" those who had weapons were during that time required to register with the government so they could be called up as part of the militia."
As it is today. The only difference is that it is, in fact, automatic. If you are a citizen (or declared to want to be), not part of the National Guard or Naval Militia, and you are male from 17 to 44, you are part of the UNORGANIZED MILITIA.
10 U.S. Code  311 - Militia: composition and classes
Current through Pub. L. 114-38. (See Public Laws for the current Congress.) (a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard. (b) The classes of the militia areâ" (1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and (2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia. (Aug. 10, 1956, ch. 1041, 70A Stat. 14; Pub. L. 85â"861, Ââ1(7), Sept. 2, 1958, 72 Stat. 1439; Pub. L. 103â"160, div. A, title V, Ââ524(a), Nov. 30, 1993, 107 Stat. 1656.)
"...Given all that's happened, I've lost a lot of trust in shipping games like this..." You really mean to say "I've developed a more realistic appreciation of the process and how appropriate (or not) the various services are for shipping valuables, ie, not to ship something of high-value via the lowest-possible-cost method."
"...Once again, I'd like to offer my sincerest apologies to the USPS for assuming the worst in that these games were stolen. I should not have been so hasty to assume malicious intent. I'm a natural pessimist however, and if you've shared all of my disappointments in life, I suspect you might be as cynical as I am...." You had me at the first sentence, lost me at the last. That sort of "well my life has been so hard" excuse is bullshit. If you were a NATURAL PESSIMIST you'd have been a lot more cautious about how you ship goods worth (allegedly) $thousands$ in the first place.
"...There is a very real issue in that their machines are ripping the labels right off of packages...." You've got to be fucking kidding. I'm not a USPS employee, but to suggest that a service that handles a HALF BILLION pieces of mail every day - of how many different sizes? weights? grades? with how many different labels? address text/writing styles? - has a "very real issue" because your precious item lost a label is ridiculous. Special snowflake alert (which was obvious anyway from the immediate suspicion of theft, but I was giving him a pass on that because he was upset). As a side note: that number of pieces is shipped by Amazon...in a YEAR. So the USPS ships roughly 300x the pieces with around 2x the staff.
"There's a very real concern in that it's damn near impossible to get help when something goes wrong unless you manage to attract a lot of media attention." You let me know when you meet a government agency with a half-million employees distributed across 31000 locations that's any more responsive. Sorry, that's just life in the big city.
"My package was sitting in Atlanta, GA for well over a month with my address clearly visible right on the box." If he's talking about what was handwritten on the box, basically what's on the box is disregarded unless it's a label. Do you have any idea how many people ship stuff in old boxes, with all sorts of addresses, comments, or old information that they don't cross out?
I'll be clear: I'm glad this guy got his stuff. But his narcissism is verging on solipsism. Is everyone that ignorant/pollyanish about the real challenges involved in modern shipping?
"According to Prof Kripa Varanasi, who developed the slippery surface, the technology is completely safe." Generally we don't/shouldn't rely on the creator's word to vouch for the ultimate safely of products, particularly ingested chemicals...
I work in the logistics industry and truly, whatever you ship you should ASSUME it's going to be tipped on every side. To go from point A to point B, *generally* you should assume that's going to be handled (loaded/unloaded) at least 6-7 times - from you loading onto local truck, unloaded at local terminal, loaded onto route truck, unloaded at next terminal, loaded onto local truck, delivered at local place. All handled by people who, even if reasonable, are in a tremendous hurry all the time. Some - for example, if someone has to move your THING out of the way to unload his company's THING from the truck - doesn't give the faintest shit what happens to yours.
"Do not stack" and "No Stack", while some conscientious handlers will respect them, usually only cause one to hesitate before loading that 1000lb pallet atop your crate. If yours has a flat smooth top, it WILL get loaded on.
