mariodiana

“There is no tomorrow! There is no tomorrow!”

Thank you. Lesson learned.

Since I do remember that episode and got curious, I asked ChatGPT. Apparently, the antipodal point on the globe from Hoboken, NJ is somewhere in the Indian Ocean, southeast of Madagascar. From Tokyo, it's in the South Atlantic Ocean, northeast of the Falkland Islands.

Undoubtedly, I'll forget all this by tomorrow morning and remember Asia :-)

I wonder if he had considered using the duct tape on Wang.

> Imagine a population of 1099 workers where half of the electorate refuses to pay taxes in order to protest the policies of the government in power.

Is that a missing verse from the John Lennon song, because I like it.

They pay a guilt tax.

“[D]esign the software to fit the maximum team cognitive load.”

I see. So, RAID drives, failover servers for redundancy, and generators (or at least UPS batteries) for power — but push your team to their maximum load.

Actually, I'm offended on behalf of Western civilization.

Thank you for that. It's thorough, and obviously well-versed in the subject.

As she says on the first page of her translation, "Now goddess, child of Zeus, tell the old story for our modern times."

O tempora, o mores!

I appreciate you asking. I'm going by memory from several years ago, but if the Greek word used to describe Telemachus means something like "presence of mind," to hint at the boy growing up to be a man worthy of such a father, and then the translated words chosen are things like "whined" and so forth, you tell me.

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Edit: Here is an essay in the "Bryn Mawr Classical Review," which touches on the issue of the slave girls killed at the end. Look for the paragraph that begins:

"This brings me to the episode often discussed by Wilson, the killing of the slaves in Odyssey 22."

This particular essay doesn't touch on what I've said about Odysseus and Telemachus, but it does touch on the fact that her own opinion of things influences the translation.

https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2018/2018.10.58

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Edit: And here is a review in the "London Review of Books," which touches on what I said:

"This makes him sound more of a brat and much less of a would-be hero than he does in the Greek."

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n08/colin-burrow/light-t...

The author did a bit of "reimagining" with her translation of "The Odyssey" as well, which I own and was very excited about at the time I acquired it. In fact, I bought the book, walked a few blocks, and attended a lecture she gave at Vassar College. I was on board with her lecture, but disappointed once I began to delve into her translation.

She has a wonderful ear, and her translation of "The Odyssey" is a pleasure to read. Unfortunately though, in my opinion, she had a bit of an agenda. Part of it she detailed at the lecture, and I found that part admirable. She said that previous (male) translators had interpolated their own editorializing: specifically, adding little misogynistic characterizations that are not found in the homeric text. She, unsurprisingly, steered clear of all that, and to hear her tell it restored Homer.

But when I began to read her translation, and then compared passages to the ancient Greek, I found that she gave her own characterizations to both Odysseus and his son, Telemachus, which were neither in Homer nor particularly flattering.

Disclosure: I don't read ancient Greek. But her translation is a line-by-line translation, so it is possible to find the exact line, use scholarly online translators of Homer, and see how a particular passage, or adjective (or whatever) translates literally.

In taking a close look, I saw that she availed herself to diminishing both Odysseus and Telemachus. I'm not the only one to notice this. Moreover, she interpolated sympathy for "victims" where there really isn't any in Homer: to wit, the servant women strung up at the end.

It made me very sad to see this, because she was an intelligent and compelling lecturer; and, as I said, her verse reads beautifully. But, she's not exactly a reliable translator.

According to the government, if it involves "tubes," it's the Internet.

Attention: Anecdote, incoming!

Since racial profiling is arguably a factor in police interactions with the public, let me just start with the fact that I'm a plain old white male. I was raised to show deference and respect to authority figures. I've had more than one teacher tell my parents, when I was in middle school and high school, that I was very polite.

