noir-york

Not sure why your comment was downvoted. Its an informed comment that adds to the discussion.

Nice bit of literature reference there. The interesting thing about moral frameworks is there are so many to choose from.

Throughout history we have been known to send our sons and daughters to die in large numbers to first gain, and then protect, basic freedoms. And for other, less honourable, reasons as well...

Returning back to science, a utilitarian could easily make the case that, if it is impossible to avoid, being cruel to bird for the sake of humanity may be a tradeoff worth making.

Yes, of course I read the article. If there was political will, Facebook would pay taxes in the UK.

The article I linked to in my comment showed that FBK paid (slightly) more taxes in 2017 than in 2016 following a public outcry.

Political pressure and HMRC's best and brightest could surely find ways to make Facebook pay a just level of taxes.

No representation without taxation.

Why should Facebook send Zuckerberg when Facebook paid a grand total of £2.6 million taxes to the UK in 2017.

If the British parliament wants Zuckerberg to attend, make the UK relevant to Facebook. Tax it.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/04/facebook-...

Absolutely fascinating! Thank you for posting.

Mediums create expectations around availability, presence, and response times.

Phone (excluding VOIP): availability is not expected, but once call is picked up, response is immediate.

Email: availability is guaranteed (if you know their email), and a response times range from minutes to next day.

IM / Slack: Availability is known and a response expected in the seconds / minutes range if you are available.

It comes down to using the right tool for the job@ "hej Jeb, you in the office?" - use IM.

Then go over to Jeb's office to continue the discussion on whether to go with solution A or solution B. Its an indepth discussion that takes over an hour and Jeb closes his door so the two of you can discuss without interruption.

Back in your own office, you email Jeb with a summary of the discussion and the points agreed.

Jeb calls back saying "hey, i'm not sure about para X"... You discuss it over the phone, issue is resolved in a couple of minutes. You post the updated document to the internal wiki and email the team.

Feeling productive, you decide its time for a coffee, you slack the channel asking who would care to join you.

When a company normalises the expectation of getting a response to anything in seconds, interruptions happen all the time and productivity takes a hit.

Also, I hate open offices and thank heavens I only have had to work in one for a few months. The only true progress we ever made was going through the lunch menus of all the nearby restuarants.

On the other hand having say, a handful of people in a room (three or four) is a good balance between the chaos of open office (and real estate cost efficiencies) and giving everyone their own (potentially isolating) office.

Government provision does NOT stop the private sector from providing options. It is not an either government OR private. But both. Your example does not exist anywhere, nor is it what it is being advocated.

To be realistic your example would be as follows: what if the US provided a grocery store that provided the basic necessities, free at the point of provistion and paid for by common taxation. People are free to buy the nice wine from the private provider next door BUT if you fall on hard times and you need to put food on the table, the rest of your fellow citizens help pay to make sure you, your partner, and your children have food to eat, and retain a semblance of human dignity, until you can get back on your feet and pay taxes that provide for someone else who needs help.

One does not preclude the other. In European countries with a national health service you can still buy private coverage.

Incidentally, a one-size fits most plan works great for alot of people.

There will be economies of scale. The bigger the pool of employees the lower the costs, so yes there are options but they could get fewer if this takes off.

Three large employers, realising that for-profit healthcare is expensive and inefficient, create a non-profit that pools healthcare and is driven by its member's interests.

This is terrible if it works.

Imagine if other employers want to join it. And then even more employers... and what if the scheme becomes so large and covering so much of the population that it ... gasp... looks almost like a government-run non-profit health insurance scheme! You know, like what those Marxists in Europe have.

And where it would it end - soon people would be demanding cheaper drug prices and being able to negotiate prices for drugs! Insane

(In case its not clear, the above is written ironicly. I am all for a well funded government-run health service)

A modern take on anthropometry and craniometry. Because we know the recent history of those.

This is the second article, the first was by the Economist, arguing - coherently - that firing Damore was not the right thing to do. The problem of course is that what Damore wrote - assuming its actually scientifically accurate - is very easy to mischaracterise.

It looks like it is indeed an extension: http://docs.timescale.com/getting-started/installation?OS=li...

May we never forget.

And being dishonest does?

Brilliant! I wish you every success.

Evolution made us, then we discovered it, and now we can directly code it.

Pity evolution didn't give us the intelligence, restraint and good judgement to make sure that we will not screw this up. And we will.

A myriad of reasons will be given. Medical reasons - how could one refuse? Then parents: "Harvard is expensive and I want to give my child the best chance I can afford". Then nation states will feel pressure to 'level the genetic playing field'.

