Depends—do you often hire companies to perform construction or renovation on houses you don’t own?

Oh agreed. I think we’re talking past each other to a certain extent. I certainly don’t think that we can expect billionaires to ever be the ones to help. Andrew Carnegie’s act of giving most of his stolen money back under very specific directions on how to use it, after repressing wages and worker actions and literally having people killed his whole adult life, is considered a high bar for them. They have an addiction of some sort. I think it’s obvious if you read Carnegie’s journal—he talks early in his career about how his success has been beyond expectations and he’ll only need to work a few more years and then he can just travel the world on that nest egg and be a business consultant. Lol.

But still some disagreements. Religions have been around for a long time, but they’ve come in quite a few varieties. Christianity in most implementations is very top-down authoritarian in nature. I don’t think that’s something “the people” decided on and then elected to hand over autonomy to meritocratic leaders, and I think this is evidenced by the many other religions that do not work the same way, like Earth Lodge religion, Malagasy spiritualism and spiritual warfare, Mahayana Buddhism, or even subsets of Christianity like Quakers that eschewed hierarchy. Unless there is something in our blood that makes certain “races” of people think differently, then it’s cultural. If it’s cultural, then the loudest voices shape it the most.

No, I think within Christianity and Christian territories people established themselves as rulers by co-opting the desires of humans to have some greater story such as religion that helps explain their lives. Likewise, I think senses of entitlement and beliefs in justice were co-opted. Reinforcing the notions of justice by constantly emphasizing its importance in your culture explains away many of your despotic actions. It provides a shield that slows the tide of revolt. Your political enemies are simply getting what they deserved; the people starving must be unrepentant sinners. In the U.S., the people who are directly responsible for so many people having less than what’s needed for a comfortable life are able to avoid scrutiny precisely by focusing on how those people deserve so much more. They do! It’s true! They know it, and hearing someone admit it feels very liberating! But listening to those voices allows billionaires and their mouthpieces to coax people into believing in their twisted idea of what society should look like—that instead of being entitled to live a good life, people should be entitled to pursue a great one.

I think the proliferation of billionaires points to a cultural problem, but not a grassroots groundswell of belief in billionaires. Too much of culture is asserted surreptitiously through native advertising in the news and PR in our newsfeeds. We haven’t adapted quickly enough—we still think these voices are our peers. We don’t realize how few voices there are, or how many parrots repeating them.

Agree on point #1, but on point #2 I lean toward “yes they can”. Billionaires’ constant PR campaigns that they conduct to avoid having their heads chopped off are what normalizes a society where people are okay with looking the other way when confronted with such unimaginable wealth disparities. There are limited resources, and the ones that are being hoarded are what will help. Obviously we the people have to do better, but intrinsic in the discussion of why we suck so much at helping one another is the fact that this culture was crafted and nurtured by the people it benefits.

It’s Bezos sponsored, so take the good PR work with a grain of salt given the state of everything he and Amazon have touched

I appreciate the operation you’re running here

Yep. Instead of focusing on humans communicating more effectively with computers, which are good at answering questions that have correct, knowable answers, we’ve invented a type of computer that can be wrong because maybe people will like the vibes more? (And we can sell vibes)

AI gets subs wrong, and thinking that doesn’t matter is both ableist and just a terrible lazy product, but that’s not the pressing matter.

It’s Israel. Because giving money to another party is not a value neutral action. Using a site that pays money to Israel—and you either know what that means or are purposefully avoiding the subject—means you are supporting Israel. Your consumption does not occur in a vacuum.

She is. A problem that has become quite apparent in the U.S. is that there are no effective measures to stop an unpopular government. The Republicans have at this time gerrymandered their voting districts and otherwise reformed democratic institutions in their favor, and are passing legislation that opposes the will of the people. They have no fear of recall, nor impeachment—there is nothing.

The vitriol people feel towards Democrats like Kamala Harris stems, among other reasons like sexism, from two common sources: a belief that Democrats spent too much time compromising with a party that openly opposed the people and the limits of government control, and a level of incredulity at the very institutional language that they are using while it is obvious that Republicans are now simply tearing down institutions they don’t like.

Just this morning I got an email from Alexandria Occasio-Cortez’s team—one of the U.S.’s most radical government representatives —that read, “And when Republicans use a legislative mechanism to gut the American healthcare system, we have to use a legislative mechanism in order to restore it and fight for it.”

How does that work? We have no legislative mechanisms available to us. The ruling party has taken away legislative mechanisms. It’s like asking a children’s basketball team to keep playing and try harder when their opponents have tossed the ball right out of the gym. The entire idea is premised on someone returning the ball—or to return from the metaphor, that Republicans are going to wreak havoc for two years and then get voted out of office because they allow enough of their enemies to vote. And that it’s “democratic” to sit and wait our turn while peoples’ deaths in the States and around the world are directly attributable to this administration’s undemocratic actions and our collective failure to stop them as of this moment.

It will impact weather patterns and severity. I’ve certainly not done the work on how much, nor do I really have a grasp on the scales involved, so that’s mostly a meaningless statement, but I can say with confidence the impact will be real. Just like dams affecting rivers, icecap mass affecting heat reflection, and solar panels increasing local temperatures.

Given that one of the impacts of global climate change has been increased weather severity and chaos, I am not afraid of positing that reducing the severity and chaos of the jet streams could be a good thing.

