I'm reminded of an article a while back talking about how the change from sodium streetlights to LED streetlights had a whole lot of unforeseen effects on animals, people's sleep patterns, driver awareness and visibility, etc. due to color changes. There was a comment on the article from an old civil engineer saying "no, these were not unforeseen, we actually did the research back in the day to figure out what color the street lights should be, that's why they were the color they were."
That doesn't seem right to me. Sodium (and mercury) vapor lamps are the color they are due to physics, and were chosen because they're very efficient (and long lasting). Low-pressure sodium is the best and worst of these; essentially monochromatic but fantastic efficiency. Their only advantage, color-wise, is that the light can be filtered out easily (they used to be widely used in San Jose because Lick Observatory could filter out the 589 nm light).
...And the old Engineer was just saying that that was the area on the spectrum they aimed for, so they found a light that emitted in that wavelength that could be technically implemented and scaled.
Way better work than whoever it is handling this LED nonsense. Why we can't find a diode that we can use to simulate the old spectra would be a fun research project.
We of course can make LEDs of more or less any color. The current white LEDs are high-power blue LEDs that are covered by various phosphors to give a mix of colors for "full spectrum" illumination. Different color temperatures are produced by different mixes of phosphors. This is pretty similar to how the traditional luminescent (mercury vapor-based) lamps worked.
But different phosphors have different efficiency and price. LED lamps were first introduced for interior lighting, where sun-like spectrum is welcome. Such LEDs were produced en masse and relatively cheaply. So street lighting naturally used them, because municipalities usually look for the cheapest viable option.
We likely could produce high-power narrow-spectrum orange LEDs if there was a large market for the economies of scale to kick in. You can buy deep orange LED lamps today (look for color temperature 1800K or 1600K, "amber"), but they are more expensive, because they are niche.
I think we've learned a couple of times that lighting placement, temperature, and shadow-casting are not ideal [0]. Also some of the newer lighting does actually fade to a different color [1] so it's not just the base temperature of the new lights.
I'm sure tons of people along the way "noticed" but if you're selling LEDs or you're paid by the LED people to create marketing to convince people that LEDs are gonna save the planet, you're not gonna bring that up.
IDK if you've noticed but we are all lighting our house with bulbs that use 1/10th the amount of electricity as incandescents did. I like the color spectrum of a real lightbulb better, too, but not enough to pay 10x in power. I make up for it by using all kinds of random bulbs all over the place so that the aggregate light in the room fills more of the spectrum than if I coordinated them all to be the same.
Did you try using high CRI LEDs with color remperature of 2700K–3000K? When I switched from halogen to LED I did just that and the difference is not noticeable, you'll have the same yellowish tint and very natural looking colours. Even with expensive bulbs, extra longevity covers for higher cost.
How many life forms do we have to kill before cost savings aren't worth it?
Besides, we can have LEDs in better spectrums for under 1/5th the costs of incandescents. We just hired stingy motherfuckers and don't care about the repercussions of our decisions.
It’s not eliminating section 230 entirely, it’s eliminating it for algorithmically promoted content. If you have a site that has user content and you present that content in a neutral fashion, section 230 applies. If you pick and choose what content to present to users (manually or by algorithm), you’re no longer a neutral platform, and shouldn’t be getting the benefit of 230.
I understand that. My point is that this would mean algorithmic feeds can only contain vapid, pointless content with no liability concerns. To me, it doesn't improve the world to require that Instagram and Youtube exclusively serve slop, even if that might cause some number of people to abandon them for non-algorithmic platforms with better content.
The current state of affairs is that Youtube and Instagram have brought back fascism and the measles, so if the complaint here is "it's impossible to moderate algorithmic content at scale and so the platforms would become incredibly risk averse," I think I'd take that alternative. I also don't think effectively forcing a breakup of the current online media monopolies is a bad thing either - if you can't actually mitigate the damage of your platform because you're too big, then maybe you shouldn't be that big.
Literally every social media site I'm aware of has had, in varying strengths and at varying times, many still currently, a movement among users asking for a fucking chronological ordered feed. Just, what the fuck my friends are saying, in the reverse order that they said it, displayed in a list.
