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Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

theguardian.com

481–490 of 569 posts

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#481
post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me cynical, but I couldn't help but notice Musk seemed to be going about his effort with the maximum amount of tweeting and publicity possible.

Why is this comment flagged? I thought the exact same thing, it was all a publicity stunt rather than a legitimate humanitarian effort.

How dare you slander our lord and savior Elon Musk! /s

Seriously though, there's a strong cult of personality at play and HN readers frequently downvote any comment that is even slightly negative about Musk or Tesla or SpaceX.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a great book, just finished listening to it. Afterwards I heard a lot of people thought it had a pro military/war bent; I don't think they read the book

I don't think it was pro-war at all. But it could certainly be said it was pro upholding a strong military tradition in the concept of a voting population as a form of civil service to earn full citizenship. And since the only people who would be voting would be the ones who were or had done the dying, it's likely a very strong anti-war book, as one would presume only absolutely necessary wars would ever be fought.

Military people are on average more pro war then average population. Military leadership gains power with wars and looses it with peace.

Pacifists happen to join armies less.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the inverse of a fanboy? An anti-fanboy? Compulsive detractor? Super-carper? There seems to be a large outspoken group of people who go out of their way to talk about Musk despite their apparent dislike of him, rather than just saying nothing and ignoring him, seemingly they feel justified by the fanboys? I think that deserves a title, carper? Detractor? Hard to imagine commenting on this post to just complai…

>There seems to be a large outspoken group of people who go out of their way to talk about Musk despite their apparent dislike of him I'm sorry what? Musk constantly gets tons of PR over nothing from news outlets, to reddit, to HN. It's really strange that a reasonable response to constant bombardment of Musk's half-baked ideas and PR stunts is somehow attributable to people's dislike of Musk personally. How is direc…

"The entire response is a really cheap, nonconstructive appeal to motive and is quite frankly full of vague personal attacks."

You should be the last person to complain about this...

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also looking at the side-view diagrams of the cave, if they were running away from the entrance because it was starting to fill up, I'm surprised that very tight hole they crawled through wasn't also underwater at the time since it looks like it is as low or lower than the cave entrance itself. They descended to below the entrance altitude after having gained a lot of altitude. I know there are probably no answers bu…

Also the fact that they kept together. Would be interesting to know if at some point they were separated and if not, how they kept together in the dark.

The story I read indicated it was a planned "expedition", so presumably they had torches and such? You can't go far in pitch black in a cave and not injure yourself.

It doesn't really add up as it's been told. The death of the expert diver too seems very strange.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just this. It's trite to say it, and I'm sure it's cold comfort to his family, but we all die, and this person went out saving lives, young lives with lots of years to save, and in service to others. His death is somber and sad, but not tragic.

With all due respect lets all be wary of the 'cult of sacrifice' which often takes hold when someone dies to save someone else. Any time someone dies to save someone else, I suggest the appropriate reaction is that we should simply regret among ourselves that we didn't develop a technological solution to the problem before the problem presented itself, not engage in hero worship (please don't read this as diminishing…

Very much agreed. Similarly, the risk is something I was aware of when I signed up as a firefighter (and magnified even more now as an officer who makes decisions about going inside on structure fires, etc). But it's very much a matter of calculated risk.

https://www.everyonegoeshome.com/16-initiatives/

This is related to firefighting, but it's interesting to see what some of the things we are trying to fix are in terms of saving lives, and little is around technology, and much in the way of culture, safety.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#486
post #47

Can anyone explain how the heck they found the children in the first place? Seriously, I can't wrap my head around it. The kids were stranded 2.5 miles inside the cave. All anyone knew was that the kids didn't return form their hike. How does that lead to "Hey, let's dive into the cave and maybe we'll find live children"? I guess they were expecting the worst, but still.

Partially dumb luck. - “A ranger of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation alerted authorities to the missing group after seeing their unclaimed belongings at the cave entrance.” - “Volanthen was placing guidelines in the cave to later assist others in navigation. He ran out of line, which led him to swim to the surface—there, he found the missing team and its coach.” https://en.wikipedia.o…

Richard Stanton and John Volanthen are the real deal. People should read their wikipedia pages. Also, watching cave diving videos... even on their best day, when they're having a great time, it looks absolutely horrifying. lol

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#487
post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There seems to be a large outspoken group of people who go out of their way to talk about Musk despite their apparent dislike of him I'm sorry what? Musk constantly gets tons of PR over nothing from news outlets, to reddit, to HN. It's really strange that a reasonable response to constant bombardment of Musk's half-baked ideas and PR stunts is somehow attributable to people's dislike of Musk personally. How is direc…

"The entire response is a really cheap, nonconstructive appeal to motive and is quite frankly full of vague personal attacks." You should be the last person to complain about this...

Why?

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#488

I do my part in promoting captialism, which has done more to pull children out of poverty than any other program or charity in the world. Free market reforms in China and India have done just brain blistering amounts of good in reducing human suffering, from child malnutrition, suicide rates, longevity, and access to healthcare.

This is a rather strange position to take, though I can understand your point, unfortunately it misses any qualitative aspects of life, and instead only focuses on the qualitative ones. You have also conveniently forgotten to mention any of capitalism's evils, including imperialist expansion, which has itself been responsible for a great many deaths. Instead, you have focused on the "by-products" of capitalism, that is to say, enlarging a workforce and giveng them what Marx called "double freedom", but at the same time capitalism has also given people double separation - these workers are separated from the means of production, and the products they make. This is no less true in China and India than it is in Britain (especially during the laws passed in the 16th century in the enclosure of the commons).

For what it's worth, I do my part in criticising capitalism, spreading the works of those who also criticise it, and prompting people to think of alternative modes of production. I think that not only has capitalism saved a great many lives, but it's improved a great many too. That doesn't mean that it should be here to say, nor that its evils can be ignored. To use an analogy, capitalism is the boat one can use to cross the river; you don't carry the boat with you once you've finished.

In another system you refer to capitalism as simply being "freely trading labour and goods". To me, this shows your ignorance of the history of capitalism, and what it is today. Have you read "The Origin of Capitalism"[0] or any contemporary critiques, such as those of the Frankfurt School?

In short, capitalism requires a lot of separation and very strange ideas of liberty, which all rely on quite a neat subjectivist-individualist approach.

[0] https://www.versobooks.com/books/2407-the-origin-of-capitali...

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#489
post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it was pro-war at all. But it could certainly be said it was pro upholding a strong military tradition in the concept of a voting population as a form of civil service to earn full citizenship. And since the only people who would be voting would be the ones who were or had done the dying, it's likely a very strong anti-war book, as one would presume only absolutely necessary wars would ever be fought.

Military people are on average more pro war then average population. Military leadership gains power with wars and looses it with peace. Pacifists happen to join armies less.

We're talking about a hypothetical electorate made up of mostly enlisted soldiers who were on the shit end of the stick when it comes to war.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#490
post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all of these countries are "non-capitalist." This is a list of parties that are anti-capitalist/communist, some with only one or two seats in their country's parliament. The introduction to the article even makes this clear: > Of the 66 states listed here, 9 of them are republics ruled by a socialist, communist or anticapitalist party, five of them are official socialist states ruled by a communist party, of them…

Like I said, much deeper research ;) Thanks for the links, they are a much better jumping off point. I cross-referenced [0] with the tables on [1] and population data from [2] to build this list for further analysis: Country *ist since Total wealth (USD) Mean wealth/adult (USD) Median wealth/adult (USD) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------…

While china is ruled by a nominally communist party, its party is definitely undergoing deliberative market reforms that are inspired by western capitalism.
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