Same here, my iPhone SE (2016) is still going strong and I can't remember the last time I stumbled upon an app that gave me enough sizing issues to become frustrating. What I would've given for the 2020 SE to be the same size as the 2016, being able to do everything on my phone one-handed is such a nice perk.
I’m not sure about that. I don’t like the toxic nonsense the president posts, but I can also not like the toxic nonsense e.g. esr posts on his website, while simultaneously thinking his web host would be wrong for editing his pages full of toxic nonsense against his will.
I think this EO will be a net benefit for free expression online. I was expecting it to be a terrible tyrannical anti-free-press power grab, but, having read it, it does not appear to be that.
Not wanting to die is privileged? I walked to work pre-coronavirus, and had been nearly run over on 3 separate occasions. Jumping out of the way, hands on the hood level nearly. Yes, the walk sign was on. I was constantly breathing in pollution from construction and old vehicles/diesel/huge trucks. I live in a major metropolitan city in the southern usa. It was not a pleasant experience.
I may be coming off as too direct. But I feel you are coming off too dramatic.
Either you are not aware of your surroundings or you’re trusting others too much for your own well being due to the egocentric Identity instilled in modern society.
“Walking” and “biking” are basic traits you should be able to manage on your own. If there’s variables elsewhere affecting such actions. You’re not being proactive enough. There’s no excuse with multiple countries in the world having less resources and facilities to manage lifestyles whom go through much worse to make ends meet. Please. All it take is to cross the street for most in the states for instance.
Edit: before we prioritize biking and walking to work. We should prioritize efficiently getting the long distance workforce into hubs with less pollution and min cost.
Your assumptions are ugly. There is no possible way for me to know an Audi 6 cylinder (relevant because quiet and fast) is going to come flying around a blind corner when there are huge red stop lights all around it. The only reason I didn't die was because I always am watching the street for cars that aren't paying attention.
Stop comparing to other countries. The usa (especially the south) actively legislates to keep car as king. All of those resources you speak of don't go towards this country's public transportation or self transportation options. Bike lanes are a joke in most big cities. I've watched cars actively try to mess with bikers, run them off the road and such. I won't try to guess their motives. You are naive.
Was the car turning right, by chance? I only ask cause I was almost hit once while out walking in a similar situation. All because cars turning right often don't actually stop at red lights, feeling that can keep going as normal, especially if no traffic is coming the other way. I wish the US would do away with that law, and strictly enforce it for a while. It'd make things a little bit safer, at least.
I apologize for my assumptions. And incorrect comparables.
Your personal implications for such necessities are valid. I personally feel if change in commute were to be made I would not want bike lanes, walking restrictions and traffic control of the immediate realm be first but rather out of city commutes to be innovated upon beforehand.
For me it’s a matter of prioritization and This sense of dread of “death” via biking and walking to work doesn’t seem on par with most whom have 1hr+ commutes out of city
In my experience, religions are happy to hand out pre-baked sets of objectives. Live a life like X. Stay away from Y. Put your money in Z. If you have trouble deciding what direction you want to go, religion can point you somewhere and surround you with a community that will encourage you to keep moving that way.
For some people, that’s really valuable. You see this especially with people who’s prior independent experience didn’t work out very well. Maybe they grew up in an abusive home and want instructions on breaking the cycle and raising their family better. Maybe there was criminal behavior, substance abuse, relationship or career stagnation. For many people, a pre-packaged world view from Religion X can be a big step up from their prior experience, ESPECIALLY when it comes with a supportive community.
The problem, of course, is two fold.
First, life isn’t one-size-fits-all. Eventually the pre-packaged beliefs will be sub-optimal for your personal situation. The better religious communities are flexible enough to accommodate this. The uglier ones lock you down or cut you out.
Second, the pre-packaged beliefs usually assert their own universal and exclusive validity. Even if the one you pick happens to be correct about this, it encourages toxic behaviors that will isolate you from non-community members. And of course the claim is preposterous on its face; The interchangeability of religions undercuts their claims to universal truth.
