It’s often not so simple as a person making a choice and knowing the outcome. There are often many tragic factors that contribute to the situation that resulted in the overdose. One common situation is someone is injured and prescribed opioids by their doctor, perhaps having been influenced by drug companies like Purdue pharma. As they take it they become addicted, eventually the doctor cuts them off and they go to other doctors, then they may find it easier to buy from a dealer, then they may find it more affordable to buy fentanyl, and then maybe they take too much or get a bad batch and od.

They didn’t start taking drugs knowing it was going to be a bad path, they started because their doctor prescribed it and by the time they figured out they were addicted they were no longer in control and may not have had the resources to get out. It’s often not just a question of willpower but one of support and resources to help you up.

There are many other scenarios, but it’s rarely a simple result of a few conscious choices and almost always a result of people suffering in bad situations and it’s ok to feel compassion and empathy even if they weren’t completely innocent in it all.

I wonder if an argument could be made that birthdate is a component of your genetic information including family medical history? It is also potentially age discrimination?

Yeah I’ll admit I had to read that sentence a couple times before it got through to me that “barred” meant she was admitted to the bar.

Also TIL elide = to strike out, abridge https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/elide

Funny I never had much Star Trek gaming experience but have recently gotten into gaming more and been a lifelong Trek fan (maybe not an official Trekkie tho). this game looks pretty interesting and I’m now just learning about it since I also don’t pay attention to the epic store!

I was gonna say this is a sad day, but that’s just nostalgia for a time that’s passed. I grew up reading and loving Popular Science, my dad always has a subscription and I would read it cover to cover usually the day it came in the mail. I let my own print subscription lapse years ago, tried a few different versions of digital magazines (anyone remember zinio?), but today it’s just websites like arstechnica and the verge that have become the focus.

I still value the articles I come across online but the print edition is just a warm memory at this point to me so I can’t expect them to keep a business going on that.

Observing and learning from the natural world is in no way dumb, it is extreme hubris to think we humans are so smart that we don’t have to listen to nature. Or that society gets to be somehow outside of nature. It is that kind of logic that got us global warming, obesity & diabetes epidemic, big pharma, and loss of traditional knowledge and wisdom. If I see a momma holding her cub by the nape of the neck my first thought isn’t going to be that I know better how to care for her young.

I work in cloud computing and it’s amazing to me how magical people like you think it is. Yes Google owns YouTube, but could still run out of resources if Google chooses, they are still at the mercy of their provider.

Services may be setup to dynamically grow but they are still consuming finite physical resources and would run out if the provider doesn’t expand those resources.

The cloud most certainly can lose data due to hard drive failure and other hardware issues; the services are designed to make that very unlikely, but cloud services also have disaster recovery options you must implement if you want to be truly isolated from a given hardware footprint.

Today I Learned

100% makes any day better!

This is fantastic, while having them obviously in drag is delicious, it would be even more stark if some of them present as traditional male too and really bring the point home.

God bless - nothing wrong with having the right tool for the job and not being frivolous. I too have an overly large truck but it’s a 3/4 ton (2500 HD) and almost 15 years old. I don’t drive it more than necessary but I own 20 acres and often enough I need to tow, haul or pull something that I couldn’t do without it. I’m going to keep this thing on the road until it dies or there’s an economically viable green alternative. But it’s crazy to think of the resources that go into a new one and I couldn’t justify it for a few mpg better, so I’m very happy to have a trustworthy mechanic 😁

And, while I really like the Rivian and the F150 lightening, they would be glorified very expensive toys and I’d still need to keep my big truck for the hard jobs, so they’ll wait till I win the lottery ¯(ツ)/¯

Thanks for your comment, certainly there are people like yourself who mean those words earnestly to convey a delicate point. I also imagine that comes out in your demeanor and character when you are saying that to someone.

Unfortunately, in my experience, many people say it without any sense of empathy or compassion at all despite the literal meaning. 😕

While I’m definitely one to get mildly irritated at the phrasing (and am even more irritated by “fur babies” lol), I’m really bothered by people excusing their own rudeness - right up there with saying “no offense” right before being deliberately offensive. Like if you don’t want to yuck my yum or cause offense then why are you about to do it anyway?

I like Gboard, Swiftkey was my favorite for a long time before Gboard seemed to outpace it. Clipboard functionally, both history and images, swipe to delete, text input, it’s just a tight experience most of the time.

Those are some fine words and definitely help motivate me to contribute more. No way I was touching threads before though, so not much convincing needed!

This looks fantastic, will give it a try, thanks!

Good bot

Really interesting to know that the current regional flavors of a language are all separately trained. This new model layering the accent on top is intriguing. I wonder how word choice factors in, pronunciation is one clear point but things like “wee” vs “little”, “wicked” vs “hella” vs “very”, “pram” vs “stroller” I’m sure is an interesting challenge.

Well, that is the point of malicious compliance isn’t it? So long as op’s giving them what they asked for, right?