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> Curing Malaria is cool but is there nothing in Seattle that he can contribute to?

Nothing in this sentence gave you pause for a second thought? Would you replace Jonas Salk with a community garden?

The criticism of Altman is apt because he hasn't achieved anything of definitive social value. (Not in a way someone else wouldn't have on a similar timeline.) Equating anything he's done to the eradication of malaria is pure scope failure.

Maybe let's not feed green-account trolls with words of calculated malice.

> let's not feed green-account trolls with words of calculated malice

Let's "assume good faith" and "respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize" [1].

They may be a troll, or an idiot. Or they may be reflecting an increasingly-prevalent view that people should stick to their "own" territory, for various definitions of "own." (Whether this fuel anti-immigrant xenophobia, colonist/coloniser moral binaries, or the dismissal or a disease eradicator.)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I sincerely believe "obvious troll" was the strongest possible interpretation of that comment.

edit: For with it's worth, "don't feed trolls" is also an HN guideline ("Don't feed egregious comments by replying").

Seattle is home to ~750,000 people. Malaria affects ~250,000,000 people a year.

From https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/committed-grants it looks like Seattle is the city that they've given the most grants to - 3,609 so far.

https://lite.datasette.io/?csv=https://static.simonwillison....

Through their work, the gates foundation has probably saved millions of lives, maybe tens of millions of lives, over the past 25 years.

They’ve also been deeply involved with various education reforms in the US. They’re definitely active here.

Their work in education has often been a mixed bag, sometimes spending huge amounts of money to enact initiatives based on little or no empirical research that ultimately hurt the students who have the misfortune of being saved by yet another tech billionaire who believes skill in computer programming and business mean they’re an authority on everything.

Yeah I agree, and chose my words carefully. Their education reform work in the US has been much more murky.

Their work in Africa has had unambiguously huge benefits.

OP should check out Effective Altruism & studies on what the most effective way to spend your resources on is.

Others have called out how silly your comparison is, but Gates and Microsoft have contributed to plenty of local things. Bill and Melinda have given hundreds of millions to local universities [1], tens of millions to local schools [2], millions to local charities [3] and you'll find their names on the donor lists of plenty of local institutions (arts, etc.). You could have seen all of this with a single search for "Bill Gates Seattle donation" but instead came here to make malicious accusations.

[1]: https://globalhealth.washington.edu/news/2017/01/25/seattle-...

[2]: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/ideas/media-center/press-rel...

[3]: https://www.uwkc.org/donate/gates-endowment/

Now find anything on that list where they didn't get something they wanted in return. They're building a brand, this is marketing.

That is a ridiculously cynical take. You can build a brand for a lot cheaper than $300 million if that's your goal.

It's a VERY realistic take based on roughly 30 years in the trenches, that's what it is.

Given sama is a Bay Area native now, I think he might not feel as connected to Chicago or St Louis or the Midwest in general.

Rousseau, Emile:

"The essential thing is to be good to the people with whom one lives. Abroad, the Spartan was ambitious, avaricious. iniquitous. But disinterestedness, equity, and concord reigned within his walls. Distrust those cosmopolitans who go to great length in their books to discover duties they do not deign to fulfill around them. A philosopher loves the Tartars so as to be spared having to love his neighbors."

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