elbasti

21 ms·

181.
by elbasti 8y ago
For me the issue with slack isn't that it's always-on (because as you said, you can log off, or turn notifications off), it's that it's an unstructured forum for ideas. I think it foments shallow commenting/debating
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Ask HN: Would you use slack if you started a new startup?
2 points by elbasti 8y ago|4 comments
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by elbasti 8y ago
To be fair, NY → LA is over 4,000 KM. Would you fly to say, Bulgaria? Southern Italy?
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by elbasti 8y ago
Agree it sounded (and probably is) insensitive. I think a different comment expressed this more clearly, by saying "that there's a certain fatalism that one experiences once they've been "diagnosed" with mental illn
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by elbasti 8y ago
I completely agree and understand the defensive position. I don't think that Szasz (and certainly I'm not) saying that the condition/suffering/symptom's are not real; and I think that's why he regrets calling t
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by elbasti 8y ago
Until 1973, homosexuality was considered "mental illness", with diagnostic criteria in the DSM. Then it was removed. What happened? Did it stop existing? No. Were homosexual individuals "cured"? No. Quite simply, the psy
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by elbasti 8y ago
> but I don't like confusing people by trying to deny the common understanding of a word. I think that's actually the crux of the argument. The phrase "mental illness" IS the perversion of a common understanding of a
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by elbasti 8y ago
But mental illness _is_ different from physical illness. That's the whole point. The dangerous thing is to presume that's not true. Or even worse: to lie about it. The phrase "chemical imbalance" comes to mind. Complete
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by elbasti 8y ago
Szasz's "The Myth of Mental Illness" is one of those works which is completely and utterly misinterpreted simply because of the title. I don't have the book available at the moment, but in the introduction he says someth
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by elbasti 8y ago
The logic is roughly as follows, for a consumer product with a short sales cycle: - Iff your market is very large, and - Iff you have well-known customer acquisition channels that are deep, with well known customer acquisition costs - THEN
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by elbasti 8y ago
West earplugs! I know this sounds counterintuitive but bear with me. This knowledge changed my life. So, there is a deep misconception about what it is to "hear", even among doctors; perhaps this can help you. A quick primer on ho
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by elbasti 8y ago
Quite the opposite. If the worry is "too much tourists" well, just raise the tax until you have the desire amount of tourists! (and a lot more money in the coffers). What am I missing here? As an example, the country of Bhutan ha
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by elbasti 8y ago
At risk of being labeled a "neoliberal idealist," why isn't the answer here simply taxing tourists more? Pigovian taxes have been a thing for fifty years, yet they are still seldom used. It seems like such an obvious solution
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by elbasti 8y ago
Of course, there are environmental reasons to avoid (some, most?) fish, but I consider wild-caught fish (and all wild/hunted game) fairly neutral from an animal welfare perspective. Perhaps this is a bit naive.
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by elbasti 8y ago
About three months ago I decided to stop purchasing factory-farmed meat. It's been pretty difficult for a few reasons. The biggest reason, by far, is access to information. Roughly, I would like to purchase only meat from animals that
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by elbasti 8y ago
Swedish police fires a gun, on average, about 30 times per year, with about half of those being "for effect" as opposed to being shot with the intent to kill. The united states doesn't track the number of times police shoot a
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by elbasti 8y ago
Insider trading isn't illegal because it's unfair to retail investors--it's illegal because it's unfair to _existing shareholders_ , which is a much more defensible position. Imagine you're an executive with inside
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by elbasti 8y ago
What does being "predictively inaccurate" mean in the context of the stock market? I assume that any time a stock jumps or falls is a symptom of inaccuracy--investors were surprised by some previously unknown--and unpriced--event.
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by elbasti 8y ago
Of course it's a thermodynamics problem. It takes less energy to split a hydrocarbon chain into CO2 + Water than it does to capture the CO2 out of the air and turn it back into solid carbon. In essence, what we have to do is "all
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by elbasti 8y ago
Well, to be technical the US does have colonies and territories--the largest of which is Puerto Rico, whose residents have no vote in US elections. There are a number of other small colonies with varying degrees of independence and repres
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by elbasti 8y ago
s/his/her
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by elbasti 9y ago
There's already a well-proven technique for price discovery: it's called a _market_. But because there's no real market for airplane tickets--the airlines basically forbid secondary transactions--we're forced into a worl
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by elbasti 9y ago
Well, not really. The tool used by the optician is a $5 dollar lantern connected to a brain that had to go through a $300,000 dollar education.
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by elbasti 9y ago
Because cooperation only happens in the repeated version of the prisoner's dilemma.
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by elbasti 9y ago
Kin.com | Ruby Developer | Chicago, IL | ONSITE We're a technology / big data insurance startup fixing the $100B home insurance industry. We are looking for experienced Ruby Developers to join our team. We are looking for a ruby d
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by elbasti 9y ago
Lucky(?) for you Mexicans and Canadians are not eligible for the diversity lottery :)
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by elbasti 9y ago
I've been told by attorneys that applying for the Green Card lottery does not come without risk--in fact it can prevent you from obtaining a non-immigrant visa. For example, when applying for an F or J visa (student/post-doc, say)
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by elbasti 9y ago
I've played development versions of the game. Hopefully I'm not spoiling too much, but there are certainly puzzles. They are super mind-bending and _different_. Definitely gave me the "now you're thinking in portals&quot
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by elbasti 9y ago
> counter the offer with a requirement that the company offer to buy back the equity at the most recent preferred share price, if the company accepts investment at a valuation exceeding $100mm. As a founder I wouldn't ever agree to
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by elbasti 9y ago
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