squillion

I've encountered all the issue listed in the post. The worst for me is redundant (overdetermined) state, that is, when a state variable is actually derivable from other state variables. It's pointless, confusing, and broadens the space of possible states, including impossible and inconsistent ones.

> Assume all people in the world die except 2 people...

That's a great argument I had never heard before, thanks!

The way I see it is that any given economy has an amount of real resources (labor, raw materials, know-how...) that are often under-utilized. In such cases targeted government spending can mobilize those resources in a way that increases output without creating the bottlenecks that cause inflation.

It's not about monads, it's about effectful code, which is represented by special types (e.g. IO in Haskell, Eff in PureScript). Effectful code can call pure code, but not vice-versa. Since a program will have to do something, the main function is always effectful, i.e. it returns an effectful special type. So you're right that pure code isn't evaluated until some effectful code is ultimately returned by the main function and executed (by a runtime or equivalent). However, in purely functional languages most code is pure, even though it's ultimately called by effectful code.

Monads and side-effects aren't intrinsically related. Simplifying, a monad is something with flatMap() - in JavaScript, Array and Promise are monads (kinda). What flatMap() gives you is the ability to chain things, which is useful to sequence side-effects so that they can be performed by a machine in a given order. That's why IO and Eff are monads.

This.

The truth is that those clubs are more elitist than the opera house.

> So you are saying that it’s Israel’s fault that jews are being subjected to antisemitism?

Absolutely not.

My point is that besides antisemitism (widespread, and disgraceful), the demonstrations stem from well-founded humanitarian concerns. The German government has only offered empty words in that respect. As an allied of Israel, it could do much more.

The UN SecGen Guterres put it in better words than I can:

> But the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.

Regarding "carpet bombing". If that seems exaggerated to you, let's use IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari's words: “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy”. Satellite images show entire neighborhoods flattened[1] to facilitate the ground incursion. Those were residential buildings.

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/0e1fb7a1-8547-48d0-b4d6-bd30f566a...

It's true, there's a lot antisemitism in Germany.

But besides the nice words and the threats of deportations, the government could do something more concrete that would demonstrate its good will. How about calling for a ceasefire, like the UN Secretary-General did[1]? Gaza city is now encircled with a million people inside, most of them civilians, with no access to water and energy, while being carpet-bombed[2] on a daily basis. Mere words of supports for humanitarian help in such a situation are disingenuous.

[1] https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/speeches/2023-10-24/secr... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/10/right-now-it-i...

I read the daily Links post of https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/

It's mainly focused on economics and geopolitics, from a leftist perspective.

The pictures with the finger at the end are even more confusing. They conflate the mapping from body parts to cerebral cortex (the cortical homunculus) with the mapping from the homunculus to some other part of the brain were the 3D environment is allegedly mapped. They don't make sense to me.

After an explanation that without L/R crossing the body map in the brain would be flipped upside down, comes this revealing passage:

"To make sense of the sensation [...] your brain would have to switch from one somatotopic map to another one with the opposite z-axis orientation".

This a textbook example of the "Cartesian theater" fallacy. It assumes a little person inside the brain who has to deal with an image projected upside-down. Of course that doesn't make sense.

> You wouldn't know it from today's frontend discourse, but the modern era has never been without high-quality alternatives to React, Angular, Ember, and other legacy desktop-era frameworks.

"You wouldn't know it from today's frontend discourse"??? Seriously? Everybody and their dog know about those frameworks.

It feels like the first footnote was added in response to criticism from the reviewers of the drafts. It contradicts the body of the article and makes the whole thing incomprehensible.

The original article must have been a criticism of frontend frameworks in general. It points to the "sandy foundations" and frames all attempts at solutions as simply adding complexity - probably including all those new frameworks everybody talks about.

Yeah, what a self-absorbed, giant jerk. He missed his daughter's competition but of course he'd do it again anytime for the lulz.

BTW the basic facts might be true but the details reek of bullshit.

> Why Heinz spent 185,000 hours redesigning this ketchup bottle cap

I bet the new cap is also cheaper to produce. They'll recoup the 1.2 million soon.

The anecdotes in this story sound perfectly plausible to me. I've been hearing this kind of stories for years now, and no, not from "republican" sources.

By the way, there's no shortage of anti-woke leftists. Just one example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqV3ARvuymY

Of course it was. Setting standards involves competing interests, bargaining, power dynamics... Obviously the stronger party will have the upper hand.

It's also funny how the article praises the freight container standard as kind of ideal, while in fact it was the product of "committee work worthy of the Bolsheviks":

"Being an ISO standard, the text is a little dry, but to me it’s a thing of great beauty, because of the collective effort it enabled. Naturally, I expected the process of creating such beauty to be a virtual Platonic Symposium of engineering prowess and disinterested advocacy. Nothing could have been further from the truth."

Read more at https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/12/the-romance-of-shipp...

I completely agree that Graeber's barter myth "debunking" is bullshit. However, even as a thought experiment, the barter story was never very enlightening - actually more confusing than anything. It suggests that money is a commodity (salt, gold, cigarettes or whatever), while we know that's not the case. The gold standard is long gone and bank lending creates money. These facts are very hard to explain starting from barter.

I still recommend Graeber's book. If you already have a decent grasp of macroeconomics it can provide perspective and depth.

The problem with this topic is that it's highly contested. Be prepared for foundational and often ideological controversies. You know, a lot's at stake.

To get an idea of the mainstream and where the general mood is, I'd start from Wikipedia.

For bank money:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous_money

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_circuit_theory

For central bank money (basically cash):

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_creation

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartalism

Note that both monetary circuit theory and chartalism are considered _heterodox_ economics. Yes, "regular" economics is called _orthodox_!

I personally think Modern Monetary Theory nails it. The MMT Podcast (http://themmtpodcast.com/) is accessible, entertaining, and non-dogmatic. A beautiful introductory book is "1000 Castaways: Fundamentals of Economics" by Clint Ballinger.