Right now there are a total of 5 houses or townhouses under $2.5M listed for sale in Palo Alto with the cheapest being a cute 1200 sq ft 3BD/2BA house for the low price of $1.68M.
The Palo Alto/Los Altos/West Menlo Park areas have fought hard to prevent housing development (NIMBY!). Recently a small number of luxury homes were built in the Barron Park part of Palo Alto. The homes sold quickly for $4.5M and up. Meanwhile, on the same small street in Barron Park, there are currently five homeless people living out of their cars and three trailer homes. They use the adjacent park's open public bathroom.
I don't think the departure of Tesla HQ will have much of an impact on the town, which is a shame. Something bad is festering beneath the pristine surface here.
I don't personally know any reasonably intelligent people who question the existence of global warming.
I do, however, know several highly intelligent people who have looked at the atmospheric carbon and temperature data and wonder (quietly, for obvious reasons) if we might have got the causal mechanism story wrong.
> CO2 produced from burning fossil fuels or burning forests has quite a different isotopic composition from CO2 in the atmosphere. This is because plants have a preference for the lighter isotopes (12C vs. 13C); thus they have lower 13C/12C ratios. Since fossil fuels are ultimately derived from ancient plants, plants and fossil fuels all have roughly the same 13C/12C ratio – about 2% lower than that of the atmosphere. As CO2 from these materials is released into, and mixes with, the atmosphere, the average 13C/12C ratio of the atmosphere decreases.
...
> What is found is at no time in the last 10,000 years are the 13C/12C ratios in the atmosphere as low as they are today. Furthermore, the 13C/12C ratios begin to decline dramatically just as the CO2 starts to increase — around 1850 AD. This is exactly what we expect if the increased CO2 is in fact due to fossil fuel burning.
In other words, all CO2 with biological source (including fossil fuels) comes pre-tagged, and the pattern we see in the atmosphere exactly matches the assumption that they're from fossil fuels.
So, unless your acquaintances theorize that it's the global temperature that drives mankind's demand for fossil fuels, there's really no ground in doubting the causal direction.
It's too bad they're doubting quietly. If they actually voiced their doubts in the form of an honest question, they would have learned about C13 ratio by now.
I think the case has been made quite convincingly that humans have dramatically increased atmospheric CO2. I don't personally know anyone who questions this either (but I don't know any oil lobbyists, to be fair). In fact, as someone who worked in climate advocacy for many years, I think that we proved this link quite well, almost to a fault. I say a fault, because so many resources have gone into proving that humans have caused the increase in atmospheric CO2 that we paid less attention to making a convincing case that the rise in global temperatures can only be explained by the reflected heat caused by that atmospheric CO2. (Just consider your knee-jerk reaction to my comment where you automatically assumed that this was a question about atmospheric CO2 without considering the possibility that it might be something/anything else).
When you look at the graphs for atmospheric CO2 and man-made carbon emissions laid on top of each other, it looks perfect. This is the money shot. But, when you lay the 150 year temperature data on top of it, it suddenly doesn't look so good (ignoring the normal 11 year solar fluctuations, just looking at the general trend line). There's a 70 year stretch when temperatures are flat to declining as atmospheric CO2 climbs by almost 20% (in advocacy training we'd be encouraged to skip past this: zoom out and highlight that they are _directionally_ similar and definitely never chart in percent change, of course).
Personally, I still ride with Team Atmospheric Carbon. But I also don't think there's anything unhealthy with good-faith questioning of the new dogma. The Earth's magnetic field has weakened by about 5% over the past 100 years. Global temperatures have risen by about 5.5% over the past 100 years. The magnetosphere protects the Earth's atmosphere from charged solar particles which would otherwise strip off parts of the upper atmosphere, allowing more UV radiation to hit Earth. Is that a coincidence? Maybe. Is increased UV-B penetration just as likely to cause warming as increased reflected infrared radiation? Yeah? So I keep an open mind.
