People’s answers to the question how much use of social media is worth to them reveal a ‘superendowment effect’: They’d pay very little to acquire it, but would have to be paid a lot to let it go.

I’d pay to avoid having to use Facebook. Not sure how much, though. Maybe up to $500 a month if it became mandatory under some authoritarian regime but you could opt out via a fee.

To force me to use Facebook? It’d be a lot. Maybe $10,000 a month, if I were to use it every day and as most people use it, with relatively honest information. I am not sure $10,000 a month would be enough. Maybe more. I’d definitely use it if someone paid me $50,000 a month. So somewhere between $10K and $50K a month would be my required Facebook usage payment.

This is so true, and all of the Mozilla/Firefox people should watch this:

This is what users do when you create an intuitive UI. pic.twitter.com/qL7ppQ6KaD

— Pranay Pathole (@PPathole) February 26, 2019

This also seems to be babbling, mostly, as far as I can tell.

Among many other mistakes, she is somehow analogizing the scarcity of attention and the need to parcel it out judiciously with the problem of students writing papers. Do professors not realize that in most cases that students must regurgitate in the simplest forms possible what professors “teach” them to have any hope of a good grade? You know, I’ve done the opposite and my grades were not good. In school, you are penalized for thinking for yourself or attempting novel ideas or interpretations. So exactly what did she think those papers would contain, exactly?

I’ve interviewed job applicants, and perceived them all as “bright and impressive”, but found that the vast majority of them could not solve a simple math problem. The ones who could solve the problem didn’t appear any “brighter” in conversation than the ones who couldn’t.

I guarantee that I could not solve that math problem, but I’d also be better at the job assuming I had any training for it than any of the other applicants, and if not I’d be better at it in a few months. Like Ice Cube, in most areas I can mess around and get a triple-double. All except math.

If one prizes writing over math, I bet I could summarize this person’s own work better — more cogently and with more clarity — than they themselves could. And faster, too.

But sure, math is all that matters. Unless the job directly involves teaching math or a lot of high-level math, why does she thinks this matters at all? Academia’s math obsession is completely bizarre. I guess it is because quantification is easy; you can solve the math problem or not. It might not tell you a goddamn thing, but, recursively enough, you can quantify if someone can quantify something.

The main problem with this whole post is that she conflates the ability to detect BS in GPT-2 results with performance on garbage, worthless essays and math problems that the person might not — probably does not — have any training to solve.

It doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s yet more babbling. Where’s the evidence that these ideas have any relation at all?

This is the kind of shit I mean when I say that smart people are just not very smart, in general. Sure, I am certain she is good at her job and all that. But like most people she has the systems thinking capability of a desiccated tadpole — and from reading the rest of her blog, she’s trying! But she’s just not very good at it (as most STEM types are not). She has good intentions, but the end result is no insight. Just babbling.

Here's Obama *bragging* about how he saw the transformation of America into the number one oil producer. This was four months ago. The climate change denial is coming from… inside the house. https://t.co/PtSoj6JctN

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) February 26, 2019

Nearly everyone, as I’ve noted before, is a climate change denier de facto. If we weren’t, we’d be running around with our hair on fire attempting to avert the coming catastrophe. Why anyone would have kids given what’s coming I haven’t a clue. People just have no idea the severity and scope of what’s ahead.

Obama was a terrible president who made the world much worse. The evidence is everywhere. People are as delusional about Obama as they are about climate change.

I am not too sexy for my shirt, but I am starting to get too big for many of my shirts.

I think it’s the much taller shoulders, mainly. And I am about two inches wider now in the shoulders/arms than I was six months ago.

everyone's calling for a surveillance state. that's impossible. shutting down social media isn't. dry up their money, end this nightmare

— Gravis: The Posts Lizard (@gravislizard) February 26, 2019

Yeah. Humans are probably not socially equipped for social media, especially most over-40s, who are the worst of all from what I’ve seen. Though it does seem to have deleterious effects on everyone who uses it, especially if it’s heavy use.

Humans do not have effective social contagion filters and are very desirous of social approval. This worked fine in small communities or bands, where it was necessary for survival. This tendency goes totally haywire in an environment of social media, especially for those who are not mentally resilient or are more extroverted.

If Facebook had never existed the world would be vastly better off.

The next time I don’t do something I am supposed to do at work, I am going to claim Russian conspiracy and see how that goes. It seems to be working well for everyone else, so why not?

This one isn’t a fail at all. It’s pretty impressive. That’s either a 335 or 345 pound deadlift, and the lift is pretty clean (good form). That she still made the lift while vomiting halfway through is even more impressive, really.

Probably came from drinking too much water or similar right before. I don’t drink much before or while deadlifting, and definitely no carbonated drinks. It’s painful and I could see myself doing the same thing if I drank too much.

40 Gym Fails.

Yet another reason I don’t work out in a gym.

Most of these aren’t fails in the sense this video probably means, but rather people deriving little to no benefit from the workout. Might as well not do it, then, especially if your atrocious form means you’re going to injure yourself eventually.

(And unless you’re doing shrugs, not doing the full range of motion of an exercise does just about nothing. Do the full exercise with less weight; it’ll benefit you far more even with low weight. Just do more reps.)

I think in a democracy more people should have a say — including young people.

Knowing it’d never pass, I’d propose a plan like this. The voting age starts at 10, or maybe 12, but you don’t get a full vote at that age. At 12, say, you get 1/10 of a vote. For every year your age increases, your vote total increases by 1/10. So at 13, you’d get 2/10 of a vote, at 14, 3/10, etc.

At 18, it jumps to 10/10 or one vote and then begins to increase by 1/10 a year until the age of 35, where you’d have a huge 2.7 votes — then it starts decreasing again until it eventually goes down to 0.5 of a vote and stays there until your death.

No, it isn’t perfect but we’re seeing now the huge disadvantages of old people having the absolute de facto power they now possess, and that is climate change is going to kill directly and indirectly millions to billions of young people who have no say at all in reversing it or adapting to it. Old people have reaped all the gains, pulled up the ladder behind them and said a big “fuck you” to their children and grandchildren.

That’d be a bit harder to do with a scheme like the above.

Countless amount of people who ar “smart” but still broke

The world doesn’t care how smart you are unless you’re going to use your brains to solve a problem

Teach something
Build something
Help someone

Being smart for the sake of being smart doesn’t get your paid https://t.co/XzGbjfbejX

— Chris Johnson (@Nappyb0yy) February 24, 2019

Exactly why I did not become a writer! I am a very good to great writer, and I can churn out high-quality writing very quickly with little editing required. But it’s still a terrible career. Writers make little and novelists fare on average worst of all.

Instead, I went into IT because I also enjoy computers and it pays well, has lots of employment options, and is not terribly geography-constrained. I’m comparatively much better at writing than I am at IT work but it doesn’t matter because writing can’t buy a retirement or an SS.