All that said, I noticed a huge difference, once I got past about age 30, in how police treated me. When I was in my late teens and early to mid-twenties, cops — young cops, particularly — often seemed to want to try to see if they could rile me up and escalate. (Of course, I never took the bait.) I suspect there is some deep-seated primate behavior going on.

Years ago when I worked second-level support, I was the on-call guy for Thanksgiving. Our customers were specialty retailers, so I thought nothing of it. I figured they'd be closed. Turns out, we had an "Urban Clothing Store" as a customer, and on that day — what?! — someone couldn't ring up an 8-ball jacket? I was with my family, enjoying a cocktail when I got the call. I have seldom been more pissed off. In the end, from what I could remember, after wasting almost an hour, we tabled the whole incident.

I'm with you. On-call is never worth it. If a company needs 24/7 coverage, they should hire round the clock.

It's difficult to develop products without understanding customer needs, and it's difficult to understand customer needs without a variety of customers. That's the problem their business model is it solving.

This is just a stray thought, but I wonder if men and women use these filled pauses differently in conversation, and, if there is a difference, could this in part contribute to the alleged phenomenon of men interrupting women in conversation more often than women interrupting men.

Related to this issue, an article in Harper's Magazine, from 2015, discussed the threat China poses to the United States, via the American businesses who have interests over there:

"The New China syndrome: How Beijing shakes down foreign businesses"

https://archive.harpers.org/2015/11/pdf/HarpersMagazine-2015...

The article focuses on the idea of indirect lobbying: namely, China pressuring U.S. businesses to lobby in favor of China's interests, or risk losing the privilege of doing business in China. (Length: 6 pages)

An object has the potential to undermine the solemnity of a ritual. As to your hot-rodding example, there is no supernatural power I'm referring to, merely perception.

I think the whole purpose of the ritual is shared solemnity. Laying aside Matthew 5:34-37, using the Bible fits in the context of Western civilization. Likewise, using nothing and merely affirming fits as well. But by its very nature bringing in any book or other item because it has "meaning" to you doesn't fit. It violates shared solemnity by the individualist nature of the act and opens the ritual to trivialization. What's next, someone's Teddy Bear?

Perhaps the planned obsolescence helped the consumer, because perhaps there would have been no willing producers if producing the lightbulbs at a price the users were willing to pay for wasn't going to turn out to be profitable, with respect to setting up production in the first place and then producing until the investment was paid back.

When we're talking market price, we have to acknowledge that it is a meeting of the price needed to bring a product to market and the price the consumer is willing to pay. We can't assume that the price of the longer lasting bulb would have been attractive to consumers, when compared to the price of the shorter-lived bulb, even if they had all the information available.

It's perfectly valid for a person to decide they'll spend more over the long run, rather than ponying up a larger sum now. And it's perfectly valid for producers to take the chance of deciding this for the consumer. As Henry Ford noted, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

Was anybody stopping anyone from offering the consumer a higher-priced and longer-lasting bulb?

I'd like to see them make an app for Apple TV, as well. The sound system setup with my television is the main one in my apartment.

Right. But, more than that, I'm talking about the fallout of shutting things down—of breaking the chain of production—and then the difficulty of starting things up again.

I was horrified when things got shut down. Even when I originally bought into "two weeks to slow the spread" and believed it was only going to be for two weeks, I was concerned that a global, advanced division-of-labor economy cannot be switched on and off like a lightbulb.

I think you're right, and I corrected myself (before I saw your post) in answering a question to my original post:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35263238

Logistics got screwed up, I agree. And the increase in the costs of transportation impacts everyone else's calculations and ability to produce. Your chips and cars example is excellent, by the way.

Thank you. I don't think I was being careful in my phrasing. By capital, I'm referring to the actual machinery and so forth used for production. Also, I expanded on that idea (as I noted) by including transportation, considering transportation to be, broadly speaking, involved with production and contributing to its cost.

