Fried_out_Kombi
@Fried_out_Kombi@lemmy.world
embedded machine learning research engineer - georgist - urbanist - environmentalist
- Comment on Monopoly 3 days ago:
It also had a second rule set where a land value tax was implemented, and the winning condition was when everyone made a minimum amount of money.
A land value tax (LVT) is a levy on the value of land without regard to buildings, personal property and other improvements upon it.[1] It is also known as a location value tax, a point valuation tax, a site valuation tax, split rate tax, or a site-value rating.
Some economists favor LVT, arguing it does not cause economic inefficiency, and helps reduce economic inequality.[2] A land value tax is a progressive tax, in that the tax burden falls on land owners, because land ownership is correlated with wealth and income.[3][4] The land value tax has been referred to as “the perfect tax” and the economic efficiency of a land value tax has been accepted since the eighteenth century.[1][5][6] Economists since Adam Smith and David Ricardo have advocated this tax because it does not hurt economic activity, and encourages development without subsidies.
LVT is associated with Henry George, whose ideology became known as Georgism. George argued that taxing the land value is the most logical source of public revenue because the supply of land is fixed and because public infrastructure improvements would be reflected in (and thus paid for by) increased land values.[7]
It’s just a stupidly good tax policy, and we should be implementing it in more places.
!justtaxland@lemmy.world
- Comment on unsure why we are surprised lol 4 weeks ago:
Exactly. When the accused has paid off half the jury, you shouldn’t put much stock in the verdict.
The only thing I care about when determining whether something is a genocide is the facts of the case (which are overwhelmingly in favor of describing the Uyghur genocide as a genocide), not the outcome of a highly political vote by countries all with their own motives and interests.
- Comment on unsure why we are surprised lol 4 weeks ago:
Imagine if someone defended nazis with “they were calmly denying the Holocaust”. I’ve seen far too many tankies denying the Uyghur genocide every chance they get. Like you say, it doesn’t matter the tone; genocide denial is itself a line you don’t cross.
- Comment on unsure why we are surprised lol 4 weeks ago:
The existence of the Uyghur genocide, for one
- Comment on Honest question: what was Hamas' long-game with respect to kidnapping Israelis? Did they think Israel would just negotiate rather than retaliate? 6 months ago:
This video by a political science professor explains it best: youtu.be/zMxHU34IgyY?si=N5oHElN4Xlbiqznh
In short, the only people who truly know are Hamas, and the best the rest of us can do is speculate.
Some possibilities are that Hamas wanted to sabotage normalizing relations between Israel and the rest of the Muslim world, that Hamas wanted to bait Israel into a wildly disproportionate response that would garner themselves sympathy and recruits, that Hamas was bluffing and feigning strength and counting on Israel to think the attack was bait, that Hamas was just acting on bloodlust and wanted to attack regardless of the consequences, or many other possibilities.
Further, we focus a lot on the substative issues, i.e., the grievances and disagreements at hand, but we don’t talk about the bargaining frictions nearly enough. There are countless border disputes around the world, and yet they rarely result in war. Why? Because war is costly and most wish to avoid it. War typically happens when there are both substantive issues and bargaining frictions, i.e., things preventing the two sides from negotiating a solution. But us onlookers can’t even know for sure what these frictions are, only speculate.
All this is simply the nature of the fog of war, that the true strategies/goals won’t be known for a while, if ever. Anyone who tries to tell you with certainty why they did what they did at this stage doesn’t actually know with any degree of certainty. Nobody but Hamas actually knows.
- Comment on Why do many folks play follow the leader even into adulthood? 6 months ago:
Definitely. If you don’t understand how the world works, you can’t tell if someone else does either. Only experts can easily spot fake experts. And that’s exactly the trouble with things like pseudoscience and misinformation; it’s easy to fall for without the domain knowledge necessary to avoid falling for it.
- Comment on Why do many folks play follow the leader even into adulthood? 6 months ago:
A great example is when you’re in elementary school and you get that one really athletic kid on your team for some team sport in gym class. You know you’re not on that level and never will be, so you tie yourself to them, knowing that them succeeding is good for you.
