litchralee

@litchralee@sh.itjust.works

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's 54 degrees Fahrenheit (12 Celsius), raining moderately hard, the rain is cold, and there's a guy blowing around wet leaves with a leaf blower. What the hell is the obsession with leaf blowers?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  As it happens, it’s about 10 C (50 F) near me, and I did actually think about using my leaf blower for a very specific purpose in the rain: blowing the leaves clear of the gutters.

  I saw outside my window that the autumn leaves formed a dam in the gutter, impounding an amount of water which started diverting onto the asphalt and the sidewalk. From what little I know about road construction, water intrusion is the greater enemy so I didn’t want to let the small pond sit there.

  In the end, I just picked the leaves up by hand to remove the obstruction. But if I had a lot more gutter, leaf blower would be the first tool to come to mind.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If a contestant on Jeopardy! gave the correct response "Alexandre Dumas" but pronounced the surname as "dumb ass", would the response be accepted?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t have much to add about the pronunciation question, but every time that Alexandre Dumas is mentioned, I feel compelled to recommend The Count of Monte Cristo, a work which I would describe as the mid-1800s rough equivalent to a shonen manga. The novel starts in 1810s southern France, just after the Napoleonic era, detailing the luck, misfortune, and events that befall Edmond Dantes, a young and intelligent sailor of modest means.

  Admittedly, the unabridged book is quite a long read, with some print editions exceeding 1200 pages. The 117 chapters may be intimidating, but IMO it’s a worthwhile read. It’s also available in the public domain in the USA, so Project Gutenberg has an eBook of it from the 1888 English translation, retaining much of the “antique” translations, for added intrigue.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I am about to board a flight. What sequence of events would occur if (by chance) for no apparent reason a window got completely smashed out?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m only a passive yet very interested observer of aviation but am also a fairly avid cyclist. I think the equivalent analog for bikes is that it’s much easier to track a straight line when doing 50 kph than at 5 kph. Just like airspeed is needed for rudder surfaces to work, cyclists need speed to maintain horizontal balance and manoruverability.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I am about to board a flight. What sequence of events would occur if (by chance) for no apparent reason a window got completely smashed out?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m assuming your question pertains to a window failure while still on the airport grounds prior to takeoff. If instead you meant a window failure while airborne, I would suggest this Mentour Pilot video about Southwest Flight 1380 where an engine defect threw shrapnel at one of the cabin windows, smashing it open with disastrous effects.

  Supposing the window failed prior to opening the jet bridge to allow passengers to board, it probably would have been noticed by the flight crew – ie the pilots, cabin staff – while doing their preflight preparations and checks, or by the ground crew, while loading baggage or food/supplies. Once notified, the boarding process would be delayed as the pilots assess whether the flight can continue – definitely not – and then the captain would use their authority to reject the aircraft for that flight, calling in the maintenance team and the airline so they can take the next steps. Practically speaking, this flight will be either heavily delayed or outright cancelled.

  If instead the window failed after closing the doors and the aircraft has started taxiing to the runway, then there are some complications. With everyone seated for taxiing, passengers are not supposed to start walking around to notify the cabin crew. But the cabin crew may already be walking the aisles to check for stowed trays, seatbelts for takeoff, baggage obstructions, etc. So if they see a smashed window, that’s an obvious sign that the cabin is not secured for takeoff. At the end of the cabin checks, the cabin crew would normally telephone the pilots to convey a secure cabin. Here, they would explain the situation and the pilots would contact ground control to return back to the terminal.

  But supposing the window broke after the cabin was declared secure, and the aircraft is about to line up onto the runway. In this case, everyone including the cabin crew are sat down, so a passenger who sees the window can’t really get the cabin crew’s attention by pressing the overhead button. Barring some sort of additional malfunction that the pilots could notice – like a major engine malfunction – this aircraft might actually take off.

  When taxiing, the pilots have a number of things to do, and so the “sterile cockpit” rule means that no non-operational chitchat is allowed, to allow them to focus. Mentour Pilot has other videos on what happens when the rule is violated. Likewise, the cabin crew are trained to not disturb the pilots unless something absolutely flight endangering is happening, at least for the first few thousand feet of takeoff climb.

  The theory is as follows: if an aircraft is on the ground and stationary, it is safe. If the aircraft is at cruising altitude and cruising speed, it is safe. But if it’s at low altitude (<1000 ft; 330 m), then it’s very easy for the flight to go sour. Hence, once an aircraft has reached a certain point in taxiing, it will basically want to take off. And we still have the problem that the pilots don’t even know the window broke.

  So the aircraft rolls down the runway and takes off. Crisis? Not really. The plane will climb quickly up to some 3000-5000 ft, at which point the plane is configured for a steady climb to cruise. This is when the pressurization system would engage, since cabins need to keep the pressure to a breathable level. Although the system may also have noticed that the cabin pressure stayed the same as the outside air pressure for the entire climb. That’s a clear sign of a cabin air leak, and the system would indicate to the pilots of a pressurization failure.

  This is the first indicator for the pilots, although at this stage in the flight, the cabin crew may also phone the pilots since they start walking around earlier than 10,000 ft altitude. A pressurization failure or broken window means the pilots must halt their climb and remain below 10,000 ft, which is the upper limit for human breathing without supplemental oxygen. The pilots would radio to ATC and request a return to the airport, or another nearby airport if need be. A pan-pan or mayday could be declared, depending on the captain’s assessment of the situation, or to obtain priority over any other aircraft wanting to land.

