clock_tower

8 ms·

31.
by clock_tower 9y ago
"Myriad ways" is still windy pompousness.
32.
by clock_tower 9y ago
Well, does the author of this documentary agree with him? Whatever the neo-reactionaries might or might not want, I doubt he wants the same.
33.
by clock_tower 9y ago
Finally, a case where Betteridge's Law of Headlines might not apply! ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines )
34.
by clock_tower 9y ago
> watching the documentary itself would answer your questions, no? I'm definitely feeling engaged, but not entirely enthusiastic... (EDIT: But I feel like I'm picking a fight with you, and I apologize for that. I'll defini
35.
by clock_tower 9y ago
Just going off the summary of part 1, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to make of this. Every cultural voice in the US -- except a few eccentric Greens -- was pro-computer-revolution; the Left wanted decentralization and freedom, wh
36.
by clock_tower 9y ago
Tradecraft from another area? Paul Graham, at least, has his doubts about that: http://www.paulgraham.com/copy.html .
37.
by clock_tower 9y ago
> a worse problem than the one we started with Bacterial infections are no longer a serious threat -- even bubonic plague has been brought under control. It's unlikely that bacteria will ever become fully immune to one or another an
38.
by clock_tower 9y ago
I expect it could stretch a game's art budget considerably, FWIW...
39.
by clock_tower 9y ago
> Our brains aren't evolved for understanding the true nature of the universe, they're evolved for reproducing and surviving in a very simple world. Absolutely. For survival-to-reproduction -- and for quite a bit more than that
40.
by clock_tower 9y ago
"Final cause" doesn't imply a designer; it's just the way the species happens to exist. (Aristotle was a deist, roughly speaking.) There's no guarantee that a species' final cause doesn't involve messing w
41.
by clock_tower 9y ago
> no sense that there is an existential threat that needs combating and then all involved can go back to the farm and "study war no more." That much, at least, I'd call a good thing. A watchful peace, or a world where viol
42.
by clock_tower 9y ago
Instead of swinging too far in the opposite direction, why not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_projection ? The northern latitudes are bigger in Robinson's projection than they are in real life, but you do
43.
by clock_tower 9y ago
> Unless we manufacture artificial meat, we won't be able to live without killing/hurting some living being. Look up ahimsa -- nonviolence, the Jain philosophy of life -- as it applies to diet. Specifically: fruiting bodies of
44.
by clock_tower 9y ago
As a Thomist (Catholic Aristotelian), I winced when I read "their purpose is to be food". So, here's one possible counter-argument: Aristotle describes all things and beings as having four causes: matter (what it's made
45.
by clock_tower 9y ago
Authors are prestigious because it's assumed that they've written their books -- with help from friends and editors, of course, but still, they're the one who structured their thoughts and churned through a few hundred thousa
46.
by clock_tower 9y ago
"You are producing the book that they would write if they could" I say if a person can't write a book, they should either learn to write or not write at all. Ghostwriting degrades the idea of authorship; "having written
47.
by clock_tower 9y ago
I'm not a psychologist; but as near as I can tell, it's Bush Derangement Syndrome again, only with less logic. Bush established secret courts, secret prisons, and a torture program; Trump tried and failed to ban Muslims from the c
48.
by clock_tower 9y ago
The latter, at least in Norway -- small settlements propped up by government spending. http://www.idlewords.com/2010/07/mission_burfjord.htm Search for "The social center of Burfjord" and read that parag
49.
by clock_tower 9y ago
Cowen's really illustrating how the upper-middle-class elite will fight savagely for their interests, regardless of what it means for their principles. Affordable housing is good _except for us_, high taxes are good _except for us_, im
50.
by clock_tower 9y ago
> As you said the authors start by mentioning: "unfalsifiable religious claims". So, they seem to start the paper by classifying this a one of those "unfalsifiable religious claims". But, they then immediately classif
51.
by clock_tower 9y ago
Five systems generating 33.3%, then. He's got a very valid point.
52.
by clock_tower 9y ago
I'd guess that they probably could.
53.
by clock_tower 9y ago
Uber broke the taxi laws and dared regulators to stop them -- and they mostly won that dare. (Remember all that talk about disruption?)
54.
by clock_tower 9y ago
The problem is that Uber loses money on every ride, so they'll have to raise their rates as soon as they stop being subsidized by VCs -- unless they have self-driving taxis by then.
55.
by clock_tower 9y ago
Modernism -- i.e., the Bauhaus, the International Style, and Le Corbusier -- was always about big, cheap, and ugly. The Amsterdam School was Expressionist, not Modernist; and nothing's more anti-Modernist than a pretty painting on a wa
56.
by clock_tower 9y ago
If I were to guess: Wal-Mart has a very bad reputation for sucking the wealth out of a community; money spent at a locally-owned store is more likely to circulate in the community, while with Wal-Mart the money's spent once and no one
57.
by clock_tower 9y ago
Massive blank facades, of the sort that this study condemns, can't occur in a diverse, mixed-use urban landscape; so I think this study has gotten to the right answer. Still, I see your point: are they getting to the right answer in th
58.
by clock_tower 9y ago
I really do blame the architecture, not the economic conditions, which were more or less constant before, during, and after Pruitt-Igoe. (And I certainly don't blame race, which was also constant before, during, and after Pruitt-Igoe..
59.
by clock_tower 9y ago
On your second point, the poor suffer from Modernist architecture. The projects actively bred crime, by encouraging isolation and demoralization -- Pruitt-Igoe was actually dynamited, and its inhabitants were much more peaceful and civilize
60.
by clock_tower 9y ago
Bare walls plus eye candy just gives you Postmodernism, which isn't much of an improvement over Modernism. The goal is to build genuinely smaller buildings, or buildings with a wider range of uses. (Think of how the Empire State Buildi

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