finite_jest

I took the liberty of changing the title. The original was the slightly clickbaity "Are Linux Programmers Getting Too Fat?".

This one? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29273132 (FDA wants 55 years to process FOIA request over vaccine data)

That is just banal ad hominem and guilt by association.

As someone points out in the comments section of article, green has been the color of SMS since the first iPhone (which didn't have iMessage) [1]. It is still possible that they made the green "harsher" or something.

I think all those Tweets about "green bubbles" can be seen as a reminder of how society works: status signalling explains a lot.

We should make some kind of an NFT t-short which certifies each person's net worth. People can simply wear a t-shirt displaying their net worth in a large, hyperlegible font and get done with it. /s

[1]: https://images.macworld.com/images/legacy/2007/06/images/con...

> Also, single-purpose accounts are not allowed here generally, because they aren't compatible with the value of curiosity that's supposed to animate this place (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). [1]

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29692666

By what measure is Carter "probably the most effective and accomplished of our ex-presidents"? In terms of being effective, I don't think he is even comparable to FDR or LBJ. He didn't even manage to get reelected.

The hostage crisis and the botched Operation Eagle Claw [1] happened during his presidency. I kinda think that could make him a candidate for the list of the not-very-competent US ex-presidents.

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

This is utterly humorless, facile, and non-informative.

"Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer" is "Unequivocally false but mostly harmless". However "Biden is a robot" is "Dangerous to yourself and others". So is "Ancient Giant Trees".

On the "Detached from reality" level, they have "GEORGE SOROS" written in a fancy font. It is not clear what do they mean. The fact that Soros spends a lot of money on leftwing causes is not conspiracy theory. [1]

[1]: https://archive.ph/20211207104121/https://www.politico.com/s...

Why not? We kinda already did it for the flu every year. And if it is the only alternative to lockdowns [1], I think most of us would prefer that.

Side-note: The article quotes Fauci as saying "I think it's too premature to be talking about a fourth dose...". That seems like one of his "noble equivocations" to me. If Israelis do need a fourth dose, it is probably true that so do Americans.

[1]: And we don't discover any long-term side-effects for the vaccines, which seems unlikely.

Malone is not generally recognized as the "inventor of mRNA vaccines" (contrary to his claims). However, he is a pioneer in the field [1], and not just a random crackpot.

I am unsure of how much value his comments are adding right now. I haven't listened to them, and I don't have the expertise to tell. But I think he (like everyone else) should be allowed to speak his mind.

I am not gonna suppress my knee-jerk reaction of not liking people who want to shut others up. This is not an isolated instance. Spotify has censored at least 40 other JRE episodes. [2] That is egregiously paternalistic. There is no way I am ever going to resubscribe to Spotify.

[1]: Nature: The tangled history of mRNA vaccines https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w

[2]: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2021/03/30/spotify-joe-roga...

TBH, I think the "go from yuppie to hippie and it all becomes rainbows" is generally a false narrative. Money does often buy happiness. That "$75,000 a year is peak happiness" thesis does not replicate, like much of the social sciences. [1]

I'm sure your new lifestyle is suitable for you and makes you happy. But I don't believe that's generalizable.

[1]: https://archive.ph/20210127035328/https://www.vice.com/en/ar...

Not really, woke used to be a word people used to identify themselves with. [1] And Tyler Cownen recently wrote opinion piece on Bloomberg defending wokism. [2]

It is not "a placeholder term for whatever you don't like", not in any meaningful sense.

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

[2]: [Why Wokeism Will Rule the World](https://archive.fo/OaowM)

I think I broadly share your distaste for bias and corporate media in general. However, one would hope there could be better alternatives than woke to bland and indefinite conservatism.

> No party wins popular vote anymore (as in more than 50%). With FPTP, we are stuck with less-than ideal seats-to-votes correlation.

As a side-note, I recently learned that the more unambiguous terms for this are "plurality" (more than all others) and "majority" (more than half). I think "popular vote" is also often used as a synonym for plurality, but I am not completely sure. Sorry, I am ESL :-)

This is interesting, I like the minimalistic aesthetics, and the final ranking looks broadly meaningful. But it think it misses some important metrics like GDP per capita, scientific research output, social mobility, and life expectancy. I am kinda of skeptical about the value of Olympic medals per GDP.

One interesting thing this made me notice is how high the net immigration for Lebanon is. That is quite peculiar, as I remember reading in the news that they have serious chronic problems with keeping the lights on.

I am also curious to know how the overall ranking is determined based on all these measures. It would be fun if you could "personalize" it a little bit to find your favorite countries. (e.g. If you like a particular sport, maybe the Olympic medals for that sport would be more exciting to you. Or if you are a non-conformist, maybe the Noridc countries won't be as attractive due to the Law of Jante [2], etc.)

