I did both in one day and it was very tiring (and I'm in my 20s). Herculaneum is small enough that anyone without mobility issues can do it, but Pompeii is quite large.
I also went to the volcano and the hike is about 3/4 of a mile and moderately steep. If your children are active they should be able to handle it, but the key is to wear shoes with good traction. Also they sell wine at the top, which is nice :)
It looks like the confidence interval is larger in earlier years because there are fewer data points.
Whats interesting to me is how big the spread is until the 1900s where not only is the blossom date trend increasing, but the individual blossom dates are grouping much closer together as well. I wonder if this is an error in measurement or if there is natural explanation for this variance reduction in the last 100 years.
This is a dangerous misconception. Bringing botulism spores to 100 Celsius will not kill them, the spores can survive indefinitely at these temperatures. This is literally the reason pressure canning was invented, to heat the liquid to a higher temperature such that botulism spores are destroyed.
No, no it doesn't. You two clearly didn't understand what I wrote. I don't how to explain it any simpler than I already have. Depending on the bacteria and the storage conditions of the canned goods, you might need to hold it to a higher f-value. For instance, canned goods that will be stored in a 25-40C range target an f-value of 12 to 15. The higher the temperature you use, the less time you need. And vice versa. It's a misconception that certain bacteria can only be killed at high heat. Quickly, sure. But, as long as you target the correct f-values, all you need is 100C. And a lot of time.
>Although the botulinum toxin is destroyed by thorough cooking over the course of a few minutes,[26][27] the spore itself is not killed by the temperatures reached with normal sea-level-pressure boiling, leaving it free to grow and again produce the toxin when conditions are right
The FDA source seems to be the best one, and was useful-- thanks for that. I'll concede that I (and it appears Wikipedia) are wrong on this matter.
For future reference, you could probably just list that, and drop the attitude. You should also avoid dumping a glut of studies that you didn't bother to read, and that turn out to be irrelevant to the study; for instance the NCBI study you linked was discussing lysozyme's effect on temperatures and appears to contradict your statements, while the AEM ASM study (34/1/23) doesnt back you up as none of the trials they did went below 104 C, and it showed an inverse logarithmic relationship with decreasing temperature.
I have read them all, but thanks for assuming I didn't. You know why I have an attitude, having to argue these points with people who are arguing based on ignorance and not any knowledge or facts of the matter. Perhaps, not commenting on subjects you know woefully little about would be the more prudent course in the future? This isn't a jab at you, just a general point of annoyance with commentators on the internet that always irks me.
That NCBI one shows C.bot being killed at temperatures under 100 celsius which doesn't contradict anything I said. See table 5. I never said all of them were to support my point of 100 c being fine. I posted ALL of those for people, if they wish, to educate themselves on the whole process, hence a couple textbooks, how the TDT in canning works, etc...
This was brought up in a post below, but the first sentence is hard to decipher. I think "patiently allowed" here implies that they kindly answered his questions even though he was touching the third rail.
In other words he was afraid of being hated on for opening the dialogue, but the people on the Slack channel were fully willing to engage.
I’ll thank them ... by promising never to bring this up in their Slack channel again.
That reads to me like "It was a shit show, I got the crap kicked out of me. I am trying to be PC." The patience part comes in where they attempted to answer his questions at all instead of merely dogpiling him with a mountain of hatred.
If they were genuinely that patient and kind, why is it described as "touching the third rail"? Genuinely patient and kind people don't make you feel like you are going to be electrocuted for broaching a topic.
Funny, when I have productive conversations with men actually willing to listen to my side, it is such a rare and wonderful privilege that I am eager to repeat the experience. (This may explain my position on HN as the highest ranked woman here. Enough men genuinely engage me on difficult subjects, it is worth putting up with whatever crap goes along with it.)
Your interpretation in no way succeeds in changing mine.
> Your interpretation in no way succeeds in changing mine.
It doesn't have to, as there is sufficient ambiguity in the writing to make either interpretation iron-clad. Yet I shared the same interpretation as the commenter you responded to, and was surprised by yours. I now see your perspective, though it rings less true to me.
