I'm just an interested layperson, but the applications in nanotechnology seem pretty straightforward to me. Nanotech is basically all about building machines on a scale where a couple individual particles can be a whole part of the machine. So every weird thing you can figure out how to make particles do, on the individual level, at that scale -- as opposed to things to make huge aggregates of particles do -- is something you can use as a part of a nanomachine.
In this case, it sounds like they've figured out a way to build a kind of rod of electrons stuck to a crystal surface, that can be made to rotate based on the application of a magnetic field. That sounds like it could be as useful as, I dunno, a wooden disc that can be made to rotate around an axle is on a macroscopic scale. It sounds dumb and useless when you phrase it like that, but that's a rudimentary wheel, and there's a zillion uses in more complex machines that wheels can be put to. Who knows what exact uses a controllably spinning rod of electrons on the surface of a crystal could be in nanotechnology, but it seems like the kind of thing that could have many and varied.
I think they don't expect the hosting companies to be able to actually do the filtering, they just want them to be legally liable for failing to do so in case a copyright owner finds their stuff on the site and wants to sue them over it.
It's another case of laws that make more people into criminals because you can't avoid breaking them, so that you always have an excuse to crack down on people when you already wanted to, not necessarily every time they violate law.
I've managed to go my entire life without ever once finding any need for Facebook, Twitter, or even Uber which at least provides an actually practical service unlike the first two.
Good fucking luck going through life without ever needing a mortgage though.
Banks control all of the actual productive capital of the world. So-called "tech companies" like those listed aren't even actually tech companies, they just make products that use technology. The first two are comparable to makers of fucking video games. They make distractions, pastimes, nothing of any practical value. Uber uses technology to play an intermediary role connecting people to something of practical value, namely transportation.
Actual tech companies are the people who build the computers and, even more importantly, the people who operate the networks between them. The people who should be facing inquiries into their practices are the goddamn ISPs and the like, not bullshit fucking Facebook who could vanish completely tomorrow and nothing of value would be lost.
If my employer were unhinged enough to need to be undermined in this way and I was aware of it, then I'd be a pretty compelling witness for an impeachment or a 25th amendment action, and that'd clearly be the more ethical choice./quote. It's not a choice at all until and unless Congress chooses to begin such an action. If they don't do that, the choice is to throw yourself out of the bus and under it, or stay on board and try to encourage the driver to not be so reckless.
Thank you, I was going to make this same comment. Wish I could mod you up.
There is coalition of states who have agreed that they will all change their elector assignment process if enough states sign on to the agreement, but it's pretty much only blue states who have signed on to it, and there's no way enough states will sign on to trigger action unless some red states get with the program too.
So under (1/2)*(2/3)*(1/2) = 1/6 people voted for Trump.
(Looking at the actual numbers it's closer to 1/8, but I'm rounding for simplicity).
Of course the same is approximately true for Clinton, but the takeaway is that Trump (like most presidents in recent history) governs at the behest of only a small fraction of the population, and can hardly be said to have a mandate from the masses.
Honestly the most disconcerting thing about this is that the author cites some of the worst things this administration has done as their few "successes" and says they were accomplished despite, not because of, Trump. I think Trump is an amoral buffoon and a disgrace to the nation as much as the author seems to, but I'm honestly a little glad to hear that that buffoon is gumming up the plans of those who want to rape and pillage our country for their own profit, instead of Darth Pence streamlining that process.
Do note, fascist dictatorships are not mutually exclusive to capitalistic economies and democracies are not mutually exclusive to social economies.
In fact, fascism demands capitalism -- it was literally defined by the man who coined the term as the collusion of state and capital -- and socialism demands democracy, as the entire point is for the means of production to be controlled by the people democratically instead of their use dictated by their designated owners.
Non-democratic "socialist" countries like the USSR explicitly considered what they were doing to be state capitalism (aka fascism), used as a means to the end of socialism. But of course fascists are never going to give up their power so that plan was doomed to failure as we've since seen.
"Capitalism" means those who own capital control those who don't.
