manachar

From my perspective on Maui I think the fate of this factory shows a problem for any business.

Had they modernized their equipment and methods years ago when profits were good, they very likely could have continued to operate at a profit and with the support of the community.

Instead, they kept the field burning, the impossibly ancient mill equipment, and didn't adapt to the dropping price of the sugar to focus on more secondary goods like rum, organic sugar, etc.

By the time they realized they'd either have to change or go out of business they were too ingrained to change and didn't have the profits to invest in changing anyways.

It's a bittersweet change for Maui. The real fear is that all of this ag land will increasingly be converted to inefficient subdivisions as has happened on O'ahu and is happening at Maui Lani and up in Kula.

That would be a fantastic way to learn history!

Only thing I'd add is that the written historical record only tells part of the story and can often get amazing insights from other sources such as the material record (i.e. archaeology).

This idea that politics or partisanship is something new to the modern world is fascinating.

I see it constantly among people that have little exposure to actual historical documents.

I suspect its origin is a bit of nostalgia for the "simpler times" of the past and the often horrendously bad methods many people learn history.

Often history is presented as a cleaned up and certain narrative - At simplest, a history of events that happen on dates. They often leave out the machinations, plotting, betrayals, and intrigue that was almost always present.

We strip the messy humanity from history as we build simplistic narratives.

Looking back it may seem to be obvious that Nazis should not have been appeased, but at the time there were many intelligent and informed people who thought otherwise. Same with the US getting involved in the War.

Politics have been a thing as far back as we have written records.

Everyone rich enough should be able to murder one person without jail time? Is that a world you want to live in?

Because private industry clearly has managed to avoid any security breaches?

For the last ~5 years the only credit card that hasn't been reissued before the expiration date because of some large corporate data breach is the one I never use.

You left out the interstate system, one of the largest public works projects of American history with lasting economic, social, and political impact.

Big money does change stuff, it can just be really hard to determine what exactly it will change and if it will ultimately be good.

Good for news and raw info - REALLY bad at analysis.

Relying on the passions of benevolent billionaires seems like a really bad idea.

Sure, I'm happy when they decide to do good, but they also do a fair bit of bad.

Spreading true (well, at least less wrong) information is a noble goal.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure we're not seeing such information availability providing avenues towards a smarter, more progressive planet.

Instead, the internet seems to be helping people create cocoons of ignorance and "evidence" to support even the most specious claims - such as the world being flat.

Knowledge does not seem to be enough. Wisdom and the ability to sift through knowledge with some degree of appropriate skepticism need to spread at least as fast as the knowledge if we are to get a smarter planet.

History is almost always more complicated than people's narratives.

Narratives are a model. Some are more accurate than others, but ultimately all of them are just models which simplify history (sometimes in verifiably false ways).

Sometimes I wonder if VR is building Plato's Cave or revealing more of the way out of it.

The more we learn about humans the more its clear our narratives and "real world" are at least partial figments of our imagination. We remember narratives that we choose to and ignore evidence to the contrary.

VR could help reveal this for people (somewhat the same as is claimed for hallucinogens). It could also allow us to increasingly choose to build fully artificial realities. Who wouldn't choose to be a god?

Interestingly, I find this somewhat similar to looking at landscape photography that people enjoy - especially from vacation destinations. Almost every picture now has more dynamic range, edge contrast, contrast, and saturation than the human eye experiences. This means people get to amazing places but are disappointed when reality doesn't match the photo. Then they use various apps on their smartphone to try to take a picture that matches the fantasy (often by erasing any of the local context or culture).

I get a little uncomfortable that a private company with as much power as Google is in the position to try to determine what is a legitimate news source and what is a fake news site.

This issue goes well beyond left vs. right. Leftist fake news may not currently be as prevalent, but the number of anti-vaxxers and vehemently anti-science screeds against "chemicals" shows that there's more than enough fake news blame to go around.

You are right that it is rotting our democracy. Information has become disinformation. People are moving to a "gut" only method of deciding what information to believe.

I don't know if Google is the one to determine this by withdrawing funding from fake-news. I don't know if anyone trusts government enough anymore for them to take on the problem. How do you determine a legitimate journalist?

Clinton did not get the majority by that much. A very significant portion of the public voted for this leader and the party espousing similar anti-science position all the way down the ticket.

The amount that money dictates outcome in matters of law should frighten us to the core.

This seems like a natural way to monetize instagram for accounts that I follow. I would take this over ads any day. If I like a business enough to follow them on instagram, then I won't mind being able to purchase something from the account.

For instance, I follow King Arthur Flour for their scrumptious baking recipes. It'd be great to be able to go straight to their online store to purchase some of their harder to find ingredients like Boiled Cider.

One thing I hope they do is make it so everybody can get in on it. Say you want to be able to sell prints of your great photos, how awesome would it be to have a built in way for customers to do so? Or have a brewery and want to sell some t-shirts?

That said... will this taint the instagram experience? Youtube feels increasingly optimized for profit-making and seems be crowding out some of the more "just-for-fun" type projects. If too much of a social media site focus on profit it becomes just another mall and less of a social setting.

Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Nosferatu-Silent-Max-Schreck/dp/B001O...

https://www.amazon.com/Blowup-Vanessa-Redgrave/dp/B000I157KO

https://www.amazon.com/Knife-Water-Leon-Niemczyk/dp/B004D22R...

Amazon + Netflix + Blueray player has become my perfect combination. The few titles that I can't get streaming I just buy the discs.

