Hacker News Reader

primrooton Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram Restricted in Southern Turkey

Also related. "Turkey’s Erdogan threatens to release millions of refugees into Europe over criticism of Syria offensive" https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/10/turkeys-erdogan-threatens-re... Emphasis mine.

primrooton How much does air pollution cost the U.S.?

But does it cost the rich more than it costs the poor? Larry Summers once had an infamous opinion about this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summers_memo I am sharing it not defending it.

primrooton Chile’s attempts to move up the lithium value chain are not working

Agreed. That's why I said "initially." Sanctions ended when the Chicago Boys were in charge of economic policy, but still did not convince the military dictatorship to hand Codelco to private control.

primrooton Chile’s attempts to move up the lithium value chain are not working

This of course partially lead to economic sanctions, and a coup. Chileans initially were made to pay dearly for such insolence.

primrooton Car tires biggest likely source of microplastics in California coastal waters

This is happening in my hometown Chitré, Panama, an 80k population town in a developing country. But ask almost anyone and they'll tell you how Chitré feels more and more like the capital city, i.e. more developed. No politician in her right mind is going to propose increasing tariffs on cars and taxes on fuel. People thinks its perfectly OK if pedestrians have access to the worst infrastructure, while cars proliferate. After all, you work hard, buy a car, close the windows, turn on the AC, and let the underachievers breathe burned fuel. The world is in order.

Update: I've also stayed several months in Chile, which based on GDP, HDI, and Gini Coefficient, is a more developed country. Fuel is twice the price as in Panama, pedestrian infrastructure is well maintained, and the car driver culture in terms of following rules is the opposite of Panama. Mom and pop shops are the norm there, everywhere I went.

primrooton In Defense of Richard Stallman

Below is a quote from an interview, where Norman Finkelstein discusses the subject of thought policing. Norman Finkelstein has of course been affected by the defense of political correctness, as documented in the documentary "The Trials of Norman Finkelstein."

"What he should have done was in my opinion deliver one policy speech. 'This is where we stand on antisemitism. This is where we stand on the mechanisms for dealing with antisemitism in our party. Case closed.' The other major mistake he made was .. a complete abandonment of the principle of free speech. People have a right to say and think whatever they want. 'I'm a member of the Labour Party. OK. I subscribe to Labour Party's political platform. That's what makes me a member.' But that doesn't mean you have the right to troll my Facebook postings, you have the right to vet everything I say or post on Instagram. I mean that's Romania under Ceausescu, that's North Korea under Kim Il Sung. That's now going to be the mandate of the Labour Party? To be trolling in your thoughts and ideas? To see whether you are an antisemite? Everybody, including you, including your camera people harbors some antisemitic stereotypes... OK. Who cares? I mean It's very hard to extirpate, ... because it's rooted in thousands of years. I mean it's everywhere. It's part of the atmosphere, it's part of the environment, it's part of the history. Do I not harbor any anti-black stereotypes any racist stereotypes? Do I harbor no sexist stereotypes? No! And now we are going to have a Labour Party, which is going to [?] the depths of your conscience, ... looking for some evidence of antisemitism, ...? It's complete lunacy and it's a complete repudiation, abandonment of the most fundamental principles of what's called the Enlightenment beginning with as the Germans put it in that nice German folk song Die Gedanken sind Frei (Thoughts are free). People have the right to think what they believe, and since thought is inseparable from speech, you have the right to think and speak as you please. And if you don't like what a person is saying then you have the right either not to listen or try to persuade the person ... but what you don't have the right to do is penalize people, punish people, expel people for their thoughts... It's a complete political disaster because all it does is it forces people to repress what they're thinking until a demagogue comes along and starts saying what you're thinking, what you were forced to repress. And instead of your erroneous thoughts having been answered, the fact that you were forced to repress them, it validates it for you. ... And then the demagogue comes along and starts to exploit all of those repressed thoughts. So morally it's unacceptable to try to police people's thoughts and politically it's a complete disaster." https://youtu.be/OPYfLY2cAi4?t=616

Update: There is also that famous video where Finkelstein talks about the "crocodile tears" of a German student taking about the son of Holocaust survivors being ... offensive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O5zgXeCynQ&t=209s

primrooton White House Weighs Limits on U.S. Portfolio Flows Into China

The so-called free market game is naturally rigged in favor of those who have more access to capital. And this includes capital of restricted intellectual property, however free one thinks restricting that capital is. However, even with the advantage of capital, a rich country like the US can find reasons, such as national security, to go against the rules. Agricultural subsidies and the military industrial complex go against the free market. Furthermore the US has a history of close relationships with countries which are in theory its philosophical opposite (Romania under Ceausescu, Saudi Arabia, and more recently Myanmar). Philosophical conflict is just an intellectually weak way of making a geopolitical conflict seem less cynical.

primrooton White House Weighs Limits on U.S. Portfolio Flows Into China

When one is powerful enough, rules are an advantage. The powerful can now enjoy the well protected benefit of breaking the rules. That's how we can more or less predict who breaks the rules.

primrooton Games Economists Play

A country implements certain policies and after some time effects are seen. Conclusion? It depends. Do the like economists like the policy, yes or no? Have things gone well or bad?

