sprucevoid

Inkscape has many good features but also many rough edges. Fixing the command palette (shortcut key ?) would go a long way. On Windows it takes around 5 seconds for the palette search box to appear after a clean start of Inkscape 1.4.4. Typing is lagging and results are wildly irrelevant. That's a shame because Inkscape has so many powerful features tucked away in menus and side panes. A well working command palette makes it quick and easy for the user to use tools without exploring menu hierarchies or memorizing keyboard shortcuts.

For example if I type "rectangle" in Inkscape command palette I would expect the draw rectangle tool as a top match. Instead the top matches are:

  Create a Slicer Rectangle
  Create a Slicer Rectangle (No preferences)
  Triangle (No preferences)
  Clone original path (LPE)
  Lightness-Contrast (No preferences)
  Refractive Glass (No preferences)
  Refractive Gel A (No preferences)

There have been several issue tracker issues about the command palette. Here is one from 2022 and still ongoing about the slow start https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/-/work_items/3227

Thank you for creating this. Every small improvement counts :) I clicked through to add a request for a datestamp naming but happily someone had already posted that request https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/-/merge_requests/7801#n...

You suppose

denying said universal healthcare to republicans

How many do you claim hold that view? Can you cite some prominent examples? I want health care for all, including you.

hyperbole

I posted https://www.cgdev.org/blog/update-lives-lost-usaid-cuts "lives lost based on the decline in outlays (current spending) may be in the range of 500,000 to 1,000,000 and potential lives lost based on the decline in obligations (commitments to future spending) are between 670,000 and 1,600,000."

and asked for data on the original "balancing out claim". You jumped in with mumblings of some unspecified number of lost jobs and vague claims about said job losers demise and then one mean online comment to you. That's where we're at, that's the tally based on the data you provided.

On the one hand ~1,000,000 deaths and on the other hand some people lost their jobs and you got a mean comment online?

lost their jobs ... which in US means ... slow, and without health insurance, likely unpleasant demise

Those you would label "woke" are famously supporters of universal health care. Universal as in would cover everyone including every single Jan 6 participant. On the one hand people striving for health care for all. On the other hand https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/nov/20/hospitals-s...

we are forcing people to live up to the world they have ushered in

No, wht you are doing is supporting an administration killing ~1,000,000 people and taking away health care from everyone, including people in the group you identify with.

These things are balancing out lately

What measures and data do you base that claim on?

https://www.cgdev.org/blog/update-lives-lost-usaid-cuts "lives lost based on the decline in outlays (current spending) may be in the range of 500,000 to 1,000,000 and potential lives lost based on the decline in obligations (commitments to future spending) are between 670,000 and 1,600,000."

What is your best estimate of deaths due to "woke" or whatever you consider the scourge of the "past decade" to be?

How many visas revoked due to the holder being not woke enough? How many people were deported from the US for being insufficiently woke? And so on. "Woke" may not be what you meant. Whatever you meant, present your measure and data.

agree

a set of basic rights that aren't in conflict

Do you have a reply to the arguments in these linked texts that property is inherently coercive? https://mattbruenig.com/2015/10/01/capitalism-is-coercive-an... https://mattbruenig.com/2014/05/07/property-and-conflict/

it's impossible to use such reports to make general claims about what kind of government is better.

Across 1000 years of history, yes. But as already noted in those cases objective health/longevity differences can settle the issue. The report can then be used as a one source of evidence in comparison between the setup in countries today.

Because "people" can't make it happen in societies where the government controls all those things.

People can vote for parties and candidates with an agenda to abolish public funding of education and infrastructure, but people choose not to. Very few vote for the libertarian party in the US for example.

And even with all those advantages, people still do try to opt out.

In the countries that score best in terms of happiness and life satisfaction there is wide and strong popular support for an extensive welfare state with tax funding of schools, infrastructure and health care. Is your view that large majorities of people in those countries over decades are consistently mistaken about both their reported happiness and their support for their welfare state?

If government-run schools in the US, for example, were really so great, there wouldn't be so many people trying to get their kids into private schools, or home schooling.

The US is not in the top of the report I cited and has many problems in the schooling system. One underpinning factor is segregation (ethnic and socioeconomic).

school vouchers

... are tax funded, so is a variant of an extensive welfare state on the funding side. A drawback with such a mixed setup (public funding of private provision) for schooling is that it often requires even more regulation, oversight and middle men activities due to for profit and competition dynamics. The US health care system is a prime example of how cost-ineffective such systems can become compared to more straightforward public provision of health care in other countries.

Only if they exist to be surveyed.

Are you saying you don't think there's any gradual differences in how extensive the welfare state is among the countries listed in the report?

Hard to tell what those people would report if we had a time machine and could go and ask them. I sure as hell wouldn't want to switch position with them. Would you? On objective measures of health, nutrition, longevity and prevalence of violence they would score much worse.

The fact that all first world countries today have governments with vastly more power is no evidence at all that such a system is the best.

