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kenny87

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I converted to the Baha'i Faith from Christianity about 15 years ago, after investigating Islam and Buddhism. Very happy to see this topic trending on HN. Our daily practice consists of reading the Holy writings every morning and evening, daily prayer and meditation, and service. There's a prayer from our tradition that says may "this American democracy become glorious in spiritual degrees even as it has aspired to material degrees ... ." I cherish this hope for this nation and all humanity.

Very nice to see to genuine interest on HN in solving our Democracy's problems, instead the general cynicism, apathy and self-interest we all too often see. But to be fair, I think it's first important to realize that we are discussing historical forces. The kind of movements that we all read about in school, are happening now. And I think when we look at history we'll see that social forces strong enough to reform empires have always started in the marginalized communities. Our role here is to become active participants, on a day-to-day basis, in these communities and aid them, both technically and morally, in building -- and here is the key concept -- decentralized quasi-autonomous [1] communities. No amount of reform, sorry being a cynic, will "fix" Washington and its relationship with "corporate capitalism". The Supreme Court settled this question, campaign money is "free speech". [2] But we can build new social structures in the gaps. It happened about 2,000 years in empire built in Rome. Why not today?

[1] http://www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/decentralization/admi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

People that enjoy listening to music -- audiophiles, DJs, music producers, musicians, etc -- often search out and download their favorite tunes, .flac and .wav specifically, simply b/c these formats have higher fidelity to the master mix. Granted, not everyone cares about high-fidelity audio, and that's ok too.

The issue here isn't legality but performance royalties. Music played over the internet is considered a performance. These royalties should be collected and paid out to recording artists, or whoever owns the master recording copyright, whenever that song is performed publicly. It's seems that FB doesn't want to pay artists these royalties.

Key takeaway from survey:

"It's not so much the volume of interactions Black Americans have with the police that troubles them or differentiates them from other racial groups, but rather the quality of those interactions."

Not sure what "preferred narrative" you are referring too, but most black people think America has a "police problem". Define that however you like. Bunch of other polls from the same organization for those curious enough to dig deeper. Seek Higher Things friend.

* https://news.gallup.com/poll/316247/black-americans-police-e...

* https://news.gallup.com/poll/315962/americans-say-policing-n...

Frankly, this kind of hubris is dangerous. The point here is not that financial instruments are 'fake' wealth or 'nothing more' than the value that people put on real assets, that is the entire crux of the matter. You literally require expertise in higher maths to understand the valuations. And even those with that understanding sometimes fail to manage the risk. The guys who literally wrote the book on modern finance bought the global financial system to its knees b/c of their mismanagement [0].

The systemic risks that these insanely complex valuations pose to the economy are real and matter. I'm talking about food, housing, education, infrastructure, health care ... real things the matter for long term growth. This concept needs to be thoroughly appreciated. The notional values here are important b/c they are powerful indicator of the impact of default on the real economy [1]. The impact is in fact so great, that the Fed is willing to print trillions and trillions of $$$ to save financial systems from their failure. But a maxim of economics is that "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." And right now our government is literally feeding the capitalists while watching millions of people go w/o food, housing, health care. It's egregious injustice and insult to people of Enlightenment everywhere.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Term_Capital_Management

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1475366

Sharing one of my favorite quotes on this topic that James Clerk Maxwell was said [0] to tell his students:

"In this class I hope you will learn not merely results, or formulae applicable to cases that may possibly occur in our practice afterwards, but the principles on which those formulae depend, and without which the formulae are mere mental rubbish. I know the tendency of the human mind is to do anything rather than think. But mental labor is not thought, and those who have with labor acquired the habit of application often find it much easier to get up a formula than to master a principle.”

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v40OcJ7rfSE&t=788s

Google is not building a nationwide website, just a trial one for Bay Area:

"We are developing a tool to help triage individuals for Covid-19 testing. Verily is in the early stages of development, and planning to roll testing out in the Bay Area, with the hope of expanding more broadly over time. We appreciate the support of government officials and industry partners and thank the Google engineers who have volunteered to be part of this effort."

- https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/13/21179118/google-coronavir...

We'll never have the quality of discussion that's needed while there are fear mongering reporters like this subverting that conversation to the level of luddism.

We can and it's actually happening. So called "dangerous" journalism and "quality" discussion are not mutually exclusive. The article actually mentions one such discussion happening at the level of the UN, an inquiry headed by Special Rapporteur Philip Alston.

"Any renewal of oppositional spirit among the Professional-Managerial Class, or what remains of it, needs to start from an awareness that what has happened to the professional middle class has long since happened to the blue collar working class. Those of us who have college and higher degrees have proved to be no more indispensable, as a group, to the American capitalist enterprise than those who honed their skills on assembly lines or in warehouses or foundries. The debt-ridden unemployed and underemployed college graduates, the revenue-starved teachers, the overworked and underpaid service professionals, even the occasional whistle-blowing scientist or engineer—all face the same kind of situation that confronted skilled craft-workers in the early 20th century and all American industrial workers in the late 20th century."

It certainly will be competition for central banks, especially in countries where the monetary policy is kinda wacky, like Venezuela, where bitcoin is breaking usage records.

Zimbabwe also: https://qz.com/africa/1662753/bitcoin-crypto-soar-in-zimbabw...

There's really quite an opportunity here for Bitcoin to help people in these countries leap their financial markets forward a few stages in development: https://www.ifc.org/wps/wcm/connect/f12930a4-a78b-43c0-9fe1-...

And it's misleading

And worrying that a large number of readers interpretation of the article was influenced by a headline. We really have to do better and be vigilantly aware of how media and power influences public opinion, especially during times such as these.

... I don't see how any of these individual things are proven to be true.

'Let the experiment be made.' -- Benjamin Franklin

That is to say democracy is, or ought to be, at its essence all about discovering, through experience, which institutions best serve the common good. "Laboratories of democracy" is another phrase that comes to mind.

Read the Q&A:

Q: Why did you make this?

A: Because educating others and fighting ignorance is one of the noblest activities that anyone can ever engage in. Also, jokes.

Part of the fun the is genre bashing. But don't take the genres too seriously.

Suggested usage: Ignore scenes and genres. Instead, pick a single year and move through the guide vertically, listening to different music released in that year.

Apparently, when they decided developing for the web was a good idea. The bigger problem is that computing is insanely complex in the modern age. Developing for the web is on the cutting edge of that computing power. We're delivering full, non-native applications to computers people are carrying around in their pockets. And because they expect their applications to run like "real" desktop applications the UI of those "web apps" require a seamless experience. So web apps are real applications that require the same complexity in tooling as any another C++ desktop applications. Web developers are real developers. It would insane to create such complex tooling if we did not need to use it to build for those insane web browsers. Blame Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee for our current predicate, not us.