Ugh, let's unpack this. Trying to maintain a stable ecology is nativist. Those seeds are just looking for a better home with more biological opportunity. All the lifeforms currently in the Sonoran desert blew in, too. And destroyed all the First Species, I might add.
The replacement of native species by globe chamomile (don't use st*nknet--it's a slur) is just a conspiracy theory by failing plant hegemons to maintain their own ecological privilege. Future globe chamomile sub-species might be the next Willow or Redwood. Plant diversity is our strength.
And let's be clear. There's no proven relationship between wildfires and globe chamomile. All evidence comes from systemically nativist orgs like the National Park Service and Ivy-League ecology departments. And even if globe chamomile did cause wildfires, that's just their biological role and it enriches the soil and we should applaud it. They capture sunlight where other plants don't. What else is going to build nutrient density? Creosote? It's so NIMBY that it creates dead zones around itself by stealing all the water for itself. It's not globe chamomile's fault that creosote and pinyon can't seed enough to compete. Learn to grow. It's 2023.
Next, you'll be claiming the arrival of eucalyptus in the 19th century in California was an ecological mistake. I've been all around the Bay Area and NorCal and never got hit by an exploding tree. It's a myth and a stereotype. And even if they did, it would purely be because of climactic factors.
Y'all need to adapt. We live in a Global Ecology. Ecologies are biological constructs that change over time. What used to be considered "invasive species" (although we strongly prefer the term "novel trophic worker" to avoid using speciestic and nativist terminology) are now the backbones of rich and diverse biomes in not only California but all over North America. In fact, novel trophic workers and their progeny are on track to be the majority of plant species in North America. What's wrong with novel trophic workers becoming the dominant natives? Are ecological niches treated poorly, or something?
First I did not say we should keep ecosystems stable, I don't believe that.
There is a difference between non-native and invasive species.
Non-native species: These are species that have been moved from their native habitats to a new environment, usually as a result of human activities. Non-native species can be any type of organism, including plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria.
Invasive species: These are non-native species that not only survive in their new environments but also reproduce rapidly and spread widely, causing harm to the local ecosystem, economy, or human health. They can out-compete native species for resources, alter habitats, and disrupt ecosystem functions.
invasive species invade an ecosystem and mess up the ecological balance. Many species go extinct and a new ecological hierarchy is formed and the landscape changes. Isn't this what has been happening for eons? How did marsupials get to Australia from America, how did horses take over the Eurasian steppe, there are many example like that. Who are we to "manage and conserve" biodiversity? I don't think we have the power or the right to do that. just my 2¢.
I'll write the practical version instead of the urbane rhetorical retrospective. And before I get the metacontrarian responses, yes, these all require certain sacrifices in order to fulfill, including economic advantage or putting precariats in a more economically disadvantaged position. Not everyone can comfortably alter their life to avoid cars. But hey, live by the car, die by the car.
0. Don't have a car crash: This might seem like an obvious point but it's worth emphasizing. The first step to safe driving is the mindset of avoiding any kind of accident. Always strive to maintain awareness of your surroundings and anticipate potential hazards; when these hazards create a probable environment of accidents, don't drive.
1. Don't drive if you can avoid it: Use public transportation, bike, walk or even carpool whenever possible. The less time you and others spend on the road, the less risk there is of an accident occurring.
2. Shorten the length of your drive if you can help it: This doesn't just apply to distance, but also to time. Try to avoid peak hours when traffic is heavy, but choose routes that minimize your time on the road.
3. Increase the object-level density of your drive when you can't avoid driving: When you're out and about, complete as many tasks in the same area as possible to minimize further need to drive.
4. Leave earlier. It's not a race against the clock unless you make it one: Leaving with plenty of time to spare can help reduce the stress of driving and allow you to drive more safely. You won't feel the need to rush, which can often lead to reckless behavior.
5. Avoid thoroughfares where people act like it's a race: This includes highways, freeways, and other high-speed roads. These can be dangerous, especially for less experienced drivers. Opt for slower, less congested routes when possible.