Market socialism is a thing, and so is state capitalism. The latter is better known by the name "fascism", and market capitalism is every bit as close to it as state socialism is. Its opposite is market socialism.
"Republic" does not mean "representative democracy". A republic is a state whose power is exercised in the name of and on behalf of its people. A democracy is a state whose power is exercised, directly or indirectly, by its people. The US is both a republic and a representative democracy. Other states can be one or the other or neither. For example, the UK is a representative democracy but not a republic. North Korea is a republic but not a democracy. Saudi Arabia is neither a republic not a democracy.
I recently heard someone say that the reason checks and balances no longer work in the US is that the founders didn't anticipate the rise of political parties. It was thought that the individuals in the Congress would jealously guard their power from the individual who was President and vice versa. (Judicial checks weren't really a thing yet then). It hadn't occurred to them that a bunch of individuals all collectively seeking power as one Party could put some of themselves in charge of the Congress and get another made President.
Perhaps, just as we no longer have the two individuals with highest votes regardless of party become President and Vice President, but instead elect one party's pair of candidates to the offices, we should likewise come up with some way to ensure that no one party may control any more than one of the Executive, Legislative, or Judicial branches.
If obesity is a health issues, treat it like one instead of as a moral failure
The only time in my adult life I have ever been leas than 10lbs overweight was when I literally could not afford to eat more than like a slice of bread a day for a year. I’ve almost always been much heavier.
In recent years I decided to really prioritize trying to lose weight more sustainably. Following my docto’s advice I skip breakfast, do a 600 calorie workout, eat a 200 calorie lunch (baked tofu), do another 600 calorie workout, and them eat a single actual meal of around 700-1000 calories (mostly soy, lentils, and garbanzos), every weeday.
My girlfriend won’t go along with that on weekends with me so we eat picnics of usually turkey wraps with apples and yogurt, maybe grab an afternoon snack of whatever she feels like, take a leisurely stroll around a park for “exercise” that’s not even a warmup to my normal routine,,and then eat out somewhere for dinner. That weekend routine is her normal lifestyle and she ia rail thin. Meanwhile this lifestyle of deprivation and hours of exercise a day has me now ONLY about 100lbs overweight, and steady, so long as I keep up the exhauting work.
Doctor says she wishes other patients would comply with treatment like I do. We’ve’ checked for thyroid and diabetes issues and that’s all fine. She has no further recommendations. So what am I supposed to do? Just... feel like shit about myself? Already doing that, it’s not helping. Starve myself for over a year again and probably suffer further health consequences while my job and life fall apart around me due to my complete malnourished breakdown? No thanks. Hope that some scientists figured out what the fuck is behind this obesity problem? I’m betting on that.
I keep killing myself in vain anyway meanwhile because if I wasn’t I’d feel even more like shit about myself but results are all that matter and everything anyone has suggested I try has had negligible results so tre problem is something fucking else.
I accused you of believing in magic and therefore abandoning rationality. Try to keep up.
Sure there are things we don’t understand. We may not know what exactly gives a person better executive control (what you seem to mean by ”will”) — though actually we do know quite a few things about that, but setting that aside for now — nevertheless something brought about whatever it is about that person that gives them that ability. To deny that is to invoke magic, an event without a cause or explanation, and to give up on reason.
All that is beside the fact that people with identical executive control and all the same pertinent knowledge and resources can nevertheless end up different weights quite easily.
The point is the discussion was that, given people with equal motive and opportunity, their means may still differ. And even if those means are something "inside" of them, a part of them, an ability that they have, something still caused them to have that ability.
Take physical strength for an analogy. There are heavy thing that need to be lifted. Two people have equal reason to want to lift them, and equal opportunity to do so. One of them takes advantage of that opportunity and lifts it with a modicum of effort and calls it done. The other takes equal advantage of his equal opportunity and struggles and struggles and struggles to lift the thing, and maybe gets it a little bit up, but ultimately to no avail.