Likewise, we like to attach our fortunes to a designated person, and they become greater than just a person in our mind. Like, that athletic kid is not longer simply a kid who’s good at sports; they’re the athletic kid. Our favored 19th-century political thought leader is no longer just some person who had opinions on society and wrote them down; they’re a political messiah.
- Comment on If the equator is the hottest part of the world, why aren't the deserts there? 6 months ago:
The type of biome you get depends largely on availability of water, not temperature.
Deserts are deserts because they have very poor availability of water most of the time. This is most often caused by simple lack of precipitation, but other factors can influence this:
- High temperatures cause high evaporation rates, meaning to need more precipitation to achieve the same level of plant growth. This is why, for example, 10 inches (25.4 cm) of precipitation will get you desert in the tropics, subtropics, and temperate latitudes, but it’ll get you boreal forest in the colder subpolar latitudes.
- Extremely low temperatures (such as in Antarctica) result in everything being perpetually frozen. Most of Antarctica is a desert, both because it gets very little precipitation and because all the ice on the ground isn’t available as liquid water.
- Extremely sandy or gravelly soils which do not retain water cause poor water availability, even with abundant precipitation and a mild climate. While these aren’t typically classified as "true deserts), the plant life certainly reflects the harsh conditions and poor availability of water.
As for why we largely don’t see desert at the equator, it’s because of precipitation. Due to the circulation of cold and warm air in the atmosphere, the equator typically sees warm air, often laden with moisture due to the oceans and the high moisture capacity of warm air, rise. As it rises, it cools, and because cool air cannot hold as much moisture as warm air can, it drops a lot of that moisture as rain. This results in most of the equator getting a lot of rain.
Once the air has risen and cooled, it cycles north and south into the subtropics, where it falls down to earth again. And in falling, it warms up again, especially as these regions still receive a ton of sunlight, particularly in the summer. But the air has already lost much of its moisture, so now it’s just a bunch of hot, dry air blasting down over the subtropics. This is why we have bands of deserts across most of the subtropics, from the Sahara to the Middle East to the desert of the SW US and northern Mexico. Same on the opposite side of the equator, with the Kalahari desert in southern Africa, the Australian outback, and the Patagonian desert.
There are other factors, too, of course, such as rain shadows from mountains and ocean currents, but the atmospheric circulation is the big one to answer your question.
- Comment on Bye biiiittttchhhh 7 months ago:
Last year, my sister had her driver’s license suspended because of a medical condition, but she’s still perfectly capable of riding a bike. But the problem is our societal assumption of cars-for-all-whether-you-like-it-or-not means her neighborhood street design is extremely hostile to her getting around by bike safely, and it’s way too sprawling and car-dependent to walk anywhere. There’s also no public transit within a reasonable walking distance.
So I might ask you: Do you believe people like my sister deserve the same right to mobility as the rest of us? If so, why support a system that make life actively hostile to her and people like her? You act as if disabilities are a monolith, and that cars are only ever their saviors, as if cars are never the thing making life actively more difficult for many people.
- Comment on Is Wealth University job application process a scam? 7 months ago:
Granted, there is a difference between a temp agency or a third-party recruiter and a “coaching” type service. The former are strictly about finding applicants, and they get paid for that service by the prospective employers. The latter are about 1-on-1 coaching, CV editing, etc., and hence they’re paid for by the prospective employee.
That said, I’ve never used one of them nor do I really see the point, given the wealth of information available for free out there. Then again, I did benefit from speaking to career advisors at my university, which were free to me at the point of service but obviously still paid for by me via my tuition.
- Comment on Is Wealth University job application process a scam? 7 months ago:
I am struggling to find any online testimonials from third parties. I have seen other similar deals with other legit companies, but how they usually work is you sign a contract with them to give them a certain percentage of your salary for the first year or two of any job they help get you hired for. This is important as it gives them an incentive to actually follow through and get you as good a job offer as they can. With an upfront payment like this, they have no material incentive to follow through and actually try to get you a good job. Even if they’re not a straight-up scam, it might be sufficient for them to get you one or two crappy job offers, then throw up their hands and say, “We’ve done our job; it’s on you if you don’t wanna accept these jobs.”