One thing that is impressive about YouTube versus other social media platforms has been YouTube's willingness to help content creators to make money.

There's a path for people with a minimum of marketing savvy to start making revenue off of their videos.

Compare this to Facebook/Instagram which requires individuals to find other ways of getting paid while those platforms profit directly off of your content.

Makes me wish for a "cooperative" Facebook where all content creators (posts, pictures, etc) get a slice of the ad revenue much like YouTube.

Assuming it never gets released (never is a VERY long time), I'd rather get a documentary on how it failed to get made.

I had a professor who gave up a good job at Harvard because he was tired of losing his best students to investment banking. It wasn't a field in any way directly related to business or finance, but Harvard students are highly recruited into lucrative investment banking positions.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

An interesting twist on free speech on the internet is that almost all speech on the internet is being done on private companies' websites.

No private company is considered required to promote or protect free speech. Each forum is able to say "don't like our policies, then go somewhere else".

This even seems quite reasonable. Why should any particular forum be forced to allow any particular kind of speech? Should Facebook be forced to allow porn as something that is protected by freedom of expression?

On the flip side, as more and more of meaningful speech occurs on these not-really-public forums of Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit, there exists quite a bit of unease on my part for these global companies to insist on narrowing expression on these platforms to that which they deem acceptable by whatever internal process they desire.

Facebook's study that showed they could manipulate people's feelings by altering the feed algorithm indicates this is an awful lot of power handed to a company focused on making profits and staying on the good side of governmental organizations.

YouTube recently started changing their policies that has started to create problems for people using their platforms.

This would likely be okay if there were real public space on the web, but it currently operates more as a series of visits to other people's private property. The release valve is a persons ability to create their own corner of the internet, but even this must leap through various ISP and web host providers terms of service. Additionally, is it really speech if you're just doing the internet equivalent of talking to yourself on an island in the middle of nowhere?

Cases like this photo will only become more apparent as time goes on. I'm not sure how society will negotiate these ideas, but at present, the commercial interests are leading the conversation in their favor.

Yeah, until the glowing rectangle problem goes away I'm not going to be too thrilled about digital frames.

It got growing up poor better than many others. To see all the other kids stuffing themselves with candy and to be left out of that society just because of a lack of money - that was such a great visceral scene to watch growing up.

"Water shoots into the cylinders at a pressure of 70 atmospheres and is pushed through the membranes, while the remaining brine is returned to the sea."

I've heard this brine can have a pretty negative ecological impact, I wonder how that could be mitigated.

"Counter-intuitively, a state is required to maintain individual liberty, I think."

Why is this counterintuitive to so many people? This was one of the prime reasonings by almost all Enlightenment-era thinkers for the reason for a government, including it being beautifully laid out in the Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

The key line is "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men".

All of those are international actions. While the people in other countries impacted by these actions had no direct method to prevent the US government actions, the people making these choices do not have unchecked power.

All of these actions were subject to all the constitutional checks and balances of the US system. Obama's drone strikes is an election issue. Albright's actions were overseen directly and indirectly by Congress. Same with Clinton (or did you not notice the amount of time Congress spent on Benghazi). There's also been judicial review of many of these elements.

There is no real method of international check on power other than a threat of power in return. The UN, NATO, and international diplomacy tries to forge a method to ensure that war is less commonly used, but ultimately, as the invasion in Iraq showed, if the US wants to do something it can do it. Same with Russia choosing to take a chunk of the Ukraine.

It doesn't fall flat, it just (potentially) shows a net benefit for most. You've also narrowed the debate to a purely materialistic benefit (.i.e. more things cheaper) while taking a broader view of the whole class of people at a time.

An individual does not have the luxury of evaluating the "good of the many" when they are unemployed by innovation. Equally horrid from the individual's perspective is discovering the skills they've spent a life time accruing are suddenly worthless and make them unhireable.

White-collar workers have only just started feeling this pressure of good jobs disappearing only leaving more menial and lower-paid jobs.

To ignore that some people are harmed by innovation is as silly as pretending that all innovation is a positive.

It's also important to note that you can't just credit changes in living standard to technological innovation. Soft innovations in things like politics and philosophy are AT LEAST as important as technological innovation.

That would be helpful. It's not always easy to know which innovation is actually a net benefit.

Leaded gasoline was a superior fuel in many respects but was clearly a fraudulent mistake (it was sold with false assurances of safety).

Even the original Luddites were not wrong in their original critiques - the technological innovations of machined industrialization did indeed replace workers and enrich employers. (That such technological innovation also created wealth was poor consolation for the workers getting the short end of the stick).

Chemical warfare was horrible enough to have military strategists more than willing to agree to ban its usage.

New is not universally a good. In fact, every change has benefits and detriments that will be unequally distributed. History has also shown a tendency for the detriments to be mostly felt by the poor and disenfranchised.

It seems fair to be cautious about the new.

This comment reminds me of the various (likely apocryphal) laws when cars were still new and shared the road with cars.

Cars we considered the new weird thing that needed to take special steps to not spook horses or their riders/drivers.

Now, of course, the situation is reversed and horses often are required to have special visibility gear to be seen more clearly by cars.

So, perhaps in the future there will be some sort of indicator light that turns on when the idiot driver turns on manual driving mode so you (edit, or your car!) can give them a wide berth.

I understand the insistence. Here in the US, people think "It's just a theory" is a legitimate refutation of evolution.

Shorthand terms can shape the debate in wasteful ways. By always ensuring you use the correct terms and thinking with evolution it helps shape the debate in more useful ways.