Like, history is big and rich! The only other reference I see regularly is some very vague notion that the Roman Empire was big and then fell later.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Anyone else get unreasonably annoyed that literally everyone's point of reference for everything is WWII? Every authoritarian movement is 1930s fascism, bad leaders are Hitler, the use of "concentration camps" for places where nobody is being killed, etc.
I find it especially irksome when I agree with the person making the argument!
What was the standard reference before WWII?
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
There's stuff like this with older Jewish kids of immigrants I've observed in my family, but it's hard to disentangle from older NY/New Jersey accents plus sprinkling Yiddish, and a hard-to-duplicate way of saying "oy." But I don't know that I've noticed specific consonant or vowel shifts like that.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
So, I listen to several podcasts by people who are the children of Indian immigrants to the US, and I swear there's a very slight accent feature, where the K sound is closer to a G. So, e.g collection is closer to gollection, or company is toward "gompany." Is this a thing? Possibly it's actually a California accent, since most of them are in the Bay Area, but I don't think I've heard it elsewhere.
In general, is there a study of kids-of-immigrants' linguistic features?
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Put another way, if a person is born today, and the "slow" rate holds for 75 years, when they are 75, a single hour of labor is triple the output of when they were born.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Kinda mindblowing:
So the slowdown in productivity growth from 2007-2019 refers to a growth rate of about 1.5% a year. From 1945-1973 it was around 2.8%.
But like, 1.5% a year still means that in a single generation, an hour of work produces 45% more stuff! In 50 years it's more than double the stuff.
2.8% is much faster (double per generation) but still! By historical standards, 1.5% is zany fast.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
For reasons I don't quite understand, A City on Mars did OK to good on sales in the first year, but in the second year is getting a resurgence in media? Theories:
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
In short, I'm surprised how often there are people who read into the book some kind of degrowth attitude? We literally say there's a cool revolution in space transit but more money should be spent on other problems, and that the geopolitics won't be simple. I get viscerally disliking that, but I don't know what people want us to do! Like, just not mention any problems?
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
One of the odd things with A City on Mars is how often we receive a version of "nothing in the book is wrong but I hate it because you didn't present everything as solvable."
Which is weird because of (a) the word hatred is surprisingly frequent, and (b) we literally outline a path forward at the end of the book.
Like we literally had a guy say it was unserious to claim reproduction might be hard, because all you need is to centrifuge the whole settlement.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Nice interview with us about A City on Mars, on CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/21/science/mars-human-settlement-elon-musk/index.html
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Oh god, this is the sort of thing that keeps me from wanting to try French in France!
https://www.reddit.com/r/banalgens/comments/1gwf21i/kyle_24_ans_%C3%A9tudiant_am%C3%A9ricain_en_france/
It's funny, being in Switzerland made me realize it's probably the best country on Earth to learn French, Italian, English, or German, because everyone is struggling with some language, and you never know which combination you're about to encounter.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Assuming you're planning for the long-term, why do people recommend gold or real estate against inflation and not just index funds, which should incorporate changes in the value of currency naturally?
Like, aren't commodities and real estate more prone to random shit happening?
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
I hadn't known much about de Gaulle and am finally reading a biography. Among the major non-evil leaders during WWII, he really seems like the one who is just certifiably bonkers. The right guy at the right time if you're France, but wow.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Hey I'm on NPR today, sounding especially attractive due to a cold that will not go away: https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510351/short-wave
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
So, it seems like at a policy level the US basically accepted somewhat higher inflation than other developed countries in exchange for a thriving economy. Successful according to most economists, but it may have cost the administration a second term. Do you agree, and how do you think it'll affect future decisions?
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Or, likewise, suppose these were questions like "Inflation was been much worse under the current administration than the last," I bet most of the Republicans would get it right, whether or not they had familiarity with the data.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Seeing this posted everywhere, but isn't this obviously a bad use of data? Like, you have a bunch of questions asking a highly polarized public whether things are good currently on a variety of indicators. Surely the divorce from reality runs in the opposite direction once the administration flips, at least to some extent, no?
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Incidentally, for those who are into this sort of thing, another solid quarter for productivity growth: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/prod2.nr0.htm
The period since 2019 or so is starting to look like a productivity uptick, though I don't know that their is a good theory about why?
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Anyone read Bostrom's new book? I thought "Superintelligence" was a bit out there, but it was a pretty straightforward book about philosophy of AI. "Deep Utopia" feels like a philosopher having a stroke. I don't know that I've ever read a more confusing and repetitive book.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
=> This profile with reblog | Go to ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social account This content has been proxied by September (3851b).Proxy Information
text/gemini