Although, I do think it's borderline inarguable that you are reading too much into the personality traits of the Slack channel members (e.g., "hateful") with far too little information to justify the strength of the words. If those descriptions weren't intended for the Slack channel participants but more of a general comment, then that makes more sense.
Although, I do think it's borderline inarguable that you are reading too much into the personality traits of the Slack channel members (e.g., "hateful") with far too little information to justify the strength of the words.
That is a misinterpretation of my remark. I have personally seen this firsthand over and over. My general remark that I am sick of seeing it does not attribute hatefulness per se to the discussion members. I still seriously doubt that it was a very warm fuzzy conversation. I think the author of the piece is being incredibly charitable.
Just look at how I am being attacked here to give you some inkling of how such conversations typically go. It is hard enough to get privileged white males to be genuinely respectful to each other in an internet conversation. That used to be kind of a given on HN, which deteriorated over time. I hope to see that sort of atmosphere return here -- it does seem to be improving -- but I hope it also includes the women in a way they never were before.
Talking about what was said in the slack channel would distract readers from the main point he was trying to make in the post. If anything he should have said less, as it is clear some still want to discuss the slack channel more than his main point.
I do a lot of blogging. I also get paid to do freelance work, often for business sites, where I get explicit instruction to say nothing negative. This is sometimes an incredibly challenging thing to do.
There was no gun to his head to comment on this discussion at all. He was under zero obligation to describe it as a slack channel or even an online discussion. He was under zero obligation to give what description of it he did. He could have easily said something incredibly generic about "Discussions I have been fortunate to be privy to suggest...."
The fact that he had to spend an entire paragraph not talking about the contents of the discussion and trying ever so hard to be PC while the pain of that discussion clearly bled through in his framing of his comments speaks to how not well it actually went. It is entirely possible to just say nothing about things you wish to say nothing about. I do that pretty often.
Actually in CA, many groceries are not subject to sales tax, just FYI. I'm not sure where the distinction is drawn, but it seems like the less processed the food the less likely it will be taxed.
The original idea was to reduce the regressive effects of sales tax by making basic necessities tax free. Coffee, ground beef, and potatoes are considered basic, but having someone prepare your food for you is a luxury. This general philosophy based on need has been around for decades (centuries?), and it was not originally motivated by getting to people to "eat less processed foods" or other health reasons. Of course, since then all sorts of changes have been made for a variety of reasons.
Not sure why this is downvoted. California, like many other jurisdictions, seems to make a distinction between groceries/"raw" foods, and "prepared foods" when it comes to sales taxes. Unprepared foods are generally exempt from sales tax, while store-prepared foods are not exempt. E.g. an unsliced bagel in NY is untaxed, but a sliced bagel can/must be taxed. Fruit and vegetables likely fall into the untaxed category.
From Wikipedia: In grocery stores, unprepared food items are not taxed but vitamins and all other items are. Ready-to-eat hot foods, whether sold by supermarkets or other vendors, are taxed. Restaurant bills are taxed. As an exception, hot beverages and bakery items are tax-exempt if and only if they are for take-out and are not sold with any other hot food. If consumed on the seller's premises, such items are taxed like restaurant meals. All other food is exempt from sales tax.
It is more complex that that: hot food might not be taxed if it is "to go" (Starbucks and their breakfast sandwiches ....), Whole Foods will always apply tax to its food bar items, the ice cream parlor down the street will apply sales tax if you say "for here" but not if they assume take out.
It is very very confusing, and I haven't really figured it out yet.
Sales tax on food in general tend to be pretty arcane. Notoriously, McVities sued the British revenue services to have some of their biscuits classified as cake instead of biscuits, because there's no VAT on cake. (They won.)
The fact that a reviewer uses 2 and 4 ratings might not be too meanngful. One reviewer might use 2s and 4s the way another uses 1s and 5s.
There may be reviewers who do not generally fit the bimodal distribution, but if they are the minority, why design your whole rating system around them? Better to optimize your system for the way most of your users behave.
yes scaled ratings do tend to have subjectivity which in practice we normalize by databasing surveys over time for categories x markets.
