EgoEimi's recent activity

  1. Carbon hacking: Least carbon-intensive traveling between US and Europe

    ~enviro Ask (advice)
    My life is split between the US and the Netherlands, where I have friends and work in both places. I try to fly as little as possible: only one intercontinental flight per year. But even that puts...

    My life is split between the US and the Netherlands, where I have friends and work in both places. I try to fly as little as possible: only one intercontinental flight per year. But even that puts my individual carbon footprint far above the average human's. I buy carbon offsets but that just shifts responsibility.

    I've long been deeply inspired by Greta Thunberg's protest act of sailing from England to New York to attend a 2019 climate summit. But sailing across the ocean in a racing yacht with a crew simply is too extreme.

    So I'm curious what are the options for reducing carbon emissions when traveling between continents.

    I've contemplated hopping on a freighter ship. My thinking is that: freighter ships are extremely efficient cargo-weight-to-emission ratio-wise, so the marginal carbon emission of me as added 'cargo' must be much lower than as another passenger on an airplane. Plus, the freighter ship will be sailing with or without me on board; whereas as a plane passenger I enable the business of a passenger flight.

    5 votes

  2. Comment on Immigration shortfall may be a headwind for labor supply in ~finance

    EgoEimi
    Link
    I think that the tightening labor market and recent rises in consumer and gas prices are good things in the long run. It's true that America is a country of immigrants; but on the flip side,...

    I think that the tightening labor market and recent rises in consumer and gas prices are good things in the long run. It's true that America is a country of immigrants; but on the flip side, America has also long relied on its immigrants to fill its endless underclass of cheap labor.

    It's time that we mature toward a balanced, sustainable, and equitable labor model that doesn't assume that immigrants will continue to pack into boarding houses to work as our cooks, cleaners, washers, farmhands, and so on so we can have our cheap eats and services. Not to mention that the rest of the world is rapidly progressing. Mexico and China are now solidly middle-income countries with plenty of economic opportunities for their people. So the spigot of desperate immigrants will continue to tighten.

    I've been seeing businesses posting unskilled jobs all the way up to $25/hr (in the Bay Area). I see people starting to cut back on consumption and driving — a boon for our environment. For too long we have enjoyed materially prosperous lifestyles by exploiting labor and nature. Maybe we should be like Norway and Denmark and have a fast food burger that costs $9 instead of $6.

    4 votes

  3. Comment on How OXO conquered the American kitchen in ~design

    EgoEimi
    Link
    Good article. It's no surprise that OXO became so big: they invest a lot in good industrial design and materials. Especially in a saturated market filled with cheap, flimsy, clumsy kitchen...

    Good article. It's no surprise that OXO became so big: they invest a lot in good industrial design and materials. Especially in a saturated market filled with cheap, flimsy, clumsy kitchen accoutrements whose designs seem like afterthoughts.

    They're a little pricey but not outrageously so; similar with Apple products, people are willing to pony up a little extra for something that works well and feels good to use.

    6 votes

  4. Comment on What is something you have changed your mind about in the last year? in ~talk

    EgoEimi
    Link Parent
    Want to throw in that Oku.club is a beautifully-designed indie alternative to Goodreads and I encourage people to join 🙂 and resist the Amazon empire.

    Want to throw in that Oku.club is a beautifully-designed indie alternative to Goodreads and I encourage people to join 🙂 and resist the Amazon empire.

    6 votes

  5. Comment on The stock market kinda wants a recession in ~finance

    EgoEimi
    Link Parent
    And on this note, I think that cryptocurrency is an extreme example of a nonproductive asset. Pouring investment in crypto raises its prices, and consequently its holders momentarily feel...

    And on this note, I think that cryptocurrency is an extreme example of a nonproductive asset. Pouring investment in crypto raises its prices, and consequently its holders momentarily feel wealthier — but no real wealth is produced. No goods production is built or expanded. No services are rendered.

    1 vote

  6. Comment on The stock market kinda wants a recession in ~finance

    EgoEimi
    Link Parent
    That makes sense to me. In my mental model, prices are rising relative to cash. It's my understanding that the years of easy, low-interest money flooding the economy has increased wealth on paper:...

    That makes sense to me. In my mental model, prices are rising relative to cash.

    It's my understanding that the years of easy, low-interest money flooding the economy has increased wealth on paper: housing and other assets have skyrocketed. Many asset-owning Americans feel wealthier.

    But that increase in wealth does not map 1-to-1 with the fundamental physical economy. Labor and goods have not significantly increased, at least to the same degree as asset prices. Labor is scarcer (for myriad reasons that I don't understand beyond expensive urban housing markets). Goods are scarcer due to supply chain disruptions.

    It's my understanding that the house of cards begins to fall when people try to cash in their paper wealth for real things that they discover that their real wealth doesn't measure up to their paper wealth. So a correction is due.

