OfSanguineFire

Joined 3 years ago

Karma
2,827
Submissions
985
Member since
May 15
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Recent submissions

Comment · 2 years ago
When I first saw reporting of these UAE ventures some days ago, it was about suspicion that the owners would eventually exploit the forest or the minerals underneath. It is a frequent phenomenon in sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar that land is first restricted and named a protected reserve, but after ribbon-cutting ceremonies are over and attention moves elsewhere, logging is done with wood being sold to e.g. China’s furniture industry, or the local population’s slash-and-burn practices encroach regardless.
Comment · 2 years ago
Curious thought: at some point a competitor’s AI might become so advanced, you can just ask it to tell you how to create your own, analogous system. Easier than trying to catch up on your own. Corporations will have to include their own trade secrets among the things that AIs aren’t presently allowed to talk about like medical issues or sex.
Comment · 2 years ago
Your concern about total environmental collapse makes me wonder why there has been so little talk recently about biomedical advances as a hedge against the effects of global warming. Twenty-odd years ago, Ray Kurzweil’s vision of the human race moving from organic to machine bodies was all the rage in nerd circles. (I don’t share his optimism myself, I just think it curious that it totally disappeared from the discourse.) Machine bodies don’t rely on a world kept within such a narrow temperature range, they don’t rely on all the species that are going extinct, they don’t even need a biosphere at all.
Comment · 2 years ago
So much was revealed in the European Parliament's ECHELON report back in 2000 that I found it hard to understand why Snowden made the big splash that he did. It all seemed pretty old hat to me.
Comment · 2 years ago
Japanese considering themselves victims in the war is something that has been present in Japanese cinema since the moment American-occupation censorship was lifted in the early 1950s. It’s present here and there in films by Kurosawa and Ozu that are now in the canon of world cinema. It seems a bit late to be offended by it.
Comment · 2 years ago
I wonder if it is easier for fast food to stay consistently vegan than a sit-down restaurant. For example, holes in the wall or food trucks that sell takeaway Middle Eastern staples like falafel or koshary. Sit-down places have too much space that, with soaring rents in so many countries, costs too much money.
Comment · 2 years ago
Your posts here are so incoherent, it’s not clear what you are complaining about. Is it the term "Eastern European"? That isn’t a “Cold War-era classification” at all. The use of “Eastern European” in the archaeology and linguistics of the region goes back to the term Osteuropa in the foundational 19th-century literature.

If you lack any familiarity with this field enough to know that, then it would be wise to refrain from making pronouncements on the worthiness of this research. Also, the HN submission is a pop-sci article created by that university’s PR, it is not the actual research. The actual research can be found in the mentioned journal.

Comment · 2 years ago
You’ll notice that I already spoke of the Moroccan occupation in my post. Repeating the point in more strident language only makes it look like you are trying to engage in political battle on HN.
Comment · 2 years ago
The article didn’t say “race” at all. Its wording tries to simplify, for a mass audience, the research that found at this Balkan site DNA that is mainly associated with sites in the east of Europe. Across archaeology and linguistics, there has been an archaeogenetics revolution in the last 15 years or so that enables tracing historical migrations like never before.

I don’t know why you think “attracted to the wealth Rome invested in its frontier zone” is a wording that implies jobseekers. It can obviously mean opportunities for pillaging, which peoples of the Eurasian steppe did for centuries. It can mean making use of convenient infrastructure left behind when the Roman military retreated from certain holdings.

Comment · 2 years ago
Have you ever traveled in Western Sahara, on both sides of the berm? Especially over a span of time that would allow you to witness the changes that have occurred in the region’s demography? The indigenous Saharawi population is so small now it could hardly form a viable state, especially one able to resist migrant flows from further south. As the other poster said, European states’ foreign policy now is strongly driven by migration concerns. Yes, the marginalization of the Saharawi from their own region is a result of Morocco’s occupation, and that can be lamented, but the damage is already done.
Comment · 2 years ago
No, the genetic factor itself is something new here, and interesting even to this reader with an academic background in a related field. Florin Curta (a very respected scholar overall) has held out against the mainstream view of a Slavic migration into the Balkans on the basis of a supposed lack of archaeological evidence. So, I suspect that many scholars, as soon as they learn of this news about the ancient DNA, will immediately think “Hmm, I wonder what Curta has to say to that.”
Comment · 2 years ago
The poster has 16905 karma and has been around since 2013, though. Obviously a bona fide member of the HN community and not a spammer. (Well, unless his account was hacked.)
Comment · 2 years ago
In Finland, a pizza-buffet chain has been one of the most common all-you-can-eat experiences. However, the catch is that you pay extra for drinks. I find the pizzas are so incredibly salty that I suspect they are intentionally made such to force drink purchases. (Like the old salted peanuts at a bar trick.) The pizzas might initially look enticing, but the magic wears off after just a few minutes of eating there.
Comment · 2 years ago
I'd be interested in seeing a study on different health outcomes for crust-eaters and crust-avoiders in their 30s and 40s. Do crust-avoiders (or hambuger-bun avoiders) suffer less from obesity or type 2 diabetes due to getting that much less intake of carbs?
Comment · 2 years ago
As someone who has occasionally stumbled across the community around this book at Reddit, I do wonder why so many of these men keep trying. When I reached, from relationship experience, my own conclusion that any partner in a relationship would inevitably have different and incompatible goals, motivations, and outlook from own, I simply chose to live alone from then on.

Obviously people might crave companionship. But if one is frustrated in obtaining that to the point of seizing on literature like Tomassi’s book, why keep hitting one’s head against that wall?

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