beat

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121.
by beat 7y ago
It's not helpful, but it's spot-on. I always think of this whenever nuclear arguments pop up here. The pro-nuclear side tends to be extremely emotional, but think of themselves as the "logical" ones. It's kind of
122.
by beat 7y ago
Everyone says that, but no one who says that shows us their math or cites any sources. Show your work . Don't just say "can't". Consider variations in both output and load, both of which are well documented. Consider co
123.
by beat 7y ago
Are you arguing we should make nuclear power less safe, then? Why? So it can finally be cheaper than wind and solar? What's the advantage of that?
124.
by beat 7y ago
No, they just said what I said, with flowery science words. Morally and emotionally, it's exactly the same thing I said. And just to be clear here... arguing "nuclear power is much safer than commonly believed" is perfectly r
125.
by beat 7y ago
There are nuclear reactors closing in the US not because of regulation, but because they cannot compete with much cheaper wind and fracked gas sources. There is little difference in operational cost between running a nuclear plant at 50% an
126.
by beat 7y ago
"Nuclear is safer because people smash their thumbs with hammers installing solar panels" is THE stupidest argument made by nuclear proponents. Please, stop doing that. It makes you sound like a jerk.
127.
by beat 7y ago
So should developers be doing all their own ops work in a half-assed, ignorant way, or should we go back to a world of throw it over the wall systems where the ops team doesn't understand the code or have a working non-adversarial rela
128.
by beat 7y ago
And this is why I find DevOps work more interesting than programming. System integration is just endlessly challenging. I always enjoy reading a well-documented integration debugging session!
129.
by beat 7y ago
What about Lake Bloomington? Miller Park "lake"? I suppose you could sit on a surfboard in knee-deep dirty water until you got bored.
130.
by beat 7y ago
Well, they could , but. Benefits, particularly health care, are very expensive for employers as well as employees, so employers, especially for lower wage work, look for ways to cut that. Not-quite-full-time is one way that's done. Ge
131.
by beat 7y ago
People shouldn't dismiss whatever they don't find pleasing. Whether or not you like something is a separate question from whether it's actually good. I mean, I hate eggs, I think they're disgusting. But I don't thin
132.
by beat 7y ago
If we think about it that way, what's the difference between value and price? Not much. I think it's very important to consider value independently of money, and Van Gogh's paintings are an excellent example of that.
133.
by beat 7y ago
Friction isn't necessarily innovation. When you pay $6 to get popcorn at a movie, it's not because they've created better popcorn. It's because they've created a local monopoly where you have no choice but $6 popcor
134.
by beat 7y ago
And that's pretty much what all this "Pollock paintings are stupid" stuff gets to, right? That anyone who likes his work or claims to find special value in it is "dishonest or deluded". You can find quotes to that e
135.
by beat 7y ago
So basically, you're saying that Pollock is easy to forge, as long as no one understand what makes his paintings distinctive? I mean, I could probably spot an amateurish Pollock forgery, and I'm no expert. And while forging his ge
136.
by beat 7y ago
I can draw stick figures and call them forgeries of Michaelangelo. That doesn't make them good forgeries. Read the original article for some sense of the technical difficulty of forging Pollock in a way that couldn't be easily spo
137.
by beat 7y ago
The economic value of art is based on what someone is willing to pay for it. That's very different from value in general. Van Gogh's "Starry Night" is probably the most valuable painting in the world, a canonical work
138.
by beat 7y ago
Capitalism has a built-in failure mode. As Peter Thiel (not exactly a commie, him) points out, capitalism only functions in its failure mode. The ideal world that all the economists and conservative politicians argue for, where pure competi
139.
by beat 7y ago
After having looked at it for a long time, I'm convinced that "institutionalized corruption" is a pleasing myth with no grounding in reality. Money in politics flows to candidates who already agree with those who control the
140.
by beat 7y ago
Many fields are shallow. But this really boils down to a distrust of intellectualism, and the idea that Joe Sixpack's off-the-shelf opinion is more valid than the opinion of someone who actually studies the subject seriously - that t
141.
by beat 7y ago
This is a really interesting article, and reinforces just how wrong the common conception that he was just "throwing paint at canvas" is. Drip technique, the way Pollock did it, is technically very difficult and required substanti
142.
by beat 7y ago
Art criticism is no different than any other field... it's completely baffling to people without education in it, and makes total and obvious sense to those who do. I went to the University of Iowa, which has Jackson Pollock's Mu
143.
by beat 7y ago
Totally different perspective from mine, but certainly valid. If you're familiar with spoon theory, the spoons you spend just working are spoons you need in order to look for a new job.
144.
by beat 7y ago
If "they do it only for the paycheck" is necessary for important work, how is it different from slavery? How are we not being coerced to do things that are, at the very least, unpleasant, for the majority of our waking hours? You
145.
by beat 7y ago
How much would I need to pay you in order to be a sewer worker? Today? Would you be willing to do it under any circumstances?
146.
by beat 7y ago
This is the trap of equating "work" with "make money". Not all work is economically lucrative, even if it may provide real human value. Consider artists, for example. The arts don't pay very well, to the point that
147.
by beat 7y ago
The worse the job, the worse the insurance, in most cases. Not all jobs are full-time skilled white collar jobs.
148.
by beat 7y ago
Why do you think incentives are removed? Is "work or starve" the only incentive? I'm not talking about a beachfront mansion and a Ferrari in the driveway for everyone. I'm talking about not starving. Want to be more than
149.
by beat 7y ago
Why would everyone stop working? If you were given the choice, would you just sit around and eat M&Ms and watch tv all day? Or would you work anyway? Consider your examples. Who would grow the food? Farmers. Because people would grow fo
150.
by beat 7y ago
I don't even think a 20% cut in pay is fair. Is our productivity, at least in brain-driven jobs, equally distributed across all our working hours? In other words, if we work 20% fewer hours during the week, will we do 20% less work? Or

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