Recent submissions

Comment · 3 years ago
Obviously you don't have to "start experimenting on children". One can survey parents on whether or not they used microwaves, plastic containers, or not, look at the health of the children concerned in later years, and then work from that data.
Comment · 3 years ago
I think this is actually evidence of what the poster above is referring to - the long-term effects of Oppenheimer being unfairly discredited. Fermi has streets, schools and subway stations named after him all over Italy. Oppenheimer doesn't (at least not to anywhere near the same extent), even in the US, because during the period when this might most likely have happened, towards the end of his life and shortly after his death, he was still widely regarded as being a traitor.
Comment · 3 years ago
I don't think you studied either Klaus Fuchs or the Rosenbergs in much detail then. Whatever the merits of their actions or the cases against them, they were certainly dedicated Communists who did their best for a cause they believed in fervently.
Comment · 3 years ago
Your evidence is a movie whose raison d'etre is to elucidate the viewpoints of an American citizen and military leader who is heavily implicated in this decision and in other American war crimes, and even that document does not support your point (McNamara openly admits that US bombing of Japanese population centers was a war crime.)

I'm not sure I would class that as 'heavily under dispute'.

Comment · 3 years ago
Hard to argue that Einstein is not overrated when he is literally the archetype of 'genius scientist' for most people in the world. But in his annus mirabilis Einstein literally made world-tier steps forward in 3 huge areas of physics simultaneously. Any of these in isolation would have ensured his immortality. This is either the single most important short productive period of scientific work of anyone, ever, or holds that accolade in tie with Newton's plague year.

Of course, his later years did not live up to this stellar record - he both made mistakes and was less productive. But how could they?

Joseph Heller was challenged by a journalist in later years that "he hadn't written anything as good as Catch-22 recently". He replied "No. But who has?"

Comment · 3 years ago
There are (in that era) no other geniuses 'like' Einstein or von Neumann.

Einstein was probably the most visionary scientist of the whole century at making huge steps forward in several key areas. John von Neumann made landmark achievements across pure maths, physics, engineering, computer science and economics.

To say that a basketball player is not comparable to Larry Bird or to Michael Jordan is no disparagement.

Comment · 3 years ago
You obviously don't know much about Evernote.
Comment · 3 years ago
Yes, BT was divided into two business units to enable this process. They unlawfully colluded with each other in order to stop any reseller from being able to charge less than the BT retail offering. Result: terrible infrastructure investment and no competition.
Comment · 3 years ago
There were quite a few small energy co-operatives in the UK, mainly set up by municipalities.

When wholesale energy prices spiked last year, followed by a cap being applied to the prices that they could charge, they weren't hedged and several ended up going bankrupt.

Comment · 3 years ago
The 'funding for public unions' is 7% of the economy?
Comment · 3 years ago
Actually, the very widely replicated experience of most challenger utilities is that the entrenched utility will stop you, sometimes in collusion with the government or municipalities. Try getting permits to dig up the road to put your competing pipes alongside the current monopolists.

In Britain, British Telecom spent around 20 years making it impossible for other players to supply an internet service to consumers. They used various anti-competitive practices and had very good capture of the largely toothless regulator OfCom. This is all documented.

Comment · 3 years ago
A "loss" here is just a politicized framing of the fact that government pays Amtrak to do something of use to society.

You might as well say that the US military makes a $1 trillion loss per year. No, they supply something which is required by the govt and which has a cost.

Comment · 3 years ago
How the web works has changed quite a lot since the early 1990s though.
Comment · 3 years ago
You're contradicting yourself. Taking notes is a feature for many, but a product for people whose working style involves taking lots and lots of notes.

Call them "process cyclists" if you want, there is a bimodal distribution for how much people use notes apps, and the people near the high mode are prepared to pay monthly for something good, and tend to be extremely loyal.

Comment · 3 years ago
I paid for a subscription because I really liked what it did and I used it a lot. The Android app became so unresponsive that it was basically unusable. I stopped paying when I found myself making notes in email again to avoid opening the treacly app.

It has since got better but I haven't gone back to paying for it, despite using it a lot, and now I'll probably slowly migrate away as they progressively break and disable the free version.

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