The existence of publishers for scientific literature is completely unnecessary in the modern era. They exist only to make profits to continue their existence. They don’t actually provide value anymore when research institutions can just conduct peer review and then let researchers self-publish.
They create negative value (a bottleneck) by limiting who can access research for just… aggregating and hosting articles.
Basically it is a “technical analysis” thing. Which basically means divination based on “shapes stonk line make”.
Death cross scary shape when stonk line cross other line
Am I crazy or does that 2-toed sloth have 4 digits on its left hand?
Edit: my leading theory is its back left leg is next to its left foreleg. So we’re seeing both finger and toenails.
Was travelling with some friends in Istanbul. They were pretty inexperienced abroad, so I figured out public transit there, told them what tickets to buy, and we all walked to the ticket machine. There was a big line/crowd, and a guy up front was taking cash and giving people tickets, which he got by scanning a card at the machine. I went first hoping to show my friends what to do - bought my ticket for like €5 or so and ignored the scammer. They all gave the scammer guy like €20 for him to scan his pass and buy them a €5 ticket. Their reasons were “he seemed official” and “I knew it was a scam, but I figured it was just easier to go along with it”.
I did fall for a taxi scam in Peru though and ended up staying at a hotel run by some mafia types. They were cool, though, so it turned out OK - just cost me a little extra money for an interesting story.
I think they mean in terms of workload, not like pay or something. Either you have a lot of work, or very little work. But when you’re needed, you’re needed urgently.
I think it was specifically for mobile - I whitelisted the facebook domain (easy) but blocking various ad servers would also break functionality on the site.
I might have to try that. I had pi hole set up but my gf couldn’t use facebook so I was politely asked to remove it
Yeah it doesn’t matter - don’t listen to drama fiends. .ml is fine. Lots of people decry it as being a tankie instance. The whole point of federation is you aren’t limited to the content on your instance - just by which instances yours is federated with.
If people or your instance bother you, make another account. Otherwise, just ignore the haters
Voting is an important tool to help contain fascism in liberal democracies while building serious social movements. (Socialist - but hopefully this isn’t actually unpopular with most socialists).
That Southern US usage dates back to at least the US civil war in the 1860s.
But yankee was used to refer to at least some people in what is now the US as early as the 1660s.
It sure is, pal.
Another point here, Amazon has really thin profit margins on their core business (not counting AWS, etc. Just the online shopping). If it weren’t absolutely gargantuan, it would fail. It’s only profitable because of the logistical efficiency it has achieved, exploitation (of workers, cheap goods from China, etc.), and absolutely massive economies of scale. Similar to Walmart.
Recommended reading: People’s Republic of Walmart. All for nationalizing - would be better for everyone.
Grab em by the vespussi
You can either use AI to just vomit dubious information at you or you can use it as a tool to do stuff. The more specific the task, the better LLMs work. When I use LLMs for highly specific coding tasks that I couldn’t do otherwise (I’m not a [good] coder), it does not make me worse at critical thinking.
I actually understand programming much better because of LLMs. I have to debug their code, do research so I know how to prompt it best to get what I want, do research into programming and software design principles, etc.
It’s almost like communication platforms shouldn’t have profitability as their main goal… maybe they could be… distributed… like some sort of… federation. Yeah. That’s it. Then everyone would follow along like… lemmings or something
Oh of course I agree. That’s just what the nestle asshole said.
That’s good. Boycotts can be effective!
Nestle has an extremely safe, risk-averse marketing strategy. In part due to their various scandals, they try really hard to be family friendly and boring.
That said, they are not worse than other food and beverage conglomerates.
child labor: mars & others were also implicated. These companies were most likely unaware of the child labor being used to harvest cocoa. The way it works is there are wholesalers in Africa who buy cocoa from processing facilities who buy fresh cocoa pods from local farms. These wholesalers advertised themselves as being child-labor-free. The farms they buy from were using child labor. This is a problem with capitalism exploiting people in the global south, causing perverse incentives, and with companies having limited insight into the full depth of their supply chains.
water is not a human right: The nestle water exec said the quiet part out loud. But, no beverage company believes water is a human right - they just aren’t stupid enough to say that on camera. If they did think it was a human right, they’d be working to ensure universal access to clean water rather than bottling it and shipping it around the world while limiting water access at their extraction points and polluting the water near their factories. Look at what coca cola is doing in mexico - rampant water pollution such that in factory towns Coke is the only safe drink for folks because the water is contaminated. Nestle is bad, but no worse than coca cola.
infant formula scandal: this occurred in the 1970s and was obviously awful. Every major multinational food and beverage conglomerate has stories like this if you look hard enough - this just happens to be a fucked up series of events that got some major media play.
