instead of dumb theatrics like spraying non-existent viricides, how about ending the barbaric practice of wet markets, or better yet, stop eating meat?
hygiene theater builds a false sense of security, which can ironically lead to more infections
Tag: stupid
Instagram is garbage
INSTAGRAM was leaving its trace on the physical world. People in search of ’grammable content were mobbing restaurants, public lands, and private neighborhoods in greater numbers, causing their stewards to think differently about design and crowd control. I read an article about rue Crémieux in Paris, where residents of pastel-painted houses were begging for a gate so tourists would stop taking photos in front of them. “It’s become hell. On weekends we get 200 people outside our windows. Our dinner table is right by the window and people are just outside taking pictures.”
Alert spam
of course, the point of these dumb alerts is security theater, not to actually accomplish anything. meanwhile, the correct course of action remains to disable this spam in your phone settings.
Criminal cop
Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Daniel Wilkey has been indicted on 44 criminal charges, including 25 felonies, “pertaining to incidents he was involved in while on duty in an official capacity”. Here are the charges (with counts per), which can pretty much be read to the tune “12 Days of Christmas” [felonies in bold]:
10 Reckless Driving
9 Official oppression
7 Reckless endangerment
6 Sexual Battery
4 Stalking
3 Assault
2 False imprisonment
2 Rape
1 Extortion
Against Against Billionaire Philanthropy
taking down lazy thinkpieces that are entirely about mood affiliation:
The Gates Foundation plausibly saved 10M lives. Moskovitz and Tuna saved a 100M animals from excruciatingly painful conditions. Norman Borlaug’s agricultural research (supported by the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation) plausibly saved one billion people. These accomplishments – and other similar victories over famine, disease, and misery – are plausibly the best things that have happened in the past century. All the hot-button issues we usually care about pale before them. Think of how valuable 1 person’s life is – a friend, a family member, yourself – then try multiplying that by 10M or 1B or whatever, it doesn’t matter, our minds can’t represent those kinds of quantities anyway. Anything that makes these kinds of victories even a little less likely would be a disaster for human welfare. The main argument against against billionaire philanthropy is that the lives and welfare of millions of the neediest people matter more than whatever point you can make by risking them. Criticize the existence of billionaires in general, criticize billionaires’ spending on yachts or mansions. But if you only criticize billionaires when they’re trying to save lives, you risk collateral damage to everything we care about.
Motion Smoothing
fails to make a credible case that high frame rate displays are somehow destroying movies.
Against tech populism
If your overall reaction to business progress over the last 15 years is even mildly negative, no sensible person will try to please you, because you are impossible to please. Yet our new anti-tech populists have managed to make themselves a center of pseudo-intellectual attention. Angry lamentation about the effects of new tech on privacy has flabbergasted me the most. For practical purposes, we have more privacy than ever before in human history. You can now buy embarrassing products in secret. You can read or view virtually anything you like in secret. You can interact with over 1B people in secret.
GDPR Impact
venture capital invested in EU startups fell by 50% due to GDPR implementation
Status as a Service
The gradient of your network’s social capital ROI can often govern your market share among different demographics. Young girls flocked to Musical.ly in its early days because they were uniquely good at the lip synch dance routine videos that were its bread and butter. In this age of never ending notifications, heavy social media users are hyper aware of differing status ROI among the apps they use.
On the dumb things people do to maintain “status”
NY Budget Dir on Amazon
Make no mistake, at the end of the day we lost $27 billion, 25K-40K jobs and a blow to our reputation of being ‘open for business.’ The union that opposed the project gained nothing and cost other union members 11K good, high-paying jobs. The local politicians that catered to the hyper-political opposition hurt their own government colleagues and the economic interest of every constituent in their district. The true local residents who actually supported the project and its benefits for their community are badly hurt. Nothing was gained and much was lost. This should never happen again.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 