To be clear, since the paper is a bit messy, here’s how they calculated a few variables.

Handedness index, HI: pick an individual. Check how many of the tasks they completed with the right hand (R) vs. the left hand (L). Then plop it into the formula (R-L) / (R+L).

So for example, if Alice used her right hand 60% of the time for any given task, R=0.6, L=0.4, HI(Alice) = (0.6-0.4)/(0.6+0.4) = +0.2.

Now let’s say Bob used his right hand 20% of the time. HI(Bob) = (0.2-0.8)/(0.2+0.8) = -0.6. Note the sign matters.

Mean handedness index, MHI: it’s mean, just like me. *ba dum tss* Just sum this stuff up and divide by the number of individuals. e.g. the MHI for the whole population of my example above would be (+0.2 -0.6)/2 = -0.2. So righties increase the score, lefties decrease it.

Mean absolute handedness index, MABSHI: disregard signal, then mean. The MABSHI for the population above would be (|+0.2| + |-0.6|)/2 = (0.2+0.6)/2 = 0.4. So stronger preference towards one hand (whichever it is) raises the score.

My personal take:

They found correlation between brain size, arm:leg ratio, and handedness… and that’s it. The title implies a cause (“why”), and that it has to do with right handedness, but both things are AFAIR (as far as I read) absent.

I think this is all a big red herring, mind you. We humans coördinate the usage of both our hands for a lot of tasks, where each hand performs a different movement:

• swing hammer with one hand, guide the nail with the other
• hold bow with one hand, pull the string and guide arrow with the other
• hold the mayo jar with one hand, twist lid with the other
• etc.

you get the idea, right? I think handedness encourages this sort of coördination, and it’s essential for more complex tasks other primates don’t typically perform. As such I don’t think it’s necessarily correlated to every instance of tool usage, as in the TOOL variable, but to specific tasks.

And there lies the problem with just replacing cars with buses

That’s not what I’m saying. I’m showing the idea in the OP (exclusive streets for “public” urban transport) is old as fuck and yet those money hoarders are reinventing it in a worse way. That’s it.

If you want my actual take on what’s the “best”: I do not think replacing everything with buses is sensible. I think buses and metropolitan trains are a good backbone, but there should be a mix, including direct transportation (e.g. taxi, regardless of being self-driving or not).

So congrats for building a straw man out of assumptions, and then beating it up. *yawn*

Now factor in that most people are going to need a vehicle in the US […]

Simply put, major bus network don’t work in most of the US […]

Emphasis mine. I’m not from USA, this comm is not about USA, and I’m clearly talking in a country-agnostic way, even if the pic I shared happens to be from my country (and city).

So, lemme be a wee bit blunt: why do you think I bloody care about USA enough to discuss the particularities of transport there? I don’t.

If USA or Kazakhstan or Nigeria or France or whatever have additional challenges against sane public transport, this perhaps warrants its own discussion thread. But it’s certainly not an excuse to narrow a discussion down from “everybody should be able to chime in” into “HOW DO PEOPLE DARE TO NOT TALK ABOUT MY COUNTRY?”, okay?

Not further wasting my time with you.

It depends on how wide or narrow you define “same place”.

If “same place” is “same neighbourhood, at walking distance”, and one of the neighbourhoods is downtown, then it’s quite a bit.

Plus buses are not restricted to two stations. And changing buses in the middle of your path is feasible, as long as the system is designed for that.

Let’s go further:

1. Make streets for self-driving cars.
2. Make the self-driving cars hold a lot more people. Like, a fuckload more.
3. Since self-driving is unreliable, put actual drivers in them. Due to #2 it won’t be a big cost.

And…

That’s exactly what my city implemented in the 90s.

Those sociopathic money hoarders are desperate to reinvent the wheel, and everything else on it.

Rome was dead the day that Octavian caenum fungus putridus paedicator SPVRCIFER! MERDICVLA LVTEA! guy backstabbed the Republic, and called himself “emperor”. *grumbles pro-Republic noises*

IMO the most important part of learning fallacies is not to call them by name while debating. It’s to smell the bullshit from a distance. Both in the others’ reasoning and your own.

That’s what those Reddit kids are missing. This shit is not an “I won!” card. It’s a reasoning framework.

(Sometimes I do still call them out by name. But that’s usually a sign I’m already losing my patience with the muppet in question, and considering to block them [online] / turn 180° [offline] while saying “I’m not wasting my time further with you and your dumb shit”.

I don’t debate religion any more, though; unlike in my later teens + early twenties. Zealots get mentally tagged “irrational harmful avoid”, and the sort of person who believes with the brain but not the liver isn’t usually a problem.)

highly corrosive and combustible chemical or go without their key ingredient.

Sulphuric acid is not combustible. I can go into details if anyone wants, but it’s mostly a fire hazard near most metals and burnable substances. This matters because, as long as properly stored, it offers no risk of fire, and proper storage isn’t hard to achieve. (e.g. carbon steel tanks if concentrated past 93%).

And this shit goes every fucking where, from copper ore treatment to organic synthesis to fertiliser production. You can get a pretty good guess of the industrial capabilities of a place based on their sulphuric acid production. As such it’s no surprise China is banning exports.

