AnarchistArtificer

joined 2 years ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Sad news. fivethirtyeight made one of my favourite things on the internet. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/p-hacking/

It's an excellent piece of science communication and dynamic data visualisation. I say this as a scientist who is increasingly drifting towards the science-comm side of research.

They did incredible work, and I hope that the people behind the work can find stability and fulfillment in whatever work they seek after this.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

I had a wee look at DUI laws in Tennessee, where this happened, and a DUI has far more severe penalties than reckless driving. Plus, based on the info on the article, I don't even know if what was described would count as reckless driving (one of the examples given was doing a wheelie on a motor cycle), so I am wondering whether the DUI charge was because the level of driving wasn't to the level that they could be charged for reckless driving, so he went for a DUI instead. This is speculation though, because we know that the officer wrote that "[the driver] crossed over lanes twice", and that could describe a wide range of driving.

It could, for example, describe someone who drifts a tire's width out of their lane, on a road where road markings are poor and there is little other traffic. Doing that twice wouldn't be great (and may be indicative of driver fatigue), but it certainly wouldn't warrant an arrest. Like I say, insufficient info means that this is speculation, but it is striking to me that they didn't try to charge her with reckless driving after the blood test came up clear. If this driver was driving badly, but not dangerously, then they shouldn't have been arrested.

I think you make a few undue assumptions in your comment that are unreasonable and possibly why so many have downvoted you (and I hope that said downvotes won't cause you to ignore people replying with good faith criticism): 1.) You assume that the level of driving she was pulled over for was dangerous enough to be at risk of harming someone, but we don't know that. In addition to the point I made above about her driving seemingly not being enough to count as "reckless driving", I also want to highlight that bad or dangerous driving isn't a prerequisite for a DUI; where I live, police occasionally do spot checks of drivers at night time in high-DUI areas (I've been pulled over and breathalysed a few times on a particular stretch of road, just for driving late at night), and if someone was driving perfectly but was above the legal limit for alcohol, then that's enough to arrest them. I make this point to emphasise that DUI != Dangerous driving, and that we shouldn't conflate the two. If she was driving dangerously whilst not intoxicated, then there are laws intended to penalise that, and so she shouldn't have been charged with a DUI regardless. Penalties for DUIs are typically harsher too, which is why the article highlights the mandatory loss of license for what should have probably just been a slap on the wrist, if that.

2.) You make assumptions about the nature of the medication being prescribed. Xanax is indeed, a medication that is prescribed for anxiety, and it can be (depending on the dose and the person) be quite highly sedating, but by the sounds of your comment, you haven't considered the possibility that the medication(s) she was prescribed may not be sedating at all. For example, atomoxetine is an ADHD medication that's an SNRI, a class of medications that are used to medicate depression and/or anxiety; I know a few people who have been prescribed it due to having comorbid anxiety and ADHD. That's just one example of medication that may have been detected but would be unlikely to impact a person's ability to drive safely. Even if the driver were prescribed a benzodiazepine (such as Xanax), that doesn't mean it was sedating enough to affect her driving. Whether a medication is likely to affect your driving is a discussion between you and your doctor, and even if we assume the person was driving dangerously, we have no reason to assume her medication is at all relevant.

I also take medication for ADHD and anxiety, and they're not the kind of meds that impact ability to drive. If I were driving dangerously (to the degree that I was a risk to other road users), I hope I would be pulled over before I could cause harm, and that would likely warrant me being arrested, but I don't think I should be charged with a DUI in that scenario — not least of all because if we cast too wide a net for what counts as DUI, then it sort of depowers the category. Morally speaking, people tend to view driving under the influence far more harshly than other kinds of bad or irresponsible driving, and rightly so, in my view. It's a hard line that I have always been cautious to never cross, and I would be disgusted if someone I knew had. Unequivocally, the person in the article should not have been charged with DUI, even if they had been driving recklessly (which again, we don't know whether they were).

