swombat

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331.
by swombat 11y ago
Some apes are already able to communicate using language - not spoken, but e.g. using a buttons console with symbols on it. They've also been taught sign language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_ape_language#A
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by swombat 11y ago
And Morning Star, Zappos, Stripe, Medium, Semco, W L Gore, Whole Foods, and others... http://danieltenner.com/open-cultures
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by swombat 11y ago
Sorry to be so critical, but this article really feels like it's trying to hard to make some elaborate point. It's seems kind of like a long bitching session about modern technology that somehow manages to blame everything on Appl
334.
by swombat 11y ago
If you're interested, this post by Scott Alexander does a fairly thorough analysis of where the water is going: http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-do... TL;DR: No, more water does
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by swombat 11y ago
People travelling to the US have been turned away at the border for humorous tweets... so I'd argue the situation is equally bad there. Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16810312
336.
by swombat 11y ago
I covered my thoughts on the difference between startup founders and entrepreneurs in this article, if you're curious... http://swombat.com/2013/6/4/startup-founders-vs-entrepreneur...
337.
by swombat 11y ago
Basically, we are in some kind of technological singularity, at least for most people. Humans on average are no longer smart enough to understand and cope with the technological developments around them. Even if you knew everything that was
338.
by swombat 11y ago
I may be cynical, but I see the opposite. I really want to believe Snowden is right about this, but what I see is governments passing more obscure laws to create more legal loopholes, and in fact doubling down on the investment in "sec
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by swombat 11y ago
There are some large-scale charities which I think do use the money well. For example, I felt no hesitation in donating to Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) at the beginning of the Ebola outbreak, when they were the only on
340.
by swombat 11y ago
Interesting comment, and I'll think about it. Not to take away from your comment as a whole, I will nitpick one particular thing. There is a big difference in tone, imho, in saying "some Silicon Valley executive died recently&quot
341.
by swombat 11y ago
Religion is a pretty complex thing. I totally agree that christianity tends to be, as Alan Watts described it, "institutionalised guilt"... but that's just one dimension of it. Religion is a huge topic. It's many things
342.
by swombat 11y ago
You're not alone in this. Many people find this difficult both to do and to witness. I think it's because many of us are, sadly, not comfortable with vulnerability. Brené Brown has an excellent and very popular talk on that topic,
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by swombat 11y ago
Sure, but there are ways to call out behaviour and I don't think we need to descend to "FOAD" types of comments. I wasn't criticising the gist of your comment, just the way it's phrased. Arguably, this comment wasn&
344.
by swombat 11y ago
> It's also good practice to critically examine any written piece, regardless of whom it may come from. While you may derive aesthetic and ostensibly emotional value from it, not everybody may necessarily feel that way. That'
345.
by swombat 11y ago
Whilst I also think the parent comment is callous and stupid, I don't think your comment is called for.
346.
by swombat 11y ago
Often people who have lost close ones feel overwhelmed by all sorts of emotions, including guilt - whether over mourning too much or mourning too little. "Is it ok that I'm still grieving? Should I still be expressing this grief t
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by swombat 11y ago
A human being died and another human being went through grief and wrote a moving post about her journey. Do you really need to apply (what I'm sensing to be) pejorative labels to it? Death may not be your typical HN fare, but it is a s
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by swombat 11y ago
> You can't take drugs 100% safely I guess this depends on your definition of "100% safely", and probably also on your definition of "drugs". Let's assume that "drugs" means "psychoactive dr
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by swombat 11y ago
Huh. The argument is deleted. What was the substance of it?
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by swombat 11y ago
The word "centralize" in the way you're using it is very misleading. Every piece of programming in existence uses some sort of language. What you're really stating, I think, is that this is written in Javascript and you
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by swombat 11y ago
I think the parent meant closure for the family and friends of the victim, not of the murderer.
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by swombat 11y ago
Make no mistake: this is entirely about the lost 2022 bid. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/world-cup/10871114... TL;DR: Don't piss off Bill Clinton.
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by swombat 11y ago
> > foreign > That's the keyword there. Ah, but they don't know if it's a foreigner until they look at it. So might as well collect it all and figure out which ones are the foreign ones later. After all, the data&#x2
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by swombat 11y ago
He's not breast-beating, just making a clear, compelling, well argued and well illustrated case... Or, you're right, it might well be my thing :-P
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by swombat 11y ago
> western societies Very US-centric. We don't prescribe amphetamines like candy in Europe.
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by swombat 11y ago
Worth checking out Cory Doctorow's YA novels... they tend to be more varied than the typical fare - a good example of what you can do with the genre. Yes, there's a "coming of age", "figuring out what you want to do
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by swombat 11y ago
There are very small cafetière's available, including single-serving ones.
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by swombat 11y ago
Totally disagree. I think you can easily compare European Culture, Asian Culture, North American Culture... they are clearly represented. Brits, Italians, Polish, Icelandic and Germans clearly form a homogeneous group. A Mexican, New Yorker
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by swombat 11y ago
My response to this kind of article is I clicked to read the comments but not on the article. Comments don't indicate anything all that interesting in the article, so I won't bother to click on the article. And yeah, it is a very
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by swombat 11y ago
Your comment is not very clear. Are you saying the article can't be trusted because the method used to collect the contents of it is not representative of what the author is thinking? Or is influenced in some way? If so, wouldn't

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