A neighborhood garbageman explains modern Egypt | Hacker News Reader

A neighborhood garbageman explains modern Egypt

newyorker.com

80 pointsdanso56 comments

"In 2009, during the worldwide epidemic of H1N1 swine flu, the Ministry of Agriculture decreed that all Egyptian pigs had to be killed. There was no evidence that pigs were spreading the disease, but the government went ahead and slaughtered as many as three hundred thousand animals. Some Egyptians believe that the decision was driven by a desire to appease Islamists, who had become outspoken critics of the regime, and supposedly hated pigs even more than they hated Mubarak."

wow.

Also see http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/05/05/us-afghanistan-pig...

It was also speculated that they were killed to oppress the Christian minority in Egypt, who derived a significant part of their income from raising swine, due to Islam's restriction on interaction with pigs.

For those debating about reading the article:

I read it in its entirety. It's quite long, but it has some fascinating vignettes into life in Egypt. Topics covered include garbage collection and recycling, politics, marriage and divorce, and the roles of males and females in Egypt.

Very interesting read indeed, a very thorough insight into life in Egypt. I especially liked the relationship part, the female oppression and dominance at the same type. Seems almost like a paradox through the eyes of a westerner.

What a great little vignette on a part of our modern world. The clash of tradition, politics, love, and garbage. My family owns an auto repair shop and I could just feel the clothes that Sayyid wears on my skin again (grease and salt, similar, but not the same as his). My father also deals with most strata of society and Sayyid's observations ring true to me as my father's words: 'Assholes have all manner of 0's on their bank slips'.

> The government played no role in establishing this system, which worked remarkably well. Social scientists often cite it as a success story among developing-world megacities... Brilliant!

One year, we couldn’t buy bottled water for months, because the plant that produced the water somehow caught fire.

Ouch. A way to know one lives in the developing world.

please come and visit michigan.

Please confirm, is bottled water unavailable for months at a time in this benighted place? What do they do about Wal-Mart, which claims to be able to supply bottled water at all times in 118 different locations in a place they're calling "michigan"?

no one suspects the social engineer that is illiterate and wears shoes 2 sizes too large

Anyone else reminded of the garbageman from Dilbert?

http://dilbert.wikia.com/wiki/The_Garbageman

I scroll down past the opening photo so the 1st line of text is at the top of my browser window and settle in to begin reading and then the header scrolls down to cover the top 3 lines of text.

Hate.

I used to `fix` that with the .js extension for firefox [0] and in my `$HOME/.js` folder I would drop a `newyorker.com.js` file :

    $('div,a').css('position',
      function (index, value) {
        if (value == 'fixed')
          return 'static'
        }
    )

[0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dotjs/

It's really poor design. Widescreen displays are in the overwhelming majority at present, but few people prefer columns of text that fill the screen horizontally. Vertical screen real estate therefore commands a premium price. Users probably wouldn't mind a vertical bar off to the side nearly as much.

Another solution - Tampermonkey/Greasemonkey script:

    // ==UserScript==
    // @name       Remove New Yorker navbar
    // @match      http://www.newyorker.com/*
    // ==/UserScript==

    document.getElementById('mobile-nav-container').setAttribute('style', 'top: -550px;');

Side project idea, chrome or firefox extension that takes text and pictures from popular news sites and removes all the distracting bells and whistles. Now that I think about it, something like that probably already exists.

I do this manually sometimes, with chrome dev tools. The whole issue actually has a pretty profound effect on which sites I read. For example, I won't follow a link to usa today unless it's something really interesting, whereas I'll read almost anything from the la times, just because I enjoy their bullshit free layout.

Readability?

https://www.readability.com/

I would rather have something local, not send a list of everything I read to some server somewhere.

Readability Redux (https://github.com/MHordecki/readability-redux) is local. It uses the old Readability library that Readability used before it turend into an online service.

Ah, then you want Readable.

http://readable.tastefulwords.com/

     Evernote has acquired Readable!

Hmmm, let's check Firebug's Net tab

    http://readable.tastefulwords.com/log.js?rand=0.8736547357568928&url=http%3A%2F%2Farstechnica.com%2Finformation-technology%2F2014%2F10%2Fborked-belkin-routers-leave-many-unable-to-get-online%2F&options=%5B%5B%3Dtf%3A%20quote(Palatino%20Linotype)%2C%20Palatino%2C%20quote(Book%20Antigua)%2C%20Georgia%2C%20serif%5D%5D%5B%5B%3Dtfm%3A%20quote(Courier%20New)%2C%20Courier%2C%20monospace%5D%5D%5B%5B%3Dtfh%3A%20quote(Times%20New%20Roman)%2C%20Times%2C%20serif%5D%5D%5B%5B%3Dts%3A%2018px%5D%5D%5B%5B%3Dtlh%3A%201.5%5D%5D%5B%5B%3Dbw%3A%2030em%5D%5D%5B%5B%3Dcb%3A%20%23F5F5F5%5D%5D%5B%5B%3Dct%3A%20%23282828%5D%5D%5B%5B%3Dcl%3A%20%230000FF%5D%5D%5B%5B%3Dta%3A%20normal%5D%5D%5B%5B%3Db%3A%20blueprint%5D%5D&customCSS=&_=1412717055539

I'll stick to Color Toggle [1] then.

1: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/color-toggle/...

Good stuff on firebug research. I am however, not sure how switching between color modes helps with messy layout.

It doesn't, but if you uncheck "Let pages override this settings", all the backgrounds will be the same and the effect is quite similar.

You can achieve something very close to that by just disabling javascript and CSS. It's amazing how much better the web is without that modern cruft.

I use http://evernote.com/clearly/

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