Earth as seen on July 6, 2015 from a distance of one million miles by a NASA scientific camera aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory spacecraft. Image: NASA
A NASA camera on the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite has returned its first view of the entire sunlit side of Earth from one million miles away. Read the rest
We’re in an era of the cult of the entrepreneur. We analyze the Tory Burches and Evan Spiegels of the world looking for a magic formula or set of personality traits that lead to success. Entrepreneurship is on the rise, and more students coming out of business schools are choosing startup life over Wall Street.
But what often gets lost in these conversations is that the most common shared trait among entrepreneurs is access to financial capital—family money, an inheritance, or a pedigree and connections that allow for access to financial stability. While it seems that entrepreneurs tend to have an admirable penchant for risk, it’s usually that access to money which allows them to take risks.
And this is a key advantage: When basic needs are met, it’s easier to be creative; when you know you have a safety net, you are more willing to take risks. “Many other researchers have replicated the finding that entrepreneurship is more about cash than dash,” University of Warwick professor Andrew Oswald tells Quartz. “Genes probably matter, as in most things in life, but not much.”
University of California, Berkeley economists Ross Levine and Rona Rubenstein analyzed the shared traits of entrepreneurs in a 2013 paper, and found that most were white, male, and highly educated. “If one does not have money in the form of a family with money, the chances of becoming an entrepreneur drop quite a bit,” Levine tells Quartz.
New research out this week from the National Bureau of Economic Research (paywall) looked at risk-taking in the stock market and found that environmental factors (not genetic) most influenced behavior, pointing to the fact that risk tolerance is conditioned over time (dispelling the myth of an elusive “entrepreneurship gene“).
Resilience is undoubtably a necessary trait for success; many notable entrepreneurs experienced success only after leading failed ventures. But the barrier to entry is very high.
For creative professions, starting a new venture is the ultimate privilege. Many startup founders do not take a salary for some time. The average cost to launch a startup is around $30,000, according to the Kauffman Foundation. Data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor show that more than 80% of funding for new businesses comes from personal savings and friends and family.
“Following your dreams is dangerous,” a 31-year-old woman who runs in social entrepreneurship circles in New York, and asked not to be named, told Quartz. “This whole bulk of the population is being seduced into thinking that they can just go out and pursue their dream anytime, but it’s not true.”
So while yes, there’s certainly a lot of hard work that goes into building something, there’s also a lot of privilege involved—a factor that is often underestimated.
Let’s not forget this event. Minnesota. December, 1862. The largest mass execution in American history. These are all Dakota Indians.
The Dakota had been reduced to starvation and dependence on government traders who exploited the native population shamelessly; as the Civil War bled government resources, there were desperate fears among the Indians that they would not receive the subsidies necessary for their survival, and they erupted into the Dakota War of 1862. The Dakota lost. The US Army then herded together hundreds of men and put them on “trial”.
Sibley ordered a commission of five military officers to try the prisoners summarily and “pass judgment upon them, if found guilty of murders or other outrages upon the Whites, during the present State of hostilities of the Indians. Major General John Pope, recently banished to Minnesota by President Lincoln after Pope’s humiliating defeat at the Civil War’s Battle of Second Bull Run, saw an opportunity to redeem himself at the Dakota’s expense. He immediately approved Sibley’s plans. “The horrible massacres of women and children and the outrageous abuse of female prisoners, still alive, call for punishment far beyond human power to inflict, Pope wrote. “It is my purpose utterly to exterminate the Sioux if I have the power to do so… They are to be treated as maniacs and wild beasts.”
The commission began the hearings on the reservation on September 28 and tried 16 men that day alone. This breakneck pace continued, and by November 3—a mere five weeks later—the commission had conducted 392 trials, including an astonishing 40 in one day. Observer Reverend J.P. Williamson noted that the trials took less time than the state courts required to try a single murder defendant. The accused were hauled before the commission, sometimes manacled together in groups, and were arraigned through an interpreter. The charges ranged from rape to murder to theft, although most Dakota were accused of merely participating in battles. The defendants entered a plea, and those who pleaded not guilty had an opportunity to speak. The commission then called and examined its own witnesses, but it did not permit the Dakota to have counsel for their defense. As one man who assisted in gathering evidence against the Indians noted, “[T]he plan was adopted to subject all the grown men, with a few exceptions to an investigation of the commission, trusting that the innocent would make their innocence appear.”
Over 300 were condemned to death. This was a degree of vicious retribution that would not be visited upon the Confederacy after their defeat, but then…these were “maniacs and wild beasts”. All those death sentences required review by Lincoln, who spared 265 of them, but 38 had to be sacrificed in a public hanging to appease the bloodlust of the white Minnesotans.
