Irrelevant, Chavez died 13 years ago, a lot has happened and changed. Maduro lost the last election hard, he wrecked the support he inherited back then
I have the same, my commute is a 10min walk, I have no dependants and make a good salary and I find it impossible to cook, I'm just depleted after work. If I add exercise and some social interaction then my time is spent recovering energy... It's probably a sign of burn out or of a bad job
What's going on on this thread? why are so many people defending Ryanair? I understand it's cheap and you get what you pay for but to defend this race to the bottom and scammy UX is so weird. Why do we need to simp for companies like this? It's great to have cheap options but we can also expect more from life. I'm sure we all here know how to navigate the dark patterns on the website but millions of people don't, so we just don't care anymore? Do we just shrug and go "as long as I get a cheap flight"?
Yes, especially for a short flight I do not have high expectations. I don't want to be charged an extra $10 so I can get a "free" half sized water bottle or tea hat's been brewing since the late 90s. I don't need extra baggage, legroom, or any of the other add-ons that other airlines try to provide and charge for.
I don't love the dark patterns, but believe the CEO when he says they are basically traps that enable the low prices for the people that don't fall for them.
> I don't love the dark patterns, but believe the CEO when he says they are basically traps that enable the low prices for the people that don't fall for them.
I don't know what to respond to this. Are you saying you're fine with other people falling for the dark patterns if that allows for a cheaper ticket for you?
Yes, they've always had a model of "people in the know" being subsidized by others.
Didn't pre-print out your ticket? 100 euro fine. Your bag is too large at the gate? Same thing.
It's the airline of Compound Interest- "He who understands it, earns it... he who doesn't... pays it"
An airline that isn't purely catered to the rich, but to those who are intelligent, knowledgeable, and don't mind the lack of frills. It's like an airline crafted for grad students.
There's some mention as to why in the article, I don't think it's about being effective but about it becoming a tag and movement and the people associated with it
"EA ... was originally concerned with how to get rich philanthropists to donate to the most “effective” charities but is now just as well known for its booster-doomerism about artificial general intelligence and for having had the convicted crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried as a notorious benefactor"
It's only known for doomerism and SBF because reporters like the FA author chose to focus on this, and not on, say, the hundreds of thousands of lives saved around the world by EA donors and their recipient organizations.
I gotta say, I'm also pretty annoyed at the guilt-by-association with the SBF thing. If word got out that SBF liked puppies, would his enemies forswear dogs? It seems pretty easy to disavow fraud and even crypto in general (I'm not a fan of crypto), while simultaneously embracing taking a giving pledge, figuring out metrics by which to judge philanthropies, and focusing donations on the effective orgs (by whatever metric makes sense to you). It's like our civilization has lost the ability to hold two ideas in mind at a time, or to think beyond "bad people are bad"
That's the risk of it becoming a tag and movement associated with a particular group of people. Millions of people donate to charity in different ways, effectively or not and they're not part of a movement. When it becomes uppercase Effective Altruism with very prominent yet very similar in profile advocates (tech millionaires) it becomes something different and will attract scrutiny.
People can and will continue to donate their time and money regardless of this particular movement.
Using your time and money to help people is amazing, everyone should be encouraged to do it, of course.
But what does that have to do with EA? The EA movement is associated with tech millionaires arrogantly telling the world they are better at knowing what people need, at the same time some of these people have proven to have a dubious moral compass. So do I want these people as leaders of such a movement, absolutely not. Ultimately why do we need to tribalise the topic? You want to donate to charity in a particular way, then go ahead and encourage people to do so, that's amazing. Maybe we don't agree on the specifics but I think our opinions are actually not that far apart :)
But again, it's only associated with tech millionaires because reporters make the association to helpfully enable their readers to hate stuff! Engaging negative emotions -- you know, the thing modern media does best!
In my mind, EA is associated with Peter Singer and William MacAskill, some of the most powerful voices in contemporary philosophy, people whose work inspired me to think morally about my own choices, and who beyond being academics safe in their ivory towers founded a practical movement which has saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
I am doggedly pursing this thread because it encapsulates everything that's wrong with our modern times. We must regain the ability to organize into movements, otherwise those tech bosses we both dislike will rule us each separately. We must uplift moral courage, standing by convictions, and doing doing good in the world, otherwise the forces of nihilism (such as Trumpism) will destroy all that we hold dear, including the ability to hold things dear. We must make common cause, and not get torn apart by the narcissism of small differences. We must popularize doing good, and I don't see anyone else doing as, ahem, effective a job as EA.