1. No. Bad. Things went bad because country did not do as economists said. 2. Yes. Bad. Things went bad because country did not deal with past policies that economists don't like. 3. No. Good. Things went well because of past policies economists do like. 4. No. Bad. Things went bad because country did not listen to the economists.

Economists are always right. There's always enough of the ideal and the non ideal going on to establish the desired causality, and negligible chance of exact recurrence.

I only take economists seriously when they talk densely and fluently about history and its complexities. I recommend Mark Blyth.

primrooton Delicate wash cycles release more microfibres

I would say our unscientific backward sense of aesthetics requires us to iron. Let's recall Veblen's ideas, and move society forward by questioning all the wasteful status-signalling rituals.

Update: your comment is more reason for me to buy Linen. I originally preferred it to cotton since the fabric tends to be more well suited to my warm tropical environment.

primrooton How climate change is melting, drying and flooding Earth – in pictures

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

"Global cooling was a conjecture, especially during the 1970s, of imminent cooling of the Earth culminating in a period of extensive glaciation. Some press reports in the 1970s speculated about continued cooling; these did not accurately reflect the scientific literature of the time, which was generally more concerned with warming from an enhanced greenhouse effect."

I would describe it a sample of irrelevant pop science noise from the past, that AGW deniers like to mindlessly compare to the current well established theory of AGW.

primrooton Arctic sea ice reaches second lowest minimum in satellite record

There may be nothing we can do to stop it, but there are measures society needs to take to not worsen the problem.

primrooton “Did You Eat the Whole Cake?” On Learning Estonian

At least in Panama, and certainly other Latin American countries mixing English and Spanish sounds like one is trying too hard at looking like one belongs to the upper class, or that one is uneducated enough not to know the right words to express an idea in one's own language.

primrooton [dead]

I read the context of that whole quote in the past, and iirc judicious foresight did not mean the judicious foresight of leaders in positions of government authority. In the most basic interpretation it can just mean that most people are well-informed. The current system is somewhat hypocritically established upon this idea. If that were the case, PR would not exist at the scale it does.

primrooton [dead]

I think the point is to not put one's hopes on the natural tendencies of any system, but to apply "judicious foresight," to borrow the phrase from J.S. Mill's Principles of Political Economy.

" Mechanical inventions... have not yet begun to effect those great changes in human destiny, which it is in their nature and in their futurity to accomplish. Only when, in addition to just institutions, the increase of mankind shall be under the deliberate guidance of judicious foresight, can the conquests made from the powers of nature by the intellect and energy of scientific discoverers become the common property of the species, and the means of improving and elevating the universal lot..."

primrooton [dead]

During extreme times, when money becomes just another idol in the face of ruthless nature ready to annihilate our superstitions, let's talk about the Necessity Defense https://law.stanford.edu/publications/the-climate-necessity-... .

primrooton Caesarean babies have different gut bacteria, microbiome study finds

> “In many cases, a caesarean is a life-saving procedure and can be the right choice for a woman and her baby,”

And in other cases it is a way to make life easier for medical staff?

Here in Panama, babies are disproportionately born through C-section in privately run hospitals.

Update: While I can't cite any stats for Panama, there is an article [0] that says

"The rates can be even higher in private clinics. For example, in Brazil, 80-90 percent of births in private clinics are now C-sections, compared with about 30-40 percent of births in public hospitals."

[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/10/12/6561984...

primrooton Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

This is a quote from an interview, where Norman Finkelstein discusses the subject of thought policing.

"What he should have done was in my opinion deliver one policy speech. 'This is where we stand on antisemitism. This is where we stand on the mechanisms for dealing with antisemitism in our party. Case closed.' The other major mistake he made was .. a complete abandonment of the principle of free speech. People have a right to say and think whatever they want. 'I'm a member of the Labour Party. OK. I subscribe to Labour Party's political platform. That's what makes me a member.' But that doesn't mean you have the right to troll my Facebook postings, you have the right to vet everything I say or post on Instagram. I mean that's Romania under Ceausescu, that's North Korea under Kim Il Sung. That's now going to be the mandate of the Labour Party? To be trolling in your thoughts and ideas? To see whether you are an antisemite? Everybody, including you, including your camera people harbors some antisemitic stereotypes... OK. Who cares? I mean It's very hard to extirpate, ... because it's rooted in thousands of years. I mean it's everywhere. It's part of the atmosphere, it's part of the environment, it's part of the history. Do I not harbor any anti-black stereotypes any racist stereotypes? Do I harbor no sexist stereotypes? No! And now we are going to have a Labour Party, which is going to [?] the depths of your conscience, ... looking for some evidence of antisemitism, ...? It's complete lunacy and it's a complete repudiation, abandonment of the most fundamental principles of what's called the Enlightenment beginning with as the Germans put it in that nice German folk song Die Gedanken sind Frei (Thoughts are free). People have the right to think what they believe, and since thought is inseparable from speech, you have the right to think and speak as you please. And if you don't like what a person is saying then you have the right either not to listen or try to persuade the person ... but what you don't have the right to do is penalize people, punish people, expel people for their thoughts... It's a complete political disaster because all it does is it forces people to repress what they're thinking until a demagogue comes along and starts saying what you're thinking, what you were forced to repress. And instead of your erroneous thoughts having been answered, the fact that you were forced to repress them, it validates it for you. ... And then the demagogue comes along and starts to exploit all of those repressed thoughts. So morally it's unacceptable to try to police people's thoughts and politically it's a complete disaster." https://youtu.be/OPYfLY2cAi4?t=616