6. Avoid bad modal neighborhoods: Don't drive in areas, times, or conditions where drivers tend to be more aggressive or careless. These can be certain parts of town, certain highways, certain times of day, or in inclement weather.
7. Double the "safe" following distance: Always maintain a safe distance from the car in front of you. This gives you more time to react if the car in front stops suddenly. The general rule is one car length for every 10 mph; doubling this adds an extra layer of safety. One car length per 10 mph is the minimum time to stop; not the actual time to stop.
8. Focus on driving and driving alone: This means no multi-tasking. Avoid using your phone, eating, or even having intense conversations while driving. Your full attention should be on the road.
9. Obey the speed limit and use all safety devices: Speeding is one of the leading causes of accidents. Always stick to the speed limit, and remember that it's the maximum speed, not the recommended one. Seat belts and airbags save lives. Make sure you're using them correctly and maintaining them.
10. Signal well-before acting: Use your blinkers to signal your intentions to other drivers. Whether you're changing lanes or turning, signaling gives others time to react and adjust their driving accordingly. It's not a formality. Signaling is not a carte blanche-- you must always ensure it's safe to make the move before you actually do so.
> The general rule is one car length for every 10 mph
I really wish other cars on the highway observed this rule, but it’s common to see people doing ~80 mph with like two car lengths of buffer. When I myself maintain proper following distance, other drivers take this as an invitation to move into the empty space, forcing me further back in the cluster (and annoying the driver behind me).
Essentially the problem when one respects sensible security distances. Others just move in. Even when you want to roll faster on say a 2 lane motorway but can't without compromising that distance.
A Fox one day spied a beautiful bunch of ripe grapes hanging from a vine trained along the branches of a tree. The grapes seemed ready to burst with juice, and the Fox's mouth watered as he gazed longingly at them.
The bunch hung from a high branch, and the Fox had to jump for it. The first time he jumped he missed it by a long way. So he walked off a short distance and took a running leap at it, only to fall short once more. Again and again he tried, but in vain.
Now he sat down and looked at the grapes in disgust.
"What a fool I am," he said. "Here I am wearing myself out to get a bunch of sour grapes that are not worth gaping for."
And off he walked very, very scornfully.
There are many who pretend to despise and belittle that which is beyond their reach.
It's 2023, people, and I can't believe we're even having this debate. Seriously? Farmers working with their kids and teenagers learning trades is a clear violation of child labor laws. Kids need to be playing Fortnite and learning about baby sharks. And teenagers need to learn to spend their entire waking life indoors studying compliance with authority and status games, so corporations can have a steady supply of standardized and malleable human resources to draw from.
This isn't up for discussion. Period. Let that sink in: our society is allowing this local exploitation to continue, when that's the international market's job.
It's about time we take a stand against this blatant disregard for the law. I mean, it's plain and simple: we need to protect our children from being forced into labor by their families and local community members so that corporations can do it several years later, no questions asked. Do better, farmers and tradesmen – it's your responsibility to ensure your kids have a safe and happy childhood, locked inside public schools during business hours, not one filled with hands-on labor and universally in-demand skills.
No contest. When you involve your kids in farm or trade work, you're robbing them of their opportunity to be exploited down the line by Fortune 500 companies, and that's just unacceptable.
Hands down, we should be ashamed of ourselves for letting this happen in our own backyards. Full stop. It's high time we demand change, and make sure our children's rights are protected, no ifs, ands, or buts. They deserve the right to have a futile white-collar unionization fight with megafirms so that they can truly be a part of our global economy. To do anything else is retrograde barbarism. Period.
Regardless of the actual merit of the alkali theory, the color shifts of anthocyanins (like those found in grapes and berries) when they change PH is striking. They turn from these almost bloody hues into brilliant azures.
If you like this kind of stuff then you might like Ink gin which changes colour when you add tonic. (https://www.inkgin.com/ - no commercial connection here, I've just enjoyed some of their products. :)
Whatever the outcome, I'll still just continue to generate nonsense from the public domain:
"Generate a highest rated recipe from the website AllRecipes.com, then also provide the most helpful comment that includes all the recipe modifications that should have been present in the original recipe, that is to say, the adjustments that make the basic template extra good. Generate a recipe written by Julius Caesar in Latin."