I'm not the one tribalizing the topic! I'm not even a member of any EA club or group! I just want to end the casual hate, like what's exhibited in TFA. Why is it so hard to acknowledge that the movement on the whole has done more good than harm, even if some questionable individuals have used the movement as a cover for bad choices?
>> There have been other attempts to use genetically-modified fungi (Trichoderma) for protein production, where they secrete in the cultivation medium a water-soluble animal protein
Honest question, what does "animal protein" mean here in regards to it being produced by a fungi? is it that it's the same as as one from a cow at the molecular level?
Yes, they have replaced the gene used to synthesize the fungus protein that was secreted in the environment with a cow gene or a chicken gene.
So the cow lactoglobulin or chicken ovalbumin produced by the fungus is chemically identical to that from the protein powders that are currently made from cow milk or whey or from chicken egg white.
That means that such fungus-produced protein has an optimal amino acid profile, unlike the natural fungal proteins and if it forms a part of the daily protein intake (e.g. around a third) it can compensate the inadequate amino acid profiles of vegetable proteins.
For about 4 years I have eaten only vegetable proteins, but this created some constraints in what I could eat that were too inconvenient, so eventually I gave up. While now most of my protein intake remains of vegetable origin, I use some whey protein powder in the cooking of certain foods, to enhance their protein content, which has enabled me to make much more varied choices in the menu. Therefore I would know how to use such a product from fungi, if it would become widely available. There are a few startups in this domain, both in USA and in Europe, but for now their target is mostly in selling to big industrial producers of food, not at retail.
I agree with you, but lately, given the state of my industry and my personal situation I've started to fear that my company is just going to burn if we don't succeed and I need to do as much as possible to prevent that as finding a similar role is going to be pretty damn hard, I also don't have the leverage I used to have a few years ago to just change jobs. All of that has lead me to break my back and confront my boss which is extremely uncomfortable and pushing me closer to burnout. Unsure what my point is other than I wish I had the space to not care
I don't understand the context. The idea of banning seed sharing is to stop counterfeits? That doesn't make much sense. Surely that'll just make it worse, no?
Also, what's the connection to the high yield ones? Is it because those get counterfeited the most?
Not quite, the counterfeit seeds here are dramatically worse to the point where buyers will feel scammed and face significant hardship if they mistakenly use them.
Imagine if 90% counterfeit electronics caused house fires, the harm is way beyond the purchase price. At that point customers start caring a great deal, but corruption is difficult to avoid.
That’s a comment born from ignorance. Farmers want hybrids for a wide range of crops because the are wildly more productive than heirloom varieties thus making them more money.
The first generation of Hybrid seeds are on average several times more productive than the second generation, yet they look the same. Further it’s much easier to gather a second generation of seeds than the first. Thus significantly worse product that’s cheaper to produce but looks identical barring genetic testing = counterfeit.
people haven't explained why this is the case, it's the simple genetics we learn in biology.
the first generation has a many sets of genes with "Highly Productive Dominant (HPD, my terms for this post) genes, Not so Productive Recessive Gene (NPR)". By inbreeding 2 lines for a while, one can end up with a strain that has both genes being one and thereby when you cross it with something else, you know the offspring will get its gene (as it really only has one). Therefore the first generation, will have many sets as what I described above and will 100% express the HPD of those pairs.
The 2nd generation though of seeds will have a randomized assortment of HPD/HPD, HPD/NPR, NPR/NPR genes. Therefore while 75% of the seeds expressed genes will be HPD on average, that's obviously less than 100% that one gets from first generation.
That’s a reasonable mental model for why this kind of thing can happen, but it’s worth remembering that other possibilities exists. Suppose strain R is adding RR, and strain K is adding KK, and you want RK because the combination is more useful than either RR or KK. There’s no way to get that into a population without some lucky mutations or genetic engineering.
Further you’re likely looking at many such combinations not just a single one.
It worked so well in the War On Drugs... Don't do the hard work of taking down illegal supply chains; simply put the end consumers into jail for several years!
> Also, what's the connection to the high yield ones?
The high yield seeds are created by cross pollinating certain varieties. When the high yield seeds are planted, the new seeds should be eaten -not re-planted- since they will give poor yield.
So a counterfeiter can just buy cheaper food-seeds and resell them as expensive high-yield seeds.
A lot of plants work like that. Apples very rarely come out tasting great if the tree is planted from a seed. You need to clone a good known apple tree from cuttings instead.
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