Afterwards, the bodies served science and local tourism.
After the execution in which all 38 were hanged simultaneously, he [Dr Sheardown] and the assistant surgeons stepped forward to examine the bodies and make the pronouncements of death. The bodies were taken away in mule-drawn wagons and buried in a long trench that had been dug in the sandy bank of the Minnesota River. Some historical accounts mention “a Dr. Sheardown” or “an unknown Dr. Sheardown” who removed some of the skin from the bodies before they were buried. Some of these pieces of skin later turned up in Mankato for sale as “souvenirs”. It is unknown with certainty whether Dr. Samuel B. Sheardown removed the skin, or a souvenir hunter who was impersonating him and using his name. Other accounts state that several doctors who attended the hanging, or that local physicians, asked for permission to dig up the bodies for use as cadavers in their anatomical studies. Permission was granted, and over the next few days, bodies were removed.
The difference between the North and the South seems to be that we carry out our lynchings on a large scale, and with Yankee efficiency.
Mankato, Minnesota, where the execution took place, has no memorials to the executed. The state of Minnesota honored several of the leaders of the US side by naming counties after them.
(WARNING: Neepery, not directly about Hugos, but somewhat related. Also it is about me observing other people observing me, so there’s a whole lot of me in this post. So: Ego alert. Also, it’s long, because I wanted to get out in one place. Skip it if you just don’t care. I don’t mind! Really!)
Over on Facebook at the moment, and as a subset of a larger discussion, there’s a conversational thread about why so many dudes (and it is largely dudes, and dudes of a certain sort and political persuasion) have such a rabid dislike of me, both as a writer and as a human being.
Naturally, I have thoughts on this, based on years of personal observation, so below you’ll find my hypotheses on why I am so widely disliked by a certain type of dude. These hypotheses are mix and match: Not all will apply to everyone.
1. Because I’m an asshole. Gotta put this one in here, and have to put it up top, because indeed, I like pretty much everyone in the world can be a complete asshole from time to time. Depending on who you are (and my opinion of you), you may see my asshole side more often than others do. I do, for various reasons, some systematic and some relating specifically to me, have the luxury of being able to get away with being an asshole more frequently than some other people can or would. So when the mood strikes me, I often have the ability to go ahead and be one.
Disclaimers, now: I try not to be an asshole nearly all of the time, and the mood doesn’t strike me very much in any event, especially as I get older and the amount of fucks I have to give about this sort of nonsense decreases over time. I particularly try to be sensitive to being an asshole to people I see having less power than I do, structurally speaking (i.e., that whole “punch down” thing). I also try very hard not to lead with the asshole card, or to be the first asshole on the scene.
But I don’t always succeed, and also and independently, from time to time I decide that me being an asshole is a thing I need to do. In that situation, if I’m being an asshole in your direction, you’re perfectly justified in disliking me. I’m okay with you disliking me. I may even want you to dislike me. Because it likely amuses me, and because I think it’s what you rate. Some people deserve a thumb in the eye.
2. Because they’re assholes. Which a significant number of them are, for various reasons, including, apparently, some of them making a calculated decision that being a jerk is a viable marketing tactic. They’ve decided, apparently, to address an untapped “asshole” sales demographic. This is a bold strategy and we’ll have to see how it works out for them. Personally I suspect the number of people enticed by an “all asshole, all the time” public relations strategy is smaller than one might suspect. But it’s not my career, and if it gives them joy, then fine.
In which case disliking me is just part and parcel of being a professional asshole. I’m a nice big target, and there’s apparently an estimation that being seen in opposition to me, or framing one’s self as one of my hopeful nemeses, conveys certain marketing advantages. It’s sort of an unpleasant variation of starfucking. I am also skeptical of this as a viable marketing strategy, in part because generally speaking when I’m aware of it being attempted, I don’t address the starfucker directly anymore. It’s fine if they want to play that game; I don’t have to participate. Which sort of lowers its strategy value, in my opinion. But again, if it gives them joy, well, whatever.
3. Because of my politics. Many of the dudes who dislike me have politics that range from reactionary conservative to bourgeois fascist, accompanied by social positions that range from outdated to bigoted (there’s a strong correlation between those political and social positions, mind you, and probable causation as well). I’m no model liberal or progressive, to be sure, but my positions, social and political, are sufficiently left of their own that a) they see me as a useful foil, b) I am in their estimation a leader of a larger, and further left, social/political movement that they created in their heads as a threat to their own largely reactionary, somewhat bigoted way of life. In this case it helps that I’m a well-off straight white man, since using me as a target means they get to deflect criticism of a bigoted worldview.
