skybrian's recent activity

  1. Comment on California goat grazing faces crisis after wage change in ~enviro

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    As the employers tell it, they provide everything to their foreign workers and the they don't interact with the community at all. They claim that the cost of living is nothing while they're...

    As the employers tell it, they provide everything to their foreign workers and the they don't interact with the community at all. They claim that the cost of living is nothing while they're working, and then they go home.

    This reminds me of someone getting a job on a fishing boat in Alaska.

    Maybe it doesn't really work that way, though? It would be nice to hear from the goatherds themselves.

    3 votes

  2. Comment on California goat grazing faces crisis after wage change in ~enviro

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    One thing that strikes me is that the article doesn't include any interviews with the goatherds. I wonder what they think? It's a traditional occupation. Have goatherds been abused for centuries?

    One thing that strikes me is that the article doesn't include any interviews with the goatherds. I wonder what they think?

    It's a traditional occupation. Have goatherds been abused for centuries?

    4 votes

  3. Comment on Boarding China’s last bus in ~society

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...] [...] [...]

    From the article:

    China’s tech giants — Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu — were all founded between 1998 and 2000. By the end of 2000, the number of internet users in China had jumped from 3000 in early 1995 to 22.5 million. In 2001, China joined the WTO. Urbanization accelerated, and the growth of the middle class fueled demand for luxury goods, tourism, and better nutrition. The number of private cars in China went up from 1 million in 1992 to almost 10 million by 2002. Many people envisioned a hopeful future in which they could acquire new clothes, new luxuries, and new technology in the new millennium.

    But the “many” did not include the 100 million people residing in the Northeast — roughly 8.5% of China’s total population as of 2000. By the 1990s, urban shrinkage, which is measured by sustained population loss, had already taken hold across 52 cities in the Northeast. And of the 68 cities across China whose populations diminished continuously into the 2010s, half were in this region. The regional birth rate has been trending lower than the national average for more than three decades, and net outmigration has become an increasing problem since 2000. In 1990, the Northeast represented 8.66% of the country’s population; by 2016, that proportion had dropped to 7.9%. The one-time cradle of China's industrial development has become a place that many would rather not raise kids or live in, given the choice.

    In the span of a decade, Chinese society simultaneously experienced rapid economic growth and extreme economic precarity. Individuals were offered transformative opportunities and faced catastrophic crises, all due to the same factors put in place by a select elite who generated the incredible promise and acute challenges modern China still faces. To many Americans watching AI reshape their economy, this narrative may sound familiar, though calls to regulate, pause, or stop the technology reflect a belief that the transformation can still be steered or stopped. That option did not exist for Chinese workers in the 1990s.

    [...]

    For China’s policymakers, slowing development was never an option. A 1931 quote from Joseph Stalin — “落后就要挨打 (luohou jiu yao aida) or “those who fall behind get beaten” — that adapted by Mao Zedong in 1956 permeated society, serving as a cornerstone of high-level policy narratives. In China’s mnemonic practices, this phrase, linked to the idea that only development can sustain a nation’s independence, is the most significant lesson from the past, necessary to remember from China’s 20th-century history of war and colonization. “The reform is painful but rewarding,” wrote the state in 2012 in reference to the previous century.

    At the turn of the century, then, the policy question was therefore not whether to reform; instead, it was how to make the transformation less painful. The government attempted to address the pain. In 1998, the state established re-employment Service Centers, which provided laid-off workers with living allowances, basic social security, and job training. The state taxation administration introduced tax incentives for businesses that hired displaced workers. Xiagang workers were entitled to tax exemptions, fee waivers, and preferential access to microloans when starting small businesses or seeking new employment. The Minimum Living Security System was established in 1999 to guarantee basic income for urban residents and expanded to rural areas in the 2000s. Higher education grew in 1999 and university attendance increased 600% in less than 10 years. This expansion was partially aimed at delaying China’s youth from entering the job market, thus leaving spaces for the re-employment of laid-off workers.

    For some workers, these policies provided a bridge. But the scale of the problem overwhelmed the response. Funds were too small or simply did not arrive. When funds did arrive, they rarely reached the people they were meant for. In one case, one former deputy director of the city-level Development and Reform Commission — an institution responsible for implementing national economic policies — embezzled the subsidies of 556 xiagang workers.