  The last scenario before the Flight 1380 scenario is if the window broke just as the aircraft was passing 10,000 ft altitude, so there was no earlier indication of a cabin leak. In this case, there will indeed be a cabin depressurization, although it won’t be as severe as at cruise altitude. Some aircraft will automatically drop the oxygen masks, and the pilots will don their own masks, now cognizant that a full-blown emergency is underway. This is handled the same way: bring the aircraft down to a breathable altitude and call ATC. The oxygen masks are good for some 20 minutes, which is well more than enough time to return to a lower altitude and make a plan.

  TL;DR: the entirety of Mentour Pilot’s YouTube back catalog truly sheds light on how the aviation industry keeps people safe. I highly recommend.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Since removed comments can still be read in the modlogs, isn't removing comments useless?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m going to address the question in two halves: what is the point of moderation overall, and what legal consequences exist when moderation (or the lack thereof) go awry?

  Mike Masnick of TechDirt has written extensively about why moderation must exist for any large-scale, publicly-available web platform, most notably in this article describing the “moderation learning curve”. That article goes through the “evolution” of a supposed “anything goes!” platform that is compelled – by economic forces, public sentiment, existing laws on CSAM, and more – to do moderation. But even the very act of drawing a line in the sand will always be objectionable to someone somewhere, so it’ll always be a thankless job. Even harder is applying a moderation policy consistently.

  But we’re getting a bit too philosophical. Why does a platform – from the largest like Facebook to the smallest Lemmy community of four people – do moderation? A few answers:

  • If stated community’s rules are regularly violated, those rules cease to have any authority
  • If users are not comfortable in a community, they will leave
  • If posters do not feel welcome to post, they will leave
  • If mods don’t take action on illegal or unpermitted content, they themselves might be removed/replaced by the server owner
  • If the server owner knowingly hosts illegal content or fails to adequate perform minimal screening, their ISP/CDN might drop them as a customer
  • If other platforms or venues exist for removed content, then it’s not really a negative impact on the "marketplace of ideas"
  • If moderation removes content that the user-base liked, then those users are free to follow the content to another platform; there are no hostages taken on Lemmy, and radicalization can still form online just like it can form at the local library by reading Wage Labour And Capital

  For the legal aspect, I can only write from a USA perspective; IANAL. Broadly speaking, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides that: 1) a web provider that hosts content authored/submitted by another person will not share in any civil liability incurred by that person, and 2) no web provider will have civil liability for their moderation decisions made in good faith. Together, this means only the original author of some defamatory post can be sued for that defamation, not the platform. And if the platform removes that defamatory post as part of moderation, the original author does not have a right to sue the platform. In shorr, this provides a lot of protection from civil lawsuits if they do moderate, or if they don’t. But if they don’t, the practical issues from earlier will still arise.

  But federal law imposes additional obligations for web providers, with civil or criminal penalties if not properly dealt with, for specific types of content. That is, content that enables sex trafficking, or CSAM. Sex trafficking was specifically carved out from Section 230, and CSAM is a possession crime: its mere presence on a hard disk, however acquired, is unlawful.

  Putting this all together, a Lemmy mod that deletes a post is performing moderation. They might do so because the post is irrelevant to the users or violates some rule. Whether the mods leave the post up or take it down, the broad civil immunity of Section 230 means the platform can’t be sued for it, nor can the post’s author sue the platform. So the post remaining in the modlog does not pose any new legal vulnerability. Rather, removing the post proves the value of having mods, so that other users don’t even have to see it. Post removal intentionally curtails “freedom of reach”.

  The exception to leaving content in the modlog is if it might be CSAM or otherwise illegal content. In that case, the mods can scrub it from even the modlog and anywhere on the platform. This complexity is why anyone hosting a Fediverse instance hosting other people’s content is advised to follow guides on how to do so. Here’s another one.

  TL;DR: the mods have a job to do, everyone wants a healthy community, and the law has only a small – but exceedingly important – handful of obligations.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why can't someone create a public alternative to health insurance in the USA?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks for pointing this out. I offered State Farm as an example because they’re the largest auto insurer in the USA, but with just that example, I can see why someone might get the impression that mutual == bad. I happen to be a happy State Farm customer, but I’m aware this isn’t universal.

  I’ve added Amica and Liberty Mutual USA as additional examples to address this.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why can't someone create a public alternative to health insurance in the USA?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Health insurance at its core is very simple. … But in the USA…

  I wrote this lengthy post a few months ago about why the American health insurance system is not efficient in comparison to the auto insurance system:

  So to answer your question directly, the costs for healthcare in the USA continue to spiral so far out of control that it causes distortions in the health insurance market, to everyone’s detriment. Specific issues such as open-enrollment periods, employer subsidies, and incomprehensible coverage levels all stem from – and are attempts to reduce – costs.

  The auto industry has examples of “mutual insurance” companies, where the company at-large is partly or wholly owned by the policyholders (eg State Farm). And that mostly achieves the objectives you’ve described for a non-profit automobile insurance pool. Sadly, this just doesn’t work in the USA, for the aforementioned bottom-line reason.

  Hospitals and doctors go through intense negotiations with insurers to come to an agreement on reimbursement rates, but the reality is that neither has sufficient actuarial data to price based on what can be borne by the market. So they just pass their costs on, whatever those may be, and insurers either accept it into their calculations, or drop the provider.

  When prices for service are opaque, how can any insurance company – even the most benevolent – properly price their policies? To stay in business would require always overestimating than underestimating. The extra revenue becomes either profit or float. But this float can’t even be beneficially used or paid out, in case the next quarter has more expensive claims to pay. Which brings us full circle to opaque pricing.

