isn’t what I wanted. Let’s slice that off and focus on this 10% I do want. Oh and freeze that shit I sliced off, someone may want it before it goes bad.” The tricking stem cells allows us to focus efforts so that the yield is much higher on what researchers want.

would this still develop into a functional human being if implanted into a womb?

No. It does not. No one has tried with humans but it’s been tried with primates. The uterus takes the embryo and plays along for a bit of time but after that, the body figures out the ruse and the whole thing comes apart, usually in fetal resorption. So while this method can produce particular lines of cells quite well, there is obvious things that are massively missing form our understanding of ovum to make this remotely successful. Can we overcome that technical deficit? ABSOLUTELY. Will we? Nah, it’s not likely.

Synthetic embryos serve a particular sticking point researchers have about human cell lines. Most governments allow human cell lines to exist for about five weeks (there’s particular exceptions to this that have more asterisks than the TOS for most social media sites, I’ll not go into them, we’re just going to stick to in general here). Thereafter, they must be destroyed. The problem is that if you need a particular line of cells that develops much later in the development stage, you need donor tissue which is much more expensive. With synthetic embryos you can “jump” right to what you need.

So this brings us back to the ethical part of this. Objectively, these cell lines being created by this process come very differently than what we harvest from actual donors. And there’s little likelihood that this process is going to develop much further than great for single targeted cell lines, piss poor for complex tissue/organs/actual humans. So objectively speaking, synthetic embryos today have very little chance to be confused for actual human embryos. Today’s synthetic embryos are just way too dissimilar to actual embryos that I think any ethical concerns are overblown. Yes, it has the name embryo in it, but that is solely a technical distinction and confusing it with actual embryos is a gross misunderstanding of the details.

Subjectively speaking, if I build a ship out of things that look like wood, act like wood, and feels like wood but is indeed not wood, did I build a wood ship? There’s a point where I can make fake wood look real enough that it would be hard to tell if it was wood or not. Likewise, it wouldn’t be impossible to develop synthetic embryos to a point that the body would know no difference between it and a real one. The only problem is that much like our wood thing, there are trees that are way cheaper to just grow and harvest than to sit here literally trying to reinvent the tree. The whole sperm/egg thing is just something nature has had a lot of time to perfect and it’s going to be a very pretty penny to mimic that. And everyone will find that there are very few takers that want to blow that kind of money.

What synthetic embryos solve is a need for particular lines of cells much later in the development phase of a human life. Those cells are expensive to obtain. Synthetic embryos are a cheaper means to getting SOME of them. But if the goal is an actual embryo, you still cannot beat the cost and effectiveness in your run of the mill fertilization. Additionally, if your goal is large amounts of tissue/full organs, likely that 3D printing is going to beat out this technology but until either one of them wins, we still have the expensive and complex system of being an organ donor and waiting till you get a fatal head injury. So synthetic embryos seem to only be able to serve the niche that they are more affordable than the current method. Could they do more? Oh yeah. Will they? Probably not. It was pretty expensive getting to where they are currently at, and going further there just seems to be better methods for the use cases they would serve.

Let’s do both?

That’s a fine take, but it ignores that for this particular issue the consumer isn’t the one dictating the terms. I can’t roll up to the McDonald’s and ask them to put my soda into the cup I hand them. Bioplastics and green plastics aren’t a thing that I directly can fund nor can I convince my politician to prioritize research into them. And the other alternatives outside of a brand new kind of plastic or a reusable cup have massive cons, not because they are inherently bad choices, but because companies rushing to implement those changes are usually executed poorly. I mean, the BEST way to reduce this aspect that’s immediately achievable by every single consumer is to just simply stop eating out completely.

I also think that having the mindset every day to live more sustainably and reduce personal waste is valuable

Absolutely. But there’s also the aspect that our society is build with some really messed up assumptions and we really need to address those. Like a lot of energy needs to be poured into those things more so than anything else. Like I said, easiest way to do away with all of the particular plastic involved in the story is to just simply stop giving any money to fast food, take away stuff, etc. Make your own sandwich, pack your own mashed potatoes, fix your own coffee to take with you.

But there’s a lot of people who are getting the full throat IRL experience that will say, “who the fuck has time for that shit?” And it’s not their fault they are caught up in the shit tsunami that is modern society. They’re just trying to survive. So things like “just stop eating there” is surprisingly, and fucked up, a big ask for them.

It can be eye-opening and a step toward bigger steps like voting, advocacy, boycotts, and conversations with others

And yeah, it’s good to have a conversation about it. But we ought to really also talk about the details of the matter because they’re important. Why isn’t that voting working? Why is there so little advocacy? Why are boycotts doomed to fail every time? There’s reasons for these things and I would argue that those reasons are way more important than shaming people who just want to eat a lunch today.

I would rather do something infinitesimally small than nothing

And I agree, but it needs to not stop there. And in fact the bigger picture items, the finer detail things, those things should be what lead the conversation and the stopping of plastic cups would be an outcome of that. Instead we have here a story that starts out with “you’re a bad person for using plastic cups” and goes absolutely nowhere with “why it be like that?” It’s just pure “you’re a bad person. End of story.” That’s not incredibly helpful to convince people that they should be mindful. People should indeed be mindful, but the shirt that a lot of us are currently wearing has a lot more contribution to the issue than the cup some person just received at the McDonald’s.

It’s literally the plastic straw thing again. And changing that didn’t really change much of the calculus then, because the straw thing contributes so little to the actual issue.