That’s always fun. Some people will swear it can’t possibly work like that, but they have plenty of experience riding bikes. You wouldn’t be able to turn properly at speed unless you’re counter-steering, so they clearly have done this. The idea seems to be so incredibly intuitive that people don’t even realize they’re doing it, which is very interesting.

The idea behind clips is that you can pull up on the rising pedal instead of just following momentum from the other foot pushing down. It does work, but isn’t really necessary for commuter biking.

I got a used bike that had a hybrid pedal with a clip on one side and flats on the other. While the clip (heavy) side usually landed down, it didn’t always and it was weird to pedal with it. I just ride around on my bike, so I replaced them with cheap flat pedals and it’s fine. I also converted it to an e-bike, and I don’t need the extra pedal power.

It’s pretty common to bring up gyroscopes for this when people know a little bit about physics. It’s all over motorcycle forums, for instance.

As you say, it doesn’t work. Experiments have been done where they attach a counter rotating wheel to cancel out the gyroscopic effect, and while it’s a little wonky to ride, it works fine.

IIRC, we’re not 100% sure how bikes work just yet. Every time somebody comes up with a model that seems to be good, someone finds a counterexample that throws it in the bin. Even your explanation of bike trail isn’t all the way there; Razer-type scooters still work without trail on the front wheel.

It works on its own. If you push your bike along with a good run and then let go, it’ll stay upright until it slows down too much.

Learning to ride a bike is mostly about being confident enough to let the bike work itself out. It gets more stable as it goes faster, but it’s natural to be afraid to go faster when it already feels unstable at low speed. Then there’s a little bit to learn about countersteering, but most people figure that out without being told it’s even a thing.

I have seen SQL written by professional Oracle DBAs. What I learned is that I do not want to look at SQL written by professional Oracle DBAs.

Except people take that method seriously all the time. All the objections I raised were one’s people have actually thrown back at me.

I’m tons of fun at parties. Everybody loves seeing my collection of bottles from defunct soda companies.

You know, maybe we shouldn’t be taking estimation advice from a 1980s science fiction movie that amounts to a systematic method of lying.

Yes, I’ve used it before. Yes, you can hopefully have everything average out in the end. Yes, project managers demand estimates. None of these are good reasons to back up how fundamentally flawed it is.

Pretty much. The US military can take on any other nation state (China is trying to change this, but it’s not there yet). The initial fight against the organized militaries of both Afghanistan and Iraq didn’t last long, and was as much of a one sided curb stomp as you’ll ever see in history. It was the insurgency later on that was the problem.

Also, in practice, they’re usually only good at one or two of the things on the list (at best) and hack their way through the rest. As much as people make fun of overspecialization, it happens in every field for a reason.

I haven’t read through the whole spec to know what else is there, but the thing is, HTTP/1.1 always allowed GET to have a body. It was originally supposed to be ignored, but they gave up on that later on because it’s dumb.

https://stackoverflow.com/a/983458

Harris I think really did catch them off guard. Which is a bit surprising?

If we were talking about the GOP of 12 years ago, they would have been able to pivot to Harris much more easily.

Trump ate the brain of the party in an almost literal way. A lot of the people who knew how stuff worked–McCain, Paul Ryan, Dick Cheney, Romney–were all pushed away or were disgusted with Trump. Basically all the smart, Lawful Evil people. This cycle completed itself this past spring/summer, when Trump replaced all the internal GOP committee members with his own people. They were chosen for loyalty first, and competence a distant second.

That factor of loyalty first/competence later makes fascism fall apart in the long run. However, they can do a whole lot of damage while the failures work themselves out. If we could figure out a way to get them to speedrun this process, we’d have a very effective tool to fight fascism.

This is what I expect to happen when AI gives solutions to climate change. Which is what Sam Altman bangs on about in interviews to justify all the power AI models are taking up.

The solutions are all sitting right there. What people actually want is solutions that cost about three fity and don’t require any lifestyle changes. ChatGPT will just tell us about all the solutions sitting there, but that’s not the answer people like Altman want.

Here, I’ll make a lot of you oblivious folk feel better about yourselves. I’ve been propositioned at a house sex party and I was still completely oblivious.

The Caprica spinoff, you mean? It was really slow for most of the season, suddenly picked up at the end and got really good, and then it was canceled.

Case in point: another Battlestar Galactica reboot is apparently in the works.

CMV: Mono mix of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” is better.

There’s downsides to the companies, though. Interviewing new candidates takes money, and takes time away from people already on the team. If everyone is switching jobs to get a higher salary, then companies aren’t saving anything in the long run. They also have a major knowledge base walking out the door, and that’s hard to quantify.

It’s a false savings.

If I were to steel man this, it’d be cross-pollination. Old employees get set in their ways and tend to put up with the problems. They’ve simply integrated ways to work around problems in their workflow. New people bring in new ideas, and also point out how broken certain things are and then agitate for change.

This, I think, doesn’t totally sink the idea of the “company man” who sticks around for decades. It means there should be a healthy mix.

I keep waiting for someone to come up with some kind of explanation for this that even sorta makes sense. No, as far as I can tell, companies just work this way.

To steel man HOA’s, they take care of common property in a similar way to condos. Anything from street lights, to the sign at the front of the cul du sac, to the playground that seems oh so much nicer than what the city ever puts in. Some even provide garbage service and maintain the streets. Municipalities have been happy to offload this burden.

Steel man off: their point is to keep black people out. The superficial niceness is so white people can say how great things work for them, even when they’re only one layoff away from losing it all.

That’s the kind of picture that would get you a great career in Hallmark Christmas cards.