I thought the US approach to biofuels was always understood as a Republican head fake towards climate change action during Bush without doing anything that would threaten oil interests while simultaneously enriching their donor and voting base with all our tax dollars.
Readit Newsaddicted commented on Big agriculture mislead the public about the benefits of biofuels lithub.com/how-big-agricu... · Posted by u/littlexsparkee
addicted commented on The United States withdraws from UNESCO state.gov/releases/office... · Posted by u/layer8
I've seen the same thing. What I've seen is most of those folks that supported them during the campaign are now pretty quiet. During the campaign it was "cool" to support Trump and the republicans but now that the dude's in office, most are seeing that campaigns are very different from the administrations.
Looking back I blame the Democrats for running horrible candidates and the gaslighting that their candidates were actually great and were as "cool" as the Trump team. It just felt so disingenuous when you heard Democrats saying that Biden was still very with it and even more disingenuous when they said that Harris/Walz were a great pick. And now the folks that said it was disingenuous were not wrong, cause after the campaign ended and Trump was in office seemingly everyone that praised Biden and then Harris then flipped the script and started saying what everyone was thinking all along (that Biden was not fit to serve and Harris wasn't a great candidate).
I talked to alot of guys that flipped from D to R this past election and just about every one of them said a version of: "do they think we are stupid??".
The Democrats have a hubris problem, they think that just because they run someone and tell folks that the person is great, everyone will just automatically buy into that. That's just not how it works and you have to make a genuinely convincing argument and that argument can't be "the other guys is worse"
The Democrats have a structural problem.
The party is defined as being composed of the people who are already elected. So the priority of the Democratic Party ends up reflecting the priorities of those who are already in office, which is to make sure the incumbents get reelected.
This means there's very little incentive to expand the electorate (which would mean younger voters, who are likely to vote younger candidates, so that threatens the aging incumbents), or spend resources in expanding the map (because by definition there are no incumbents there whose interests are represented in the party).
For as advanced as the US political system is, it's incredibly backwards when it comes to professionalization of the political parties. A good comparison is the BJP in India. Setting aside policy, ideological issues for a moment, what they're really good at is being professional. The head of the party is not elected, and constantly rotates the party representative in each election, keeping their bench deep. They also have a soft age limit.
In a way, Donald Trump's greatest contribution to the Republican Party was destroying the incumbency advantage for Republicans. As a result the Republican slate was completely refreshed with younger (although generally worse) candidates, but while it may have made the party significantly worse from a policy/ideology perspective, it has made it politically stronger.
addicted commented on The United States withdraws from UNESCO state.gov/releases/office... · Posted by u/layer8
And it’s wild to think that more than 1/3 of the devs I’ve met in my life support this admin. These are seemingly smart people. The past 10 years or so made me realize I don’t know anything about human nature or intellect.
Edit: I am in no way saying conservatism is bad and liberalism is good. I have my values in both.
To be fair, a lot of people were fooled by the first term.
In the first term Trump hired a lot of retired or retiring generals. They may not have been subject matter experts, but that's fine, since they had subject matter experts within their departments, and they had the ability to organize, lead and execute.
But most importantly, most of them had a pretty strong sense of ethics and loyalty to the country and constitution.
The generals, and the people they hired, and even the Trump lackeys who were nonetheless being watched by the generals, helped keep Trump's worst impulses in check.
In Term 2, on the other hand, Trump has explicitly picked people who are completely unqualified (this is a mafia tactic to ensure the individual's loyalty is entirely to you since they know they would never have got the job they did on merit) and their primary skills lie in right wing TV and Podcasts. So these people prioritize effect and show for their followers, and are loyal to no one but Trump. And they've been selected primarily because they're incapable of doing the jobs they've been hired for well, so it's a stark 180 from the first term.
addicted commented on NIH limits scientists to six applications per year science.org/content/artic... · Posted by u/pseudolus
I can't speak to whether the 6 applications is the correct number, but it seems like a reasonable first pass to apply some limit as long as the NIH is closely monitoring this and modifying the restrictions as needed.
addicted commented on Apple Will Transition from the CTF to the CTC for EU Businesses developer.apple.com/news/... · Posted by u/eXpl0it3r
Who is advising Apple on these actions? Is it a team out of California? Because their approach to working with the EU seems pretty obviously unproductive and will (as it has in the past) hurt Apple, leading them to give up even more than they may have wanted, where if they worked collaboratively in good faith, they'd probably be able to negotiate the EU into a position more favorable to their preferences.
> Regulatory arbitrage disguised as innovation, dressed in the fashionable vocabulary of patient empowerment while serving no master but the quarterly earnings call.
No masters except the patients that are literally being empowered to make choices about their medical care and are paying a substantial premium (in many cases) to do so.
I would happily be empowered by my doctor and UnitedHealthcare instead, but sadly that’s not on the table.
Try getting tretinoin from a real doctor; I’ve been written prescriptions multiple times, never once succeeded in actually getting it, because insurance is a fucking nightmare. And I’m not on a cheap plan.