  In this environment, the only remaining prudent thing for a benevolent health insurance company to do is to hold huge reserves. But that is not competitive against profit-seeking insurance companies that can undercut the benevolent company, who had tied one hand behind their back. Benevolent companies rarely survive.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can the public expect to get to see Luigi Mangione's 3 page manifesto in its entirety in a reasonable timeframe?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  There are a number of rights which are curtailed when in custody – whether pre-trial or as part of a sentence – but even under the appalling incarceration standards in the USA, the right to free speech is not something which is substantially limited while in custody, barring some very particular circumstances.

  A defendant in jail awaiting trial has not, by definition, been convicted of any wrongdoing. So for pre-trial detention – where the purpose is to assure that the defendant won’t skip court – the only cognizance reason to curtail the defendant’s speech (either by mail, phone, or in-person) would be for jailhouse security reasons, as noted by various court rulings. The ACLU has litigated cases where prisons – ie post-conviction detention – violation the prisoners’ rights, so no doubt that pre-trial defendants in a jail would preserve more rights.

  An example where free speech continued even while serving a sentence is when the Menendez Brothers gave a phone interview from a California prison, as part of a new documentary on the 1989 murders they were convicted of, now under scrutiny.

  On the flip side, there are times when a defendant must have some speech curtailed prior to trial, even if they’re not in jail. Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) comes to mind, who was ordered pre-trial to not communicate with employees of his exchange (unless all lawyers are present) as the judge agreed with prosecutors that he could try to manipulate them into lying to the feds.

  What would be outrageous in that case was if the order was more sweeping, such as being restricted from talking about his own case, for which he has a First Amendment right to do so.

  Appropriately, the First Amendment rights must be jealously guarded, even for people we might not agree with, precisely because it also protects people we do agree with.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why dont hackers just do white-cap hacking and figure out loopholes in valuable companies' stuff and use their fiduciary duty as a legal basis to compel patronage of their services?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  and use their fiduciary duty as a legal basis to compel patronage of their services

  Do you mean a hacker should find a company’s tech vulnerability and then either: a) inform the company that a vulnerability exists and they should pay $XYZ to learn what it is, or b) inform the company that a vulnerability is known and it will be disclosed unless $XYZ is paid, or c) simply inform the company of the vulnerability and hope that they’ll pay the hacker to consult on how to fix it?

  Scenario A is generally permissible, if such a vulnerability does exist. Things like NDAs and contracts can be agreed before the hacker describes the vulnerability, to legally protect the company in case the hacker was bluffing. That said, even without contracts, falsely claiming that a vulnerability exists or that the hacker knows what it is would be fraud in most jurisdictions.

  Scenario B is blackmail, and is illegal. [shocked Pikachu face]

  Scenario C is possible, although there’s no guarantee that the company is looking for consulting. Although if the hacker’s speciality is both how to identify and patch such specific vulnerabilities, this may be more likely.

  That said, taking a step back, are you sure you meant to reference the fiduciary duty that corporate directors owe to their shareholders? This is not the same as the business judgement rule, where directors must act with reasonable prudence in the company’s best interest. The latter rule exists because there may be multiple tactics to fully honor the fiduciary duty, and it would be inequitable to allow suits against directors just because they decided to achieve the objective in different ways.

  Neither the fiduciary duty nor the business judgement rule penalize a director just because a business challenge arises, such as a data breach. Rather, the fiduciary duty is violated when a director hides info from the shareholders, or does not follow explicit instructions from the shareholders. And the business judgment rule will not protect a director that is working in bad faith or taking unreasonable risks with the company’s assets.

  Declining to hire a hacker as a consultant is a reasonable course of action. It would be a strange – but not impossible – instruction for the shareholders to order the management to “never negotiate with terrorists” but absent such a command, there wouldn’t be a violation of the director’s duty of care.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don’t more people start profit-sharing companies or co-ops?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The short answer is that starting or incorporating is the easy part, and the hard part is guiding the seedling of an idea through a array of hazards, any of which can quickly sink the plan.

  For clarity, I will use the term “organization” to broadly refer to a group of people and resources dedicated toward a goal, which includes what you described as profit-sharing companies and co-ops, as well as the predominant business structures like for-profit corporations (ie INC, LLC) or non-profits charities, plus groups that use those structures in non-conventional ways, like 501©(4) “social welfare organizations” that incorporate for flexibility but constrain their operations to what is within their remit (eg DSA, NRA). Although it might seem that I’m focusing on tax-exemption by referencing the American IRS tax code, this is more a short-hand to refer to organizations voluntarily constraining themselves by their own terms, in contrast to even narrower types of entities which are constrained by law. The latter might include a Limited Liability Partnership, which in California is only granted for a union of lawyers, architects, or accountants.

  As for why I’ve expended a whole paragraph to describe the different ways that organizations can form themselves, it’s because the formation often has little to do with the intent of the organization, the current or future size of the endeavor, or whether they’re likely to make it off the ground. Any and every organization enters this world as a small, tender operation, and neatly falls into what the US Small Business Administration (SBA)'s Office of Advocacy would describe to as a “small business”. This includes any prospective co-op or even a one-person venture, and unfortunately the odds are heavily stacked against small businesses.

  Since co-ops and profit-sharing companies would play in the same capitalist environment, I think it’s fair to equate these organizations with “small businesses” at large, for the purpose of this analysis. From that SBA document, only two-thirds (67.6%) of new businesses last longer than 2 years, and less than half (48.9%) make it past 5 years. And of the businesses led by minorities – specifically women, veterans, Black, Hispanic, and Asian descendants – their percentages were even lower.

