lsc

We have a super-robust set of tools for this for fiction; I'm still chewing through the list generated by 'all Pulitzer prizes for fiction written during my lifetime' - and all of them have been quite good. ('the Orphan Master's Son' so far has been my least favorite, though it was still really quite good. And because these were chosen /at the time/ you get a glimpse into what people were thinking at the time. Mailer's "The Executioner's Song" was a wonderful book in it's own right, but I think was also a historical slice of 'the discourse' at the time.)

For Movies, I find that Ebert aligns a lot with my taste. If he says it's good, it's really good. I mean, that doesn't help with recent movies, but there's more than enough of the old good stuff. (There's a lot to be said for consuming old media; it gives it time for critical opinion to stabilize. )

I mean, of course, all of these methods will leave out a lot of really good stuff. But... that's kind of the point; there's way more media than I can consume. There are professional reviewers that can give you more really good media than you could consume in a reasonable lifetime. I'm not quite halfway through the 'Pulitzer prizes awarded in my lifetime' list, and I've started a few years back. (I mean, I was 40 or so by the time I started, and so I had read a few of the books just 'cause they were popular books that people recommend. McCarthy's "The Road" is exactly the sort of thing I like, so I read it before on another person's recommendation. But still, like, you see some really great work outside your genre; I'm not normally a romance novel kinda guy, but Lurie's "Foreign Affairs" was absolutely beautiful, and absolutely not a thing I would have read without this project.)

I haven't completely solved the problem for technical books, just 'cause people who have good up to date knowledge of an area have often built up that knowledge over time. they read some books but those books are long out of date, they've brought their skills up to date with mailing lists, which they then vet based on their knowledge of the reputation of the person posting.

I mean, I think it's pretty easy for the non-perishables, "The C Programming Language" is a thing you should read if you work with computers. But which tomb on docker is up to date enough and pretty good? that can be a difficult question to answer, and is often answered based on the author's reputation for other technical work they do, which usually tells me something about the accuracy of the book, but doesn't tell me if it's well written or if it's up to date enough. (On the other hand, if you are well known for writing a big part of the subsystem I wanna learn, eh, I don't feel too bad about giving you money for a book even if I later decide that the book is not written in a way I find engaging, like, you earned it and I'll buy another book.) And... I dunno. often you can get sample chapters, and that gets you a pretty good idea of how engaging the writing is.

I mean, one way to address it is to start at the base... "go read the gang of four design patterns books, and then use your knowledge of object orientedness to make sense of modern object-oriented configuration management systems" - which does make some sense. But still, I should spend the time to find the tech book awards that match up with my taste.

Eh, I don't really care about 'edgy' but it bothers me that so many projects, especially when those projects are computer commands, are hard to search on. Like, ss or ip. I mean, in those cases, they're central enough to my world (I'm a sysadmin) that it's worth just memorizing to the point where I rarely need to look it up, but looking up an 'ip' command is way harder than looking up an 'ifconfig' command. Not everyone writes "Iproute" before pasting their 'ip' command.

I mean, I think it's less of a problem for projects that are not commands... really my whole complaint is that a lot of the commands in my universe used to be super unique; you aren't going to get a lot of off the wall results for lsof or ifconfig; but ss and ip? yeah, even when you limit it to my work context, you get conflicts on those.

I think a lot of it is politics and labor leverage and education. after the new deal and the second world war and the GI bill, a lot of our workers had free education. We had a serious safety net for the time and a very progressive tax system with very high top marginal rates to pay for it. and lots of unions. All things that give workers more negotiation power.

for me, devices of different sizes do different things; I carry a lot of specialized devices, from a small laptop to a giant e reader to a regular sized ereader to a cellphone to a watch, and for me? the thing that is currently missing is a thing I can input text on with one hand (while doing something with the other hand) the SE original filled that gap; the iphone 7 is slightly too large to comfortably input text with using one hand, it's a little cramped to input text with two, at least for my hands.)

I should try one of those pop-out deals and see if it makes using the iphone 7 with one hand practical.

The continued gains in productivity we have seen since that time have come by way of mechanization/automation.

but that has been true since the first chimp figured out how to shove a stick into an anthill and get more tasty bugs than just picking off the ants on the surface. We use tools, better tools are how productivity advances.

Yes, yes, we have better tools than ever before, to the point where they don't look like tools. We can build a machine to do a thing and then leave, and only come back and tinker with it when it breaks.

Some time in the previous century basically everything switched over to assembly-line type production, where nobody built the whole widget themselves. the current switchover is to, uh, I guess you would call them robots. Tools that do the thing with one time input to guide them (and, of course, lots of ongoing maintenance)

But make no mistake, these "robots" we have are still just tools; tools that give massive leverage to the labor that programs those robots and that maintains those robots.

My understanding is that a lot of those young people end up needing to go to the hospital, and only survive because of treatment.