Why is it so much harder for the second person to lift things than the first? There's something lacking inside of them that the other has -- physical strength. But why do they lack it? There are surely things that each of them could do or not do to improve their strength or let it fail, but there are also lots and lots of things beyond their control.
For example, my girlfriend works at a library and lifts and carries and stacks and shelves books all day long. I sit at a keyboard and type all day long. Yet if we need to haul in some luggage or something like that, I can just effortlessly carry a thing in each arm that it takes her both arms and a lot of effort to carry. She's doing more of the kind of stuff that should incidentally build up her strength, while I'm putting absolutely zero effort into being strong whatsoever. We both want the luggage in the house the same, her maybe even more, and we can both walk out to the car to get at it just as easily as the other. Why can I effortlessly do this thing that is so hard for her?
Because I'm a big man and my genes tell my body to make hormones that trigger cells to grow and just build me some nice big muscles whether I want it to or not. She could, maybe, build up strength like mine, if she put a bunch of effort into it. But it's not her fault, in any kind of moral-responsibility sense, for not being as strong as me.
Any personal characteristic is like this. Maybe not so genetically determined, maybe more nurture and less nature (though everything is a mix of both), but if one person has stronger will than the other, then there are some factors that went into giving that one person more strength of will than the other.
Either that, or it's something analogous to saying that all my girlfriend needs to be as strong as me is to choose to be as strong as me, and magically she just will be, without anything happening to cause her to be.
Calories eaten and absorbed minus calories burnt from exercise and resting metabolism will be stored as fat, sure. You might note that some parts of that sentence describe things not under voluntary control. I've italicized them for you in case your obvious mental deficit makes them hard for you to find.
You know there are literally drugs that will make people just drop weight off, right? Problem is they have a bunch of terrible side-effects. These things were sold, and then problems with them found, and lawsuits were had over all of that. If you can put a chemical into a fat person and that will make them thin (so long as you don't care about the other health issues it causes) there are obviously factors at play besides just gluttony and sloth.
Research like this is looking to what else, aside from those kinds of drugs, might affect those factors.
To be clear, I'm not saying that crony capitalism isn't a thing. It is a thing, and it's a bad thing. But it's a specific bad thing: where those with power due to their capital-ownership give unfairly favorable treatment to their cronies in what should be fairly competitive arenas. It doesn't just mean "the bad kind of capitalism".
All capitalism is the bad kind, because all capitalism is inherently about those who own capital exploiting those who don't. If that isn't happening, then it's not capitalism happening -- even if it's a free market. A free market where that doesn't happen isn't capitalist, because that's just what capitalism means. A landowner extracting money from tenants in exchange for nothing, just because those tenants have no land themselves and so have to live somewhere or another on the terms (and at the price) set by whoever owns that somewhere, has nothing to do with cronies, but is the epitome of capitalist exploitation. Likewise a wealthy banker lending money at interest, or any gatekeeper of a resource limiting access to it unless people bribe them into allowing its use. That's what capitalism is.
NB that buying or selling something is not capitalist.
Economic rent is when someone who is the gatekeeper to a resource won't allow access to those who need it to use unless they are paid to do so.
The owner of a piece of property is legally a gatekeeper to it, inasmuch as they can legally exclude others from use. Allowing others to use it, but only for a fee -- "contract rent" -- is therefore an example of economic rent.
Fun fact: "usury", a term usually considered an epithet today, literally just means that, etymologically: A fee for use. All rent is usurious, by definition. (Including all interest, which is just rent on money).
Slashdot Mirror
There are no extreme leftists anywhere near control of anything.
Worst thing coming from that side is some oversensitive children screaming on the internet.
Also BTW, "wingnut" is an exclusively right-wing term. The left-wing equivalent is "moonbat".
I'm just an interested layperson, but the applications in nanotechnology seem pretty straightforward to me. Nanotech is basically all about building machines on a scale where a couple individual particles can be a whole part of the machine. So every weird thing you can figure out how to make particles do, on the individual level, at that scale -- as opposed to things to make huge aggregates of particles do -- is something you can use as a part of a nanomachine.