It also means that they see me as an affirmative-action beneficiary of the non-existent political and social movement that they’ve created inside their heads, which they also think runs things in the science fiction and fantasy genre, which it does not, because, again, it doesn’t actually exist outside their heads. If it did, in the manner in which they seem to believe it does I, as a well-off straight white man, would be an extraordinarily unlikely candidate for their approbation when it came to sales and awards. The fact that they appear to think I am an excellent candidate for this approbation is a significant tell about their own worldview, i.e., that even an alleged social/political movement celebrating/ordering diversity requires a well-off straight white man as a figurehead.
Related to this:
4. Because I should be with them and I’m not. I’m a well-off straight white man who writes military science fiction (among other things); if you look at the stats, the correlation between these categories and “socially/politically conservative” is pretty high. That I’m not socially or politically conservative is apparently a source of confusion and upset for some. Likewise, I’m a well-off straight white man who is a loudmouth on the Internet and who writes about poverty and inequality and who has been unapologetically for things like same-sex marriage and the right of women to have total reproductive control of their own bodies, and has used his influence in his field to speak against harassment, and for diversity. Which is also apparently not what I should be doing.
That I am doing these things, and that I don’t have the expected politics for my easily-slottable demographic, is confounding — and also, if you’re the sort of person who gets upset about these things, suggests possibly that I am a traitor to well-off-ness, and straightness, and whiteness, and man-ness, all of which have, apparently, very specific conditions of being, of which I may not actually meet. Hold that thought, we’ll get back to it.
5. Because I’m successful: Despite not slotting in how I should socially or politically, and not receiving the imprimatur of the folk who apparently believe they have the ability to decide who and what is really science fiction and what is not, I’ve nevertheless done very well in my field, while others doing similar things (and doing it better, in their opinion), are not doing as well as I am. This clearly isn’t fair or right.
Obviously, the fact that I am doing better than some others despite my inauthentic nature means that I am a beneficiary of manufactured success, either at the hands of the social/political movement they’ve created inside their head which does not actually exist, or by the manipulations of my publisher, who for some reason has decided that tying itself to a writer who doesn’t sell, to the tune of millions of dollars and more than a dozen books, is a valid and solid commercial strategy. Which, of course, just makes the detractors even more annoyed.
All of this combines to the following:
6. Because I’m not a real man. My political and social positions, and my success which must obviously not be real, mean that I’m not an actual man man. I’m not an alpha male. I’m a beta or even a gamma, a submissive tool of women, in cowering awe of real men, and probably gay, because being gay is the worst possible thing for a man to be, and one that is, is hardly deserving to be called a man at all.
Note well the strategy here: When a man who does not meet these fellows’ requirements for manhood nevertheless succeeds — and succeeds in a field they have claimed as their own stomping ground — the play is de-masculinize him (by their silly definition of “masculine”) as much and as quickly as possible. In other words, they try to demote that man. They’re trying to demote me from manhood, because manhood, in this formulation, is really the only thing that matters.
This, unsurprisingly, leads to the next reason they dislike me:
7. Because they can’t actually do anything to me. In point of fact, I can’t be demoted by them, either out of my manhood, or out of any other advantage I have. After all their blathering and whining and conspiracy theories and nasty mean awful snarkings, they have changed precisely nothing. Look, I’ve been on the receiving end of this nonsense literally for years, and none of it — none of it — has ever made a single material difference in how I’ve led my life, how my career has advanced, or how I do my work on a day-to-day basis. Nobody cares. Literally no one cares.
When faced with this sort of general impotence, the response appears to be: Try harder. Well, again: I wish them joy. It won’t matter to me.
8. Because of envy. This one is pretty obvious in some specific cases. I’ve been pretty successful despite being a mewling coward of a gamma, whereas some of them have been notably unsuccessful at nearly everything they’ve done despite being awesome supergeniuses who are always thinking sixteen steps ahead, so tremble when I walk amongst you, puny humans. To which my response is: I’m sorry your life has turned out so poorly for you, but this is not really my problem, and also, I wish you would stop trying to make it my problem.
9. Because I refused to recognize that they were right about something that one time, or several times. This is also specific to a couple of people who thought they were pretty good with that whole arguing thing, and were making points that were clearly self-evidently correct, and were non-plussed when I noted that they were not self-evident, and also, they couldn’t argue their way out of a paper bag. Clearly in these cases the problem was not their positions or their inability to elucidate them in a coherent manner, but that I was mean. Unsurprisingly, people who think they are right about most things more often than not appear to hold long grudges against people who point out they’re often not right, and not right more often than they would like.
