Prions behave a bit like a biological version of ice-nine. It's a novel shape of protein that "teaches" other protein to be shaped like it. Obviously its scope is far more limited than all the world's water, but it's still sobering to think that this risk even exists.
With all due respect, Hacker News is not the place for making blanket assertions with no references. Please post a citation if you have one. Otherwise please don't waste readers' time with unfounded rumors.
We seem to live in a post-ironic moment. Look no further than the Boogaloo Boys. They want to start a second American civil war and are named after the 1984 movie "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo".
It would be a joke except they've engaged in violent attacks up to and including murder in the service of trying to start that aforementioned civil war. Are they serious or a joke? I think their embrace of a ridiculous name makes them almost more frightening because it shows their contempt for reasonableness, for lack of a better term.
It's comparable to how the Nazi "goose step" march was terrifying precisely because it was so awkward and unnatural. It's like, if these guys are capable of doing this with a straight face, what else are they capable of?
Jokingly referring to something as "<subject_goes_here> 2: Electric Boogaloo" was a very common turn of phrase on certain parts of the internet in the early-mid 2010s. It sounds like a joke because it grew out of a joke.
>almost more frightening because it shows their contempt for reasonableness, for lack of a better term.
I think another way to look at it is willful nonconformance and rejection of mainstream values (and judgement). Not unlike gutter punks dressing the way they did.
I think counter culture has a long history of this, from men wearing their hair long to people dressing up as literal clowns.
Eh, we've done a partially successful job constraining nuclear weapons beyond the US and the USSR/Russia. And, so far, we've constrained their use in war.
For way more info about military patches, challenge coins, and how to decode them, check out "From the Archives of Peter Merlin, Aviation Archaeologist" by Trevor Paglen.
He goes into detail about how patches with aliens indicate the project took place at Area 51, and that lightning bolts represent electronic warfare.
> It's been really eye-opening to start realizing just how many people refer to a collective as a unit. And how many beliefs are dependent on not inspecting that fallacious thinking.
This is the top comment in a chain of siblings that are dogpiling on the parent for no good reason. I'm replying because I think it's a case of pointing out a distinction without difference, which is a low value response up there with "But correlation isn't causation!"
In this case there are many different groups that benefit from a higher prison population. Private prisons are perhaps the most commonly cited, but they hold a tiny percent of the total prison population.
But there are many, many private businesses that sell to prisons. Sudexo-Marriott makes millions selling services to private and public prisons. I once toured a "super max" prison in Ohio and saw that they had tens of thousands of dollars in commercial Hobart restaurant equipment.
The knee jerk response here is, "Of course a prison pays for commercial dining services and equipment! That's not surprising, it's inevitable!" But that's my point. It's inevitable that there's billions of dollars being made off the US's prison population. And that's not including industries based specifically on exploiting prisoners, like prison phone and teleconferencing services that overcharged the incarcerated and their families by billions of dollars.
There are many utterly conventional businesses that use slave labor from prisons. This is not hyperbole -- prisoners are often forced to work for $1 a day or less. They are punished with solitary confinement or even additional prison time if they refuse.
The final rebuttal would be, "Well not everyone in America benefits from a large prison population!" But if you read carefully, that's exactly what the parent comment is saying. But enough different and powerful stakeholders do benefit from a large and growing prison population that it's difficult to enact reforms to make that number smaller.
It’s completely fair to say that private prisons have too much pull and that there are bad incentives like you point out.
It’s completely unfair to express surprise that Americans would come up with a way to reduce their prison population because of the notion that they’ve all been captured by the private prison industry.
> they’ve all been captured by the private prison industry
This is a straw man argument, which is also discouraged on HN. Literally no one -- besides you and the sibling comments below -- has suggested that everyone has been captured by private prisons.
Instead there are businesses all along the spectrum of those that incidentally do businesses with prisons to those that exclusively do business with prisons to those that are (private) prisons. And that doesn't even include police and sheriffs departments or politicians who benefit from prisons.
I sincerely suggest that you engage with the discourse at hand rather than dismissing it with straw manning and other logical fallacies.
> “I'm surprised at this concept spreading in the US, since the system would generally benefit from having perpetual perpetrators percolating through the prison slavery system.”
A sweeping statement about the entire conceptual space of a huge country based on ideas about the private prison system manipulating an entire country.
“the system” here is specifically referencing the web of government and corporate interests that benefit from a large and growing prison population. There is no reasonable reading of this which implies the author naively believes EVERYONE supports prisons.
Please do a better job of close reading and critical thinking. Especially with “now you’re strawmanning,” the rhetorical equivalent of “I know you are but what am I?”
> Probably one of the usual suspects: projection or virtue signaling.
Pretty sure the post you're referring to is wondering why the original caption referred to the "leisurely negro". The alleged virtue signaling you refer to seems to be an honest misunderstanding by the author of the Myth of Bananaland.
> It has already has a production rate higher than its rival EV trucks and has outsold them as well this year.
This struck me as dead wrong, so I looked it up. You're dead wrong. BUT, you're less-dead wrong than I expected:
Estimated sales numbers for 2024 as of 11/23/2024:
Tesla CT: 16,000
Rivian R1T: 16,312
Ford F150 Lightning: 22,807
I'm honestly surprised the CT is estimated to have sold so many trucks! But the Ford sold over 40% more.
But as per the original article: Whomst amongst us can say whether the line was shut down due to low demand or to increase production / retool for a cheaper line?
Massachusetts is the state rated #1 in pre-K to 12 education, and they have about 100% of teachers in unions. This seems to destroy your argument that teachers unions need to be "abolished" in the name of helping students.
Yeah sorry I don't care about some click bait US News list on "best states". Also, the methodology is based on test scores which I could care less about. Being good at the SATs and ACT just mean you have rich parents that can steamroll your tutoring, which tracks with high cost of living places like Mass.
You are literally choosing to dismiss data that destroys your argument while providing none which supports it. Your opposition to teachers unions is clearly based on your emotions and ideology rather than any facts. Please do better when posting on HN.
correlation does not equal causation homie. a US news listicle with a method of ranking doesn't mean anything. i can find a list that has mass towards the middle or bottom depending on the bias of the ranking i share.
This is a major misconception. The people you see homeless on the streets are very disproportionately those with mental illness(es) and addiction problems. But studies show a huge percent of the homeless have jobs; the link below says 40% to 50%.
But we don't see people workings and living in their car or in a shelter "being homeless," so we tend to think of the visibly homeless as representative of all homeless folks.
And for those who do have mental illness or addiction problems, well, those problems are severely exacerbated by being homeless. They'd be more likely to get treatment and improve with housing.
reply