    Even as market reform and industrial upgrades brought new job opportunities, there were simply not enough: In 2004-2005, 24 million people entered the workforce, but only 9 million new roles were created. Even within these new jobs, there was a mismatch between supply and demand. The workers who had been laid off were predominantly in their forties and fifties with industrial skills, while the foreign companies entering China wanted fresh university graduates or young rural migrants who were willing to work for less. And though the expansion of higher education benefited many, it eventually produced young workers who were overqualified for many jobs, resulting in high youth unemployment that persists in China today. And much of the suffering was silently buried under cold numbers and grand policies.

    [...]

    If economic restructuring was an unstoppable force of nature, then the only possible response was to move with it before it moved without you. Xiang Biao diagnosed this as a "last bus" mentality: a collective fear that missing the opportunity to seize a piece of post-socialist accumulation meant missing everything. You either catch this bus towards success or be left out forever. It was a frenzy born not of greed or enthusiasm, but of the desperate realization that the old world was gone and the new one had no reserved seats. What began as a northeastern industrial experience has, amid decades of social change and competition, became a prevalent psychological structure spanning different socioeconomic classes and regions.

    [...]

    In the late 1990s and early 2000s, learning English was the last bus. Globalization was the irreversible trend; only by learning English could Chinese people interact with the greater world. The state mandated English education as a core Gaokao subject and pushed it into primary schools in 2001, giving rise to cultural phenomena like "Crazy English" (疯狂英语; fengkuang yingyu), wherein tens of thousands of people gathered in public stadiums to scream English phrases at the top of their lungs in a desperate collective bid for fluency. In the late 2010s, the mobile internet boom was the last bus. As tech giants like Alibaba and Tencent offered unmatched salaries in other industries, millions rushed to learn coding and enroll in computer science degrees in universities that were aggressively expanding computer science programs, only to find themselves facing a constantly decreasing employment rate.

    In 2023, understanding AI was the last bus, and over 250 thousand people paid for rudimentary AI crash courses, terrified of being rendered obsolete overnight. In 2026, OpenClaw was the last bus, with thousands of people — retirees, white-collar workers, housewives — lining up outside tech company offices for engineers to install the agent directly onto their phones.

    [...]

    When polled only three decades later, perhaps every respondent genuinely believes that AI is good for both society and for themselves. Or perhaps they see AI as another surgery necessary to survival, knowing full well that flesh will be cut away and discarded, but convinced that the pain borne by individuals — however devastating to them — is small against the benefits at large. The polls, as they are written, cannot distinguish between these narratives. .

  5. Comment on California goat grazing faces crisis after wage change in ~enviro

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    It seems like it's bigger than any single business. If they double their prices will they still get customers, or will their customers decide that, at that price, they can do without the goats?...

    It seems like it's bigger than any single business. If they double their prices will they still get customers, or will their customers decide that, at that price, they can do without the goats?

    They seem to believe they won't have a business anymore. Maybe they're wrong, but...

    1 vote

  6. Comment on No data centers in my backyard in ~society

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...] [...]

    From the article:

    The only solution seemed to be hitting the road, going to the towns where data center fights were happening, and talking to as many people as I could: activists, yes, but also workers, planners, politicians, and residents. I wanted to learn: Do most people actually care about data centers, or just a passionate few? What’s motivating these revolts—is it about AI, or energy costs, or good old NIMBYism? How did local opposition become a national issue? And how is AI moving elections?

    [...]

    My conversations make me wonder if the technical content of data center deals is mostly beside the point. Closed-loop cooling systems? “I don’t believe them.” Paying millions in taxes? “I don’t believe them.” Creating a thousand jobs? “I don’t believe them.” I hear a reflexive skepticism of every claim.

    Rather, the way that AI companies engage with communities—forcing NDAs, dangling billion-dollar promises, pushing environmental externalities far away from AI’s wealthy user base—resembles a classic story about dark money in politics. Your politicians are being bought by billionaires and gigantic corporations to screw you over. It’s not Skynet: it’s the oligarchy.

    [...]

    So: what is driving the data center fights erupting across America, from rural farmers to feminist academics, from conservative NIMBYs to Bernie bros?

    First, the material impacts: AI data centers are big, ugly, noisy, and very energy-hungry. Construction processes are long and locally disruptive. Water consumption and air pollution is generally minimal, but there are exceptions. In a vacuum, most people would choose to live by a flower field over a data center. But these costs are not so different from other industrial developments like manufacturing or solar farms. Those don’t go up without dissent, but have not commanded the shared hatred that data centers have.

    Second, process failure. Many people living near data center sites don’t feel that they got a choice. In San Francisco we see how desperate the industry is for compute—atoms still do not scale as seamlessly as bits. That tremendous financial pressure is materializing as fast tracks, fat checks, and limited time for public input. It looks like Big Tech cheating the system, engaging in cronyism and bribery, throwing money bags at politicians and hoping the dollar signs substitute for a positive case.

    Third, weak benefits. There is no compelling pro-data-center, pro-AI faction. Charles Franklin, who runs the Marquette Law Poll, emphasized that you only get sentiment this skewed when one side fails to make a case. The AI and utility companies are unsympathetic, permanent workers are not numerous, and most consumers do not feel that AI products are essential to their lives. At least nuclear power and public housing has its advocates (especially among those who live far away). Data centers are hated whether you live near one or not.

    Moreover, tax contributions can be delayed, and many in deindustrialized areas aren’t sure if they’ll ever pan out. In the era of the K-shaped economy, being “pro-growth” in the generic has lost its sheen. Several activists assured me they were not anti-technology—I didn’t hear much about specific AI harms—but that an email-writing widget was not worth a data center in their backyard. And more crucially, they did not want their town to be the collateral damage in a few tech billionaires’ pointless ego race. If AI is a bubble, they didn’t want to be part of the pop.

    Finally, grievance is amplified by a national environment of historically low trust in corporations and the government. Americans of all parties feel the economy is “rigged” against them; “corruption” and “affordability” regularly rank as top concerns. News articles and viral TikToks teach people to link their local complaints to these bigger political messages: data centers are enriching politicians and billionaires while raising your electric bills. Facebook groups convert solo concerns into social movements. Everywhere in my interviews, people suspected their opponents of being paid off.

    You cannot detach the data center backlash from these broader trends in American political culture. “AI populism” is more about populism than about AI.

    [...]

    Back in San Francisco, it is striking how little the AI industry understands its own unpopularity—the reasons that people resist. They ask if it’s a problem of benefits not being generous enough, or else a big misinformation campaign. (By the end of the trip, my friends and I felt slightly ashamed of the caricatures we originally believed in. In general, one should be cautious about assuming your opponents are just reading fake news.)

    In Wisconsin and Michigan, sometimes bigger numbers made observers more suspicious. People saw them and thought: I’m being bribed. There must be a catch. It turns out that politics is more than an optimization game; voter interests are neither stable nor reducible to dollar amounts. It is also about thymos: the desire to be “recognized as a human being… with a certain worth or dignity,” who can sacrifice material survival in service of higher ideals. Through Fukuyama’s lens, elections and town halls and social media debates matter not because they are maximally efficient preference aggregators, but because they are “a stage for the expression of thymos”—a place where people make their values heard.

  8. Comment on New Zealand has a new official language — English in ~society

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Not really, no. The way I'd expect it to work for something symbolic and uncontroversial, like legislation declaring national peach tree day or something like that, is that if nobody wants it,...

    Not really, no. The way I'd expect it to work for something symbolic and uncontroversial, like legislation declaring national peach tree day or something like that, is that if nobody wants it, there's no reason to do it, but given that some people do want it, there's no reason to oppose it.

    This is obviously a controversial issue, but I don't really see why it should be. It's hard to imagine any compelling arguments either way for something that doesn't seem to matter much. The ones briefly summarized so far don't seem compelling.

    But since that's just a first impression, I'm leaving the door open to there being more to it.

    4 votes

  9. Comment on New Zealand has a new official language — English in ~society

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Okay, clearly many sympathetic people have argued against it. But this brief summary doesn't tell us how good the arguments are. For example, I'm wondering how expensive this measure could be when...

    Okay, clearly many sympathetic people have argued against it. But this brief summary doesn't tell us how good the arguments are. For example, I'm wondering how expensive this measure could be when it seemingly doesn't do anything substantial? And how exactly does it undermine the official status of other languages?

    2 votes

  10. Comment on A thread about the history of streetcars in the US in ~transport

    skybrian
    Link
    From the Bluesky thread: [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...]

    From the Bluesky thread:

    in general, public transport before world war II was generally privately owned. it was a business, like railroads had been since the start of the industrial age. nobody liked the privately owned monopolies that owned public transit. 2/

    [...]

    basically, these monopolies dominated metro areas, because they weren't just the transport monopoly. in la, oakland and miami, the train company was the biggest real estate developer. in atlanta, new jersey and new orleans, they were the power company. 3/

    [...]

    these monopolies were hilariously corrupt as well, and they had few friends. henry huntington (of LA's red cars), or charles yerkes (of the chicago eleveated) were as detested as bezos and zuckerberg were today. 4/

    [...]

    the trains got a serious challenge from cars in the early 20th century. and by the end of world war II, the train systems were worn out and needed massive government investment to survive. but because the transit companies were shitty monopolies, nobody wanted to help them out! 5/

    [...]

    On top of that, the new, shiny buses often had A/C, and the streetcars only had fans. The first air-conditioned bus was introduced in 1946. The first air-conditioned streetcars weren't introduced until 1976. 8/

    [...]

    All of this is to say, GM was picking the bones of the dying streetcar companies. Think vultures, not eagles. And when we talk about the GM conspiracy charges... GM-affiliated National City Lines actually kept streetcars running longer than peer systems. 10/

    [...]

    There was, however, one exception to this: Minneapolis-St Paul. There, a finance bro, the mob, and a crooked lawyer really did buy the trains and sell them for scrap - but that was the exception, not the rule. 12/12

    2 votes

  12. Comment on New Zealand has a new official language — English in ~society

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    To put it another way, "the other side wants it" is a heuristic that might understandably make one suspicious, but it's only convincing to committed partisans. If there are other, better arguments...

    To put it another way, "the other side wants it" is a heuristic that might understandably make one suspicious, but it's only convincing to committed partisans. If there are other, better arguments then they should stand on their own.

    3 votes

  13. Comment on New Zealand has a new official language — English in ~society

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    I think this controversy is stupid, but if you reflexively oppose harmless changes then it makes your own side look stupid, too. And that's what they want.

    I think this controversy is stupid, but if you reflexively oppose harmless changes then it makes your own side look stupid, too. And that's what they want.

    7 votes

  14. Comment on For those with criminal records, AI is breaking down barriers to employment in the US in ~society

    skybrian
    Link
    This is about automating office work (of the legal variety). Usually, people worry about lost jobs due to AI automation. But it's a good reminder that the people who need the work done matter too...

    This is about automating office work (of the legal variety). Usually, people worry about lost jobs due to AI automation. But it's a good reminder that the people who need the work done matter too and if they're charged too much then they won't be able to afford it.

    Making a process more efficient by reducing labor costs sounds kind of bloodless. It can be a mixed bag depending on what it is. But it's not just for mustache-twirling villains.

    There's a lot of room for improvement in making legal processes more efficient and more affordable.

    11 votes

  15. Comment on Is music just sound? A creative technologist's perspective on AI-generated music. in ~music

    skybrian
    (edited )
    Link
    I recently bought a gadget that you connect to the midi ports on a digital piano (or any midi instrument) and it will record everything you play to an SD card. Since midi doesn’t take much space,...

    I recently bought a gadget that you connect to the midi ports on a digital piano (or any midi instrument) and it will record everything you play to an SD card. Since midi doesn’t take much space, a single SD card can record everything you play for years, and you can play it back at any time. It will sound identical because it’s driving the same musical instrument.

    The idea is that you can be recording all the time. If you play something good you can get it back. It seems pretty neat!

    But it also made me think about how easy it is to generate and replicate piano music. it’s just midi data. When practicing from sheet music, sometimes I wonder what I’m doing that a computer couldn’t do easily. Generating midi data from sheet music doesn’t seem that hard a problem, conceptually.

    And yet, I find listening to a really skilled pianist to be really impressive. There are difficult pieces I enjoy practicing. Yes, it sounds good, but I think it’s very tied to it being a human performance, in a similar way to athletic performance.

    When that’s something I want to pay attention to, a music video captures the human performance better than sound alone. I want to see how the music is made, not just hear it. I like to see the pianist hitting the keys.

    4 votes

  16. Comment on California goat grazing faces crisis after wage change in ~enviro

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...]

    From the article:

    Goats have become a familiar sight on California hillsides, munching through weeds and brush before they can become fuel for wildfires. But the companies that put those herds to work said a change in state labor rules have made goat grazing too expensive to continue.

    The labor rule in question was a temporary state law that allowed goat herders to be paid under the same wage structure as sheep herders, but expired July 1. Goat grazing companies said the expiration meant they could face annual wage costs of about $240,000 per herder because of overtime requirements.