The reason online ratings tend to be bimodal is because the respondents are self selecting sample rather than randomized. Since product ratings are not typically compulsory, the extreme likers/dis-likers tend to fill the survey question.
When implemented as compulsory, it drives poor user experience and having to fill a survey to get something anyway introduces a bias (just fill something to get it over with). So no easy answer.
This is also the reason traditional survey firms haven't really gone out of business even with the wealth of online data from Facebook, Twitter and product reviews available, though better/easier access to actual behavioral signals are certainly replacing surveys in some areas.
> "Being yourself", authenticity, and direct/brutal honesty are roughly orthogonal; you can (or not be) one without affecting the others.
While I agree with the general sentiment of your post, I find quote does not actually work out in practice.
I have been in many situations (ie around family, coworkers, etc) where the group has a strong opinion about something and I feel the opposite. I would usually not chime in and let the conversation move on, but when people ask your opinion, there is a decision. As far as I can see, the options are basically:
1) Lie: not authentic or direct honesty
2) Avoid/Deflect: maintain authenticity, not direct honesty
3) Fein disinterest: lacking authenticity, not direct honesty
4) Express your dissent: authentic, direct honesty
The only options for maintaining authenticity are to be directly honest, or to not answer, and there is a limit to the extent you can avoid answering direct questions and still maintain freedom and conserve your energy and focus.
So while I agree that you don't have to be brutally honest to be authentic, I would say they are far from orthogonal. Sometimes choices have to be made, especially around people who have a tendency to pry or ask your opinion a lot.
You can also take the socratic approach and just ask good questions instead of making statements.
Sometimes you don't even have to ask, just mirror your counterpart (repeat his last statement as a question) and make good use of silence. Wu wei all the way.
Yes! I am by nature non-confrontational, but this is how I dissent in a discussion without getting into a heated argument (when the possibility of changing minds goes out the window anyway).
This is still difficult, but better than staying quiet or lying, a path to self-contempt.
The problem comes to a head when you get the tech equivalent of "Does this make me look fat?". The vast majority of the time, people asking things like that don't want to hear the truth. They want a partner for their mental trip to fantasy land.
> The problem comes to a head when you get the tech equivalent of "Does this make me look fat?". The vast majority of the time, people asking things like that don't want to hear the truth.
If a majority of society would answer such questions with brutal honesty, the stupid idea of asking questions where they don't want to hear the truth would disappear. This sounds like a better world. So I have to conclude the "politeness" is what prevents improvement in this section.
If you think people are actually interested in the lie when they ask questions like that, you've missed the subtext. They aren't interested in the answer. They know the answer. They want you to make an effort to make them feel good.
You should be flattered when somebody asks you a question like that. It means they want you to care about them. That you would resort to the brutal response might hurt them but it gives them good advice: steer clear of you.
Doesn't the reason for asking that question depend heavily on context? If your wife asks you that as she's getting dressed in the morning, she may well be asking for honest(-ish) feedback to avoid looking fat all day at work. It deserves a very different sort of consideration than if she's asking you that on your dinner date.
Or have I been getting this wrong for the last decade?
Doesn't the reason for asking that question depend heavily on context?
Yes, it does. Maybe you and your wife are so close you can be brutally honest with each other and it doesn't hurt your relationship. The same advice might not apply to Sally from accounting, however.
I'm not sure that is a parallel; having known several who espouse that position, I've never gotten the impression that the weapons with which such a society is armed are intended frequently to be used.
