Casting pig iron at the Iroquois smelter | Hacker News Reader

Casting pig iron at the Iroquois smelter

echevarria.io

64 pointsivanech14 comments

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If you like iron making. The old way is on display here, an original blast furnace from 1693 in Belgium. Very rare.

http://www.mmil.be/

In the US we have the Saugus iron works which ran from around 1645-1670. It’s a fun visit.

https://www.nps.gov/sair/index.htm

Evil feels like the wrong word and oddly placed at that.

Many people equate "evil" and "harmful" implicitly.

Are you saying this is more harm prevention/safteyism rhetoric?

Seems like a direct reference to William Blake's 'satanic mills'.

I felt the substance of the message more than the details.

Does it really detract from the essence of it? Sometimes just the realization of the underlying meaning is all that is needed to be beautiful, even if the words aren't perfect.

It's a direct reference to the essay called "Photographing Evil" that is discussed in the next paragraph. If you want to bridge the gap from your article to someone else's it helps to use the same terminology.

It's a bit awkward, though, and I would use the word sinister myself as a compromise, but I certainly see why they did what they did.

I guess the summary fails to explain why this qualifies as evil as opposed to early industry or lack of knowledge. I tried to look up whether the industry knew whether these were harmful fumes and whether there were reasonable alternatives to iron production back then but couldn't find anything.

You seem to believe that evil requires a priori knowledge or intent. I think there is enough wiggle room in that word to allow otherwise.

Merriam Webster offers causing harm or injury to someone which would fit the article.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/evil

That definition is a bit dated. Evil as a result does not relate to evil with intent, and using it in that context is odd in modern times.

To make my example a bit more concise, if your financial planner lost you money on the market would you ever tell them, "You did an evil thing"? Of course not, but it did result in harm to you, regardless of their intent.

To clarify, it's "evil" as in the problem of evil [1] – not necessarily malicious but instead anything involving suffering. This is also how "evil" is used in the essay Photographing Evil by Robert Adams.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil

"Modern pig casting machines produce stick pigs, which break into smaller 4–10 kg piglets at discharge." -- wikipedia page on pig iron

I’m going to be smiling all day thinking about this use of the term piglet

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