Interesting this guy and the barn owl got flat perches, where the other birds got something to wrap their toes around.

They look very squishy. Not awe inspiring like the rest of the show, but nice to have a place to pause from the sharp bits.

Public support fractures if the questions are broken down into more detail. People have unfounded fears of new “death panels”, and founded fears of the government screwing up implementation (Canada has crazy wait times for many medical services - it’s an outlier among developed countries, but demonstrates the screw-up opportunity). People support new services if they are funded magically, but aren’t willing to support tax raises, even though the tax increases would be less than the savings from not paying for private health insurance.

The complexity - and partisan politicians being more than willing to weaponize confusion over details to divide us against each other - is the barrier.

Global population growth is happening. Slowing down, but looks inevitable for at least several more decades. Given that baseline, it is optimal for all countries involved to allow immigration from countries with population growth (reduces strain on government services, adds to the economy with remittances) to countries with lower birth rates (tax revenues support social service budgets, increased entrepreneur rate of immigrants increases job growth, etc.)

Economies can transition to population decline while maintaining standards of living for sure, if handled in a planned way. Some short-term pain during the transition, then fine later. But why go through a combination of short-term pain right now, at the same time as incredible cruelty is required to keep out migrants?

A path to degrowth will be needed globally in the medium-term future (finite planet), but trying to implement that now at just the US locally isn’t going to help the planet at all.

One of the operator pulpits at my work can be run by one pulpit operator, but commonly has multiple people in it - someone is almost always being trained, floor operators hang out on break or when maintenance has to take the machine for a while, lead operators and supervisors and quality personnel stop in to monitor. They have I think five computers, all with their own keyboard and mouse. The operator mainly interacts with just one, and the others are set up for reference spread all around the edges of this room that comfortably holds five people. It works pretty well because the auxiliary people can look stuff up on the reference computers without having to take away keyboard or mouse control from the operator, and with how physically distant some of the machines are from each other, a switched keyboard would have to get carried around the room which would be annoying.

In the short-lived news app Artifact, that was one of my favorite features. It was done on demand, and if a high portion of early viewers asked for a rewritten title, the rewrite would become the default for future viewserves.

In the Artifact implementation, the LLM was specifically prompted by the app to summarize the article with an honest, non-clickbaity title. In Google’s case, they claim they are prompting the LLM to title the link to better tempt the searcher to click on it based on what they were searching for. Kind of the opposite. Yes, LLMs could do what you say, but that doesn’t seem to be how Google is setting it up.

The solid color blocks are very cool. Guessing they live in a colorful environment for those patterns to have been selected for.

It depends on the leaf-to-area ratio. We have a lot of trees that are large. Even mulched, the sheer volume of leaves would kill the grass. We have about a third of an acre and let a majority grow taller stuff, or where the trees are really dense have a leaf mould ground condition. It is nice to have some walkable area, grass is the lowest maintenance option for that, and keeping the grass alive requires leaf removal.

Or it’s a fake explanation of the picture, or a fake picture (AI or old fashion photoshop).

I’ve asked my neighbor if an arrow I found in the road was theirs (no, but he was happy to take it) and coordinated removal of dead trees on the property line. Those went well.

I was rather stressed and unhappy when a neighbor, after some passive aggressive comments, reported us to the city weed inspector. The weed inspector determined we didn’t have any violations, and we made extra sure to leave our “wild patch” in the front yard and take our time cleaning up leaves after that.

The sunnier eye pupil being more constricted gives a rakish aspect.

The white dapples on his back are very close in pattern to the lighter colored spots on the branch he is perching on. Impressive camouflage!

I stop in at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church for Mass… As we pray for the RAM volunteers and patients, I think about how, despite the myriad ways Trump’s policies will harm locals, very few of the people I’ve met seem to hold him responsible. Nor can they articulate why they are standing by him. No one has mentioned abortion—or even inflation. They tend to fall back on immigration as Trump’s signature selling point…

Inflation in auto parts, he informed me, was a necessary trade-off for the strong economy that was surely coming. “Sometimes,” he said, “we have to sacrifice.”

This is pretty much it when I check on patriots dot win. Racism is top, and any negatives are worthy sacrifices.

I wasn’t intending my comment as a correction - microbe is a more general term than bacteria, and most fungi are indeed microbes - but just saw an opportunity to add on what I think is a cool fact. Thanks for bringing up the carboniferous period!

That it took 400 million years for one fungus to evolve wood eating is wild to me. And no other microbe has ever evolved that ability: my understanding is all wood decay fungal species today evolved from one shared ancester.

NotAWheelchair (owned by YouTuber Jerryrig Everything) sells custom models for 1,200 to $2,000. Not sure if the customization they offer is everything you meant, but they seem to be offering some competition to the market.

I work in manufacturing, lots of physical tasks. The work instructions for the physical tasks get out of date with control system and physical machine changes just as much as the non-tangible type work documents.

I have found work instructions that (succintly, no essays) explain when something is a safety protection, or affects quality, are more effective. Most workers want to make a good product, and are genuinely trying to be helpful by making a change, but might not have visibility to the full impact. Explanations can also help reduce change fear: often managers won’t approve change because they don’t know why a rule exists, but are afraid it’s important. Having the explanation right there with the rule can help reasonable arguments prevail over fear.

Aw, thanks. I hope you gain a document savvy coworker!

It’s an unfortunately rare skill set to change documents. If the way it’s being done is better than the document, there is a process to make the document match, but that idea seems to not even occur to most of my coworkers, across multiple industries in my couple of decades working.

I have filled out so many change review forms justification field “updating document to match existing practice. No process change.” Boss always signs.

Equating advocacy for planning for projected near- and middle-term population changes with advocacy for “infinite” growth is exactly the lack of nuance that frustrates me.