I wouldn’t bother with these guys. If you really want this sort of coaching, go for a reputable one that you would sign a contract giving them a percentage of your salary. And definitely one with plenty of third-party reviews online.
- Comment on I was gonna make a celebration meme, but then it's not shitposting 7 months ago:
Me when mango, too
- Comment on And now Bezos is trying to inserts ads everywhere 7 months ago:
Enshrinklification of the internet
- Comment on [deleted] 7 months ago:
Funny thing is it’s actually bad for the economy at large to needlessly waste money. Money not spent on a new bike is money that could be spent on other things or other investments. But wasting your money is good for certain individuals, i.e., whoever sells you that new thing. We just have an economy structured around all of us acting like crabs in buckets, pulling each other down just to try to get a little bit ahead ourselves. A better economy would be built upon cooperation and efficiency, not mutual sabotage and needless waste.
- Comment on How does one resist getting into protracted arguments while still staying informed? 8 months ago:
For science news/communication,Sabine Hossenfelder is really good. She’s an actual physicist and does a great job at presenting science news in a no-bs way. Also a good sense of humor.
For climate-related stuff, Climate Town is very good. He has a master’s degree in climate policy, and he cites a ton of sources. His videos have a lot of humor and sarcasm, but they’re very strongly fact-based.
For general journalism and analysis, The Atlantic and The Economist are very good in my experience. They’re both subscription-based (which honestly might be why they’re so good; they don’t have to chase clicks for ad revenue), but you can just browse their website for articles, then copy-paste the article links into archive.is to bypass the paywall.
I also find public broadcasters produce a lot of good content, as they likewise don’t have to chase clicks for ad dollars. PBS and NPR (American), CBC (Canadian), DW (German, but they have English-language documentaries on youtube here), and Al Jazeera (Qatari, just don’t trust their reporting on Qatar; their English international journalism is highly reputable, though, and they produce good documentaries available on youtube here are some examples. In general, I find the long-form content produced (i.e., longer videos and documentaries as well as long-form articles) by these outfits to be better for “getting informed” than their regular just-the-facts news.
For geopolitics and the war in Ukraine, William Spaniel is the best I’ve found. He’s a professor of political science, and his videos are in-depth and topical on the happenings on the war. He also gives great insight into political science and geopolitics as a whole. Also has a good sense of humor and engaging style.
- Comment on How does one resist getting into protracted arguments while still staying informed? 8 months ago:
The main issue I find with strict factual reporting like Reuters or the AP is that most of us simply don’t understand the context on every single issue to think critically about every story we read. Like, I know I have certain topics I do know a lot about, but the world is just too complex for me to know a lot about every topic.
This is where good explanatory journalism can come in, like Vox does. If you can find a good explanatory journalism outlet that you can trust (for me Vox is one of them), that really helps. There are also solo journalists doing this, scientists doing science communication, and so forth. Explanations by experts really help a lot.
- Comment on How does one resist getting into protracted arguments while still staying informed? 8 months ago:
Honestly, the best way to get informed is outside of social media. What gets people talking isn’t always what you should know, and what people talk about on social media isn’t typically a very high level of discourse. Sure, you do find occasional people putting in high-effort, informed comments, but it’s hard to separate those from all the noise.
Probably my top recommendation is to find a non-fiction book (or several!) with good reviews and written by an expert on a topic that interests you and read it. As an example, I’m really interested in sustainable agriculture and gardening, so I got a few books on the topic, Farming the Woods and Silvopasture, and I read them. The nice thing about entire books written by experts is they’ll include a lot of details and specifics that you simply wouldn’t know that you don’t know. And because it’s a book, not some short video that has to appease an algorithm, they can take the time to guide you through all the depth you would miss from more superficial material.