    1 vote

  7. Comment on How Mormon missionaries learn new languages in 6-9 weeks in ~humanities

    EgoEimi
    Link Parent
    Furthermore, I think the way we're teaching foreign language in public schools at least (which was my experience) is a colossal waste of time and money. Everyone I know had to get foreign language...

    On that note, I think that all my high school and university foreign language classes were a giant waste of time. I could've accomplished all those years of work by being held hostage by a French grandma for a week or two.

    Furthermore, I think the way we're teaching foreign language in public schools at least (which was my experience) is a colossal waste of time and money. Everyone I know had to get foreign language credits in high school and university to meet their graduation requirements — yet almost none of them has achieved any sort of meaningful proficiency in their chosen foreign language.

    It's a very pennywise, pound-foolish approach. It'd be cheaper to take all that money spent over multiple years and instead buy monthlong immersion courses for students and be done with it for the rest of their education career (unless they choose to specialize).

    1 vote

  8. Comment on How Mormon missionaries learn new languages in 6-9 weeks in ~humanities

    EgoEimi
    Link
    Makes sense that immersion and intensive study in a short period of time would be highly effective. In the Netherlands, there is the Language Institute Regina Coeli run by nuns. They offer total...

    Makes sense that immersion and intensive study in a short period of time would be highly effective. In the Netherlands, there is the Language Institute Regina Coeli run by nuns. They offer total immersion:

    • You live, sleep, and eat at the institute for the duration of the course (usually a week or something)
    • Spend 10 hours a day studying along with private lessons
    • No/minimal English. Everyone will speak to you in the target language.
    • Your brain is forced to adapt and build pathways in order to adapt to the new environment, not being allowed to repeatedly fall back on English as a crutch. This is the biggest issue, I think — that the brain will always seek to take the path of least resistance when language learning demands resistance.

    In my past language learning experiences, traditional language classes are extremely inefficient. Parts of language must be bridged together through context in order to be meaningful and memorable. The practice of studying different parts of a language in isolation and spaced across long time spans fails to build dense connections between those parts in time before your brain tosses them out, so there's a lot of re-learning and repetition.

    On that note, I think that all my high school and university foreign language classes were a giant waste of time. I could've accomplished all those years of work by being held hostage by a French grandma for a week or two.

    1 vote

  9. Comment on Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who sketched the Prophet Muhammad's head on a dog's body, has died in a traffic accident in ~arts

    EgoEimi
    Link
    Quite tragic though he's lived to be 75 years old. Not a very old age but still enough for a full life. I admire that he's sacrificed so much of his personal freedom in defense of free speech. I...

    Quite tragic though he's lived to be 75 years old. Not a very old age but still enough for a full life.

    I admire that he's sacrificed so much of his personal freedom in defense of free speech. I cannot imagine living everyday life knowing that there are countless plots against my life.

    1 vote

  10. Comment on Poetry Machine (project) in ~creative

    EgoEimi
    Link Parent
    I think I'll start with a static corpora from the Chicago Poetry Foundation which I can manually annotate. I think that if the feedback is overwhelmingly positive, I'll build something more...

    It might be nice to allow contributions from the community? Something like a QR code or drop box to-be-scanned.

    I think I'll start with a static corpora from the Chicago Poetry Foundation which I can manually annotate. I think that if the feedback is overwhelmingly positive, I'll build something more complex with a wireless connection. 🙂

    A small suggestion might be to incorporate artwork of eyes on it:

    I really like this idea! It would make sense that giving the chassis an anthropomorphic form would deter people from vandalizing it. It's hard to hurt something when it stares back.

    4 votes

  11. Comment on The cost of engaging with the miserable: Were we always this lonely and embittered? in ~life

    EgoEimi
    Link Parent
    Real social connection indeed takes real work, sacrifice, patience, compromise, etc. People have to give and take. I suspect that our consumer culture has overly trained people to think that they...

    But with social media you kind of have a simulacra of social connection with minimal cost at your fingertips. So you can sort of try to achieve that social connection without having to do the same amount of work with emotional regulation to get it.

    Real social connection indeed takes real work, sacrifice, patience, compromise, etc. People have to give and take. I suspect that our consumer culture has overly trained people to think that they can get whatever they want however they want and fast. But this mindset of immediacy isn't conducive to real social connection.

    7 votes

  12. Comment on Poetry Machine (project) in ~creative

    EgoEimi
    Link
    Just bumping this up once to see if anyone else is interested in the idea of a machine that prints poetry In a public space. ;)

    Just bumping this up once to see if anyone else is interested in the idea of a machine that prints poetry In a public space. ;)

    4 votes

  13. Poetry Machine (project)

    ~creative Text 162 words
    The concept It's a box that contains a receipt printer and an interface with several buttons. A user would press a button that reflects their emotional state (happy, sad, anxious, etc.), then the...

