It depends on what you want to do with your life and career. You haven't said what your interests are or what your Master's is going to be in. If you want to be a software engineer then starting career early is better. If you want to go into research then going to university is better. If your Masters is going to be in liberal arts then your prospects of a lucrative job out of Cambridge will be less than having gained two years of professional experience. Since I don't know the specifics, I'll give general advise - decide what's important to you long term and choose the option that aligns with it.
At this point, I buy all insurance (home, auto, health etc.) with highest deductible and lowest premium knowing that there is a high probability that insurance will not pay (or pay only partially). I mainly buy insurance to avoid catastrophic losses and hope that, if such an event were to happen, they would cover the loss at least partially. For smaller losses I am willing to absorb the loss and save money on premium every year. The money saved on premium can be used (to some extent) to cover the loss of the denied claim. Also, in the event of a loss, having high deductible discourages me from filing claim which keeps premium low for subsequent years.
When me and my wife were purchasing our first home, we had everyone from mortgage people to realtors to our own friends and family that owned homes tell us to never use our home insurance unless it was something truly catastrophic.
Currently our home insurance deductible is $10k. The logic is that anything less than that we can pay ourselves. Home insurance is only there to cover either catastrophic damage or really, a total loss.
What do you consider catastrophic loss? I’ve found in home insurance the delta on lower deductibles isn’t that meaningful and when something happens, the pay out is almost always worth it. Something like water damage from a burst pipe can be 20-50k very quickly, and having to pay a 10k deductible is quite a big hit in addition to the remediation needed.
By catastrophic loss I mean an event that has the potential of causing bankruptcy (such as house burned to the ground). Home insurance rates vary a lot depending on where you live so our math is likely very different and we both could be right. While a big expense in one shot definitely pinches more, paying higher premiums every year, the annual premium hikes, in addition to raised premium for subsequent years due to filing a claim can also add up to a lot surreptitiously.
Total loss being the bar seems crazy to me. A 20-50k unexpected expense for almost everyone would essentially result in bankruptcy or at minimum insolvency and long term debt.
That means you would need to hold enough money in short term accessible money (HYSA, etc) to self insure in that scenario, which is unachievable for most people.
Insurance should set a maximum cap to your pain no matter the circumstances… and I think the pain being >50k is quite unreasonable unless we’re talking about property that is worth in the millions.
Your point is perfectly valid. There is no single right answer. It just depends on what risk level one is comfortable with and that varies from person to person.
I’d agree there’s no single right answer, but I think generally a risk profile for an insurance product that is so outsized against you seems like a poor decision.
This isn’t like putting all your money in meme stocks or something, this is more akin to selling risky stock options. The downside potential is massive and essentially uncapped, whereas the upside potential is meager.
Downside is not "essentially uncapped". That would be the case if I did not have insurance. I do have insurance - one with high deductible with a fixed maximum loss that I am willing to accept should such an event happen.
For things you can cover, external insurance will be more expensive than self-insurance because you aren't paying for random CEOs. (Unless you've captured some and are tending to them)
Stark reminder of how precious and meaningful a life can be - of any creature, no matter how small. We should be nice to all creatures not just humans.
There’s no point to be sad: even trees get remembered and honoured. Human’s humanity have no such "compassion contingent”: loving a new child doesn’t take the love out of the precedents.
Some antispeciesist (and others) argue that giving more compassion to animals is a step to develop one’s compassion to others being, hence being nicer to others humans. On the opposite: accepting an horrendous practices toward non-humans animals makes ones more prone to accept horrendous practice toward humans.
I agree. However, you get insane push back the second you start to mention veganism. And yes, that is a luxury and there large parts of the world where that's not an option, but if you're reading this comment you probably could survive without eating meat.
Yep. Another great example of this is any discussion where datacenter resource usage gets brought up. Mention how much water someone's ChatGPT queries takes and people will generally agree it's a problem. Mention how much water their burger takes and at best you'll get people hemming and hawing about protein or indigenous cultures or their cousin's friend who went vegan and got really sick.
Also, I personally think framing it as a binary or quasi religious decision is counterproductive.
I was vegetarian for some years, before ultimately deciding I just run better on an omnivore diet. But for environmental and ethical reasons I decided to make meat more of a side dish vs the center of the meal, and to mostly eat chicken vs more high environmental impact animal proteins like beef.
I think a lot of people that would never go full vegan can do well on this sort of less meat middle road.
Hot take: people get angry about veganism because they suspect, deep down, that vegans are right and feel guilty about eating meat. (Not taking the moral high ground here - I have put approximately zero effort into reducing meat intake at all.)
Vegas are objectively right. I eat mostly vegan but still eat other stuff from time to time. I look at those times as me being selfish. I am an imperfect person and the vegans are right.
So long as they're humanely harvested? Some argue that cows are mistreated when kept producing milk as much as they are, but I haven't looked into it because I'm selfish too.
Cows are mammals. They produce milk for their young for a period after giving birth then stop, just like a human woman. Which means that for us to take their milk we have to keep them constantly pregnant.
Ask a woman (or think about it if you are one) how they would like being forcefully impregnated then having their tits constantly milked, year after year. As a bonus, the born kids are separated into girls to be milked in the same cycle and boys to be killed and eaten.
Agree if the animals are treated well; but I have a very high bar for that. I would also accept eating animals which died of old age if it could be done safely. It's easier to just round this to "vegan."
The real problem with veganism is that you are a social outcast around normies. That was the biggest problem that I had. Also, veganism is essentially a "fundamentalist" way of thinking -- all or nothing. Now, I advocate for people to experiment with eating less meat and animal products, not zero. Even if people cut the amount of meat they ate by 20%, it would have a huge environmental impact. Also, the type of meat you eat also has a large environmental impact: Consider beef vs chicken.
