A large part of west Nebraska is known as the “sand hills” it’s not very fertile mainly cattle ranchers are out there. It is interesting that 30 miles or so east of where sand hills start is some very good farm land, but go west into the sand hills you risk blow out if you try to do anything with the soil (basically if you uproot some grass it will create a patch of sand, over time the wind will make the patch of sand bigger and bigger). In fact sometimes people put stuff like used tires in the spots to help prevent blowouts from getting bigger. Another fun fact about sand hills is that when it rains it replenishes the underground Ogallala Aquifer which is a pretty amazing source of water, one of biggest in the world, and very important for irrigation ect. Anyways, I think that geography has a lot to do with eastern side being more populated.
There is pain, and there is real pain. This is real pain. When life hits you like this, it's important to just endure, rather than escape. Trying to escape the pain can lead to addictions and behaviors that bring more problems. Some people are hit with pain like this and live a whole life trying to escape it, but never do. Best thing is accept, grieve, and continue on. Regardless, you will not be the same person, this will change you. Sometimes life just sucks, and there is no way of saying it doesn't, only time and love can help. However, the sun comes up every morning, and there is a sunset every night.
This is for anyone out there suffering some acute trauma like losing a loved one, or a chronic trauma like abuse over many years. I have experienced both, and it took me over 15 years to realize what had happened and to recover. I originally chose escapism. I didn't realize it at the time, but that's what it was. I was always into something, eventually even substance abuse. Ironically, escapism is how I ended learning to code, which was an escape for me. However, I also ended up being around even worse things and witnessing more death, while living broke and stressed out. This dragged me into even more suffering to the point of wanting suicide every day, but I just couldn't do it. This was a combination of escapism, and being around people with the same negativity as me.
Fortunately in time, I found myself, and realized everything that had happened, and how life can just be like that. But also how beautiful and exciting life can be as well. This would not have happened had I not met certain people that showed me what it means to love, and to be mentally strong. Also, by reading and learning you can find inspiration and love from someone that you will never meet in real life. Regardless, we need support of strong and positive people around us. We are a social species after all. When dealing with death/loss, remember the good times, be thankful for the time we had, and leave it at that - easier said than done.
The sun will rise tomorrow, and you will too. Take care, friend.
If you are willing to pay, some of the courses and programs like micro masters, micro bachelors on edx can count for credit, which is not necessarily cheap, but may be cheaper than it otherwise might be [1], also see [2] as example.
All though even then, it may be cheaper to just enroll in some local or online classes at a community college in your state for a couple hundred dollars.
You should try to petition your state governor office to get the felony removed. It is a long time consuming process and will likely need help from a lawyer, but I have friends that have successfully gotten their felony removed after several years of diligently trying again, and of course good behavior in the mean time. It may never happen, but might as well give it a shot, it can’t hurt.
I am also glad the FDA protects us from chemicals and ingredients that would cause processed food to be unhealthy and harmful, if they didn’t do that we would probably end up with an overweight population and tons of food related health problems.
No, it's making the correct point. The government can't get you out of having to do the evaluation yourself because the government is broken, which is unlikely to change. In fact this is a major problem with the existence of the regulations -- they protect incumbents. Patented drugs get FDA approval, public domain drugs that could be alternatives to them don't because there is no one to pay for the approval process.
If heroin is legal, nobody forces you to buy it. If generic insulin is illegal, you're in trouble.
How do "we" fix it? You can vote for two Senators and one Congressperson and even assuming that your vote in particular was the deciding vote and one of your choices on the ballot was someone actually inclined to do something, you now have a legislature in which the bad laws pass with a margin of 33 Senators and 174 members of Congress instead of 35 and 175.
The only way to fix it would be to fix the structural incentives in place, i.e. institute more checks and balances to prevent regulatory capture. But this is the chicken and egg problem -- to change the rules you have to be in power, but if you're already in power then you like the existing rules because they're the things that put you in power.
Or in times of populism, you use your power to remove the rules that were meant to constrain opportunities for corruption because they're inconvenient to your agenda, and then those constraints stay gone because they're inconvenient to the next administration's agenda too. So how do you get them back, or introduce new ones?
> And nothing can beat a good to great government.
The best form of government is a benevolent dictator. The worst form of government is a malevolent dictator. But the only difference is who is in charge, which changes over time.
> If you don't want regulations, sure, Somalia is that way
Is there some way we can get past the thing where people are unable to distinguish between the government prohibiting acts of violence and the government prohibiting informed consensual interactions between adults and imposing competition-destroying bureaucratic rules at the behest of incumbent megacorps?
Laws are about statistics. Statistically you can't trust even adults with stuff like gambling or smoking. Statistically they will make bad decisions that will wreck the lives of a big percentage of adults. Not a majority, but maybe 20%.
Nobody is using statistics to pass these laws. There is no logical reason for cannabis to be illegal when alcohol isn't or for most stimulants to require a prescription when nicotine is available over the counter. They put caffeine in soft drinks and candy for crying out loud. The Federal Government of the United States directly subsidizes the production of high-fructose corn syrup.
There are two ways to deal with the fact that some people make poor decisions. The first is to teach people to make better decisions. This is obviously the correct answer, because it needs to be done anyway, because the second is insane. The second is to make all of their decisions for them.
And there is no "them" -- they're us. The people making the laws are just as human as anyone else. All you're doing is punting the decision to a different fallible entity which has less information because they're choosing in the abstract without the benefit of context. And causing errors to be universal rather than individual, resulting in systemic risk and lethal monoculture.
It's far better to have 20% of people make the wrong choice than 100%.
I was considering this, working on a new javafx app for a side project. Using java 17, and generating binaries with fxlauncher/jpackage/wix is not working great imo. Any good recommendations on tooling for using the graal route? I develop on linux but most users will be on windows. It would be great to not have to use windows vm for building the binaries (but i can if needed ofcourse).
What trouble are you having with jpackage? It's easy. Anyway, in order to AOT compile your JavaFX compilation you will have to run(or test) your application with Graal's tracing agent to collect the metadata and then compile it. You can use Graal's native plugins for Gradle or Maven.
I guess that makes it even worse. Large companies surely want people around the world to visit their websites for brand recognition even if they don't operate in their regions.
[1] Sandhills: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandhills_(Nebraska)
[2] Ogallala Aquifer: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer