GoatOnPony's recent activity

  1. Comment on Car break-ins drop in San Francisco as drone use increases in ~transport

    GoatOnPony
    Link Parent
    SF, compared to other California cities, has lower violent crime rates and strict gun laws. I won't say that police have no need to fear for their safety, but I very much doubt that car jacking...

    SF, compared to other California cities, has lower violent crime rates and strict gun laws. I won't say that police have no need to fear for their safety, but I very much doubt that car jacking and car break ins involve much risk (especially on a relative basis than other crimes or cities). I don't buy that drones do anything measurable when it comes to reducing the risk to police. A cop somewhere is still going to have to be physically present to do the arrest.

    If drones help with racial injustice, great! That's afaict not an argument that the police or this article are making so it wasn't something I was arguing against. It can absolutely be a factor in weighing the merits of the policy if you (or the police or some other third party) want to provide evidence for it having that effect. I for one don't think that, absent evidence to the contrary, drones make encounters between police and racial minorities happen any less often or with any less animus. Drone and other surveillance is perfectly capable of mistaking identities or misinterpreting events or being viewed through the same perspective police have when dealing with them in person. AFAIK no cops are stopping their normal activities in exchange for drone or surveillance, this stuff is just additive.

    As fot the later part of your comment, my point is that the article posted here presents a downwards trend (present already before the drone policy changed, see my edit above) and quotes that imply drones are the cause. That is a very mild form of evidence being presented and we should require better of our decision makers if that's all they have. Better evidence might be available, but it's not from this article alone.

    I don't dislike drones and additional surveillance for want of more evidence, I dislike them because they're easily co opted into the authoritatian regime we currently live in. There's mountains of actual hard evidence about misuse of flock, drones being used to surveil protests, or tracking people for a host of bad reasons. I think it's unwise to simply accept that maybe reducing car burglaries is good enough justification to allow more encroachment unto authoritarianism. There's a slim chance that I might if the evidence presented for their utility was very, very good - or at least I'd accept that this is a tradeoff that society broadly might be willing to make and instead I'd better spend my time tackling the issue from a different angle.

    5 votes

  2. Comment on Car break-ins drop in San Francisco as drone use increases in ~transport

    GoatOnPony
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    There's lots of evidence that could be presented, eg differences between different jurisdictions or comparing before and after of different policies/tools becoming available at a more granular...

    There's lots of evidence that could be presented, eg differences between different jurisdictions or comparing before and after of different policies/tools becoming available at a more granular timescale. Some analysis might also be talking to people perpetrating crime, people are generally less conniving than you expect (I'd missed the rapper quotes in the original article and I do count that as evidence of it working).

    If we can't have some proof that one tool is better than another other than just an appeal to the (IMO) dubious authority of the police then I'd err on not giving them the tool - especially in the current environment.

    Edit: I did a search and car break ins were already in decline with articles like this one (https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/sf-car-break-in-data-18639763.php) coming out in February 2024, a whole month before Prop E enabled drone use (and which presumably would have taken some time to actually get used in earnest afterwards).

    7 votes

  3. Comment on Car break-ins drop in San Francisco as drone use increases in ~transport

    GoatOnPony
    Link
    I'm reserving judgement on the cause and effect of why property crime is down. I certainly won't take the police at their word that drones and surveillance measures and tough prosecution is the...

    I'm reserving judgement on the cause and effect of why property crime is down. I certainly won't take the police at their word that drones and surveillance measures and tough prosecution is the answer (so please fund more of those things so we don't have to get out of our police cruisers and don't try to elect any DA who might prosecute cops again!). I expect that those measures do have an impact, but I want something more than just the police saying so to gauge how much and if alternatives could have accomplished similar results or if the marginal effect is worth the societal costs. SF cops aren't that different, if different at all, from cops everywhere else in the US.

    These issues also tend to get weighed with a priority structure of personal property > poverty > state overreach which feels short sighted and egoist. I get that it's mostly human nature but makes me a little grouchy regardless.

    22 votes

  4. Comment on Is there any interest in building a Tildes successor? in ~tildes

    GoatOnPony
    Link Parent
    I made a comment in the mega thread about an idea I've had for a new social media site. The gist is to assign users into a random cohort upon joining where each cohort is designed to fluctuate...

    I made a comment in the mega thread about an idea I've had for a new social media site. The gist is to assign users into a random cohort upon joining where each cohort is designed to fluctuate around some fixed size and posting/commenting rate. When a cohort gets too large it gets graph partitioned into two. When a cohort gets too small another cohort adopts it. By default you only see content from your cohort and/or their content always appears first, but you could also have some optional ways to both boost especially good content to more site wide visibility and also ways to restrict posts to just be within your cohort.

    I think smaller communities are better than larger ones but they're fragile, not able to buffer large ingrowth or exodus. The thrust of the idea is to try and give small communities a chance to weather those ups and downs by weathering them together.

    Another more radical idea in this space could be asking the cohorts to do their own internal moderation and governance and reserving admins for only most egregious stuff. This would probably look like having a random jury from a cohort approve/disapprove flagged posts from a cohort member (although I can also see benefits to having a cohort jury approve/disapprove posts only from another cohort).

    1 vote

  5. Comment on How often are you eating plant based meals? in ~food

    GoatOnPony
    Link
    My partner and I try to cook ourselves 6 days a week and eat out once a week. The home cooked meals are all vegetarian (sometimes we add goat cheese to hummus or make a fried egg sandwich) and...

    My partner and I try to cook ourselves 6 days a week and eat out once a week. The home cooked meals are all vegetarian (sometimes we add goat cheese to hummus or make a fried egg sandwich) and frequently vegan (rice/barley/couscous in rice cooker, vegetables + tofu in an air fryer). Eating out though all bets are off and we typically eat meat. I don't think I've bought meat from the grocery store in several years after we finally cut out deli meat.

    2 votes

  6. Comment on Any significant changes to Tildes are extremely unlikely in ~tildes.official

    GoatOnPony
    Link Parent
    I've long had an idea for a social media site which would slowly partition itself as new users joined and also unpartitioned itself as users became inactive. Every user is part of some explicit or...

    I've long had an idea for a social media site which would slowly partition itself as new users joined and also unpartitioned itself as users became inactive. Every user is part of some explicit or implicit cohort that is attempting to maintain a specific size and rate of posts and comments. If implicit maybe just the ranking changes so that you tend to see your cohort content first before anything else. If explicit then cohorts could vote to reshard into smaller ones and some graph partitioning algorithm would shuffle users around. In implicit mode you could try different cohort sizes and see which ones actually work best. In an explicit sizing mode, communities get the final say on when big enough becomes too big.

    9 votes

  7. Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books

    GoatOnPony
    Link
    Currently reading The Heart of the Nhaga by Lee Young-do, translated into English by Anton Hur. It's been good so far, lots of inventive worldbuilding and memorable characters. The plot hasn't yet...

    Currently reading The Heart of the Nhaga by Lee Young-do, translated into English by Anton Hur. It's been good so far, lots of inventive worldbuilding and memorable characters. The plot hasn't yet congealed into something cohesive since I've still early in the book but there's some promising hints and mysteries so far. I'm not sure how much I like the translation, but this is also one of the first translated books I've read. The sentence structure and word choice is off in ways which cause me to occasionally have to reread a sentence before it clicks. It's just not as fluid as I'd like or perhaps I'm not used to it yet.

    The book I read before this one was The Language of Liars which... I found a little maddening. I wrote up a review on my website which I'll link to instead of typing it out here since the issues are all with the ending and involve spoilers.

    2 votes

  8. Comment on What creative projects have you been working on? in ~creative

    GoatOnPony
    Link
    I've been practicing my illustration and blogging skills for the last couple weeks. In particular I challenge myself to create some new tabletop RPG content every Monday based on a random...

    I've been practicing my illustration and blogging skills for the last couple weeks. In particular I challenge myself to create some new tabletop RPG content every Monday based on a random wikipedia article and then put a drawing up alongside it. The random wikipedia articles have been a lot of fun to see weird stuff and create an initial seed idea! My latest one from earlier this week: https://stackofgoats.studio/blog/random-inspiration-21/.

    I also started up another weekly blog series trying to put down a bunch of sentence or two long worldbuilding bits around a theme. I've always been inspired by the "try to think of six impossible things before breakfast quote" by Lewis Carol. Here's my set of random worldbuilding ideas around bathing: https://stackofgoats.studio/blog/worldbuilding-scraps-3/

    2 votes

  9. Comment on Minute Cryptic in ~hobbies

    GoatOnPony
    Link Parent
    Oh wow, fantastic job on it! It's one of only like 3 web games I keep returning to solve while on short train rides :)

    Oh wow, fantastic job on it! It's one of only like 3 web games I keep returning to solve while on short train rides :)

    1 vote

  10. Comment on Minute Cryptic in ~hobbies

    GoatOnPony
    Link
    I've been enjoying parseword which has a nice UI to help explore the options by clicking on the words so you can see what operations they perform. I think it's a bit easier and approachable than...

    I've been enjoying parseword which has a nice UI to help explore the options by clicking on the words so you can see what operations they perform. I think it's a bit easier and approachable than other cryptid options but you do only get one a day.

    2 votes

  11. Comment on How funerals keep Africa poor in ~life

    GoatOnPony
    Link Parent
    Thanks for the reply. I don't think I particularly disagree with your comment except that we have different views of the intent and thesis of the article. As I said, an article with limited aims...

    Thanks for the reply. I don't think I particularly disagree with your comment except that we have different views of the intent and thesis of the article. As I said, an article with limited aims of presenting the specific exorbitant funeral costs as a predatory practice and a piece of general interest, totally fine to skip over the larger picture. Examining how a particular practice might produce ills in the society at large is good and can be done with less context. My claim is that that's not the article before us and that it's thesis and argument are not contained to the narrow scope of pricy funerals. It's making a significantly broader claim where other systemic factors are germane and relevant. If you don't think it's making those broader claims then I can see how my comments come across as superfluous.

    And again, I've never said that you can't critique social practices or apply universal moral standards. I'm not a moral relativist. Post an article specifically about genital mutilation and I'll condemn the practice. Post an article that genital mutilation is the cause of infant mortality where it also vaguely implies that trans people shouldn't exist and I'll condemn the article though.

    This article is the latter and not the former. It's particular critique is flawed in as such that it's used to argue a broader condemnation of kinship societies or posit either as the (not just any, but the) primary agent of poverty and vaguely imply that we should all just shut up about western societies being too individualistic. My critique of the article is limited to it taking that angle. If you don't see that angle being the primary one then I fear we can only ever talk past each other

    8 votes

  12. Comment on How funerals keep Africa poor in ~life

    GoatOnPony
    Link Parent
    It's not as explicit as it once was, but the continent is still to some extent exploited. Multinational corporations still own and extract much of Africa's mineral wealth. Industries reliant on...

    It's not as explicit as it once was, but the continent is still to some extent exploited. Multinational corporations still own and extract much of Africa's mineral wealth. Industries reliant on African cash crops share very little wealth back to the continent despite large profits in their home countries. Loans from the IMF come with requirements for privatization and austerity. Unequal trade agreements protect western industrial imports.

    8 votes

  13. Comment on How funerals keep Africa poor in ~life

    GoatOnPony
    Link Parent
    The article has a heading titled "Kinship societies are wealth-destroying societies" and says "Economic development is extraordinarily difficult in intensive kinship culture" and also remarks how...

    The article has a heading titled "Kinship societies are wealth-destroying societies" and says "Economic development is extraordinarily difficult in intensive kinship culture" and also remarks how "suffocating that social world is, how parasitical it is on its most productive members, and how poisonous it is for any prospect of economic development". There's a lot like that in the article. It's pretty explicit in its hypothesis.

    I didn't talk about the funeral rights in particular, but I will say that all societies indulge in many many rituals and activities that don't go into infrastructure, healthcare, or anything that's productive or a better use of capital. That's just called living life, no? We might readily agree that perhaps the amount of expenditure on funerals is too much relative to other priorities, but I'd hope it's an issue with the amount spent rather than with the activity itself. People need fulfillment beyond the base tiers of Maslow's heirarchy even if those base tiers aren't being consistently met. Economists, and likely the article's author, can call this an irrational wastage of potential but it doesn't make it wrong or bad.

    In my original post I already said I'm not trying to take a moral relativist stance, there are practices that should be shunned or condemned. Costly funerals are not on that list for me though.

    Finally, I don't think every discussion of issues needs caveating with 'Colonialism' but I think it's extremely telling that this author makes no mention of it and makes the claims they're making. I'll just be blunt: I think this article is a thinly veiled trojan horse of an ideology attempting to assuage western guilt at the consequences of our imperialist and colonialist past by pointing only at the idea that poverty is really just a choice that 'some specific groups of people' are making. It states that kinship groups are performing the role of the welfare state and then paints all recipients as mooches. It calls warm familial bonds wistful thinking and roundly reduces human life to a measure of productive output. It ignores any possible responsibility that we in the west may have towards addressing poverty and paints the kinship group as an active, malevolent adversary to a nebulously defined idea of progress. I'd usually give the benefit of the doubt and just allow this to be a 'oh look at that interesting societal quirk' type of article where broader systemic issues can be elided, but this article has some agenda beyond that so I feel it's relevant to bring up that missing context.

    13 votes

  14. Comment on How funerals keep Africa poor in ~life

    GoatOnPony
    Link Parent
    I think I'd still probe a bit on whether kinship networks are an obstacle to economic growth, there's a number of assumptions that the article makes which I think deserve a closer look, eg: that...

    I think I'd still probe a bit on whether kinship networks are an obstacle to economic growth, there's a number of assumptions that the article makes which I think deserve a closer look, eg:

    • that kinship networks are at conflict with rule of law and contractual obligations
    • that ritual removal of wealth cannot be repurposed into social benefit (eg. if wealth was given away to motivate some lasting communal improvement)
    • that capital allocation must be done at an individual's discretion in order to be effective (family and communally owned businesses exist after all)
    • that individual capital accumulation is necessary to alleviate poverty in particular (ie. why individuals instead of at the state, society, or family group level might not be better positioned to intercede to help those in need)
    • that these wealth burning rituals are not producing beneficial externalties worth preserving in at least some form (many cultures include extravagent events)

    I agree with some of those assumptions (at least in a weakened form), but there's still too much missing for me to agree to the conclusion that kinship networks are an important obstacle.

    12 votes

  15. Comment on How funerals keep Africa poor in ~life

    GoatOnPony
    Link Parent
    Do we see split economic results based on strong kinship? A split rigorous enough to show cause and effect? The article doesn't present evidence showing that afaict, nor does it do any comparisons...

    Do we see split economic results based on strong kinship? A split rigorous enough to show cause and effect? The article doesn't present evidence showing that afaict, nor does it do any comparisons to look at other countries. Even if it did, there's a long way to go before establishing that strong kinship is not just a contributing factor but supposedly /the/ contributing factor. Perhaps there is something there, but the article is not presenting the kind of analysis I'd need to really entertain it when instead we could, eg. investigate mineral wealth exploitation or work to reconstitute USAID. It's not good to keep asking 'why' when there's an opportunity cost to not pursuing the immediate and obvious issues.

    An analysis which says that a broad material issue is due specifically to culture, especially a culture that the author is not from, needs to meet an incredibly high bar because it's a suggestion that is ripe for abuse. Many imperialist projects were started under the stated aim of reshaping an indigenous culture 'for their own material betterment' up to and including the present day. Again, this isn't to say that cultures are impervious to critique in some absolute moral relatist way, but it's not critiques we should levee lightly.

    15 votes

  16. Comment on How funerals keep Africa poor in ~life

    GoatOnPony
    Link
    I found the article thought provoking, but rubbed me the wrong way. It makes a bold claim - that kinship societies are incapable of 'economic development' and by implication that the only path for...
    • Exemplary

    I found the article thought provoking, but rubbed me the wrong way. It makes a bold claim - that kinship societies are incapable of 'economic development' and by implication that the only path for poverty reduction is through a social revolution to specifically make the people conform to Western individualist (rational, egoist, dependent on state over other structures) standards. This gets applied to an entire continent with a variety of cultures, history, and economic conditions. I don't want to just 'noble savage' and say kinship societies are perfect and propagate no social ills, they most certainly do. But to put everything on a linearized scale of kinship vs individualism and say that one is the source of impoverishment seems reductivist and like the author has a particular agenda. The whole thing is written as though this person's family went and stole their house.

    I'm also shocked that any discussion positing a single reason for Africa's poverty can ignore the international and historical systems of oppression that have been, and continue to be levied against the continent. A framing of the issue as 'African kinship societies are just fundamentally bad at getting themselves out of poverty' really looks like an attempt to absolve any obligations Western countries have towards developmental aid, except of course to promote our 'superior' values of individualist capital accumulation (which of course should not be maligned here at home either lest we too slide into impoverishment). That's an uncharitable take perhaps, but I don't think the author's take was particularly charitable either.

    49 votes

  17. Comment on Searching for neighbours on the indie web in ~tech

    GoatOnPony
    (edited )
    Link
    Hopefully I'm not too late, but I just created a simple 88x31 button png for my website stack of goats! Currently my website has mostly progress updates on projects and TTRPG content that I've...

    Hopefully I'm not too late, but I just created a simple 88x31 button png for my website stack of goats! Currently my website has mostly progress updates on projects and TTRPG content that I've been putting up for free. I don't yet have any buttons but I do have a webring and also a wander console. I'll try to get a home for buttons and add folks sites to the wander console as soon as I can!

  18. Comment on What creative projects have you been working on? in ~creative

    GoatOnPony
    Link
    About two months ago I started on a TTRPG blog series where I roll a random wikipedia article and turn it into game content, eg. if I get an article for a politician I might create an NPC or a...

    About two months ago I started on a TTRPG blog series where I roll a random wikipedia article and turn it into game content, eg. if I get an article for a politician I might create an NPC or a faction or a way to run elections in a session. It's been a great way so far to flex creativity muscles! I'm up to 17 posts and the latest went up yesterday. It adapts the idea of a news anchor to a fantasy setting. I also drew an illustration to go with it which I quite like how how it turned out.

    3 votes

  19. Comment on The dead economy theory in ~society

    GoatOnPony
    Link Parent
    That logic feels equally applicable to capitalist systems. Most people want stuff and inequality denies it from them, necessitating force to protect said assets. And that is on a more ongoing...

    That logic feels equally applicable to capitalist systems. Most people want stuff and inequality denies it from them, necessitating force to protect said assets. And that is on a more ongoing basis. America has the fifth highest per capital incarceration rate after all.

    9 votes

  20. Comment on Do we want to stop all crime? in ~society

    GoatOnPony
    Link
    There's a variety of pragmatic reasons why the thought experiment isn't applicable to the real world: no universal agreement on criminal activity and suitable punishment, no powerful system is...

    There's a variety of pragmatic reasons why the thought experiment isn't applicable to the real world: no universal agreement on criminal activity and suitable punishment, no powerful system is instantaneous and perfect and impossible to abuse, and figuring out the right proportionality of punishment is just truly unknowable except by some omniscient entity capable of understanding our inner thoughts (hence why it's a popular invention).

    But I do want to try and engage in the thought experiment on its more philosophical grounds and propose that even if those practical issues were solved we wouldn't like it. Humans aren't perfectly rational, perfectly computing machines ourselves - we want some slack to be lazy and selfish and getting an unfair leg up even if we don't perceive our behavior as such. We spend the vast majority of our lives as amoral entities in that we don't even think to apply moral reasoning to every thing we do. Trying to coerce people into behaving morally every moment would be exhausting and consume all our mental energy even if there was some outside system which handled enforcement for us.

    Separately, if your thought experiment fleshed out into a pretty good anime intrigues you, go watch psycho pass where the police are given a means to determine someone's crime coefficient.