It is some evidence. Since if a system with a less extensive state that offers less of public services like schooling, infrastructure and health care is what is really better for people, why haven't people made it happen already? See here also my previous point that gradual steps towards such system should, if they are really an improvement for people, show up as higher scores in happiness surveys. Absence of that trend is some evidence against your claim.

Are subjective. People's responses will be relative to what they're used to and what possibilities they see for their lives.

People report how well they experience their lives as going. Not perfect, people can be mistaken and you might now better than them how happy they really/objectively are I suppose. But then again, do you have any better empirical evidence in support of what you proposed? If not how confident can you really be about it?

These studies give no evidence at all that you could not have people whose subjective satisfaction and happiness was just as high, or higher, in a country with a minimal government along the lines I've described.

They don't prove that it is impossible, true, but if your proposed setup really was so much better wouldn't gradual steps towards it also be somewhat better in ways that made people report greater life satisfaction and happiness? And wouldn't then that show up in the ranking so that the top scoring countries would be those that come closest to (or least far from) your ideal? But that's not what we're seeing, the top scorers have the most extensive welfare states. That's some evidence against your claim.

They also give no evidence that such a country could not do as well or better in objective terms.

What's "objective terms"? Do you mean longevity? Health outcomes? The top scoring countries in terms of happiness score very high there too.

Note also that you claimed that all systems going further than what you suggested would have "eternal conflict", which sounds really serious and awful and thus would realistically affect how people report how well their lives are going. Isn't the report evidence against that claim of yours?

Legal rights can be seen as especially strong claims, with implications and interactions to be further specified in laws and regulation. What alternative do you think would be more useful arrange human relations, if not literally appeals to the God of Thunder?

protecting the basic rights that everyone has to have to have a free, civil society, and stopping there. A government that has more power than that has too much power.

What's your empirical evidence for thinking that such a setup is better and that going further than that brings "eternal conflict"? Since all prosperous democratic countries in e.g. north america and europe combine private property with taxation for public provision that goes beyond what you desire. Furthermore in empirical studies of life satisfaction and happiness the top of the list is consistently held by countries with extensive welfare states funded by taxes[0]. How does that square with your claim?

[0] https://happiness-report.s3.amazonaws.com/2024/WHR+24.pdf#pa...

You say "childish" and "unrealistic" but such legal rights already exists. For example children have a right to education and the government has to see to it, in one way or other, that the child gets education (which could take the shape of public schools or funding, regulation and overseeing privately owned schools or some other arrangement). Similarly for other legal rights. a right in that sense means an especially strong claim that guides policy and is specified and updated through laws and regulations.

The notion of moral rights can be seen as a form of value and as such is about as workable as other notions of value e.g. virtue, duties, obligation and the good.

Nussbaum's specific list of capabilities isn't anticipated by Mill, but that doesn't mean Mill dodges questions like what is human flourishing. Mill wrote a lot about politics and what makes human life go better, both in terms of what is ultimately valuable and what it is crucial to nurture in people for them to experience such value. His views on education, freedom of expression and more in political theory are in that way covering some of the same ground that Nussbaum does with here capabilities approach.

how the word "voluntary" is actually used by people is complex in interesting ways. People report (degrees and shades of) involuntariness and coercion in lots of different situations. For example "I hate this shitty job but I don't have a choice". So as a matter of language use there's lots of different kinds of involuntariness that doesn't cleanly map onto any libertarian-ish view. At which point libertarians tend to make the move of proposing their own, much more narrow definition of "voluntary". Which implicitly embeds normative assumptions that would need to be argued for, which libertarians fail to do.

Incorrect, it was founded with more goals than that. It also has the mechanism of democracy for updating over time, and such updates have added prosperity producing things like taxation for public provision of education, infrastructure and much more. Which means that the initial version of the technology called the United States have long since gotten various updates.

As a utilitarian, Mill got to dodge questions like "what is human flourishing?"

What do you mean? What is the thing that utilitarian founders like Mill wanted to promote in the world? How is that not connected to human flourishing?

Something can't be "taken" if it's not owned.

Sure it can, someone can take land in the plain everyday sense that they occupy it and tell others to stay out. But that act, and any attempts to enforce it, is coercive and aggressive. Which proves that any system with property rights, including every libertarian proposal ever made, is coercive. That's ok but it also means that your "is it voluntary?" complaints are futile and self-defeating.

Property rights systems exist because people use property to achieve their life's values

What's your empirical evidence for that claim? The actually existing legal construct of property in countries around the world, and in international treaties, in fact serves a whole range of goals. In every prosperous country on earth there is room for both private property and taxation for public provision. In empirical studies of life satisfaction and happiness the top is consistently dominated by democratic countries with extensive welfare states funded by taxes https://happiness-report.s3.amazonaws.com/2024/WHR+24.pdf#pa...

If you have "collective efforts" you want funded or built, you're free to ask people voluntarily to put their lives, children, families etc. on hold for whatever cause you think is important that I don't see that you have insight into.

