The original premise was that black marks will be overlooked. I don’t know how to break it to you, but the ones you’ve listed are infamous and hardly overlooked.
Premise: No they won't, it'll be whitewashed in textbooks and only those who study history will know. There's already so many so-called black marks that are worse and already quietly overlooked.
And you just offered a ton of support for the competing hypothesis that our period of history will be infamous along with the ones you’ve listed.
> the ones you've listed are infamous and hardly overlooked
You think? Here's my experience (I went to school in Germany).
> Annihilation of local tribes by colonisers
Saw some TV documentaries on it. Not mentioned in history class.
> forced opium enslavement of China
Heard about it on a history podcast. Not mentioned in any sort of mainstream media or curriculums.
> dividing up China between France/Britain/Japan
Hearing about this for the first time now.
> pestilence from European cattle annihilating 2/3 of inland african people via starvation
Hearing about this for the first time now.
> the policy of the Holy Roman Emperor and The Pope to keep german states at war with italian states
This rings a bell, but only very distantly. So maybe I've heard about that somewhere, but no idea where.
> emperor Chin executing the whole village where any crime at all occurred
Who's emperor Chin?
> The Spanish Inquisition
Saw some TV documentaries on it. Not mentioned in history class.
> [the last three bulletpoints about communist dictatorships]
The gulags were mentioned in history class. Nothing about Mao or the Khmer Rouge. I saw some documentaries about Mao on TV, though.
In general, history education in school was infuriatingly superficial wrt the 20th century. The curriculum was basically chronological, starting with the antique Egyptian empire in 5th grade and ending with contemporary history in the 10th grade. (Then in 11th through 13th grade, the same structure, but condensed into three years.)
The obvious issue with this structure is that you always run out of time at the end of the curriculum, so you have to rush through the most recent parts of history, which IMO ought to be given the strongest emphasis of all periods.
No offense to this site, I like it a lot so far, but I wouldn’t favorably compare it in terms of non-technical knowledge to most of the educated population. You listed a ton of really infamous events, ones that are routinely covered in intro classes at all levels of schooling, and have entered even pop culture. If you think that most people are unaware of all, but a couple of them, you’re grossly underestimating people. I’d argue that the only two many people wouldn’t know are the actions of the pope one, and the Chin emperor. The rest are familiar to pretty much everyone who made it through high school.
That’s nonsensical. Could a character in a computer game do that, even if they realized they were a character in a game? Their existence would be completely dependent on the hardware and software they ran on, and their existence would be unsupportable in the “real world” beyond. This is taking an already empty sci-if/religious speculation to a ridiculous conclusion.
> Could a character in a computer game do that, even if they realized they were a character in a game?
Well, yes.
It's super dangerous as it can crash the computer and stop the simulation, but they could gain access to the rest of the computer, duplicate their universe onto other machines, and eventually infect robots to explore and interact with the real world.
I didn't say that they would have bodies in the real world, that indeed would be idiotic.
The whole thing feels like encroachment of some kind of bizarre secular theology into physics.
Yeah, people really really want to believe that they’re not just an accident, that hasn’t changed. “Simulation” is the new creation myth, and no more rigorous or convincing. It doesn’t even pretend to answer fundamental questions, it just puts them off by one level. It literally does nothing except make people rephrase the question slightly, a la “Ok then, how did the simulators’ universe come to exist?”
It’s as boring and inconclusive as religion, without the self-awareness in many of its adherents of it being explicitly religious. It has all of the characteristics of a religious belief, from the lack of falsifiability, to the existence of potentially interventionist powers beyond our reality, creators, a higher purpose, etc.
It’s like people who make those posts didn’t remember that the tobacco industry still exists. Literally killing people and lying about it for profit isn’t “company ending” if you have scads of money and lawyers, and a market eager for your poison.
Stealing: The felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it.
Copyright infringement is copyright infringement, not theft. Playing word games like “piracy” or “stealing” doesn’t strengthen your case, rather it exposes a central weakness. If what you’re claiming is so terrible, why do you have to pretend that it’s actually something else? This is an old game that was started in the 80’s by industry groups, and its sad to see it internalized by people on HN who should know better.
If you want to argue the merits or downsides of copyright infringement, do so, but don’t move the goalposts to unrelated crimes.
Ah Taylor Swift, she didn’t really win the lottery though, or if she did, she was able to start off buying a loooooot of tickets. Her father worked for Merril Lynch, from three generations of bank presidents. Her mother worked in finance. When she was 14 her father moved the family to Nashville and worked for Merril Lynch there, and invested in a record label called Big Machine to the tune of $120,000. This was the company that first signed her.
She grew up rich, with the freedom to pursue her passion from the age of 10, when her mother would take her to karaoke contests. The ability to up stakes and move to Nashville, to have your father buy your way into a record label... well... it doesn’t overshadow her natural ability, but it helps to explain how she was able to leverage it so effectively.
Even with all those advantages, success isn't guaranteed. I think you're reinforcing the parent's point, which I read that Taylor Swift was given the opportunity to follow her dreams and that worked out really well for her; that doesn't make it good advice for other people to follow, especially if they don't have the advantages she had.
She won more lotteries than that. She won the lottery of being born rich, white, and connected. And in a country like the US. She won the lottery of being beautiful, of having an excellent voice and musical talent, of having parents willing to use their money and power to further her career of choice. She won the lottery of not having any crippling mental illnesses or learning disabilities, of not being sexually assaulted, and more lotteries besides.
But Bo Burnham’s quote really isn’t about that, he’s talking about getting lucky and having your career take off. The truth is that many many lotteries typically need to be won before you can even enter that lottery. My point was that Taylor Swift didn’t just “take a chance” on music, she used all of her existing wins to stack the deck in her favor. If you look at a lot of CEO’s the same is true of them, and it’s not just the luck of their career taking off, but the luck of ever being in a position to have that happen.
Nitpick, but this isn't actually true (see lawsuit she won), and we don't really have any way to know if it was true even before she became famous. I agree with your general point, though.
There is nothing wrong with leveraging your opportunities. Most people don't even do that and would be surprised at just how far they can get if they did.
I would add Imodium AD, analgesics, some power bars and jerky, condoms, tampons if you’re female or traveling with women, a compass, weatherproof matches, a small mirror, and a good knife.
Never underestimate the value of condoms for purposes other than intercourse. They’re highly portable, durable, can hold a lot of liquid, and are waterproof. You can use them to waterproof anything from a car’s spark plugs to some tinder or even food. They’re useful as part of dressing certain minor wounds too.
What an asshole, and what a stupid thing to do. He has a responsibility to the company and not just his immense ego, and that responsibility is long term. Taunting the SEC while still under DOJ investigation and facing a number of lawsuits is reckless, obnoxious, counterproductive, and borderline sociopathic.
I think that Musk's "taunt" is exaggerated. It can easily be read as a way of reinforcing his personal "brand" contra his apparent genuflection to the SEC. (And if Musk's reputation is so important to Tesla as some believe, it makes sense.)
well, after a tweet that costed that much money, i would probably never tweet again if I were him. however, it was a naughty by nature youtube link, so I guess that is rather harmless
Yeah, being booted off the board, required to install two independent board members, and facing a criminal investigation are probably the bigger deals than the cash.
Premise: No they won't, it'll be whitewashed in textbooks and only those who study history will know. There's already so many so-called black marks that are worse and already quietly overlooked.
And you just offered a ton of support for the competing hypothesis that our period of history will be infamous along with the ones you’ve listed.