This is mentioned briefly in both the articles, but wanted to highlight that the Scopes trials were initially initiated as a media stunt by the local coal company to bring money and attention to their town. They selected Scopes as the defendant, William Jennings Bryan as lead prosecutor, and, after H.G. Wells declined, Darrow as defense.

Civic groups testing the law to bring them to trial isn’t an unusual practice, but it being led by local business to profit the town is.

Source

Because thats the only other choice. Right. 🙄

People don’t want another politician.

The stench of establishment is the only thing the Democrats have to wash off to win an election. That’s all people want. They wanted it so bad that they voted for Trump again. Stop putting establishment candidates in front of the electorate.

Maybe it’s because it’s because I just finished reading this section in Range, but I think it’s more than the engineers knew.

When sociologist Diane Vaughan interviewed NASA and Thiokol engineers who had worked on the rocket boosters, she found that NASA’s own famous can-do culture manifested as a belief that everything would be fine because “we followed every procedure”; because “the [flight readiness review] process is aggressive and adversarial”; because “we went by the book.” NASA’s tools were its familiar procedures. The rules had always worked before. But with Challenger they were outside their usual bounds, where “can do” should have been swapped for what Weick calls a “make do” culture. They needed to improvise rather than throw out information that did not fit the established rubric.

Roger Boisjoly’s unquantifiable argument that the cold weather was “away from goodness” was considered an emotional argument in NASA culture. It was based on interpretation of a photograph. It did not conform to the usual quantitative standards, so it was deemed inadmissible evidence and disregarded. The can-do attitude among the rocket-booster group, Vaughan observed, “was grounded in conformity.” After the tragedy, it emerged that other engineers on the teleconference agreed with Boisjoly, but knew they could not muster quantitative arguments, so they remained silent. Their silence was taken as consent. As one engineer who was on the Challenger conference call later said, “If I feel like I don’t have data to back me up, the boss’s opinion is better than mine.”

I think most of us believe decisions should be data driven, but in some edge cases gut instinct is valuable.

It is easy to say in retrospect. A group of managers accustomed to dispositive technical information did not have any; engineers felt like they should not speak up without it. Decades later, an astronaut who flew on the space shuttle, both before and after Challenger, and then became NASA’s chief of safety and mission assurance, recounted what the “In God We Trust, All Others Bring Data” plaque had meant to him: “Between the lines it suggested that, ‘We’re not interested in your opinion on things. If you have data, we’ll listen, but your opinion is not requested here.’”

They didn’t get blown up. The Challenger did.

Don’t take low ball offers personally. There are serious bids that deserve conversation and then those that don’t. Move on.

But if you keep getting nothing, maybe you’re the issue.

Start singing it with them. Do it sincerely. You’ll either kill their joy or you two will have a moment.

I get upset because of upsets me first and foremost. If others get upset and I don’t, it doesn’t change my feelings. If they share their reasoning, I can see their point of view. If it makes sense, I can empathize with them because I see how it has upset them. It still may not upset me. Sometimes they will present a view that is compelling that will then make me upset.

your argument doesn’t really disprove the topic of this discussion.

Topic of Discussion

I don’t know if Stockholm Syndrome exists for hostages held at gunpoint.

Stockholm syndrome doesn’t require being held at gun point.

The real issue is people behaving irrationally according to you. If you were in this situation, you would done the rational thing. Therefore, they must be irrational. They are, I’m part, to blame for their situation.

But this is all predicted on your value system and not theirs. Stockholm syndrome doesn’t take into account their story and what convinced them to behave the way they did. It a heavy hand that decontextualizes events and removes victims agency. Accounting for these may still reveal something worth addressing for a smaller subset of victims who are trauma bonded, but it should patiently and diligently center and empower the voices of victims and not dismiss them as irrational

Your left, my right.

That’s how it was designed. That’s how everyone uses it.

Puck from Gargoyles decided to mimic the most serious person he could find and serve a billionaire. All because he thought it would be hilarious. This is chaotic neutral. This continues to blow my mind.

I think it’s a testament to on the nose satire and hitting at the heart of people’s anxieties about work.

Listen up! AI’s gonna be a game changer. If you don’t master passive prompting kids your vending machines good bye. Buy my book, “Passive Prompting”!

Everyone. Calm down… This is a joke account.

Here another one of his posts.

Why is this on shitpost? Dude’s got a mega thread with references and receipts.

I’d like to try Linux with minimal commitment and no setup. Give it real test drive with some of my most important tools.

If and when I decide to make the switch, I want to have access to my normal windows machine. I’d keep it around if I need it. But prefer if it went away slowly. I want to work with and communicate with windows users with neither of us having to jump through weird hoops.

I want my printer to work.

Problems will come up, but I don’t want it to dominate my time.

I’m sure most of you will say not to worry, but until I’ve logged some real hours, I will.

Here’s Simon Willison’s write up of how he uses AI. He’s been using it for a couple of years and distilled his methods in this article. He also discussed when and how he vibe codes.

I agree with this.

As a leftist, celebrate life and fight so others can have those celebrations. Checking your privilege can be an entrance to that battlefield, but it can also stall out there. And it can feel like something important has been done because of how much feeling it has. But stalling out there does nothing to liberate anyone.