hugh4

54 ms·

511.
by hugh4 11y ago
Symbolism up the unsubtle end of the spectrum, that you're actually supposed to notice consciously and comment on, becomes allegory, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. Superman has been an allegory for Jesus and/or America
512.
by hugh4 11y ago
That's a good point. The most common question out of a student's mouth is "But why do we have to learn this?" And that's a pretty good question. Unfortunately they're asking the people least likely to know. Tea
513.
by hugh4 11y ago
The thing about that kind of symbolism is that it works best when you don't even consciously notice it. The talk of the boat anchor just primes you into thinking in a certain manner, then the author hits you with the girl-father story
514.
by hugh4 11y ago
So how much of the city's residents' taxes turn out to be just subsidising the tiny minority who need wheelchairs?
515.
by hugh4 11y ago
However in an outstanding case of Gell-Mann amnesia, people will still turn the page and panic at whatever the new scare story is (climate change?)
516.
by hugh4 11y ago
Newspapers only know how to tell a few different narratives, so they feel the need to hammer everything into one of them. In this case it's "plucky underdog takes on established titans", which you have trouble hammering into
517.
by hugh4 11y ago
Well occupancy seems to top out at 90% in the graph, so no doubt there's still plenty of availability out there.
518.
by hugh4 11y ago
It's neither realistic nor desirable that maintenance workers in San Francisco should live in San Francisco. Any more than the cleaners at the Hilton should live in the Hilton. San Francisco is a small expensive area within a large met
519.
by hugh4 11y ago
It's interesting that Chariot can sell a bus ride for barely more than the (heavily subsidised) MUNI costs. In my limited experience though, it seems that when I ride the MUNI I'm the only person actually paying a fare. Everybody
520.
by hugh4 11y ago
Do you also take offence to the term "The South" being used in the US to refer to places which are not, in global terms, very far south?
521.
by hugh4 11y ago
> But in a new social product, there is no social proof. The groups, if they exist at all, will be sparse and ill-defined. So with no social insights to be gained, what brings in the early adopters? Or maybe they just want the cool new g
522.
by hugh4 11y ago
>I never felt like the Road Not Taken was about individualism, even when I first read it in high school. To me it's about the fact that sometimes you have to make momentous decisions in life, in which neither choice is clearly right
523.
by hugh4 11y ago
>I've been saying for years now that if you live in a potential burn area, know where your irreplaceables are, carry fire insurance, evacuate and LET IT BURN. If people did that, you couldn't buy fire insurance any more. Let&#x
524.
by hugh4 11y ago
I suspect that sometimes we deliberately complicate our languages to make it harder for the less educated classes to speak them properly, thus creating a larger barrier between us and them.
525.
by hugh4 11y ago
It's easy to see why it's a problem when we look into the past. Presumably, every creature should be considered to the be the same species as its parents. But go far enough back and your N-great grandparents are undeniably a diffe
526.
by hugh4 11y ago
It's a bit of a weird one, because anyone in the Victorian era who could afford that much stuff could also afford servants.
527.
by hugh4 11y ago
I feel like the Victorian era already gets enough hate for being less "enlightened" than our own. (No doubt they would feel the same about us.) Much like the 1950s, I feel like it's an era which gets a bad rap because of the
528.
by hugh4 11y ago
Inflation of zero is just as good for encouraging spending as small positive inflation -- the rate you'll get by low-risk investing will always beat inflation by a bit. But the moment inflation dips below zero it really starts discoura
529.
by hugh4 11y ago
And then they charge an extra hundred bucks for an extra few bucks' worth of memory. Which is why I have the base model. It's the same with the European cars. BMW or whatever will sell you (in this country) a tiny underpowered fou
530.
by hugh4 11y ago
It's fine for lots of people, but those aren't the people that Apple wants to target. The last thing Apple wants is people who find they can't download more apps and music (putting money into Apple's pockets) because the
531.
by hugh4 11y ago
Depends what you mean by "sustainable". There's far more fresh water falling on the US than is being "used". Go look at any river. Gazillions of litres of fresh water per minute just flowing out to sea and getting s
532.
by hugh4 11y ago
And San Francisco is a nice place. So what's the problem? Sure, not everyone who wants to live there can afford to live there, but that's always the way it is in desirable places, otherwise we'd all live in Vanuatu or somethi
533.
by hugh4 11y ago
It's obviously just one guy's screwup, but it got me thinking. For first-year university subjects, there's a smallish number of textbooks across the globe. For first-year physics, you're using Halliday and Resnick, or ..
534.
by hugh4 11y ago
Really? I didn't go to school in the US. Do they really spend the whole lunch hour sitting around? We went outside, ate our sandwiches or bought lunch from the canteen, and then played for the rest of the hour. The whole "school l
535.
by hugh4 11y ago
> The hacker label is, as Foucault might say, a “dubious unity.” There's no such thing as "a unity". That doesn't make sense, perhaps you've translated poorly from the French? > The single phrase can barely co
536.
by hugh4 11y ago
That's really surprising, if it's true. I'd like to see this one replicated before I start believing it. I wonder whether it could be useful for other things. If I want to be a better public speaker or tennis player, can I sp
537.
by hugh4 11y ago
Why not just leave San Francisco basically as it is? The city works okay right now. You can get around it reasonably well. Housing and transport are only a problem if you're going to keep trying to cram more people in there. That'
538.
by hugh4 11y ago
>For the study, they consider a purely theoretical situation in which people could line up at any time when a facility opens, like boarding an airplane. >The problem with “first come, first served” is it incentivizes people to arrive
539.
by hugh4 11y ago
I'm not so convinced by the value of these big science fairs. It seems that they're inevitably won by some kid whose parents just happen to be scientists, or who otherwise have a scientist in the family. And what they get that&#
540.
by hugh4 11y ago
I hated naptime when I was at preschool, I could never get to sleep. Although it's possible I'm just misremembering, and I got to sleep just fine most of the time and only remember the times I lay awake thinking about how I hated

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