bbctol

15 ms·

121.
by bbctol 9y ago
One of my favorite early constructed languages, Volapük, was essentially doomed by its extensive use of umlauts. Non-German speakers found them difficult to pronounce (and strange sounding) but the creator responded to all criticism by insi
122.
by bbctol 9y ago
Yes, Esperanto was a deeply political project. The ultimate goal was to spread international unity and peace, rather than just to create an interesting language. At the time, it was taken very seriously by not insignificant numbers of peopl
123.
by bbctol 9y ago
That's... not communism in a nutshell, though. That's just autocracy, it describes fascism equally well. I don't know many companies that even claim to distribute income to employees based on need.
124.
by bbctol 9y ago
Well, the internal structure of a company is almost always autocratic , but not every dictatorship is a communist one, and very few companies are even nominally communist.
125.
by bbctol 9y ago
Nerdwriter also branches out more into subjects he doesn't actually have expertise in, while Tony Zhou is at least a professional editor who sticks to talking about editing.
126.
by bbctol 9y ago
Especially as this really isn't about "Strange Loops" as coined by Hofstadter, just... regular loops.
127.
by bbctol 9y ago
The New York Times visualizations and interactive analyses are consistently high quality. Playing your own psychological tricks on Uber drivers in https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/02/technology
128.
by bbctol 9y ago
Clean litter out of forests... for free? Visit the sick... for free? People don't like being truck drivers because they like driving trucks, they like being truck drivers because they like eating, sleeping, and raising their families.
129.
by bbctol 9y ago
Agree on the getting too big; how's this for a political strategy... bust the trusts again EDIT: and for those pointing out (correctly!) that amazon doesn't violate antitrust, http://www.yalelawjournal.org/article&
130.
by bbctol 9y ago
Probably not, since this signal wouldn't be repetitive, and one of the significant aspects of the Wow signal is that it didn't repeat.
131.
by bbctol 9y ago
I thought they might want to avoid confusion with Robert Thornton, the nuclear physicist of the same era, but for some reason didn't want to include a parenthetical "not the famous one" and so provided some extra detail. Even
132.
by bbctol 9y ago
Doesn't matter from our probabilistic perspective. Odds of seeing someone with a father who survived atomic testing is different from odds that your father survived atomic testing.
133.
by bbctol 9y ago
It's about not being encumbered by all the extra material. People can feel more fulfilled by just experiencing themselves and the mountain, not themselves, the mountain, and a whole mess of carabiners and leveraged ropes. Honnold'
134.
by bbctol 9y ago
Prisons have a certain amount of gaintime (small reductions in sentencing) that's there to be withheld at the prison's discretion, specifically in order to motivate work and good behavior.
135.
by bbctol 9y ago
I'm not familiar with the idea that there was a 'postmodern revolution' in education (or even what that would look like?) What changes are you referring to?
136.
by bbctol 9y ago
Something about the structure of twitter makes things that happen there seem much larger than they are. It's an OK platform if you recognize that the communities on it are really, in the grand scheme of things, very small --but so man
137.
by bbctol 9y ago
They'd be more likely to say "Some gods lived here long ago."
138.
by bbctol 9y ago
Agassiz had a complicated life and career with plenty of lasting accomplishments, but his shortcomings do seem relevant to the piece; by the end of his life he was most famous for refusing to accommodate Darwinism.
139.
by bbctol 9y ago
Been on there for a while, but not posting much as... there isn't much to post about. Something of a pity, but also very expected.
140.
by bbctol 9y ago
Still, to extend the metaphor, we may see a world where cryptocurrencies are like Second Life, but the blockchain is like social media in general. Meaning: it's not so much that Second Life didn't do anything useful, the useful fu
141.
by bbctol 9y ago
What... isn't okay about this? It's a description of the interviewee, you don't have to agree with it.
142.
by bbctol 9y ago
Holy crap, dude, I make $35k a year and my life is fine. What on earth were you spending money on (10 years ago!) that you were miserable spending 60,000 dollars a year?
143.
by bbctol 9y ago
Yeah. Even if Juicero had "succeeded," it would have been research and investment into a $400 juicer.
144.
by bbctol 9y ago
Wait, which one's communism and which one's capitalism in this scenario?
145.
by bbctol 9y ago
That second sentence really doesn't follow the first.
146.
by bbctol 9y ago
To truly master the art of failing, you'd have to end up dead
147.
by bbctol 9y ago
Hey, the Twilight Zone was always my favorite show. It's a place between mystery and imagination, a place where the laws of reality are bent, a place where people arbitrarily start thinking you said genes don't exist.
148.
by bbctol 9y ago
Right, of course. Since we live in a universe devoid of power relationships, it stands to reason that two groups described differently are in fact different, since no one has an interest in describing people other than accurately. Like how
149.
by bbctol 9y ago
Man, I understand the desire to make every map a rectangle, but filling that in with endless ocean is just so wrong
150.
by bbctol 9y ago
A better quote, from eminent philosopher Kanye West, would be "Having money isn't everything; not having it is."

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