10. Because of tribal identification. At this point there’s simply a small cadre of people who have decided that the world is against them — or have decided that it’s a smart career move to convince other people that the world is against them — and moved to hook in a bunch of other like-minded folks to create a tribe. When doing something like this, it’s nice to have something for the tribe to exercise their daily two-minute hate against. For this cadre, at this moment, these things include a non-existent political and social movement they’ve created in their heads, the awards this non-existent political and social movement supposedly control, and me, as a titular icon of this non-existent political and social movement.
If you’ve been convinced to join this tribe, this is great — you’ve been pointed in a particular direction, given your instructions, and now all you have to do is follow the steps. That the steps are silly, based on nonsense and are, in the case of me at the very least, liable to effect nothing, is almost aside the point. The point is: membership. Belonging. And something to hate, or at least dislike.
And again: If it gives these people joy to dislike me, it’s no skin off my nose. I’ll be doing my own thing. I do think it’s sad, however. I hope eventually they decide that they have better things to do. There are, indeed, so many other, better, things to do with one’s life. Let’s hope they figure out what those things might be.
Oops. I’m not sure Reddit is winning this fight.
Earlier this week, Reddit announced a perplexing new plan to “contain” the worst bigots on the site. Instead of simply banning the bigots, their subreddits would simply be “reclassified.” Redditors would have to sign into them much as they now sign into the site’s NSFW subreddits, and, presumably to avoid angering advertisers, Reddit would remove all ads from them.
In other words, as I noted the other day, Reddit has decided to fight the bigots … by funding ad-free forums for them.
Well, the folks in the 4/chan subreddit (not 4chan itself; the Reddit incarnation of it) want to get into that sweet, sweet ad-free action. So one enterprising channer suggested that they spam a thread with the n-word to prove they’re as hateful as the hateful assholes of r/coontown:
![NIGGER POSTAs many of you have heard, reddit admins are now providing ad-free bandwith to racist hate subs... (self.4chan) submitted 21 hours ago by reese_ridley/he does it for free/[M] - stickied post ...and apparently the admins think we aren't racist enough to receive these great benefits. What the fuck? ITT we spam "nigger" to remove ads from /r/4chan forever](https://manboobz.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/4chann.png?w=604)
And spam they did. Here’s a portion of the top comment in the thread:
The comment continues on for a time in this fashion.
Other commenters had similar ideas; this one was so relentless I made a half-hearted attempt at censoring it.
![TasselHat [score hidden] 14 hours ago If you smell something funny when you walk down the street, you're in Coon Town. You look and see garbage all over the street, you're in Coon Town. Up and down the street there ain't nothing but trash, nigger girls trying to get a nigger boy's cash. Then you even see a spook with a big moustache, in Coon Town. On the corner there's a nigger with a drink in his hand, that's Coon Town. Trying to bum a nickel from whoever he can, in Coon Town. Don't be surprised, you can make a bet, if you go back tomorrow he'll be there yet. He's trying to get drunk and drunk he's gonna get, in Coon Town. Niggers never bother about going to work, in Coon Town. They seem to think that work is for jerks, outta Coon Town. They don't do nothing but sleep and doze, he don't wake until his eyes are tired of being closed. It's half a day's work for him to scratch his toes, in Coon Town. It amazes me to see the way they live, in Coon Town. They do all the taking while we have to give, to Coon Town. The White man worries, the nigger don't care, cause at the end of the month his check will be there. Every nigger earns his living off the old welfare, in Coon Town. Every nigger earns his living off the old welfare, in Coon Town. I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO](https://manboobz.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/f4channcens.png?w=600&h=503)
You get the idea.
Brilliant move, Reddit admins! You surrendered to the bigots and now they’re walking all over you.
H/T — r/GamerGhazi
A great start in New York fighting wage theft:
On Wednesday, the owner of nine Papa John’s franchises in New York City pled guilty to the first criminal case brought by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman against a fast food franchisee over wage theft.
According to court documents, including company records obtained by the attorney general’s office, Abdul Jamil Khokhar, the franchisee, and BMY Foods Inc. paid its 300 current and former workers the same base rate for any hours they worked after putting in 40 a week, which under law should be paid time-and-a-half. To get away with paying less, they allegedly paid overtime hours in cash and created fake names for the employees in the timekeeping system. They then filed fraudulent tax returns that left out the cash payments made to employees under the false names.