    The concept

    It's a box that contains a receipt printer and an interface with several buttons. A user would press a button that reflects their emotional state (happy, sad, anxious, etc.), then the machine prints out a more-or-less appropriate poem on a receipt printer, beautifully formatted and embellished with simple artwork.

    It could be occasionally repurposed for certain themes, like Pride Month to print out queer poems.

    I want to place it someplace public and well-trafficked, like Dolores Park or on Castro Street.

    Feedback

    I like poetry. The idea of a (free) vending machine that gives me a poem to uplift my day excites me. But I wonder if this appeals to others enough to be worth fully realizing. I don't want to spend time and money building something that'll go totally unloved.

    Also curious about anti-vandalism measures or ideas. I'm sure some jerk will try graffiti-ing it or peeing on it.

    Lastly, anyone interested in collaborating?

    7 votes

  14. Comment on The Google engineer who thinks the company’s AI has come to life in ~tech

  15. Comment on San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin gets removed in a recall election in ~news

    EgoEimi
    Link Parent
    The article's' description of "dogmatism" is pretty spot-on. I've loved SF since I was a little queer kid who saw the sea of pride flags in the Castro. But it's also clear that the city has been...

    The article's' description of "dogmatism" is pretty spot-on. I've loved SF since I was a little queer kid who saw the sea of pride flags in the Castro.

    But it's also clear that the city has been long led by people who are more concerned about ideology than practicalities and on-the-ground realities. Some might denounce capitalism, but capitalism's mechanisms are still very real — and they failed to effectively operate its levers to achieve results.

    For years the city's coffers have bursted with tech money windfall. Pragmatic leaders would have used the money to transform San Francisco in an urban utopia for rich and poor alike, creating an Amsterdam or Copenhagen of the West Coast.

    It's a real pity to see what it has become — or failed to become.

    6 votes

  16. Comment on Free-speech group will spend millions to promote First Amendment cases in ~misc

    EgoEimi
    Link Parent
    I think this "proletarians of the world, unite!" way of looking at things misses that there are a lot of people out there who believe that work is virtue, man must earn his daily bread, and that...

    I think this "proletarians of the world, unite!" way of looking at things misses that there are a lot of people out there who believe that work is virtue, man must earn his daily bread, and that honest hard work is core to "being a man".

    I don't believe such, but there are many voters who conceptualize things in a very different way than how liberals do.

    2 votes

  17. Comment on Free-speech group will spend millions to promote First Amendment cases in ~misc

    EgoEimi
    Link Parent
    The 2016 election outcome was severely disappointing to me — but similarly not completely surprising. I tread between two vastly different worlds: one liberal, coastal, cosmopolitan, multiracial,...

    The 2016 election outcome was severely disappointing to me — but similarly not completely surprising. I tread between two vastly different worlds: one liberal, coastal, cosmopolitan, multiracial, and highly-educated, and the other of my upbringing — Midwestern and conservative. I think of some childhood friends who didn't go through traditional college paths and viewed the Clintons with deep mistrust.

    I think the lack of conservative voices and sincere engagement with such voices on college campuses may have created a college-educated social stratum — I think of my college friends and acquaintances who are now in media and politics as journalists or strategists — that's incapable of engaging with the masses beyond simply as data.

    3 votes

  18. Comment on Introducing: AMD Privacy View in ~tech

    EgoEimi
    Link
    Orwellian or not, from a purely usability standpoint this greatly degrades interface usability. Peripheral vision of UI elements is important. When you obscure everything, you'll spend extra time...

    Orwellian or not, from a purely usability standpoint this greatly degrades interface usability. Peripheral vision of UI elements is important. When you obscure everything, you'll spend extra time and eye movement hunting for specific elements.

    8 votes

  19. Comment on Apple's Self Repair Program toolkit weighs 79 pounds in ~tech

    EgoEimi
    Link
    I decided to share this because I'm presently looking at options for replacing my iPhone 11 Pro's battery as I want to prolong its life. Sending it to an Apple Store is a big hassle as it requires...

    I decided to share this because I'm presently looking at options for replacing my iPhone 11 Pro's battery as I want to prolong its life.

    Sending it to an Apple Store is a big hassle as it requires two trips (drop off, pick up) and at least three days of waiting (their estimation). Presently iFixit's DIY kit seems the most attractive and economical.

    I was also curious about Apple's newly announced Self Repair Program. When I looked into it, it was only for 12 models and newer. And Apple will send you a 79-pound kit of tools, which is absurd, not to mention energy-intensive to transport.

    It seems like an incredibly ill-spirited way of offering self-repair options to customers, akin to paying someone entirely in pennies.

    2 votes