  When you think about it, a successful organization requires 1) genuinely visionary leaders, as well as 2) the staff to carry out the objective, plus 3) resources to enable the organization, plus 4) a measure of luck. Much like in a game of Settlers of Catan, it is rare to hold all the requisites at once, let alone at the very start of the game. Whereas conventional stories of capitalist success generally focus on a genius or lucky young upstart that upends the business world through shrewd business acumen – thus providing their organization with the first requisite – I think the co-op and profit-sharing models start with having the second requisite, usually forming the initial group of dedicated employees.

  And I don’t disagree that there are lots of community-minded individuals that are able and willing to come together towards a common cause. But the crux of an organization is that it, er, organizes people and resources in an efficient manner for that common pursuit. I am of the opinion that true leaders with the necessary impassioned drive and ability to inspire and rouse their organization’s staff are far and few between. And that’s even before considering their core competencies in addressing organizational crises, their handling of public relations, and their personal and business roles in the socioeconomic environment.

  We need only look at the conventional business world to see where corporate leaders absolutely drop the ball and pull the organization downward, be it Boeing’s various CEOs following the MD merger, to convicted fraudster Martin Shkreli of Turing Pharmaceuticals, and more. But while there are a lot of really awful leaders taking their organizations down with them, there must also be run-of-the-mill leaders who do actual leadership, whether for manufacturing, charities, food banks, actual banks or credit unions, and more. The problem then for requisite #1 is a matter of incentive: for those leading successful capitalist organizations with nation-wide scope, what would attract them to help lead a smaller organization to provide daycare and pre-K at the local level? If there is a genuine shortage of qualified leaders, then capitalist incentives would mean they seek out bigger operations to use their skills, not smaller ones.

  That, of course, just means that communities need to be producing more people that are qualified to be leaders (requisite #1), in addition to forming the communities that will become the staff of those organizations (requisite #2). I will not dwell on the third and fourth requisites, as it’s fairly obvious that even with good leaders and good people, if the means of production aren’t present, there’s not much to be done.

  As a closing food-for-thought, much of what I’ve discussed above is very American-centric, as our notions of organization are both democratic yet republican in nature. That is, we want to enable the masses to participate (requisite #2), but we also expect leadership to be singular individuals (requisite #1). This does work, and certainly dates back the eras of kingdoms and empires – have you thought of the Roman Empire today? – but it may be worth exploring leadership that is also democratized.

  Switzerland comes to mind, as their Federal Council – the closest equivalent to the US President or a company chief executive – is actually seven people, whom all serve as the collective head of state and head of government for the country. Note that this is not equivalent to a company Board of Directors, which is more analogous to the Federal Assembly of Switzerland, which is the parliament with legislative powers to set policy. Furthermore, this is not to be confused with direct democracy, which the Swiss also do, by way of referendums.

  It’s possible that rather than needing to develop more skilled leaders, an alternative is to assemble a small, core group of individuals who together have enough skills to competently lead a co-operative organization. This would certainly be more tractable, although I haven’t given enough consideration as to how this would work, and whether there are any existing models to look at. It might or might not mirror the qualities needed from existing, successful co-ops and profit-sharing companies, with REI and WinCo Foods coming to mind.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨how do you workout when you don't have much time?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This is a shorter answer than I typically would write, but any sort of exercise program should be atuned to your specific circumstances, since if it’s not practical to execute upon it, then it’s not going to sustainably achieve its objectives.

  As for me personally, I wrote my program based on a friend’s five-day-per-week program, which splits the days into: arm day, back/shoulders day, chest day, leg day, and core day. I specifically do not want to be overworking certain muscle groups without adequate rest. Each day takes no more than 60-70 minutes, including warm ups.

  Might I suggest posing in c/gym or c/homegym for advice on how to tune your current program; there shouldn’t be a need for a full rip-and-replace.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can a disk image with multiple partitions be shrunk in a reasonably easy way?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m sure there’s probably some sort of mdadm invocation to shrink an existing RAID1 mirror pair, but in the absence of that, one option is to create the mirror pair you want on your 2.5" SSDs, and then shrink-and-clone the filesystem from the NVMe mirror to the 2.5" SSDs, using something like Gparted.

  In that way, you end up with the mdadm pair that you wanted, and the filesystem is correctly sized.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨why is the mexican-american war considered "the last war of humanity"??⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t have a complete answer, but the mechanization of warfare should have a lot to do with it. Things like the semi-automatic pistol – they would have called it an “automatic” pistol during that era – the modern hand grenade, the airplane for reconnaissance (although lighter-than-air balloons might have been used? IDK), and other weapons wouldn’t have really appeared for the Mexican-American War (1846-1848).

  Or did you mean the Spanish-American War (1898)? I think the same logic still stands, especially since train networks would have been more fully developed by the turn of the century.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can someone explain the framework of the current British... idk is empire the correct term?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Ah, the Darien Scheme. How to basically go all-in on the New World colonialism thing but fail miserably.

  For people unfamiliar, here’s a 3 minute video mentioning the topic in the context of the 17th Century Scotland, leading to the merger with England: youtu.be/ld1GJ0zvsas

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can someone explain the framework of the current British... idk is empire the correct term?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  For other examples of countries-in-countries, we can look to Switzerland, Germany, and the USA. A casual observation of all three are that their first-level political subdivision is known as a “state” and not “province” or “territory”.

