Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What has melted your brain recently?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 231 posts

Re: Ask HN: What has melted your brain recently?

#81

Post by mavhc »

neonsunset wrote: post #78
pasabagi wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are two points: first, 'all lives matter' is a typical dog whistle for a lot of people who are racist , even if you are not. If you're going to argue that line, you have to try and put some clear water between you and them. The second point is that, in an unjust society, not accounting for the effects of that injustice on people (say candidates for a job position) compounds that injustice. So like, if y…

That's the core of the issue. Instead of addressing rhetoric at a face value, people put their projection of disagreement into your words and judge you by that. After all, what is the difference between people who use "all lives matter" as a thinly veiled excuse for discrimination and people who use "it's a pride month and you're homophobic" as an excuse to attack you when asked to stay on technical topic? Addendum:…

The point is to do both, acknowledging that certain people have inherent (dis)advantages, and that established perspectives are usually the perspective of the establishment, which isn't representative of the whole

Re: Ask HN: What has melted your brain recently?

#82

Post by neonsunset »

_8j50 wrote: post #65
neonsunset wrote: post #51

Reality check I got after being accused of having anti-minority opinion while arguing for protection of all categories of people, just without double standards and without giving priority to some over others. This got me instantly banned from a community I had professional interest and participation in, which made me realize the damaging effects of culture wars that are about to get worse for major corporations. With…

How is this even relevant to tech work? Minority, inclusion,etc... do you work in HR, legal or PR? If not how does writing code or engineering systems include that subject? Honestly curious.

> "Honestly curious, wink-wink"

A follow-up comment in the response above addresses your question. It's a situation online, not in a workplace.

However, it is similar to what I tend to notice at work more and more, with a small number of employees having major negative impact while the majority stays silent and does nothing.

Humans are good at dealing with crisis when it's apparent and happens quickly as it triggers our fight or flight response. This crisis I think is slow, which we are notoriously bad at mitigating (case in point: climate change). This means that we could expect seeing major resistance once the situation becomes intolerable even to otherwise agreeable people. My fear is when this happens, irreversible damage to fundamental freedoms will already be done and we'll be back to the cycle of bad times -> struggle -> good times.

Re: Ask HN: What has melted your brain recently?

#83

Post by fractallyte »

iqkznnft wrote: post #75

War in Ukraine. I've always been proud of being European, but this event is exposing how shambolic the EU can be in some situations. Fuck, I just saw the headline "Germany says it can send rocket launchers in August"...

You should have seen the war in ex-Yugoslavia...

Many parallels with this current war. Describing the EU (and UN) as "shambolic" is not the word I'd use... :-/

Re: Ask HN: What has melted your brain recently?

#84

Post by incomingpain »

This 2nd US Civil war issue is melting my brain actively.

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/5/31/the-civil-war-t...

https://nypost.com/2022/06/14/squad-rep-bowman-warns-of-civi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_American_Civil_War

I don't agree with the cold civil war thing, but seemingly many people believe the civil war has already started. Glad I have no intention of going to the USA. I would agree with that it seems inevitable. So there's your lay down and contemplate.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2022/06/14/democra...

I believe I read that polling shows republicans are at 80 year highs and an expectation of close to or super majority in house and senate.

What's the contemplation on that?

Re: Ask HN: What has melted your brain recently?

#86

Post by negative_zero »

I'm a hardware engineer: The pitchforking on HN about "right to repair" issues. Frankly, those threads degenerate into what I'd expect on reddit.

To clarify, I support the problems trying to be solved but a lot of the ideas are just the wrong way to go about it. I've thought of weighing in, but the way some other dissenting commenters get beaten down means I self censor and move on to other threads.

Re: Ask HN: What has melted your brain recently?

#87

Post by H8crilA »

dmos62 wrote: post #58
H8crilA wrote: post #26

The 7MW radar that was installed on a one-of-a-kind variant of the RC-135: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_RC-135#RC-135E_Lisa_Ann... From more negative things, the realities of war. See pictures from Mariupol for example, or listen to the intercepted phone calls from that region ...

> The system could track an object the size of a soccer ball from a distance of 300 miles (480 km), and its mission was to monitor Soviet ballistic missile testing in the reentry phase Sounds pretty cool.

If you were to somehow point this radar back at the aircraft itself it would probably melt the airframe :)

Re: Ask HN: What has melted your brain recently?

#88

Post by _8j50 »

neonsunset wrote: post #82
_8j50 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this even relevant to tech work? Minority, inclusion,etc... do you work in HR, legal or PR? If not how does writing code or engineering systems include that subject? Honestly curious.

> "Honestly curious, wink-wink" A follow-up comment in the response above addresses your question. It's a situation online, not in a workplace. However, it is similar to what I tend to notice at work more and more, with a small number of employees having major negative impact while the majority stays silent and does nothing. Humans are good at dealing with crisis when it's apparent and happens quickly as it triggers…

No idea what you are talking about. Did you reply to the right comment?

Re: Ask HN: What has melted your brain recently?

#89

Post by neonsunset »

_8j50 wrote: post #66
causality0 wrote: post #4

People at work complaining up a storm about the cost of military aid to Ukraine while at the same time advocating a declaration of war against Russia as if that would be cheaper.

Mutually assured destruction would sure be cheaper.

Mutually assured destruction is unlikely to happen. It is game theory advantageous to make other party believe you are an irrational agent while being the opposite. If non-nuclear systems require human input to arm and engage them, rest assured nuclear systems would be even more so.

That said, if people actually looked at the numbers, the military help provided by US to Ukraine is spare change compared to the cost of economic and political consequences of not providing it.

Re: Ask HN: What has melted your brain recently?

#90

Post by postsantum »

causality0 wrote: post #4

People at work complaining up a storm about the cost of military aid to Ukraine while at the same time advocating a declaration of war against Russia as if that would be cheaper.

Most people in developed countries don't know what a real war is. With some exceptions, most "wars" in the last decades were mostly TV shows about NATO/US bombing some unfortunate army to smithereens. The possibility of deadly retaliation resides in the same part of viewer's brain as Terminator movie

This, and the positive view of being a hardliner lead to insane statements

Post reply on HN