It's interesting I just finished reading an article about a very similar topic on overpopulation that argues that we're past the point where we have enough land to feed the population using organic methods: https://open.substack.com/pub/depopulism/p/in-defense-of-eff...
Wow, this post seems quite distrustful, to say the least.
For instance this shocking paragraph is backed only with YouTube comments on vlogs.
> Setting aside useful modern sex/gender mythologies, it is clear that men are interested in having sex and women are interested in having children. I am often struck by how broody many women are from an evolutionary perspective. Despite the significant risk placed by giving birth to a woman’s life, many of the most neurotically minded women that I know are absolutely obsessed with having children and satiating their craving for cuteness.8 It makes sense from an evolutionary perspective for such a genetic instinct to have been cultivated. How else could women be incentivized to bear the incredible risks of child birth?
You can't claim something this extraordinary without a solid study.
There's also a graph with a line interpolating a fog of points which could not clearly be interpolated like this.
I didn't find the claim you mentioned, searching "organic" didn't find anything. I was interested in knowing if it considered meat consumption. The word meat doesn't seem to appear. I probably wouldn't have trusted anything written there anyway.
The HN submission is about lands and fighting climate change.
My main point was that the post is garbage (in addition to apparently not being related to what the commenter said about it), and my backing point was mainly that the (extraordinary) claims would need to be backed with solid evidence.
But that last point is also true for contradicting statements. Especially the adventure one. I would think it's more related to studies, career and job stability, and not only for the women, but they indeed study more and have more paid jobs than a century ago.
At this point I just won't take any "women want X" claim without strong evidence, too many of them have been stated only backed with intuition, which really doesn't work, because it's easy to introduce sexism (even if well-meaning) in such claims and we know there are strong biases around the topic (and let's be honest, the paragraph I quoted is plain sexism and completely disrespectful to the LGBT community, in addition to everybody else really - this link simply has nothing to do on HN if you ask me).
> Mathematically the minimum number of elements necessary for a pattern is three.
An assertion about mathematics requires a definition, and I don't believe this one for the usual definition of 'pattern'. For example, if I wanted to exhibit a linear pattern, two data points would be sufficient.
(But we're not talking about mathematical constructs anyway, so it's not clear what the relevance of mathematics is.)
2 points establishes local linearity, not global linearity. f(x) = x^2 looks linear if you take any 2 arbitrary xs, add a third and you can no longer draw one line that intersects all 3 points.
> 2 points establishes local linearity, not global linearity. f(x) = x^2 looks linear if you take any 2 arbitrary xs, add a third and you can no longer draw one line that intersects all 3 points.
Yes, certainly. And 3 points can show you a pattern that looks quadratic but isn't, and so on. More to the point, 3 points can rule out a claim of linearity, but they also cannot demonstrate a claim of linearity (e.g., you can usually find 3 collinear points on the graph of a cubic). My point was not to make a mathematical claim myself, but rather to argue that the claim "the minimum number of elements necessary for a pattern is three" is so vague to, I think, be nearly meaningless—and, in particular, unfalsifiable; in my mind, it doesn't deserve the adverb "mathematically".
Only on HN could a comment thread devolve from "light observation on the nature of comedy" to "arguing about the nature of linearity in mathematical equations" in 6 comments.
hey thanks! Since reading this post, I remembered that hands-down the best talk I ever gave had _quite a lot_ of humor in it, lots of it technical.
I'm quite proud of it, and as I've told other people about it, I specifically mention a "laughs per minute" rate of, for the first few minutes, an impressive rate! (It wasn't just my humor, definitely a group experience) I think it went great, in large part because it was a quite improvisational, reactive experience.
It feels _so_ strange to plug oneself's talk, but here we are:
"Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App"
To the degree that it was successful, it was ENTIRELY due to a highly supportive group of people eagerly invested in my success. What a powerful phenomena to have at your back.
update: It was sorta hastily prepared, and my gosh, rewatching some if now years later there's a lot I wish I'd done better in the organization and clarity of some how how I presented. It just totally had elements of a standup routine, as many entertaining talks do. This is independent of the value, correctness, necessary truthfulness of the content, of course.
I believe it does! It was remote during covid, and I sorta dropped off, but I bet it's back in person! It's got really strong leaders and community around it.
You have a good open, but when you drop the 1912 line at the end of the opening bit, it's practically crying for a topper.
If there's anything in local history you find interesting that happened that year (or even better, in the previous two years), you could have played that against the stereotype of London buses always coming late and in groups.
Btw, I really want to congratulate you for having the courage to do a set. It takes a lot to perform comedy in front of an audience of strangers - with tech talks you at least have the slides as a crutch, but with standup, you have nothing to fall back on. You have a good grip on pacing, too. Please keep at it.
Hi, I'm the author. I'm a Data Scientist and I spend most of my time doing data analysis in Jupyter Notebooks or coding up ML algorithms.
