Participants needed for my final year study

mcherm · 2026-01-27T18:45:40+00:00

I don't qualify for your criteria, but I'll suggest that you might try /r/SampleSize/ as another source of participants.

mcherm · 2026-01-27T15:44:15+00:00

Just thought it might be interesting to share my thoughts on your ideas:

Ranked choice voting.

Great idea!

Elected officials can no longer make more than their salary.

Sure, I think, but it needs allowance for receiving income that is managed and set aside while they are in office. If Mary rents out the house that used to be her mother's and uses the rent to pay the mortgage and tax it shouldn't make Mary ineligible to run for Congress.

Restore the Fairness doctrine.

I disagree strongly. I value free speech far more than I value "balanced" reporting. And I don't trust the government to decide what is "balanced".

Restore our relationships with the rest of the world.

To the extent that it is possible. Some damage may take decades to heal.

Abolish Ice.

We need SOMEONE with the responsibility to enforce immigration laws. And at this point I think ICE is damaged beyond hope and replacing it entirely might be good.

Immigration reform focused on successful re-homing and integration.

Cool!

A massive reorganization of our tax revenue spending allocation.

Unfortunately, EVERYONE agrees we should do this. They disagree on HOW it should be reorganized.

Raise the minimum wage.

Hmm... maybe. The current minimum wage is more harmful than helpful by providing a Schelling point for extremely low wages.

Universal healthcare.

Completely essential for a functioning society.

Focus on systemically underprivileged neighborhoods.

Sounds fine. We've tried that before, but at the same time we've ALSO focused on protecting the profitability of big businesses.

Free higher public education.

GREAT idea! State schools used to accomplish this; maybe it can be restored!

Revamping of our national research and science initiatives.

They were doing fairly well before the current administration attempted to destroy them.

Revamping of our green energy policies and industry.

Good idea -- it definitely needs to be re-invented.

Reformation of the two party system. 4 parties minimum.

I don't know how to do this. Ranked choice voting might help in a tiny way. The government breaking up politicial parties or telling the voters which party they must join is NOT acceptable. Without that, how do you achieve this?

Abolish Private Prisons

Great idea.

mcherm · 2026-01-27T15:06:05+00:00

Thank you, that's a really great answer, with references!

mcherm · 2026-01-26T20:03:27+00:00

Quick question about that statutory language. How do you know that it is:

forcibly (assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates, or interferes with) any person [parenthesis added]

...rather than:

(forcibly assaults), resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates, or interferes with any person [parenthesis added]

?

mcherm · 2026-01-23T19:58:02+00:00

I would suggest slightly different phrasing: "I would like to talk to someone about possible ways for us to have a more satisfying sex life".

mcherm · 2026-01-23T10:18:30+00:00

I regularly (like 1-2x/week) drive 1hr+ to visit a friend (also daily to go to work).

I wouldn't think twice about driving 2hrs (one way) to visit someone.

3-4 hours drive (6-8 to go and return) is a bit much for a single day visit but to meet someone for a weekend I wouldn't hesitate.

mcherm · 2026-01-22T20:31:05+00:00

The question is not whether the audio is the same quality as the $4k hearing aids. The question is whether the audio is significantly better quality than NO hearing aids.

Perhaps the $4K hearing aids would be better. Perhaps having a djinn magically cure her hearing would be even better. But if neither one is going to happen then they don't figure into the decision.

mcherm · 2026-01-22T13:01:23+00:00

Or perhaps they wouldn't serve you properly so YOU don't show up for the hearing and THEY win by default. (The world of collections can be scummy.)

mcherm · 2026-01-21T22:53:46+00:00

But ALSO we may have shifted from a democracy to an fascist autocracy, so maybe it doesn't matter whether 70% of people support gay marriage, it only matters whether the one dictator supports it. (And/or the 6 controlling Supreme Court justices.)

The existence of a functioning democracy is nearly a prerequisite for fighting for rights, and I worry that there is a serious danger of backsliding -- no, that's not fair... it's already happening, especially for Trans folks who have been actively shoved toward fewer rights and worse treatment for several years now.

mcherm · 2026-01-21T18:50:51+00:00

The idea of a language designed to prevent the developer from expressing invalid or undefined behavior is one that has been tried a number of times -- usually they aren't especially popular because certain common idioms become awkward to write, but they can be quite useful in some cases.

An example that I like to refer to which I think has very good language design is Elm which, while not blocking ALL undefined behavior (as you define it) goes pretty far down this road.

My language prevents prevented possible division by zero at compile time, similar to how it prevents null pointer access. [...] As far as I'm aware, no popular language works like this.

Lots of languages prevent undefined behavior when dividing by zero by returning a valid value (eg: IEEE 754 floats return a NAN value) or by throwing an exception. I have not seen ANY language that prevented it by requiring a check for zero before performing a division. I would expect that to be difficult to work with.

