thesagan

There’s so much to protest and so many are crushed that many Americans have resigned hope for change.

"Fast" may also be used as an adverb. See: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/fast

Yep, that's exactly what I was hinting at.

Although you're being downvoted, this is a growing sentiment among researchers and others near the field. There are calls to improve measurements of a society's wealth, as well as individual.

Current headlines use the broad statistics, such as the most exclusive unemployment stats, that don't really capture what's happening on Main Street.

The reporting on the economy barely pokes at issues and are generally just looking for general correlations, such as "Stocks do X as Y does that," or "GDP is doing X while Y is doing Z."

That seems a bit simplistic.

With Comcast maintaining pipes that carry traffic to Google, I wonder how a Google vs. Comcast event would look.

Don't many hunter gatherers have easier lives?

See: "According to Sahlins, ethnographic data indicated that hunter-gatherers worked far fewer hours and enjoyed more leisure than typical members of industrial society, and they still ate well."

Citation: "Notes on the Original Affluent Society", Man the Hunter. R.B. Lee and I. DeVore (New York: Aldine Publishing Company) pp. 85–89. Published in 1966.

I think the confusion stems from the fact that most people speak through or on private property—both digital and physical.

But they're taught in school that there is a general "freedom of speech" which doesn't really exist. This sentiment is echoed in mass American media to adults.

There's very little "public" speech in a legal sense. The most populated speech structures are privately owned. Censorship is built into those structures. America, as a whole, does not have "free speech" except for property owners. Unless you're on public property, behaving lawfully, such as in court, or "speaking truth" next to the post office, etc. etc. you don't have free speech.

So, when people hold a good portion of their discourse through private structures, those structures seem public. The host companies seem like governments through terms of services. They see the first amendment as applying there by default.

Seems like we’re removing lanes from the “information highway.” A once optimistic future to waste. Like radio and tv. Less participation is better now; as in the famous statement of an “excess of democracy.”

How quick we change our values.

I happen to think the opposite. I know it's unpopular.

Downvoted posts are distinct markers that shape our experience. But we're warned to not discuss it; the very thing that controls how we see and what we see (or not see). Apparently that's boring.

Voting systems create echo chambers. Most people vote based on subjective agreement, not on objective quality. We need to be aware of that, and discuss it. Just my opinion, which I'm wary to post but will anyhow.

I think it's different for everyone. Myself, two decades ago, I was happier. I'm still happy now, but I was much more exuberant, in general, back then. The zest and passion of youth sort of stuff. I'd rather live through COVID now that I'm older, instead of back then.

If I were still in my 20s I'd be very upset over these conditions and how that will compound over the rest of my life. The compounding really, really matters for young people. They're being diminished. It's an extraordinary trolley problem as another poster stated.

My view: we're choosing to diminish youth to preserve the elderly. Maybe ok. Maybe not. Probably not; they're the future. I don't know what the balance should be—which way to swing the trolley switch. My judgement is that public debate is shallow, binary, and without nuance. The weakest and poorest suffer as a result.

I don't think there's any right or wrong answer here. But lots of people are getting hurt in different ways and in different durations.

I think the concern stems from differing contexts. When typing on the phone, you're looking at the phone. You're usually (hopefully) not driving.

Driving, on the other hand, is demanding on the senses; on at least three of them. Touch screens pull eyes off the road. Physical knobs are much easier to grab without looking.

In my car I have the luxury of both touch and knobs for some things. I always use knobs when I can. It feels safer. (But then, I also prefer crank windows instead of automatic, so maybe I'm just a nut.)

It's like my Macbook touchbar. It stinks. The physical keys were easy to use without looking. With touch, I almost always need to look steady at it before I touch. For me, muscle memory isn't enough for touchscreens. Weird.

Like grocery stores or many types of restaurants, for example. They usually can't compete against the Walmarts and Paneras, which suck up consumer mindshare. Similar with soft drinks. Coke and Pepsi build as much mindshare as possible. You may invent a great product, but it likely will never get noticed among corporate noise.

Google, Wikipedia, Facebook are becoming the default go-to spots for particular activities, similar to what McDonald's did to fast dining in the 60s and 70s. I guess, in general, markets saturate, oligopolize, and the small spots fade away unless they're niche or very high quality.

That's what popped in my head, "oh, pivoting!" I guess there's an element of readiness to the idea.

It's a problem. Been one since the Spanish-American war.

Some of the biggest source of advertising revenues for news media organizations comes from defense companies. The New York Times pushed for the Iraq war, for example. They fired journalists who reported dovish news, too. Many others left to report as freelancers so they could paint more accurate pictures in smaller publications.

Similarly, MSNBC will bring on ex-Pentagon officials to "analyze" current events, but they don't bring in ex-State Department officials. There are likely patterns and incentives here. "Follow the money" as they like to say.

I agree. Most of these tombs are better in the ground, unknown and undiscovered. I understand we can build knowledge from these artifacts, but there may be some unforeseen value in abiding by the benign wishes of ancient peoples.

