>I came away thinking if those were presented as affiliated links, that conversation could have been monetized in a mutually beneficial way.
I also ask LLMs for product recomendations. But the moment I suspect they are hidding the best items (not paying for the ad) to push the second best (not even talking about pushing shit as good products because they pay more) is the moment the LLM loses its value as recomender.
I went to Cuba, and they were a good amount of Kia Picanto, Daewoo and cars from China brands I could not recognize. Of course they can't import from the US due to the embargo, and Europe would be unreliable for after-sell service.
They trade, limited by their own poverty, with countries that can't be easily bullied by the US.
> It's happened in London, where a clear anti-car agenda is being disguised as a pro-clean air agenda.
I don't know about London, but in Spain there is no disguise: you can find pro-clean air and pro-human strategies. Pro-clean limits, or straight ban, the access of ICE vehicles to some zones. Pro-human/anti-car limit or ban circulation or park for any car in certain zones.
It is easier than that: in Germany for example swastikas are forbidden. But they don't prosecute or fine web pages served in other countries. Or books for that matter. In some countries communist symbology is prohibited, yet they don't fine US web pages for having them. And don't forget the Great Firewall: China blocks pages, and get along with some webs to tune what they serve. But you can publish Tiananmen massacre images in your european hosted web, and they don't fine you: it is their problem to limit access, and they understand it.
Just to clarify for casual readers: there’s no blanket ban on swastikas in Germany. You can use it for satire or historical reasons. You’re going to find a lot of swastikas on the German Wikipedia for example.
France stopped Yahoo! from selling nazi memorabilia in France (because it's illegal to do that in France). This actually went through the US courts and they agreed, mostly [0].
It's kinda voluntary, though, there's no international agreement about this.
This isn't strictly true, major magazines like Der Spiegel can use it for 'satire' or some such nonsense, it's basically at the whim of those in power as CJ Hopkins learned, his satirical use resulted in him being perversely punished, but state aligned magazines get a pass.
Why the investment funds have to build the houses? Houses has been built/funded from zero by the future owners since forever, either individually or through cooperatives. That way, "investors" don't need a positive ROI, and they happily lose money overall if they get a home.
I know some people that are currently "willing to invest" in buying a ship container or two and transform it into a house to get costs down. The problem? Regulations don't allow them to put the container in their own property.
Using a shipping container is almost always a stupid plan compared to just putting up some wood. As much as I want to make zoning more flexible, I'm not in a rush to change that particular regulation.
Sounds arrogant to block someone else plan to have a home, just because you don't like it. And then claim regulations are not the problem, but lack of willing to invest.
If you think containers are a bad idea, don't buy one.
The demand for containers is rare and they don't really save money over building small out of reasonable materials. That specific regulation isn't blocking anyone from having a home.
But the studies are pervasive. For example, the (flawed) study that found that one cup of wine with each meal was healthier that no alcohol at all is still quoted today, and still "reproduced" in other studies that make the same claim but adding a clause of "given that you also [do good amount of exercise|eat very healthy|are in perfect health already]". Or the flawed studies that Soffriti and Belpoggi pushed (some of them didn't even pass peer review, but reached the public anyway) about artificial sweeteners and other things being carcinogenic: they basically feed mices with whatever they feel until they die, they look the corpses and if there is a tumor, eureka: what they put in the diet is the cause. Nobody took the studies seriously, except the public that now have a "scientific paper" that says Coca-cola causes breast cancer.
In this case some public reads "smoking a joint daily equals invulnerable to Alzheimer, science says so".
Yup. There's definitely a pattern and it seems like an obvious consequence of the structure of incentives.
If you make a product you can make a study that shows it has some kind of benefit in some specific way, even if it probably causes more harm in other ways that are less obvious, and then you can sell it. Media will spread around your study especially if it shows something that will be a bit click-baity, and any study or discussion of the possible downsides will get far less attention.
This is also why basically every edible plant has some article saying it's a "super food" etc etc.
> The noise cancellation is also great. I’ll use them if it gets noisier than my closed headphones can block.
You can get the Seinhensser Momentum 4, wireless optional, but closed over-ear and still work without battery, for less than 200. Way better sound quality than the in-ears.
Airpods didn't invent noise cancelling, Bose has been selling them since 2000. Price/quality has been always on the side of the wired devices. Unless you need wireless, get something wired. Airpod, and similar, are almost always less than 1 meter away from the phone.
>I didn't say they did but the Airpods are essentially best in class for this
Best in class are the Bose QuietComfort Ultra, (wireless is optional for the overears, as is should be in such a product). Sennheiser Momentum 4 (wire also optional for the overears) are also a very good alternative, maybe not as blocking as the Airpods, but the sound is probably better, more "natural", but that is a personal taste after all. Comparing only the ear buds, Airpods are the less forgiving with the ear fit of the three models, they clearly prioritized aestetics before ergonomics.
The point is that there were excellent NC options before the Airpods, and almost nobody gave a fuck about the technology. Suddenly Apple "invented" the tech for the masses, and now nobody can't live without it, to the point that you are a cavemen if you are not using them. They never were the best, they are just another ones. Kudos to Apple for good marketing and brand positioning.
Incidentally, I can't use regular ear buds for long without them moving around and losing a lot of sound quality. I have in-ear monitors custom made, and they still move and pop out sometimes. I tested the Airpods my sister has (the ones without silicone tip), and they simply don't do the work because they don't seal enough unless you push them with your fingers.
As if "A" or "C" defined a person capacity. I know some straight A's that went directly for a repetitive and boring but well paid and stable job. Other stayed in academia and turned top scientists.
Academia is a very particular dynamic very difficult to find elsewhere, and some people dig it. You can watch some people finding the same dynamic at Google for example, where they are allowed and encouraged to fiddle around and keep publishing (e.g. the Attention paper, why would Google allow such publication?). Such dynamics are explored in Terence Kealy book "The economic laws of scientific research".
I also ask LLMs for product recomendations. But the moment I suspect they are hidding the best items (not paying for the ad) to push the second best (not even talking about pushing shit as good products because they pay more) is the moment the LLM loses its value as recomender.
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