Accurately labeling a potentially infinite list is an interesting problem we humans seem to have created for ourselves.

In practice Greek letters are much like regular numbering and soon become unintelligible. There’s a reason they still include India in the title here.

Maybe we should switch to naming hurricanes after desserts.

My understanding is that many in the Native American community self identify as ‘Indian’. Or have historically, I’m sure the younger generation is moving away from it.

The FT quotes: ‘120,000 a year for bat surveillance’.

Seems negligible as an outsider.

I sat at a lunch table with Eric at an Event Apart SF a couple years ago, super friendly guy. Really recommend that conference I had a great time.

I have to tell you as an American and kinda grumpy one at that, if you get a smile and hi on the sidewalk as we pass each other it’s purely out of love for mankind.

CSS actually does have functions. ‘linear-gradient()’ is one that returns a background image. You also have the choice of interacting with your style sheets via the css object model similar to the way you interact with the DOM, this is the basis of most css in js tech.

If you can’t tell, I’m a CSS shill.

I wonder, how exactly do we determine the ideal amount of biodiversity for the planet / a given region?

Outside of ideas like ‘we should not exterminate entire species’ and ‘we should not hunt so much that we ruin hunting grounds for future generations’ it does not seem obvious to me.

I guess maybe we are so far gone that the only thought is to damage control.

Do you think questions like that can ever be answered?

There's a YouTube video I like, called "The Chinese Farmer," by Alan Watts.

The gist of the video is that reality is so unimaginably complex that we cannot know if a given change is going to be a net positive (over what time frame?) or a net negative (again, over what time frame?).

This pretty much informs my thinking these days, and when something happens that I notice, I find myself more able to refrain from labeling it as either good or bad.

> There's a YouTube video I like, called "The Chinese Farmer," by Alan Watts.

Wasn't familiar with this video myself, so I searched it up. Passing it along for the next person:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byQrdnq7_H0

I like the message as well.

And do microscopic and subsurface diversity count? If they do the proportion of anthropogenic diversity decline might look a lot smaller. Or do we only care about visible flora and fauna for this purpose?

Human pollution creates new niches that didn't exist before. Microbes in particular can adapt to them in dramatic ways, increasing genetic diversity. Surely we don't want to promote diversity by finding novel ways to pollute. Biodiversity can increase as a sick ecosystem decays, so sustainability is a crucial consideration. Below some threshold more radiation increases biodiversity. But is it worth more mutant babies?

So changes in absolute quantities of biodiversity might not be a good way to measure the health of the environment. Optimal biodiversity probably depends on for who, and is different each species and niche.

Perhaps not because microscopic organisms can re-evolve faster.

It’s mind blowing the author chose to include that phrase given the rest of the article is pretty well written.

It's a thing this community actually says, not wordplay on the author's part.

I know three people who separately just moved to sac from the east bay. And a couple who are thinking about it... didn’t realize this was a trend.

As someone who grew up in Sac, don’t do it guys! It might be a quick drive but it’s a different California.

The first sentence of your comment gives away that you grew up in Sacramento.

It was only when I left the area as an adult that people told me they thought it was weird that people referred to it as "Sac" (and "East Sac", "West Sac", etc.). Apparently for the uninitiated, this reminds people (at least young men) of a body part.

i enjoy it much better than bay area. to each his own

While we do call them crypto currencies I don’t think crypto market is really comparable to the currency market. Maybe more like a precious metals etf or something.