Not only is this seemingly the most desired feed among end users, it was also the default one. MySpace didn't have a choice in the matter, they had to show a chronological timeline, because they didn't have a machine-learning algorithm nor a way to make one. They could tweak it based on engagement metrics but on the whole, it was just here's what all your friends have posted, in reverse order, scroll away. And then eventually you'd hit the end where it's like "you're up to date" and then you go on with your fucking day.
But of course platforms hate that. They want you there, all day, scrolling through an infinite deluge of bullshit, amongst which they can park ads. And we know they hate this, because not only have platforms refused to bring back chronological feeds, they actively removed them if they existed at one time. Not only is this doable, it's the most efficient way that requires the least compute from their servers, but platforms reliably chose the inverse... because it makes them more money.
Also specifically on this:
> My point is that this would mean algorithmic feeds can only contain vapid, pointless content
The vast majority of these sites is vapid, pointless content RIGHT NOW, even if it attempts to convince you it isn't.
Literally every social media site I'm aware of has a chronological ordered feed of people you've chosen to follow. Facebook does, Instagram does, Youtube does. It's just not the homepage, and most people don't care enough about what feed they get to go navigate to it every time they open the app. Would it be nice to make them let you put it on the homepage? Sure, I'd support that.
Your ability to evaluate whether the argument is correct is limited. In theory, the author and the correctness of the argument are unrelated; in practice, the degree of experience the author has with the topic they’re making an argument on does indeed have some correlation with the argument and should influence the attention you give to arguments, especially counterintuitive ones.
Even further, not everything is a math proof, where everything has been standardized and open (although understanding the proof is a whole other topic). Heck, take it one step lower - coding - and even though theoretically the source code is 100% transparent, still often times your claims are not reproducible because of environment. Now lower it one more to any kind of science where replication is expensive and/or hard, and then one step lower to personal experiences... And yeah, things can seem tough, can't it?
And even in the case of mathematics proofs, that tells you nothing about things such as: extendability, taste, where future direction should go, what this philosophically means, etc. Which we definitely do care about.
It's funny because the people throwing around fallacy accusations everywhere don't understand that they are semi selectively using fallacies alongside claiming universality while not actually practicing it (not that you have to, of course, I very much don't agree with that premise, but if you're the one saying it...)
Anyways. /rant, it's crazy how many people don't discuss these basic but subtle ideas. To be fair, I struggled with the same exact things when I was 15, and it doesn't seem like you get taught this kind of nuance until maybe the tail end of a rigorous bachelor's degree, though personally I only learned this stuff on my own through extensive trial and error and suffering.
The same way it’s always done: political organizing. Find groups that are working towards the world you want and start chipping in and getting involved. It takes time, there’s no magic wand, and we should’ve started 20 years ago, but none of that changes the answer: if you want the world to be different, get out there and start doing the work.
And, it has worked - it worked in the 30s to get the New Deal through and expand unions, it worked in the 60s to advance the environmental and civil rights agendas, it worked in the 80s to dismantle the New Deal, it worked in the 90s to promote gay rights, it worked in the 00s to make Christian Nationalism a national political force, it worked in the 10s to get a fascist elected and then re-elected, and god willing it’ll work in the 20s to get these fucks out of office again too.
Yes, but only if you have an ax to sharpen. With a lot of things it takes trial and error to make progress. You can take this pretty up high too - sometimes it takes building multiple products or companies to get it right
> With a lot of things it takes trial and error to make progress
Way too often that is used as an excuse for various forms of laziness; to not think about the things you can already know. And that lack of thinking repeats in an endless cycle when, after your trial and error, you don't use what you learned because "let's look forward not backward", "let's fail fast and often" and similar platitudes.
Catchy slogans and heartfelt desires are great but you gotta put the brains in it too.
I see indecision and analysis paralysis far more. And yes, you do need to thing about things, but far too often I see people not do something because they're worried it's not optimal. But not doing something is far worse than doing something sub-optimally!
Without commenting about the frequency of negligence myself, I suspect at least that you and GP are in agreement.
I doubt GP is suggesting ‘go ahead and be negligent to feedback and guardrails that let you course correct early.’
Plugging the Cynefin framework as a useful technique for practitioners here. It doesn’t have to be hard to choose whether or not rigorous planning is appropriate for the task at hand, versus probe-test-backtrack with tight iteration loops.