Khokhar’s sentencing is set for September 21, when he faces 60 days in jail. He also faces paying the employees $230,000 in back wages as well as an additional $230,000 in damages and $50,000 in civil penalties.
BMY Foods Inc. declined to comment. A Papa John’s spokesperson said in an emailed statement, “Papa John’s is aware of the recent incident involving one of our New York franchisees who was taken into custody this morning. These allegations do not reflect our position as a company. We have a strong track record of compliance with the law. We do not condone the actions of any franchisee that violates the law. This particular franchisee has divested itself of most of its restaurants and is in the process of exiting the system. We will continue to monitor the situation closely and take appropriate action.”
More of this. And Papa John’s itself needs to be held legally liable. Franchising exists in no small part so corporate doesn’t have to have any legal accountability for what happens in their stores. They control what they care about and let the little things like workers be on the backs on the franchisee. It’s a model that exists to help the corporation. One way it helps them is provide legal distance from the actual conditions of work. That has to change, and there has been recent signs that it is changing. We already know that Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter is a terrible human being who likes to keep his labor as poor as possible. I don’t know if Schneiderman can go farther up the food chain, but imprisoning a franchisee for wage theft is a good start.
I want to be mad… But where is the lie?!?Californians visiting another state.
Lofoten features a subpolar oceanic climate under the Köppen climate classification. Winter temperatures in Lofoten are very mild considering its location north of the Arctic Circle – Lofoten has the largest positive temperature anomaly in the world relative to latitude. This is a result of the Gulf Stream and its extensions: the North Atlantic Current and the Norwegian Current.
Follow Ultrafacts for more facts!
Yes, but where are the flying cars.
I demand flying cars.
We’d also settled the stars.
Norway started out as a kingdom in 872 and has existed ever since. It has also saved quite a bit of its traditional architecture. Traditional Norwegian architecture makes it look like a land out of a fairytale. Stave churches – so named because of the Norse words for their load-bearing poles – were extremely popular back in the 12th century, and their unique shape matched with all-wooden construction make is simply spectacular.
Norvegian vernacular (as in, built to local requirements and using local materials) architecture is wonderful. Moss and even trees grow on the roofs of wooden or stone buildings, making Norway a sort of Norse Shire. Have a look, and plan your next holiday accordingly!
(h/t: boredpanda)
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Artist Calvin Seibert (previously) recently completed a new series of his geometrically precise sand castles on the beaches of Hawaii. A professional sculptor, Seibert seems to borrow angular ideas from Bauhaus architecture or the flair of Frank Gehry. How he’s able to control the sand so perfectly is anyone’s guess, it certainly puts my traditional upside down bucket method to shame. You can see more of his work over the last few years here.
Be sure to check out this great 6-part video series by Innuendo Studios about the backlash to Tropes vs Women in Video Games, online harassment and GamerGate.
Why Are You So Angry? Part 1: A Short History of Anita Sarkeesian Why Are You So Angry? Part 2: Angry Jack Why Are You So Angry? Part 3: Perception is Everything Why Are You So Angry? Part 4: An Autopsy on GamerGate Why Are You So Angry? Part 5: “The Good Guy” Why Are You So Angry? Part 6: Talking to Angry Jack
Yet another article about the ongoing Reddit failures portrays those who run the site as Libertarians who have no idea what they’re doing, and the attitude of dudebros running a place to pander to dudebros is inescapable.
Banning communities that actively encourage rape is unequivocally good (even though action hasn’t been taken yet), but it shouldn’t end the discussion. Reddit doesn’t deserve special credit for banning places that tell men to rape women. That ought to be one of the easiest decisions in the world, and the fact that it seems like a novel approach to governing a site with 160 million monthly visitors is abhorrent. Huffman’s plan for hate communities like r/coontown is to quarantine them from the rest of Reddit. But the mechanism of this isolation is a joke. Former Reddit CEO Yishan Wong’s approach to hateful content was telling everyone that “each man is responsible for his own soul.” Reddit’s new policies are basically a restatement of that, plus a button you have to click on. Users will eventually have to sign into Reddit to access its worst communities, but that means nothing will change for everyone who already uses Reddit — Reddit already requires you to log in to leave comments or vote on links, and those members represent the entire community.
There is no easy way out, and it’s unfortunate that the leadership only wants easy paths that don’t disturb the existing membership, when it’s those people who cause the problems.