But, as your question points out, I'm not really talking about destruction so much as I am about capital lying fallow for an extended period, and the chain of production—which endeavors to work as a well-oiled machine—being disrupted. My central point is that our ability to produce was greatly curtailed, resulting in less goods and services available.

Finally, I'm not quite sure what you mean by "who" and "why." I'm not pushing some kind of conspiracy theory. I'm just making observations of what has happened.

Full disclosure: My understanding of economics is heavily influenced from what's called the Austrian School. On that understanding, we have two main factors that are contributing to the rise in prices. Only one of them is, properly speaking, inflation.

Putting the subject of inflation aside for the moment, the first cause is the destruction of capital. Capital destruction, which broadly speaking includes our ability to transport goods, has curbed the economy's productive capacity. We produce less, and so what we are able to produce becomes more dear. This is the supply issue, but it's not inflation.

The second cause is inflation. The definition of inflation I'm using is the increase in the money supply. Until very recently, this is what the Fed (and other central banks) have been doing. More money chasing the same amount of goods—all else being equal—causes a rise in prices. This is the demand issue.

I realize that this understanding and use of the term inflation isn't mainstream. But I think it makes it easier to understand what is going on.

What happens when AI models ingest the AI-generated content that will soon flood the web?

The way capitalism works is this. Rich people have the responsibility of knowing what to do with their money. If they don't know what to do with it, it won't be long before they're no longer rich. Perhaps people are sympathetic towards FDIC deposits up to 250 thousand dollars. (That isn't capitalism, either.) But at some point people need to evaluate whether or not a bank — or anyplace else, for that matter — is a safe place for their money. If it isn't, the money shouldn't be there.

Of course, this takes work. That's called reality. This is now the second major banking crisis in 15 years. That's called death throes. The system we have is a mess. And bailouts aren't helping. With respect to the system, bailouts are doing the job of alcohol in staving off delirium tremens.

I think what I wrote was misleading. When I wrote that I never migrated to Swift, what I meant was that I never bothered learning it. It broke my heart to have to work on iOS and throw away my Objective-C knowledge and trade (the UI stuff of ) UIKit for SwiftUI, especially as all that remained a moving target for a long time.

I just went and got a new job. I'm doing web front-end work with React and TypeScript. I'm not crazy about that, believe me.

I don't even bother with iOS stuff right now as a hobby, because I can't really stomach it. I really think Apple went the wrong way.

On a side note, I can't stand "reactive" UI's (though that's what I work with now). You know, key-value coding and notifications on iOS can be used to make a reactive UI (of sorts), instead of updating the UI imperatively. But all the books I've ever read from iOS people who knew what they were talking about always warned strongly about overusing KVC or notifications: specifically, because it makes reasoning about how code works more difficult.

So, what the hell then is the idea of a reactive UI. It's taking the kind of architecture or pattern programmers have always been warned not to use, and then turning the entire UI into that!

I am really just down on the whole thing. I think it's a mistake.

> But with C++ and Java, the dynamic thinking fostered by object-oriented languages was nearly fatally assaulted by the theology of static thinking inherited from our mathematical heritage and the assumptions built into our views of computing by Charles Babbage whose factory-building worldview was dominated by omniscience and omnipotence.

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> And as a result we find that object-oriented languages have succumbed to static thinkers who worship perfect planning over runtime adaptability, early decisions over late ones, and the wisdom of compilers over the cleverness of failure detection and repair.

And, there you have it. This is a big part of the reason that I never migrated from Objective-C to Swift. When I was programming in Objective-C, I always felt challenged by the idea that I had something to learn by embracing dynamic programming, and that it would be difficult, because the rest of the "OOP" world had forgotten all about it. What's left now is only a choice of straitjackets.

"OOP to me means only messaging, local retention and protection and hiding of state-process, and extreme LateBinding of all things." – Alan Kay

I wish OOP had explicitly forked, all those years ago, and the C++/Java stuff could have been called something else. That would have at least cleared things up, conceptually.