d_t_w

This is superb, and I'm only on page two. I'm thankful that Rich finds the time to produce his thoughtful content and I hope he has the opportunity to present this at HOPL-IV when it is rescheduled.

The distinction between Information Systems and Artificial Systems is the key point to me and reflects my experience, not that I understood it at the time.

I use Clojure today because it is a better thinking toolkit for Information Systems (or the inelegant 'Products' as I defined them in my conj talk). I'm an order of magnitude more productive in Clojure than I was in Java. It's not a small step, it's a step-change.

I think we might be clones. My self-funded business (https://operatr.io) is built in Clj/Cljs.

From the product, to the static website, marketing emails, even the licensing runs Cljs on Node in AWS Lambda.

I would have listed those same bullet points off the top of my head.

Eyoo!

The apology is cheap, and there are no repercussions.

It is business as usual. That's Australia.

46,000 year old Aboriginal caves dating back to the last ice ace, where 4,000-year-old braided hair had been found. The timelines of Austraila are almost incomprehensible, and yet there is no duty of care, we blow that shit up.

I was going to make a joke, but I've edited it to point out that Australia's care and consideration for Aboriginal artefacts is a disgrace.

To save you a click:

'Mining giant Rio Tinto has apologised for blowing up 46,000-year-old Aboriginal caves in Western Australia dating back to the last Ice Age.

The Juukan Gorge caves, in the Pilbara region, were destroyed last Sunday as Rio Tinto expanded an iron ore project agreed with the authorities.

Many prehistoric artefacts have been found at the remote heritage site.'

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-52869502

This is relevant because it happened last week.

Pelorus Bridge is the most beautiful swimming spot if you're ever in that part of the world. The bridge runs over the river which runs into the sound that Pelorus Jack was named after.

https://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/places-to-go/ma...

This is the point. I still work in Java occasionally but I'm much more effective delivering in Clojure today - with 10 years experience, than I am in Java which I used my entire career.

Same host environment, many of the same libraries, same developer. Different language, different mindset.

I can imagine to a degree, I have zero experience with Javascript and I found the practice of getting a Clojurescript REPL very complicated.

Once I was set up I quickly became effective, though I do tend to stay within the bounds of Cljs and avoid the host where I can.

I studied Java at University and then worked with it for 15 years through various companies, finance mostly. I like the language but the opportunities and my use of it felt very stale in the end.

I switched to Clojure a decade ago, around the time I started working with distributed systems. The best move I have ever made. I love working with Clojure and I find a large benefit in my understanding of the JVM.

Recently I've built a front end (Clojurescript) and some lambda services (Clojurescript on Node) to complement my startup (Clojure, https://operatr.io - its a tool for Kafka). There's an advantage to using a single language/mindset through your entire stack.

I spoke at the last Conj (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnvtPzEH-d8) about my experience, broadly speaking my top reason for loving Clojure is that I am much more effective in delivery today than I was a decade ago. I simply don't believe I could have built Operatr in Java/Javascript, YMMV.

In technical terms Clojure's data-orientation coupled with host-interop is much more important to me than it being a functional language or emacs/vim etc. Turns out I still use Intellij (with the Cursive plugin) and my work setup has changed very little.

It's a great tool, if you haven't tried it you should have a play - particularly if you work with Java.

I use node.js in AWS Lambda because I run Clojurescript on top of it.

My application (https://operatr.io/) is Clojure (JVM / Back-end), Clojurescript (Browser / Front-end), Clojurescript (AWS Lambda) - there's enormous leverage is using one language in all cases.

I have at least one function that exists in all three environments, but more than that I have one common language for delivery.

Availability is one, most distributed systems also replicate.

Which Lisp flavour do you use Mark? I worked in Java for 15 years before moving to Clojure a decade ago.

I find it superbly powerful to be able to leverage the JVM and the Browser with the same language.

It's a spy satellite, they probably painted it in camouflage.

