burgessaccount

6 ms·

1.
by burgessaccount 5y ago
“Barter” may not be the best term for it, but until the 18th/19th century (varied a lot by location), most people procured the physical goods they needed through their own family’s effort (subsistence); through in-kind payments and mut
2.
by burgessaccount 5y ago
I think the article really under-emphasizes the role of capitalism in this. If I need help with my kid, I don’t call my mom, I hire a babysitter. If my mom needs medical help, she won’t call me, she’ll pay a nurse. Goods and services that u
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by burgessaccount 5y ago
I’m not so sure about blaming social media. I really wish the article had included any sort of concrete data on whether estrangement has actually become more common over time. In my family, my grandfather didn’t talk to his parents because
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by burgessaccount 5y ago
Yeah. I guess my instinct would be this is something platforms have to do while they’re still considered cool? Like Snapchat could have done this seven years ago but couldn't pull it off now?
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by burgessaccount 5y ago
This feels like when Microsoft pays for TV characters to use Bing instead of Google. It doesn’t make Bing look cooler, it just makes the TV shows look cheap.
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by burgessaccount 5y ago
You can google all the stats I provided, just like I can google all the no-citation stats you provided. Yup! I’m a big fan of contraception and options for women. That will probably start to bring the global population down slowly within ab
7.
by burgessaccount 5y ago
No, the test is, does a public high school diploma command more pay than no high school diploma? And the answer is a resounding yes. As I have noted, multiple times, in this discourse, I think there is a role for private education, and I th
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by burgessaccount 5y ago
Hmm… can’t point to one specific book, but there are lots of links. You can google “reforestation monoculture” and “reforestation native species.” This article is a great place to start: https://e360.yale.edu/features/w
9.
by burgessaccount 5y ago
Or it’s possible that your public school helped make you into the person your professor thought had potential. Re: Seattle. I didn’t say “the public school system is perfect and never does anything stupid.” I said, “it is a net-good for the
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by burgessaccount 5y ago
Also, your public high school got you admitted to Caltech, so… worthless??
11.
by burgessaccount 5y ago
Okay, well I had the opposite experience, and found that my public high school had made me over-prepared for Yale, to the point that writing 20 page papers was easy. One individual, anecdotal experience proves nothing. That is why I pointed
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by burgessaccount 5y ago
Of course rising population is at the heart of this. But unless you’re planning to Thanos our way out of the situation, the people in the Western world need to consume less. Less beef, which is hugely polluting. Less sugar, which is toxic a
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by burgessaccount 5y ago
I find that statement pretty goofy. I went to an excellent public school - better than many private schools. The overall expansion of public schools since the 19th century has massively benefitted the American economy. Look at the relative
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by burgessaccount 5y ago
Instead of subsidizing the ridiculously inflated cost of these programs through loans, the government should just open a string of bare-bones universities across the country that offer decent job training for free. No fancy dorms, no deluxe
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by burgessaccount 5y ago
That’s exactly right. I work in film and TV, and there are great, high-paid jobs in those fields… if you win the equivalent of a professional lottery. Unfortunately these MFA programs are (of course) not transparent about that. And, unfortu
16.
by burgessaccount 5y ago
Definitely true! I am a huge fan of trees. But the wrong tree in the wrong place is a bad thing. I try to advocate for responsible and thoughtful reforestation - which is, unfortunately, a lot more expensive than people want it to be.
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by burgessaccount 5y ago
Particulate matter in the air causes precipitation. Spraying large amounts of particulate matter into the sky is likely to drastically change global rainfall patterns - so you might get a ton of rain in the Sahara, where it’s useless, and n
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by burgessaccount 5y ago
I actually think all people in the developed world - rich people of course most of all, but “commoners” too - do need to learn to be content with a lot less. Before the industrial era, the average person in England owned 36 objects. And tha
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by burgessaccount 5y ago
Trees actually can provide tremendous cooling dynamics, beyond CO2 absorption. They provide shade at ground level. If every house in the US were surrounded by trees instead of useless lawns, energy use for both heating and cooling would be
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by burgessaccount 5y ago
Calcium carbonate is a better fit - see Gates’s experiments. Likely to still be disastrous, but better than sulfur dioxide
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by burgessaccount 5y ago
A few other problems - 1) trees take a lot of water to grow, and 2) all the carbon they sequester can go right back into the atmosphere in a forest fire. Some very scrupulous carbon-offset companies (like YC co terraformation!) are careful
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by burgessaccount 5y ago
Yeah, I mean the green new deal was like 75% not climate spending? And a billionaire does not need to tackle the whole problem, just make a dent? My main point was that we actually already have most of the technology needed to fight climate
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by burgessaccount 5y ago
I partly agree - yes, individual people spending money is not a long-term solution. But we aren’t even in the stage of needing stable, long-term solutions - we need immediate, drastic, dramatic actions. And there are already strong incentiv
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by burgessaccount 5y ago
I’m very excited about them as a possibility (I think there’s another thread about them on HN?) but so much is unproven. We have no idea how much carbon the sand will absorb, or how fast, or how much it might mess with oceans along the way
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by burgessaccount 5y ago
Why doesn’t he just use a few of his billions to build free renewable power plants? Emissions reduction, now, is so much more important than the possibility of carbon reduction in ten or fifteen years
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Netflix's global UI(wired.com)
1 points by burgessaccount 11y ago|0 comments
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by burgessaccount 11y ago
Haha, that does sound deeply annoying. But makes sense given German words. I really don't know which is better, to standardize or personalize...
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by burgessaccount 11y ago
What is interesting to me is that when adapting the keyboard to other languages, they often didn't attempt to change the layout for the keys used most in those languages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY#Inter
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by burgessaccount 11y ago
I think there is a fundamental incentives problem in hiring - employers don't have a strong incentive to treat candidates well, because either they won't need to hire again soon, or they will be trying to hire someone who really w
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by burgessaccount 11y ago
I don't want to speak for ArkyBeagle but I think, when young adults move, they often move for work - so you show up in a city where what you're there to do is work, the people you know are through work, you don't have the bal

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