No, I wouldn't use fedex for such a shipment, either. I'd find a good local LTL firm where you could make special arrangements - the larger/more anonymous the freight company, the less anyone cares about your stuff: after all, if it's broken insurance will pay for it.
The article omits a critical point: that Swedish (Nordic) culture has an almost unique approach to authority that is particularly collaborative and consensual.
This model is not exportable to other contexts without a wholesale change of the destination culture as well...a bit more of an undertaking.
"...which would make it low enough to clear gas and sewer lines and to be undetectable at the surface.."
First, you probably mean DEEP enough?
And "undetectable at the surface" Sure - unless you nick things like the Aliso Canyon Gas Storage facility (which stores gas as far as 9000 feet down....) (cf https://www.washingtonpost.com...)
Deep-tunnel digging is pretty much 90% about dealing with the unexpected, because that's the part that fucks you quickly, catastrophically, and often lethally.
That said, I wish him the best. The only thing I see as a barrier is, as usual, the lawyers. I don't believe that the current legal regime as far as who owns/uses/profits from subterranean 'property' is anywhere near where it needs to be to cope with what he's talking about. It's very much a wild-west show, because most of the law seems to deal with MINERAL rights, not access/use rights. Can Musk tunnel 100' under my house without my permission? How about the state capital? What if he's 1000' down?
So what you're saying is that there haven't been radical near-instant (in geological terms) 'spikes' of warmth about every 120k for the last 3+ million years?
Funny, that's pretty much what that graph shows to me.
Let's be clear - I didn't blame it on the scientists.
I simply said that this is an example of "why people are taking scientists less seriously".
I totally agree it's science writing; part of it may be endemic to the democritization of information in the internet age. Formerly, these sorts of fascinating, cutting edge science information would be confined to the pages of discipline-specific journals (who were well able to cover it). If something was really big news, it might show up in the NYT or on the wire, to be parsed and conveyed to other publications by a few credible, experienced 'science' writers.
Now, there's a gajilliion science magazines out there (in print and web form) so there's no possible way that they can all have competent journalists. Further, the news outraces the discipline and shows up on everything from Gizmodo to Slashdot, at BEST getting a half-assed summary from someone who spent 2 mins speed-reading the exec summary of the (as you experienced) paywalled ACTUAL paper.
"Security best practices" would be to shitcan the entire idea of the internet of things as stupid and stop listening to marketing drones whose only motivation is to sell you some thing from which they can forever after farm data-demographic income.
The fact is that SJWs cannot seem to comprehend that inequality in result isn't itself proof of some bias, PARTICULARLY if the bias-factor isn't even part of the algorithm.
Further, the fear is that simple objective analysis will occur without human intervention, and thus lack someone to call racist, sexist etc (in essence, so they're pre-labeling the author of algorithms as racist, sexist etc.).
For example Your algorithm shows that people below a certain income level fail to repay loans at the normal rate, so it calculates the interest rate upcharge needed to offset the lower rates of repayment. Said upcharge seems to be applied more frequently to minority borrowers = "racism" (even though it's based entirely on income, not skin color)
"... to some speculation that the Earth may be losing its magnetic field -..." Since the data ultimately suggests that fluctuations are completely normal, I submit that this also starts to explain why people are taking scientists less and less seriously.
I suspect that the cadre of researchers crying that the sky was falling was probably a small percentage, yet because of the synergies of such predictions, commercial media, & natural human histrionics, THIS was the narrative being discussed in the broader discourse.
"There's a point where cars become too powerful. "
Nothing personal, but fuck your nanny-state ethics.
Either people are self-governing adults, capable of making their own decisions and living with the consequences, or they're not. The only people who aren't - ie the mentally disabled, and children - have their rights and privileges strongly circumscribed.
If they're not, and you're actually asserting that people AREN'T entitled to make their own decisions, then you've taken a giant step onto a mighty slippery slope. Don't get me wrong, there are elites (some genuinely benevolent, others merely camouflaging themselves as such) all over the world that insist they know better how people should live their lives than the stupid masses. We can't let people smoke, it's dangerous. We need to disincentivize people from eating fast food or drinking sugary drinks because they get fat.
