Just for interest, this is the latest model chatgpt 4o, seems to have focussed more on the emotions and the simplicity.

"Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything" by BJ Fogg is a practical guide that explains how to make lasting changes in behavior by starting small. The core idea is that by focusing on tiny, manageable habits, individuals can create significant and sustainable changes in their lives.

Key Concepts:

1. Behavior Design Framework: Fogg introduces the Behavior Model, which asserts that behavior is a result of motivation, ability, and prompts converging at the same moment. For a behavior to occur, there must be sufficient motivation, the ability to perform the behavior, and a prompt to trigger it.

2. Start Small: To create lasting habits, start with tiny behaviors that are easy to do, such as flossing one tooth or doing two push-ups. This minimizes resistance and makes it easier to maintain consistency.

3. Anchor New Habits: Attach new habits to existing routines. For instance, after brushing your teeth (an existing habit), perform a tiny habit like flossing one tooth. This linkage helps in remembering and performing the new habit.

4. Celebrate Successes: Immediately celebrate after completing a tiny habit, no matter how small it is. This positive reinforcement helps wire the new behavior into your brain, making it more likely to stick.

5. Iterate and Expand: Once the tiny habit is established, gradually increase its complexity or add new tiny habits. This approach allows for scaling up behavior change in a manageable way.

6. Focus on Positive Emotions: Fogg emphasizes the importance of feeling good during and after performing the habit. Positive emotions reinforce the habit, making it more likely to become automatic over time.

Practical Applications:

• Habit Stacking: Create chains of tiny habits that build on each other throughout the day.
• Behavior Swapping: Replace unwanted behaviors with positive tiny habits.
• Tiny Habit Recipes: Develop specific, actionable plans for incorporating tiny habits into daily life.

By following these principles, Fogg argues that individuals can create powerful, lasting changes in their behavior without relying on sheer willpower or motivation alone.

It sounds like you're taking a skeptical stance towards the conventional interpretation of dinosaur fossils without proposing an alternative hypothesis for their origins. This approach can be useful for critically examining evidence but might limit understanding if alternative explanations aren't explored. In scientific discourse, it's typically valuable not only to critique existing theories but also to propose viable alternatives that can be tested and evaluated against the evidence. If the goal is to challenge established views like the existence of dinosaurs, developing a coherent alternative theory on the origin of fossils could strengthen your argument and provide a new perspective for consideration.

The existence of dinosaurs is well-established through a variety of scientific evidence. Here are some of the key proofs:

1. Fossil Evidence

• Bone Fossils: The most compelling evidence for the existence of dinosaurs comes from fossils. These are preserved remains found in sedimentary rocks that have formed from sediments laid down in ancient rivers, lakes, and seas. Dinosaur bones show distinct features, such as air-filled cavities that indicate they were adapted to support massive bodies while being lightweight, similar to modern birds.
• Tracks and Footprints: Fossilized footprints and tracks give clues about the behavior, movement, and size of these creatures. Sites like the Paluxy River trackways in Texas and others around the world show clear, sequential dinosaur footprints.
• Egg Fossils: Fossilized eggs have been found in many locations around the world, providing direct evidence of reproduction in dinosaurs. Some nests even contain embryos, which help scientists understand growth and development in these creatures.

2. Geological Distribution

• Global Spread: Dinosaur fossils have been found on every continent on Earth, including Antarctica. This widespread geographic distribution is consistent with the known plate tectonics and continental drift over geological time scales, supporting the timeline in which dinosaurs are said to have existed.

3. Radiometric Dating

• Age Determination: Radiometric dating methods allow scientists to determine the age of rock layers where dinosaur fossils are found. These methods typically use the decay of naturally occurring isotopes, such as uranium-lead or potassium-argon dating, to establish the age of rocks as ranging from about 66 to over 200 million years old—corresponding to the Mesozoic Era, the time period during which dinosaurs thrived.

4. Comparative Anatomy and Phylogeny

• Anatomical Similarities: The study of dinosaur fossils allows scientists to reconstruct their skeletons and infer muscle attachments and body shapes. Comparisons with modern animals can help interpret their posture, diet, and lifestyle.
• Evolutionary Relationships: Dinosaurs share many features with other groups of vertebrates, especially birds. In fact, modern birds are considered the direct descendants of theropod dinosaurs, a relationship supported by numerous anatomical and genetic data.

5. Soft Tissue and Molecular Evidence

• In some rare cases, soft tissues have been preserved in dinosaur fossils. For example, flexible blood vessels and cells have been reported in Tyrannosaurus rex fossils. While controversial and rare, such findings can provide insights into the biology of these ancient creatures.

6. Paleoenvironmental Reconstructions

• Contextual Clues: Fossilized plants, pollens, and associated animal fossils found alongside dinosaur remains help reconstruct the environments they lived in, further validating their existence and providing context about the ecosystem dynamics of the past.

