Love it - I don't quite get the bit about the car, though (the hybrid, not the "backfire") - Can someone 'splain it to me? Maybe it's a movie reference, I'm bad with those.

I absolutely love my cats and can't stand to think of them dying - But I can't stand the thought of them suffering even more.

If your cat is in constant terror and needs to be consoled frequently, she's suffering. And at 17 (and with other physical symptoms suggesting she may not be in the best of health), it's not like she has all that long left anyway.

You should probably talk with your vet about whether or not it might be time to send her over the rainbow bridge. If the vet says no way, she's fine, hey, forget I said anything! But don't make her suffer just because you can't bear to let her go, you'll regret that more than the alternative.

Personally I'd cut a hole in the backing exactly matching the XBX, and place it on its side blowing out that hole (so top facing backward). That solves two problems in one, you're ventilating the AV cabinet and removing the largest source of heat at the same time.

Having the bottom of the XBox facing forward might be a bit ugly, though, if you care about that. If so, you could also do the same but blowing in - A bit less efficient (since you're venting the heat into an enclosed space), but should still basically do the trick.

Your link defines it as iteratively converting a DCG to a DAG by removing the lowest-weighted connections until only forward paths exist between the hypothetical cause and the target effect, thereby establishing "causality".

In one sense that's entirely defensible, but the fundamental flaw is that you can do the same between almost any nodes in the graph (as long as a cycle exists between them - You can't e.g. prove JFK's assassination caused the Big Bang because there's no loop that can ever go back to that point).

/ Edit: My apologies, I misunderstood that you're the actual author of TFA. But you're still right!

This is a great cautionary tale against looking for simple chains of causality, but the title is misleading - Causal projection is an extremely specific technical term. Thinking in causal terms is still one of the most powerful tools we have in modern science, we just need to be careful not to fall for our own confirmation biases.

If you're referring to studies like this one, that's not quite what they're saying. You're right, it's not as simple as HDL is "good" cholesterol. As they conclude, though,

> Compared with low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), HDL‑C is of secondary importance for cardiovascular risk stratification and the calculation of the LDL-C:HDL‑C ratio is not useful for all patients. Low HDL‑C levels should prompt a search for additional metabolic and inflammatory pathologies. An increase in HDL‑C through lifestyle changes (e.g. smoking cessation and physical exercise) has positive effects and is recommended; however, HDL‑C is currently not a valid target for drug therapy.

That's still a valuable finding, though - Increasing HDL without increasing total cholesterol is actually pretty hard to do. If something as simple as adding a bit of honey to my morning oatmeal can manage that, pass me some o' that yummy bee vomit!

Is this autosomally heritable, or merely breeding a generation of very literal dead ends?

Also, hide a few of the good candies inside a baggy of crappy carrot sticks for the kids of those uptight prudes who cruelly demand their little angel not touch that demon, Sugar.

Who's forcing you to drive to work? Ford? Exxon? Ammann & Apollo? And which of those is physically preventing you from biking there instead?

This has nothing to do with "want" - If you're buying the product, you're still contributing to the demand for it. Nobody "wants" to own a washing machine. Yet, virtually everyone that can afford one, does. Why? We want clean clothes - A washing machine is merely a convenient means to that end.

This exactly.

I'm not anxious, I don't struggle with self regulation, and I'm extremely "mindful of the present". I just have no other time in my life to...

Well, okay, there's where I can't really justify my behavior. What do I do at midnight instead of going to bed? I waste what precious few hours I have to myself reloading Reddit over and over and over.

I suppose there's a case to be made for the benefit of simple recreation, but I don't really feel good about admitting that.

Name just one product that's produced solely because some stereotypical archvillain CEO wants to destroy the planet faster, rather than because we are willing to throw money at him to make it.

We are how the world is built and what is produced.

Look - I'll offer an olive branch here: You're right that POU is a tiny fraction of our total environmental footprint as a species (10-15% gets mentioned often). You'd be absolutely correct in saying that taking shorter showers is a drop in the bucket vs almond farming in the frickin' desert.

But all that overhead, from mining to manufacturing to shipping to that god-awful clamshell packaging (also made of oil)... Is still only because we demanded that iPhone, those almonds, that Hummer.

Not a single gigaton of supply-side emissions are because the evil manufacturing industry "wants" to make iPhones. They want to make money, and for our part, we can't throw it at them fast enough regardless of how awful their products are for the environment.

It means stop blaming Exxon for the fact that we all want to commute to work as the only occupant of a 2000lbs internal combustion vehicle and on our own schedule, rather than taking public transit or biking in the rain. Exxon wouldn't even exist if there wasn't a demand for their carbon-spewing poison.

CEOs are statistically sociopaths, but sociopaths aren't stupid. They don't clear-cut the rainforest with a pinky to their lips and cackle with glee; they do it because we thought that mahogany coffee table would perfectly compliment great grandma's quilt (framed and hanging on the wall rather than providing warmth as we crank the thermostat, of course).

I did say not to cook it directly. That said, if it takes five minutes of a torch to light the pilot, it's already not in great shape. :)

FWIW I learned this trick from a service tech, when I called specifically because I couldn't get the pilot lit. He basically told me he could replace a bunch of parts for a few hundred bucks if I really wanted him to, orrr... Grab a $10 "My First Torch" kit from $BigBox and the cylinder will probably last longer than I will (and I already had a halfway decent one, just for sweating pipe, nothing fancy).

During the step where you're supposed to hold the button in. I don't remember what the setting is, but I remember my fingers are ready to fall off before it finally stays lit.

Ignore most of the instructions, and use a propane torch on low for up to five minutes to heat up the area around the thermocouple (don't hold the torch right on it, you want to warm it, not cook it).

If that still doesn't work, time for a service call.

I can't say what you do or don't have available in your area, but in mine, Spectrum isn't even running Coax anymore, it's all fiber to the door. I literally can't plug an analogue TV into the "cable" and watch TV.

Modern "Cable", isn't. You only need a WiFi router and a smart TV (or a computer, phone, basicially anything capable of playing streaming media).

/ Edit: My apologies, I didn't realize you were trying to steal cable. In that case, call Spectrum and have them do a proper installation. What you're describing wouldn't normally be your problem if this was all above-board.

Respectfully, this isn't about pharma research or corporate-academic misconduct, that's just the backdrop for the real discussion. The real issue being described can best be summed up as (IMO):

Why is plagiarism bad?

If your answer is epistemological, great work, you "get" it (and, sadly, most likely didn't attend public school in the US). It matters how we know X so we can challenge the underlying assumptions when appropriate.

If your answer involves getting or stealing "credit", though - That's the heart of what this essay is condemning. Why should anyone feel a sense of ownership over "the truth"? And why should their reputation be harmed if they perform an honest experiment whose findings are later refuted? Yet, you don't need to look hard to find countless rants about positive result bias in scientific research; everyone knows it's a serious problem, but everyone also needs to eat, while operating under a system that only rewards successes.