teachrdan (u/teachrdan)

teachrdan commented on Trees on city streets cope with drought by drinking from leaky pipes newscientist.com/article/... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

prasadjoglekar · a day ago

This is one example of why I've stopped listening to climate change alarmists. Instead of doing the grunt work of local utility maintenance, it's so much easier to blame "climate change". The climate may be changing, but it's a convenient excuses to not do anything.

Another example - in NYC a few years back, several people died when floodwaters entered their basement homes.

Mayor De Blasio: Climate change.

Local resident: you guys didn't clean out the drains, it's all clogged.

teachrdan · a day ago

> This is one example of why I've stopped listening to climate change alarmists.

I'm not sure if I understand your logic. People who advocate to stop climate change (alarmists?) literally never use is as a convenient excuse "not to do anything." If you could provide an example I'd be happy to take that statement back.

Instead, the point is that, due to climate change, we're having more and more instances where something as trivial as a clogged drain can lead to people drowning in their basement apartments.

EDIT: On reflection, the so-called "climate change alarmists" who say you should "not do anything" are probably shills for big corporations, who want to save money on risk mitigation by saying there's no point because it's too late to mitigate the risks of climate change.

teachrdan commented on Steve Wozniak: Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about happiness yro.slashdot.org/comments... · Posted by u/MilnerRoute

t-3 · 12 days ago

Is being a neglectful or unloving parent equal to being a bad person? Maybe he was a bad parent, maybe he was an overly demanding and overbearing boss, but it's not like he was killing people or selling weapons. He sold phones and mp3 players and computers. He almost certainly contributed to making the world a better place by many objective criteria. I don't know why he's labeled as a "bad person" when there are hordes of people who foment and profit from war and killing and don't contribute at all to human productivity, creativity, or wellbeing but are lauded.

teachrdan · 12 days ago

> it's not like he was killing people or selling weapons.

Well, if your standard is that no one is a bad person until they are literally murdering people or selling war machines, then no, of course not.

But as a parent myself, I think it's fair to say that if you, as a multimillionaire, stoop to doing the bare legal minimum to support the child you created, who was at one point living in poverty because you failed to support her before, then yes: you are a bad person.

There are obviously many other ways in which Steve Jobs was a bad person! He kept obtaining temporary license plates because he wanted to park in handicapped spots without getting tickets. He orchestrated a salary-fixing cartel that artificially depressed wages for many thousands of engineers in Silicon Valley, all so that he and his other obscenely rich friends could get even richer. And he had his devices manufactured in China under horrendously exploitative conditions again, so that he and his shareholders could make an extra buck. (on top of the billions they already had)

But if your standard of being a "bad person" (not even evil!) is murder or complicity in it, then you could make a strong case that Steve Jobs was not a bad person, altogether.

teachrdan commented on Shale Drillers Turn on Each Other as Toxic Water Leaks Hit Biggest US Oil Field bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/toomuchtodo

fsckboy · a month ago

>Unsurprising. Over a decade ago I was searching for a dissertation topic and a self-reporting fracking site...

it's unsurprising because in all human endeavors, success has many parents, while failure is always an orphan. Has nothing to do with fracking.

teachrdan · a month ago

> Has nothing to do with fracking.

I wish you had read OP's comment more carefully:

> Further, not all the chemicals being leaked... were reported, as any that had trade secrets (at the time and to the best of my recollection) were excluded.

The exact mix of chemicals used in fracking fluids is proprietary -- in all likelihood not because it's so valuable as a trade secret, but as an excuse not to report the presumably toxic / carcinogenic contents to the public.

This is absolutely something specific to fracking.

teachrdan commented on US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Trump orders theguardian.com/us-news/2... · Posted by u/leotravis10

indil · 2 months ago

Your news sources have woefully misinformed you. Trump's argument is that it's not enough to be born here, you have to also be a charge of the country:

"Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

Note the "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof". Trump's argument is that people born in America to tourist parents here for a few weeks (for example) aren't subject to the jurisdiction of America. It's a valid argument to make, even if you come down on a different side. Even the author of the 14th amendment said that was the point of that clause. Even in logical terms it makes sense: You can't just let anyone in to give birth and then collect benefits; it's unsustainable.

However, this case wasn't about citizenship. It was about the broader issue of lower courts issuing restraining orders outside their jurisdictions. It's a recipe for chaos. There's a reason why there are multiple jurisdictions, and courts are limited to their jurisdictions. What happens when two lower courts issue conflicting nationwide orders? The only court in the US that has jurisdiction over the entire country is the Supreme Court. This was a losing battle.

There's a right way and a wrong way to go about addressing problems. Court cases are sometimes more about the core issues involved than the concrete circumstances. Sure, birthright citizenship was the reason for the suit, but the core issue was judicial overreach. Don't get mad because the way your side was "winning" was by cheating, and they were stopped. Try having an actual good argument, and doing things the right way by arguing the actual case in a court.

teachrdan · 2 months ago

> Even in logical terms it makes sense: You can't just let anyone in to give birth and then collect benefits; it's unsustainable.

The 14th Amendment was passed in 1868. Government benefits were basically nonexistent at the time, and besides, with the US population at under 40 million people, we needed more citizens, not fewer. Your "logical" argument is completely anachronistic and irrelevant.

The conservative side of the Supreme Court claims to rule based on what the writers of the Constitution had in mind. This is another example of how they completely ignore what the writers/framers/etc. of the Constitution intended as soon as it interferes with the larger conservative agenda that they serve.

teachrdan commented on The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return ericneyman.wordpress.com/... · Posted by u/surprisetalk

dragonwriter · 3 months ago

> If the Bible was written by an omniscient and all-powerful God, then why does it have so many inaccuracies in it?

