jcromartie

But our gov't is right on top of banning even more harmless plants... (Kratom this time).

If bananas reflected yellow light, but we saw them as blue instead by some purely neuropsychological phenomenon, would this cause any significant problems?

Am I the only one that actually did learn this in school?

The most terrifying thing about prions is that they are infectious but not alive: they can't be "killed" in the normal sense by sterilization. The proteins must literally be dissolved to neutralize them.

I don't think anybody ever meant to imply that pure functions can be composed in any order. That's the confusion here. "Pure functions can be run in any order" only means that they don't have side effects so one call doesn't impact another, but nobody ever meant or (hopefully) understood that to mean that the inputs and outputs of pure functions could be composed in any order. I don't even know what kind of confusion could lead to such an idea.

Are you sure we are talking about the same "functional programming"? Consider a function that parses a number from a string, and a function that doubles a number. How could anybody expect the order of these applications to not matter?

When reading anything on The Guardian it's important to ask what they aren't telling you, because it's almost certain that they are omitting many very salient details out in order to fit the story into their own narrative. If you knew that Nieto had other problems, you likely wouldn't come away from the Guardian article believing that he was executed for being Hispanic.

People in third world nations don't have any empathy super powers for people who are ethnically, religiously, or socio-economically from themselves either.

I remember that thread. I actually think they took my advice to heart.

They moved a 2-ton car... on wheels, on sealed concrete, with winches...

So, how does it turn out for people who shoot at the police? I'm sorry but you are living in libertarian cowboy fantasy.

And part of the reason why cops are armed to the teeth is because the citizens are. It would require real total mutual disarmament of citizens and police to change anything in the USA.

So I don't see it changing any time soon.

And until the people employed by the systems that police, prosecute, and incarcerate other people have a sufficient safety net, they will be motivated to prop up those systems.

Universal basic income just makes too much sense.

> those of us who are non-white, older than 40, disabled, trans, not neurotypical, queer, from low-income backgrounds, and/or a host of other identities will continue to be locked out of tech.

What if those people are just less likely (note: this is about probability, for all I know the best programmer in the world could be a disabled queer 50 year old black person from a poor family) to be competitive among candidates? This basically amounts to hiring as charity.

There is no end to the list of possible "identities". You can ALWAYS slice humanity up into smaller and smaller groups to find some identity that is underrepresented. Everybody is clamoring to grab a niche identity to claim oppression points. This is why identity politics is garbage.

Unless for-profit corporations are actually jobs programs in disguise, there's only one sensible thing to do: value people for what they can do for the company. Period. Though maybe favoring a candidate because they have the right skin color IS actually good for companies? Who knows?