  Swiss history – which I admit I’m not that clear on – shows that the modern sovereign state formed as a loose confederation of smaller kingdoms unifying together. Indeed, the foundational document of the modern Swiss Confederation in 1848 directly drew inspiration from the USA Constitution of 1789. However, they made some modifications, such as having a 7-person Federal Council, which together fulfill the role akin to the American President. That is, the role of Head of State and also Head of Government (aka a Prime Minister). This style of executive governance hews more closely to the rich Swiss traditional of direct democracy, rather than that of a purely representative republic.

  Germany, specifically the successor state of West Germany post-WW2, and then the unified state of Germany post reunification, is a federal republic. A republic to restore the functions of the earlier Weimar Republic, and a federation of states because of USA influence in drafting the Basic Law – Germany’s Constitution – following WW2. But unlike the USA federal system, the German system would mimic the parliamentary system of Westminster, being that of the United Kingdom. So while governmental power is distributed amongst the several states and the federation, the governance would be through indirect election of the Prime Minister. The idea is that by dividing power this way, no mustached fellow with fascist ideas could take control of the organs of power again.

  Finally, examining the oldest continually-operating example, the USA currently is composed of a strong federal entity and 50 US States that wield all remaining power not reserved to the federal government. But initially, this is not what the American Founding Fathers had in mind at all. The late 1700s envisioned the original 13 colonies of the early United States of America to be independent countries that confederated for common causes, like defense and foreign policy. The precursor to the US Constitution – the Articles of Confederation (1777) – tried this, but problems quickly arose because each State had their own currency, debt levels, legal systems, and often undermined each other to advance their own position, such as favoring in-state citizens in lawsuits filed by out-of-state citizens. This made trade difficult and the federal government had little power to do anything about this.

  Even with the revised US Constitution document, the whole weak federal government thing continued until the 1860s during the American Civil War, with the aftermath being a federal government that fully asserted its powers under the US Constitution. Any notion of US States being country-like would have fully evaporated by then, especially during Reconstruction when the Guarantee Clause was used to install military governance in the defeated southern states until reintegration into the Union. Such a thing would be impossible for a modern country/sovereign state.

  To that end, the modern US State is still a sovereign entity, in that certain things are wholly within their domain and not of the federal government’s. But US States are still beholden to the US Constitution, use the same money as the Union, and must honor interstate commerce and contracts from in- and out-of-state, as well as judicial rulings from the federal court system. But this dual sovereignty system post 1860s continues to evolve, with some states encroaching on federal authority, such as with border control.

  Aspects of these three example countries find their way into most of the modern governments of Western countries, so hopefully this was a useful explainer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can someone explain the framework of the current British... idk is empire the correct term?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ll take a cursory stab, but other references exist for the minutiae of how these things came to be.

  Britain == United Kingdom Great Britain == an island wholly within the UK United Kingdom: a sovereign state (eg USA, Germany) composed of the constituent countries of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, plus a few overseas territories. Briton: a British citizen, or someone tracing their ancestry to the UK constituent countries

  The short answer for why a country (UK) can have countries (eg Scotland) in it is because the notion of sovereign states (the modern definition of countries) only came into existence in the 18th century or so.

  Canada, formerly the Dominion of Canada, formed from the British North American holdings plus the French parts that the British bought (ie Quebec). Granted self governance in the 1860s, independence in the 1930s, and finally full “patriation” in the 1980s to remove all vestiges of the UK from Canadian laws. However, the independent Monarchy of Canada remains, and just happens to coincidentally follow the exact same selection rules as the British Monarch. So the King of Canada will be the same person as the King of the United Kingdom, even though the Government of Canada is no longer controlled by the Government of the United Kingdom. In both sovereign states, the King is a figurehead from where authority and governmental legitimacy emanates, and the current King of Canada continues the tradition since Queen Elizabeth II that the Monarch’s appointed Governor-General of Canada shall represent the Monarch in all Canadian matters, meaning the Monarch will not directly involve themselves.

  Why still keep the Monarchy of Canada? The voters haven’t chosen otherwise, to pursue a republic or any other form of government. The same applies in Australia, although it’s slightly more complicated as each Australian State derives their state-level authority from the Australian Monarch, whereas Canadian provinces exist as a part of the singular Canadian confederation. Nevertheless, with the Monarch delegating power within each of his “realms” to the respective Governor-General, becoming a republic is a matter of passing bills in the parliamentary system. Barbados did exactly this in 2022, replacing Queen Elizabeth II with a republic.

  The British Isles includes both the Island of Great Britain (where Wales, Scotland, and England are) plus the Island of Ireland (where the Republic of Ireland, and Northern Ireland are), and a few smaller islands. So yes, every part of Great Britain is a part of the UK, but the UK also includes the Isle of Mann and the upper part of the Island of Ireland.

  In all circumstances, “Ireland” means the Republic of Ireland; it’s almost never called “southern Ireland”. The whole history of British colonialism in Ireland is long, sordid, and full of misery, culminating with The Troubles of the 1960s and still causing concern post-Brexit due to the EU border basically dividing the Island of Ireland.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's wrong with Bluesky App?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  To start, let’s verify that Bluesky the app is indeed open-source. Yep, it is. But that’s not the same as having all the machinery be open-source, where anyone could spin up their own, compatible service; maybe named ExampleSky. To be compatible, ExampleSky would need to use the same backend interface – aka protocol – as Bluesky, which is known as ATProto. The equivalent (and older) protocol behind Mastodon and Lemmy is ActivityPub.

  ATProto is ostensibly open-source, but some argue that it’s more akin to “source available” because only the Bluesky parent company makes changes or extensions to the protocol. Any alternative implementation would be playing a game of chase, for future versions of the protocol. History shows that this is a real risk.