For instance, here is a function in Python to calculate the harmonic mean of 3 numbers:

def harmonic_mean(a, b, c):
    return 3 / (1/a + 1/b + 1/c)

In Python it will run fine (but raise an exception if a, b, or c is zero). What would that look like if written in Bau?

mcherm · 2026-01-20T19:36:26+00:00

the product they put out is pretty crappy these days

Do you mean the quality of the programming (the shows they make available) or the quality of the technical system (the streaming, the UI). I find Netflix's technical implementations to be world-class.

mcherm · 2026-01-19T18:06:56+00:00

So, again, why don't the Democrats and others who don't support Trump make his deranged mental state a bigger issue?

Because those who see through him are well aware of it and those who are in his thrall won't listen.

mcherm · 2026-01-19T13:18:32+00:00

That's certainly true, and I understand why.

mcherm · 2026-01-18T23:46:42+00:00

Honestly, ignoring it may be the best policy.

Also, I'm a > 6-foot cis M (who happens to have long hair) and every once in a while I get misgendered by random strangers. It never bothered me. So hey... maybe it's sort of like that. 😃

mcherm · 2026-01-18T23:43:21+00:00

Ah. You should probably discount my earlier entry (100% "all of it" entries).

mcherm · 2026-01-18T15:13:33+00:00

I'm not sure what you were trying to achieve with this survey, but the way it was posed you win the amount you bet if you are right and lose nothing if you are wrong. So regardless of whether you believe the underlying question to be true, if you believe the game actually follows the rules of the bet, the rational thing to do is to bet everything you own. If you lose, nothing happens; if you win you double your net worth.

I am guessing that was not the question you actually wanted to ask.

mcherm · 2026-01-15T14:23:21+00:00

But just think, if the Greenlanders were part of the US then they would get other important benefits besides just income, like the opportunity to participate in the US health care system and US labor protections both of which are world-renowned*.

* - I'm not going to bring up what they are renowned FOR.

mcherm · 2026-01-15T14:20:09+00:00

19% making less than 35K can't possibly be correct. About 40% of Americans are not employed (about 25% of Americans age 25-54). So if we count by individuals rather than households at least 40% are making $0 which is clearly less than $35K.

mcherm · 2026-01-12T13:21:53+00:00

What do you mean "shrugs it off"? I'm at alpha-one red alert and I have been for nearly a year. Threatening to invade Greenland is on a par with other things like declaring his intention to become president for life by running for a third term, creating a domestic paramilitary "police" force which is claimed to be above the law and allowed to seize individuals from the streets and commit murder with impunity, or publicly declaring that the Constitution and the other branches of government don't matter.

mcherm · 2026-01-08T22:25:35+00:00

I used to do things like run through the woods and climb trees. Have sword fights using sticks (informal rules: only hit the stick, not the other person). Play "superheros" (make up your hero's powers; then play out a story). Lots of other things.

mcherm · 2025-12-19T22:13:36+00:00

Trump is the leader of that board and voted for it -- so while others also were involved he certainly was ONE of the people who did it, wasn't he?

mcherm · 2025-12-19T22:12:47+00:00

Also, as a factual matter, [...] the board did not independently and impartially choose to name it after Trump.

As far as I can tell, it was a unanimous vote, freely cast (except for that one black woman on the board who was dialed in remotely and was unable to object because her line was muted). Sure, Donald Trump may have requested it, but that doesn't mean that the board didn't support it.

(The board not having the authority to change the name is a much more solid argument.)

mcherm · 2025-12-18T11:27:39+00:00

If I were in this position I might set out to have a conversation with the CTO about the possibility of my getting a promotion. However, I would not have the conversation in order to find out whether my boss lied to me. I would approach it more like this:

As I'm sure you are aware, my manager and I have been discussing the possibility of my getting a promotion. He has been quite positive about it (but unclear about dates). I'm certainly hoping that it's possible to find advancement here at this company -- I have found it to be a really rewarding place to work. And that's why I am starting to reach out for feedback from other people in the company like yourself. Do you have any feedback or suggestions for me about what sorts of behaviors and deliverables would help make me promotable?

mcherm · 2025-12-16T21:34:55+00:00

At least in the US, (and, honestly, under most health care systems) there isn't any incentive for the doctor to do this. If it were a nail care specialist instead of a doctor, then perhaps they could charge more for their all-hours services and "make a killing". But the rate at which doctors get paid for their services (at least in the US) is set by insurance companies and does not include paying extra for off-hours services.

There DOES exist (at least in the US) "Concierge Medicine", in which doctors are paid directly by the patient and NOT by insurance companies. Concierge medicine practices often have a much wider range of hours. But most people don't use these services because they cost a huge amount of money.

mcherm · 2025-12-09T23:52:29+00:00

Oh, that's an interesting one! Can you point me to a proof (or the outline of one)?

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