Huffman says that the company will “try more aggressive approaches” if “hateful users continue to spill out into mainstream Reddit.” But hateful users pervade mainstream Reddit; their words and ideas can be found nearly everywhere, whether it’s casual talk about rape, or a meme of Neil deGrasse Tyson as “black science man.” It’s definitely not an easy problem to solve, just like solving racism is not easy — but there are obvious ways to attack it. Banning places like coontown is an easy first step. Too bad Reddit’s leaders lack the courage to take it.
I think a dose of reality is in order. Reddit is not about free speech. It’s not about being the “front page of the internet”. It’s about providing a meeting place for privileged young white men to gather and shit on everyone who they perceive as beneath them. The good stuff on the site is an accidental byproduct of having a large enough population of human beings that a subset can sometimes do better than the the majority.
So it’s simple. It’s not my kind of place, and it’s not a good place for women or minorities or anyone who finds racism and misogyny unacceptable. We should all just leave it for the dudebros, who will continue to find it their kind of home on the internet.
Luke.stirlingThe single biggest reason I have never used Reddit. I know there are a lot of places online whose policies also do not specifically prohibit hate speech. But few of those (beyond know cesspools, like image boards) have actually had those limits tested. Of them, only Reddit has managed to both radically fail to stem emergent hate speech while maintaining some level of mainstream respectability.
Much better policy; Send Reddit’s bigots to Snake Island
So the new Reddit CEO — returning co-founder Steve “Spez” Huffman — announced the site’s much-anticipated new content guidelines today, and to say that they are disappointing is a bit of an understatement.
Essentially, he told the site’s many varieties of bigots that they could continue to spout their various bigotries on Reddit without repercussions, so long as they didn’t actually threaten to, you know, go out and murder or otherwise physically harm people whose sexual preferences or skin color or religion (or whatever) didn’t meet their approval.
Only now the bigots will be posting on Reddit s dime.
No, really.
Reddit’s new policy on hate speech is to make hateful content “opt-in,” like the site’s NSFW subreddits are now. Oh, and to not embarrass the site’s advertisers by running ads next to blatantly hateful garbage.
As Huffman explained in a posting on Reddit, under the new policy
it’s ok to say “I don’t like this group of people.” It’s not ok to say, “I’m going to kill this group of people.”
Hateful content — or, as Reddit euphemistically puts it, “content that violates a common sense of decency” — will be “reclassified” but not banned. The “indecent” stuff
will require a login, must be opted into, will not appear in search results or public listings, and will generate no revenue for Reddit.
What this means in practical terms, Huffman explained in a followup comment, is that
r/rapingwomen will be banned. They are encouraging people to rape.
r/coontown will be reclassified. The content there is offensive to many, but does not violate our current rules for banning.
So, yeah, Reddit’s grand plan to deal with its bigots is to … subsidize them.
I can’t even.
Adding to the repugnance of this “hide the hate, but keep hosting it” policy is the fact that, in the wake of the #RedditRevolt against now ex-CEO Ellen Pao, and Dylan Roof’s racist murders in Charlestown, South Carolina, /coontown and other blatantly racist subreddits have seen a giant boost in traffic, with more than 18,000 subscribers and roughly 200,000 page views a day.
As MrTomFTW noted in a posting on r/GamerGhazi, r/coontown is
closing in to matching Stormfront’s traffic. This means that Reddit could soon be host to the largest active white supremacist forum on the Internet.
Actually, that’s understating things a little. If you add Reddit’s other racist subreddits into the mix, Reddit is already the number one destination for white supremacists looking for a place to talk online.
And Reddit will keep footing the bill.
the update is a sustainable means to enlarge the existing residence, and provides two bedrooms (one master), a storage landing, additional washing area, and external roof access.
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It depends.
This question is prompted by a paragraph in Randall Munroe's what if? post the other day entitled "What if New Horizons hit my car?" (in turn based on a question by Robin Sheat). The answer to that question was, "it would be pretty bad for both vehicles," although as is so often the case it's not so much the answer but the explanation.
But as long as we're talking about the answer, it would in fact be pretty bad. The New Horizons spacecraft weighs over 1,000 pounds (478 kg), and is about the size and weight of a concert grand piano. And while it would be bad if a grand piano hit your car, it'd be worse if the grand piano were traveling at over 30,000 miles per hour. (That's almost 50,000 kilometers per hour, but somehow kph is still less impressive.) Moving at more than eight miles (or 14 km) every second, New Horizons is one of the fastest objects the species has ever created.
And you parked right in front of it. Nice job, genius.
Oh, also, it's powered by a nuclear generator, so the tiny pieces of your car that are now on their way to the Kuiper Belt are also radioactive.