So, to summarize: Religion is a reasonable place to get a default world view and community, especially if you’re existing beliefs/community aren’t serving you well. Long term they are suboptimal because they don’t adapt to your personal circumstances very well.
I've actually taken an essentially opposite view, interestingly enough. As a younger person I read widely, rebelled in a very thoughtful way against my religion (in my opinion! haha!), took things very seriously, tried to really understand both atheism and other religions, etc. I think all of that was important. Through life experiences I've come to appreciate, strangely, the rituals of religion and the not-making-sense-ness of it. So I find it useful to consider the pre-baked objectives as a sort of rough draft I can push against, but more importantly, I've discarded the world view and taken the concrete. For Christianity, that's bread, wine, the holidays, the rhythm, the community, the directive to support charities generously. The concrete actions do something on a primordial level, as they're what my ancestors have done for oh about eight generations.
The actual pre-packaged beliefs? Meh. I'm less interested than I ever was in arguing the particulars of Paul with anyone. So, to summarize, for me religion is a reasonable place to get a default set of rituals and perhaps community, and long term that's the useful part because the rituals can continue even as my beliefs and circumstances change.
This may also be worth thinking about with respect to healthy eating, exercise, etc. Don't get sucked into a cult, but if signing up for (now-virtual) CrossFit or Pilates classes, or following Starting Strength, gets you doing something, it's a concrete physical ritual that can stay with you even as you change :)
Thanks for the thoughtful reply! I’m glad you’ve found a fulfilling spiritual practice and community. I hope they are supporting you in this difficult time.
> I find it useful to consider the pre-baked objectives as a sort of rough draft I can push against, but more importantly, I've discarded the world view and taken the concrete. For Christianity, that's bread, wine, the holidays, the rhythm, the community, the directive to support charities generously.
That’s pretty interesting to me. I certainly agree that the rituals and community are the best part of organized religion. I’ve enjoyed them in the past and I miss them now. I actually considered returning to the church when I had a young family for exactly these reasons.
I just can’t untangle the practical from the philosophical. The community is great in and of itself, but it exists explicitly to advance a particular set of beliefs. It’s hard to take the community without the beliefs. At least, I haven’t been able to do it successfully. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say I could have, but I would have felt like a fraud. I think that would limit my ability to integrate.
> This may also be worth thinking about with respect to healthy eating, exercise, etc. Don't get sucked into a cult, but if signing up for (now-virtual) CrossFit or Pilates classes, or following Starting Strength, gets you doing something, it's a concrete physical ritual that can stay with you even as you change :)
Absolutely. The principal applies to many places. Employers, even. Many start ups want you to drink the kool-ade, own the vision, play ping pong... you can opt out of that and just do the engineering and paycheck!
> The community is great in and of itself, but it exists explicitly to advance a particular set of beliefs.
No. The community is above the beliefs.
Humans benefit greatly from acting within a group. Yes, it always grows a "here are The Best Practices" division. (It's just a sad side effect.) But one can identify with a smaller and humbler subgroup with the wink-wink approach to rules: switch to the higher levels, seek new goals, etc.
As an atheist, I took me years to notice this minority. Talking with deeply religious people often reveals that stuff they are actively pursuing is not only very interesting, but it's far above what you can achieve just by pondering about some Nietzsche text in your armchair taking mental notes "oh this definitely goes on the top of my todo list now". The group is the magic ingredient to the real-life results.
Disturbingly big part of modern atheism is actually sheer laziness. If I've written my final conclusion "Therefore all religion is useless." it's easy to come up with hundred semi-honest-but-true arguments to reach that conclusion. There is a lot that goes under the radar, like supporting the self-improvement of your children/family and coping with bad problems in your own life, chiefly including suffering and death. Atheism mostly says: better be rich and be able to afford some good professionals.