Relevant to note sulphuric acid is typically made from sulphur, and sulphur is typically obtained from petroleum and/or natural gas. That’s why the supply has become problematic.

If you don’t have corn beer, then any little thing… (reference to a certain song)

By the way they still drink that same corn beer in the region. It’s called chicha de jora. It’s barely alcoholic,

I wonder if there wasn’t some decoration around that “plug”, like a tail or some feathers.

The jaguar spots becoming holes in the statue are a nice detail. I guess they’re there to avoid the ceramic from exploding once cooked? (I once made a clay centaur in arts class. It got me a 100. Then it exploded in the oven. Teacher was sadder than me.)

Haec amissio? (is this loss?)

What’s shown in the picture is fairly solid, to be honest. The vowels remind me Italian (four heights) meets German (front unrounded vs. front rounded vs. back rounded).

/ʁ/ is being listed twice; is this an accident? Or is the consonant playing double role, as both the voiced counterpart for /x/ and as a liquid?

Vowel romanisation is a bit weird but eh, kind of tricky to do this anyway. I typically reserve letters otherwise associated with consonants for this reason; e.g. ⟨w y v⟩. But in your case it would require a lot of respelling.

Props for using a diaeresis instead of umlaut. It’s the best approach in this case, umlaut tends to create too much diacritic spam.

Main thing missing from the phonotactics are assimilation rules; for example languages typically don’t allow stuff like /np/ or /mt/, even if otherwise allowed. I also think it’s a bit strange to allow coda stops but not coda fricatives, but that might be due to “stereotypical Romance” bias from my part.

I forgot to add that end vowels fall silent when an apostrophe comes before them, technically “KHngoiengngņgöiëxuh’í” /xŋœŋŋngoieʃə/ is completely legal

Did you review the conlang in the meantime? Because the pic says nothing about apostrophes, and /xŋ/ doesn’t seem to be a valid onset in the list.

What a banger. I’m not into musicals, mind you, but I’ve enjoyed every single second of this episode, it was bloody perfect. All that build-up from the other six episodes, the tease with the Misfits “fighting” over Elizabetta, the way they introduced Lilith’s lovers, letting the Misfit’s personalities “leak” into the characters they’re representing, all that anxiety waiting for Purson (mind you I did read the manga, but I was still “Purson when?”)…

And they made the Misfits look physically tired at the end of the episode. Specially Elizabetta. Like you’d expect from someone who has been dancing/singing/acting for minutes in a row, it’s something so subtle but you notice it in real actors.

Plus I love how this arc basically introduced a new character (Purson) without feeling weird or off. Perhaps due to his bloodline ability, sure, but still.

People will still talk about this episode for the years to come, because it is that good.

That a relationship needs to grow into maturity, and this takes time.

I think people are a bit too eager to swallow bullshit in general, as long as spoken/written/gestured in a confident tone. And they often deal with uncertainly poorly; when others show doubt, they often either disregard the info or the doubt itself.

This likely predates Big Tech. I do agree with you though, Big Tech is actively encouraging this behaviour — it’s easier to sell goods, services and ideas to a gullible person than to a sensible one.

And, when it comes to LLMs, Big Tech is always playing some sort of double game: at the same time it claims “the info might be inaccurate, be careful!”, but it tunes its models to use that confident tone that fools people into believing bullshit. Because the people in Big Tech know that, if the general population becomes sceptic towards LLM output, most of its appeal as a new technology is gone; you can’t use it for any task that needs any sort of reliability.

[Sorry for the double reply]

*slow clap*

I’m not completely opposed to people using large models as a writing aid, specially for technical stuff. However: if you’re publishing a scientific paper, it’s your job to check it twice, thrice, tenice ten times, to ensure all info there is accurate, factual, and well grounded. If you can’t do it, you shouldn’t be littering the commons with your rubbish.

That applies even to references. In fact, references are part of the process: knowledge isn’t born ex bloody nihilo dammit, people should be able to check the references of your paper and find earlier literature about the subject.

[Justin Angel] My guess is that this policy will be applied selectively depending on institutional privilege and personal notoriety. It’ll end up as a tool of silencing unconnected individuals vs. promoting better scientific discourse. // I aspire to be wrong.

Doesn’t it sound weird that someone immediately assumes (i.e. makes up) the policy will be implemented unfairly, as soon it is announced? Well, if you check their profile, it doesn’t:

Justin Angel // @JustinAngel // AI, iOS & Android dev. Worked at Meta, Uber, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft building apps, developer platforms, and hardware. Tweeting about LLM psychotherapy.

Plus almost all of their tweets are about LLMs. This stinks “competing interests” from a distance.

It’s actually harsher than it looks like: “followed by the requirement that subsequent arXiv submissions must first be accepted at a reputable peer-reviewed venue.”

This means that, for all intents and purposes, if you get caught by this policy, you’re permanently banned from submitting preprints to arXiv, even if those are the main appeal of the repository.

Good to know, since I have both peppermint and red peppers in my garden. And I actually use both together often, with either ground meat or aubergines. (Plus cumin. Lots of. It goes great with both.)

Abo-meow-nya-tion.