Love this. Moving to CM4 will make the form factor even better. If you're interested, here's an AI camera paired with a steerable hyperdirectional speaker that uses the Raspberry Pi and Google Coral: https://www.toutaudio.com/
Apple Fitness+ (specifically the 20 and 30 minute HIIT workouts) have completely changed my life. I started in January and I've lost 15 pounds so far. I sleep so much better at night (also tracked by Apple Watch). I fall asleep within 10 minutes of getting in bed and I (usually) sleep all the way through the night now. The effects on my anxiety levels and sleep patterns have caused it to become a personal obsession. I'm honestly a little scared of missing a HIIT workout. I've tried to get friends and family to do it, but there's still a lot of resistance for some reason. But I think that Apple is tapping into something huge. The iPhone is a toxic obsession. Fitness+ is a healthy obsession. This is the version of Apple I want to support and believe in.
Honestly, having kids fixed my personality in a thousand significant ways. I was never a raging cerebral narcissist, but I had patterns of responses to situations which were incredibly self-centered. My children didn't change my perspective, that would be too convenient and easy. Having children just gave me more outlets to be the caring, nurturing person that I wanted to be deep down. I enjoy expressing my personality as a dad more than any other persona I've ever tried on.
I'm glad that's working for you, but for anyone else reading, if you think you have some sort of uncontrolled pathological narcissism, please do not have children.
A majority of the people I know who have mental health issues as adult are in that situation at least in part due to narcissistic abuse by their parents. /r/raisedbynarcissists/ has over half a million subscribers for a reason. If you want to have kids, get yourself straightened out psychologically first, or set aside funding for the therapy they'll need ahead of time.
"I'm glad that's working for you, but for anyone else reading, if you think you have some sort of uncontrolled pathological narcissism, please do not have children."
Thank you. This is a wonderful, pitch-perfect example of the type of insanely arrogant thing I would have posted in a forum before I had kids.
And let's not forget the controversy from just five months ago where the nytimes reported (and dozens of other media outlets blindly re-reported) that facebook allowed companies like spotify, netflix, and the royal bank of canada to read, write, and delete our private messages. All because the nytimes's tech reporters don't understand how an API works. Or maybe they do, but the nuance doesn't fit with their current agenda.
I'm struck by how often I see these types of comments these days, both on this site and others. "Not a fan of facebook, but..." or "I hate facebook, but..." It reminds me of the shift in discourse around Hillary Clinton in the run-up to the 2016 election. I'd talk to reasonable people who'd say, "Well, Clinton is certainly evil, but she's the lesser or two evils" or "I hate Hillary, but Trump isn't qualified." It was basically a case of an entire population trying to process the cognitive dissonance created by a massive disinformation campaign. Every time I see a negative article posted about fb (and it's pretty much daily now), I see in the comments some variation of this same struggle to reconcile our (probably neutral) feelings about fb against this rolling tide of propaganda. It's disheartening how quickly we've accelerated to this dystopia of mass-manipulation of public opinion through social media.
Agree 100%. I don't use grocery delivery or meal kits and it's not because of cost or food spoilage or inaccurate orders. I don't use them because going to a brick and mortar grocery store is awesome. My kids really love going to the grocery store. They haven't yet been conditioned to believe that they should be embarrassed of or bored by certain activities. For them, it's an exciting opportunity for discovery. They're delighted by new products they haven't seen before.
I can't remember the exact statistics, but the vast majority of people prefer b&m grocery shopping. In many cities and towns across America, the most fun thing you can do each week is to go to the Walmart and shop. It's a social experience. It engages all your senses. It's fun. I believe that's partly why brick and mortar grocery purchases are still around 97% of total grocery sales despite grocery delivery services being available for over two decades.
I imagine at some point in the future, someone clever will figure out a way to replicate the in-store experience online, but there's nothing that's even close right now (sorry AR/VR).
> I don't use them because going to a brick and mortar grocery store is awesome.
I agree with you, but the meal order kits, at least to me, doesn't solve "going to the grocery store".
They solve the issue of too much choice and too little time to make a decision. That push us to just try to same usual meals. At least with meal kits, not only you try new stuff, that you may have no tried for many reason (Does my supermarket carry this ingredient? Do I have it already in my pantry? Will I need to buy 10x too much of it to try this meal that I may not like?), but you also do it quickly.