Dallasite here. While the marketing campaign was very catchy, it has fallen on hard times. Take a walk or drive through Dallas, and you’ll quickly become crestfallen with the amount of litter constantly flowing with the breeze. It’s a disgrace.
Sadly not holding my breath for this to happen in America. After they tracked those spring breaker cell phones with ease, I’m afraid human rights are already being trampled.
In hindsight, cellphone data should have augmented contact tracing rather than just sitting on the sidelines and drawing maps a week later. In my opinion there is a time and place to wield technological power when there is a collective need. Ethicists can argue where the line is drawn but an existential threat to 2% of the infected seems sufficient, especially given how fast a pandemic spreads.
This kind of opinion is predicated on a utilitarian ethical viewpoint. I.e., it's okay to do wrong to a small number of people if it benefits the overwhelming majority of people.
There are plenty of other ethical approaches, many of which would say that the upholding of certain rights is more important than any benefits gained from violating them.
It's not merely predicated on a utilitarian ethical viewpoint, it assumes that we've accurately accounted for costs of the options (eg, second and third order effects) when deciding rather than merely justifying our preferences with biased models.
Empirically, the second (biased models) happens considerably more often than the first (accurate accounting) -- to the point that even if you're a utilitarian, you have to admit it doesn't work in practice. You simply can't make the required benefit calculations for utilitarianism.
This is something businesses get wrong a lot: their numerical justification is actually a reflection of the biases of their staff, rather than an accurate accounting of the options.
The counterpoint to this is that you can't just wait forever before making a decision. At some point, you'll have to do with imprecise data, and for a pandemic that is developing very rapidly, you can't just sit back and do nothing (well you can, but then you have to make an argument for why this is a good option).
As to the point of whether utilitarianism is a good ethical framework... well, at least no non-consequentialist ethical framework has ever convinced me. A naïve reading of utilitarianism has its problems, of course, but those can be accounted for; but the classical Kantian conundrum of not being allowed to lie to a murderer seems silly to me. Plus saying "principles matter" has just as many problems as the utilitarian approach, as nobody will be able to agree on those principles.
Your edit is worth debating, though I doubt there's an easy way to settle the argument between ethical concerns and the efficacy of tracking at phone cell granularity. Most of what I've read in that regard didn't really indicate that particular technological capability makes more sense than an overall lockdown since it can hardly be called targeted.
For further context: The example you replied to references this data in the hands of advertisers, with extremely questionable claims about their pseudo anonymization. That just made your comment before the edit less sensible. I believe such a debate might make sense at the level of a government agency, private entities exchanging that data is just a ridiculous idea.
Contact tracing via technology doesn't have to be via phone towers or anything like that (I agree those have little value outside of the aggregate). Anonymous tracking solutions via bluetooth that are much more are actively being developed and have also been advocated for by people affiliated with the CCC (as well as epidemiologists).
If everything else in American politics and government execution worked smoothly and some extra cell phone tracking could have unwrinkled the last wrinkles, I'd maybe give your argument consideration.
As it currently stands, getting cell phone data would be like polishing the door knobs while your basement is flooded. There are bigger fish to fry, lower fruits to pick etc etc.
I and many WFH people I know are working more than they were pre-corona, unfortunately.
This is common when people first start to work from home. You feel you have to do more in order to prove that you're working at all.
It's also common to feel that all of the time you were out of the house before is 'work time', so whatever you spent commuting before is now time you should be working.
It's worthwhile trying to fight those feelings and define scheduled hours that you work, otherwise you will find work takes over your home life.
The combination of working from home and having kids out of school is particularly rough. Either on its own would be enjoyable. Both at the same time is less so!
I appreciate the sentiments, but I'm in a line of work where we have to track billable hours. Similar to how lawyers have to do it. I have clearly defined my boundaries, and have none of the problems you have described. Really my main problem is that my higher ups are clearly not taking this seriously and are expecting people to put in the same amount of work pre-crisis. I'm thinking that is probably what a lot of my peers are going through too.
