a3n

I suppose it depends on the ratio of masters to slaves in your hypothetical 5000 person town.

Your context, after all, is a global catastrophe that would require local self-sufficiency. That implies the isolation that would enable human nature to take its course.

Scouting semi trailers containing useful supplies, breaking in to them, and then defending the position until the contents are used or repositioned.

Pessimistically speaking.

How many people have you known in that position that had little or none of those?

It never stops shifting.

Trucker. Yes. People have to eat and poop, they need their ... everything. Literally, everything.

And I sincerely appreciate your doing some of that thinking here, out loud.

My solution to this problem is to:

a) not be aware of it

which allows me to:

b) not worry about it.

Or try this from ddg

  !abbr wtf

(I didn't know ddg had that bang code, I just guessed. At this point, guessing ddg bang codes often works.)

And of course there's the wtf utility in Linux and bsd.

https://linux.die.net/man/6/wtf

That was essentially Kosky's point. I was taking his class, he was a big peacenik (involved with Give Peace a Dance at the time), and I talked to him about working for defense companies, Boeing being the gorilla in the room in Seattle.

And so he said that thing, which sticks with me still.

I saw a headline saying that we should treat Google as a "public good."

You could at least think of all corporations as public goods. And so there's an argument to be made that society and its individuals have the right and responsibility to ensure their health and fitness for purpose.

Someone has to work at the waste treatment plant.

In the 80s Ted Kosky, a math instructor at South Seattle Community College, suggested to me that if ethical people refused to work for defense companies, then those companies would only be staffed by unethical people.

Come at that thought from any direction you like.

Aaand they did.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27771538

That was excellent. Concise, informative and interesting.

TIL

I'm guessing they won't be missed.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Mercury+vapor+turbine&t=fpas&ia=we...

> P.S.: What is the go-to reference for human technology?

You should repost that paragraph as its own ask HN. That would be a fascinating set of references.

On the desk of a mechanical or chemical engineer I once saw a book containing common or basic machines.

I've been a Fastmail customer for many years, using my own domain. I never think about it. So, yes, I recommend Fastmail.

"I bite the finger, and it brings me food."

...

"I bite it, and it brings me food."

...

"I bite food, and it brings me food."

...

"I bite food, and ... waaait a minute."

I used the Beautiful Soup python HTML parser to pick apart an employer's javadoc for a product, and wrote out C++ header files, as a first brush at (others) rewriting the java product in C++.

> Some of Gettr’s copy is stilted and strange, including the boast that it’s a “non-bias” social network that “tried the best to provide best software quality to the users, allow anyone to express their opinion freely.

I can't decide if that sounds vaguely Russian, or just confused and under-literate.

If you can't read it, try reader mode.

When we were in one of a few early meetings justifying the coming leap off our burning platform (they said that) and on to Agile, I said "This too shall pass," out loud. It got a few nervous giggles from people less subversive (another word for stupid) than me.

I never dreamed I might see it in my lifetime.

So they can serve better targeted and reinforcing ads to them?

A picture of uniformed North Korean toadies standing around Kim Jong Un comes to mind, all with their notebook and pen at the ready, smiling and hanging on every word.

I guess we're all just money on the table, eh?

Trucker. Tomorrow I collect a $2500 signing bonus, having changed companies 2 weeks ago.

From the comments:

> These guys were important once, right? I don't think I'm old enough to remember such a time. I thought they were a law firm for a while because they only seemed to be mentioned in court cases.

Ouch.

I guess now he'll know one of the known unknowns.

In some rural areas the local prison is a major employer. Gotta keep the economy humming.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison%E2%80%93industrial_co...

> equal response teaches them immediately that committing those acts leads to a negative outcome.

I could say just as logically and with the same lack of evidence say that hitting kids to control them teaches them that violence is a good technique to get your way.

> "Parents hit their children because they think doing so will improve their behavior," Gershoff said.

That's what parents say.

Parents hit their kids because they're angry with no impulse control, or assholes.

Doing the same thing to an adult can get you an assault charge, or a punch in the face.

I think the punishment for corporal punishment should be jail and corporal punishment.

I guess "gameification" isn't so great.