On the other hand, with AI soon replacing us, apparently, we can fight back and enhance ourselves!

> Worth reading the comments where someone points out a much simpler and more elegant solution, although it's still not an ideal situation.

I'm always wary of such "<language X> isn't great because..." posts as I find that the frustration is as much a function of the developer's competence, (lack of) imagination and familiarity with the language and its idioms, as it is with the language itself.

Thanks for posting this! Super interesting

> I think there are several markets in art delivery but it will take connections, money, and luck to prise it open.

Curious about this. I love art and visit musuems regularly.

The first time I saw a van Gogh at d'Orsay I got goose pimples. A flat 2D image on my laptop or a TV does not come anywhere close to the experience of seeing the painting itself.

Aren't musuems the best 'art delivery' mechanism there is?

Simply kill the animal humanely and it will not suffer. Make sure that grazing animals have adequate space and aren't fed shit, offal and pumped full of antibiotics to save money and con the consumer.

In other words, treat the animals, and the people who will eat their meat, with some dignity.

> the pain that a human has to suffer for eating inferior food lacking essential nutrients

That's only the half of it! What would happen to our national dishes if meat, fish and frutti de mare were to be banished from the table?! Barbaric!

> the lower an individual eats on the foodchain

Why are you privileging organisms higher up the food chain? There should ethically be no difference in how we treat living things based on where they are in the food chain, except for qualitative reaons (bacteria vs a cow), so you are making the distinction on purely practical reasons.

> is the reduction of greenhouse gases and other negative outputs the lower an individual eats on the foodchain

That is at best a practical argument, and one that can be made only because technology to scrub greenhouse gases is not yet in use.

> Since the vast majority of life on the planet is incapable of experiencing pain

Counting by species or by total population? Insects may not feel pain (AFAIK) but most species (animals and plants) experience pain or stress.

> exist logical arguments

Not sure why you keep saying logical arguments. As opposed to what? Non-rational ones?

There are strong ethical arguments to be made for not causing pain/stress when killing animals (and plants) and not killing life unnecessarily. But against eating meat? Its in our very nature to eat it, indeed meat is part of a healthy and balanced diet.

> Their treatment is generally poor, but again their purpose is to be food.

That smells like a non-sequitar to me: their purpose is indeed to be food, but that neither justifies poor treatment or cruelty, nor does poor treatment necessarily follow simply because animals are bred as food.

I am not overly familiar with the subject but I do know that there are rules and regulations both at the national and EU level to protect animals from mistreatment.

It is pretty effective as long as you ignore the economic theories espoused by the Cato institute (the institution the author forms part of) and other pseudo think-tanks.

Interesting to note that the author tries to discredit Keynesian economics, but makes no mention of the Reinhart / Rogoff debacle that completely undermined their paper which purported to show a link between debt and growth - a paper much referenced by people like the author of the article who are primarily interested in using economics as a fig leaf for their ideology.

For the record, I trained in politics and economics.

A great read! Horology, Ecclesiastical history and lattice structures in one article. Thanks for posting.

So because he's laying the blame at the wrong door then he, and so many others in his predicament, don't deserve empathy?

The man is a pilot not a political anorak/economist/pundit. It would be more helpful to point out where the blame lies: lobbying, party/campaign financing, unfair trade agreements etc.

The lack of empathy in the comments is disconcerting. The post is a bit light on details (though the example given of flying 23 hours back-to-back continental flights is terrible if regular) the post deserves better than: 1. Pilots fly for fun. You made the wrong career move. 2. Capitalism! 3. you're lucky - imagine if you were a warehouse worker.

He's a pilot, not an accountant or lawyer. He knows that there is pay pressure due to companies skirting regulations. That exec mgmt gets massive bonsuses while the pilots work very long hours and (probably unpaid) overtime offends one's sense of justice.

Pay has been stagnant for the vast majority of workers for decades. We should be doing something about it, not dismissing it. Capitalism is a great tool for progress, but it should not, and is not, the answer to everything. Human dignity matters.

I just had an awesome monkfish with scallops for dinner last night. And earlier this week a John Dory. And they were great!

But then again, I don't order fish from any restaurant, but go to a fishing village and the restaurants there show you the fresh fish for you to choose from. Good fresh fish is not cheap.

I cannot understand why the writer, a scientist, engages in scaremongering instead of presenting a holistic picture. A dinner of fresh fish paired with an excellent white wine makes for a healthy and very enjoyable evening.

Great science writeup!

The Tsar Bomba described as a "the noble purpose of containing capitalist imperialism" - great quote :)