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Comment Re: Say what you will re: free trade or protection (Score 1) 40

I don't know where you buy your clothes, but mine appear to have been made in S America, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Vietnam and I'm not sure where else. I've had made-in-US clothing before but the quality was pretty poor, probably because they were having to match prices with countries where wages were way lower. I suppose the same applied with clothing made in the UK, although it's been a long time since M+S dropped their "Buy British" policy.

Comment On the need for social&environmental improveme (Score 1) 189

To support your point about a need for broad social&environmental improvements, consider: "The [critical of] RFK Jr. Op-Ed the Los Angeles Times Didn't Want You to Read"
https://www.yahoo.com/news/rfk...
        "... For decades, U.S. public health policy has been dictated by neoliberal principles that prioritize privatization, deregulation, "free" markets, and associated profits over public care systems. ... Illness is framed as a matter of individual behavior and personal failure--poor diet, sedentary lifestyles, or smoking, for example--rather than the result of policies that undermine rights to healthy environments. ... Meanwhile, social problems like poverty, isolation, and trauma are medicalized, treated as individual pathologies requiring individualistic interventions, like often-ineffective pharmaceuticals or psychotherapy that cannot touch root causes, while ignoring the necessity of investing in systemic, collective solutions. This diverts resources from community-based social care and prevention, generating profits for industry while leaving patients with endless bills and disappointments. ... For example, policies like universal childcare, housing-first initiatives, and direct cash transfers improve health outcomes while reducing poverty and economic insecurity. During the pandemic, expanded child tax credits and direct payments helped millions of families and brought dramatic health and safety improvements to communities--proof that public investments can make an enormous difference for public health. ... In this spirit, this approach to public health centrally prioritizes community-based, nonprofessional care services that have been shown to improve both mental and physical health while reducing medical needs and health care costs. ..."

Comment Why smoke alarms are deadly things (satire) (Score 1) 90

Some satire similar to the logic fossil fuels sometimes uses against renewables:

(begin satire) Smoke alarms are a leading cause of deaths and fires in the home. Every years, lots of people are killed falling off of ladders to change smoke alarm batteries. False alarms from smoke detectors cause numerous kitchen injuries as people using kitchen knives are startled and accidentally cut themselves or stab nearby family members. Smoke detectors wired into home electrical systems can short out and burn down your home. Radiation from smoke detectors causes cancer. Many firefighter deaths are attributed to responding to smoke alarms. Worse, the Dihydrogen Monoxide used by firefighters responding to smoke detectors is itself a dangerous substance responsible for thousands of deaths annually. The answer to all this ongoing carnage is simple -- keep deadly smoke alarms out of your home if you want to stay safe! Brought to you by the American Association Of Cosmetic Undertakers, For-Profit Burn Care Centers, and Companies Rebuilding Homes After Extensive Fire Damage. (end satire)

For a more accurate picture about smoke detectors, consider what the National Fire Protection Association has to say:
https://www.nfpa.org/education...
"Smoke alarms save lives. Smoke alarms that are properly installed and maintained play a vital role in reducing fire deaths and injuries. Fire spreads fast--working smoke alarms give you early warning so you can get outside quickly. ... When working smoke alarms are present in your home, the risk of dying in a home fire is cut by 60 percent, according to the latest NFPA research."

Comment Deliberate unrecoverable damage (Score 1) 85

Well, technically that is the entire point of some of the major sports in the world, and it would be problematic to say that deliberately causing brain damage for competition is ok in one sport but not in another.

On the other hand, I am not altogether convinced it should be openly encouraged in any sport.

This is a tricky one, because I would also argue that I should have no say in what a person does to their own body for their own reasons, that my firm belief that people should have bodily autonomy when it causes no actual harm to others does not permit me to condemn others for doing stuff to their own body for their own reasons when it does no actual harm to others even if it's a context I don't agree with.