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

You are right that newspapers lean capital C Conservative [1] in Canada. It is mostly due to Postmedia. Ownership by Postmedia is quite conspicuous in the list.

CBC is really woke though. You don't need to suffer them too much to notice that. Randomly turn on the radio while driving a few times, and you will see.

[1]: Which in its current form looks like a bland, toothless, uninspiring, "big tent" party. Roughly speaking, they only seem to win if you use irrelevant metrics like popular vote (https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/news/erin-otoole-conservatives-p...)

Right. To be frank, it really seems you are suggesting people who disagree with you should be marginalized to a few corners of the internet suffering from "the coven of the witches" problem.

And for the record, Ruqqus was shut down [1], so it really doesn't even exist.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28799199

From HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html):

> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.

> If the people of China decided to march on Beijing tomorrow nothing in the world could stop them

That is utterly untrue. Have you seen the "Tank Man" photo [1]?

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

TBH, I think that is a bit of a trite diversion/straw man. I don't think anyone is arguing this is an act by the government. However, censorship is not always something government does [1]. This certainly _is_ an act of corporate political censorship.

And if they can easily get away with censoring people who "get to whine about it on C-SPAN", it is certain that you and I and the rest of the plebeians have absolutely no recourse. That is not OK.

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

Right, I agree, to some extent it does. I was trying to give a better outline of the general form of @b3nji's argument, as @Ardon's objection seemed to be based on a misunderstanding.

There is a "pragmatic libertarian" argument too, which goes like this: The mandatory jab is much less costly to civil liberties than lockdowns, and if the virus is not quelled, the political support for lockdowns will only increase.

There is a whole bunch of issues and trade-offs involved. [1] People have strong feelings on this [2], and discussion is often reduced to partisan "rallying cries".

[1]: e.g. see my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29759089

[2]: Which is somewhat understandable, some of us have lost loved ones, lost jobs, been down the dumps, felt like being in "house arrest", couldn't even hit the gym, witnessed all the paltering by the media etc.

Not de jure, but it seems they are trying to make it so de facto.

FYI, Canada does not have a president. Trudeau is the prime minister. However, you are right in that his quote (which I think was in French originally) is just awful name-calling.

Perhaps, I'm really not sure how often would that happen though.

I actually think the analogy is a relatively good one. Parallels also also run for the question of how much "paternalism" do we want (the limits of "for-your-own-good" argument). Interests of insurance providers (whether social or private) is also involved in both cases.

In the case of vaccines, immunocompromised people's health is also a consideration. And there is the issue of side-effects, especially for young people. And there is "bodily autonomy". And the stress on healthcare system, etc.

I think there could reasonable discussion about these issues. However, the sad reality is that things quickly get reduced to repeating trite "rallying cries".

> If a seatbelt doest stop you from dying in 100% of car crashes, I don't understand why they're mandatory?

Interestingly, your comparison is relevant, but you are responding to an argument which I don't think is being made. The OP is _not_ arguing that vaccines shouldn't be mandatory because they aren't 100% effective.

On the contrary, the OP's argument is that since vaccines are relatively effective, one person's choice to not get vaccinated will not effect the others, and it should be up to them.

Your seatbelt example is relevant, in that the same "no-harm-to-others" argument can be made in that case too.

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29753183

Yes, that is true. There was a discussion of this issue on HN yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29744347

That makes sense, as Google's extension to RCS does have a form of "end-to-end" encryption.

I believe they are blocking links to the websites in an SMS message.

Thanks :-)) lichess.com was a typo on my part, sorry for that.

Do you mind checking l̶i̶c̶h̶e̶s̶s̶.̶c̶o̶m̶ lichess.org? It's a popular online chess website, as the name suggests. A Reddit post from a month ago claims it is also blocked. [1] I think that would be hilarious.

[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/r0r2jh/tmobile_blo...

According to the video, links to Odysee (a YouTube alternative) and Free The States (an anti-abortion websites) are blocked. People on Reddit [1] also corroborate this. Corporate censorship exists, it is generally biased politically, and is not OK.

[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/GoldandBlack/comments/rs2wqr/appare...

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PS. Here are a couple of things that I think are worth clarifying:

* This about them blocking links to the websites in an SMS message, not DNS blacklisting or deep packet inspection.

* Their blocking system seems pretty dumb in general. Apparently, it is even blocking lichess.org [2], the whole .xyz TLD, and stochastically Jacobin (the National Review of the left).

[2]: Thanks to @lynndotpy for confirming this.