eplanit

A clever bum, for sure.

"Johnston’s feelings about money are inextricably bound up in his certainty that refusing to spend it is the only moral way to live."

It's ok for others to spend on his behalf, though. It sounds like he is applying an effective story to a nicely vulnerable population of marks.

While his philosophy is BS, I cynically admire his hustle.

There was a similar article regarding ants a couple or more years ago, also featured on HN. Same author, I wonder?

Really good timeline presentation. I think that Napster/peer-to-peer circa 1995 deserves to be added.

A little bitter, are we?

I don't think I'll accept such extreme authoritarianism. It's quite a thing to want so much state control over peoples' lives.

We are the lifelong chain-smoker who, when diagnosed with lung cancer, chooses to keep smoking because of a misguided belief that "at least I'll die happy".

Facebook is becoming "Buy-n-Large" from "Wall-e". The prescience of that movie is more evident every year since it was made.

I'm curious and it seems cool, but no I'm no opening up my camera to some random website. As an option, it'd be nice if it offered a simple button to trigger the change instead of using the camera.

Great! Thank you.

Or, we could reject insanity and recognize that all people are imperfect, and that societies' values change over time.

They're confusing Bezos with Musk. Musk is revolutionizing the adoption of solar energy and non-petroleum vehicles, and even has a goal of liberating humanity from Earth itself. Lofty, and becoming so real. Not to mention Spacex/starlink and the implications for a truly global internet, _serious_ space travel, ...

Name one thing Bezos is doing that isn't about himself. I liked his "thank you" to Amazon customers (I for sure helped get him into space) -- but it was simultaneously very off-putting, and I'm not surprised he's completely blind to that reaction. Kudos to him for his success, which I respect, but I find nothing about him to admire.

Godspeed to framework! When you have a linux version I'll buy one.

That review is indeed lukewarm, but lists not one specific gripe as to anything wrong or not working. It's really a worthless review.

And feels like it still is.

Indian-American: An American citizen whose family came from India.

American Indian: same as Native American.

Wasn't K-Pop bombardment working well enough as a downvote mechanism? /s

Twitter is a sewer.

It's tiresome. You can't use the image of a Native American as a symbol of strength and bravery as was done by sports teams and clubs -- despite the explicit intention of honor, it's cast as an insult (the Washington Redskins was an outlier and the antithesis of this -- good riddance to them and their ridiculous logo). A man builds a monument to a famous Native American, and his stated intent is to honor and somehow try and compensate for the wrongs done to them. Naaah, he's bad, too.

When I went to summer camp as a kid, the cabins were divided in two (how they were constructed), with one side being the Comanches, and the other side the Apaches. The idea was strength and bravery (as practically all such references were). Never ever was any of that about denigrating or insulting a group. Do people want their mascot to be a symbol of someone they hate or belittle? Of course not. Anyway, I'm sure that's all gone now, too.

Fine. I guess we should topple all the monuments built for the Indians along with all the other statues of 18th and 19th century Americans. Let's think of the Indians only as victims (there is no pride in victim-hood, and it implies weakness); or, maybe keep them so that people might be able to gain some insight into history.

So if I go on an ocean cruise I'm a Sailor?

Hmmm.. the photo seems to indicate otherwise: https://twitter.com/blueorigin/status/1417251070989029376

It's intersting (sort of) to contrast Bezos with Musk on this: Musk wants to colonize other planets, and in his other work to convert from fossil fuels -- truly moving the species forward. Bezos, on the other hand, fancies himself as Jean-Luc Picard, made trip #1 about himself, and what he's really making happen is a lucrative space tourism business. Still cool, but not at all on par with Musk's work.

Congrats Bezos, nonetheless (he gets a Nancy Pelosi clap, at least).

Yes, water dowsing is bullshit, and that has broad consensus. So, the author uses that to basically make the argument that journalism should no longer be objective (the current prevailing trend amongst journalists, it seems), and to report only the "truth" that the reporter believes in. This is why "journalism" is crap nowadays, and why so many people have lost faith in it. Because, writing about Covid's possible lab leak, or wondering about the new vaccines are really similar to writing about water dowsing, right?

It's classic Strawman arguing (and even has a Trump reference for a bonus point).

He handled that gracefully, which shows very good people ("soft") skills.

One "consultant" technique I use in such situations is to say the correct thing, but while giving "credit" to the person who was actually wrong: "I think $JOE is right about $TOPIC, and what he's saying is that <proceed to making the _correct_ case>". I find that many will be persuaded and are more willing to accept the correction in this form, as they're not being told that they're wrong. If they still don't agree, then I can ratchet up to more pointed criticism: "oh then I misunderstood you...but isn't there a problem then because...."; but, if you can keep bringing them in by validating at least some what of they thought, it helps.

I'm guessing the Android Launcher is next to have banner ads.

"Diet soda, dunno what to do with that one."

Let people decide for themselves? Alcohol is unhealthy, so it should be banned. Hamburgers are high fat and environmentally impactful, so those should be banned, too. Let's not forget cigarettes....

Yes people should opt to not consume unhealthy stuff, but how much authoritarianism do you really want?

It's like how Nevada residents _insist_ on the incorrect pronunciation of the name of their state[1]. I go with the "when in Rome..." philosophy -- I say it wrong when I'm there, too.

[1] https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/618644/youre-probably-pr...

For me, it would be because of a great ("great" as in Ed Wood style film-making) movie "The Monster that Challenged the World" (even the title seems low budget).

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050722/

tl;dr "An earthquake in the Salton Sea unleashes a horde of prehistoric mollusk monsters. Discovering the creatures, a Naval officer and several scientists attempt to stop the monsters, but they escape into the canal system of the California's Imperial Valley and terrorize the populace"

I didn't define race in any sociopolitical way -- precisely the opposite, in fact. The socio-political aspect comes from the Nationality+Ethnicity parts.

My wife is Chinese, and feels a racial kinship to Asian people from many countries: Japan, Korea, Vietnam, ... Refers to all as Asian.

The definitions I've known have remained stable until very recently. I'll stick with Race: genetics; Ethnicity: the group/tribe one "grows up" or is most shaped by; Nationality: the country you're in/from.

They can all align to (mostly) one group, like in India and China, or can be mostly aligned like in northern Europe, or a melting pot like the US.

It's the "connotations" (i.e. conflations) that are the reason that almost everything is labeled "racist".

Wrong. Try Japan. They're clean, polite, and courteous. Crowded trains in August (like all year) are surprisingly absent of body odor (and litter, and noisy people, ...).

Different folks are indeed different in some ways.

Those are examples of a morally conservative society, in which a Judeo-Christian value system was in place, and when there was a stronger emphasis on conformity. I guess the sensitivity was in breaking those rules. In those times too, however, children were taught "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me".

Now, everyone is comfortable with talk of sex and biological realities...but a book critical of transgenderism is literally called "violence": https://www.rt.com/usa/529308-american-booksellers-associati....

I guess critics of such topics are today's Juvenile Delinquents. /s