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Oregon’s transportation system is due for an overhaul next year. Here’s what you need to know
  • Even with those concerns, I still like tolls

    A. Driving a car has externalities that are currently not priced in the gas tax / registration fees. This means that having toll free roads are also regressive in that they are forcing people who do not drive (often due to poverty) to subsidize those who do drive. It makes sense to make the drivers pay for more of the harm they cause others, and tolls are a simple way of doing this. They are also can help discourage driving since paying every time you drive in a certain area is probably more noticable than paying once a year when you register your car.

    B. This is a real issue in 205 where there is another bridge right next to it. Maybe in this case, you can add a toll to both bridges. But generally, the urban growth boundaries in Oregon make it easy to find places to find put toll booths where there is no way to drive around it.

  • Donald Trump does not get post-shooting poll boost
  • Polls have a margin of error and election results have generally been within the 80% confidence interval 80% of the time.

    It is true that when there are less polls (like in special elections) it's harder to get an understanding of the state of the race.

  • Donald Trump does not get post-shooting poll boost
  • Polls have been remarkably accurate in the last few election cycles.

    The "polls are wrong" talking point is a convenient way for politicians to ignore the will of the people. Trump has done this for a long time, and recently Biden has taken up this practice to pretend that the "Real Americans" think he is fit to be president for another 4 years.

    So please don't repeat this talking point, or at least read a bit into historical accuracy of polls before you declare them bullshit.

  • Why are US states, school districts banning smartphones in schools?
  • In the US you sometimes hear that phones in class are necessary to see if your kids are OK in a school shooting scenario.

    I think this isn't a good argument, since school shootings are rare, and it's unclear if each student having a phone would do more harm than good in that kind of situation.

  • Has Title IX Outlived Its Usefulness?
  • I think your Title IX comment is a misinterpretation of the video. He never said Title IX is responsible for the achievement gap, and cautioned against policies that disadvantage girls. He used Title IX as an example to show that the academic achievement gap in favor of boys, that Title IX was attempting to solve, is smaller than the current academic gap in favor of girls (at least by one measure); therefore systemic action is necessary.

    But I found this video did a good job at clearly stating the crisis we have for boys, particularly black boys in America. And the idea of pushing for more male teachers, particularly English teachers, seems like good policy.

  • How big is the oil market
  • I've received the advice that you should always make your charts so that you numbers are proportional to a length, since people aren't good at comparing areas (or volumes).

    So the numbers here probably ought to be proportional to diameters

  • Follow-up to old post about man-made horror: man-made horror has been commercialized and is also live-streamed. (Brain organoid computing)
  • You don't need to "tie a specific neuronal activity to a thought or memory" to know whether a set of neurons can have humanlike memory or emotions. We know that specific brain regions are required for specific brain functions. Most famously, we know that hippocampi are necessary to form new episodic memories due to Patient HM. This organoid does not have anything like these necessary specific brain regions, so we can be pretty sure they don't have these human brain functions.

    Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "tie a specific neuronal activity to a thought or memory" We've known examples of single unit neural activity being correlated with thoughts for many years, see place cells and Grandmother cells. Really, the whole field of systems neuroscience studies this at some level. And I think that field has made some progress.

  • Follow-up to old post about man-made horror: man-made horror has been commercialized and is also live-streamed. (Brain organoid computing)
  • I don't find brain organoids to be disturbing or all that interesting. Organoids are not very different from classical cell culture. And organoids of human neurons are not very different from organoids of mouse neurons.

    This is not anything like a human brain living in a dish.

  • Federation seems to work now

    It seems like comments show up immediately now. At least on Lemmy.world

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    lemming934 @lemmy.sdf.org
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