I don't think you'd have to look far today to find people who believe democracy itself is fundamentally dangerous, and should be curtailed to some degree (people of BOTH parties, curiously).
I do *not* subscribe to your 'we need to wrap everything in a giant safety net' philosophy, as to me its obvious that it's not far until certain essential liberties start disappearing "for our own good".
Please share the link where it's proved he "took money" from the Russians? Smells like a "fact" pulled from your ass.
It sounds like he raised a tit-for-tat subject, probably saying that if Trump was elected, the sanctions would be lifted. That was at the very least wrong, ahead of the inauguration, if not outright illegal.
No need to make it more than that by inventing 'extra shit'.
...as much as I'd like to strongly disagree with him, I'm simply not going to go after something a parent says after losing a child. No matter how dumb or self-destructive the child was, etc.
That person is grasping at whatever straws they can to maintain their sanity. They're out of bounds.
Now, I would take to task the editor(s) of the Indianapolis Star for printing that shit. At a certain point, morally, one would have to say "You know, maybe that doesn't need to be in our article."
Slashdot Mirror
...being really good at one thing (ie some particular nuance of tech) doesn't automagically make you an expert at every other thing?
Someone please also communicate that to Hollywood.
" those who had weapons were during that time required to register with the government so they could be called up as part of the militia."
As it is today.
The only difference is that it is, in fact, automatic. If you are a citizen (or declared to want to be), not part of the National Guard or Naval Militia, and you are male from 17 to 44, you are part of the UNORGANIZED MILITIA.
10 U.S. Code  311 - Militia: composition and classes
Current through Pub. L. 114-38. (See Public Laws for the current Congress.)
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia areâ"
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.
(Aug. 10, 1956, ch. 1041, 70A Stat. 14; Pub. L. 85â"861, Ââ1(7), Sept. 2, 1958, 72 Stat. 1439; Pub. L. 103â"160, div. A, title V, Ââ524(a), Nov. 30, 1993, 107 Stat. 1656.)
"...Given all that's happened, I've lost a lot of trust in shipping games like this..."
You really mean to say "I've developed a more realistic appreciation of the process and how appropriate (or not) the various services are for shipping valuables, ie, not to ship something of high-value via the lowest-possible-cost method."
"...Once again, I'd like to offer my sincerest apologies to the USPS for assuming the worst in that these games were stolen. I should not have been so hasty to assume malicious intent.
I'm a natural pessimist however, and if you've shared all of my disappointments in life, I suspect you might be as cynical as I am...."
You had me at the first sentence, lost me at the last. That sort of "well my life has been so hard" excuse is bullshit. If you were a NATURAL PESSIMIST you'd have been a lot more cautious about how you ship goods worth (allegedly) $thousands$ in the first place.
"...There is a very real issue in that their machines are ripping the labels right off of packages...."
You've got to be fucking kidding. I'm not a USPS employee, but to suggest that a service that handles a HALF BILLION pieces of mail every day - of how many different sizes? weights? grades? with how many different labels? address text/writing styles? - has a "very real issue" because your precious item lost a label is ridiculous. Special snowflake alert (which was obvious anyway from the immediate suspicion of theft, but I was giving him a pass on that because he was upset).
As a side note: that number of pieces is shipped by Amazon...in a YEAR. So the USPS ships roughly 300x the pieces with around 2x the staff.
"There's a very real concern in that it's damn near impossible to get help when something goes wrong unless you manage to attract a lot of media attention."
You let me know when you meet a government agency with a half-million employees distributed across 31000 locations that's any more responsive. Sorry, that's just life in the big city.
"My package was sitting in Atlanta, GA for well over a month with my address clearly visible right on the box."
