Our Newfound Fear of Risk • Hacker News Board

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#191

Post by a3n » Thu, Sep 05, 2013, 7:22 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #185

a3n wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When my own kid was very young I was paranoid about touching him in public. It didn't stop me, but I was mindful of it, and I would occasionally feel I was getting extra scrutiny by some parent; a man not at work in the daytime, holding a young boy's hand. Feh.

This strikes me as odd. As a parent (dad) of two, I wouldn't ever dream of feeling odd about holding either of my kids' hands - or even for that matter chasing them down when they run away screaming (which happens often). Just a counter data point here.

I didn't feel odd for the act, I felt uncomfortable with the assumptions or speculation implied by the scrutiny. No one likes to be distrusted, regardless of the context.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#192

Post by zaphar » Fri, Sep 06, 2013, 3:42 AM UTC

purplelobster wrote: post #186

zaphar wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We got visited once. Turns out the CPS for the most part isn't really interested in Parents who love their kids enough to let them experience a little pain. They were there less than 30 minutes.

You seriously had CPS called on you? By neighbors?

They don't tell you who reported you so I don't know who. As I said though it was basically a non-issue. They have to respond to reports but we were in no way considered a danger to our children. Others experiences may vary of course so don't generalize from mine.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#193

Post by api » Sat, Sep 07, 2013, 4:53 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #184

api wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Panels are not irreversibly diluted or consumed. They just "fall apart" at the molecular level and have to be recycled.

Recycling has its limits. I've mostly looked at this with regards to lithium (critical in Tesla's EVs, though other rare earths are also limiting, perhaps moreso). With present known reserves (including recent finds in South America -- Bolivia as I recall), there's not enough lithium to build batteries for an EV for the entire world's population. I believe the number I came up was about 1 in 10. And that's for one ge…

"With sufficient energy, you can extract virtually anything from seawater (even stuff like uranium). But that "with sufficient energy" prerequisite is pretty much specifically the challenge we're looking at."

Not so much. There is plenty of energy... I mean tons... with one caveat: it's not always on.

But there's no reason that extraction of minerals from sea water couldn't be a daytime-only thing.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#194

Post by api » Sat, Sep 07, 2013, 4:55 PM UTC

lectrick wrote: post #190

api wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangent: I lived in Boston for a while. I'm glad to read stuff like this as it reminds me that it wasn't me. PSA: Boston is not liberal, except a little bit in the abstract NPR "latte sipping" academic sense. Culturally it is unbelievably, stiflingly conservative, far more so than "red states" for example.

I dated a cute girl from Andover, MA for a while. Andover is a little upscale town just north of Boston, kind of a well-off suburb. She hated that I wore a tiny bit of gold jewelry (gold cross from my grandmother) because "that's what non-white people wear", so away that went. She hated that I wore T-shirts because... probably similar reasons. I took her to a beach on the Cape, and she wore... black. Covering her who…

That's astounding, but not surprising. The wealthy 'burbs of Boston are even more stifled than the city or Cambridge.

Boston should have been Silicon Valley. It had all the pieces, everything aligned, best of the best. But it's not. I think there's a really good argument to be made that this conservatism is why. All the really smart people ran away first chance they got.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#195

Post by lectrick » Mon, Sep 09, 2013, 5:29 AM UTC

api wrote: post #194

lectrick wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dated a cute girl from Andover, MA for a while. Andover is a little upscale town just north of Boston, kind of a well-off suburb. She hated that I wore a tiny bit of gold jewelry (gold cross from my grandmother) because "that's what non-white people wear", so away that went. She hated that I wore T-shirts because... probably similar reasons. I took her to a beach on the Cape, and she wore... black. Covering her who…

That's astounding, but not surprising. The wealthy 'burbs of Boston are even more stifled than the city or Cambridge. Boston should have been Silicon Valley. It had all the pieces, everything aligned, best of the best. But it's not. I think there's a really good argument to be made that this conservatism is why. All the really smart people ran away first chance they got.

Sadly, a startup (thredup.com) that I worked for did too and I decided not to join them, mostly because I had reached a point in my life where uprooting to the opposite coast was unfortunately no longer an option (and I had already spent 4 years in a previous life in Cali)...