dj_gitmo

I have starting looking for software engineering jobs for the first time in a few years, and I'm looking at it through a more socially conscious lens than I did a few years ago.

I'm not opposed to commerce or people making money, but so many of the startup I see are based on business plans that just seem dystopian.

Software can solve real problems, but right now capital seems to be choosing some really unsettling applications. Things like using ML to inform "behavioral nudges" for asset manager, many of the healthcare tech startups, and all of the surveillance and spying tech.

I'm guessing the actual interview is behind a paywall, but it can't really tell. It just seems like the article ends abruptly.

I actually like some things about the Economist and I subscribed for years. I feel like people would be better informed about the world if they read it. That said, it's absolutely dripping with ideology and you need to know how to read it. It's a cheerleader for Capitalism, kinda like the Financial Times. https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/05/how-the-economist-thi...

> If Lambda can turn a profit by offering people a stab at a decent job, that would be a fine lesson in capitalism.

I'm not so sure. The solution might not be to train more nurses, but to retain the exiting nurses. Nurses have a really high turnover rate in the U.S. The problem is nursing is demanding work and it often requires long hours.

> Nurses who work more than 12 hours in a single shift and more than 40 hours a week are likely to leave the nursing workforce within a year. Overtime for nurses should not be commonplace. Instead, hospitals and other healthcare organizations should reduce the length of shifts and the number of hours in a workweek. Hospital administrators should not push nurses into working extra hours.

https://rnbsnonline.unm.edu/articles/high-cost-of-nurse-turn...

> A study by Compdata Surveys of 11,000 healthcare employers with more than 11 million employees found the average turnover in healthcare jobs in 2017 was 20.6%, up from 15.6% in 2010, putting healthcare’s turnover second only to hospitality’s.

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/will-2018-be-t...

> Turnover rates also varied significantly across countries with the highest rate reported in New Zealand (44·3%) followed by the US (26·8%), Canada (19·9%) and Australia (15·1%).

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jan.12483

This might be a lesson in capitalism, but maybe not the lesson that The Economists thinks.

I look forward to the day when Psychedelic are a normal, and even boring, topic of research and medicine.

The message of the F35 is that the US is committed to Military keynesianism.

I think they're pretty clear in the article that the problem is that there is no centralized place to ship the waste. Having it sit out in the open where it needs constant security, next to a plant that close decades ago, is the sign of a political failure.

They keep trying to put it in Nevada, but Nevadans aren't having it. They don't trust the federal government after being lied to about the dangers of the open-air atomic bomb testing that they carried out in the 1940s and 50s.

I understand storage and bomb testing are not equivalent, but I don't blame Nevadans for being skeptical. The government should look someplace else at this point.

The question that matters is: Should the US intervene.

Let's run down a list of the recent US interventions.

Russian Election of 1996: The US helped rig Russia's election in 1996. Electing Yeltsin for a second term is what brought in Putin and basically killed Russian democracy. https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-meddling-in-1996-russian-el...

Iraq: 600,000 dead so far.

Libya: It was supposed to turn into a thriving democracy but instead it's now a thriving slave market. https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/14/africa/libya-migrant-auctions...

Yemen: Largest humanitarian crisis in the world.

The list goes on and on. Things don't get better when the US intervenes. Let Venezuela decide it's own fate.

I'm in the US and it is difficult to find media here that is critical of US intervention in Latin America. It's not a question that people need to engage with at all if they don't want to. It's a small story.

The current administration has nefarious intentions for Venezuela. They want to turn it into a more compliant, Banana Republic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic

I'm not really talking about the current administration. I'm talking about the US government's overall policy of overseas intervention that goes back decades. The press often criticize the government for not intervening, or for exiting an intervention. You're not going to see anyone on the pages of the NYT say that the US shouldn't be intervening in other countries, period.

> How did you miss the fact that virtually every US newspaper has criticized the current president's foreign policy on deep breath Syria, Russia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Canada, South Korea, Russia, most of our allies, etc?

> Syria

The press criticized the administration for deciding to leave. Even though the Syrian civil war is basically over and the regime won. Obama was criticized for not "doing enough" even though the Syrian Civil War was the largest CIA operation in decades and the opposition was overwhelmingly made up of sectarian death-squads. Don't take my word for it, read what the NYT's Thomas Friedman said in 2017. He argues we should allow ISIS to continue existing so that it might take down the Assad regime. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/12/opinion/why-is-trump-figh...

> Russia

The liberal press has been criticized the decision not to ramp up a new cold-war with Russia. They attack anyone who opposes more sanctions.

> Iraq

The press uncritically promoted the invasion of Iraq and only turned against it when it started going bad.

> Afghanistan

If the any administration decided to pull out they would be criticized.

How about the West's role in Yemen? You didn't hear anything about that in the Anglo press until recently even though the UN was calling it the worst humanitarian disaster in the world.

I'm not saying the establishment press is always wrong. They serve an important purpose, but on foreign policy in particular their coverage ranges from good(leaving the Iran deal is bad) to awful(uncritical support for Syrian opposition), and sometimes it's just propaganda.

American citizens rely on the government and the press to determine if the election in a foreign country were legitimate. They do not speak the language in the country and do not have cultural ties to this country.

Do you think that the average American can accurately asses who is the proper president of Venezuela using only the word of the government and the press?

We know the current administration is packed with ideologues; many of whom are veterans of the Latin American "Dirty Wars" of the 1980s. I don't think we can trust the government on this one.

The "click bait" article, which is actually well cited, makes the case that the press is almost always in favor of regime-change in Latin America.

So I will ask again, do you think that US Americans are knowledgeable enough about Latin America to know what is best for Latin America?

Establishment media organizations in the Anglo world are so reluctant to criticize of the Government line on anything related to foreign policy. It seems like it would be so easy and risk-free in the current era especially.

They're either ignorant of the history of US interference in Latin America, or they're ideologues acting in bad faith. I imaging there is also a strong pressure to go-along to get-along that weeds out anyone who would properly push back.

I recommend The Gray Zone Project for a counters-establishment perspective. Like all journalism, you need to know how to read it, but it really does cover foreign policy in a way that NYT cannot. https://grayzoneproject.com/ If you prefer something more tabloid-y I recommend The Canary. They even have US and UK editions. https://www.thecanary.co/us/

I'm not a primitivist. A sustainable economy will require more people, to work in agriculture and energy to reduce carbon intensity. It will require more of our best minds working on these problems instead of using their talents to get more clicks using machine learning.

Our economies are more planned than we like to admit. It's just that right now we don't exercise any control over the direction or goals of our economic production.

I guess I agree that the legislation should be simple. For example legislation that ban carbon pollution within certain industries by a certain date. Say, by 2035 for electricity, 2045 for agriculture. That would really set things in motion wouldn't it.

It would make a lot of old folks mad, but the younger generation would know which skills to build for the new economy.

This rail-bound tank was probably not designed with weight savings as a prime considerations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz95_VvTxZM

Still, this is a fascinating idea and I would love to see someone make a serious attempt at it.