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dlr3y100

And it's not just the number of overcast days that is a problem.  Bellingham is very far north-- enough so you get significant swings in day length between summer and winter-- that is great in the summer, it is still broad daylight out at 11pm at night-- but winter days are really short.   Sunset is around 4:30, or earlier, from mid-Nov to mid-Jan.  The sun has gone down before you get off work.    Here is a link to sunrise-sunset data for Bellingham  https://sunrise-sunset.org/us/bellingham-wa/2020/10.        

dlr3y140

Two things to be cautious about re Bellingham:

  1. the % 'overcast' incidence is much higher than the % 'measurable precipitation' incidence. I lived in the area until I was about 30 and the number of days when I literally never saw the sun, or a scrap of blue sky was very high, especially during the winter.  People with any tendency towards Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) should avoid Bellingham, indeed, the entire Pacific Northwest.  
  2. Winters seem colder there than you would expect from the actual temperature.   Just like high humidity makes heat seem hotter, high humidity makes cold seem colder.   I've never heard anybody make the comment 'yes, but it is a dry cold..', but it does make a very noticeable difference.    
dlr3y30

If human souls are generated by the human brain, which seems as likely as any other mechanism of creating them, then perhaps an upgraded brain will generate upgraded souls.  

dlr4y30

So we should expect Dunning-Kruger to not replicate if the subjects were offered a nontrivial reward for how well they predicted their test scores.

dlr4y10

why assume that the "master" is a unified module?

Answer by dlrFeb 28, 2020310

A 2 weeks supply of food sounds like far too short a supply. The first case of 'atypical pneumonia' was noticed in Wuhan in late Dec. It is now late Feb. They have by now organized themselves in Wuhan to the point where all of the ill people are getting sent to 'local' (temporary) 'hospitals' and the 'local hospitals' are triaging and sending seriously ill people onto actual hospitals with the capacity to care for people who are seriously ill (like requiring oxygen). But this level of organization is a fairly recent situation. Even 2 weeks ago, sick people were literally walking to hospitals, because ambulances were swamped; they were being turned away from hospitals for lack of beds and supplies, and medical personnel to look after them; they were sitting in hospital waiting rooms for hours being cross exposed to other sick people, etc. So, even with massive efforts on the part of the government, it took about 2 months for them to get their act together in a real hot spot of infection. If you are unfortunate enough to end up in a similar type 'hot spot' to Wuhan, (but still live in a first world country) it probably won't take longer than 2 months for the government to get its act together, but I wouldn't assume they will do much better than that... so, if you are planning on buying a little insurance, I'd suggest that a 2 month supply of food, etc, is about minimum of what you would need to get through a (1st world) worst case scenario, rather than 2 weeks.

And a 3 months supply would probably be a better choice than a 2 month supply. It's not like Wuhan is virus free or anything close to it, today, 2 months in...

A 3 month's supply of food sounds crazy, and, true, you probably won't need it. But, it's almost cost free to supply yourself with it. No one at all is suggesting power outages. So, you can probably just stock up on food and supplies you normally use anyway, at least for frozen, canned, and non-perishable type things. That obviously won't do for stuff like milk and fresh fruits and salad stuff, so you'll have to make some substitutions there, but for most other stuff you should be OK if you just buy extras of things you normally buy anyway. The only cost is the inconvenience of buying it all at once, and finding a convenient place to stack it down until you need it.

dlr5y10

"...join some activity where you see the same people at least once a week"

This is really excellent advice. Another way of adding a lot of happiness to your life, that works for a lot of people is to change the ratio of fats and carbs in your diet-- keep the total number of calories the same, just up the amount of fats, a lot, and decrease the amount of carbs, a lot. Maybe up the amount of protein some too, cutting back on the carbs for that too. There's a lot of web sites all over for keto diets, low carb diets, that will give you pointers. If you're like me, after a few days your mood will brighten a lot, and you'll start experiencing random surges of sheer happiness besides. Very possibly lose weight too. But, $$$ compared to regular diet, so, pros and cons.

dlr5y10

MY objection would have been, 'But Martin Luther King was a communist!'


dlr6y10

2. The lottery is a waste of hope. [I'd say that statement reduces to: the odds of winning the lottery are lower than the odds of the average person getting millions dollars by some (any) other process. Is there any other concrete action that the average human can perform; ie, any other concrete scenario that the average human can focus on, and feel hope about actually occurring, that is more likely than winning the lottery after buying a lottery ticket? Maybe starting their own company? The odds of getting rich doing that are small too, though no doubt much larger than the odds of getting rich winning the lottery. But the effort required is much larger too.

But the statement codes for 'hope' not increasing actual average wealth.


So, I'd have to say the average lottery ticket buyer is perhaps not irrational if he is buying hope. (ie, if what he wants to buy is hope, something to get him through the depression of knowing he's never going to be able to quit his shit job, or live in a great house, or do all the fun stuff that rich people do, or have lots of girls chasing him cause he's rich...
On that basis, I'd say the statement is demonstrably untrue... hope is a valuable commodity, since it makes you feel good, even if it doesn't pan out, and thus, perhaps very much worth buying.

The statement says that the lottery is a waste of hope. I say that hope is very often not a waste even if what you are hoping for never pans out. ]

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