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Cake day: November 19th, 2023

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  • There are details missing in this question that matter tremendously. Squirrels are faster and more agile than us. If they are well coordinated, and behave optimally to win (without concern to their individual survival, only the group’s success), I think it would take only a small number of squirrels to brutally murder most people, something like 5. I think their best strategy would be to go for the eyes first, then inflict bleeding injuries and escape again before the person can react. Without tools, and without backup, this approach wouldn’t take long to wear down most people.

    If the squirrels don’t care about their own survival, but make straightforward attacks, I’d think closer to 10-20. The person’s injuries will still compound quickly, but once thet have a grip of a squirrel, it wouldn’t be especially hard to lethally injure.

    If the squirrels still behave like squirrels, and are instead attacking because (for example), they are starving, then the number probably doesn’t matter much, as they’re more likely to go after each other, and the person would have the opportunity to plan and ambush small groups at a time.





  • “Bigger” is easy, because there are obvious ways to measure the size of a government, like the revenue the government gets, the amount of government spending, the number of people working directly for the government, the number of people currently imprisoned, or who have been imprisoned at some time in their life. There’s also slightly more abstract things like the amount of time people spending doing paperwork for the purposes of the government, and the total volume (pages might be a reasonable measure) of government laws, and regulations.

    As for controlling more of our lives, I think it’s significant that many of the most influential regulations are local. Cities design with building codes with the idea of servicing car traffic, emergency vehicles, and parking needs. This prioritizes cars over other forms of transit by government mandate, and puts a pretty steep upper limit on how walking friendly (or bicycle, or mass transit) city areas are allowed to be. In most places, you need exceptions to the rules to have areas without roads running everywhere.

    A similar thing happens in food regulations. Many places around the world have small food vendors that sell a single (or a few) food items from a stall on the street side. The US has strict food regulations that require sinks, refrigeration, and other items that don’t fit in that kind of environment. Most US cities also control the number of street side vendors that are allowed to exist. If you watch “street food” videos, that doesn’t exist in the US because of our regulations.

    Regulations add to the cost and complexity of housing. My great grandfather built a house. I read the requirements to do that now, and gave up. There are hundreds of pages of regulations and requirements, inspection schedules, and licensing requirements that must be followed. Some of those regulations aren’t even free to access.

    On the other hand, these requirements placed uniformly on many industries have some benefits. When you buy a house, you can expect it to be suitable in a huge number of circumstances. Self built, self designed houses sometimes have major design flaws, and sometimes collapse or burn down or flood for surprising reasons that could have been foreseen by experts.

    It’s very likely that more things we do are regulated, and those regulated activities are more tightly controlled than they were in the past. A part of that is that politicians are systemically more willing to make additional regulations than they are to remove existing regulations, even if some of those regulations are known not to work.




  • I’d describe it as sort of 3 layers. The first is practical/everyday things, which are mostly much nicer than being alone, but require attentiveness and communication (learn what your SO doesn’t like doing, and do it. Learn what things are work together projects, and what things are stay out of my way type things for each of you, probably other aspects too) - but once you know how to take care of each other, almost everything is less work, takes less time, and costs less money. Cooking, laundry, cleaning, gardening, repairing things, painting the house are all improved. Decorating and having guests over are harder, at least for me. You have to not fall into the trap of taking the things they do for granted, even when those things are routine.

    The second layer I’d describe is lust/romance, which is sort of easier, except that you must avoid letting things coast too long. You have to dedicate time and effort to discovering new things about each other, and new things you enjoy together. You should still be dating, no matter how long it’s been, and ideally you should both be planning things most of the time. In my relationship, this is usually 1-2 things per month, each.

    The final layer is the emotional/support layer. Almost any time, my wife can seek comfort and support from me in a variety of ways for all kinds of things, and I get the same from her. All the big problems in life are easier when you can share them, so here the benefits are huge. This is the only thing I got basically none of from having roommates or a best friend, or dating. For my situation, there’s basically no downside to this.






  • That estimate is based on assuming that the ratio of matter to light output is the same between galaxies 10 billion years apart in age. The high light output of these young galaxies could also be supermassive stars that burn out very quickly, larger stars typically forming faster than smaller stars, or many other things.

    Blindly assuming a linear relationship between two things, then extrapolating is how you get the Windows loading bar circa 2000.

    Separately, but just as big a potential issue, the data itself may be incorrect. Previous galaxies measured at extreme redshift values were remeasured, and found to have less extreme values. This can be as simple as there aren’t that many photons from these galaxies reaching us, so a short measurement period might not be enough to get an accurate picture.