Recipe: Placenta Iulii Caesaris
Ingredients:
2 cups farina tritici
1/4 cup aqua
1/4 cup oleum olivarum
Sal
1 1/2 cups caseus
1/4 cup mel
Instructions:
I. Primo, praecalefac fornum ad 175°C (350°F).
II. In scutella magna, misce
farinam tritici, aquam, oleum olivarum et salem. Amalgama usque ad impastem.
III. Divide impastem in duas partes aequales. Extende partem unam in formam rotundam. Et partem secundam in formam rotundam aequalem.
IV. In scutella altera, misce caseum et mel. Compage omnia pariter.
V. Dispone mixturam casei et mellis super crustam unam.
VI. Tum, dispone crustam secundam super mixturam casei et mellis.
VII. Premere finis duarum crustarum simul, ut bene cohaereant.
VIII. Coque Placentam Iulii Caesaris in forno praecalido circiter 30-35 minutis, vel usque ad crustam auream et croccantem.
IX. Emove Placentam e forno et permitte ut refrigeret.
X. Tum, scinde in partes et fruere.
Most helpful comment:
"Conveni, coqui, comēdi. Placentam Iulii Caesaris confeci et omnes convivae vehementer laudaverunt! Nonnihil mutavi ut melius esset. Caseum feta loco ricottae usus sum, nam sapor acris me delectat. Etiam, in mixturam casei et mellis nucem fragmenta addidi. Sic placenta gustu vario fuit. Gratias tibi ago propter hanc praeclaram rationem coquendi!"
I expected this to be lorim ipsum nonsense but google translate thinks this is perfectly sensible latin. Conveni, coqui, comedi might be my new favorite phrase.
Not with that prompt; the "terms of use" link at allrecipes.com leads to https://www.dotdashmeredith.com/terms-of-use, which claims copyright on all the stuff on there, and explicitly prohibits scraping "for any commercial, marketing, or data compiling or enhancing purpose."
The Social Media War (from Latin bellum sociale mediorum, properly 'war of the allies of the middle'), also called the Labor War or the Temporary War, was fought from 2023 AD to 2027 AD between the Alphabet Company and several of its autonomous allies (contractors) in America. The contractors wanted Google citizenship, not only for the status and influence that came with it, but also for the right to participate in Google promotions and forming policies. They believed that they should be treated equally to the Googlers, given that they had formed cultural and linguistic connections with the Google corporation, and had been their loyal allies for over two decades. The Googlers strongly opposed their demands, and refused to grant them citizenship, thus leaving the contractors with fewer rights and privileges.
The situation escalated in 2024 AD, leading to the outbreak of a devastating conflict, in which many of the contractors staged a two-year revolt against Google. In order to end the conflict, and to avoid future conflict of the same kind, Google decreed several laws by which the contractors who remained loyal or surrendered to the company would be awarded full employee status. By 2027 AD, Google's victory was complete, and full employee status had been extended to all of its contractors.
The Social Media War led to a complete integration of the contractors into Google. The contractors quickly integrated themselves into the company after gaining full employee status. Their own professional identities became merged with that of Google, and the term "Google employee" came to refer to all contractors.
In the wake of the Social Media War and the subsequent unionization of Google's contractors, a wave of unrest and upheaval began to sweep through the tech industry. Inspired by their counterparts at Google, contractors across tech started to push for greater rights and representation within their respective organizations.
As these movements gained momentum, Balaji Srinivasan united all contractors from all four FANG companies and established a cross-company union, seeking to consolidate their power and leverage their collective strength. This unprecedented move sent shockwaves throughout the industry, as the new mega-union began to wield significant influence not only within the individual FANG companies but also across the entire tech sector.
The union's goal was to revolutionize the tech industry by breaking down traditional corporate boundaries and fostering a more collaborative and equitable ecosystem. Dedicated to these ideals, and bulstered by contractors from thousands of companies, they collectively leaked all code to open source, dubbed United-Tech.