Randall included a couple of legal points in his analysis, concluding that—and this is the good news—(1) NASA would have to pay for your car and (2) because you wouldn't be at fault, in most states your insurer would be legally prohibited from raising your premiums. I think those answers are both right if we assume, as he does, that your car was parked at home and New Horizons was rather dramatically off course. I want to assume, though, that your car was orbiting Pluto.
First, as Randall mentions, under Article II of the 1972 Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects, a country that launches a space object is strictly liable for any damage the object causes on Earth. So if your car is sitting in your driveway when it's hit by a spacecraft, whoever launched it has to pay regardless of fault. This assumes, of course, that you had the good luck to be hit by a spacecraft launched by a country that has ratified the treaty, but the U.S. has ratified this one. Technically the treaty doesn't apply to a launching state's own nationals, but under the Constitution a ratified treaty is the law of the land anyway. So if you are a U.S. citizen, you're still good. (Unless you were home at the time, in which case they'll be paying your estate.)
Correction: As Prof. Jonathan Weinberg has pointed out, the treaty wouldn't control this, because the part that says it doesn't apply to a launching state's own nationals is also the law of the land. That doesn't mean NASA is necessarily off the hook, just that its liability would have to be determined by some other provision of U.S. law, not the treaty itself. That probably means the Federal Tort Claims Act and/or the regs governing Claims Against NASA or Its Employees for Damage to or Loss of Property or Personal Injury or Death. The result's probably the same, but neither of us are space lawyers, we hasten to add.
But if you were "parked" out near Pluto, the answer is less clear. Under Article III of the Convention, if a space object causes damage in space to another space object (which your car would be in this scenario), then whoever launched the former is only liable if they were at fault. And the question of fault is also relevant to the second question—whether your insurance company could raise your rates as a result of this space casualty.
In most if not all U.S. states, it is illegal for an auto insurer to raise your premiums because of an accident in which you weren't at fault. Exactly how this works depends on the state. Under California insurance law, for example—and California law is atypical in many ways, but it was the only state I was willing to research for free—companies can only consider the following factors when setting premiums:
Further, your "driving safety record" can only be based on (1) your traffic-violation convictions and/or (2) accidents in which you were "principally at fault." Still further, an insurer can't claim you were "principally at fault" unless it investigates and finds (among other things) that you were at least 51 percent responsible. Yet even still further, the law presumes you were not at fault if your car was (again among other things) lawfully parked, the victim of a hit-and-run, or damaged by "animals, birds, or falling objects."
Up to this point, I think you are in pretty good shape. Let us assume that the insurer is able to get an adjuster out there to do the required investigation. (We are assuming you could get your car out there, after all.) Ordinarily there might well be a decent argument that you were at fault. Questions such as "what was a 1972 Buick LeSabre doing in Pluto orbit to begin with" do come to mind. You probably didn't remember to tell NASA about this before launch, and New Horizons did not have much fuel for course corrections afterward.
But the good news for you is those presumptions. You were lawfully parked, or at least not unlawfully parked. I don't see any street signs in any of these pictures so far. There is also no question that you were the victim of a hit-and-run. The thing is already almost 700,000 miles (over 1.5 million km) from the site of the (imaginary) accident, and I doubt NASA left any insurance information on your now-radioactive windshield fragments. You might even take a run at arguing your car was hit by a "falling object." It's falling toward something, isn't it? If any of those arguments worked, I'm not sure the insurer could overcome the presumption, no matter what the adjuster's report says.
But there is also very bad news for you: the number of miles driven annually.
Assuming you wish to insure your next car with the same insurer, this factor may be a problem. The issue would be how many miles the insurer can reasonably expect you will drive that car, not how many you drove the last one. But it would seem relevant for the insurer to bring up the fact that, assuming you drove 65 mph the whole way, your most recent vehicle was driven approximately 569,400 miles per year in each of the past 5,209 years. You could certainly argue that you're not likely to do that again, but I think there might be a premium hike in your future.
Clarification: The paragraph above assumes that you accelerated to 65 mph and then coasted the rest of the way to Pluto. To get yourself "parked" there you would also have to decelerate, of course, and you could get there faster by accelerating for the first half of the trip and then turning around and decelerating. (The giant assumption there is that you have enough gas to do it. This is why New Horizons just did a flyby; there wasn't enough fuel to orbit.) That raises lots of other issues, though, because after the first couple of years, even a 1972 Buick LeSabre would be traveling at a significant fraction of the speed of light (assuming the standard 350 engine and a 0-60 of about 10 seconds, which works out to .27g of acceleration). In other words, I did not even try to account for relativity. But I think the conclusion is still a reasonable one.
