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After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

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Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#291

Post by MangoToupe »

breppp wrote: post #233
MangoToupe wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder this, too. I also wonder why Saudi Arabia and Israel aren't subject to the same sanctions. I'm sure there's a good reason somewhere....

Examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_bombings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Francis_Buckley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_A._Anderson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMIA_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_U.S.%E2%80%93Iran_naval_i... https://www.iranintl.com/en/202408126589 Because that's their entire MO for their existence…

Ok, I don't see a comparison happening. Israel seems to kill americans on a regular basis. Saudi arabia doesn't seem to be much friendlier either, not to mention refusing to align with our proclaimed values.

You gotta do more to convince me that iran is any worse than either

Half the things you linked barely have anything to do with iran; certainly much less connection than saudi arabia had with 9/11. Do better!

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#292

Post by mrguyorama »

jna_sh wrote: post #50
stainablesteel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this same problem is one of the side effects of mining for the metals used in things like solar panels it comes at the sacrifice of many non-western countries and this conversation is never on the table it's such a shame things that could otherwise last for thousands of years will get destroyed by a few decades of mismanagement

Never on which table? “Exporting” environmental degradation is an incredibly widely discussed issue. Especially for South America, due to illegal rainforest clearing for soy farming to feed the NA/EU cattle industry, and lithium mining in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile.

I played a flash game in the mid 2000s about running a McDonalds restaurant and growing your beef in brazil by cutting down all the rainforests.

One of the most fun games to ever deliver a message hah.

Pretty sure it's in the Flashpoint Archive actually, if you want to play it.

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#293

Post by kragen »

gpjt wrote: post #135
est31 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Machine translation has certainly become better, and that's amazing and wonderful to see. Definitely an amazing thing that has come out of the AI boom. However, it has led to many websites to automatically enable it (like reddit), and one has to find a way to opt out for each website, if one speaks the language already. Especially colloquial language that uses lots of idioms gets translated quite weirdly still. It's…

Not sure that every browser advertises English, but mine certainly does. However, as I'm in Portugal, many websites ignore what my browser says and send me to translated versions, I assume based on my IP. That causes problems because the translations are often quite bad, and they do it with redirects to PT URLs so I can't share links with people who don't speak the language.

I have the same problem in Argentina. Worse, I'm pretty sure that Google and other search engines decide that I don't deserve to receive good information because I live in a Spanish-speaking country, so they send me to terrible low-quality pages because often that's all that's available in Spanish.

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#294

Post by thaumasiotes »

> This is a tragic turnaround for an arid country with a proud tradition of sophisticated management of its meager water resources. Iran is the origin and cultural and engineering heartland of ancient water-collecting systems known as qanats.

> Qanats are gently sloping tunnels dug into hillsides in riverless regions to tap underground water, allowing it to flow out into valleys using gravity alone. They have long sustained the country’s farmers, as well as being until recently the main source of water for cities such as Tehran, Yazd, and Isfahan. But today only one in seven fields are irrigated by the tunnels.

> Iran has an estimated 70,000 of these structures, most of which are more than 2,500 years old.

2500 years old is roughly the beginning of Persia, with the conquest by Cyrus. If the network is mostly older than that, Iran may have a tradition of using them, but it doesn't seem to have much of a tradition of building them.

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#295

Post by thaumasiotes »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #159
Waterluvian wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Early in my career I spent a lot of time thinking that HTML was antiquated. "Obviously they had 20th century ideas on what websites would be. As if we're all just publishing documents." But the beauty of HTML eventually clicked for me: it's describing the semantics of a structured piece of data, which means you can render a perfectly valid view of it however you want if you've got the right renderer! I imagine langua…

> I imagine language choice to be the same idea: they're just different views of the same data This is a tempting illusion, but the evidence implies it’s false. Translation is simulation, not emulation.

What evidence are you thinking of?

The parent comment is essentially correct that translations of the same material into different languages represent different views of the same data. A human translator must put in quite a bit of effort establishing what underlying situation is being described by a stretch of language.

