8,902 karma · joined July 3, 2017
The author wrote: "I can't use "else" as a conjunction in normal speech, only in computer programs."
No doubt people use 'else' as a conjunction now, due to the influence of programming.
To show the author is completely wrong requires finding pre-1959 uses of 'else' in a conjunction.
The Civil Rights Act which created the EEOC does not require or permit an employer to break the law to accommodate a request, even if it is reasonable and with no burden.
Instead, the law must be challenged directly.
"An accommodation may cause undue hardship if it is costly, compromises workplace safety, decreases workplace efficiency, infringes on the rights of other employees, or requires other employees to unwillingly do more than their share of potentially hazardous or burdensome work." - https://www.eeoc.gov/religious-discrimination
Otherwise we would all be joining a religion which require 360 days of religious festivities each year.
We see this with people who believe it is a religious requirement to share their faith at work, even when their co-workers say they don't want to hear it.
We see this with people who say their religious belief says they don't take orders from a women, even if that woman is their boss.
If your transhumanist religion compels you to share PII with your machines in a way which breaks the law, then there's likely an undue burden.
If it means you need access to a power plug during lunch so your devices can scan your brain for 10 minutes - almost certainly not an undue burden.
"Independent of the author's economic rights, and even after the transfer of the said rights, the author shall have the right to claim authorship of the work and to object to any distortion, modification of, or other derogatory action in relation to the said work, which would be prejudicial to the author's honor or reputation."
Those non-economic rights are referred to as moral rights, and you apparently want to get rid of them as well.
As the old saying goes, "You are unique, just like everyone else." Which is why I never said the current time has nothing unique, but rather "There's nothing special enough".
The player piano roll transformed copyright, with White-Smith Music Publishing Company v. Apollo Company leading to the Copyright Act of 1909.
The Linotype machine, microfilm, the photocopier, the cassette tape, the floppy disk, the internet, hip-hop sampling, p2p file sharing - every single one of these challenged existing ideas of copyright. Some of these also got people to call for copyright abolition.
With no indication of how the subjects were selected.
Social class and musical education are obvious confounding variables, while they only looked at age and gender.
They cite Virgil Griffith, which https://brainvolts.northwestern.edu/wp-content/uploads/boxtr... categorizes as "noted Internet data miner Virgil Griffith". https://digitalcommons.calvin.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl... says he scraped data from Facebook and compared it to average school SATs. There's a Wikipedia page about him at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil_Griffith . Looks like he got out of prison last year.
Google Scholar knows of no citations to the paper, nor favorable reviews for Griffith's analysis.
The JEP paper, available directly at https://jep.ro/images/pdf/cuprins_reviste/74_art_4.pdf , comes across to me, a non-expert, as low quality.
David L. Ross as Galloway? https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/David_Ross
https://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-writer-who-c...
> Back in 2017, Holbrook wrote an essay for Huffington Post entitled, "I Can't Answer These Texas Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems." The writer had discovered that two of her poems were part of the Texas STAAR state assessment tests, and she was a bit startled to discover that she was unable to answer some of the questions.
> One reason was simple inaccuracy. One question asked why the poet had inserted a stanza break in a particular spot-- and then didn't insert a stanza break in the testing materials. But there was a second issue. Holbrook is a performance poet, and she had inserted the break at the point where, in live readings, she pauses. That choice was not one of the choices available on the test.
> In fact, much of Holbrook's issue with the questions was a sort of existential dilemma. Several questions asked, directly or indirectly, for the test taker to judge the author's intentions. The author knew some of her intentions, sort of remembered others, and had others that were layered and complex. But the manufacturers of the test--who had never asked her about any of this--provided only four choices that did not allow her to choose the answer that she knew to be correct.
This leads to questions like: Is the author more or less privileged than the test writers? Are the test writers more or less privileged than the students taking the test? If they are of equal privilege then how can there be a standardized test concerning the author's intent?
Well, look at that. An essay about the benefits of slave trade and colonialism, while making no mention of slave labor or oppressed people.
Yet the literary criticism of Borges's short story points out how the two texts have different messages.
For Cervantes, this is a book for the people, written in the language of the people.
For Menard, this is a book for specialists, who would understand the old Spanish language.
In the 20th century of Bertrand Russell and William James, the philosophical concepts that an educated writer like Menard would know are far different than 16th century Spain, so an expression like "history, the mother of truth" has different meanings.
Since you mention Homer, if I were to write of the wine-dark sea you would know I am referring to Homer. It brings along cultural connections, including its own Wikipedia page.
While when Homer uses it, it doesn't have those connections.
The idea that a text stands alone is a formalist style known as New Criticism, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Criticism .