I remember when I tried Goodfood late last year, there was a recipe I was interested in, but it was from their "family" meal plan. I still wanted to do it, so a month ago I went to get the recipe. I couldn't find a few of the spices at my local supermarket and it required a little bit of Sherry Vinegar, which sure isn't expensive and may be used in the future, but it's still way more than I need and will go to waste if I don't reuse it/like it.
I'm going to try a service that someone made in this thread, Eat This Much, and I'll see if it's works too, but I feel like it's not enough and many of theses issues will come up.
I still haven't closed my account over Goodfood, I still plan to order a few meals from time to time, to add recipes to my usual meals list. I feel like that's the kind of usage that make sense. Sure it's more expensive, sure the shipping require more waste, but it doesn't hurt if it just happens from time to time and maybe my Sherry Vinegar that I may waste in the long run isn't much different either.
The very idea that anyone could understand a person's personality or character from an essay and 45 minute interview is laughable. On top of this, even trained professionals demonstrate subconscious racial biases in everyday life. This has been confirmed in several psychology studies. It's perfectly valid to question the value of a subjective personality assessment. It opens the door to stereotype-fitting and confirmation bias. I'd also challenge the admissions committee to really observe the way Asian-americans, particularly Asian-american males, are treated on campus at Harvard. It's bizarre and surprising. They're treated with the casual dismissiveness formerly reserved for 1950s housewives. I can't imagine that this attitude doesn't track all the way back through the admissions process.
> I'd also challenge the admissions committee to really observe the way Asian-americans, particularly Asian-american males, are treated on campus at Harvard. It's bizarre and surprising. They're treated with the casual dismissiveness formerly reserved for 1950s housewives.
This.
Microaggressions do exist. I think they are a part of how we naturally arrange ourselves in dominance hierarchies. They are so subtle and natural, it's insane to make such actions a crime, or to create bureaucratic enforcement against them. Those are policies of insanity. That said, I've seen a lot of racially tinged microaggressions as an Asian male.
I don't think this is a case of them actually judging Asian applicants as having a bad personality. There's nothing subjective actually going on here. Harvard was using the only subjective factor in the process to achieve their own goals for affirmative action. This was the only place they thought they could hide putting their finger on the scales.
They failed. Hopefully this blows up in their face as it should. The way to end racial discrimination in this country is to stop discriminating based on race.
My wife was also in the ER a couple of years ago. She was there for about nine hours. At one point the attending came by and spoke with us for less than a minute. He basically repeated what the nurses and PAs had been telling us for the past few hours. But he clearly wasn't paying attention to the case because his summary was clumsy and lacking in detail. It was no more helpful than what I was reading on Web MD on my iPhone. My wife's exact words when he left the room were, "That was weird." Later, when we looked through the bill from the ordeal, it turned out that this awkward, uninformative, 45-second interaction was billed at almost $1000. If he had told us ahead of time that his unnecessary analysis was going to cost $1000 (even if it was paid by insurance) I would have thrown a shoe at him and told him to get lost. Healthcare is not a marketplace.
>>It was no more helpful than what I was reading on Web MD on my iPhone.
This kind of thing is what makes automation in the medical industry ripe for disruption. In fact close 80% of the information any doctor can give you in case of first 2-3 visits is what you would get by doing simple google search or reading WebMD or even looking up the Merck's manual.
Unless you have serious problem, automation can solve most of the problems people have.
>> If he had told us ahead of time that his unnecessary analysis was going to cost $1000 (even if it was paid by insurance) I would have thrown a shoe at him and told him to get lost. Healthcare is not a marketplace.
Exactly why we need automation. A while back CA's were considered accounting and auditing geniuses. Most of them are out of job today as accounting software got more automation and intelligence.
Wait till the time when most doctors go out of job as software automation sweeps health care industry.
The Palo Alto/Los Altos/West Menlo Park areas have fought hard to prevent housing development (NIMBY!). Recently a small number of luxury homes were built in the Barron Park part of Palo Alto. The homes sold quickly for $4.5M and up. Meanwhile, on the same small street in Barron Park, there are currently five homeless people living out of their cars and three trailer homes. They use the adjacent park's open public bathroom.
I don't think the departure of Tesla HQ will have much of an impact on the town, which is a shame. Something bad is festering beneath the pristine surface here.