tatrajim

13 ms·

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by tatrajim 4y ago
Learning foreign languages as an adult is valuable for facilitating thinking about the world in very different ways. In my case, learning Korean in my 20s helped me understand group dynamics and hierarchies (they are built into the verbs th
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by tatrajim 4y ago
In a powerful, if indirect, way Gravity's Rainbow changed my life. The idea that V2 rockets pockmarked London in a Poisson distribution blew my young mind. How could randomness be predicted?! It prompted me later to take a number of
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by tatrajim 4y ago
Yes, lived in Seoul (~20 million in metro area) for over a decade and never once feared for crime any time day or night.
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by tatrajim 4y ago
Response to same query from ChatGPT 3.5 legacy: "Halley's Comet is a periodic comet that appears in our sky approximately once every 76 years. It was last visible from Earth in 1986 and is expected to return in 2061. In the 15th c
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ChatGPT 4 > ChatGPT plugins (Alpha) – Wolfram on historical astronomy?
1 points by tatrajim 4y ago|2 comments
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by tatrajim 4y ago
People in general are more accepting than you might suppose. If the criteria that matter most to you involve your identity as a member of a putatively rare and privileged group based on gender identity and religion -- as opposed, say, to b
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by tatrajim 4y ago
The US is full of safe, pleasant communities, excellent for raising families, though not necessarily near tech work places. Look outside the coastal bubbles and explore a bit. I'm very happy living in a place shunned by erstwhile coll
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by tatrajim 4y ago
Things are more complex on the GOP side than your summary indicates. The gulf between the legacy GOP (think Mitch McConnell) and the MAGA wing is substantial and growing, and there are stark class and racial differences. According to a rece
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by tatrajim 4y ago
Apparently Google found irrelevant or was otherwise unable to include in its training data Judge Gabelman's (of Wisconsin) extensive report, "Office of the Special Counsel Second Interim Investigative Report On the Apparatus &
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by tatrajim 4y ago
As I reminisced on an earlier post about the chilling atmosphere for students at Stanford, the situation was a mite different in the 1970s. My first day there as a callow freshman from the Midwest, the cool guy next door in the dorm kindly
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by tatrajim 4y ago
If you're an American, you'll be all too aware of what a mess the US electoral system is, subject to varying rules across thousands of jurisdictions, large and small, and involving now prolonged "early voting", "abs
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by tatrajim 4y ago
Have to agree, from study in Taiwan, life in the PRC, Hong Kong, and South Korea over decades: democracy in Taiwan is healthier than that in the U.S. For the skeptical, check out videos of how ballots are counted in Taiwan. Individual ball
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by tatrajim 4y ago
We are all primitives of the future. Forbearance toward, and forgiveness of, the deeds and attitudes of our ancestors is a way of atoning for our own barbarism in the eyes of the future.
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by tatrajim 4y ago
True or not, in the past there was a persistent rumor going around Seoul that every time Apple had scouted out a good location for its first store in Korea, Samsung would mysteriously learn of it and manage to block the transaction. Definit
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by tatrajim 4y ago
Under Xi Jinping China launched a series of security initiatives targeting outsiders. An emblematic case was that of Apple, whereby the Apple Book Store and iTunes Movie Store were abruptly shut down after prior legal approval. "Apple
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by tatrajim 4y ago
Then, again, it might just be a logical reaction to the fundamental political changes that have occurred in the PRC since Xi Jinping came to power in 2013, especially after he changed the constitution to remove term limits in 2018. Under hi
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by tatrajim 4y ago
By this logic, if Xi Jinping can clone himself and maintain permanent rule, then China will surely become democratic.
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by tatrajim 4y ago
This brings back memories of a visit some 20 years ago to Moganshan （莫干山） park in northwest Zhejiang province, China. There we ran across an amazingly lively and intelligent 11 year-old boy, who lived with his family nearby. We asked his ma
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by tatrajim 4y ago
Consider the highly detailed recent report in the Columbia Journalism Review on the failure of the mainstream press to report on Russiagate. In light of the many tens of thousands of articles, blogs, reports, comments et al. on the interne
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by tatrajim 4y ago
It's a bit sad to realize I am part of the last generation of students who had to put together an essay from books found via a card catalog, take notes, then type up several drafts painfully on a typewriter. Not to mention learning ma
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by tatrajim 4y ago
Don't question the matrix on HN. Agents are already on their way. . .
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by tatrajim 4y ago
Just a bit different in the 70s. My first day as a freshman, the cool guy next door kindly approached me and muttered "Hey kid, you want a hit of hash?" The one inviolable rule for university housing was "no growing of pot p
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by tatrajim 4y ago
Well, I like the part about the ex-FBI agents at Twitter having their own slack channel. Reminds me of the CCP committees now required at every Chinese private corp. Who doesn't love a secret police network at one's workplace?
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by tatrajim 4y ago
Wake me when even elite Chinese call out and stop using the term "老外“ ("clueless foreigner whom [go the nuances] I can hold in humorous contempt and take advantage of at will").
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by tatrajim 4y ago
Good point. Is it now the received wisdom of HN readers that these are legitimate tools of big-tech and that we should merely yawn at confirmation they were employed at scale to manage narratives deemed inappropriate? Then why lie about usi
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by tatrajim 4y ago
Actually, there are three now, one of which is anti-war, a policy position that apparently is too "right wing" for Europeans to accept?
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by tatrajim 4y ago
If you rely on caricature to assess social reality, you will find ample confirmation for your beliefs. Upon reflection, you might possibly wonder, though, why many Chinese, including a number of my friends and colleagues in Beijing, Hangzho
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by tatrajim 4y ago
- Re-examining the policy of permanent warfare by the US and the continuing expansion of the military-industrial complex - personal freedoms, including the rights of free speech, free assembly, and freedom from unreasonable electronic searc
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by tatrajim 4y ago
On deck: FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan a la his deposition yesterday that he held weekly meeting with big tech companies ahead of the 2020 presidential election? Just business as usual. . .
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by tatrajim 4y ago
Visitors to South Korea can enjoy the spectacle of Korea's most famous ginkgo tree, at Yongmun Temple (양평 용문사 은행나무) on the outskirts of Seoul, 42 meters tall, and thought to be around 1,100 years old. It has been designated a National

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