olavk

18 ms·

151.
by olavk 8y ago
The "Law of Jante" is formulated in a novel by the Danish-Norwegian author Axel Sandemose. He explicitly states that the law is used by the proletariat to keep each other down, and that it is a universal phenomenon - just as str
152.
by olavk 8y ago
Oh yeah didn't mean to imply it was always the case. Certainly the physicality of the painting is a bit part of the experience, especially for the artist which work consciously with the three-dimensionality of the paint.
153.
by olavk 8y ago
I kind of disagree - many paintings are actually better experienced on print or online than in real life. Just take your example of Mona Lisa - you will get a better impression of the art from a good reproduction than from watching it behin
154.
by olavk 8y ago
You are downvoted, but as somebody outside of the UK I have no idea if you are correct or not.
155.
by olavk 8y ago
Sorry, can't edit anymore. That said, I believe the title itself is flamebait - you don't need to be an expert in WWII to see that. It is not a question of who suffers most, just historical facts about where the war took place and
156.
by olavk 8y ago
Saying "Russia" rather than "USSR" in this context is not really simplifying, it is more like distorting history. Like saying Prussia instead of Germany. "The Prussian-French war of 1940-1945"
157.
by olavk 8y ago
Calling it the Russo-German War is (probably deliberately) ignoring the sacrifices and sufferings of millions of Ukrainians and Belorussians and other nationalities in the USSR.
158.
by olavk 8y ago
It is bullshit. At the time of the bombs it had long been clear that Japan was losing. The only question was how drawn-out the end game would be.
159.
by olavk 8y ago
The rules for implicit coercion in JavaScript are rather unintuitive. When people post funny examples of JavaScript "WTF's" it is almost always surprising consequences of coercion rules. {}+[]==0 and so on. Of course you cou
160.
by olavk 8y ago
If you know C, I think you should just go ahead and dive into Rust.
161.
by olavk 8y ago
Aristophanes speech is interesting because it presents preference towards either men or women as something innate an immutable in a person. This is quite different from how it was usually seen in antiquity - for example one Roman historian
162.
by olavk 8y ago
Are you saying it was worse when Indians scalped settlers than when settlers scalped Indians?
163.
by olavk 8y ago
> that beget the end of slavery in the developed world. Where did you learn this? This is absolutely wrong. Most developed nations had abolished slavery before the US did. A few, like the Ottoman Empire and Brazil was later, but to frame
164.
by olavk 8y ago
Actually, it was Woody Allen in the movie "Take the money and run" which carved a gun out of a bar of soap. The escape attempt was almost successful until they entered the courtyard where it was raining heavily. Apparently this sc
165.
by olavk 8y ago
Kotlin is competing against Java, while F# is competing against C#. F# is a great language, but so is C#. MS has done a really great job evolving C# away from a Java clone. C# keeps adding features inspired by functional languages, narrowin
166.
by olavk 8y ago
Do you know C or other languages with manual memory management? Rust requires an understanding of memory management at a level lower than what languages like Java, Python etc. expose. The complex parts of Rust (borrows checker, lifetimes et
167.
by olavk 8y ago
Yeah, this is my main beef with SQL. The syntax is just clunky when you want to compose operations. Linq does this much better. With-clauses (aka Common Table Expressions) improves this a lot, but it would be better still if you could just
168.
by olavk 8y ago
NoSQL is not going to die, there are many places where specialized non-relational databases are appropriate. But the hype wave may be coming to an end.
169.
by olavk 8y ago
Is this the final nail in the coffin for the NoSQL hype? Although I'm not sure the road back to sanity is to add SQL interfaces to non-relational database systems. SQL and the relational model are often conflated, both in the NoSQL hyp
170.
by olavk 8y ago
Apuleius' "Metamorphoses" is probably the oldest complete novel known. It is from the second century, so much older than the novels you mention. And it is still read - at least I read it a few years ago in translation and fou
171.
by olavk 8y ago
In order for a theory to be falsifiable it first have to be a theory! The simulation hypothesis is not even a theory (i.e. it makes no verifiable predictions), so it is not even falsifiable in principle.
172.
by olavk 8y ago
There would probably be a lot more people complaining about scheme!
173.
by olavk 8y ago
You should probably look into the JVM or .net platforms, where the same libraries are available through multiple languages. For example .net have F# which is a very strong functional language, and the JVM have Scala and Clojure. Pyhton is n
174.
by olavk 8y ago
There are plenty of very good functional programming languages. If you prefer Haskell to Python, just go ahead and use Haskell. Python has a very specific design philosophy which is a focus of readability and the "preferably only one o
175.
by olavk 8y ago
There is a saying about the band Velvet Underground - that not many people bought their records, but everyone who bought one went out and started their own band. I think Lisp is kind of similar - its influence is much larger than its fame,
176.
by olavk 8y ago
You are forgetting you first need to reach 105, which very few do, so the population you apply the coin toss to is much smaller. While not impossible according to the article, it would be incredibly unlikely anybody lived to 137. There is
177.
by olavk 8y ago
Yes, but not much. Since mortality is about 50% for people over 100 (according to the article), doubling the population of humans should only see an increase of one year.
178.
by olavk 8y ago
Statistics. The article says mortality after 100 is about 50%. Which means out of everyone who reaches 100 years, only one in a million will reach 120 years. Since there are only half a million humans in the world who are older than 100 yea
179.
by olavk 8y ago
According to the book by Axel Sandemose which defines the "Law of Jante", it is a custom which the proletariat uses to keep each other down.
180.
by olavk 8y ago
I didn't ignore that, I mentionend the "limited resources" scenario with the 16GB example a few posts back.

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