In this case, it sounds like they've figured out a way to build a kind of rod of electrons stuck to a crystal surface, that can be made to rotate based on the application of a magnetic field. That sounds like it could be as useful as, I dunno, a wooden disc that can be made to rotate around an axle is on a macroscopic scale. It sounds dumb and useless when you phrase it like that, but that's a rudimentary wheel, and there's a zillion uses in more complex machines that wheels can be put to. Who knows what exact uses a controllably spinning rod of electrons on the surface of a crystal could be in nanotechnology, but it seems like the kind of thing that could have many and varied.
I think they don't expect the hosting companies to be able to actually do the filtering, they just want them to be legally liable for failing to do so in case a copyright owner finds their stuff on the site and wants to sue them over it.
It's another case of laws that make more people into criminals because you can't avoid breaking them, so that you always have an excuse to crack down on people when you already wanted to, not necessarily every time they violate law.
I've managed to go my entire life without ever once finding any need for Facebook, Twitter, or even Uber which at least provides an actually practical service unlike the first two.
Good fucking luck going through life without ever needing a mortgage though.
Banks control all of the actual productive capital of the world. So-called "tech companies" like those listed aren't even actually tech companies, they just make products that use technology. The first two are comparable to makers of fucking video games. They make distractions, pastimes, nothing of any practical value. Uber uses technology to play an intermediary role connecting people to something of practical value, namely transportation.
Actual tech companies are the people who build the computers and, even more importantly, the people who operate the networks between them. The people who should be facing inquiries into their practices are the goddamn ISPs and the like, not bullshit fucking Facebook who could vanish completely tomorrow and nothing of value would be lost.
If my employer were unhinged enough to need to be undermined in this way and I was aware of it, then I'd be a pretty compelling witness for an impeachment or a 25th amendment action, and that'd clearly be the more ethical choice./quote.
It's not a choice at all until and unless Congress chooses to begin such an action. If they don't do that, the choice is to throw yourself out of the bus and under it, or stay on board and try to encourage the driver to not be so reckless.
Thank you, I was going to make this same comment. Wish I could mod you up.
There is coalition of states who have agreed that they will all change their elector assignment process if enough states sign on to the agreement, but it's pretty much only blue states who have signed on to it, and there's no way enough states will sign on to trigger action unless some red states get with the program too.
To elaborate:
Under 1/2 of people are even eligible to vote.
Only around 2/3 of those actually voted.
Under 1/2 of those voted for Trump.
So under (1/2)*(2/3)*(1/2) = 1/6 people voted for Trump.
(Looking at the actual numbers it's closer to 1/8, but I'm rounding for simplicity).
Of course the same is approximately true for Clinton, but the takeaway is that Trump (like most presidents in recent history) governs at the behest of only a small fraction of the population, and can hardly be said to have a mandate from the masses.
Honestly the most disconcerting thing about this is that the author cites some of the worst things this administration has done as their few "successes" and says they were accomplished despite, not because of, Trump. I think Trump is an amoral buffoon and a disgrace to the nation as much as the author seems to, but I'm honestly a little glad to hear that that buffoon is gumming up the plans of those who want to rape and pillage our country for their own profit, instead of Darth Pence streamlining that process.
Usenet was only "moderated" with killfiles. That's the big difference.
There being a free market for capital doesn't mean that those who own capital control those who don't. Think it through.
P.S. "capital", not "capitol", unless you mean countries trading their seats of government.
Do note, fascist dictatorships are not mutually exclusive to capitalistic economies and democracies are not mutually exclusive to social economies.
In fact, fascism demands capitalism -- it was literally defined by the man who coined the term as the collusion of state and capital -- and socialism demands democracy, as the entire point is for the means of production to be controlled by the people democratically instead of their use dictated by their designated owners.
Non-democratic "socialist" countries like the USSR explicitly considered what they were doing to be state capitalism (aka fascism), used as a means to the end of socialism. But of course fascists are never going to give up their power so that plan was doomed to failure as we've since seen.