Also note that the compounded semaglutide is superior because it comes in adjustable dose vials, unlike the pens. But I’m sure the author would claim that taking a smaller dose to reduce side effects is “a dangerous and unproven approach to medicine that puts patient lives on the line purely for profit”.
I'm confused. An insurance company cannot reject a prescription. They can only reject paying for it.
So if you're paying for it with Hims why wouldn't you be willing to pay for the medication the doctor prescribes to you if the insurance company is refusing to pay for it?
When Gruber mentions that he never uses Markdown outside of his blog, and hinting at the fact that it was not intended for text editors (and other apps), there's one important point I want to make.
Yes, Markdown has disadvantages, and a few rough edges for uses as the format for editors et al, but there are two very big advantages and/or sideffects of it's widespread use: (1) it's cleartext and therefore very good as a measure against vendor lock-in and (2) it has, to some extent, dampened the rampant "not-invented-here"-esqe tendency to use proprietary formats. Even in open-source apps, proprietary formats make it hard for non-dev users to get their stuff out. If it's markdown (or at least supports markdown export) from the beginning, at least you know you can take your data with you.
Another nice thing about markdown is that you can pick up the formatting even if reading the markdown in plaintext.
So lists look exactly how you would expect lists to look like if you were writing it on a piece of paper.
Italic/Bolds are surrounded by /* which convey emphasis even in plaintext.
Headings prefixed by # is a reasonable way to depict headings in plaintext and convey the intention immediately even if you don't know Markdown.
They are giving court dates to (regular) cyclists, they are harsher on bikes than cars, and they are stopping cyclists at a higher rate than they stop drivers of cars.
https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2025/04/18/exclusive-cops-writin...
https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2025/05/02/policy-change-nypd-wi...
If the police don't care about the difference, why do you?
No, the question is are bicyclists killing and injuring pedestrians disproportionately than cars.
And the answer is no.
Every time a bike lane is installed on a street/avenue the safety rate for pedestrians increases dramatically.
> e-bikes above a certain power level
This is already true in NYC. It just another law that there aren't enough resources to be enforced IMO
It's largely enforced fine with e-bikes.
However, you do have car lane legal scooters that also ride in the bike lanes when convenient which are a real problem.
These aren't e-bikes, however, and are not supposed to be in the bike lane in the first place.
Important context that may explain it somewhat further down in the article.
> “Since e-bikes do not require a license, drivers of e-bikes can simply ignore their traffic summons with no repercussions whatsoever, making any enforcement futile,” the police spokesperson said. However, the new requirement that cyclists appear in court, or face an arrest warrant if they fail to, creates “a strong incentive to show up in court.”
Cannot speak for its accuracy.
Anecdotally (London not NYC) I feel like I am "endangered" by e-bikes much more often than cars, because they seem to regularly skip red lights and come silently shooting out from the other side of a car while you are crossing, which a car simply cannot do. They are far heavier than a normal bike and seem to be closer to a small incredibly quiet moped.
Obviously lives-saved is the most important metric, but that doesn't mean the "feeling of safety" component is worthless. The comparison around deaths is only useful if those figures are primarily car deaths caused by running red lights.
I feel like the most sensible policy is requiring licenses for e-bikes above a certain power level (not easy!) and then bringing parity to the treatment of cars vs e-bikes after that
> Anecdotally (London not NYC) I feel like I am "endangered" by e-bikes much more often than cars
Speaking of NYC, not London, there are several reasons I see for this. 1. NYC has used bike lanes as pedestrian safety infrastructure, siting the bike lanes right against sidewalks, providing a buffer from cars. NYC DOT has done a lot of research every time a new bike lane has been added, and every time they did that pedestrian deaths and severe injuries dropped. However, the flip side is that you're gonna have e-bikes much closer to you than cars.
2. Street infrastructure, including red light timing, etc. is entirely based on cars and not bikes. The bike lights, for example, switch directly from green to red, providing no "yellow" period to stop. This actually makes sense because bikes are significantly safer, but it leads to different behavior than cars, which some pedestrians feel is "unfair". What would actually be fair would be to design the infrastructure suitable for bikers as well.
3. Pedestrians simply have different expectations of cars/ebikes. You will reliably see tourists not even look for bikes while crossing the bike path and stand in the middle of the bike path or walk in the bike path in a way they never would with a car lane.
4. Bikes are just given much poorer infrastructure. In NYC, you have narrow bike lanes, several of which are interrupted with slick and dangerous sewer gratings, and with no space to pass, with car parking right next to them leading to people constantly hopping through the bike lane from their cars to the sidewalk without looking, constantly creating a danger of opening their doors without looking causing bikes to be "doored", etc.
There's way too much "feels" in this discussion. It's about time someone provided some actual data that bikes, and even e-bikes, have even slightly increased risks to pedestrians, when all the actual data suggests otherwise, and it's about time we recognize that at least in places like NYC, the "danger" caused by bikes/e-bikes, is literally because the city has made bikers a buffer to protect pedestrians from the actual dangers on the road, the 1-2 ton cars traveling at incredible speeds through dense urban areas.