Agree. Everything else is easy: taste, nutrition, cheap shopping... but if you decide to exclude animal products, prepare to face ostracism and you'll need to learn to cope with that. A simple and effective way is to ignore the blames and regards, let them flow to the ground without catching them.
Some people will get angry at you because you tried to do something good to much:
- not trying: that's ok, everybody is free to keep his life as-is
- trying 0-90%: that's ok, everybody is free to try doing some good
- trying 90-100%: you're a fundamentalist, you can't change the world
My advice: don't argue:
- "that's extremist" / "that's not natural" / [...] => That's an opinion, you won't change it. Smile and route to another subject.
- "why are you [an extremist/unnatural/priest/...]?" => Question. Don't try to rant the full manifesto, you won't change their opinion neither. But if you feel confortable you may clarify a few inches of incomprehension :
- Have you heard of vegansociety's definition[0]? I don't consider myself as an extremist.
- I find Tofu very tasty!
- I won't try to change your habits, just doing thinks the way I like them better.
Golden rule: don't get upset. You're always free to not being confortable discussing your choices.
Hard disagree. People care about animals because they have faces that trigger their empathy. Plant life is still life. The destruction of plants to feed people is no more moral than the slaughter of an animal. The cutting of a redwood to make a desk is not moral. Many people also lack any kind of principle and make stuff up as they go. They get angry at killing a butterfly, but they don't care at all about killing a wasp. Likewise, people get upset about a pig, but they don't care about carrots. The carrots lack a face, and the wasp lacks pretty wings.
I was recently at a wet lands were there were hundreds of thousands of snow geese making the lake white and blackening the sky, crazy to see and yeah we are blessed with the ability to change the entire Earth, the other guys are just along for the ride
Beaver dams change ecosystems. The Earth has oxygen due to cyanobacteria. Pedantically, all living beings change the Earth. But it certainly seems like we're the ones making the biggest changes at the moment.
Ideally yes, one would ask these questions. Practically, there is not enough time. You'd be lucky to get even 5 minutes to ask all these questions. Even if you have the time, you have to ask these questions in a diplomatic manner. Unless you are a well known hot shot in your field, a job interview is marred by power imbalance and any signal that you are cynical, confrontational, question authority etc. will count against you. So do ask these questions, but be careful how you frame them.
Eng Director here: 100% True. And I'll take it a step further:
> Ask this: “How does a project go from an idea to a ticket? Specifically, at what stage are engineers brought into the conversation; when the problem is identified, or after the solution has already been decided?”
The root of this question is great. The way it's phrased would be a flag for me.
I'd coach someone to ask it this way: "Can you tell me about how bugs and feature requests go from known to implemented/deployed? I want to know how it maps to my previous experiences/workflows"
This is the same question effectively. You will get your answer, and can ask a clarifying follow up if needed.
Author's description of twin paradox is incorrect. In fact, the paradox is not described at all. The paradox is that since motion is relative then from both twin's perspective the other twin goes on a journey and ages slowly. So why it is that on returning, only the traveling twin has aged slowly? The answer is that both twins indeed see each other age slowly but for the traveling twin to come back they have to slow down to zero and reverse direction. At that moment the frame is no longer inertial. While turning around, the traveling twin will see the stationary twin age very quickly (enough to catch up with their earth age), so when they meet there's no paradox. For each of them the other has aged as per their observations.
The twin paradox holds in a Pacman universe where there is no change in direction.
The main issue with the twin paradox is that it demonstrates where our euclidian intuition fails us.
There are several interpretations on how to resolve it, but they are all just flawed lenses, intended to help you along a curriculum until you understand the math, and also understand the limitations of intuition.
The 'turn around' explanation is part of that and unfortunately often sold as the ultimate resolution.
All I can offer without going into the weeds is that it is not the shape of the paths, but mearly the relative length of two paths though spacetime that matters.
Proper time and proper acceleration is possibly a pathway in flat spacetime?
Learning that the order, timing, and sometimes causality of events is also relative tends to be a barrier, thus some of these didactic half truths are useful.
The "Einstein train paradox" is the classic intro to the relativity of simultaneity if you aren't familiar.
In the SR case, proper acceleration is possibly the better option.
This is an extremely detailed explanation of the twin paradox that covers things from multiple angles, even situations that involve no acceleration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vv5d5KHKDVE
Are you suggesting that two people in a shared inertial space when venture into other intertial frames but ultimately end up in a same frame later will agree on how much time has passed in between?
Because I lowekey believe this to be true but don't have means to prove it.
The whole site seems very much like it is AI generated. In particular the css is very close to what I've seen ChatGPT generate when I used it to create similar things.
Nothing lasts forever. Even 100 years is a very long time given the technology / cultural / legal changes. It's futile to try to come up with an eternal solution. Just host it on something that seems to be reliable / stable for the foreseeable future and tell the younger generation to migrate it after you are gone to whatever tech of their day is going to be. If the younger generation does not care to migrate your work, then it is not of value to their generation and it is OK for it to fizzle out. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but it is probably best to have realistic expectations about how much people would care about your work after you are gone.
The main (and possibly only) benefit of networking is that hiring manager will look at your resume. Without networking, your resume may never even been seen by the hiring manager. But beyond that networking does not matter for the candidate. In fact, FAANG companies go out of their way to make sure that the person who referred the candidate is excluded from having any involvement in the interview process. The days where you get to skip rounds just because you know someone are gone.
