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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • It’s a definition from a well-respected global standards organization. Can you name a source that would provide a more authoritative definition than the ISO?

    There’s no universally correct definition for what the ≈ symbol means, and if you write a paper or a proof or whatever, you’re welcome to define it to mean whatever you want in that context, but citing a professional standards organization seems like a pretty reliable way to find a commonly-accepted and understood definition.



  • “Approximately equal” is just a superset of “equal” that also includes values “acceptably close” (using whatever definition you set for acceptable).

    Unless you say something like:

    a ≈ b ∧ a ≠ b

    which implies a is close to b but not exactly equal to b, it’s safe to presume that a ≈ b includes the possibility that a = b.



  • the other is still made of people who deserve to live their own lives.

    But those “people” (i.e., the clones of Tuvok and Neelix) never existed in the first place.

    The main issue in this episode is that two sentient beings were effectively destroyed against their will to create a new sentient being. To rectify the issue of two sentient beings being destroyed to create one new sentient being, the one was destroyed against his will.

    But a clone of Tuvix would not come into existence at the expense of any sentient beings besides the original Neelix and Tuvok. It doesn’t solve the original “we’re killing a sentient being to bring back our friends” problem the original Tuvix caused, but it doesn’t create new problems either.

    We could just transporter-clone and combine Tuvok and Neelix into Tuvix in one shot. The net effect is one new being, Tuvix, at the expense of nobody. Doing it by cloning Tuvix is just an added intermediate step.




  • We’re not in a recession. Economic growth last quarter was almost 5% (which is massive) and growth has been positive for the last 4 quarters. The average quarterly growth over the last several decades has been closer to 2%.

    The economy is doing just fine. Frankly, most people hear their neighbors complain about the economy, so they think the economy is bad, so they complain about the economy, and the result is everyone thinking the economy is terrible when it objectively isn’t.

    Inflation is relatively high by recent historical standards, but it’s really not that high anymore and hasn’t been for most of 2023. People got sticker shock during the height of it last year and haven’t forgotten. But the labor market is still tight, people who gave up trying to find work a long time ago are entering the market and getting jobs again, wages continue to rise, business investment is up, and small businesses are being created at a historically rapid pace.

    When pollsters ask people, “how is your personal financial situation?”, most people are answering “good.” When those same people are asked, “how do you think everyone else’s financial situation is?”, they scream “TERRIBLE!” That doesn’t mean there aren’t people suffering, but things aren’t nearly as gloomy as everyone insists they are.


  • But that’s not what TypeScript does. The joke in the meme doesn’t really even make sense.

    A better analogy would be you have a basket that’s explicitly labeled “Fruit” and TypeScript complains if you try to put laundry detergent in it because you said it’s supposed to be a basket of fruit.

    This meme was clearly made by someone who doesn’t use or understand TypeScript.









  • I’ve tried to make this argument on the more extreme political communities and the arguments supporting a strike ranged from “everyone would blame the rail companies” to “the damage to unions is worse” to “all those people without jobs would rise up in protest to support the unions” to “it wouldn’t be that bad, it’s being exaggerated by the corporate media.”

    It shows just how privileged those people are to actually think that when people who are already living paycheck to paycheck, rationing insulin to survive, and barely managing to feed their families suddenly lose their income, can’t get insulin, see food prices double, and can’t even drink the tap water anymore because of a “rail strike”, they’re going to understand the nuance of the situation and blame rail companies for not giving the workers sick days.


  • The railway strike would’ve caused shortages of chlorine for city water supplies, shortages of essential medicines like insulin and antibiotics, severe food insecurity and inflation, and would’ve led to millions of people losing their jobs. Railway freight accounts for 40% of freight transport in the US. Imagine 40% of everything that’s made every day suddenly not getting to where it needs to go. There’s a reason Congress has never refused to block a railway strike every time it’s been threatened over the last 150 years.

    The contract was good for the workers but didn’t include paid sick days. Congress imposed the contract on the rail workers when a couple of unions didn’t ratify it (although most of the unions did).

    Biden kept working behind the scenes after signing the law Congress passed to block the strike and got the rail workers their sick days without the suffering a rail strike would’ve had on the millions of Americans who were already struggling with high inflation on essentials. The IBEW union explicitly thanked him for it: https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid



  • “Howdy” for me. I’m from and live in the Northeast.

    Started saying it ironically on work calls to break up the monotony of saying “Hey” when the host joined the meeting and said hello. It was pretty much just a joke at first. Now it’s about 50% of what I say in response to someone joining the meeting saying hello.

    Honestly, I kind of like it. It’s folksy, friendly, simple, and informal. It’s slipped out a couple of times when guests arrive at a family party and are walking in the door and saying their hellos, but it’s mostly relegated to work meetings.

    A few of my coworkers have even started doing it occasionally, so it seems like it’s catching on.