Machine translations don't do this; they attempt to map one piece of language to another piece of (a different) language directly.

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#296

Post by mrguyorama »

nradov wrote: post #131
jrjeksjd8d wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their country is cash strapped and needs to be independent because of US sanctions. The CIA overthrew the democratically elected government in the 50s which led to the Islamic Republic.

That's true, but on the other hand the CIA today isn't forcing Iran to sponsor terrorist organizations or arrest women for being immodest or keep Islamists in charge. If they want to eliminate the sanctions then the path to doing so is clear and would have tremendous benefits for the Iranian people.

> If they want to eliminate the sanctions then the path to doing so is clear and would have tremendous benefits for the Iranian people.

Didn't... uh, didn't they... try?

And then Trump killed it?

My understanding is that there are allegations they were still pursuing nuclear capability but, we still don't have any actual evidence, and then we bombed them anyway.

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#297

Post by justinclift »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #295
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I imagine language choice to be the same idea: they're just different views of the same data This is a tempting illusion, but the evidence implies it’s false. Translation is simulation, not emulation.

What evidence are you thinking of? The parent comment is essentially correct that translations of the same material into different languages represent different views of the same data. A human translator must put in quite a bit of effort establishing what underlying situation is being described by a stretch of language. Machine translations don't do this; they attempt to map one piece of language to another piece of…

Relatedly, I tend to think of translations somewhat similar to a lossy system like those used in (say) image compression.

ie a compressed jpg of an image can retain quite a lot of the detail of the original, but it can introduce its own artifacts and lose some of the details

For things where the overall shape and picture is all that's required, that's fine. For things where the fine details matter, it's less fine.

Translations seem to be similar in that regard.

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#298

Post by breppp »

owenversteeg wrote: post #282
baxtr wrote: post #73

Maybe it’s selection bias but: The saddest thing about Iran I’ve noticed is the stark contrast between the current state of the country and the intelligence of the people I’ve met from this country.

This discussion comes up from time to time on HN. I actually think the country _has_ accomplished a lot given their geopolitical situation. Just to list a few things in the 21st century: 1) they had years of (at times fairly successful) proxy wars with three of the most militarily powerful US allies until the recent collapse, 2) a nuclear program, 3) the largest ballistic missile attack in history against the US, and…

probably less, your examples are related to weapons and an arms industry innovation is accelerated by sanctions and boycott. This has happened to the Israeli weapons industry due to lack of access to weapons especially in the 1960s and 1970s

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#299

Post by cess11 »

reducesuffering wrote: post #269
cess11 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're leaving out a lot of detail. Yes, Mossadegh stopped counting votes, claiming the election was corrupted by foreign influence, which it to some extent was. Less than half the members of the majlis that had thus been elected belonged to his own party, so that wasn't exactly a power grab for himself. In the events that followed his popularity rose and he tried to gather a government but was blocked by the shah, w…

I have no issue with the details, and appreciate the nuance here. I just object to people who frame the situation as "there is no dispute the US and UK overthrew a democratically elected Iranian government"

Perhaps it would be better framed as 'the US and UK conspired with local factions to overthrow the movement for democracy and liberation'.

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#300

Post by cess11 »

ch4s3 wrote: post #260
cess11 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was as democratically elected as the system at the time allowed and spent basically his entire political career on increasing the power of the majlis and getting rid of colonial interests. The UK spent a lot of resources conspiring against this project, which ultimately failed, to a large extent because he did not have a solution to the blockade that followed nationalisation of the oil production. Perhaps he also…

> increasing the power of the majlis Right up until he was about to lose an election, then he suspended counting votes and tried to dissolve the Majlis in alliance with the communist party.

Not sure what you mean. In the -52 election he stopped the vote counting when enough of the majlis was filled that it could legally do work, and then tried to form a government which the shah blocked. This is what led to the proposal that the majlis give him six months of emergency powers.
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