If he's talking about what was handwritten on the box, basically what's on the box is disregarded unless it's a label. Do you have any idea how many people ship stuff in old boxes, with all sorts of addresses, comments, or old information that they don't cross out?
I'll be clear: I'm glad this guy got his stuff. But his narcissism is verging on solipsism. Is everyone that ignorant/pollyanish about the real challenges involved in modern shipping?
...the market value of a significant fraction of the worlds anime, hentai, and furry porn
Good to know, I guess?
I work in an industry that believes if it's not important enough for YOU to pack correctly and safely, it's not our problem to babysit your stuff.
Sorry, your "super important package" is precisely as important to us as everyone else's.
I googled "Renminbi", all I got was links to currency fixing.
No, I can't say we'd miss monopoly money that someone else pretends is currency.
"According to Prof Kripa Varanasi, who developed the slippery surface, the technology is completely safe."
Generally we don't/shouldn't rely on the creator's word to vouch for the ultimate safely of products, particularly ingested chemicals...
97% of US tourism is DOMESTIC. (http://www.eturbonews.com/53328/research-domestic-tourism-significantly-dominates-us-tourism-mar)
Fairly few people give the faintest shit that you come and visit, or don't.
The US economy doesn't quiver the slightest without your euros, rand, pesos, or whatever.
"Skyrocketing" ha ha that's funny.
Most American tourism is domestic. (nearly 97%)
Your failure to show up won't matter to anyone.
I work in the logistics industry and truly, whatever you ship you should ASSUME it's going to be tipped on every side. To go from point A to point B, *generally* you should assume that's going to be handled (loaded/unloaded) at least 6-7 times - from you loading onto local truck, unloaded at local terminal, loaded onto route truck, unloaded at next terminal, loaded onto local truck, delivered at local place.
All handled by people who, even if reasonable, are in a tremendous hurry all the time. Some - for example, if someone has to move your THING out of the way to unload his company's THING from the truck - doesn't give the faintest shit what happens to yours.
"Do not stack" and "No Stack", while some conscientious handlers will respect them, usually only cause one to hesitate before loading that 1000lb pallet atop your crate. If yours has a flat smooth top, it WILL get loaded on.
No, I wouldn't use fedex for such a shipment, either. I'd find a good local LTL firm where you could make special arrangements - the larger/more anonymous the freight company, the less anyone cares about your stuff: after all, if it's broken insurance will pay for it.
As an American, I can say honestly: we're perfectly fine that you go somewhere else.
...then you're a fucking MORON not sending it fedex, and/or insured.
Dipshits.
20 years of dev, and they're at version 0.182.
The article omits a critical point: that Swedish (Nordic) culture has an almost unique approach to authority that is particularly collaborative and consensual.
This model is not exportable to other contexts without a wholesale change of the destination culture as well...a bit more of an undertaking.
Cf the work by Geert Hofstede
Not always a bad thing.
Bad Lip Reading are far more entertaining than the actual text of the presidential debates, for example.
"...which would make it low enough to clear gas and sewer lines and to be undetectable at the surface.."
First, you probably mean DEEP enough?
And "undetectable at the surface" Sure - unless you nick things like the Aliso Canyon Gas Storage facility (which stores gas as far as 9000 feet down....)
(cf https://www.washingtonpost.com...)
Deep-tunnel digging is pretty much 90% about dealing with the unexpected, because that's the part that fucks you quickly, catastrophically, and often lethally.
That said, I wish him the best. The only thing I see as a barrier is, as usual, the lawyers. I don't believe that the current legal regime as far as who owns/uses/profits from subterranean 'property' is anywhere near where it needs to be to cope with what he's talking about. It's very much a wild-west show, because most of the law seems to deal with MINERAL rights, not access/use rights. Can Musk tunnel 100' under my house without my permission? How about the state capital? What if he's 1000' down?
Good luck, Elon.
Seriously, at what point do we finally just let stupid people kill themselves?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...