Similarly, there are some interesting projects going on surrounding the use of aerogel and other materials that could help focus sunlight at the top of the oceans, where evaporation can actually occur, that are focused on creating clean drinking water—and while I think this is a good end unto itself, a nice side benefit would be less solar energy reaching the ocean and raising the body temperature.

For once, it’s cool to hear about proposed industrial projects and their side effects and they’re maybe positive, instead of “well that sounds like it’s going to leech heavy metals into the surrounding community”

Of course, aerogel is horrible to work with and clogs if it doesn’t break, and nobody else has solved the problem of scaling up and dealing with the steam getting in the way. On the lightweight flying jet stream turbine front, well, I’ve been following development for 8 years and nobody has even solved the ‘limited supply of helium leaking away into space’ problem for starters. And it’s hard making an efficient generator so lightweight that it can fly. So we don’t have to worry about them potentially improving global weather severity just yet. Or potentially devastating our remaining populations of migratory birds!

As frustrating as it is I think we benefit more from welcoming latecomers than shaming them and thinning the number of people of people willing to admit they were wrong in the future

I’d frame going to CBT as “making your trips outdoors more enjoyable” rather than “compromising your stance on worms.” It could radically improve your average day.

Also a neat site. It seems like the ratio of usable protein would be a good addition to, but a lacking substitute for, the raw quantities. Especially given how incomplete the PCDAAS and DIAAS datasets are.

That’s a neat site, and I was hoping your answer was in there, but they don’t have data on cooked mushrooms. We’ll have to do a bit of math.

So you’re taking the nutritional data provided and then shunting the fiber and water out of the way. Why? You can’t just eat the nutritional parts of food; you have to eat the whole thing, and that limits the amount of food, and thus nutrition, you can ingest in a day.

Were you thinking about food prep? Some water weight is lost there, certainly, but it’s not everything.

Let’s add a raw steak into the mix, and then we can instead look at how much water weight is actually lost when you prep these things to eat, by estimating it from data elsewhere.

The beans are ready to eat. They’re drained and rinsed. You don’t remove that water weight. So that’s 7 grams of protein per 100 gram serving.

The steak will lose about 25% of its weight when cooked, per multiple sources I found during a search. That means we need about 133 grams of raw beef to achieve 100 grams of cooked beef. So we can multiply its 21 grams of protein by 1.33, and we get about 29 grams of protein in a 100 gram serving. Their grilled steak averages around the same amount, so we’re on track so far.

Why is that discrepancy so great? I thought beans were supposed to be a great replacement for meat?

That comparison was done between beef and dry beans (note the 24 grams of protein, about the same as the beef). 100 grams of dry beans becomes about 370 grams of prepared beans. So in a 100 gram serving of beans you can actually eat, you get just over a quarter of that 24 grams protein: our ~7 grams from earlier. You also lose some water soluble protein when you rinse and drain them. They’re not the magic protein replacement people think they are.

Mushrooms are even worse. Per America’s Test Kitchen (and we’re gonna have to take these numbers at face value because I can’t find anything else), shiitake mushrooms lose about 14% of their weight in water when cooked, and cremini (think portobello, they’re just different stages of development) mushrooms lose about 60%. Thankfully the USDA’s site also has nutritional data listed for these two types of mushrooms: “minimally processed” shiitake and cremini mushrooms contain 2.4 and 3.1 grams of protein, respectively, per 100 gram serving. But those aren’t meal ready. To do that, we’ll cook the mushrooms, and they’ll shrink to 86 gram and 40 gram servings. So let’s start with enough raw mushrooms—119 grams of shiitake (or 119% of the original serving) and 250 grams (250%) of cremini. Multiply our proteins by 1.19 and 2.5 and we get a plausible range of between 3 and 8 grams of protein per 100g serving. So some are comparable to beans in their protein content! And some contain half, or less, of an already low amount when compared to the protein found in meat.

This quick comparison on Wolfram Alpha shows a similar story, with a less optimistic look at mushrooms’ possible protein content. Screenshot:

Now, the fact that you’re taking in so much more water when you eat 100 grams of beans or mushrooms than you are when you eat meat means you can eat more of them, and drink less fluids, but only to a point. And you’re certainly not getting 8 times more mushrooms than beef from a restaurant when they do a protein substitution. Getting enough protein in a vegetarian or vegan diet can be hard work. And restaurants are not making it easier by misleading people who may not know any better—I’m certain it’s careless, not malicious, but it is happening either way.

They’re (mushrooms) also constantly listed on American menus as a “protein” option despite a dire lack of the stuff

Don’t teach lol

Obviously not, the poor spec choices led to the price. Perhaps the company claiming to focus on ethics could focus on ethics instead of bezel-less design and 120 Hz screens, thus bringing it in at a lower price point. Feel free to critique me now

I’ve only ever seen the legal “right to be forgotten” concept applied to search engines and news publications. I think the closest to this was in Delhi high court where they ruled to have some social media “news” posts deleted. But that’s far different from having platforms erase things you’ve said and may regret. And then add yet another degree of separation for using a semi-private form of communication in email.

I am not speaking authoritatively so anyone who knows more than me jump right in.

That’s unreal. No, you cannot come up with your own scientific test to determine a language model’s capacity for understanding. You don’t even have access to the “thinking” side of the LLM.

If you would like to link some abstracts you find in a DuckDuckGo search that’s fine.

Well that’s about Trump, not politicians broadly. But if we assume that’s the issue across the board, is the problem that politicians are able to represent us with their words, or that politicians are able to escape consequences for their words?