bkandel

> Margaret Rennix, Harvard’s assistant director for humanities and social-sciences support, told me she’d spoken with a student who was struggling to read a book written in Old English. The culprit: Anthony Burgess’s 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange. (The student used ChatGPT to “translate” the book into easier language.)

Has the author read A Clockwork Orange? It is filled with made-up "slang" that's basically just Russian. Needing some help to understand that is totally reasonable to me -- I definitely looked up a bunch of the words when I read it!

As far as I can tell, my kids and their friends never actually play the game either, they just collect the cards. I don't think they even know the rules.

China's greatest weakness is that their working-age population has already peaked and is in the process of plummeting, which will continue over the coming decades.

This is fascinating! Would it be possible to add some explanations for some of the gay ads? I feel a little clueless but I don't really understand why some of those are targeting the gay community.

I think it's just always hard to find stuff you like, and time is a great filter. There are tons of new series that my sons like: the whole Percy Jackson world, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Dog Man, Lemony Snicket, Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales, etc. Lots of books out there!

It's an oversimplification of how the body works to the point of not being useful. For example, if you eat 2500 kcal a day and maintain a steady weight of 150 lbs, it is not the case that if you change your diet to 2200 kcal you will consistently lose X pounds per week. You would more likely lose a bit, then plateau at some level that's hard to predict, because now your body adapted to an input of 2200 kcal a day. Add to this the complication that where those calories come from matters a lot, because when you increase your blood sugar, your body increases insulin which builds up body fat, but if you have eat a low-sugar/carb diet, that happens less. And if you eat sugary foods, you will tend to get hungry more quickly than eating protein-based foods. It's all so person-dependent and food-dependent that just saying "eat less calories and you'll lose weight" does not accurately describe most people's reality.

I think this is pretty common! More sleep makes everything better -- attention, immune system (getting colds less often), mood, etc.

This is so off-base I don't even know where to begin. "Maybe you just don't get to ... ride on planes" -- so the kids never get to meet their grandparents or great-grandparents who are too unwell to make the trip because you won't give them a screen for an hour or two? Like everything else in life, dealing with screens is a balance. Every day for multiple hours is too much; a couple hours on twice-yearly trips is not going to have any effect on them.

I actually had the exact opposite conclusion from the analysis: Dreidel is a great kids' game of chance, because it's easy to come back from a few bad rolls and it's almost impossible to lose.

I get that the author really dislikes UHC, but most of these are just really not interesting. For example, of course they want media inquiries to go to the media relations team. That's why they exist! As for referring to a recently deceased CEO as an "esteemed colleague" -- I guess esteem is in the eye of the beholder, but that's such an anodyne way of referring to anyone that I'm having trouble seeing anything noteworthy in it.

Yes! Especially if you have kids -- minors go through TSA pre-check lines with parents with pre-check, even if the kids don't have pre-check on their own.

I suppose this is true in some abstract sense, but not in companies of any reasonable size when it comes to hiring. There are lots of things that are firmly set company-wide, like the type of health plans offered and the company contribution, that are pretty much non-negotiable. Not knowing this makes you look naive or runs the risk of just confusing the hiring manager/HR.

How is this by accident? He was specifically looking for datasets for this purpose and found a good one, then loaded it into a program to find man-made structures.

The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. It changed the way I think about what's important, both to me and to other people and societies.