So what you're saying is that there haven't been radical near-instant (in geological terms) 'spikes' of warmth about every 120k for the last 3+ million years?
Funny, that's pretty much what that graph shows to me.
Let's be clear - I didn't blame it on the scientists.
I simply said that this is an example of "why people are taking scientists less seriously".
I totally agree it's science writing; part of it may be endemic to the democritization of information in the internet age. Formerly, these sorts of fascinating, cutting edge science information would be confined to the pages of discipline-specific journals (who were well able to cover it). If something was really big news, it might show up in the NYT or on the wire, to be parsed and conveyed to other publications by a few credible, experienced 'science' writers.
Now, there's a gajilliion science magazines out there (in print and web form) so there's no possible way that they can all have competent journalists. Further, the news outraces the discipline and shows up on everything from Gizmodo to Slashdot, at BEST getting a half-assed summary from someone who spent 2 mins speed-reading the exec summary of the (as you experienced) paywalled ACTUAL paper.
"Security best practices" would be to shitcan the entire idea of the internet of things as stupid and stop listening to marketing drones whose only motivation is to sell you some thing from which they can forever after farm data-demographic income.
The fact is that SJWs cannot seem to comprehend that inequality in result isn't itself proof of some bias, PARTICULARLY if the bias-factor isn't even part of the algorithm.
Further, the fear is that simple objective analysis will occur without human intervention, and thus lack someone to call racist, sexist etc (in essence, so they're pre-labeling the author of algorithms as racist, sexist etc.).
For example
Your algorithm shows that people below a certain income level fail to repay loans at the normal rate, so it calculates the interest rate upcharge needed to offset the lower rates of repayment. Said upcharge seems to be applied more frequently to minority borrowers = "racism" (even though it's based entirely on income, not skin color)
"... to some speculation that the Earth may be losing its magnetic field -..."
Since the data ultimately suggests that fluctuations are completely normal, I submit that this also starts to explain why people are taking scientists less and less seriously.
I suspect that the cadre of researchers crying that the sky was falling was probably a small percentage, yet because of the synergies of such predictions, commercial media, & natural human histrionics, THIS was the narrative being discussed in the broader discourse.
Cf the Cry Wolf syndrome
"There's a point where cars become too powerful. "
Nothing personal, but fuck your nanny-state ethics.
Either people are self-governing adults, capable of making their own decisions and living with the consequences, or they're not. The only people who aren't - ie the mentally disabled, and children - have their rights and privileges strongly circumscribed.
If they're not, and you're actually asserting that people AREN'T entitled to make their own decisions, then you've taken a giant step onto a mighty slippery slope. Don't get me wrong, there are elites (some genuinely benevolent, others merely camouflaging themselves as such) all over the world that insist they know better how people should live their lives than the stupid masses. We can't let people smoke, it's dangerous. We need to disincentivize people from eating fast food or drinking sugary drinks because they get fat.
I don't think you'd have to look far today to find people who believe democracy itself is fundamentally dangerous, and should be curtailed to some degree (people of BOTH parties, curiously).
I do *not* subscribe to your 'we need to wrap everything in a giant safety net' philosophy, as to me its obvious that it's not far until certain essential liberties start disappearing "for our own good".
Please share the link where it's proved he "took money" from the Russians? Smells like a "fact" pulled from your ass.
It sounds like he raised a tit-for-tat subject, probably saying that if Trump was elected, the sanctions would be lifted. That was at the very least wrong, ahead of the inauguration, if not outright illegal.
No need to make it more than that by inventing 'extra shit'.
...as much as I'd like to strongly disagree with him, I'm simply not going to go after something a parent says after losing a child. No matter how dumb or self-destructive the child was, etc.
That person is grasping at whatever straws they can to maintain their sanity. They're out of bounds.
Now, I would take to task the editor(s) of the Indianapolis Star for printing that shit. At a certain point, morally, one would have to say "You know, maybe that doesn't need to be in our article."