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The things that didn’t happen often say more than the things that did.

Exactly. This is why it is very upsetting when anyone brings up the people that died in the Challenger explosion but fail to mention Big Bird, who did not, as if there is something that makes those astronauts more important to the story.

https://www.history.com/news/big-bird-challenger-disaster-na...


Given the Apple controls the hardware, kernel, and core services, what impact does this have? Just preventing vulnerability escalation?

I would never have received the career support I did online. I’m so lucky I got into software engineering before remote work was a thing.

As a senior engineer, I benefit from remote work. But it’s sad to see those informal lunches replaced with Zoom “coffee.”


This is exactly it. The few years I had in office were an amazing foundation for my career. I see the same in those who started around the same time I did. Most of my team who was hired remotely are struggling.

D&D was highly customizable, so it was as medieval as you wanted.

Some of the sourcebooks were extremely accurate in describing the Middle Ages. Others didn’t even try.

I do like the articles core criticism: the goal of D&D is social advancement.

D&D always was a Western at heart. A group of desperadoes going town to town taking up jobs and fighting the baddies.


When did that change? Because I have played since ADnD 2nd Edition and I do not think it has ever been highly customizable. Customizable? Yes, but not highly so.

1e literally had examples on how to blend the game with other games such as Boot Hill, Gamma World, etc.

We played all three but never combined them.

They have guns and smoke powder in 5e and it just doesn't feel right.

Game of Thrones with cowboys carrying torc grenades?


I feel like as the game evolved to fit more of a trope-y Tolkienesque quasi-medieval setting it definitely got more and more out of place. 1e, especially earlier on, and before was much more of a genre mishmash. Fantasy in the truest sense.

We never combined them either but I did find it cool that the 1e DMG gave explicit advice on how to do so. Heck, there was even that one module where the characters can find laser weapons. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expedition_to_the_Barrier_Peak...


> They have guns and smoke powder in 5e and it just doesn't feel right.

One of the settings for the game that became OD&D included far-future alien technology (Blackmoor), so there's long been precedent.


I never played 1e, I started with ADnD 2e.

Yeah, things started shifting with 2e and that shift kept going further and further.

With Forgotten Realms it shifted from more of a pulp swords & sorcery to a medieval-ish Tolkien-esque environment.

Over time it shifted from low fantasy to high fantasy.

And not only did the theming start to solidify, but over time the tropes arguably became self-reinforcing.


Every campaign I can remember from that era was customized enough that the players and DM would joke about it being "2.5e".

I hear Star Wars is a pain to translate because of the meaningful names.

“Darth Vader” was sometimes translated as “Dark Father”, but that his role as Luke’s father too obvious - a role the initial translators didn’t know existed.


George Lucas wrote that twist for The Empire Strikes Back. The character was already named Darth Vader.


Group insurance isn't weird at all.

Health insurance is new, because until the 1920s/30s the salary loss from sickness was more expensive than medical care, so that's what was insured against.

But no sooner was demand for health insurance created than it was pushed into groups. In America, there's never been a time where non-group insurance was the norm.

The reasons is clear: healthy people would not get coverage, but sick people would.


Why the interest in sterilization? Because ACA makes it a very simple use case?

Out of curiosity, does ACA require coverage if the doctor refuses?


Because it is the most aggressive way at almost no cost to empower someone’s reproductive rights in an adversarial socioeconomic system, while each avoided unwanted child is a net positive. Cost benefit ratio is enormous. ~40% of annual pregnancies (both US and international) are unintended, $330k cost 0-18 (2023 dollars), limited to no support for parents, etc.

ACA coverage is for the procedure, doctors who won’t refuse can be found at https://childfreefriendlydoctors.com/

If you want kids, Godspeed. If you don’t, I am building systems to radically empower that outcome. “Build something people want.” or something like that. Essentially a suffering reduction flywheel.


> ~40% of annual pregnancies (both US and international) are unintended

how many are unwanted though? unintended doesn't necessarily have the negative connotation that /r/childfree folks make it out to be.


https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/07/25/the-exp...

https://www.axios.com/2024/07/25/adults-no-children-why-pew-...

> 64% of young women say they just don't want children, compared to 50% of men.

Unfortunately, the dataset for unintended pregnancies doesn’t also ask if it was unwanted, leaving us to infer preferences via various datasets.


To be fair, even if 5% are unwanted I would think this is a good investment of effort. I have no data though


Sure, honestly I have no problem with people wanting to sterilize themselves, although I do somewhat support the idea that what you want at a younger age isn't necessarily what you want at a later point in your life, so sterilization should be handled at least somewhat seriously.

That said, I do take umbrage with people using suspicious statistics in unusual ways to push an agenda. If your cause is just, there is no need to use misleading statistics to inflate its importance. I argue this for causes I support as well as those I don't support.


I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted, I feel you’ve expressed your views very well. I especially like

> If your cause is just, there is no need to use misleading statistics to inflate its importance.

I absolutely love this, and appreciate you calling it out. We need more of this.


My wife and I have struggled greatly with infertility. But nobody wants to help when you can’t conceive. Certainly not the ACA.

I suspect there’s often an anti-natal bias at work: unwanted children have a very low negative value (like toxic waste), while wanted children are a luxury good.

You mentioned a cost-benefit ratio. How does this calculate the pain of not being able to have more desired children?


Several states require insurance cover IVF and there are always children available for adoption.

People who want kids are not my TAM, I cannot speak to their unmet desires. We all must grieve that which we want but cannot have. Life is inherently unfair. I can speak to the burden of unwanted children though.

I am sorry to hear of your struggle and wish you well.


The US isn’t anywhere near a civil war.

But for the sake of argument …

The US Military is heavily dependent on reservists. There are tons of veterans with military training. The US military has a terrible record against insurgents. Soliders ordered to attack their friends and family go awol. The US military does bot train to suppress a wide scale domestic insurrection.

America is blissfully far from a civil war, bit our heavily armed populace could give the military a run for its money.


Book of Numbers - God demands a census, and then prohibits censuses because only God can call for one.

Echos of this are found in Revelations, where all are required to have a number for buying and selling.


What is the connection you are drawing between those two things?

A census was used to assess a nation's fitness for battle and to set a taxing expectation.

Revelation is discussing the state of affairs under the rule of Nero (the man whose name has the number 666, or 616 depending on the source of your translation). Presumably, it became difficult to do business if you were not known to be loyal to the emperor.

(Side note: You are probably meaning to reference 2 Samuel 24 / 1 Chron 21 when you claim that unsanctioned censuses were prohibited, though that's never actually stated. Just, everybody in the story knows that what they're doing is wrong. But plenty of commentary has been written about why David's census was problematic.)


Not a number a mark, either on their forehead or their hand. Which kind of resembles Apple's FaceID and TouchID :)


I recently faced a personal catastrophe because a low ranking clerical worker mixed up a form.

I’m not mad about it. I’m mad there’s no apology because the company insists they did nothing wrong.

Another company, the one reading the form, is responsible for services rendered in regards to the form. Clearly not the form-fillers fault.


Oh so many systems take "pass the buck" to an insane level. My employer switched insurance providers recently. Twice we were referred to a specialist for one of my kids and each time it took about a week for the referral to be approved (apparently the PCP referring you isn't enough with this HMO).

The only thing that has changed is my HMO; the kids still have the same pediatrician with the same office staff for which referrals were never a problem in the past. However, the insurance company made sure to tell me that they are not the ones delaying it, because it's technically the administrative department of my pediatrician that has to do the referral review. The fact that insurance company mandates that the referral review must be performed by a licensed nurse and follow a byzantine process, of course, has nothing to do with the delay.


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