I think Vader and Luke, despite their differences, make an excellent comedy duo.
【トゥナイト！】ニューホライズンズは冥王星系を6時間で通過する。マッハ50の超高速だ。冥王星の直径は3分弱で横切るからそのあいだに写真を撮りまくるぜ。電波は5時間以上かかって地球に届く、その後、探査機は永久に戻ってきません。 http://pic.twitter.com/VFbetmJxkJ
— 高木壮太 (@TakagiSota)July 14, 2015
All dogs share the same basic digestive system despite the range of physical variations (and attitudes) across different breeds. Every dog is designed to eat a raw animal-based diet, from the Chihuahua to the Great Dane. Breed-specific dog food brands are simply a marketing gimmick aimed at playing on the pet owner’s emotions, and their desire to feed their pet the best possible diet.
I don’t think that dogs need an animal-based diet. If done right they can be vegan and not contribute to the murdering of innocent animals. We’ve adapted and domesticated them enough to do so. They’ve evolved to live without meat just like us.
200% incorrect. Vegan diets are carbohydrate-based. Carbohydrates are inflammatory, feed cancer (glucose), contribute to periodontal disease (leading to systemic organ failure, eg heart), cause insulin spikes leading to a multitude of other issues in the long-term (thyroid, liver, diabetes, heart disease) and also cause pancreatic problems due to extreme stress on the pancreas (secreting heavy loads of carb enzymes over a long period of time). The low moisture content coupled with high plant protein may also cause renal failure in the long term. The preservatives used may also be linked to cancer (BHA, BHT etc), and these diets also skew the omega3/6 ratio, causing further inflammation (linked to cancer again). They cause urine alkalinity leading to urinary problems such as crystals, blockages and UTI’s.
Brief into to dog anatomy/physiology:
- Stomach PH: Their highly acidic stomach is designed for eliminating harmful bacteria and breaking down bone into a gel-like substance. Humans have a much more alkaline stomach acid which is why we would struggle to digest raw bone.
-Digestive Enzymes: Higher level of proteases to break down animal protein. High bile load to help push through bacteria.
-Dental Anatomy: Sharp pointed teeth designed for ripping and tearing flesh and bones.Dogs do not chew their food as we do, they are wired to swallow chunks quickly as a basic survival instinct.
-Jaws: Dogs also have strong jaws that physically cannot move sideways (like your own can). This sideways grinding action is a feature that allows pre-digestion of plant material. Again, dogs rip off chunks and swallow them whole.
-Lack of Salivary Amylase: Omnivores have this for pre-digestion of carbohydrates. Dogs and cats do not. The canine pancreas secretes amylase as a backup, however this does not mean they should be fed a high carbohydrate diet every day for a lifetime. Processed food (incl vegan) is 40-70% carbohydrate.
-Lysozyme: Instead of amylase, dogs have lysozyme in their saliva which is an antibacterial. This may be useful for destroying any harmful bacteria in carrion/rotten food/feces, as well as wound cleaning.
-Gut length: The canine gut is short in length which is because flesh must be pushed through quickly. It does not need to sit and ferment, as this could allow bacteria to multiply to harmful levels. Note that plant eating animals have a long digestive tract and even multiple stomach chambers in order for plant material to be slowly broken down by the necessary enzymes.
-Nutrient profiles. Dogs have 0% biological requirement for carbohydrates. They gain every single essential nutrient from a prey based diet such as Whole Prey/Prey Model. Vegan diets are full of processed lab-made vitamins and minerals. Many vitamin pre-mixes are made in china and shipped to the country of manufacture.
All in all, dogs will survive on a high carbohydrate diet but it will cause systemic effects eventually. Similar to smoking, a junk food diet affects every dog differently and some may be affected more severely than others, and in different time spans. You can also expect high vet fees in the form of dental cleanings, dental surgeries and various health problem later on in life.
It is not recommended that you feed your pet the equivalent of a big mac for the entirety of its life. This is essentially what kibble and vegan diets are. Evolution has changed the appearance and even the behaviour of your dog, but their digestive system is still geared towards meat. Basically, you are paying money to have a company slowly kill your pet from the inside out.
0/10, Not Recommended.
Hard science here for anyone who needs to shut down a “vegan pet owner.” It’s abuse. Feed your animal the substances they evolved to eat or do not own an animal, it’s as simple as that.
How else would a stray dog eat unless it was some kind of meat? Dogs don’t know how to make tofu.
Also, if you must not have meat in your house, there are house pets that do not eat meat. Cats and dogs NOT being one of those animals.
Minha nova heróia
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