  On the flip side, Mike Masnick – founder of Techdirt, author of the 2019 paper advocating for “protocols, not platforms” that inspired Bluesky, and recently added member of the board of Bluesky – argues that the core ability to create a separate “Bluesky2” is where the strength of the protocol lays. My understanding is that this would act as a hedge to prevent Bluesky1 from becoming so undesirable that forking to Bluesky2 is more agreeable. To me, this is no different than a FOSS project (eg OpenOffice) being so disagreeable that all the devs and users fork the project and leave (eg LibreOffice).

  But why a common protocol? As Masnick’s paper argues, and IMO full agreement with what ActivityPub has been aiming towards for years, is that protocols allow for being platform-agnostic. Mastodon uses are keenly aware that if they don’t like their home instance, they can switch. Sure, you’ll have to link to your new location, but it’s identical to changing email providers. In fact, email is one of the few protocol-centric systems in the Internet in continued use. Imagine if somehow Gmail users couldn’t send mail to Outlook users. It’d be awful.

  Necessarily, both ActivityPub and ATProto incorporate decentralization in their designs, but in different fashions. ActivityPub can be described as coarse decentralization, as every instance is a standalone island that can choose to – and usually does – federate with other instances. But at the moment, core features like registration, login, or rate limiting, or spam monitoring, are all per-instance. And as it stands, much of those involve a human, meaning that scaling is harder. But the design suggests that instances shouldn’t get too large, so perhaps that’s not too big an issue.

  ATProto takes the fine-grained design approach where each feature is modular, and thus can be centralized, farmed out, or outright decentralized. Now, at this moment, that’s a design goal rather than reality, as ATProto has only existed for so many years. I think it’s correct to say for now that Bluesky is potentially decentralizable, in the coarse sense like how Mastodon and Lemmy are.

  There are parts of the Bluesky platform – as in, the one the Bluesky organization runs – which definitely have humans involved, like the Trust and Safety team. Though compared to the total dismantlement of the Twitter T&S team and the resulting chaos, it may be refreshing to know that Bluesky has a functional team.

  A long term goal for Bluesky is the “farming our” of things like blocklists or algorithms. That is to say, imagine if you wanted to automatically duplicate the block lists that your friend uses, because what she finds objectionable (eg Nazis) probably matches your own sensibilities, then you can. In fact, at this very moment, I’m informed that Bluesky users can subscribe to a List and implement a block against all members of the List. A List need not be just users, but can also include keywords, hashtags, or any other conceivable characteristic. Lists can also be user-curated, curated by crowd sourcing, or algorithmically generated. The latter is the long goal, not entirely implemented yet. Another example of curation is “Started Packs”, a List of specific users grouped by some common interest, eg Lawsky (for lawyers).

  So what’s wrong with Bluesky then? It sounds quite nice so far. And I’m poised to agree, but there’s some history to unpack. In very recent news, Bluesky the organization received more venture capital money, which means it’s worth mentioning what their long term business plan is. In a lot of ways, the stated business plan matches what Discord has even doing: higher quality media uploads and customizations to one’s profile. The same statement immediately ruled out any sort of algorithmic upranking or “blue checks”; basically all the ails of modern Twitter. You might choose to take them at their word, or not. Personally, I see it as a race between: 1) ATProto and the Bluesky infra being fully decentralized to allow anyone to spin up ExampleSky, and 2) a potential future enshittification of Bluesky in service of the venture capitalists wanting some ROI.

  If scenario 1 happens first, then everyone wins, as bridging between ActivityPub and ATProto would make leaps and bounds, and anyone who wants their own ATProto instance can do so, choosing whether they want to rely on Bluesky for any/all features or none at all. Composability of features is something that ATProto can meaningfully contribute to the protocol space, as it’s a tough nut to crack.

  But if scenario 2 happen, then we basically have a Twitter2 cesspool. And users will once again have to jump ship. I don’t personally use Bluesky, being perfectly comfortable in the Fediverse. But I can’t deny that for a non-tech oriented audience, Bluesky is probably what I’d recommend, and to opt-in to bridging with the Fediverse. Supposed episodes of “hyping” don’t really ring true to me, but like I said, I’m not currently an invested user of Bluesky.

  What I do want to see is the end result of Masnick’s paper, where the Internet hews closer to its roots where interoperability was the paramount goal, and the walled gardens of yore waste away. If Bluesky and ActivePub both find their place in the future, then IMO, it’ll be no different than IMAP vs POP3.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do the majority of women still take their partner's last name?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Pew Research has survey data germane to this question. As it stands, a clear majority (79%) of opposite-sex married women changed their family/last name to their husband’s.

  But for never-married women, only a third (33%) said they would change their name to their spouse’s family name. 24% of never-married women were unsure whether they would or wouldn’t change their name upon marriage.

  From this data, I would conclude that while the trend of taking the husband’s last name is fairly entrenched right now, the public’s attitude are changing and we might expect the popularity of this to diminish over time. The detailed breakdown by demographic shows that the practice was less common (73%) in the 18-49 age group than in the 50+ age group (85%).

  Pew Research name change data

  However, some caveats: the survey questions did not inquire into whether the never-married women intended on ever getting married; it simply asked “if you were to get married…”. So if marriage as a form of cohabitation becomes less popular in the future, then the change-your-family-name trend could be in sharper decline than this data would suggest.

  Alternatively, the data could reflect differences between married and never-married women. Perhaps never-married women – by virtue of not being married yet – answered “would not change name” because they did not yet know what their future spouse’s name is. No option for “it depends on his name” was offered by the survey.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨what can I use to cushion my knee when exercising with it on the floor so it doesn't hurt?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In my homegym I have an AbMat foam pad which I also use as a knee pad. And while I think the thick foam would work outdoors on tougher terrain, it would not meet your criteria to fit in a backpack.