I hope my comment doesn't come across like I'm hating on you, because whilst I was shocked at your comment, I only wrote all this because I hoped we could have a productive discussion. I'd be interested to hear if you have any thoughts in response to my comment, even if I haven't changed your opinion.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Sometimes, we bullshit ourselves by asking questions like this because we understand that the situation at hand (one being led to doubt their own lived experience, likely because of some internalised prejudice) is one where we don't have agency.

I, for example, parsed the above image as relating to disability, because that's where I most often doubt myself. I often worry that I'm faking, and also that I am faking worrying that I may be faking, and at the core of each of these anxieties is the fact that I sort of wish I were faking. It would reflect pretty poorly on me as a person if I were faking my disability, but at least in that world, I'd have agency. If I were faking, then it'd mean it's me holding myself back from my dreams, instead of fucked up, systemic obstacles.

The crux of it is the question: would I rather be a decent person in a shitty world, or a shitty person in a decent world? I don't get to choose what kind of world I live in, so unfortunately my only real choice is whether to be decent or shitty, given that it's a shitty world. But imagining a world in which I am the shitty one and faking my difficulties, that allows me to entertain the prospect of a decent world that isn't systemically fucked.

Ultimately it's a foolish fantasy, but understanding how it derives from feeling desperate due to lack of agency in my life helps me to feel more sympathetic towards myself at least. The internal dynamics motivating your own question may look different to what I have described here, but regardless, you are valid and you deserve a better world than what we have here. Try to remember that, in order to avoid tearing yourself down as we all strive to tear down the unjust systems of oppression that cause these questions in the first place

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I see your point, I hadn't thought about it this way. I think what you're suggesting is this:

           |                        |
           |          rest of LAN <-/
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Reasonably difficult, I think. I'm basing my answer off of the vibes I get from open source firmware projects for routers, which are far more common. I haven't heard of similar for printers, which suggests that there is less of a foundation to work on. I think Brother, in particular, was a brand that has typically been decent up until now.

I also get the sense that programming firmware is different enough to programming software that a software developer trying to contribute would find it really difficult(?. Someone correct me if I'm wrong — I'm not a software developer, but a scientist who writes code, so I'm speaking outside of my main expertise). But this loops back in with the lack of existing projects making it harder to get to grips with how to do stuff — part of why I like open source programs is because I can look through a project and try to understand what the code is doing.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I haven't watched it yet (besides a few clips I've seen here and there), but I'm reminded of how so many games in the 2010s got caught chasing graphical fidelity. That led to a surge in interest in indie games, many of which had objectively shitty graphics, but an art style that was deliberate and interesting. A recent game in that vein that I have played and loved is Signalis, an incredibly artistic survival horror game.

Gaming and animated movies are obviously two completely different mediums, but I reckon we can use the same lens here; I'm going to wait until I've seen this movie (or at least, substantial chunks of it) before I judge it. As you suggest, it being voted best animated movie suggests the story must be great, but what I'm really intrigued by is how well this particular animation style works to support its characters and story

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

I hadn't noticed this until you pointed it out, but yeah, their logos are fire

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

They certainly seem keen to disown him. Bloody idiots

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

This is a different kind of boat, but I met someone recently who lives in a houseboat like this and apparently it works out cheaper than buying a house near where they work. It's moored on the Thames, some way upriver from London.

The funniest part was how relatively normal this person was. They work as a lawyer.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

In many, if not all of the cases outlined, the police officers only had the opportunity to get to know their victims because they were undercover in their community (and often using the relationships as a means to bolster their cover). If this isn't rape by deception, I don't know what is.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

2010 was also exceptional because this was the most seats that the Lib Dems had won in a long time (possibly ever?), which, at the time, people speculated could be the end to the UK's defacto 2-party system (not counting the Scottish National Party (SNP)). Then the lib-dems squandered that good will and took 14 years to regain their footing. Fun fun fun.

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