The Onion Futures Act • Hacker News Board

Re: The Onion Futures Act

#51

Post by ahazred8ta » Thu, Dec 13, 2018, 5:10 AM UTC

ryan-allen wrote: post #25

jpatokal wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Onions are pretty fundamental to Western cooking as well, but they're not a staple in the sense that people will starve if they're unavailable, the way potatoes or wheat are.

I've always thought staples were the bulk of the energy content in cultures, i.e. rice, bread from wheat/corn/etc, potatoes. I checked anyway, there's a bunch more I hadn't considered! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staple_food

Yes, but when you get your vitamins from one main vegetable, it can be a public health problem if a moth eats the whole crop several years in a row. NIGERIA has been limping along since 2016.

#TomatoEbola

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/05/26/4795176...

Re: The Onion Futures Act

#52

Post by time-domain0 » Thu, Dec 13, 2018, 5:13 AM UTC

deytempo wrote: post #44

Who else initially thought this was going to be about TOR?

I was thinking The Onion was being banned because it was predicting the future.

Re: The Onion Futures Act

#53

Post by time-domain0 » Thu, Dec 13, 2018, 5:15 AM UTC

21 wrote: post #13

Laws should have an expiration date. Otherwise in 100 years there will be 1 million laws.

The commercial code (UCC) is already a horrible, inconsistent mess.

Re: The Onion Futures Act

#54

Post by time-domain0 » Thu, Dec 13, 2018, 5:16 AM UTC

21 wrote: post #13

Laws should have an expiration date. Otherwise in 100 years there will be 1 million laws.

Laws need diffs and refactoring.

Re: The Onion Futures Act

#55

Post by flukus » Thu, Dec 13, 2018, 5:23 AM UTC

time-domain0 wrote: post #54

21 wrote: post #13

Laws should have an expiration date. Otherwise in 100 years there will be 1 million laws.

Laws need diffs and refactoring.

I'd like unit tests too. Done in TDD fashion by the creators of the law, not the ad-hoc edge case finding of the precedent system.

Re: The Onion Futures Act

#56

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 13, 2018, 5:42 AM UTC

gammateam wrote: post #41

Aloha wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What on earth does this have to do with the OP's comment?

> What on earth does this have to do with the OP's comment? the onion futures act prevents farmers from having agricultural insurance on onion the same way they do on their other crops the onion futures act can be repealed with very low effort by inserting it into a bill that congress has to pass, such as budget appropriation bills didn't realize nobody caught that

[deleted]

Re: The Onion Futures Act

#57

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 13, 2018, 5:43 AM UTC

21 wrote: post #13

Laws should have an expiration date. Otherwise in 100 years there will be 1 million laws.

[deleted]

Re: The Onion Futures Act

#58

Post by taylorfinley » Thu, Dec 13, 2018, 6:46 AM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #22

anitil wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a good episode! Planet Money is so good that I've worked my way through 10 years of back-episodes over the last year or so, it's one of few podcasts which is worth doing that.

Try Freakonomics if you haven't already. I did the full back catalog on both.

At the risk of derailing things and spiraling into off-topic chatter... is anyone else really bothered by the background music on the Freakonomics podcast? They seem to use the same tracks every episode. Ten years ago that wasn't particularly grating, but as production values in podcasting have gone up listening now I feel like I'm hearing a marketing video thrown together on fiverr.

Re: The Onion Futures Act

#59

Post by gnud » Thu, Dec 13, 2018, 8:24 AM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #22

anitil wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a good episode! Planet Money is so good that I've worked my way through 10 years of back-episodes over the last year or so, it's one of few podcasts which is worth doing that.

Try Freakonomics if you haven't already. I did the full back catalog on both.

I stopped reading Freakonomics after their horrible climate change chapter in the 2nd book. I don't know much about climate science, but even I could recognize a lot of the basic errors in that chapter. That made it hard for me to trust their writing on other issues.

To conclude, the reasons why Levitt and Dubner like geo-engineering so much are based on a misreading of the science, a misrepresentation of proposed solutions, and truly bizarre interpretations of how environmental problems have been dealt with in the past. These are, in the end, much worse errors than their careless misquotes and over-eagerness to shock highlighted by the other critiques. [0]

[0]: www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/why-levitt-and-dubner-like-geo-engineering-and-why-they-are-wrong/

Re: The Onion Futures Act

#60

Post by F_r_k » Thu, Dec 13, 2018, 8:55 AM UTC

ryan-allen wrote: post #33

pwaivers wrote: post #7

Another interesting topic in the derivatives markets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_derivative . Basically you buy futures or options on the temperature, rainfall, and cloud cover. Super interesting!

This is an actual thing??!

If you don't understand it, why have you got an opinion of it ?