Such collective efforts are already underway. One is called the United States, a system where the legal construct property is bounded and compatible with taxation for public provision. The US is a club of people who have banded together for common goals and with democracy as a tool for updating the system. If you don't want to be part of that club then leave.

Every claim to property over any parcel of land is fundamentally a coercive taking in that it tries to forbid everyone else, billions of people, from using that piece of land. Any attempt to enforce that land claim is an initiation of aggression against other people freely moving about in the world. In that way any system of property, libertarian or not, has at its root coercion. Some coercion is table stakes for civilization and that is ok.

it leads to logical contradictions with other rights

only if you assume that all rights are simple and absolute. But why think that? Rights as legal constructs come with various limitations and interactions, as specificed in laws and regulations. For example the notion of property rights is legally compatible with taxation in every democracy on earth. Nussbaum's project is concerned with the philosophical arguments for what underlying principles should guide the construction and specification of such legal rights.

Who’ve decided that the decision should be deferred to them and not me or someone else?

The people through the process of democracy, where you also have a say as a voter and potential candidate. Property rights is a legal construct, created by the state. A technology if you will. Part of the rules of that construct is that property can be taxed for public provision purposes.

I'd reply that a properly regulated and bounded bundle of property rights is compatible with taxation for public provisioning of e.g. police, judiciary, health care, infrastructure, education and many more things. If you disagree with that then the discussion would move back to more fundamental normative background questions. Like how can a valid claim to property come about in the first place. For example if you think a necessary condition for a valid property claim is that the holding can be traced back through a chain of voluntary transaction then most current holdings of land in the US are unjustified, since they trace back to genocidal oppression by european settlers. In addition there are dire problems for other libertarian talking points about property.

https://mattbruenig.com/2015/10/01/capitalism-is-coercive-an...

https://mattbruenig.com/2014/05/07/property-and-conflict/

I find web chat interfaces very useful for programming, but it also feels like early days. Speedups will smooth out a lot of pain points. But other UI changes, some even quite small, could enhance use a lot. A few of various size top of mind with regard to Claude web chat UI specifically:

- intellisense in the inputbox based on words in this or all previous chats and a user customizable word list

- user customizable buttons and keyboard shortcuts for common quick replies, like "explain more".

- when claude replies with a numbered list of alternatives let me ctrl+click a number to fork the chat with continued focus on that alternative in a new tab.

- a custom right click menu with action for selection (or if no selection claude can guess the context e.g. the clicked paragraph) such as "new chat with selection", "explain" and some user customizable quick replies

- make the default download filenames follow a predicable pattern, claude currently varies it too much e.g. "cloud-script.py" jumps to "cloud-script-errorcheck.py". I've tried prompting a format but claude seems to forget that.

- the stop button should always instantly stop claude in its tracks. Currently it sometimes takes time to get claude to stop thinking.

- when a claude reply first generates code in the right sidebar followed by detailed explanation text in the chat, let some keyboard shortcut instantly stop the explanation in its tracks. Let the same shortcut preempt that explanation while the sidebar code is still generating.

- chat history search is very basic. Add andvanced search features, like filter by date first/last message and OR search operator

- batch jobs and tagging for chat history. E.g. batch apply a prompt to generate a summary in each selected chat and then add the tag "summary" to them. Let us then browse by tag(s).

- tools to delete parts of a chat history thread, that in hindsight were detours

- more generally, maybe a "chat history chat" to have Claude apply changes to the chat histories

Unfortunately 1.4 does not fix command palette issues on Windows (5+ seconds to show, freezes, crashes, several commands accessible through UI buttons not available through palette with same name phrase). Finding the name of an action and how to trigger it (button somewhere or menu/submenu item) is a pain point in Inkscape and a good command palette can help a lot.

reads to me as

That was not the intention with that claim. I meant to convey something more minimal: if you after investigation have no strong reason to think either is environmentally worse then let animal harm considerations break the tie.

suppose I source my wool from sheep that are kept well, but have shorter lifespans. If I'd then switch to cotton, I'd contribute to entire ecosystems being impacted due to water usage.

What does "kept well" mean? If a sheep was really treated well in the sense of it not being subjected to the many harms that 99% of all sheep currently are subjected to and was individually cared for, including appropriate food and veterinary attention, then it would likely live much longer, unless someone kills it while still healthy and with years left to live, which does not sound like "kept well". Also, the water usage comparison depends on what type of cotton production you're comparing to, since there exists recycled cotton and various smaller scale production methods geared to reduce water usage.

As for the climate impact of wool see https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24008053/wool-marketing-e...

zero assurances

It is a personal, minimalistic blog that someone else submitted to HN. The argument that the bed fire risk comes mostly from smoking in bed seems straightforward so maybe they did not feel a need to spell it out.

While on the topic of fire hazards "[s]heep farming emits high volumes of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and also drives carbon-emitting deforestation"[0] both which, I add, contributes to climate change which increases the likelihood and impact of forest fires which put human lives at risk.

[0] https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24008053/wool-marketing-e...

If you're uncertain about the environmental impact you could decide based on the many well-documented harms in all stages of the animal industry.