Very.

Is there a difference between 'raises' and 'borrows'?

I read this as Tesla took investment of $1.8B (presumably in return for shares), but in this case they have issued $1.8B of bonds, so they've effectively taken out a loan.

I use it regularly, it's great.

Cassandra has a range of anti-entropy repair processes that run periodically, that's broadly speaking enough in my case.

I don't require last-write-wins. It's an immutable time series with no updates, no deletes.

I have a system which computes over an immutable time series and stores the results in Cassandra, which I treat as the source of truth. I think it's fair to call it a DB.

For further/similar content by Ben Stopford that I personally found a very high quality:

http://www.benstopford.com/2015/02/14/log-structured-merge-t...

Is it really that bad? I'm not American so perhaps I missed the decline, I've only noticed them breaking a number of stories recently (previous month for example) that all seem fairly credible, albeit often via anonymous sources.

I admit I can't discern the difference between the dozen WAPO or NYT articles I've read in the previous fortnight, for instance.

I appreciate the contrast you are drawing with that comparison, it's a clever one.

It seems that we agree that, in isolation, the caricature of two bare-footed, slack-jawed, slovenly, drunk, ignorant, impoverished indigenous Australians is racist. At least neither of us can think of anything we would add to exacerbate it.

In my example of the hook-nosed Jew, the Jew is the hate-figure. In your counter-example Hitler is the hate figure.

Who is the hate figure in this cartoon? The racist generalisation of the indigenous man. Surely that's problematic?

You're aware that the cartoon was posted in a paper that has history of writing articles titled "Blacks find ways to get high", the cartoonist has a library of similar content where the hate-figure is indigenous, and that this particular cartoon was aimed (and succeeded comfortably) to shift attention from the case of indigenous children being tear gassed.

I'm comfortable that it is racist dross, I'm hoping that I've managed to at least raise that thought with you in a compelling way.

If he's a moderator, he can shut this thread down if he likes.

In my opinion my experience adds some context. On reflection I'd be happy to change 'crap' for terrible and so on, but I can't edit that (historical time-out I guess).

Now, if you'll excuse me, my comment has actually spawned a really interesting, intelligent conversation with an Australian about the conduct of the main protagonist of this article, and I don't have any more commentary to add on this point.

I'm sorry to inform you that the internet is not an anodyne safe-place. Consider your emotional reaction and continued need to engage, down this off-topic path.

I find it interesting that you choose to go into fine detail, again, about the facts of life and social problems in the Northern Territory as you understand them and to share your own personal anecdotes, as if these have some impact on the cartoon been grotesquely racist (or not).

Please understand that even as a johnny-foreigner I'm perfectly well aware of the state of affairs in the NT. You'll note that your not the only Australian that reacts to this cartoon by earnestly explaining their understanding of the social problems of indigenous communities (though the other responding to me is also perfectly comfortable stating the cartoon is racist, but strangely chooses to respond to me, rather than any of the comments claiming the cartoon is not racist, go figure).

I'll posit that everything you mention, to some degree, is common knowledge in Australia. I don't accept that Bill Leak was genuinely trying to play an informative role here. We are also plainly ignoring the fact that this cartoon came in response to reports of aboriginal children being tear-gassed in Don Dale, so it's obviously an attempt to re-apportion blame, no?

If you'll humour me one more time. Imagine that the police-officer is out of frame, just a hand. Can you suggest anything that would make the cartoon of the two remaining aboriginal men racist? Let me help you, perhaps you could exaggerate some physical features, or include some negative stereotype? Has the author missed anything? What would you add to change their representation to be a racist one? It's fascinating that your only suggestion to turn the original cartoon from "not racist" to "blatantly racist" is the ethnicity of one character. Is it true (and it's hard I guess not to deliver this without the tone of an insult, so apologies) that you're perfectly aware that the caricature of the two remaining characters is deeply, deeply racist, it's just that you're comfortable with all the stereotypes they contain? It is racist, but it's ok, in short.