If the hospitals are overwhelmed, the death rate is going to go way up.

dunno, I kinda think that the right actions at the right time can [could have] make a huge difference. I think that if the rest of the country shut down the way CA and NY did... we'd have a real chance at this thing being a month-long crisis. (Of course, the real test here is how bad it ends up getting in CA; California shut down earlier in it's spread than NY. If I'm right, that means the peak won't be as bad here... but that is yet to be seen.)

I also think the cuts to the county health department are... normally mitigated by an ample federal response.

I agree with you... last week.

I mean, sure, we should lock down now, but my feeling is that it's mostly too late for the urban areas.

The rural areas might have a chance... they need to lock down hard right now. But... from talking to rural family... I'm not sure that's culturally possible.

I'm not questioning the need. I'm just saying that it seems to me a lot more realistic that we'll be able to short-term ramp-up production of 1 and 2 than it is to think we'll be able to adequately ramp up 3.

The stories I hear from medical people I know (and this is just anecdotal) is that they are only given serious PPE when they know there is an infection, but it's less clear if that's just standard policy or if that is due to limited supply.

I do agree that if PPE isn't used early and often here, we're going to be short medical personnel, and I think getting those back online is probably going to take longer than throwing money at manufacturers to build more PAPRs.

the disrespect for sleep the medical profession has is insane.

If someone is gonna be cutting on me, I want them to have a good night's rest. They tell me to sleep consistently and well quite often. seems like if it's good for me it would be good for them, too.

Yeah, remove the limiter, and how long does it take to make a doctor? I mean, sure, some people are saying that this thing is still gonna be here in four years (I am not a medical person, but that's what some of them say. something about the type of virus this is that will make a vaccine difficult) so that might not be a bad idea, but... I think we probably need to be focusing on how we can increase medical capacity four weeks from now more than four years from now.

Yeah, I'm personally not too concerned with the "stuff" end of things. This is America; in spite of rhetoric to the contrary, we remain a manufacturing powerhouse. Apply enough money and we'll get whatever "stuff" we need on pretty short order.

I think the big problem is medical technicians and doctors. My feeling is that we should be focusing on training up medical people on a massive scale, as that's something that the USA is notoriously bad at. Perhaps the military could provide medical technicians the fastest? lots of healthy young people who are trained in the use of serious PPE? (I wonder how the procedures differ between nuclear, chemical and biological threats like these?)

People talk about beds... but the problem isn't physical beds. I could make you a physical bed. the problem is doctor and medical technician labor to make the bed useful.

This was the day before the shelter in place order was announced. The guy was going on under his breath about how people don't know how this thing was transmitted, that you aren't supposed to wear them if you aren't sick. He said it in this really sort of stressed out and angry kinda way. I apologized in what I hope was a really sincere kind of way

(I mean, I... am not going to be angry at someone who works retail at a time like this, short of maybe getting physically attacked. I know I'm feeling bad 'cause I am working from home and have to deal with my own lack of discipline and have to cook for myself now. I have top-shelf medical insurance and unlimited sick time. I can only imagine that those on the front lines, getting sneezed on all day with none of those benefits are in bad shape.)

Dude said "It's not your fault, it's the media" and generally seemed mollified - I mean, if this were facebook, I'd fire back something about how I don't see how his media is any more accurate than mine, considering neither of us are experts... and if you are supposed to wear a mask if you are sick, well, almost none of us actually know if we are sick. But this was a face to face interaction, so I sincerely wished him good health and finished the paperwork (before quarantine, I'd use 'order online, pick up in store' orders to minimize time in store)

so wait, is it OK to use masks now? last time I went out with a mask I got chewed out by a clerk. It was... deeply weird. (I mean, I understand the guy had probably had a hellish day and that probably had more to do with it than anything, and I apologized and did what I could to diffuse the situation. But it was deeply weird, 'cause normally the economic inequality here in the bay area means that I'm treated really well.)

I'm one of those people who lacks the discipline. I live with someone who works remote full time, and they have that discipline, and are in fact way more productive working from home. But me? I have no problem doing well in the office, but all the full work from home jobs I've had? I've been a miserable failure. I'm worried 'cause my performance is going to drop a lot right as we head into the third recession of my career.

It really varies by personality. Some people do a lot better by themselves. But if you hire me? It's worth paying for the office space.

Property values will fall after the next recession. It looks very likely that this set off what will become the next recession. (I mean, a recession is two quarters, so it hasn't happened yet... but it seems really unlikely to me that we won't see a recession, considering.)

It's an interesting question. Urban areas, it would seem, are likely to get the spread a lot faster, but they also have way better medical infrastructure. It will spread slower in rural areas, but you have way fewer hospital beds, and less medical infrastructure in general.

I... don't believe that? I mean, I've used public bathrooms... and I've used tech worker bathrooms. Yes, maintenance is required. that's part of provisioning a restroom. I... do not believe that the homeless are significantly worse than the techworkers (once you factor in just how often the techworker bathrooms are cleaned, I think we might be the bigger problem here?)

