I’m a scientist! :D

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There are some errors in the “correct” numbers For example, note that the respondents estimated that 89% of Americans have a high school diploma or higher. Yet the chart says the real figure is 65%. But doesn’t that seem odd to you? Do you think on average 35% of people drop out of high school?

No, the source of this error is that the question is poorly worded. 90% of Americans 25 or older have a college degree. The graphic indicates the poll asked specifically about adults. And it seems the respondents had the correct answer, about 90%.

I don’t know where they get the figure that only 65% of adults have a high school degree. My best estimate is that they mixed up “the percentage of adults with a high school degree” and “the percent of people with a high school degree.” The latter would count all current K12 students, as they obviously don’t have their diploma yet.

This is one item that really stood as an obvious and glaring error. And if I can see this one, I wonder if other numbers in either the ‘correct’ responses or the respondents’ results are just due to poor or incorrect phrasing/interpretation of questions.

I have two master’s degrees, have spent years teaching undergraduate engineering courses, am working on a dual-major PhD in engineering…and I…apparently…cannot read a plot.

Honestly, I’ve been pawing through the list of medical conditions that let you still be eligible for the new covid booster. I have something that I think will qualify. But my funnier goto is that depression is one of the eligible conditions. And nothing makes me more depressed than an anti-science quack running our vaccine system!

I’ve been on tirzepatide for maybe three months at this point. I highly recommend it. I think the risks are massively overblown. It’s predictable fear-mongering that is simply an understandable reaction to how greedy the pharma companies are with their pricing on it. If you can’t afford it, it’s tempting to convince yourself it would be a bad thing to take it anyway.

I can’t afford it, but instead of spreading FUD about it, I found a third way. I just pirate the shit out of it! I’m not just taking tirz, I’m taking bootleg tirz! So far I’ve dropped from about 180 to 150.

¿Por qué no los dos?

I’ll take every vaccine I can get. Hell, I would sign up for the smallpox vaccine if I could get it, even though that disease hasn’t existed in the wild in decades. I want every covid booster. I want it all! Jab me up, give me that sweet MRNA!

And I’ll take the other stuff too. I love me a good edible. I’m on tirzepatide myself, even though insurance doesn’t cover it. How do I afford it? Simple! I pirate the hell out of it!

Tale as old as time. The abused grow up to become the abusers.

Yeah…this is the kind of person that the mob was most useful for back in the day. This was the kind of guy that got his knees broken for being a wise guy.

You’re ascribing more competence to these people than they deserve. They’re not omniscient. And trawling social media only gets you so much. Hell, you can tell them you’re generally liberal but opposed to illegal immigration if you really want. Yes, the Trump admin has some pretty extensive social media search capability, but that’s for their upper level cabinet officials. They just can’t afford to be that picky for the type of low-level position I’m talking about. ICE has expanded by leaps and bounds, way beyond any ability for them to properly screen applicants.

Eh, officially being fired for incompetence is a pretty good piece of evidence in your favor. Plus assumedly there wouldn’t be any witnesses that could report you actually committing any of the worst ICE offenses.

If your mortgage payments are fixed, but your pay increases with inflation, your real monthly mortgage payment goes down over time.

That if is doing so much heavy lifting it just qualified for the Olympics. The problem with inflation is that your wages don’t keep up with it.

Sure, there is that difference. But the series doesn’t even address the fact that he’s already killed hundreds of people. Intentionally or not, it’s still absurd to hand wring about killing when you’ve already killed hundreds of people, accidentally or not, and the one person you’re worrying about taking down is literal genocidal maniac. To me that just sounds like not being willing to take responsibility for your own actions. Intentionally or not, Aang killed hundreds of people. And it’s not like he never went into the Avatar state again after taking out the Northern fleet. Hell, he fought Ozai while in the Avatar state. Maybe he should have just “accidentally” killed Ozai while in the Avatar state and just washed his hands of moral culpability, just like he did all the other people he killed before then.

Regardless, Aang found a way to make peace with the fact that he had taken hundreds of lives. But when the person in question is someone of power and renown? Then it becomes something to fret over.

Thanks! Fixed.

For me, the best version of this is Avatar: The Last Airbender. Aang spends an entire arc lamenting how he may need to spill blood and kill the Fire Lord. Meanwhile the very same Aang had previously sunk an entire naval fleet single-handedly.

How many thousands of sailors, most of them probably people drafted against their will, did you kill that day Aang? Remember when you literally sliced entire ships in half? Your hands cut through steel, would you have even felt the flesh you were cutting through? Or how about all those ships you sank? A fair number sank instantly. You think everybody got out safely from those ships? Or how about that time you destroyed that giant drill machine, the one manned by thousands of soldiers, outside the walls of Ba Sing Se? You think everyone managed to miraculously escape that fireball? And those are just the major battles. How about the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fire nation soldiers you casually tossed around like rag dolls with your powers of air, water, and earth during dozens of minor skirmishes? What are the odds you managed to toss all these men around like playthings and NOT have a few of them have their skulls bashed open on rocks when they hit the ground wrong?

The point of this is not to condemn Aang’s actions through the series. His actions were fully justified, as he was fighting a war against an expansionist colonial military power. What he did was an objective good. But by the time he’s hand wringing about having to kill Fire Lord Ozai, Aang had almost certainly already taken hundreds of lives. Hell, he probably killed hundreds just in that final climactic battle against the airship armada. The Hindenburg disaster saw 1/3 of the passenger and crew parish. And that was from an airship that crashed when it was already landing and close to the ground. Aang was dropping ships from miles in the sky. Maybe some soldiers with fire bending powers could somehow slow their own descent enough to survive, maybe they had some parachutes. But there’s zero chance that Armada didn’t have a fatality rate at least comparable to the Hindenburg disaster.

So Aang blithely kills hundreds of conscripts without a second thought. But then he has a crisis of conscience that takes multiple episodes to resolve, and that crisis of conscience is all about…Fire Lord Ozai? This is like if someone nonchalantly participated in the Firebombing of Dresden and then suddenly developed complex moral doubts about putting a bullet in Hitler’s head. Aang had already killed hundreds of people that Ozai had sent to their deaths. No one was forcing Ozai. He wasn’t a conscript. He had full autonomy; he’s the absolute ruler of the Fire Nation. He doesn’t even have a Congress or Parliament to answer to. He has absolute total moral responsibility for every evil thing the Fire Nation has done. Yet, when it comes to actually holding the powerful accountable, suddenly Aang wants to talk about the morality of killing.

New law. LLMs will only be accessible in very particular forms. Engaging with an LLM will be more like visiting the Oracle of Delphi. You’ll have to travel to some remote location and ask the LLM in person. It will then respond in riddles or vague prophecies that leave a lot open to interpretation. This will be the only legal way to use an LLM.

The final solution to lock picking!

But what is ownership? Ownership is the society-recognized right to the exclusive use of property. But society establishes certain limitations on those rights, including requirements to allow the lawful access by law enforcement to the property.

You intrinsically give law enforcement permission to access property if they have a warrant. It’s just part of the bargain of land ownership.

I don’t have to worry about being drafted, I’m officially morally unqualified to serve in my nation’s armed forces!

Eh. We can use some of the good things from the past without using the bad as well.

I like this look. It has this aura of beautiful golden light about it. It has that aura without going the full gaudy gilded look like you would find in something the president built.