Collectively, these evidences from paleontology, geology, and biology robustly demonstrate that dinosaurs existed as real, living organisms on Earth millions of years ago. Their study continues to provide valuable insights into the history of life on our planet.

My understanding with phones is that you phone your own provider, who then looks up the provider of the number you're calling based on country code, provider or area code prefixes. Providers will "peer" with each other to route calls over the most cost efficient path. So the other sides provider is responsible for getting it to the right destination phone within thier own customer network. Theres no authentication from the sending party on a protocol level, this is why scammers can spoof as any phone number.

I believe that IP routing does something similar, the IP data is handed over to possibly multiple providers until it reaches its destination provider. The blocks of ip addresses are published as linked to an Autonomous System and each autonomous system has an owner/provider. The source is not authenticated at a protocol level which is why we need client and server certificates.

In DNS you go to the root TLD servers and ask what IP the .com resolver is. The .com resolver has a list of mappings of authoritative name servers to domains. So example.com may have an authoritative NS of 1.2.3.4 who you can go to and ask what IP test.example.com is hosted on. The authoritative name server is the source of truth for that domain and other servers cache it to prevent overloading and increase speed. You may check with the authoritative NS if you want, but it may be slower to respond than your local NS. Again DNS is not authenticated at the protocol level so we need server certificates to prove that the device behind the IP serving you is allowed to serve you test.example.com.

You're probably right about being worse off overall, just so much unnecessary complexity. We do have council tax here, but that depends on how big a house you live in and how expensive the area is to maintain for the council. And its a fixed rate per household, owed monthly while you're at the same address. But I know the councils get most of thier funding from the state budget and other income streams like selling land. Theres also national insurance too which I guess is like social security. https://www.gov.uk/national-insurance

I have no idea ehich one is better, or costs more, but the UK does seem to offer more in return. Admittedly I only see the bad news stories about the US so have no idea what its like "on the ground". I've been to Florida, New York and Vermont, so I see how states are very different places with different needs, understandible why theres not a lot of state unity on issues.

The UK also has much higher income taxes. Comparing US and UK income taxes:

• in the US, for someone earning 578,126+ USD (£457,000) it's 37%
• in the UK, for earnings over £50,000 (~65,000 USD) its 40% , equivalent US earners only pay 22%
  • and when over £125,000 (~157,000 USD) this increases to 45% in the UK

US income tax is ferarally controlled. I don't have exact numbers but increases in income tax for the highest earners should be able to fund a public healthcare system, at least for the lowest earners in the US.

https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/united-states/individual/taxes-on-personal-income https://www.gov.uk/income-tax-rates

Edit: There are also state income taxes, which vary for some reason, I'm sure theres also county and city based taxes as well, processing them must be a nightmare. Is the US just 52 countries in a trench coat?

In the UK you can invest £20,000 (25,000 USD) per year into a fully tax free ISA savings account. You can spend it on anything you chose at any time, and you will never need to spend any of it on healthcare against your will. https://www.gov.uk/individual-savings-accounts/how-isas-work

Dental care is free in the UK for under 18s, people who are pregnant or given birth in the last 12 months, or people on low income. https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/dentists/who-is-entitled-to-free-nhs-dental-treatment-in-england/

Also if you were to unfortunately become disabled and are unable to work, you will be supported fully for the rest of your life. These benefits are not based on previous taxes paid like in the US. https://www.gov.uk/financial-help-disabled https://www.gov.uk/pip/how-much-youll-get

This is wild, in the UK, if you were in an accident and needed years of surgeries, it will always be free. The cost of parking to visit the hospital will be the most expensive thing anyone ever gets billed for, and that will be around 10 dollars a day. We do pay income tax, but lower income earners pay less or none. Theres also sales taxes, and things like sugar, alcohol and nicotine are taxed quite highly as they can contribute to health problems. But it's all well worth it to never worry about medical costs. https://www.gov.uk/income-tax-rates https://www.gov.uk/government/news/sugar-tax-revenue-helps-tackle-childhood-obesity https://www.gov.uk/tax-on-shopping/alcohol-tobacco

That would be fine, but a lot of these features are added in an update, with complicated setups or mods to turn them off. Start bar local app search now gets sent to bing search by default, thats almost never what people want. Most people wont know how to disable it or care. But I guess thats fine as long as Microsoft gets to increase its bing usage stats and collect more user data.

To be clear, my problem is with these features getting pushed as default enabled.

AI assistants usually need to upload the data to process it. So it's potential enshitification via adding data upload/harvesting features to a trusted offline text editor. Usually companies have ways to generate revenue streams based on the data from these "free and useful features". Adverts based on what text files you open might be the long term end goal.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3zbaj/incoherent-conspiracy-suggests-ghislaine-maxwell-is-a-powerful-redditor

Can you middle click?