halhod

11 ms·

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by halhod 3y ago
HN may enjoy this old Christmas special I wrote on Ethan, a teenager born without a cerebellum https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2018/12/18/the-...
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by halhod 3y ago
This headline appears to be bullshit. The report does not recommend banning smartphones. This is what it actually says: "Banning technology from schools can be legitimate if technology integration does not improve learning or if it wor
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by halhod 3y ago
lol, hilarious question that betrays utter lack of understanding of how the economist or any serious news org works. of course i own no shares in TMC or any other DSM related company (unless they're somehow in the Vanguard world index)
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by halhod 3y ago
I agree with you, and I hope we will go that way; free range organic high quality etc etc. but the lure of metrics affects our thinking too, in ways one cannot avoid wrestling with
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by halhod 3y ago
1) this underestimates the scale of increase in nickel supply we're gonna see in the next five years. last year 3.3m tonnes. by 2025 it's gonna be 5m tonnes, by 2030 11m. on current trends, the vast majority of that comes from Ind
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by halhod 3y ago
it has one page of indicators in the back, yes. it would defo be too many sources to fit in print, but clearly digital makes this possible as a little clickable footnote at the bottom or similar. part of the issue is that one can't hel
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by halhod 3y ago
3/3 -- deep breath -- My central concern is that the article you've written is by itself relatively benign. It uses an interesting ratio (biomass disturbed) and a bit of fluff from TMC's public disclosures and the nickel mark
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by halhod 3y ago
"will be released back into the sea at a depth of around 1,500 metres, far below most ocean life" -- that we know of, and, of course, that pesky life on the bottom is way below 1,500 metres. >>>> no, far below most oce
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by halhod 3y ago
so, taking your points in turn (1/?) Thanks for getting in touch! While (of course) you're not being directly paid by the company, it remains puzzling how the article comes off so glossy for TMC and seabed mining. This positive to
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by halhod 3y ago
and having read through your comment in more detail, I will defo reply later. lots of interesting points. my email is halhodson at economist dot come if you'd like to ping me there just so that we don't loose the thread
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by halhod 3y ago
Hi there, my blood is fine! appreciate the cut and thrust, even if no one is watching. I would have preferred if you had started in good faith and critiqued the facts etc rather than jumping to "who is paying you" I think I said i
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by halhod 3y ago
yes, good point. I am sure this has been discussed internally and not adopted to date for a good reason, but I will think on it more
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by halhod 3y ago
That’s kind of you to say, thanks. I get the cynicism, and I worry about it. Humans aren’t getting out of climate change without all the tools we have in the box, including “big industry” imo
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by halhod 3y ago
no worries at all, did not take it as such. and yeah, i guess i think just cos something has worked well for us for a long time, doesn’t mean it’s not worth thinking about how well it works today
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by halhod 3y ago
I think about this a lot, and I think you may be right, but I am also not sure anyone ever had their mind changed by having sources cited. My main thought is that in an age of cheap machine generated text, we may need to be more transparent
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by halhod 3y ago
No problem, happy to help
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by halhod 3y ago
yeah you’ve got it. i’m based in London. i am fairly confident that our style can come across as arrogant. i don’t always ageee with it, though i can see its advantages. you’ll see i put a bunch of my sources below for you to check out if y
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by halhod 3y ago
I said it once, and waited for them to express interest. Now you have. Here are some of the papers from which the reporting is drawn: starting point for abyssal biomass calcs - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.33
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by halhod 3y ago
I don’t mind at all. The honest answer is I don’t really know. Broadly speaking it helps our voice sound authoritative and readable to not be breaking the flow of a piece up with lots of quotes and citations. But I can assure you I spoke to
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by halhod 3y ago
there’s enough nickel in the CCZ to get the world to 2040 on a path to net zero. not “1000s of years” worth
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by halhod 3y ago
We do in fact have an idea, and it’s improving all the time. See this paper by MIT team on the plumes from the collector https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abn1219
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by halhod 3y ago
hi, i’m the writer. this article, like all my articles, originated from my own curiosity. at no point was i pitched on this. the only PR pitches i’ve received about the subject over the last few years have been from environmental groups
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by halhod 3y ago
Hi, I’m the writer. I was, obviously, paid nothing by TMC or any other company. If you’re interested I can link all the peer reviewed publications on which I based the calculations. The Economist's style is not to show our workings on
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by halhod 3y ago
HN may be interested in the rest of the special report, which is here https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2023-04-08
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by halhod 5y ago
I am curious that you read this piece as arguing for any particular position. I did not write it with a particular argument in mind. My personal bias is the same as yours
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by halhod 5y ago
almost all are written by Ann, who is brilliant. the odd one is written by a subject matter expert, or by someone for whom the subject was a source this one is a particularly good example, that HN may enjoy https://www.economist.
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by halhod 5y ago
we do. all letters sent in by emailed in get the following autoreply: "The Economist thanks you for your letter, which has been passed to the author of the article. All letters are edited if selected for publication either in print o
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by halhod 6y ago
Bytedance is a Chinese company. Look up VIE (variable interest entity) or "Sina Structure". Essentially the Cayman islands topco is a fudge that the Chinese government tolerates to facilitate non Chinese investment in Chinese comp
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A special report on Chinese technology(economist.com)
2 points by halhod 7y ago|0 comments
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by halhod 8y ago
HN may be interested in the longer briefing that this editorial is based on - https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/12/01/the-semiconduc...

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