> New Criticism developed as a reaction to the older philological and literary history schools of New England, which focused on the history and meaning of individual words and their relation to foreign and ancient languages, comparative sources, and the biographical circumstances of the authors, taking this approach under the influence of nineteenth-century German scholarship. The New Critics felt that this approach tended to distract from the text and meaning of a poem and entirely neglect its aesthetic qualities in favor of teaching about external factors. ...
> It was frequently alleged that the New Criticism treated literary texts as autonomous and divorced from historical context, and that its practitioners were "uninterested in the human meaning, the social function and effect of literature."
Borges's story is a commentary about this debate.
While the linked-to essay in the Chronicle made no mention of the long discussion of the relevant literary theories, seemingly insisting that analytical writing somehow stands outside that debate, by simply ignoring the debate.
What is more macho, getting coffee yourself, or telling the (almost certainly female) secretary to do it for you? Getting coffee is a menial job.
What is more macho, changing your baby's diaper, or expecting your wife to do it? Changing a diaper is a woman's job.
What is more macho, polishing your own shoes, or paying the shoeshiner?
What is more macho, carrying your own luggage, or paying a porter?
These are menial jobs, often done respectively by poor children ("shoeshine boy") and Black people. (White train passengers once called each Pullman porter "George", following the slaveholder tradition of referring to a slave by the master's name!)
By using a porter you show social dominance, and imply you are rich enough that their payment is a trifle.
(On a tangent, "Qué es más macho, pineapple o knife?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9d9YAz3A4pc by the inestimable Laurie Anderson.)
I looked in archive.org and found nothing on that specific topic, but learned that wheeled luggage existed in the 1940s, at https://archive.org/details/sim_quote_april-13-19-1947_13_16... from 1947:
"INVENTIONS: Wheeled suitcase can be rolled instead of carried. Two small wheels, attached on one end near the bottom when case is standing in ordinary position, touch the floor when suitcase is tilted by means of extensible handle on the top near the other end [Science Service]"
But I'm also thinking about the wheels available at the time - 1950s rollerskates used metal or wooden wheels, as I recall. Rubberized polymer wasn't available for another decade. Metal wheels on luggage seems a poor combination.
I also think porters were much more common, which meant many of those "macho" men could easily pay someone to carry their bags to the room, or airplane.
> On 9 October 2026, the United States imposed new sanctions on the ICC. The sanctions bar the ICC from U.S. financial services, technology companies and transactions in U.S. dollars, and require U.S. businesses and individuals to wind down their businesses with the ICC in six months.
The -chester means something like "a city or walled town, originally one that had been a Roman station", or sometimes "prehistoric fort". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_(placename_element)
I thought it might be the sound, but I see Worcester (which is the spelling of the unpalatalised variant ) is translated to Workaster, so it's a consistent conversion based on the root.
But if it's etymology, I can't find (at least not with my poor knowledge of Dutch) a Dutch use of -kaster.
A-ha! I think I figured it out! The Dutch village of Kesteren is from the Latin "Castra", for "army camp", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kesteren .
Well done!
According to the Guardian article, which it the source the NY Post used, if those trees were illegally logged, they cannot be sold to wood-processing plants.
Do you know if the law also prohibits the topsoil from being sold to farms?
This is part of a 2 year, €13 billion investment by Google, so €5 billion is nearly all of the yearly investment of a single project.
On the other hand, Finland is only a part of Google's world-wide projects, and these projects are expected to produce revenue for, what, decades?
A 10-year time frame changes your numbers to ~0.1% and ~0.2%.
For Google, a fine of ~EUR 5 billion is a rounding error in their cost of doing business.
I've visited libraries in a half dozen countries, where I'm not even a taxpayer. I just walked in.
Some services at the library might not be free, including book checkout or making photocopies.
But if you want to make that distinction, then walking around your neighborhood isn't free because in most place you need to wear clothes, and clothes aren't free.
FWIW, I've walked a lot of forest roads without a car or bike. And the biggest littering problem on our sidewalks, by weight, are the escooter riders who simply leave their machines parked in the middle of the sidewalk.
The problem isn't that the sidewalks are free to use, the problem is one of regulation and enforcement.
That's why libraries are both free and well-loved - they librarians regulate the free space.
"Teachers and pupils won’t be banned from wearing political symbols, like pro-Palestine badges, at schools (AFP/Getty)"
and
"The government-commissioned report did not call for an outright ban on teachers and pupils wearing political symbols or flags – like pro-Palestine badges – in schools and colleges."
"Sir David said he decided against a ban as he believed it was “unworkable” and “untested legally”."
The report is at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/independent-revie... with Recommendation 16:
"School leaders should carefully consider the time, place, and manner of political expression (including in relation to staff dress codes and pupil uniform policies), ensuring that the wearing or displaying of political symbols, flags, or slogans, and the expression of political views, are compliant with their legal duties in relation to political impartiality, whist being mindful of promoting respectful dialogue, inclusion and engagement."
