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

Sri Lanka scrambles to restore power after monkey causes islandwide outage

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 161 posts

Re: Sri Lanka scrambles to restore power after monkey causes islandwide outage

#81

Post by s1artibartfast »

rectang wrote: post #24
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we certainly need to update/devise methods that do not harm anyone living creatures (or at least the sentient ones) Nature is brutal. I distinctly remember a hike where I stumbled on a mother bear (RIP) tearing apart a still-alive baby elk for her cubs. Human civilisation has done a lot of damage. But we might also be able to spare a lot of sentient suffering, bringing care to the biosphere and taking station as na…

Humans are far and away the most cruel species that has ever walked the face of the earth. No other species has the capacity to invent torture, using our analytical abilities to keep the victim alive indefinitely while inflicting the most vicious agonies possible (e.g. torturing the child in front of the parent).

Are you judging by the median or the extreme? I dont really see why the latter would be a reasonable way to asses species.

Re: Sri Lanka scrambles to restore power after monkey causes islandwide outage

#84

Post by paulryanrogers »

anon291 wrote: post #77
master_kuro wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely insane. It's almost cartoonishly monstrous. Why isn't this better known? The way the Tamils were treated is so pure a representation of evil that I can barely get through the Wikipedia page. This was the work of Buddhists, too! I've been taught that Buddhists were peaceful and non-violent by creed, but clearly not if the only Buddhist majority nation is capable of such abomination.

Most westerners are woefully misguided in their interpretation of eastern religions. We are still people. I'm always shocked when Europeans or Americans single out Christianity as some uniquely malevolent force. People are like this. We have always been like this. Being atheist, agnostic, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, pagan, heathen, etc -- it doesn't make you superhuman. We're all capable of this and the soone…

Much religion depends on magical thinking and/or blind appeals to authority. IME it facilitates bad behavior that's less likely to be tolerated by more rational belief systems.

Re: Sri Lanka scrambles to restore power after monkey causes islandwide outage

#85

Post by rectang »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #81
rectang wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are far and away the most cruel species that has ever walked the face of the earth. No other species has the capacity to invent torture, using our analytical abilities to keep the victim alive indefinitely while inflicting the most vicious agonies possible (e.g. torturing the child in front of the parent).

Are you judging by the median or the extreme? I dont really see why the latter would be a reasonable way to asses species.

I'm primarily responding with skepticism to JumpCriscross about humans minimizing "sentient suffering" — which would be measured by the aggregate of total suffering inflicted by all members of a species.

The extremes contribute the most in the ledger of agonies, but I don't think they are the most relevant — rather I fault human nature for tending to produce extremes. Is it Vladimir Putin who is personally responsible for all the suffering inflicted by the Russian state, or can we say that the environment from which Putin emerged played a role?

Thanks to their reasoning abilities, humans have enormous capability to inflict violence and suffering, which is not matched by a commensurate empathy which would dissuade violence.

Re: Sri Lanka scrambles to restore power after monkey causes islandwide outage

#86

Post by anon291 »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #84
anon291 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most westerners are woefully misguided in their interpretation of eastern religions. We are still people. I'm always shocked when Europeans or Americans single out Christianity as some uniquely malevolent force. People are like this. We have always been like this. Being atheist, agnostic, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, pagan, heathen, etc -- it doesn't make you superhuman. We're all capable of this and the soone…

Much religion depends on magical thinking and/or blind appeals to authority. IME it facilitates bad behavior that's less likely to be tolerated by more rational belief systems.

The arc of history simply does not show that. We can point to the various issues in communist states (not criticizing communism but all the communist states are undoubtedly atheist).

Re: Sri Lanka scrambles to restore power after monkey causes islandwide outage

#87

Post by user_7832 »

anon291 wrote: post #79
master_kuro wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely insane. It's almost cartoonishly monstrous. Why isn't this better known? The way the Tamils were treated is so pure a representation of evil that I can barely get through the Wikipedia page. This was the work of Buddhists, too! I've been taught that Buddhists were peaceful and non-violent by creed, but clearly not if the only Buddhist majority nation is capable of such abomination.

> Why isn't this better known? The external affair minister of India, Mr Jaishankar, recently excoriated a European politician over Indians handling of Ukraine. He said 'Europe needs to get past the mentality that Europe's problems are the world's problems, while the world's problems are not Europes problems '. And this is where that attitude comes from India has dealt with genocides at its borders in Sri Lanka and B…

Somewhat related and tangential, there’s this concept/subreddit of “it’s always the same map” [1] where basically some counties/regions have most/neutral coverage (US/Canada, Western Europe, Australia, Japan mainly), some have limited/biased coverage (India, China, Russia maybe), and many (mainly Africa or smaller Asia/Oceania countries) have none at all. An earthquake in some pacific island killed 150? Never heard of it. Two dead in a school shooting in Arizona? Straight to Reddit’s frontpage.

Mind you, I’m not saying deaths anywhere are good of course - but the reporting is terribly biased in a way that many may not even realize, especially if you live in one of those “western” countries and primarily consume English media/news. Heck, just look at what is commonly considered “core countries” [2]?

1 - https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/4buox6/tragic_world_... 2 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_countries

Re: Sri Lanka scrambles to restore power after monkey causes islandwide outage

#88

Post by coin »

roenxi wrote: post #30

It is hard to think about Sri Lanka without recalling [0] that this is the country which recently attempted to institute a fertiliser ban. My default assumptions about their general infrastructure management are unflattering. [0] https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/fertiliser-ban-d...

More specifically the activist Vandana Shiva talked Sri Lanka into outlawing conventional agriculture and only use organic methods.

“In Sri Lanka, Organic Farming Went Catastrophically Wrong” https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/05/sri-lanka-organic-farmi...

Re: Sri Lanka scrambles to restore power after monkey causes islandwide outage

#89

Post by athenot »

Jailbird wrote: post #83
DecentShoes wrote: post #78

No it didn't. A lack of redundancy caused an islandwide outage.

I heard similar but haven't found a "no, it wasn't a monkey" article yet.

The point is that the monkey was only the trigger. But the full cause of an outage is much more than just the trigger. It's a monkey this time, could have been an operator or a storm...

Digging a bit deeper, they appear to be running with very little margin, if any. Meaning redundancy and protection against cascading failures is limited.

Fixing the real cause is expensive, so it's often easier to just blame the trigger—though admittedly in this case it makes for a great headline. :)

Re: Sri Lanka scrambles to restore power after monkey causes islandwide outage

#90

Post by nullc »

athenot wrote: post #89
Jailbird wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard similar but haven't found a "no, it wasn't a monkey" article yet.

The point is that the monkey was only the trigger . But the full cause of an outage is much more than just the trigger. It's a monkey this time, could have been an operator or a storm... Digging a bit deeper, they appear to be running with very little margin, if any. Meaning redundancy and protection against cascading failures is limited. Fixing the real cause is expensive, so it's often easier to just blame the trig…

or a kite.

It's not like the monkey deployed special monkey skills beyond "occupy space while being electrically conductive".

Post reply on HN