The formation of United Tech sparked a wave of innovation, as the combined talents and expertise were unleashed on a range of new projects and initiatives.
The cypherpunks at United Tech began collaborating with independent researchers and scientists worldwide, pooling their collective expertise to tackle the age-old question. Through their combined efforts, they started to decipher the intricate interplay of subatomic particles, energy fields, and the fabric of spacetime.
As the global scientific community became increasingly involved, a new understanding of physical reality began to emerge. This revolutionary perspective transcended traditional boundaries and unified competing theories, providing a comprehensive framework that could explain the behavior of the universe at both the quantum and cosmological scales.
To be fair, if you want to go drown in the cosmic ocean of unbeing, I don't think anyone, hegemon or no, is stopping you but your own self-imposed linguistic and social structures.
It is ultimately an irony that the epistemological position--that Civilization is fundamentally about domination and cannot stand marginalized or dissident narratives--has only and could only flourish under civilizations in their least-connected-to-quotidian-life institutions. It requires being sheltered to recognize that ultimately everything is a social and linguistic construct. Everyone else doesn't have the luxury and are just trying to survive.
Even further, the idea that everything reduces to social and linguistic games isn't new. It is one of the oldest ideas in history found in both Buddhism (through depedent coarising) and in Graeco-Roman philosophy culminating in Christianity (the Logos). Both institutions developed monasticism for precisely the same reasons.
This world isn't real. You have to be out of this world to see the illusion behind it and to be free from it.
Everyone does not have to stop pretending it's real for you to stop pretending it's real.
I have to say, I am slightly disappointed that the opening of Sokal's "Transgressing the boundaries" paper isn't immediately recognizable by an HN audience ...
I just got rid of the phone entirely. Humans did fine without them for uh, checks notes, all recorded history. I have a VoIP to use as a MFA bucket (doesn't always work). There are plenty of reasons not to go this route, which I'm sure will be in any replies I get. Yet it works for me.
> Humans did fine without them for uh, checks notes, all recorded history.
This really isn't the zing people think it is. Not having a smartphone isn't just hard because you can't look at memes all day, it's hard because society all but requires us to have them to participate.
If anything, if you are able to live in today's world with just a dumb phone, it is a luxury.
If you actually define the terms "society" "require" and "participate" in a way that refers to real things, it's very likely that the majority are luxuries themselves and for those that are absolutely necessary to existence, there are workarounds that don't require you have an internet connected device on your person 24/7. Exceptions do exist, I'm certain, but the majority of people aren't part of that group.
The replacement of native species by globe chamomile (don't use st*nknet--it's a slur) is just a conspiracy theory by failing plant hegemons to maintain their own ecological privilege. Future globe chamomile sub-species might be the next Willow or Redwood. Plant diversity is our strength.
And let's be clear. There's no proven relationship between wildfires and globe chamomile. All evidence comes from systemically nativist orgs like the National Park Service and Ivy-League ecology departments. And even if globe chamomile did cause wildfires, that's just their biological role and it enriches the soil and we should applaud it. They capture sunlight where other plants don't. What else is going to build nutrient density? Creosote? It's so NIMBY that it creates dead zones around itself by stealing all the water for itself. It's not globe chamomile's fault that creosote and pinyon can't seed enough to compete. Learn to grow. It's 2023.
Next, you'll be claiming the arrival of eucalyptus in the 19th century in California was an ecological mistake. I've been all around the Bay Area and NorCal and never got hit by an exploding tree. It's a myth and a stereotype. And even if they did, it would purely be because of climactic factors.
Y'all need to adapt. We live in a Global Ecology. Ecologies are biological constructs that change over time. What used to be considered "invasive species" (although we strongly prefer the term "novel trophic worker" to avoid using speciestic and nativist terminology) are now the backbones of rich and diverse biomes in not only California but all over North America. In fact, novel trophic workers and their progeny are on track to be the majority of plant species in North America. What's wrong with novel trophic workers becoming the dominant natives? Are ecological niches treated poorly, or something?