And according to the methodology, calling for someone's resignation at a university is not considered deplatforming, while calling for an art piece to be taken down ... is.
Which I think is a bizarre definition.
I'm a programmer. What you're asking for is far from my expertise. My observation is this FIRE study does not appear sufficient strong to support the conclusions you want to draw from it. I am not able to present evidence which might convince you that your conclusions are right or wrong.
And it is far easier for you to criticize any specific examples I come up with, than for me to do the research you want me to present, which seems rather unfair, given that your only supporting evidence is this FIRE report.
That, combined with the lack of error bars (with estimates for possible increased signal sensitivity in their collection method), and the fact they changed methodology while their reports imply an unchanged methodology, does not lead me to the same conclusion you've reached.
The issue isn't "if the students get violent on campus, the campus gets violent in response", it's that recent history shows that even if students stay non-violent, the campus still gets violent in response, eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UC_Davis_pepper_spray_incident .
It is hard to stay non-violent when the power structure opposed to you becomes increasingly violent.
FWIW, I recall student protests during the 1990s to deplatform Henry Kissinger due to his war crimes and abuses against humanity. There were student anti-war protestors in the 1990s too - I seem to recall Stanford students were opposed to her becoming provost. I'm also sure that if I looked I could find students opposed to a visit by Kurt Waldheim, due to his association with the Nazi Party.
"If they commit to this series"? You know their data starts in 1998. How long until you think they are committed?
If there are no error estimates, how can you even tell if it's an important indicator upward or downwards?
> I seriously doubt that students in the 1990s, the era of the X-Files and Art Bell, were out protesting “pseudoscience”.
Interesting. On what do you base your doubt?
I drew my specific example from being a student in the 1990s, and remembering the protests against the racist psuedoscience of "The Bell Curve". For example, from
https://archive.org/details/bellcurvedebateh00jaco/page/170/...
"""Rushton describes student protests against him: "They have a large number of blacks parading the halls with bullhorns, shouting, banging on the walls. If four or five skinheads with swastika armbands showed up outside my class, there would be tanks on campus to get them off and into jail. If you've got, quote, disadvantaged groups, a band of blacks and left wingers, the university will cave in."""
Here's a bio. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Philippe_Rushton
Now, that's in Canada, but similar things happened in US universities. Do I need to find specific examples or will you trust me on that?
> Why don’t the students seem to go after any datacenters
Ahh, you mean the "How to Blow Up a Pipeline" approach?
Quite simple - polls are warning signs, and data center owners, like pipeline owners, have a lot of money and security, and with the government backing them up.
The civil rights movement started decades before MLK Jr.
MLK Jr. remarked that "a riot is the language of the unheard", not to justify the violent actions against American white supremacy, but to describe the underlying motivations which encourage those riots,
Those who have no political power are more likely to use physical power to cause change. If non-violent protest does not work, then violent protest is more likely.
As a thought experiment, consider the possibility that in the 1990s the administration was more responsive to student protests, and more amicable to cancelling, for example, a scheduled talk by a proponent of pseudoscience.
While three decades later, the administration practices have changed[1], student views are increasingly ignored, and students found their school was increasingly used to give pseudoscience the veneer of respectability.
If non-violent responses don't work, do you sit there and bear it? Do you leave? Or do you get tempted by violence to "make things right" for the shared esprit de corp among the students?
Quoting MLK Jr more fully:
> A riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.
Fight against social justice, expect thoughts to bend towards violence.
[1] https://telescoper.blog/2026/10/18/dark-academia-how-univers...
> "Dark Academia – How Universities Die" is] an analysis of the decline of the neoliberal model of the university accompanied by the rise of commercialisation, managerialism and authoritarian models of governance. ...
> '''Impersonal and unforgiving management hierarchies have supplanted academic judgement, collegiality and professional common sense. in many institutions, senior executives have no PhDs and have been trained in business or the military instead. Mindless performance targets dominate teaching and research to the point of caricature, designed by functionaries who’ve never taught a class or written a research article in their lives. Unfortunately, these hierarchies have become notoriously bossy. Coercion rather than volition compels much academic labour today, even tasks that scholars would have otherwise done willingly because it’s central to their vocation. This surfeit of duress, most of which is unnecessary and counterproductive, is a defining feature of the corporate university.'''
> The book charts the rise of this fanatical managerialism, the consequent fall of academic institutions as places of education, scholarship and research, and their replacement by soulless teaching factories.
I read the methodology and wasn't convinced that the collection isn't biased by the marketing push for awareness of FIRE's mission, or by changing methods in data collection.
Their graphs, for example, don't even show error bars, which makes it impossible to determine if the trend they report is meaningful or random noise.
Regarding old campus newspapers, part of the "expensive and slow scholarly effort" means also reading the followup papers to see if there is information about a meeting being held or canceled, and if there isn't, include that in the statistics collection.