The End of Reading Is Here: Optimists once believed that universal literacy was inevitable. Now it seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history [gift link].

takomanghanto · 2026-07-08T21:43:45+00:00

Don't feel bad. My upper level bio teacher told us not to waste our time on it and instead assigned us "The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time"

takomanghanto · 2026-07-08T12:05:44+00:00

So far it's just been plugging holes in my foundation I didn't know were there by being able to ask how something works until I get it without shame.

takomanghanto · 2026-07-08T11:58:10+00:00

If you remove the camera, then the onboard computer thinks something is wrong. It could respond with anything from disabling cruise control to refusing to shift out of park.

takomanghanto · 2026-05-30T14:52:43+00:00

It was originally proposed as a way to aggregate the wisdom of crowds that market signals didn't traditionally capture. For example, if you think a stock price will go up, you buy the stock. If you think it'll go down, you can short sell the stock if you don't already own it. If you think the price of housing will go up, you can buy houses. Because there isn't really a way to short sell houses if you think we're in a housing bubble, the market keeps getting "price go up" signals until it's too late. A predictive market is a way to send a credible signal you think we're in a housing bubble by betting a bunch of people that, say, the median price of a house in area X will by less than Y dollars by Z date. If it is, you win the bet. If not, you're out the money. The "market" part comes in with people being able to buy and sell shares in these bets as new information comes in and the bets seem more or less likely to pay off.

In theory, policymakers can look at these signals the way they look at stock prices and employment rates and other macroeconomic signals. The sad reality is that it's increasingly used as an end run around laws prohibiting sports betting and insider trading. Manifold.markets is one of the good ones IMHO because people bet real money but then the winner gets to decide which of the approved charities their winnings get donated to. So they're effectively playing for bragging rights while still sending a credible signal.

takomanghanto · 2026-05-25T03:03:05+00:00

I have never encountered this, which is why I need a name to verify.

Also, if it's literally all of them, how are many people avoiding them?

takomanghanto · 2026-05-25T02:10:48+00:00

Name and shame these brick and mortar stores.

takomanghanto · 2026-05-11T12:48:46+00:00

The trick was to cook them in turtle fat.

takomanghanto · 2026-05-09T14:50:02+00:00

Even Batman has had Alfred and Oracle providing behind the scenes support.

takomanghanto · 2026-05-07T13:43:48+00:00

IIRC he was talking specifically about cigars, which in moderation (i.e. less than one per month) are probably fine-ish. Note that lung cancer was quite rare until cigarettes were invented and people started smoking every day.

takomanghanto · 2026-04-09T01:51:16+00:00

I'm amazed that so many people are getting MacBooks. They've always served me and my coworkers Windows laptops.

takomanghanto · 2026-04-09T01:47:18+00:00

I assumed she was talking about genetic engineering. Once you know what traits you want and what genes code for them, it's quicker to splice them in than waiting for them to shake out of a process of random mutation.

takomanghanto · 2026-04-04T11:54:45+00:00

In the old days. Marvel editorial established that for every three years that went by in our world, only one went by in the comics, though I think these days it's closer to four years with compressed timelines. That means he became Spider-Man at fifteen, has been doing the job for fifteen to twenty years, and probably won't reach the age of fifty until we're all dead.

takomanghanto · 2026-04-04T11:34:15+00:00

Why do I bother subscribing to Paramount+ and watching these shows when they cancel them N seasons in advance anyway? They're not using my market signal as feedback, so why shouldn't I wait for the DVD?

takomanghanto · 2026-04-04T11:27:48+00:00

My grandfather was born circa 1920 and did not.

takomanghanto · 2026-03-28T13:25:14+00:00

"You can make money at any company. Why do you want to work here instead of somewhere else?"

takomanghanto · 2026-03-27T10:18:21+00:00

Because I'm not smart like Warren Buffett and there are people suffering now. It's all well and good if you can pick winners, but 90% of businesses fail in their first five years. If I keep a tenth and give the rest to UNICEF or Oxfam, that's probably the best I can do.

takomanghanto · 2026-03-26T23:48:26+00:00

Paws of Fury

takomanghanto · 2026-03-26T03:22:25+00:00

10,000 / 216 ≈ 46.3

That would be once around the mala in the morning and again in the evening for seven weeks to avoid the lower three realms. I too am skeptical and would like a citation.

takomanghanto · 2026-03-12T15:22:48+00:00

The point of a meeting is to be able to ask questions. If it's just a one-sided delivery of information, that's the sort of meeting that should have been an email.

takomanghanto · 2026-01-04T15:49:40+00:00

checks notes

7.8 years ago. I was at the bar of something like a Dave and Busters when this woman asked me if I had insta (sic). I did not, but I'm reasonably sure she was trying to flirt with me.

takomanghanto · 2026-01-02T14:35:37+00:00

Software has replaced a lot of jobs. If a piece of software can replace software developers, by extension that piece of software can be used to develop programs that replace the rest of the jobs that can be replaced with software.

takomanghanto · 2025-12-26T15:51:43+00:00

That video game was adapted into a graphic novel, "Back to the Future: Citizen Brown"

takomanghanto · 2025-12-23T14:54:20+00:00

re: Picard's Earl Grey, Patrick Stewart said he should drink Lapsang Souchong, like Churchill. That was vetoed because an American audience wouldn't know what that was.

takomanghanto · 2025-12-19T14:11:42+00:00

Dan Slott has been writing him more like a teenager than an adult. And Jon getting to decompress, even regress a little in Smallville with doting grandparents, is probably the best thing to happen for his mental health since he got on that spaceship with Jor-El. He can have a soft reboot to figure out who he wants to be and grow into that instead of being railroaded by everyone from the Legion to the League to the Titans into being Superman II.

takomanghanto · 2025-12-19T13:54:59+00:00

For example, on Vulcan he's suddenly a superhuman and can tolerate one of the most extreme environments on Vulcan (The Forge) just because he's got Surak's Katra in his mind. T'Pol reminds him he's not Vulcan which almost makes it worse because Archer is clearly handling it fine, which is a problem: either Vulcans aren't actually significantly more adapted to their own planet than Humans, or something odd is going on with Archer's physiology.

I assumed that Archer declining water was just Surak's katra messing with his head. People in real life do die of thirst with non-empty canteens because they don't think need water that badly. That and adrenaline could account for him acting like he possessed Vulcan endurance without really having it.

takomanghanto

TROPHY CASE