gydfi

6 ms·

1.
by gydfi 10y ago
Japan is going pretty well last I checked. It's one of the few places that is successfully transitioning to a lower birth rate via population shrinkage rather than mass immigration, enabling them to maintain their own culture and peopl
2.
by gydfi 10y ago
That's partially true but I think it's partially a recasting of right-wing thought into a left-wing mould. The main driving factor is third-world immigration, and in particular the perception that mass immigration from the third w
3.
by gydfi 10y ago
Hell no, i don't think religions should be allowed to push their agenda on children. If we banned that we could eradicate religion within a generation. If I had a teenage daughter I'm sure I'd have little control over what sh
4.
by gydfi 10y ago
Helping them make up their own minds about the issues? That's a pretty good service. But reprinting propaganda from one side only does not serve that purpose.
5.
by gydfi 10y ago
Are you sure you think that biased substance is better than nothing? Are you sure it's not just that you happen to agree with the bias in this case? If Teen Vogue were suddenly full of pro-Trump propaganda would you be so enthusiastic?
6.
by gydfi 10y ago
Maybe it's too much to expect, but I rather think that any publication which doesn't have an overt and honest political bias ought to be politically neutral.
7.
by gydfi 10y ago
Anyone being considered for that job will have an impressive CV, obviously.
8.
by gydfi 10y ago
Semi-intentional maybe? If you tried to start the Amish now it'd never last, it's too large a leap. But the Amish society evolved slowly over time much like others. If you went back to the early days then the Amish wouldn't b
9.
by gydfi 10y ago
A good book on this theme is Matt Ridley's "The Evolution of Everything", which argues that social institutions are generally a lot more evolved and a lot less designed than people realise, and that we forget this at our peri
10.
by gydfi 10y ago
Ten years isn't that long in a car's life though.
11.
by gydfi 10y ago
I dunno. Go anywhere in the world and look at how billionaires and Presidents get around. Do they catch buses or do they choose to get around in private, possibly chauffeured, vehicles? (Let me just pre-empt someone's example of some b
12.
by gydfi 10y ago
How long before facebook gets sued over a suicide it failed to prevent?
13.
by gydfi 10y ago
I'd say it matters a great deal what it is -- for instance if your cause is the pro-life movement or the expulsion of illegal aliens then you might have difficulties getting social approval in San Francisco. I find it a hilarious insta
14.
by gydfi 10y ago
Yes but that's a bus. Public transport is intrinsically a worse and less convenient experience than having a private driver.
15.
by gydfi 10y ago
Huge transfer of wealth from low-margin businesses to high-margin businesses. Supermarkets, for instance, have margins of about 3%. With a revenue tax they'd be completely boned. They could raise their prices, of course. But the bigger
16.
by gydfi 10y ago
While Vox tends to lean pretty strongly anti-Trump I think this article is actually pretty good/neutral.
17.
by gydfi 10y ago
Right, because of all that obvious evidence of stuff that hasn't happened yet but might.
18.
by gydfi 10y ago
Well "liberal" in the sense it's used in US politics to mean "left wing" not actually liberal.
19.
by gydfi 10y ago
What if I'm both deaf and blind? Should Netflix have to cater to me through some kind of touch system? If I'm blind and I go to an art gallery should there be an audio track to somehow explain what I'm not seeing? What about
20.
by gydfi 10y ago
Or it shows it's a terrible law and total compliance with it results in terrible effects.
21.
by gydfi 10y ago
OK, but why should they? Prioritising one customer over another isn't good business sense, you're likely to lose the less loved customer.
22.
by gydfi 10y ago
Like most arguments about "isms" that do not have a single, rigorous definition accepted by everybody, debates about "capitalism" are pretty useless. Karl Marx means one thing by the word, Ayn Rand means another, most ot
23.
by gydfi 10y ago
If only we had basic income so everybody could be paid to produce content like this.
24.
by gydfi 10y ago
But flying close to the sun is still really bad. It's just we've never got close enough to the sun for it to be a problem.
25.
by gydfi 10y ago
Pus, I hope.
26.
by gydfi 10y ago
By the time you've paid for a drone and someone to fly it in each city, you might as well just pay someone minimum wage to drive around photographing the lots from ground level. It'd probably work out cheaper.
27.
by gydfi 10y ago
Index funds seem to be emerging as a new religion on the comment sections of the internet. As religions go it's reasonably harmless, but the faith that some folks have in index funds vs sensibly diversified portfolios of decent self-se
28.
by gydfi 10y ago
When I think of what a globalised world will look like, I think of Singapore Airport. People of all colours and creeds, living peacefully together, with absolutely no history or cultural memory beyond the present moment, and nothing to do e
29.
by gydfi 10y ago
Not at all, it seems to me it's more like whether it's 1 or not 1. Expressing any skepticism gets you branded as a "skeptic" and then a "denier". Of course what the "not 1" crowd tend to miss is that
30.
by gydfi 10y ago
I wouldn't say so. You can still get perfectly alright freestanding houses in the non-ghetto parts of Berkeley for under a million.

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