The beginning areas of the video game The Secret World are in New England, and it unironically nails this vibe really well.

• rowhammer
• rainbow table
• global interpreter lock
• race condition (atrocity?)
• core dump

The thing that gets me is that these people are all really smart. If someone is willing to lie and do math, why not work at an unscrupulous pharma/finance company? They’d make way more money and do way less work. I’d even argue that fraud in the private sector is less unethical - if investors give money to a fraud they deserve to lose it, and regulators take an adversarial stance and have whole orgs (in theory) policing fraud like the SEC and FDA.

It takes a really particular kind of scumbag to seek a position of public trust, make a bunch of trainees financially and professionally dependent on them, accept taxpayer money intended to help cancer patients, then commit fraud.

Wife and I did Dorf Romantik on a recent long train ride and we had a great time. It’s very cozy/calm which helps when you want to stay low energy and not bother your neighbors. And I fully agree with the battery pack idea - it gives me a ton of peace of mind when I’m traveling.

What in the world is the original context here? Have these people never encountered a puddle before? Her foot is completely immersed in gutter water and his white pants are about to be soaked and gross.

According to the article they’re spending $17 billion to increase production.

A very cool idea, however the headline is misleading - NASA has not even remotely committed to running this mission. They’ve selected the swarm project as one of 13 projects in their innovation program and given it up to $175k to study feasibility. That’s roughly a postdoc for two years. This is far, far from committing the hundreds of millions or billions needed for the execution of this mission.

Great shot! LA Union Station?

New construction sometimes doesn’t even help, when developers knocks down an old affordable 12 unit apartment building and build a luxury 36 unit building, you’ve created -12 units of affordable housing.

The argument I hear against this is that the 36 people who move into the luxury apartments moved from somewhere, and so 36 other apartments become available. The reduced demand for the vacated apartments then drives their prices down.

Of course, housing as a market is super distorted for a bunch of reasons so this effect is muddled. But I think it would be a net negative to fully disregard supply and demand in a market-based economy and preserve 12 affordable units in favor of 36 luxury ones.

Largely agree with all your other points though.