Rationality
“A ball and a bat together cost $1.10. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?” A fascinating article about why everyone gets this question wrong.
To learn a skill, read one book that explains the what of the skill, one that explains the why, and one that explains the how. I think this article could have used more examples of reference books, but I really enjoyed the author saying what you should look for in the negative reviews.
Effective Altruism
A guide to careers that don’t require a college degree for effective altruists.
Twelve pieces of general consensus about global poverty.
Many people claim that women reinvest ninety percent of their income into their family. However, further research suggests that this statistic doesn’t come from anywhere.
Social Justice
Content warning for drugs, suicide, abortion, miscarriage, pregnancy, corpse desecration, and probably a dozen other things I’m forgetting: how the concept of fetal personhood winds up trading off against women’s rights. Three things that hit home particularly hard for me: if you attempt suicide while pregnant you can be charged with attempted murder; if you die while pregnant you can be kept on life support against your previously stated wishes in order to keep the fetus alive; many doctors and CPS workers disapprove of pregnant people taking Suboxone, so pregnant people go off it and wind up relapsing and sometimes overdosing.
Gay escorts offer a service helping men get used to having sex without drugs. This is the sort of thing that warms my heart.
Cop apologizes for arresting people for trading in drugs. This is the sort of story that always warms my heart.
Just Plain Neat
A cable tech talks about the weird people she saw on the job, feat. Dick Cheney.
Meet the woman who invented cosplay.
Fake nude of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez debunked by foot fetishists. “”I’ve sucked enough toes in my life to recognize when something doesn’t look right… Because we can’t dorsi- or plantarflex our 2nd-5th toes independently I knew it wasn’t a matter of the toe being bent. I thought that maybe she has some form of brachydactyly but her Wikifeet page has clear evidence to the contrary.”
Poker player locks himself in solitary confinement for 20 days for $62,400.
Secret music composed by medieval nuns.
Put MSG In Everything You Cowards. Recommending partially for the cooking advice and partially for the delightfully belligerant tone.
Thing of Things 
MSG article: 6/10 not belligerent enough. Apology update saying “you know your own body”? Psssshhh. Tell them to do a blind test.
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MSG is disliked because of racism:
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So what kind of discrimination is to blame for imaginary gluten allergies?
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Many people claim that women reinvest ninety percent of their income into their family. However, further research suggests that this statistic doesn’t come from anywhere.
The link here links to the “Why I hated being a cop” story instead.
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Does one conjoined twin have the right to smoke crack when the other twin doesn’t want to?
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This doesn’t seem like too much of a contradiction.
you have very little in the way of rights over your own corpse. If you’re murdered it doesn’t matter if you wrote that you wanted “no autopsy” in your will, they’re gonna do an autopsy.
If there’s a plague that can spread from dead bodies with a big body count it doesn’t matter if you wrote exact instructions for how your body is to be handled and where it’s to be burried. They will be ignored and your body thrown into a pile and burned to protect the living.
Once dead you have no particular right to bodily autonomy because you have ceased to exist as a person.
In most countries the state leaves the handling of corpses to the next of kin as, pragmatically speaking, the living benefit most from being able to do whatever rituals they want to do to say goodbye but it’s mostly just a nicety.
As such, if you value a foetus at even 1/1000th the value of a normal human life and your corpse makes for a convenient life support machine then there’s no particular contradiction or clash of rights.
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Yeah, I’m going to echo Murphy’s point here. Warning in advance: this is not going to be tactful or sensitive.
If we’re pearl-clutching over “leave us not entertain the notion that personhood is an innate quality of humanity, heaven forfend, lest we be disturbed out of what is convenient” then I’m going to say if someone on life support can be considered truly, as well as legally, dead then they don’t have personhood themselves anymore, their remains are just a lump of meat and we’re not bound by anything save sentiment, custom and practice codified into law from doing what the hell we like with the body.
Oh noes the dead body is going to be turned into an incubator for a parasite foetus? Well the dead body is going to be buried and turned into worm food, or cremated and turned into ash, if we immediately whip them off life support so what’s the problem here? You don’t want X to happen your dead body? You only have rights as long as you’re a person, once you’re no longer a person (or never achieved the status of being a person in the first place) then surprise, surprise, no rights: your dead body and that foetus both lack personhood and we, real life breathing actual persons, have superior rights there (that’s the whole damn argument over abortion: the mother is a Real Person, the foetus is only a Potential Person, Real Person trumps Potential and has Real Rights and can decide to kill the Potential if they want).
Well, living survivors are now Real Persons, brain-dead person on life support is Not Even Potential Person anymore, survivors can decide “yeah turn that meat lump into an incubator” because Real Person Rights include the right to decide what happens Potential or Former Person! The pro-choice side has pushed this into law, so they can eat the consequences of that fight.
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A person’s body can be considered their property, and people do have a say over what happens to their property even after they die. If someone wants to leave their fortune to their child or to a charity of their choice, we’d consider that an important preference that should be respected even after the individual has ceased to exist. Legally, “person who used to exist and now doesn’t” is different than “person who never existed in the first place.”
Whether a brain-dead body should be kept physically alive in order to keep the fetus alive is a complex question that probably depends a lot on individual circumstances. If a person expressly says they don’t want that then I think that preference should be respected, but most people never express a preference one way or the other, so I imagine in that situation it should be handled in the same way we’d address handling someone’s remains when the individual had no stated preference. Which I imagine would involve asking their spouse or closest family member or whatever.
I don’t actually know what the law currently says about it.
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@Hyzenthlay.
In some countries your corpse might be considered part of your own estate if there’s no pressing public interest requiring something else be done with your corpse. I mentioned a couple of examples that have come up historically in law.
Though some countries don’t consider human flesh something that can be owned, it is outside the realm of things that can be considered property, if your leg is amputated during a medical procedure then you have no special rights over it even if it’s your former flesh. Often corpses have a similar status in that they have no owner, only people who have it in their custody.
But even if it’s considered part of your own property: your last will and testament is little more than legal suggestion. If your heirs mutually agree they can ignore the section in your will that says “not one cent should go to my daughter, the hussy”, they can ignore your wishes about the fate of your property as long as they agree.
If you have a living minor child who isn’t provided for it may not even matter what your chosen heirs think, courts can unilaterally decide that any parts of your estate they consider necessary be diverted to the care of that minor and the wishes of your other heirs can be ignored.
When there’s a clash between the rights of foetus and living mother there’s a real philosophical and ethical clash. When that happens I fall far on the side of the mother.
When there’s a clash between foetus and the suggestions about the uses of a corpse, there’s little or no significant philosophical and ethical clash.
when you are dead your wishes in regards to anything and everything you own, including your corpse are little more than polite suggestions.
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> Buying MSG is not as easy as buying salt—look for a bottle of Accent in the store or a bag of Ajinomoto online—but it’s just about as easy to use.
TIL: apparently gringos can’t just buy ajinomoto like salt at any normal grocery store.
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About global poverty:
https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$state$time$value=2018;;&chart-type=mountain
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