- Comment on ‘The Idol’ Canceled At HBO After One Season 8 months ago:
This is an unpopular opinion, but I actually thought the show was very well done (until the plot twist at the end; it had zero foreshadowing and just kinda cheapened the whole show retroactively).
Extremely difficult and uncomfortable to watch? Absolutely. Objectively bad quality show? I don’t think so.
- Comment on Why is the legal system so expensive? 8 months ago:
And thus the question becomes how we can craft a fairer legal system that isn’t so pay-to-win, but still maintains the core principles of property rights that allows business to, ya know, happen. Sure we could do what many naïve people on the internet want and seize the means of production, but who on earth would want to start a productive business or make productive investments in a country where the government can just up and seize your assets without justification? Just as we need protection against businesses screwing us over, we also need protection against government screwing us over. Anyone who says we should just seize assets and nationalize industries willy nilly should ask themselves if they wanna risk some ghoul like Ron DeSantis being the one with the power to do that.
As to actual answers on how to make such a system that isn’t pay-to-win but still maintains a stable system and rule of law, I don’t actually know. I’m no expert in the legal system. But I’m sure there are experts out there who have spent a lot of time thinking about these sorts of questions and have ideas on how to improve/reform.
- Comment on Who knew 1989 was an uneventful year in China 8 months ago:
You were right; we already got a salty lemmygrad user elsewhere in this thread now
- Comment on quatre-vingts 8 months ago:
In Switzerland, they use septante, huitante, and nonante for 70, 80, and 90, respectively. Much more sensical, imo.
- Comment on *LLMs and AI art stepping over the corpse of NFTs* 9 months ago:
Yeah, I’m working at a company that traditionally makes digital signal processors for telecommunications, and even we’re using AI for actual practical applications. The current project I’m working on is applying an object detection model to detect different signal types in 2D spectrograms. The old way takes like 15 minutes to scan and detect across a wide band. This technique is likely going to be an order of magnitude faster (at least based on preliminary results) and lower-power, as you only need to capture one set of samples, then let the computer vision do most of the rest. The old way to scan for signals required taking a bunch of RF samples, which was very wasteful of time and energy, but there wasn’t really an alternative until now.
- Comment on Which side are you placing your bets on? 9 months ago:
To add to this, this all burst into the news last week when some of the researchers behind LK-99 announced it just last week, and so labs around the world have been furiously trying to replicate their claimed results these past several days.
- Submitted 9 months ago to [deleted] | 32 comments
- Comment on Why don't more poor people join mutual aid groups instead of using charities? 9 months ago:
What you’re describing is essentially how society functioned for most of human history until the advent of large-scale, organized civilization. In fact, even in modern society, most family structures and friendship dynamics worldwide still use this.
Mutual aid depends upon reciprocity, the idea that I help you today on the understanding that you’ll help me when I need help. But what happens when Gondor calls for aid but Rohan refuses to answer, especially despite being capable of it? Well, at a small scale (such as within families or among friends) we make a mental note to never help that particular person again, and we might even tell others that they’re a selfish scumbag and not to trust them. Therein lies the disincentive to cheat: if you cheat, you will find yourself cut off from any future aid.
But humans have a fundamental limit to how many personal relationships we can maintain. In fact, this concept has a name: Dunbar’s Number.
Dunbar’s number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person.[1][2]
It has been proposed to lie between 100 and 250, with a commonly used value of 150.[8][9]
So if your society/family/mutual aid group gets bigger than Dunbar’s number, you stop being able to meaningfully keep track of who’s a cheat, and so does everyone else. Without that, cheaters can cheat without nearly as much repercussion, which breaks down the whole system of trust mutual aid is built upon.
And that’s why we now have more complex systems in modern society. Things like currency and laws to ensure fair exchange and stop cheaters. But even with all of this, we still have mutual aid in the form of our immediate friends and family. And because friends and family are a naturally select group, they’ll never surpass Dunbar’s number, allowing the system of trust to (mostly) function. It still sometimes breaks, of course, such as when families excuse toxic behavior so as to not rock the boat.
