pchristensen

To be clear, it was one talk out of ~30, not the main topic. But the talk (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference...) was unusually direct and stood out among the more common, often repeated topics like faith, temples, etc.

I think the main reaction (at least in tech circles) is that companies like Meta have the power, the legal protection, the political cover, and the indifference to shut down anyone on their platform. So making them the sole provider for your tech and communication is a huge risk.

And this incident (negligent takedown of a community on an important day) demonstrates the point perfectly.

That is definitely part of the history, but there is no reality where the USA wouldn't have taken Hawai'i, one way or another, because of it's strategic location and the 19th century attitude toward conquest. Hawai'i couldn't defeat Western powers militarily, especially after disease wiped out so much of the population, and none of the Asian countries had developed enough to compete at that point.

But that inevitability doesn't excuse the specific deceit and treachery around the annexation of Hawai'i.

This is a multi-sided conflict. Ignoring reality and history won't help, even if you feel very strongly that one of those sides is right.

  - 1948 - Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon invade Israel
  - 1956 - Israel invades the Sinai
  - 1967 - Israel preemptively strikes Egypt in response to military buildup 
  - 1973 - Egypt and Syria invade Israel
  - 1982 - Israel invades Lebanon
  - 2006 - Hezbollah attacks Israel

On the contrary, I was using those charters to establish shared blame, rather than singling out Israel for every act of aggression in the conflict.

I’m well aware of the history.

What I meant was, I don’t think Israel is the only guilty party in that decades old conflict, nor the only side with agency to choose how to react in the conflict.

Read the Hamas charter, Iran’s statements about Israel, etc. Israel is not unique in choosing violence.

If you watch Top Gear, do you think it's fine for your data to go to Raytheon? Alcoa? Goldman Sachs? Saudi Aramco?

Netflix has to know what you're watching in order to show it to you. Sony doesn't have to know what you're watching to render HDMI output. All companies are not created equal in every single transaction.

Israel is definitely a threat to its enemies, but even if you think it's all their fault and they deserve it (I do not think that), it's pretty obvious that Israel also faces many threats.

That is only one part of Israeli society.

2nd largest manufacturer by dollar value, not overall activity, employment, share of employment, value relative to other industries, percentage of consumption manufactured domestically, etc etc etc. America's manufacturing is specialized on highly valuable outputs.

If you care at all about this, you'll love Neal Stephenson's long article Mother Earth, Motherboard: https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/

Different companies have different track records and incentives with regard to privacy. There may be companies more trustworthy than Apple, but there aren't many companies less worthy than most TV manufacturers.

Over the years, readers learned what to expect from Joel and Paul, which gave them freedom to continue writing in their own style. I'm curious how the same writing would be received today in a very different environment - much more crowded and driven more by social media than the open web, not to mention the shift of attention towards video. I just don't think writers today have access to the attention that tech bloggers of an earlier era built up.

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are indeed Christian.

I havent read PSS but I loved The Vital Question and Transformer. It was so much better than a book on the Krebs cycle had any business being. I probably liked VQ better though.

I’m also reading Seeing Like a State!

Most Middle Eastern Jews were definitely not voluntary migrants in 1948. They were expelled from cities and lands they had lived in for centuries.

From how I understand the history, in 1948, the attacking Arab armies from neighboring countries told the local Arabs (Palestinians) to leave the war zone to be safe. But when Israel won the war, those Arabs could not return.

I’d imagine many of them are immigrants that either fled, were deported, or decided not to return for the picking seasons.

Reminds me of in the Avengers - SHIELD couldn't navigate the helicarrier, and Nick Fury said "Is the sun setting? Then put it on our left!"

Several of the referenced studies used award winning modernist buildings, and others used similar size and use of buildings e.g. city halls.

You beat me to it!

I don't think you're saying the same thing.

Transportation allows people to live far from where they work, but that's everything from horses to bullet trains.

Free roads allow for dispersed uses but doesn't affect how dense of segregated they are. Beyond the cost and space requirements to park everyone's cars. Zoning is doing almost all the work you're describing - even with the presence of cars and subsidized highways, the built environment would look very different without zoning and with more market forces.

Jacksonville (and most of Florida) is extremely low lying with a high water table, so sub-surface construction (basements) and subways are basically impossible.

Structurally, it's a low density, car-based city so light rail (as opposed to busses) requires a lot of up front investment without the land use to justify it. At this point, like many US cities, adding effective transit is a chicken and egg problem with land use.

Transit access is what concentrates jobs and creates urban vitality. Highway access has a similar effect but creates corridors and edge city clusters which also drive up land values and cost but are impossible to effectively serve by transit, requiring every single person to drive.

Props to you both for honesty and understanding the economics.

I think you might be surprised at what percentage of the residential land in basically every metro area, and even percentage of all land in the metro area, is zoned for SFH only[1]. In the USA, he last century of development was zoned for SFH, and there's not a budget or state capacity to build sufficient transit out to the exurban areas where there is land for new neighborhoods.

[1] Here are some for reference: City / Metro Area Residential Land Zoned Single-Family Only (%) - San Jose, CA 94% - Arlington, TX 89% - Charlotte, NC 84% - Seattle, WA 81% - Chicago, IL 79% - Portland, OR 77% - Los Angeles, CA 75% - Minneapolis, MN 70% - Washington, D.C. 36% - New York City, NY 15%

Seattle, Chicago, and Los Angeles are surprisingly high, but hundreds of square miles of SFH offsets a lot of lakefront high-rises.

But this is the whole reason people complain about NIMBYs - there are no other backyards left!

That is the correct translation, well done!

He's a professional writer. As the article says, even if you write your own words, this is still a problem with proofreading, copy-pasting references or quotes, and "AI checkers".

The ability of citizens to restrict or prohibit building in their jurisdiction is extremely strong, basically everywhere in the developed world[1]. There's not much they can do to affirmatively cause things to be built - that still takes capital and expertise - but local controls have stifled many, many, many parts of economic development and greatly skewed the economy.

[1] https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-great-downzoning/