    Company owners said the higher labor costs might force them to switch from goats to sheep, or shut down and sell their herds.

    [...]

    In California, grazing companies were frequently hired by cities and other local governments to use goats to reduce vegetation that could fuel wildfires. The exact percentage of California’s 500,000 sheep and 125,000 goats used for targeted grazing was unknown, but labor advocates and grazing company owners agreed it was at least 20% and increasing.

    Tim Arrowsmith, owner of Western Grazers, a goat grazing company in Red Bluff, said goats could eat a much wider variety of plants than sheep, including starthistle, a thorny weed that grew densely and could become a wildfire risk because of its dry, fibrous stems and leaves. Sheep would eat starthistle only in the early stages of growth, but goats would eat it even after it became prickly.

    [...]

    The law at the center of the dispute was Assembly Bill 1066, signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown, which gradually extended overtime pay requirements to agricultural workers. Under the law, agricultural workers eventually became entitled to 1.5 times their normal wage for working more than eight hours a day or 40 hours a week.

    Range herders, including sheep and goat herders, were originally treated differently under the overtime law because most herding companies said they could not afford conventional hourly overtime for jobs that required herders to remain on duty around the clock. Instead, the state established a minimum monthly wage for herders that included $2,934 in regular wages and an additional $1,887 in overtime wages.

    More than 90% of sheep and goat herders in California worked under H-2A visas, most commonly coming from Peru and Mexico. Companies like Western Grazers also had to cover herders’ room and board, meals, limited clothing expenses and transportation to and from their home countries, along with visa costs.

    [...]

    In 2022, the California Labor Commissioner’s Office determined that the alternative minimum monthly wage applied only to sheep herders, not goat herders. The interpretation meant goat herders were subject to standard overtime requirements for the hours they worked, potentially pushing annual wages to around $240,000 per herder, in addition to expenses paid by employers.

    [...]

    Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, who authored AB 1066 while serving in the state Assembly, said she fought for the bill because she believed agricultural workers should have the right to an eight-hour workday like other workers.

    [...]

    Workers on H-2A visas were particularly vulnerable, said Fletcher, now president of the California Federation of Labor Unions. Herders working under the visa program could work for employers such as Western Grazers for three years, return to their home countries for 90 days and then return to California for another three years, she said. They often spoke little to no English, worked in isolation and had no direct path to U.S. citizenship through the visa program.

    [...]

    Arrowsmith said grazing companies used H-2A workers because U.S. workers did not apply for herding jobs.

    [...]

    “All stakeholders agree that the alternative minimum monthly wage for range herders who are on duty 24/7 should be the same for sheep and goat herders because the workers and work involved in herding sheep and goats are similar and often overlap,” the report read.

    “The Legislature got this study and did absolutely nothing with it,” said Soares. “They just let (SB 143) expire.”

    5 votes

  18. Comment on Christopher Tin - Baba Yetu (2009) in ~music

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Did you know that it's the Lord's prayer? Baba Yetu means "Our Father."

    Did you know that it's the Lord's prayer? Baba Yetu means "Our Father."

    4 votes

  19. Comment on Japan to announce Tokyo, Washington took joint action on yen in ~finance

    skybrian
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    This seems a little different: Japan has huge foreign investments that, if the yen falls, are more valuable domestically. (I asked ChatGPT to make a chart from official numbers. It's in yen so...

    This seems a little different: Japan has huge foreign investments that, if the yen falls, are more valuable domestically. (I asked ChatGPT to make a chart from official numbers. It's in yen so that spike at the end is partially due to the weakening yen.)

    So at least some Japanese investors are presumably pretty well protected financially. And if they decided that they needed to cash in foreign investments rather than holding them, it seems like that would strengthen the yen?

    Which is what the central bank is doing by selling US treasuries.

    3 votes

  20. Comment on US general warns he lacks sufficient forces to protect Israel amid Iran war in ~society

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Apparently it's complicated. Israel had Patriot missile defenses but they were mothballed in favor of their own systems. Also, "Patriot missiles" are continually upgraded so the US probably has...

    Apparently it's complicated. Israel had Patriot missile defenses but they were mothballed in favor of their own systems. Also, "Patriot missiles" are continually upgraded so the US probably has better ones.

    There's more about US and Israeli missile defenses in this article from May: https://skybrian-links.exe.xyz/post/1144

    2 votes