This would be a very good gotcha for a religion that believed the Bible was written by God (or at least dictated verbatim) and that it was intended to be a purely literal factual account, neither of which are majority positions within Christian theology (Fundamentalism, in which close approximations of both are important defining beliefs, being a relatively new movement within Protestantism and not the mainstream of Christianity.)

teachrdan · 3 months ago

> This would be a very good gotcha for a religion that believed the Bible was written by God

Fair enough! But if God is all powerful and all knowing, he decided to make the bible incorrect. Why would he do that?

teachrdan commented on The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return ericneyman.wordpress.com/... · Posted by u/surprisetalk

ivape · 3 months ago

I don’t think anything is weird anymore. The ultimate reality of free will is that you will always have the option to do right and wrong. If you don’t have faith, this privilege will be difficult. The human left to their own devices will always have a shifting sense of morality (turning a ship by 1 degree at a time).

Faith was a gift to help.

In terms of Christ, let me put it this way. Imagine your high school, and one day the President of the US visits. You may not directly see him, but the whole school would know about it, even if he was just there for 5 minutes. It’s a matter of faith, and it’s the little bit you need to help with the gift of free will.

The very first story (well second story) in the main monotheistic books was the Eden Story. That story is all about how vulnerable we are with the choice of free will. Empirically, we have seen the failure of it over and over throughout human history (systemically you can easily see it). So, yes, I fully believe in the fallen nature of man, not because we are evil, but because what a gift and responsibility free will actually is.

teachrdan · 3 months ago

> You may not directly see him, but the whole school would know about it, even if he was just there for 5 minutes.

My question would be: If the Bible was written by an omniscient and all-powerful God, then why does it have so many inaccuracies in it? Easy ones include a global flood that killed every animal on Earth. (Except for the two of each animal on Noah's ark, which would have overheated with so many animals in it, if it hadn't collapsed under its own weight first.)

But there are also internal contradictions between the four gospels of the New Testament. Why would God make his own books inaccurate? To me, that indicates they are not the product of divine inspiration but the written accounts of oral histories.

Your response may be that God introduced these errors into his holy books to test our faith. But at that point, isn't the answer to every contradiction and inaccuracy just, "To test our faith"? Is there literally anything that would change your mind, or is your faith just being tested even harder?

teachrdan commented on Prohibition and ice cream in the US Navy oldsaltblog.com/2025/05/h... · Posted by u/speckx

ceejayoz · 3 months ago

There's a possibly apocryphal story about a Japanese higher-up who realized the war was lost when the ice cream barges showed up, because the Allies had that much spare resources for a treat while the Japanese troops were starving in the jungles.

teachrdan · 3 months ago

I've heard the same said about German POWs in WWII. Towards the end of the war, when they were served tea and biscuits while their comrades in the field starved, they knew the British (and Allies more generally) were going to win.

teachrdan commented on Lufthansa plane flown by autopilot after pilot faints in cockpit scmp.com/news/world/europ... · Posted by u/gscott

bbatsell · 3 months ago

My understanding of the purported reasoning behind the reversal was:

- They required airlines to implement cameras to monitor the hall leading up to the cockpit so that the pilot in the cockpit can verify who is requesting entry (without this, they still must follow the rule — Ryanair chose not to retrofit, so they continue to use attendants who can look out the peephole).

- In testing, they decided that the extra time that the cockpit door was unsecured during the switchovers in tight spaces was more dangerous than trying to solve the suicidal pilot issue with better mental health monitoring.

(My own note, we know that suicidal actors have no problems taking weapons to their copilots or whatever attendant is stuck looking out the peephole, e.g. FedEx 705.)

teachrdan · 3 months ago

Link for the lazy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Express_Flight_705

"On April 7, 1994, Federal Express Flight 705... was the subject of a hijack attempt by Auburn R. Calloway, a Federal Express employee facing possible dismissal for having lied about his flight hours.

"Calloway boarded the scheduled flight as a deadhead passenger carrying a guitar case concealing several hammers and a speargun. He planned to crash the aircraft hoping he would appear to be an employee killed in an accident, so his family could collect on a $2.5 million life insurance policy provided by Federal Express..."

teachrdan commented on Malaya's Timeless Design linyangchen.com/Philately... · Posted by u/cenazoic

khy · 4 months ago

I get the sense that a lot of science in the 19th century was done by the idle rich.

teachrdan · 4 months ago

Charles Darwin was independently wealthy and largely funded his own research into evolution.

teachrdan commented on Accountability Sinks 250bpm.substack.com/p/acc... · Posted by u/msustrik

selfselfgo · 4 months ago

I ask for something, when they say they can’t do that. I say the magic words “Maybe your manager can do it?” You just don’t accept the possibility of your request not being fulfilled, say they are contractually obliged to do, even if you’re not sure, if all else fails reverse the charges on your card. Threatening small claims court works well. I now do that on the on the second email, do I look like a fool? Yes. Do I have a lot of time to investigate your platform's org structure and capabilities when I have dozens of companies like this I deal with daily? No.

teachrdan · 4 months ago

Before threatening small claims court (known to be a PITA for the plaintiff), I'll tell them that if they can't resolve it, then they should send me an email telling me so, which I'll forward to my credit card company so they can reverse the charges. Then I'll remind them that that's bad for the business because it increases their transaction fees and ask (again) if there's any way to just refund me. This works for me like 90% of the time.