For me I find it helpful being in an office as at home by myself it's way too easy to get sucked into the rabbit hole of YouTube or the Productivity Porn on Hacker News. For me it helps feeling like I'm part of a team and I don't want to let my team down.
Isn’t it broad strokes to paint office work as “better” when a lack of discipline is the problem and not where the work is performed (this is only an observation, please don’t take it as anything other than constructive criticism)? Accountability and the ability to push through the emotions around procrastination are not necessarily location dependent.
I’m sure, for some cohorts, they must be in the office to deliver. For many others, this is simply not the case.
It's hard to tell, but from what I've seen the people who have trouble setting boundaries when working from home are the same people who would consistently put in extra hours in the office, answer email at 11pm, etc.
I feel really irritated when I see them blaming a flexible work environment for the same problem they had before, and asking for the entire workforce to be subject to restrictive conditions so they can have an ineffective incentive to stand up for themselves.
Boundaries can be challenging because the person who has the least to lose wins. If you have imposter syndrome, need the job financially, etc you’re less likely to enforce healthy boundaries to prevent termination. With that said, there are definitely folks who embrace office theater that you mention in your first paragraph. It takes some work to suss out if the toxicity is the org or the person.
Sounds like you have poor self-control. I've been working from home for 6-years and never once had this problem.
There are many ways to form productive habits at home; for example, remote conference rooms that people can jump in and out of. Slack even has "huddles" now which are very useful for remote work.
Letting your team down has nothing to do with being a seat-warmer in the office.
>> For me I find it helpful being in an office as at home by myself it's way too easy to get sucked into the rabbit hole of YouTube or the Productivity Porn on Hacker News. For me it helps feeling like I'm part of a team and I don't want to let my team down.
> Sounds like you have poor self-control. I've been working from home for 6-years and never once had this problem.
Sounds like you have a bad attitude. It's not a good to respond to someone who shares their personal experience with a drive-by judgement that they must be the problem because you think it works for you.
That is an interesting view, team people and non team people are very different it seems. I'm non team and can easily manage my own work day, it's less common it seems, at least thats what I'm told. People are so very different in what they are comfortable with and I really like the variability that is becoming common.
Genuine question - do you enjoy what you do? Because the only difference there is social judgement in the office if you were to be slacking - if you need to be pressured into doing your work, are you in the right field?
Most people can still go into an office if that's what they want to do.
What's not reasonable in general is to expect others to come into the office to motivate you/socialize with/etc. if they don't have to.
In general, it's reasonable to expect to have some non-home place to work at (whether a conventional office or coworking space). What's not as reasonable is to expect a before-times office where everyone comes in every day.
(Don't worry about the hate Mike, that type of tone doesn't belong here.)
Some people have trouble working from home and need a bit of social pressure to get things going. I personally prefer cafes or coworking spaces over a mandatory office, but that's me. I have faith that people will find what works for them and gravitate towards the opportunities that work well with their skills and personality.
If you find it better to work in an office, great.
But telling me that my preferred way of working is "not best" for my mental well being is just annoying. Or telling me that I actually must not like WFH, and I just am not conscious of it or haven't acknowledged it yet is just... No.
I think I am uniquely qualified to judge what is or is not good for my own mental well being, my own productivity, etc.
If you focus on and achieve outcomes, you won't "let your team down".
It is very much possible to waste time at work, get involved with various "initiatives", create all the right noises, and be seen as one of the team while not actually contributing to anything productive.
Hey, I'm working on a project to help users discover more interesting content on YouTube. Our channel-based recommendations allow you to search a channel and get a list of other channels making similar content, with a focus on surfacing relevant smaller and more obscure channels.
We have most of these channels mapped and I think you'll be able to discover some interesting new content on some of these lists, especially in the more niche categories of the shoe commentators and the London transport channel:
I hope some people find the tool useful. You can search channel names in the top bar or click icons in the lists to navigate to different channels' pages.
Edit. Seriously, not sure what it is but the site looks wacky. Like only partially rendering and elements out of focus and missing some borders etc. Is this planned? Not sure it's the best way to attract users....
Just put out an update on the database to correct the missing icons. As channels change icons the old links go dead. Should be back to near 100% icon coverage now.
As far as "elements out of focus and missing some borders" goes, I think this may be referring to the choice to have channel descriptions pop-up on hover in the lists rather than cluttering the screen with text. It may be something else, we do use a gray background underneath the page headline (with the channel title, subscriber count, large red "View on YouTube" button, and channel icon), for example.
Of course, we'd love to hear more feedback on the page design choices.
As a Data Scientist working at a Publicly Listed Company I've really started to feel siloed and alienated by WFH. I think that my colleagues feel the same, but they just don't voice it. Shameless plug but, I wrote a blog post about it on my personal website here: https://michaelgv.uk/posts/2022/08/what-tech-workers-dont-un...
