Another trail that is in the making. [image: Great-American-Rail-Trail-interative-map-2023-Image-courtesy-RTC.jpeg] From Wash DC to Wash state. 3700 miles. The preferred route of the Great American Rail-Trail connects 150+ existing rail-trails, greenways and other multiuse paths spanning more than 3,700 miles. These trails are hosting the Great American through their communities, making possible this grand vision of a nation connected by trails. And with more than 55% of the route already on the ground, now is the time to experience the Great American Rail-Trail! Probably be another 10 years or so till it is finished.

He's come a long way from stealing sirloin at the supermarket. Purloining amirite.

@Horace said in Hay Horace: I continue to believe Hanson has a good chance of being remembered by history as an important thinker. Hanson definitely thinks his output warrants that. He coincidentally touches on this in today's email to his list. It is relatively easy to identify a list of things that we want, in the sense of preferring a life with more of them to less of them. For example, we want time, income, health, insight, happiness, meaning, power, respect, connection, and accomplishment, both for ourselves and for our associates. But these things tend to be correlated with and to cause each other. So which of these things is the what we REALLY want? It seems that evolution, via our DNA and cultural heritage, mostly just gave us many inclinations to grab more of these in many diverse situations, with only limited guidance on what do when they conflict. So to decide which are our deeper desires, we must think hard about how we’d make such choices, and must consider many such choices to get very far. One of the key habits that evolution bequeathed us is to lean into the choices that seem to go well for us. So by the time a person is my age (65), they’ve collected pretty consistent and specialized habits of activity. From which they can more easily infer what they want. For a long time my main activity has been to try to gain and explain insight into important neglected questions. Yes, I also like to eat, sleep, socialize, watch movies, etc. but I have to do at least some of that, and so that seems at best a minor contribution to “what I want”. So then the key question becomes: WHY do I want such insight? I could try to claim that I had the most socially approved possible motive for this, namely to altruistically benefit people today and their future descendants via my insights. But while altruistic benefit does add to my motives, it isn’t plausibly my main motive. I’m nearly as motivated to gain insight on topics that offer far less altruistic gains. I feel I’d be substantially less motivated if I thought no one would ever remember or appreciate my insights. Those who applaud me don’t have to exist today, but I want them to eventually exist. But I also feel I wouldn’t be very motivated to be appreciated for insights that I myself didn’t much respect. So it seems I want the PACKAGE of applause for insights that I think deserve such applause. I’ll thus summarize what I want as “glorious insight”. I want to find and spread insights that I see as objectively worthy of admiration and praise, and I also want that admiration and praise to actually happen, at least someday. Insights are more glorious when they are elegant, deep, make a bigger difference to lives and other insights, and were hard to gain and explain. And the level of admiration of a particular person who contributed to an insight should be adjusted for their resources and constraints; it is more impressive to do something hard, with fewer resources, and when many forces opposed your efforts. So, what do you want?

Testing the crap out of something is how I grew up. It seems to have fallen by the wayside. I’m running extracts from supposedly brilliant extract coders who don’t even check their own work. I can look at the data and tell it is wrong. We’ve gone through that four times now. It’s very annoying.

@Mik Interesting stuff

@jon-nyc said in SF 2589: Neither here nor there, but I wonder why ‘SF’. In most jurisdictions it would be ‘SB’ for senate bill. When I saw this , at first I thought Jolly was referring to a federal form "standard form". We have tons of them.

@Horace said in If we can't deport them...: Carne asada hot dish. Sounds good akshully.

@Axtremus said in Unilever removes CEO: I would fire Ben and Jerry's CEO It breaks my heart to hear you say that. Trump has claimed another soul. Maybe my soul will be the last survivor. #AOC2028 #BrokenHeartsReforged #EvilIsBad #GoodIsGood #MoralityAboveAll #TrumpStinks

Bankruptcy?

Your battery is low

Great song, great band.

@Wim said in Happy International Day of Happiness: @Doctor-Phibes One foor in the grave? Indeed. Mr. Meldrew is Britain's happiness representative.

It is fun reading some of the accounts of people who "play" with scammers. I used to read the stories on a website called 419eater which was scammer payback. On story was so funny - about a guy that had a scammer traveling across Africa on the promise of some payoff which never existed. LOL

With Everest climbing season opening again imminently, the idea of using drones on the world's tallest mountain to ease the load on sherpas has been making waves Officials in Nepal are gearing up to resume testing drones from next month with the view to use them to carry equipment up the mountain in the future. Trials began in 2024 when Chinese drone manufacturer DJI teamed up with Nepalese drone service company Airlift and mountain guide Mingma Gyalje Sherpa. They completed the first successful drone delivery trials, carrying 33lb (15kg) payloads from Base Camp to Camp 1. and While drones could take away risk and enhance safety for sherpas, who may need to complete fewer trips and could use geolocation capabilities to pinpoint routes in changing landscapes, they come at a price. One DJI drone can cost more than $70,000.

https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-smugglers-mexico-us-migrants-immigrants-52ba1b44126f3c2b7887b808307ffa96 At a time when legal pathways to the U.S. have been slashed and criminal groups are raking in money from migrant smuggling, social media apps like TikTok have become an essential tool for smugglers and migrants alike. The videos — taken to cartoonish extremes — offer a rare look inside a long elusive industry and the narratives used by trafficking networks to fuel migration north. and Narratives shift based on the political environment and immigration policies in the U.S. During the Biden administration, posts would advertise getting migrants access to asylum applications through the administration’s CBP One app, which Trump ended. Amid Trump’s crackdown, posts have shifted to dispelling fears that migrants will be captured, promising American authorities have been paid off. Smugglers openly taunt U.S. authorities: one shows himself smoking what appears to be marijuana right in front of the border wall; another even takes a jab at Trump, referring to the president as a “high-strung gringo.” Comments are dotted with emojis of flags and baby chickens, a symbol meaning migrant among smugglers, and other users asking for prices and more information. and One smuggler, who asked to only be identified by his TikTok name “The Corporation” because of fear of authorities tracking him down, said that other accounts would steal his migrant smuggling network’s videos of customers saying to camera they arrived safely in the U.S. “And there’s not much we can do legally. I mean, it’s not like we can report them,” he said with a laugh.