  My other suggestion would be a scrap piece of horse stall mat, which are nearly solid rubber sheets commonly employed for homegym floors. This is what I use when working in my yard, for tasks requiring a lot of kneeling. Such a piece – while heavy – could be cut to whatever size you need, using a sharp knife or a jigsaw.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do I get over fear of cooking?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I am a software engineer by trade, so when I started cooking, everything and every tool was intimidating, because I had no idea how it worked nor what it was meant for. I knew nothing about knives besides not to drop one, didn’t know the difference between a wok and a skillet, and didn’t understand how oil creates a non-stick surface on a non-non-stick pan.

  What helped me was a book that wasn’t like a recipe or cook book, but something closer to a food and kitchen textbook. The Food Lab by Kenji Lopez-Alt goes into some excruciatingly scientific detail about the role of different kitchen implements, and then showcasing recipes that apply theory to practice. Each step in the recipes thoroughly describe what to do, and the author puts a lot of content onto his YouTube channel as well.

  It was this book that convinced me to buy, strip, and season a cast iron pan, which has already proven its worth as a non-sticking vessel comparable to my old Teflon-coated pans. And I think for you, reading the theory and following some of the recipes might develop sufficient experience to at least be comfortable in an active kitchen. It’s very much a chicken-and-egg problem – if you’ll pardon the poultry pun – but this book might be enough to make progress in the kitchen.

  Also, since it was published in 2015, it’s very likely available at your local library, so check there first before spending money to buy the book. Good luck with your culinary development!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Did something about mass produced ice cream change like 10 years ago?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  As there may be regional differences, you might want to specify your area. For example, ice cream in the UK doesn’t have to meet the same requirements as in the USA, so oddities like cheap ice cream made with no dairy or cream is possible, using vegetable oil instead. Evan Edinger has a video on UK ice cream in particular: youtu.be/CfM7yZD0PlE

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the point of reading aloud the digits of the golden mean and recording the whole damn thing?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  My guess is that reading tomes like this is useful as a vocal exercise and can be a way of “getting one’s name out” for aspiring vocal talent. After all, what better way to showcase voice work on a resume than to point to examples online? As for the exact tome, it doesn’t really matter for this purpose but might as well also contribute to the wealth of human media.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How long do you think we'll keep seeing "formerly Twitter"?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  When I see “Xitter”, I think it might be pronounced Exeter, like the town in southwest England. But that feels like an undeserved slight against the good people of Devon and England.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do PhDs HAVE to use Dr?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  So far as I’m aware, non-occupational pre-nominal honorifics inure to the individual, so generally speaking, if that person doesn’t want to use their title, they don’t have to. And in the same way that most people will go along with someone’s acquired honorific of Dr or Capt or whatever, the same should also apply if someone expressed that their honorific should not used. I have no citation for this, other than what I’ve seen in life.

  As a sidenote, in Britain, I understand that medical doctors are able to use the pre-nominal of Dr, but surgeons specifically will drop the Dr and just use Mr. or Ms.

  Apparently this stems from ages ago when surgeons did not have to have a medical degree, and the doctoral view was that surgeons were akin to butchers. This may have reflected the crudeness of early surgeries. As a result, surgeons developed a history of being Mr – it’s not clear if female surgeons also took on Mr. So after the various laws/rules changed so that surgeons also had to be doctors, they still kept the tradition of Mr.

  Thus, a male student of medicine in the UK could go from Mr, graduate to Dr, and then graduate as a surgeon to Mr again. I have no citation for this either, but it’s plausible for the ardently traditional British nation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨For states on the coast with excess solar energy why don't they invest in water desalination and pump that water back upstream?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  If you were to properly consider the problem the actual cost would be determined by cost per distance traveled and you essentially decide the distance by which ever you are budgeted for.

  I wrote my comment in response to the question, and IMO, I did it justice by listing the various considerations that would arise, in the order which seemed most logical to me. At no point did I believe I was writing a design manual for how to approach such a project.

  There are much smarter people than me with far more sector-specific knowledge to “properly consider the problem” but if you expected a feasibility study from me, then I’m sorry to disappoint. My answer, quite frankly, barely arises to a back-of-the-envelope level, the sort of answer that I could give if asked the same question in an elevator car.

  I never specified that California would be the best place to implement this process.

  While the word California didn’t show up in the question, it’s hard to imagine a “state on the coast” with “excess solar” where desalination would be remotely beneficial. 30 US States have coastlines, but the Great Lakes region and the Eastern Seaboard are already humid and wet, with rivers and tributaries that aren’t exactly in a drought condition. That leaves the three West Coast states, but Oregon and Washington are fairly well-supplied with water in the PNW. That kinda leaves California, unless we’re talking about Mexican states.

  I’m not dissing on the concept of desalination. But the literature for existing desalination plant around the world showcases the numerous challenges beyond just the money. Places like Israel and Saudi Arabia have desalination plants out of necessity, but the operational difficulties are substantial. Regular clogging of inlet pipes by sealife is a regular occurrence, disposal of the brine/salt extracted is ecologically tricky, energy costs, and more. And then to throw pumped hydro into this project would make it a substantial undertaking, as dams of any significant volume are always serious endeavors.

  At this point, I feel the question is approaching pie-in-the-sky levels of applicability, so I’m not sure what else I can say.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨For states on the coast with excess solar energy why don't they invest in water desalination and pump that water back upstream?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not a water or energy expert, but I have occasionally paid attention to the California ISO’s insightful – while perhaps somewhat dry – blog. This is the grid operator that coined the term “duck curve” to describe the abundance of solar energy available on the grid during the daylight hours, above what energy is being demanded during those hours.