"Capitalism" does not mean "free market".
"Capitalism" means those who own capital control those who don't.
Market socialism is a thing, and so is state capitalism. The latter is better known by the name "fascism", and market capitalism is every bit as close to it as state socialism is. Its opposite is market socialism.
That would be "capitalism".
"Republic" does not mean "representative democracy". A republic is a state whose power is exercised in the name of and on behalf of its people. A democracy is a state whose power is exercised, directly or indirectly, by its people. The US is both a republic and a representative democracy. Other states can be one or the other or neither. For example, the UK is a representative democracy but not a republic. North Korea is a republic but not a democracy. Saudi Arabia is neither a republic not a democracy.
I recently heard someone say that the reason checks and balances no longer work in the US is that the founders didn't anticipate the rise of political parties. It was thought that the individuals in the Congress would jealously guard their power from the individual who was President and vice versa. (Judicial checks weren't really a thing yet then). It hadn't occurred to them that a bunch of individuals all collectively seeking power as one Party could put some of themselves in charge of the Congress and get another made President.
Perhaps, just as we no longer have the two individuals with highest votes regardless of party become President and Vice President, but instead elect one party's pair of candidates to the offices, we should likewise come up with some way to ensure that no one party may control any more than one of the Executive, Legislative, or Judicial branches.
If obesity is a health issues, treat it like one instead of as a moral failure
The only time in my adult life I have ever been leas than 10lbs overweight was when I literally could not afford to eat more than like a slice of bread a day for a year. I’ve almost always been much heavier.
In recent years I decided to really prioritize trying to lose weight more sustainably. Following my docto’s advice I skip breakfast, do a 600 calorie workout, eat a 200 calorie lunch (baked tofu), do another 600 calorie workout, and them eat a single actual meal of around 700-1000 calories (mostly soy, lentils, and garbanzos), every weeday.
My girlfriend won’t go along with that on weekends with me so we eat picnics of usually turkey wraps with apples and yogurt, maybe grab an afternoon snack of whatever she feels like, take a leisurely stroll around a park for “exercise” that’s not even a warmup to my normal routine,,and then eat out somewhere for dinner. That weekend routine is her normal lifestyle and she ia rail thin. Meanwhile this lifestyle of deprivation and hours of exercise a day has me now ONLY about 100lbs overweight, and steady, so long as I keep up the exhauting work.
Doctor says she wishes other patients would comply with treatment like I do. We’ve’ checked for thyroid and diabetes issues and that’s all fine. She has no further recommendations. So what am I supposed to do? Just... feel like shit about myself? Already doing that, it’s not helping. Starve myself for over a year again and probably suffer further health consequences while my job and life fall apart around me due to my complete malnourished breakdown? No thanks. Hope that some scientists figured out what the fuck is behind this obesity problem? I’m betting on that.
I keep killing myself in vain anyway meanwhile because if I wasn’t I’d feel even more like shit about myself but results are all that matter and everything anyone has suggested I try has had negligible results so tre problem is something fucking else.
I accused you of believing in magic and therefore abandoning rationality. Try to keep up.
Sure there are things we don’t understand. We may not know what exactly gives a person better executive control (what you seem to mean by ”will”) — though actually we do know quite a few things about that, but setting that aside for now — nevertheless something brought about whatever it is about that person that gives them that ability. To deny that is to invoke magic, an event without a cause or explanation, and to give up on reason.
All that is beside the fact that people with identical executive control and all the same pertinent knowledge and resources can nevertheless end up different weights quite easily.
Also, you misunderstand Godel.
The point is the discussion was that, given people with equal motive and opportunity, their means may still differ. And even if those means are something "inside" of them, a part of them, an ability that they have, something still caused them to have that ability.
Take physical strength for an analogy. There are heavy thing that need to be lifted. Two people have equal reason to want to lift them, and equal opportunity to do so. One of them takes advantage of that opportunity and lifts it with a modicum of effort and calls it done. The other takes equal advantage of his equal opportunity and struggles and struggles and struggles to lift the thing, and maybe gets it a little bit up, but ultimately to no avail.