People online scapegoat Nestle, but continue to buy electronics and clothing made with child labor, tree nuts/soda/and other products known to be harmful to watersheds, and many other products from companies which harm people in the global south. This isn’t meant to defend nestle, but to remind everyone that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Nestle is not anywhere close to an uniquely evil company. Not even in its own industry.
Things won’t get to that point, most likely. Things can get really bad and still recover. If it’s an apocalyptic scenario, better invest in a stock of bullets and a bunker.
Finance-wise, have an emergency fund and well-diversified portfolio. This is not financial advice, and I’m not a professional, but this is what I’d do with retirement funds and personal stock accounts:
Emergency fund: if you already have this handled, then look at your investments. If you dont have an emergency fund, do everything you can to save up at least 3-6months of living expenses - ideally in a high-yield savings account to protect your money from inflation.
US stocks: Don’t be over-exposed to US stocks, especially riskier ones. Historically, bonds and foreign stocks have been recommended to balance your portfolio, but many people have ignored that in recent years due to the dominance of US large-cap stocks, especially the tech sector. Ensure you’re diversified in accordance with your risk tolerance/retirement time-horizon.
Non-US Stocks: It would be good to have a non-US ETF or index fund with developing and emerging markets. It may not perform as well, but can potentially hedge against US market volatility. The counterpoint here is that US stocks are globally interconnected enough that getting non-US stocks would overexpose you to that part of the market. Caveat emptor, do research.
Bonds: bond ETFs/funds, I-bonds (inflation protected securities, you can buy $10k per year), and automated bond ladders can give you steady returns. Remember buying bonds directly is fairly illiquid - your money will be stuck in the bond for the duration of the bond’s term.
Cash: Inflation isn’t crazy right now. Probably wouldn’t be bad to have more cash than normal sitting in high-yield accounts (earning around 4% APY right now) since the market is likely to dip. Maybe consider liquidating some investments that are riskier than you’d like. I wouldn’t really advocate trying to time the market, but also it doesn’t seem like a bad time to be a little heavier on cash imo.
Check out Boglehead 3 fund portfolios and their variations. Imo it is time to be safe and boring. If you have a long time until retirement, don’t panic - ride it out and consider rebalancing your portfolio to the standard, oft-recommended asset mixes. If your retirement timeline is short, make sure that you aren’t over-exposed to risky investments like stocks.
Learn what you need to do to follow recipes, and then you’ll learn the rest over time. Cook things you like to eat.
Don’t get a bunch of junk for your kitchen. You only need basic things and can buy them as you go.
Know what it means to steam, boil, simmer, sautee, bake.
Keep your knives sharp.
Learn the basic cuts (dice = .5 - 2cm cubes, mince = very tiny little pieces, julienne/batonnet/chiffonade - strips of stuff of various sizes).
The key to cutting anything is to break it down into manageable, regular pieces that you can easily turn into cubes or rectangles.
Since you have difficulty tasting:
Don’t over-salt. You can always add more, but you can’t remove it.
Acidity and fat are important to make food taste good. Vinegar is often a hack to make food taste better.
Adding MSG to your food is also a great way to make it taste better.
Learn what herbs and spices belong in different kinds of food. Some can go in a lot of different cuisines and dishes - like salt, pepper, garlic, onion, parsley, and chives. But others have more niche uses, and some combinations are very typical of specific cuisines. Buy individual spices, not spice mixes. Dry spices are stronger than fresh spices, so if substituting dried for fresh, you will use less than you would use if they were fresh.
The head chef of Alethea (3 star michelin restaurant) totally lost his sense of taste for years and still ran one of the best restaurants in the world.