pasabagi

79 ms·

721.
by pasabagi 5y ago
> (On balance, I personally think that not having the implicit conversions, as Rust and Go do, is generally the better decision, but I certainly acknowledge that C is easier in this regard.) Really? I think there must be a better way - I
722.
by pasabagi 5y ago
If you sort this[1] graph by per-capita absolute deaths, you can see the nations ahead of the UK are pretty poor. Compared to France and Germany, the UK has about double the per-capita death rate. [1] https://www.statista.com&#x2
723.
by pasabagi 5y ago
Seems pretty well, actually. I'd be interested to know why - I'm also not entirely clear if they 'stayed the course'. I think there's also the aspect that not all lockdowns are created equal, so it's possible t
724.
by pasabagi 5y ago
In a vacuum, I would agree. However, given that 'herd immunity' was absolutely not the approach east asian countries were going for, many of which had been battling with COVID already, and who had a great deal of experience in res
725.
by pasabagi 5y ago
I actually think the just (although extremely unlikely) response to all of this would be to start a criminal investigation against the people involved in the response. If you run a factory which, by some accident, kills tens of thousands of
726.
by pasabagi 5y ago
1. He's obviously an asshole. 2. He's obviously right; the UK response was absolutely crazy. One thing that struck me is that he tweeted a picture of the graph[1] the government was using when they were going for the 'herd im
727.
by pasabagi 5y ago
> I don't think there is that much chance of shooting war, both sides have too much to lose. Everybody always thinks that, but unfortunately, these things sometimes happen, even by accident. Sane and reasonable people consistently a
728.
by pasabagi 5y ago
In a rational world, the takeaway would be that western countries were unprepared for a pandemic. If the whole world reacted like East Asia, coronavirus would have been last year's niche issue. Even if it does turn out to have come fro
729.
by pasabagi 5y ago
I think the problem is the question is being weaponized in US-China relations in a really pernicious way - essentially, it isolates China, makes them feel unfairly treated - in a way that's actually really dangerous. An incumbent power
730.
by pasabagi 5y ago
I'd say that Britain never really had a nationalist movement, because it had its anti-monarchist revolution before nations really existed, and basically became an empire at the same moment in time. So there was never really a great dri
731.
by pasabagi 5y ago
There's nothing more german than oktoberfest, nothing more american than wearing a pair of star-spangled-banner trousers while shooting an assault rifle at a bald-headed eagle, and nothing more british than 'elisabeth tower'[
732.
by pasabagi 5y ago
While people in england do make a lot more jokes than people elsewhere, the average sense of humour is no better.
733.
by pasabagi 5y ago
Dunno how english Big Ben is. It was built in a made-up architectural style because it was supposed to be 'english' but england didn't really have much of an architectural culture. Also dunno about double-entendre. Seems a li
734.
by pasabagi 5y ago
This is totally simplistic. If you think western journalists are incentivised to criticize basic societal norms and systemic problems, I have a bridge to sell you. I'm also not sure where you're getting these 'hyper-critical&
735.
by pasabagi 5y ago
> The idea the UK was late is doing the rounds inside the UK establishment but it's wrong. You seem frankly a bit divorced from reality. If you go to a chart of the daily incidence rate before either the first or the second wave, th
736.
by pasabagi 5y ago
... The UK lockdown was very strict, but it was also very late. Lockdowns work fine, they just don't work when you call them after everybody already has it. Strictness and timeliness are unrelated characteristics. Being afraid to leave
737.
by pasabagi 5y ago
Firstly, I don't think skepticism is the inverse of docility, or even necessarily aligned with being questioning. Skepticism is traditionally characterized by an attack on the methods of knowledge-production, and as such, can engender
738.
by pasabagi 5y ago
"I was at a hospital the other night where I think there were a few, there were actually a few coronavirus patients, and I shook hands with everybody, you'll be pleased to know, and I continue to shake hands," - Boris Johnson
739.
by pasabagi 5y ago
I'd hazard he's being ironic. This all said, there's a germ of truth in the unhinged paranoia - it's a bit like rolling coal. You heard of rolling coal? It's where people modify their trucks to make them emit toxic
740.
by pasabagi 5y ago
> wasn't much they could do about the situation that would make a major difference, save for employing totalitarian enforcement measures that no one wanted. Are you insane? There are tons of countries that are not totalitarian, wit
741.
by pasabagi 5y ago
I think there is a context to Chernobyl or Fukushima - they were industrial accidents, and there is a very long history of industrial accidents, many of which were far more deadly. Obviously, in both the USSR and Japan, there were/are
742.
by pasabagi 5y ago
That too - but that's present in any state. Japan just had the weirdest combination of resting all authority in the emperor, while having a strong tradition of the emperor never exercising any practical authority. So you get stuff like
743.
by pasabagi 5y ago
Is this a moral or a factual statement? I guess I'd reject the whole victim/perpetrator dichotomy and say that people's conditions are contingent on forces largely out of their control. That's a factual statement. Lots o
744.
by pasabagi 5y ago
For the record, Critical Theory doesn't really refer to Baudrillard or Lyotard - it's a term from Adorno, I think.
745.
by pasabagi 5y ago
The old, rich, and stupid. One of the things that has been blowing my mind recently is the awareness of how many wars happen as a result of accident, miscommunication, and institutional inertia. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour started
746.
by pasabagi 5y ago
Where I live (Germany) all of these actions would be illegal. I think broadly speaking governments do a lot to set the tone of what's acceptable in the pandemic, by what they say, and what they do. A big government rally is powerful le
747.
by pasabagi 5y ago
As a sort of counterpoint, I think it might be worth it to watch a classic of the 'free debate' genre, Buckley vs Baldwin[1], that happened in the sixties in Cambridge. It pitted a black civil rights activist against the young Buc
748.
by pasabagi 5y ago
I think you have a misconception here about what freedom is. A freedom is a restriction on the state. It simply says that the state cannot act against you for exercising a freedom, or act to prevent you from doing so. Repercussions, consequ
749.
by pasabagi 5y ago
> My views on some social issues, particularly 'free speech', are considered a conservative now. By who? Rosa Luxembourg, for example, was a free speech fundamentalist, and she is still far left of many left wingers today. Fre
750.
by pasabagi 5y ago
I imagine this will change, though. I would have thought induction hobs are cheaper to produce, since it's just a copper coil and a bunch of power mosfets.

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