Yes, I measured the kibibytes - it really does. :-) And if you really want to go by looks (as you worded your question): I tested it with a proxy that slows down the connection - one can see the time the website builds itself up and how it looks as long as not all the data of your fatty JS framework arrived. :-)
I found things to be easier if I first contemplate why people ask the question in the first place and then reply to the reason of the question, not the question itself. People ask questions they don't require the answer to(for instance, there might not be an answer) for all kinds of reasons; trolling, 'just making conversation' etc. Depending on the reason and if you have time / want to indulge you can go after the real intent. If someone trolls you can have good shouting matches (which I enjoy now and then), if just making conversation and the question might be laden, you can change the subject that wasn't the goal of the conversation anyway.
another tack is to harmonize. In this situation for example, you'd take a few elements of the group's consensus and fold in your own thoughts - synthesizing a new position that expresses your own ideas but with some 'bridges' that help the group relate to what you are expressing. Maybe even changing your own position marginally in the process.
Yes! I totally do this - you show that you've listened to the other person, that their opinion is important, and then go into reasoning about why you have a differing opinion.
This is of course, if the other person actually wants to have a conversation. If I feel they simply want to vent their frustration, then I usually just let them say what they have to say, and not bother responding.
Sometimes it's better just to keep quiet and say nothing.
If people are venting, and I'm asked directly however, I usually confront the underlying topic - that people are venting for example. Sometimes questions are asked as a type of manipulation, or have a different intention other than receiving an answer to the question.
I frequently find myself asking people if they want to vent, or solve. I'm game for either, but like many of you, pretty sure "solve" is our default state and "vent" is theirs and the mismatch? Not so great.
Yea, my wives is pretty 93% in "solve" mode and I'm 84% in "solve" mode so we try to explicitly say "can I just vent (or talk something out loud) to you?"
They go together: if I know that you and I can have a discussion and agree to disagree, rather than having it escalate it to an emotionally charged argument that affects our relationship, then I'm more likely to express my thoughts thruthfully.
This presumes a level of objective truth that is almost never available within the confines of casual conversation. I find the failure mode of a stubborn "truth-seeker" far more obnoxious in most settings than the failure mode of someone saying "huh, that's interesting, I'll have to look into that more" even when they're pretty sure they're right.
Surely you realize how much of an oxymoron that is.
Follow an unrealistic and impractical standard, just as your forefathers have. Why? Because it is righteous and good.
There's no point in finding the truth. Perhaps if your knowledge seeking gives you positive neurochemical feedback, more power to you, but to denigrate all of society for not conforming to your ideals is a very ugly personality trait.
It's not hard to tell if someone is actually seeking dialectic and wants to pursue the truth. The vast majority of people are making smalltalk and may as well be discussing professional basketball.
The tack I've come to lately is to say "I don't think we currently have sufficient information available to adequately resolve this issue" - it works like a charm, and people seem to like you more when you say that, compared with "let's agree to disagree"
You are bringing up the argument for Welfare, Universal Healthcare, etc., that there is nothing that the schools can do. The problems that these kids are facing stems from the fact that they live in poverty. This leads to issues such as the one mentioned by the author. The only way to solve the problem would be to try to figure out a decent Social Benefits system for the poor, to where poor parents do not feel the need to resort to prostitution, drugs, drinking, etc.
> try to figure out a decent Social Benefits system for the poor, to where poor parents do not feel the need to resort to prostitution, drugs, drinking, etc.
Why do you think that the lack of a "decent Social Benefits system" is the reason why they do prostitution, drugs, drinking?
To put it another way, you seem to be assuming that someone drinks because they're poor. Could it be (for some/many) that they're poor because they drink?
I would assume that it is simply the amount of thought and focus that is required to memorize thousands of streets that would cause these increases. I wish there was a control or a group of people that were studying something besides memorization to see if there was truly a difference. The time frame here is 3 to 4 years.
Here you go: "Musical training-induced functional reorganization of the adult brain: functional magnetic resonance imaging and transcranial magnetic stimulation study on amateur string players."[1]
Agreed, I can only hope if America keeps shifting toward high tech jobs, corporate leader will realize that the most efficient companies will win out; and nothing makes for an efficient company like happy employees. Not everyone is going to be able to make cool building looking out into nature, but employee happiness should be addressed somewhere in the budget.
I also went to the volcano and the hike is about 3/4 of a mile and moderately steep. If your children are active they should be able to handle it, but the key is to wear shoes with good traction. Also they sell wine at the top, which is nice :)