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Messages - ergophobe

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1
Water Cooler / Re: VW unveils the larger ID.Buzz electric van headed to North America | Engadget
« on: June 03, 2023, 03:34:14 PM »
>> lower trim level though

That's mostly what I was thinking of. Based on the early hype, I was imagining more pitching to young, free, camping in the van, but at a $70K price tag with plush expensive seats all of those people would just have to figure out how to rip out and throw away, it seems like more of an upscale, fancy family car.

2
Water Cooler / Re: VW unveils the larger ID.Buzz electric van headed to North America | Engadget
« on: June 02, 2023, 05:31:57 PM »
I think they're shooting for a somewhat different market than I had imagined.

3
Water Cooler / Re: Korea Shatters Its Own Record for World’s Lowest Fertility Rate
« on: June 01, 2023, 05:51:42 PM »
Quote from: rcjordan on June 01, 2023, 02:48:30 PM
I wonder which types of birth control are impacting 3rd-world countries the most?

Is that even the right question? Though hard to untangle, birth control is downstream of other cultural changes (giving women more education and control of their lives, economic changes that make it less "useful" to have a large family, infant mortality decreases and so forth).

I remember reading something years ago from an aid worker in India who said that he was explaining to a man with 12 kids that with condom use he could continue to have sex without having to have unwanted children. The man looked at him quizzically and said, "Well, I wanted 12 kids and now I have them, so I now I will start using condoms."

4
Water Cooler / Re: Korea Shatters Its Own Record for World’s Lowest Fertility Rate
« on: June 01, 2023, 02:55:23 AM »
The world’s peak population may be smaller than expected
New evidence suggests Africa’s birth rates are falling fast
https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2023/04/05/the-worlds-peak-population-may-be-smaller-than-expected

Russia’s population nightmare is going to get even worse
The number of Russians born in April 2022 was no higher than it had been in the months of Hitler’s occupation.
https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/03/04/russias-population-nightmare-is-going-to-get-even-worse

5
Water Cooler / Re: UK: Oldest evidence of plague in Britain found in 4,000-year-old human remains
« on: May 30, 2023, 11:31:24 PM »
Interesting. I didn't realize that the Plague of Justinian (which I think was the most deadly in terms of percentage of population in areas where there are estimates) was the same parasite as the Black Death, let alone that it had circulated for thousands of years.

Quote
DNA evidence published in 2015 indicates Y. pestis infected humans 5,000 years ago in Bronze Age Eurasia,[55] but genetic changes that made it highly virulent did not occur until about 4,000 years ago.[58] The highly virulent version capable of transmission by fleas through rodents, humans, and other mammals was found in two individuals associated with the Srubnaya culture from the Samara region in Russia from around 3,800 years ago and an Iron Age individual from Kapan, Armenia, from around 2,900 years ago.[58][55] This indicates that at least two lineages of Y. pestis were circulating during the Bronze Age in Eurasia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yersinia_pestis

6
Water Cooler / Re: I'm pretty tired of hearing about
« on: May 30, 2023, 05:33:33 PM »
My filters must be working. Haven't heard mention of her in a few years except an article a while back where a fraudster was described as "no Elizabeth Holmes."

I thought for sure your post was going to say "debt ceiling."

7
Economics & Investing / Re: The layoffs will continue until (investor) morale improves
« on: May 29, 2023, 09:51:30 PM »
You studied computer science but big tech no longer wants you. Now what?
Students at the Bay Area’s best universities once dreamed of working for Apple, Google and Meta. Then the lay-offs happened
Quote
Armed with a stack of cvs still warm from the printer, Ayara (a pseudonym) plunged into the career fair. ...But none of the faang firms was here this time. Neither were Spotify, Salesforce, Uber or Microsoft.
https://www.economist.com/1843/2023/05/15/you-studied-computer-science-but-big-tech-no-longer-wants-you-now-what

8
Water Cooler / Re: DE: Geothermal energy is indispensable for transforming the heating sector
« on: May 29, 2023, 09:36:27 PM »
Japan’s hot-spring resorts are blocking geothermal energy plants
A centuries-old leisure industry is a powerful, but not insurmountable, obstacle to progress
https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/05/28/japans-hot-spring-resorts-are-blocking-geothermal-energy-plants

There's always an interest group....


9
Web Development / Re: Photoshop Firefly Generative Fill
« on: May 29, 2023, 07:57:56 PM »
https://www.adobe.com/sensei/generative-ai/firefly.html

Worth a look

10
Web Development / Photoshop Firefly Generative Fill
« on: May 29, 2023, 07:54:36 PM »
More serious topic...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4DVMBlzCgQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGNiuuJflGI

I used to manage a website where the designer called for a 1920x540 image at the top of every page, but had to look good as a square image on mobile. Incredible hassle dealing with that extreme aspect ratio. This basically ends that problem.

11
Web Development / Graphic designers jobs safe from AI threat
« on: May 29, 2023, 07:45:05 PM »
Graphic designers have nothing to worry about

12
Water Cooler / Re: UK: Beekeepers 'run out of equipment' as swarms rise - BBC News
« on: May 29, 2023, 06:30:05 PM »
Those 4000 native species tend to pollinate within a specific niche, which is wonderful, unless you are, say, an almond or orange or apple farmer.

The advantages of introduced/naturalized honeybees (bees of genus Apis, primarily Apis mellifera)  are:

1. They co-evolved with the Old World crops that make up most of our ag.
2. They are in any case promiscuous pollinators, so they will even pollinate ag species they have never seen before.

The disadvantage, of course, can be displacement of native bee species that preferentially pollinate native plants with cascading effects on native plant populations. Between European bees and European earthworms, the environment in North America has been radically changed since they were introduced in about the seventeenth century (sixteenth in South America).

13
Water Cooler / Re: UK: Beekeepers 'run out of equipment' as swarms rise - BBC News
« on: May 29, 2023, 04:51:12 PM »
Quote
We only have honeybees now because of beekeepers. There are no wild honeybees in this country because honeybees are affected by a parasitic mite which feeds on their blood - it's an invasive species.

Wow. I had no idea. Meanwhile, in the US, honeybees do exist in the wild and they are, while not “invasive” (a value-laden term that was not used in biology until the 1950s and not precisely defined until the 1990s), definitely introduced and not native.

14
Economics & Investing / Re: Debbie says 'There are no Soft Landings.'
« on: May 28, 2023, 10:43:34 PM »
>>headed into a moderate recession

it feels like we are already there

15
Water Cooler / Re: State Farm halts new property insurance policies in California
« on: May 28, 2023, 10:43:04 PM »
Quote
The change does not apply to personal auto insurance or existing home insurance policies in the state.

State Farm started here by not issuing new policies, but one by one, they non-renewed every policy. Same with All State, Farmers, AAA, and everyone else.

They may not be canceling existing policies en masse, but it will be harder and harder to renew and fewer and fewer places will meet the necessary criteria. I suspect it will come down to highly, highly urbanized areas where large expanses of concrete reduce risk and perhaps some agricultural areas where large, carefully planted swaths of land reduce risk. But in general, this was a fire-dominated landscape for thousands of years and it is becoming so again.

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