primrooton Nearly 90 percent of Peruvians want members of Congress to step down

This occurred during the first government of Alan García https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accomarca_massacre

primrooton Worms fail to thrive in soil containing microplastics: study

"Even as their ad was inducing guilt in viewers for spreading trash, Keep America Beautiful’s members were fighting legislation that could have done much to address the problem."

https://theintercept.com/2019/07/20/plastics-industry-plasti...

primrooton Worms fail to thrive in soil containing microplastics: study

Kevin Anderson often stresses out this point.

Besides there is this point regarding recycling:

“It was propaganda that did not appear propagandistic. It also shielded corporate polluters from blame by shifting responsibility onto individuals.”

https://theintercept.com/2019/07/20/plastics-industry-plasti...

primrooton France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

> Companies are even easier to control than people because their whole existence is made possible by laws and regulations of governments.

And this is how we know the "small government" slogan is an absolute sham.

primrooton Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914

> faster-growing, larger, longer-lasting vegetables are better product

Whatever product fits into the economies of scale, and selective commoditization solely for the sake of profit concentration not nutrition or environment.

But back to the idea of measuring everything. These are the counterpoints I can think about regarding measuring and controling:

* Measuring and controlling cost resources, some less, some more. E.g. It is easier to measure yields than to measure nutrition.

* There is imperfect knowledge on how to respond (control) after a given measurement, or even what measurements are important. E.g. Premature optimization, Goodhart's law, lack of certainty regarding nutrition.

* There are conflicting interests on what the result of controlling should be. E.g. more profits or more nutrition?

* Under appropriate circumstances systems can respond to variability or keep functioning without human control or input. This is resilience. E.g. Pollinating insects, edible weeds.

primrooton Artificial leaf produces first drugs using sunlight

"Losing patience, he sent the message:

You are advised to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your city.

The Spartan ephors again replied with a single word:

If." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconic_phrase

primrooton Uber proposes policy that would pay drivers a minimum wage of $21 per hour

The Principle of Least Action applied to human collective instincts.

primrooton What Companies Are For

The concept of property is predicated on the existence of government, and we've just completed the circle.

"Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions. It is only under the shelter of the civil magistrate that the owner of that valuable property, which is acquired by the labour of many years, or perhaps of many successive generations, can sleep a single night in security. He is at all times surrounded by unknown enemies, whom, though he never provoked, he can never appease, and from whose injustice he can be protected only by the powerful arm of the civil magistrate continually held up to chastise it. The acquisition of valuable and extensive property, therefore, necessarily requires the establishment of civil government. Where there is no property, or at least none that exceeds the value of two or three days labour, civil government is not so necessary.

Civil government supposes a certain subordination. But as the necessity of civil government gradually grows up with the acquisition of valuable property, so the principal causes which naturally introduce subordination gradually grow up with the growth of that valuable property. "

(Emphasis mine)

http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN20.html

primrooton What Companies Are For

The adjective liber in Latin is what the slaves are not, that is, "unrestricted [people]". The root 'lewdh-, from which it comes, is also in Leute and ljudi (people). Liberty today seems to be often used to mean unrestrictedness of capital/property/contracts, so the connection I see with its semantic history is the idea that some people can be more people than others, and that the government should be strong enough to deter anyone from threatening this state of liberty (e.g. back then by fleeing from slavery, now by ... well the list is too long). Remember the words of Laozi, long and short give rise to each other.

primrooton What If the Singularity Does Not Happen? (2007) [video]

> Plants ... who are resilient to all herbizides and selective bred for maximum spread into our ecologic niche.

Ironically one of such plants is Cyperus Rotundus, very useful in times of famine. Perhaps we are living in hyperopic age, where the obsession with economies of scale and controlled environments makes the immediate localized complexity into a high entropy nuisance worthy of destruction.

primrooton Translating and Interpreting Chinese Philosophy

> since they’re just talking about fundamental observations of the mind which are universal

I have to politely disagree. In fact there are lots of subjects in common between so called Eastern and Western philosophy. Maybe you are mostly thinking about Yoga. Just reading the beginning of this piece of text today https://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=en&id=41979&remap=gb made me think about a phrase used by Jesus and then much later by Marx "Let the dead bury their dead."

primrooton Translating and Interpreting Chinese Philosophy

You are welcome. Here is some material describing the grammar in case anyone is interested. http://www.invisiblebooks.com/CGCC.htm