Iran did the same before the conflict in response to prior Israeli attacks - the two drone waves they sent that were intercepted were both demonstrations of capability, not actual attacks.
Unfortunately I’m not sure their current audience is gonna pick up the implied threat.
It's also a bit unreasonable to launch live munitions that have some 90% probability of being intercepted by a given system on a good day, while intending for "just a warning"
When they launched the drone strikes on Israel, they gave Israel and the US warning time so they could be intercepted. The second time, they gave them much less warning time.
The Iranians have a long history of negotiating loudly via their actions, which anyone who's spent any reasonable amount of time studying Iran knows and has seen in action. They're really not a mystery, they're very transparent, we just don't like what they're saying.
It’s more like if David and Goliath are in a standoff
David takes a small rock and whips it at a sensitive spot on Goliath’s ankles that most people don’t know about (Diego Garcia)
David knows Goliath will probably dodge it, and most likely kick it away given it’s importance, but there’s a point being made by shooting: if it hits then that’s a win, but if gets knocked down it’s a warning that they know where they need to hit for it to hurt
> The kids also weighed in on the debate around the extent of the ban. The two options bandied in Salem were a “bell-to-bell” policy or just inside classrooms. The latter would allow kids to use their phones during passing period and lunch. Several advocated for that change. That mirrored the debate within the Oregon legislature. It ultimately led to a stalemate and the need for Gov. Kotek’s executive ruling.
It sounds like the legislature broadly agreed on the ban, but couldn’t agree on a couple final details. Insofar as an executive is useful, that’s the case for it: calling the shot in the face of several good (or bad!) options but no clear winner.
There is a reason why no US president in the last 40 years has gone through with the fantasy of attacking Iran. When even George W. Bush decides against a war, it means something.
I think George himself is the reason we wound up in Iraq and not Iran. That cabinet was just itching to invade a country full of brown people and oil we could "liberate". Afghanistan obviously didn't scratch that itch and all those people, just by nature of what was going on in the world earlier in their careers, f-ing hated Iran. Buuut, Iran would've been a tough sell. Meanwhile, just over the border there's this other other country full of oil and brown people that's run by a guy the world already considers bad, the propaganda will be easier, the coalition that's keeping him under control is kinda falling apart so we can use the threat of regional destabilization and terrorism to get buy in, the Bush family regrets leaving him in power so any "out of band" advice he may seek is going to be favorable, etc, etc.
I will say this: a demonstrably better foreign policy to the good for the USA and everybody else is our own energy sufficiency trending into green energy.
Two, Israel and surrounding countries get they're act together themselves. Own you're own liberty. Like Aeschylus' Oresteia the furies are out of control.
Three, the general we in the US who voted for trump, the senate that approved the idiots running the executive branch, must move away from shadow boxing culture warfare. It's a waste. The dems lost twice to trump; they are out of touch. The current slate of Republicans are a sinister combination of wusses, liking trumps broader policies, but executing them so malignly and incompetently it's breaking into systemic destruction from law to prices. Im not a liberal; nobody is owning me with smart ass memes. We are simply failing each other while debt increases, our friends in the world are cold hearted to us (derservedly), while congress will not discharge its constitutional responsibilities.
I think im gonna volunteer to help with 2026 voting. Its our next shot at righting this rotten ship.
Of course, wanting to be technically correct: Iranians are Aryan (Iran is a variant spelling), and literally Caucasian (they live near the Caucasus on the Asian continent).
In other words, they're the prototype "White People", at least by claims - over and back. Not that that stops anyone anyway. Certainly doesn't stop people who merely claim to be Aryan :-P
To give an idea of how badly the Bush administration wanted to attack Iraq, Richard Clarke mentioned going into the White House situation room the day after 9/11 and seeing them talking about invading Iraq, and wondering how messed up your priorities had to be to be doing that.
Yeah it’s pretty obviously a stupid idea to attack one of the masters in drone warfare.
Iran mass produces drones and have optimized them for the modern battlefield in the Russian war against Ukraine.
You don’t win wars with jet aircraft anymore. You win them with (cheap, mass produced) drones. And the US only has expensive drones that can be manufactured at a low rate.
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