In case you're considering explaining further fine details about aboriginal life, let's say the cartoon was of three greedy hook-nosed sinister jew bankers. I've put literally every trope in I can, exaggerated every physical characteristic, every negative stereotype. Would that cartoon become not-racist because there's some element of truth the idea that Jewish people are a merchant class? And would your time be spent well explaining that to me in fine detail?

Thanks again for the conversation, this has been a fine example in my experience of discussing racial issues with Australians.

Satire would suggest humour? Like you I've read all sorts of discussion of the cartoon, not once have I heard it described as funny. Perhaps I'm reading the wrong articles. What is satire that is not funny, crap satire?

I was familiar with the affairs of the week, I just didn't read the precision of the OP because I don't think the cartoon was clever. As noted, I thought it was deliberately provocative, outrageous, and deeply, deeply racist.

I find the Australian commentariat interesting:

> So I guess the cartoon was a failure; it used racist, racial stereotypes and no positive outcome came from it.

We agree, the cartoon is racist. So why all the circumlocution around the central point? Is it because it raises uncomfortable questions about Australian culture? Is it really appropriate for your Prime Minister to, of his own volition, choose to exalt a cartoon that includes racist, racial stereotypes?

I expect the OP is a reasonable person, and I suspect I won't ever receive a response to "How would you make that cartoon racist?", because literally every ham-fisted racist trope has already been applied. There's nothing subtle about it.

I'll posit this. That cartoon would never have been printed in The Times of London, The New York Times, or The New Zealand Herald. If it had been we wouldn't collectively expend one iota of the discussion required in Australia to ascertain that, yes, it is racist. It's not really a question that requires much inspection, but here we are.

I'll accept our British, Kiwi, and American friends if they choose to contradict me on that.

And yes, the NBN is a disaster. We're in agreement again.

Neither Britain or New Zealand have written constitutions, I'm not convinced that Australia's is the problem at hand, though I guess it could be that a poorly written one is worse than none at all.

Thanks, what an intriguing level of detail to draw from the cartoon, I have to admit I never read even the slightest amount of that from it.

To me the cartoon is staggeringly racist. Clearly, deliberately, outrageously racist. And I am deliberate in my use of the words "deliberate" and "outrageous" because personally I believe in Australia that the proprietor of this particular newspaper makes his money by manufacturing outrage.

To me the cartoon is as racist as the day is long, it's as racist as it is blunt. There's no finesse. There's no guile. There's no dog-whistle or wink to the unspoken. It's a full frontal racist scaling of the ramparts. Which is why I find your comment so intriguing, because you clearly hold a detailed opinion, well communicated, of many different facets you have drawn from the content and how they relate back to social issues in the Northern Territory and yet none of what confronts me occurs to you.

So can I ask you. If I were the proprietor of a newspaper that liked this cartoon but needed it to actually be racist. What would you change? Could you change anything to make this cartoon racist? Or is it not possible. Perhaps we just disagree on what racism is.

Personally, I can't think of a single thing that I could change to increase the amount of racism it expresses. I'm interested to hear your opinion.

Thanks for sharing your opinion.

The earnest responses you've received are fairly representative of commonly expressed opinions in Australia. I don't believe it's the majority view, but certainly at large minority at least - including the Prime Minister it appears.

The further context is that cartoon was printed in The Australian, which is basically a Murdoch tabloid but masquerades as the paper of note in Australia. The cartoon in particular was drawn in response to a "Four Corners" (TV) report on the treatment/abuse of children at the Northern Territory's Don Dale detention centre, many of whom were Indigenous.

Thanks. Personally I'm comfortable that both the location and further context are extraneous.

His assertion that it united the nation is misguided enough (and clearly factually incorrect, though as an outsider you may not be aware of that).

That the PM chose that particular cartoon to exalt speaks volumes.