I don't trust modern society to store these artifacts for more than a few hundred years without losing them to war, theft, modification, infrastructure issues, or whatever. The modern world is relatively unpredictable and chaotic compared to the past, in my mortal opinion.

That said, it's nice to have some of these out of the ground, for us still living. But pulling up everything we find feels like science-sponsored grave robbing to stock our treasury of knowledge, which is valuable but not holy.

Actually, I think this is now normal in the U.S. and should be expected going forward. From both duopoly parties.

Power grabbing is the game.

I'm not sure this is an age thing, but a personality thing. I've worked with several people in their 20s and 30s who have had one or more of these traits, as well as older folks who had few or none.

I'm stopping short of making any generalizations, because in my experience the evidence (for me at least) isn't there to make any. Perhaps things are different elsewhere, though. I'm only speaking from my experience, as I suppose we all are.

Great Recession!

/s

People read the headline. The small words beneath it are there for the headline to rest upon. Sometimes a picture also rests on the small text. That small text is pretty useful.

When I worked at a newspaper a lot of work went into headlines and pictures, in relation to the rest of the copy. We knew what we were doing, and we also knew what are readers weren't doing.

I think you're in very good company, myself included.

Fallacy of relative privation. It's still a dark place.

Interestingly enough, I forget which author, claimed Titanic even began heading for Newfoundland before stopping, after the flooding worsened (perhaps due to the movement, there are conflicting testimonies about how the early pumping performed.)

But yes, the offloading of passengers would have been extremely risky; and only recommended if the ship were—for sure—going down, without a doubt, and that passengers would need to get off.

Today, lifeboats are more-or-less little boats you see on cruise ships, and are used now and then for shuttling passengers to resorts. No biggie, in those cases.

I likely wouldn't survive. I would've been confident in the ship, and the crew's countenance.

The ship sank very slowly at first. No reason for panic, if things are just still. I would've known about watertight doors, and how ships haven't really sunk from iceberg incidents.

Plus, there's a wireless on board, and we're in a busy shipping lane. Plenty of time to get help. Plenty of lifeboats, too. We can offload people onto another ship and row back for more.

Hey! Look, lights right over there. I can almost make out portholes. They can get over here if things get ugly.

The list to port seems to be the big problem. They'll just use the bilge tanks, maybe. I barely perceive the downward list, since the ship is so long, and we're up so high. (I guess I'm in first or second class.)

The officers are so calm. Things are orderly. Capt. Smith seems calm. The band is playing. Damn it, let's get this pumped out and be on our way!

Some time passes, suddenly the ship feels like it's lurching down, perceptively. Wait!!! I run up to the front of the ship, and see water coming over the bow! Hell! The crew didn't give us any indications things were this bad.

I look behind me. Lifeboats are almost gone. Everyone else notices what's suddenly happening. It's 2:00 a.m. We're sinking. Suddenly we feel the list downward, the port list being gone.

Wait! Where'd that light go? Weren't they coming?

It's too late. The crowds are surrounding the last lifeboats. I panic and run aft.

When there's competition to foster. Unfortunately, the pendulum has been swinging towards market concentration, duopolies, and even monopolies.

See: Health insurance industry

Also see: Internet service providers

Also also see: Publishing

Thank you for this post.

I'm better than I was a year and a half ago when I was doing full time web development at an agency for large corps.

I just burned out one too many times and got sick of development and tech, in general.

So, now I'm back in school studying info science and deputy editor of a newspaper. I've made contacts everywhere.

Right now we're investigating the slow privatization of my public school and some recent antics by administration to outsource an entire tech department to an outside vendor. It's fascinating stuff. But it's dramatic too, and sad, when people lose their jobs.

With all the vitriol out there, the decline of independent journalism and the rise of tech, I sense a lot of spiritual opportunity (and perhaps not monetary) in reporting on these things, even though traditional media is in decline.

I'm hoping to find and join other people building next chapters in this area.

Most importantly, I needed to get away from code and screens and get in front of people with questions. I love asking questions.

Tldr; Money wasn't buying me happiness.

I've seen this pattern in academic settings myself.

There's simply a lot of tunnel vision. Although, as a parent comment pointed out (a bit rudely) there's acknowledgement of various shortcomings of measures such as CPI, there's also a tendency to assume these models are accurate in policy-setting institutions.

I'd say they're maybe as accurate as predicting weather in the Great Lakes Region.

Also: r/economics should not be representative of economists, as a group. (Although they do parrot a lot of bank and government economist views.) Most posters there strike me as undergrads, who are mostly clueless to the fuzzy subtleties of the study (and life in general.)

Like politicians, smart economists wait to make predictions—growth or recession—until two quarters later.

As a group they miss acute macro moves, altogether.

There's a lot of exuberance lately in areas that benefit from low interest rates; housing (again), corporate debt (this one is huge), and sovereign debt (another big one).

Over the last few decades, we seem to have a boom-bust debt cycle of sorts, and it doesn't seem to be abating at the moment given what we're seeing with the Fed, yields, and debt.

But if the number of players on the bench keep increasing while those on the field keep decreasing, you might start to wonder if there's a problem, or if the Warriors will be back to play next season.