No, “new years day” would just be a day all by it’s self, global celebration day… And get this, every 4 years you get two party days.

Obviously this will never happen, the world would all have to agree on the change…, which isn’t going to happen. Oh well it is nice in theory.

Quantum theory is only “controversial” to the general public, mainly because we haven’t found a way to explain in simple terms things like superposition, entanglement, quantum tunneling. Quantum theory is spectacularly successful, though incomplete.

Even the “simple” stuff like the uncertainty principle takes a detailed understanding to properly grasp why there are pairs of properties that are inherently linked, and that information about one dictates how much you can know about the other. e.g. position/momentum and energy/time.

While the entanglement “signal” is near instantaneous, for various reasons no meaningful information can be deciphered faster than C.

Assuming our quantum theory, while not complete, is not wrong. We will not be able to engineer our way around this limit. A lot of funky shit becomes possible if you can break causality even with “just” information.

Science: wow that is a nice animal you have there; have you seen out Large Hadron Collider, it accelerates clouds of particles up to close to the limit of causality and slams them into specially designed targets. We do this to probe the secrets of the universe at the edges of imagination and plausibility.

Magic: I can kill people by pointing my stick at them…

Science: yeah, we have that also…how big do yours get? We have a problem where we went too far and now can destroy the world, but because everyone has these weapons we live in an uneasy tension called mutually assured destruction, so no one uses their most powerful weapons for fear that others will also.

Magic: I can make it rain when I want.

Science: ok now that would be useful, you have to teach me how to do that.

Many years ago, I was supervising at a supermarket checkout. An older lady (late 50’s / early 60’s) started berating one of the young checkout girls, she was newish about 16yo.

I over heard, it was hard not to after a little while. I walked over, I was 19 at the time. I’m not a big guy 5’9" and weighed around 60kg (checks math…132lb). The old woman sees me and begins to go into a rant, to which I simply said, get the fuck out of my store. It was latish (8:30pm), there were no managers left in store.

She went into (what is now called) full karen mode, ranting about calling my manager. I got a bit pf paper and wrote my managers and the store managers numbers down with their names and said, “go ahead, call them”. She quickly calmed down and went to go stand back in line…I said, “no I told you to get out”.

If we are going with de-extinction, then the Haast Eagle. NZ is really far too safe, we need a genuine predator to keep us on our toes.

I eat kiwifruit like this. Fur and all

Little kids concentrating, like 2-3yo. When they are just about to “get” something, and they know it.

It is really cool to see.

I just wish everyone would switch to Firefox.

It is because Chrome has a monopoly, is close enough to monopoly.

In the winter, probably once a week. Unless I do something strenuous, then it would be once I get back home

Summer time, mostly daily.

Except for the crocs, this also applies to New Zealand waters.

If you feel yourself being pulled away from shore, relax, swim across not against.

Also suffers love rips, express line back behind the breakers.

Most of the time it is pretty easy to know what the winter is trying to imply.

It gets really silly when using big numbers. e.g. a nanometre is 100,000 times smaller than a human hair.

My pet peeve with mathy stuff, “something is X times closer/smaller etc than something else”

If A is 1 away, saying B is ten times closer means what exactly? Is B 10 away? 9, 0.1?
I think what most examples are trying to say is that A is ten times the distance to B, but the way it is said if just annoying.

This vegan sour cream is really nice, super easy also: https://youtu.be/8ILzKYAZWGY?list=PLxWGB-fhb7NXHzQPI5dn6kM_8cGxarJKl

Same channel, lasagna with no tomato, for those that can’t eat nightshades. https://youtu.be/WES5UFjgvQk?list=PLxWGB-fhb7NXHzQPI5dn6kM_8cGxarJKl

That one is coming back

What is wrong with living in New Zealand an earthquake zone?

Focusing on your points:

2. Controlling population - this is flawed completely, the lowest birth rates in the world are in the most affluent countries. In a lot of places it is below the replacement level of 2.1 births/woman. I think it is fine to accept the premise that hunger, disease etc are very bad things.

3. This is think is much more open to attack than point 2. Luxuries are of no moral significance, in my opinion is a flawed premise because it is both a “Straw Man” and a “Rhetorical Definition”.

• It is a Straw Man argument because: it is weakening any counter point by hand waving away any possible refutation by using “Luxuries” in a pejorative way (in my opinion).
• It is a Rhetorical Definition because it is using Luxuries in an emotionally charged way (again in my opinion); it is equating that you as a person, indulging in “Luxuries” are taking a moral stand. Luxuries are not required for life and thus are immoral, when those same resources could be used to save others lives.
• My refutation: Happy people are generally more productive, having access to some luxuries increases happiness, therefore having access to luxuries increases productivity.
• This leads to: a more productive society generates more tax revenue that can be used to help others. Thus paying your fair share of tax is a moral good.
• Counterpoints: Some people will become hedonistic and focus too much on luxuries. Some people will hoard wealth and forgo their moral obligation to pay their fair share of tax.
• Supporting case: We could look for a real word example…ignoring the situation that lead to it, lets examine the productivity of North vs South Korea, the amount that each country gives to international aid etc…SK gives approx $37USD/citizen, I could not find any data on how much NK gives, we can probably assume it is very low.

4. What you say here is basically a “rising tide lifts all boats” argument. This is a very valid argument, again using the North/South Korea example, SK has invested heavily in R&D and as an indirect consequence, their ability to help has vastly outstripped that of the North.

• There is another point here, it seems to me that Singer is providing a “False Dilemma”; essentially saying that there are only two choices here, we either help or don’t help. One choice is good the other evil.
• I posit that there is a middle ground, we can strive for the ability to enjoy some luxuries without devolving into hedonism, whilst still helping those in need.

In conclusion. You were correct to take issue with the presenter blindly accepting premises 2, 3 & 4. The way you tried to refute point 2 however was not great. Especially since point 2 is the only premise that we can say “is self evident”.

My points are more temporally distant then those of Singer, he is stating that helping now is better than building the ability to help much much more in the future.

I hate this trend.

I’m quite sensitive to light, and some of these LED’s are stupid.

Mostly it is because iOS and Android abstract away the file system. I’m 43 and have been using computers since the late 80’s, one of my biggest gripes with android is the lack of a good simple file browser and text editor.

This is why the rest of the world uses l/100km (liters per 100 kilometers), the comparison is linear and thus comparable between different vehicles in a simple manner.

• 5mpg = 20g/100mi
• 10mpg = 10g/100mi
• 40mpg = 2.5g/100mi
• 55mpg = 1.82g/100mi

The difference between 10 and 20g is easy to see as a lot bigger than the difference between 2.5 to 1.82g. 15 is a much bigger number than 5, but that 15 is relative to the initial mpg rating

In fact going from 5mpg to 10mpg is better than going from 10mpg to 100mpg, a 10g saving vs a 9g saving…the more you know