pasabagi

32 ms·

1.
by pasabagi 1y ago
So, I agree that good standards and (to a lesser extent) algorithms come out of practice. However, the basic point about a standard is not that it's perfect: it's a coordination mechanism. Companies go bust all the time, technolog
2.
by pasabagi 1y ago
I actually think Germany would be really good at digital infrastructure if they stopped being afraid of friend computer. Germany is immensely proud of its history of creating standards - there's literally a place in berlin called DIN P
3.
by pasabagi 1y ago
I'm not sure I can do it justice in an adhoc way, but it's important to keep in mind there are a few layers of irony that the piece is working on. First, Socrates, who does not write, is being presented as a character, in written
4.
by pasabagi 1y ago
Pluto? Plotto? Platti? Seriously though, that's a horrible bowdlerization of the argument in the Phaedrus. It's actually very subtle and interesting, not just reactionary griping.
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by pasabagi 2y ago
Trying to prove correlations between race and crime is literally the historical basis of criminology as a discipline. They failed, it's stupid, and now people know better. You can commission as many studies as you like on astrology, an
6.
by pasabagi 2y ago
I mean, it's not a very interesting research topic? People who are poor and young commit certain categories of crime more often. That has nothing to do with immigration or race or whatever.
7.
by pasabagi 2y ago
German spelling is ridiculously easy, whereas English spelling is quite hard. I guess the equivalent inverse would be comma use in German.
8.
by pasabagi 2y ago
I've read that big pharma are primarily patent companies: most of the actual research is done by universities, then most of the production is outsourced.
9.
by pasabagi 2y ago
I think even Russia and the US still do intelligence sharing on a lot of stuff - and that's before you consider that the US seems to be in everybody's networks anyhow, so non-sharing is probably just sharing with a bit more skulld
10.
by pasabagi 2y ago
The expectations for hostage-takers are pretty low, whereas the expectations for police are, if not sky-high, at least that they won't kill or injure you. Disappointment is often proportionate to anger. There's a second point whic
11.
by pasabagi 2y ago
Democracy is not supposed to settle technical questions. It is supposed to settle questions about societal goals and moires. As such, there's no need for anybody to know about anything technical. And they don't: the president of t
12.
by pasabagi 2y ago
Expertise exists. You can ask a hundred non-mathematicians what a circle is, and get a hundred incoherent answers. Sometimes, you just have to recognize that you don't have the requisite training to respond to a problem, and just follo
13.
by pasabagi 2y ago
I think I'm pretty good for a layperson at statistics + public health stuff, and a lot of the precautions we ended up taking in the pandemic were news to me: for instance, the effect of masks on protecting others, the relationship of i
14.
by pasabagi 2y ago
No need to presume: you can read the article. "dissemination of defamatory fake news and another probe over possible obstruction, incitement and criminal organization." Which is fair enough, I think.
15.
by pasabagi 2y ago
Do you have the same opinion on Jan 6 rioters?
16.
by pasabagi 2y ago
Well, ~50%[0] of microplastics is car tyres, so you know, good luck. Support public transport, support cycle lanes, campaign for pedestrianization, etc. Maybe move to a low-car-density enviroment? Holland? [0]: https://e360.yale.
17.
by pasabagi 2y ago
The Tony Blair Institute is perhaps the most powerful thinktank in the UK today, and Tony Blair loves AI in the way that only a man who peck-types can. The TBI put out a paper suggesting that 60% of public servants could be replaced with AI
18.
by pasabagi 2y ago
I dropped reading this about halfway: the author has some fairly cranky opinions about recent history.
19.
by pasabagi 2y ago
Is it compassion? One of my cousins has downs, and she's something of a favourite because she's easygoing and sensible - exactly the sort of person that, if you were going to live hunter-gatherer style, would be great to have arou
20.
by pasabagi 2y ago
Eh, the per-capita housing situation in the UK is 1 house per three people, per gov.uk statistics[0]. A third of a house is plenty for most people. The problem is that these houses are very unevenly distributed, so a large majority are unde
21.
by pasabagi 2y ago
My feeling is Britain is both paradoxically tolerant (I live in Germany, and the difference is stark ), but also omnidirectionally hateful - for instance, British people are the only people in the world who, as a norm, hate children. It&#x
22.
by pasabagi 2y ago
I don't know: as I understood it, the trucker thing was basically about showing that they occupy a strategic position in the Canadian economy. It's like the old rail strike idea: it doesn't matter if everybody hates you, if t
23.
by pasabagi 2y ago
It's often pretty hard to do public protest without breaking some kind of law, even if you do everything you're supposed to. I'm not a fan of the truckers (the loud horns were totally infuriating) but the fundamental problem
24.
by pasabagi 2y ago
I mean, it seems a bit unclear what his political positions actually were, but it does seem they were just opinions. As philosophers go, that's pretty small beer: Thales used to roast people alive in a brass container, Marcus Aureliu
25.
by pasabagi 2y ago
Apparently bullshit, though: https://www.lexpress.fr/idees-et-debats/michel-foucault-et-l... Guy Sorman wasn't Foucault's friend, and later said (about his statement) that he never actually saw anything he de
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by pasabagi 2y ago
I guess it's a question of what change you push for. Imagine you go to post-revolution Haiti, and you just try to push for economic growth. You recognize that the country has an internationally competitive sugar industry. So you work o
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by pasabagi 2y ago
I think the only country you've mentioned that's a) not a city state and b) run by the colonized people, not the colonizers, is Ireland. If you look around the world, there's a pretty strong correlation between length of colo
28.
by pasabagi 2y ago
Isn't it a bit a matter of culture, though? Colonial administrations are built to extract wealth from a country. So, when you get independence, that's still what the government, hell, even the infrastructure, is built for. Half th
29.
by pasabagi 2y ago
Or, immortal Joseph Stalin having breakfast with immortal Richard Nixon, while deciding who gets sent to the gulags today.
30.
by pasabagi 2y ago
I guess my intuition for how a 'right-to-return' should work would be, if you have your property stolen and you are driven out of the land, and it can be proven beyond reasonable doubt that it is yours by inheritance, then you sho

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