  So yes, there is indeed an abundance of solar power during the daytime, for much of the year in California. But the question then moves to: where is this power available?

  For reference, the California ISO manages the state-wide grid, but not all of California is tied to the grid. Some regions like the Sacramento and Los Angeles areas have their own systems which are tied in, but those interconnections are not sufficient to import all the necessary electricity into those regions; local generation is still required.

  To access the bulk of this abundant power would likely require high-voltage transmission lines, which PG&E (the state’s largest generator and transmission operator) operates, as well as some other lines owned by other entities. By and large, building a new line is a 10+ year endeavor, but plenty of these lines meet up at strategic locations around the state, especially near major energy markets (SF Bay, LA, San Diego) and major energy consumers (San Joaquin River Delta pumping station, the pumping station near the Grapevine south of Bakersfield).

  But water desalination isn’t just a regular energy consumer. A desalination plant requires access to salt water and to a freshwater river or basin to discharge. That drastically limits options to coastal locations, or long-distance piping of salt water to the plant.

  The latter is difficult because of the corrosion that salt water causes; it would be nearly unsustainable to maintain a pipe for distances beyond maybe 100 km, and that’s pushing it. The coastal option would require land – which is expensive – and has implications for just being near the sea. But setting aside the regulatory/zoning issues, we still have another problem: how to pump water upstream.

  Necessarily, the sea is where freshwater rivers drain to. So a desalination plant by the ocean would have to send freshwater back up stream. This would increase the energy costs from exorbitant to astronomical, and at that point, we could have found a different use for the excess solar, like storing it in hydrogen or batteries for later consumption.

  But as a last thought experiment, suppose we put the plant right in the middle of the San Joaquin River Delta, where the SF Bay’s salt water meets the Sacramento River’s freshwater. This area is already water-depreased, due to diversions of water to agriculture, leading to the endangerment of federally protected species. Pumping freshwater into here could raise the supply, but that water might be too clean: marine life requires the right mix of water to minerals, and desalinated water doesn’t tend to have the latter.

  So it would still be a bad option there, even though power, salt water, and freshwater access are present. Anywhere else in the state is missing at least one of those three criteria.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What happens when the US runs out of SSNs?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Haha, your reply beat out mine by only a minute.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What happens when the US runs out of SSNs?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This does not agree with what the Social Security Administration has published:

  Q20: Are Social Security numbers reused after a person dies?

  A: No. We do not reassign a Social Security number (SSN) after the number holder’s death. Even though we have issued over 453 million SSNs so far, and we assign about 5 and one-half million new numbers a year, the current numbering system will provide us with enough new numbers for several generations into the future with no changes in the numbering system.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the stock market?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  For the historical questions, I don’t really have answers, especially where it involves departures from the Western world. I did, however, briefly touch up on Islamic banking, which I’ve always found intriguing as the Islamic faith does not permit charging interest on loans, viewing it as usurious. I’m informed that Christianity also had a similar prohibition on usury, but apparently it fell due to the need to fund the constant wars in Europe.

  I’m not really seeing the difference in feudalism except a members only kind of participation with a crony pool of inbreds, not all that different than the billionaires of today.

  I think the important distinction insofar as stock markets is that the crony pool of inbreds have access, so too does the commoner. Well, the middle-class commoner usually. And we’ve seen David-vs-Goliath cases where the commoners put up a decent fight against the inbreds’ institutions; the whole GameStonk fiasco comes to mind. An equivalent economic upset would have been wholly impossible at any point during any feudal period in history.

  What are the idealist or futurist potential alternatives between the present and a future where wealth is no longer the primary means of complex social hierarchical display? My premise is that basing hierarchical display on the fundamental means of human survival is barbaric primitivism.

  From conversations I’ve had previously, possible answers to that question are presented in the works of Paul Cockshott, author of Towards A New Socialism. I’ve not read it, but friends in Marxist-Leninist parties have mentioned it. The Wikipedia page, however, notes that it’s an economics book, which could be fairly technical and difficult to read. Sort of like how Das Kapital is more-or-less a textbook, in contrast with how Wage Labour And Capital was meant for mass consumption.

  Wealth extraction neglects the responsibility of the environment and long term planning.

  True. The cost to the environment is not “internalized”, to use the technical term. Hence, it doesn’t need to be paid for, and is thus “free real estate”. Solutions to internalize environmental harm include carbon taxes or cap-and-trade. But the latter is a lukewarm carbon tax because it only looks at the end-result emissions, rather than taxing at the oil well, so to speak.

  I’m curious how humanity evolves in a distant post scarcity future but without becoming authoritarian or utopian/dystopian

  Might I recommend The Three-Body Problem and the trilogy overall by Liu Cixin? This phenomenal hard scifi work describes a space-based future where the human species faces a common, external threat. After all, much of today’s progress was yesterday’s scifi. So why not look to scifi to see what tomorrow’s solutions might be. It’s no worse than my crystal ball, which is foggy and in need of repair.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What careers are relatively easy to get into with decent unions behind them?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If you’re in the USA, I cannot understate how useful it may be to refer to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’s (BLS) Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH), a resource which I believe has no direct comparison:

  How can I learn about an occupation that is of interest to me?

  The Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH) provides information on what workers do; the work environment; education, training, and other qualifications; pay; the job outlook; information on state and area data; similar occupations; and sources of additional information for more than 300 occupational profiles covering about 4 out of 5 jobs in the economy.