I mean, certainly cleaning is the major cost of provisioning a public bathroom, and that needs to be carefully considered during the design of such things. but I don't think that makes public restrooms impossible, just more expensive.

do you have a lot of homelessness in the thinly-populated desert?

eh, it seems like the obvious solution to these problems is to provision some public bathrooms, you know, Netherlands-style.

I personally trust all of amazon fresh enough to feed me? but yeah, it's probably good advice to not put things that come from the rest of amazon in your mouth.

It's so weird to me, though 'cause here I am, totally willing to pay extra for convenience, and amazon seems to be throwing that premium away.

Clearly, it's not an impossible problem to solve, 'cause basically every other major retailer (and for that matter, nearly all minor retailers) has solved it. It's only the places where they try to both sell their own stuff and be a marketplace of shady third party sellers where I have problems, and even then, most places that try to do both do a better job of segregating the real business from the 'let's compete with ebay' business than amazon does.

I mean, it seems to me like this would be costing amazon money both in the short and long term. If I were an amazon shareholder, I'd demand they drop the third-party garbage until they figured out how to solve the problem as well as target does.

eh, but if this problem gets bad enough, it will kill amazon. If I order a certain brand of stuff off of amazon and I get something I can't use often enough, I'm going to order from another store.

Right now, I'm paying a premium for the convenience of amazon. I'm willing to pay a reasonably large premium for convenience; taking that premium is a sustainable business, but if I'm paying a premium, I expect the product I ordered.

But you know what? safeway is just down the way, and they do deliveries, too. CVS does deliveries, and doesn't seem to have this issue.

I mean, sure, an everything store is great, but if you have enough quality issues, I'm going to go back to maintaining accounts at each vendor.

(all that said, the problem is below my threshold right now. I have been sent the wrong product, but... it doesn't happen often.)

Hypothetically speaking, would you rather read about the recent US impeachment proceedings in Korean or in English? You know, the language most widely spoken in the US?

So, I mean, I agree with your point. but as an aside, I think it would be really interesting to see the perspective of a Spanish historian on the recent events in my country

because public transit tends to increase nearby property values

Do you have references? my impression is the opposite.

Do you think having a bus stop out front would make the average suburbanite want to pay more or less for their house? My guess is quite a bit less, but I also don't have references to back up my impression.

(I mean, I think this is changing in the most urban areas. But I think that in the case of the homes of a majority of Americans, nearby transit lowers the sale value of a home rather than raising it.)

This model does depend on the idea that most homeowners think that public transit will bring poor people and/or crime and thus would lower property values. There are lots of examples of homeowners blocking transit and then complaining about traffic.

There's a lot of evidence for this in the '70s; this was super tied up with wanting an ethnically and economically homogeneous neighborhood. it explains a lot about where VTA goes (and why we have VTA in the south bay and not BART) The evidence for this is not as strong now.

The bay area is such an outlier that I almost feel like it should be exempt from broader 'housing cost' discussions. Fixing the bay area housing crisis is a whole other set of concerns.

I think it's pretty similar to most other places that were built low density that now have high demand. We need to change the rules to allow high density, and we need public transit.

No one in our area wants more office space. I don't know that there's much of a demand for new office space, the buildings we have are full of vacancies.

I... kinda do? back in the days after the crash, I would rent industrial spaces as workshops for my business. I had 1/4 of an industrial condo down the way from the hacker dojo at one point. It was a lot of fun, and only possible 'cause there was a lot of space and it was cheap. I mean, yes, yes, I should have bought. but my point is just that having space is... pretty nice.

That, and at work I'm crammed into this open office; they allocate more space to my car in the parking lot than they allocate to me - I think we'd all enjoy a few more sqft.

* more traffic

Homeowners generally don't fight nearly as hard against new office buildings. The bay area, for example, wouldn't have a housing problem if we built apartments like we build offices, and our traffic problem would decrease.

The problem is that the home value model of homeowner motivation fits the data much better than any other model.

Show me a bay area "homeowners for better public transit" rally and maybe I'll change my mind.

more to the point, for "full self driving" even with infrastructure, the "don't hit unexpected pedestrians" technology needs to get way better. You probably can regulate transponders in cars. You probably can't regulate transponders on children.

but note, we're paying most of that already in the form of people who are killed and under-compensated by under-insured drivers. Increasing liability insurance minimums would roll that cost that is currently born entirely by the victim into the cost of operating a car, which is where it ought to be.

If we're talking about social ties, you should probably be looking at the number of people who attend church weekly. I don't think there's a big social ties difference between going to church twice a year and not going at all, and it looks like your link only goes back to the '90s for 'goes to religious observance nearly every week' and 'has been in the last seven days'

For that matter, I know a handful of people (my grandparents age) who aren't really religious but that go to church most weeks 'cause it's a nice social thing.