pfkurtz

13 ms·

61.
by pfkurtz 5y ago
Is it that from where you're sitting my points 1) and 2) a) aren't true, b) are true but aren't really harmful to society, or c) aren't the particular fault of the man who sits atop the right wing media ecosystem (which
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
Yes NIMBY is a problem and may be more about human nature. The broken regulatory environment that exacerbates the problem is a consequence of elite competition: government not working for the public is caused by being captured by narrow int
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
I was not aware of this paper, I will read it and see what further work has said, thanks (it's from 2015 there's gotta be something).
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
Yes, the conservative-neoliberal alliance that has produced terrible inequality and political institutions incapable of solving problems because they aren't actually responsive to the public... succeeded everywhere.
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
This is a real problem, and a direct consequence of elite competition: keep other competitors out. There should be enough places to live built as there are humans.
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
Here's McKinsey in 2019: "Labor’s share of national income—that is, the amount of GDP paid out in wages, salaries, and benefits—has been declining in developed and, to a lesser extent, emerging economies since the 1980s." ht
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
I didn't say Soros, and I didn't say "Koches". I said Charles Koch and Rupert Murdoch because they are the men destroying the fabric of our society by 1) fueling non-stop culture wars and hatred (about a trillion dollars
68.
by pfkurtz 5y ago
The US jobless is at record lows. That is a bad criticism of our economic system, because it isn't true. It might be the case that some powerful economic actors work to undermine full employment some of the time (for instance). But t
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
Yeah I know. I wish more people noticed that the most powerful people keep being left out of diagnoses of our problems.
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
Yeah I know, but this seems like a throwaway line designed to add "both sides" cover, in between several paragraphs of shadowboxing the Left. The owners of the system seem curiously left out of most analysis.
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
How can an article about "elite competition" not mention anything about how, during a few decades in the 20th Century, labor's share of profits increased, and since 1980 has flatlined, with all rewards accruing to capital? Wh
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
For. Real. What pathetic nonsense.
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
I want every comment about this here and on Twitter tattooed over every inch of my body and codebase. Love it.
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
From someone who went from Wittgenstein -> programming, I think this is a good comment. What I really like about the Tractatus, which I've been reading on and off for 20 years and just dusted off to read in German for the first time
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
That is exactly what they are, a book with original on the left, English on the right. The publisher Dover makes a whole series across several languages, and it's not too hard to find Greek and Latin classics. Recently I see more speci
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
This isn't my whole approach or anything (it builds on a really good education) but I find my continuous, lifelong learning of things I want in my soul to know about has reached a stable, always-improving habit by having a few stacks o
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by pfkurtz 6y ago
Hard for me to separate theses Thiel is partially right about from the great harm his existence has done to our species.
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by pfkurtz 6y ago
This whole crisis has seen constant articles that, at least on the clickbait level which actually influences our discourse, present reasoning like "we didn't notice anything bad (yet)" -> "maybe nothing's ever ba
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by pfkurtz 6y ago
So... you just like to be disagreeable.
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by pfkurtz 6y ago
What's happening now in American politics (and lots of places) must be the trial run for attempting to address this problem.
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by pfkurtz 6y ago
For dead languages the answer is easy: a lot of the most interesting texts are in verse. Including Middle English. I have never had a conversation in any dead language. Prose literature is actually a more recent development, so if you wan
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by pfkurtz 6y ago
"I'm on a screen for 80-90% of my waking hours" — I've been there and it can be really destructive to mental health and also basic thinking. That's a good place to be in your career. Learning complex subjects is muc
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by pfkurtz 6y ago
The question that first springs to mind is, do you have a goal to learning new programming stuff (either a real intellectual goal, or something professional)? Is it helping you? Maybe you really like learning but need to pick up something e
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by pfkurtz 6y ago
The Canterbury Tales is a great preparation for the harder stuff!
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by pfkurtz 6y ago
In a college language seminar we read The Tale of the Wyf of Bathe very closely in Middle English. The Canterbury Tales are a really great way to learn it, because they are so rich and varied and there are great dual language editions wit
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by pfkurtz 6y ago
Also there were many people distributing masks to the maskless, and people whose sole mission was to pump hand sanitizer onto people's hands. The people in the crowd care about the virus and for the most part when right back to social
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by pfkurtz 6y ago
Been to a major one, and a very, very high percentage of the people there wore masks, enough that it was consistently odd to see people without them. Also people trying as much as possible to keep a little space between each other. Who wasn
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by pfkurtz 6y ago
There's almost certainly a lot of safe opening up we could do. What would make it dramatically safer would be pro-social behavior from people on the right. The protesters are all wearing masks and doing their best to maintain social di
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by pfkurtz 6y ago
This, and so much more of this.
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by pfkurtz 6y ago
Really, shouldn't org-mode be taught to toddlers?

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