DoughnutHole

7 ms·

1.
by DoughnutHole 3mo ago
Most of the time I’ve gotten major value or insight out of a book it’s because it’s said something truly unique or insightful that I genuinely never would have thought of if I hadn’t read it. Your prompt is useless because I might think I c
2.
by DoughnutHole 4mo ago
The amazing thing about AI is that you don’t even need AI superfans to shoehorn it into a conversation that doesn’t even touch on AI. Detractors will do it for them.
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by DoughnutHole 6mo ago
The Soviet Union was able to innovate in the areas they chose to sink resources into but innovation was clearly not as widespread as evidenced by their decades of stagnation from the 60s onwards. They were still innovating in military techn
4.
by DoughnutHole 7mo ago
Nuclear advancements slowed down due to PR problems from clear and sometimes catastrophic failure of commercial power plants (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima) and the vastly higher costs associated with building safer plants. If any
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by DoughnutHole 8mo ago
Russia didn’t start this war with the intention of getting into a protracted slugging match over 20% of Ukraine - they got into for the whole thing. Luckily Ukraine beat back the drive on Kyiv. But if Russia’s success metric at the outset o
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by DoughnutHole 8mo ago
If those attack vectors are intrinsically less effective at causing mass destruction then that’s an improvement. A plane hijacking can evidently cause enormous destruction with minimal equipment and personnel. Even just a bomb on a plane ca
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by DoughnutHole 8mo ago
Homer used to complain about the big things. He tried to kill himself in the third episode due to losing his job. The first 2 seasons are honestly comparatively depressing with some of the heavy topics they touch on. The Simpsons just l
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by DoughnutHole 8mo ago
Coe is insightful and good at violence, but also (!spoiler for latest season) responsible for the most hilariously unfortunate cock-up of the show so far…
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by DoughnutHole 8mo ago
Not particular unique - this is a common practice in a lot of agricultural industries. e.g. there are wine co-ops in France where many vineyards commingle their grapes to produce a commercial volume of wine under a particular label. What th
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by DoughnutHole 9mo ago
Companies can have additional motives to profit, and they’re more likely to when control is concentrated just because individual people have multiple desires. This was certainly the case with early Disney because Walt Disney was a megaloman
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by DoughnutHole 10mo ago
The blindness is to reality and nuance. If you stare at your GPS and don’t pay attention to what’s in the real world outside your windshield until you careen off a cliff that would be “blindly” following your GPS. You had data but you didn’
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by DoughnutHole 10mo ago
This is Japan selecting itself to develop a critical industry. Being deeply embedded in global supply chains and your allies’ economies makes it a lot more difficult for them to justify abandoning you to your enemies.
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by DoughnutHole 1y ago
> Most humans code crap. My biggest frustration with AI coding tools is that bad engineers are no better at judging the quality of AI code than they are at writing code themselves. So, their output has shot through the roof without an im
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by DoughnutHole 1y ago
> It can’t replace a human for support It doesn’t wholly replace the need for human support agents but if it can adequately handle a substantial number of tickets that’s enough to reduce headcount. A huge percentage of problems raised in
15.
by DoughnutHole 1y ago
I have to assume this is entirely because American architectural practices are ultimately derived from England’s, where courtyards are not particularly helpful. They make perfect sense in warm, sunny regions like the Mediterranean because t
16.
by DoughnutHole 2y ago
Why not both? The mercantilist economic policy of the UK was an abject failure that made its people poorer and prevented the import of cheap food. But the UK’s unwillingness to provide sufficient aid once the famine had already started was
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by DoughnutHole 2y ago
Maybe if the North Korean people had the most basic of civil liberties and could communicate in any way with the outside world people would be less inclined “stereotype/orientalize”.
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by DoughnutHole 2y ago
Yea now we just have people only getting help with issues with Stripe when an exec has to respond to them making a stink about it on Hacker News.
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by DoughnutHole 2y ago
Other industries innovate despite having to follow codes and industry standards. They just innovate slower. Engineering standards are built on piles of corpses. We’re lucky that most of the growth of our industry has been in non-life-critic
20.
by DoughnutHole 2y ago
Yes absolutely. Being found not guilty of a crime or being pardoned has no bearing on the evidence that exists which is presented in a separate civil case against you. There’s no double jeopardy in a civil case - it’s a matter of if someone
21.
by DoughnutHole 2y ago
Arguably not, but once revolution and civil war break out you don’t really have the option of just going back to how things were. It’s certainly better than if the civil war had gone on for 13 years as it has in Syria. We also don’t know ho
22.
by DoughnutHole 2y ago
You don’t just press a button that says “war economy” and then everything turns out fine. You drive massive inflation, weaken consumer markets, take on massive debts and eventually run out of young men. Pretty much every nation bar the US w
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by DoughnutHole 2y ago
Russia’s ability to implement a war economy isn’t unique - the last time they did it (WWII) so did the UK, Germany, and the US. More recent examples include the both sides of the Iran-Iraq war and Armenia in its war with Azerbaijan. GDP has
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by DoughnutHole 2y ago
Preaching to the choir here - I love carbon steel and cast iron. Unfortunately try as we might to get people to switch, the fact is that undamaged Teflon is more non-stick than anything else and most people don’t want to put the effort into
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by DoughnutHole 2y ago
Presumably you’re not using Teflon pans then, because there’s no way you wouldn’t notice the non-stick surface getting destroyed by metal utensils. There’s also a potential health argument against cooking with Teflon pans to begin with, but
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by DoughnutHole 2y ago
If your life is dominated by an us vs them dynamic small demonstrations of difference become hugely important. In a similar vein different people in Xinjiang in China observe entirely different timezones - Han Chinese observe Beijing time (
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by DoughnutHole 2y ago
Except it is simultaneously cited by many people as demonstrating some intrinsic aspects of human nature. Anyone who has done their research know the experiment is bollocks. There’s countless others out there touting it as informative.
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by DoughnutHole 2y ago
To be fair the framing of “carbs are evil” is also lazy. The root cause of most cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes is obesity due to excess calories of any sort (although once you’re diabetic or prediabetic carbs are a HUGE problem
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by DoughnutHole 2y ago
It takes many generations, really. Having money doesn’t easily buy you a hereditary lordship. You might be able to buy a load of land but probably not a prestigious ancient estate because the families that own them would usually rather let
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by DoughnutHole 2y ago
Honestly the focus on financial stratification here highlights the differences between what class means in the UK and the US. In the US class distinction is (almost) entirely down to money. If you’re rich you can buy nicer things than someo

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