Why is it so much harder for the second person to lift things than the first? There's something lacking inside of them that the other has -- physical strength. But why do they lack it? There are surely things that each of them could do or not do to improve their strength or let it fail, but there are also lots and lots of things beyond their control.
For example, my girlfriend works at a library and lifts and carries and stacks and shelves books all day long. I sit at a keyboard and type all day long. Yet if we need to haul in some luggage or something like that, I can just effortlessly carry a thing in each arm that it takes her both arms and a lot of effort to carry. She's doing more of the kind of stuff that should incidentally build up her strength, while I'm putting absolutely zero effort into being strong whatsoever. We both want the luggage in the house the same, her maybe even more, and we can both walk out to the car to get at it just as easily as the other. Why can I effortlessly do this thing that is so hard for her?
Because I'm a big man and my genes tell my body to make hormones that trigger cells to grow and just build me some nice big muscles whether I want it to or not. She could, maybe, build up strength like mine, if she put a bunch of effort into it. But it's not her fault, in any kind of moral-responsibility sense, for not being as strong as me.
Any personal characteristic is like this. Maybe not so genetically determined, maybe more nurture and less nature (though everything is a mix of both), but if one person has stronger will than the other, then there are some factors that went into giving that one person more strength of will than the other.
Either that, or it's something analogous to saying that all my girlfriend needs to be as strong as me is to choose to be as strong as me, and magically she just will be, without anything happening to cause her to be.
So you believe in some kind of causality-defying magic?
Because without that magic, whatever is "within you" was caused by something that ultimately predates you.
And with that magic, well... you've just bowed ungracefully out of any rational discussion that might've been had.
Calories eaten and absorbed minus calories burnt from exercise and resting metabolism will be stored as fat, sure. You might note that some parts of that sentence describe things not under voluntary control. I've italicized them for you in case your obvious mental deficit makes them hard for you to find.
You know there are literally drugs that will make people just drop weight off, right? Problem is they have a bunch of terrible side-effects. These things were sold, and then problems with them found, and lawsuits were had over all of that. If you can put a chemical into a fat person and that will make them thin (so long as you don't care about the other health issues it causes) there are obviously factors at play besides just gluttony and sloth.
Research like this is looking to what else, aside from those kinds of drugs, might affect those factors.
To be clear, I'm not saying that crony capitalism isn't a thing. It is a thing, and it's a bad thing. But it's a specific bad thing: where those with power due to their capital-ownership give unfairly favorable treatment to their cronies in what should be fairly competitive arenas. It doesn't just mean "the bad kind of capitalism".
All capitalism is the bad kind, because all capitalism is inherently about those who own capital exploiting those who don't. If that isn't happening, then it's not capitalism happening -- even if it's a free market. A free market where that doesn't happen isn't capitalist, because that's just what capitalism means. A landowner extracting money from tenants in exchange for nothing, just because those tenants have no land themselves and so have to live somewhere or another on the terms (and at the price) set by whoever owns that somewhere, has nothing to do with cronies, but is the epitome of capitalist exploitation. Likewise a wealthy banker lending money at interest, or any gatekeeper of a resource limiting access to it unless people bribe them into allowing its use. That's what capitalism is.
NB that buying or selling something is not capitalist.
Thanks! :-)
Glad you like it, thanks for the feedback. :-)
Economic rent is when someone who is the gatekeeper to a resource won't allow access to those who need it to use unless they are paid to do so.
The owner of a piece of property is legally a gatekeeper to it, inasmuch as they can legally exclude others from use. Allowing others to use it, but only for a fee -- "contract rent" -- is therefore an example of economic rent.
Fun fact: "usury", a term usually considered an epithet today, literally just means that, etymologically: A fee for use. All rent is usurious, by definition. (Including all interest, which is just rent on money).
I wish I could upmod you.
And that I could find a home even as "cheap" as that around here.
And that I was alive in 1976 to buy back then.