Given that (ethically) I cannot condone wilful irreversable damage but (ethically) cannot condemn personal choises that harm nobody else, the obvious conclusion is that I don't believe such sports should be actively promoted or encouraged, but that what individuals do in the privacy of a private sporting event should not concern those outside until or unless actual harm outside of those events occurs.

Comment Re:Spoofing from address? (Score 1) 16

Yea, I have gotten a few of the "I lost my wallet/phone/etc. can you send me xx cash via WU ..." email spoofing scams

I have had two variations of this over the years, in both cases the legitimate senders had lost control of their email addresses after falling for phishing attacks. With their address books Online, what could go wrong? Anyway, what happened there was not what I understand as spoofing.

Submission + - Jira IS Turing-Complete (seriot.ch)

Ardisson writes: Long-rumored folklore finally proven with a working two-register machine built in Atlassian Automation rules. Includes addition demo and Fibonacci in three states.

Comment Re:Employee draw poker (Score 1) 84

Treadmill? That can be optimistic.

One place I worked for, I was hired to do DB and coding. Sped their database up by a factor of 60, and resolved tickets efficiently.

Another place I worked for, I was hired to do QA. Found numerous performance issues and dangerous security holes.

Didn't last in either, because politics are more important than people, and revenue is more important than wages. Once all the factors that seriously impacted profit were removed, keeping me would merely have meant a better product, not more cash. The market is only so big, and once you've taken all the share you're going to, being better won't increase it. Companies don't think beyond the next quarter.

Two other places I worked for, the CEO was using it to scam money off investors and get cheaper healthcare. They never intended to produce a product.

If you're forced to treat employees well, these things will still happen but they'll happen less often. Because the risks are higher, the payoff is lower, and penalties for getting caught are a whole lot worse.

Comment Re:yah this is bs (Score 1) 84

Agreed. There's deliberate undercounting for the long-term unemployed, and a failure to account for the fact that firing seasoned workers with acquired skills isn't the same as hiring inexperienced yoofs who have no meaningful experience in producing robust, high quality products. Although, to be fair, corporations don't seem keen on producing those.

However, there's another factor to consider. The number of retirees is smaller than the number of people entering work for the first time. Due to Covid, a LOT smaller than usual. This means that the markets are expanding. If the markets are expanding but the numer of people being added is only keeping pace with job circulation and retirement, then the job market (as a percentage of those who can work) must be smaller relative to both the markets and the work that needs to be done.

This is the most misleading part of employment statistics. Whilst total unemployment is important (but only useful if not deliberately undercounted), you also need to know the employment:activity ratio and the employment:expected employment in a fully functional market of that size ratio.

Comment Re:Hmmm. (Score 1) 63

On what basis do you draw that conclusion?

On the basis that a woman from the Radiophonics Workshop innovated a technique?

Perhaps you are going to argue Einstein was a moron because Noether figured out the relationships between symmetry and conservation laws.

I know there are some idiots here, but frankly you are one of the worst.

Comment Re: The climate grift (Score 3, Informative) 41

Climate latency is around 40 years, so if 2025 is when the climate trajectory passed the point of no return, then the actual prediction is that Miami will be in serious trouble by 2065 and that no viable path to Miami recovering will exist, that CO2 won't drop to levels that permit such a recovery within the remaining lifespan of any part of Miami.

Comment Other options: gift, exchange, planned economies (Score 3, Insightful) 158

As I wrote about in 2010: https://pdfernhout.net/beyond-...
        "This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society."

Or the YouTube video:
"Five Interwoven Economies: Subsistence, Gift, Exchange, Planned, and Theft"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
        "This video presents a simplified education model about socioeconomics and technological change. It discusses five interwoven economies (subsistence, gift, exchange, planned, and theft) and how the balance will shift with cultural changes and technological changes. It suggests that things like a basic income, better planning, improved subsistence, and an expanded gift economy can compensate in part for an exchange economy that is having problems."

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Karl's version of Parkinson's Law: Work expands to exceed the time alloted it.

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