The U.N. humanitarian agency, citing Gaza’s Health Ministry,
The "Gaza Health Ministry" is run by Hamas. We seriously shouldn't be taking them at face value. Multiple math people have looked at their numbers and decided they're made up.
That's over and above that we care about "soldier" and "civilian".
A 17 year old soldier being reported as a child is inappropriate. Of course we think that Hamas reports all of their soldiers' deaths as women and children so there's that.
No. Free trade doesn't depend on "equal" (actually it depends on different marginal productivities). It also doesn't depend on "fair".
Counter intuitively, the benefits to trade happen to the country that is the least restrictive, not the most restrictive. China's stupidly massive subsidies are giving American consumers free money.
I oppose trade with Russia and China because it would be "a win for everyone", not because it wouldn't.
This has always been "what did you expect". The USA always kills a lot more of their civilians than they kill of ours. "Proportional" means "military gains should be proportional to civilian suffering".
Hamas had something like 20k to 40k soldiers at the start of this. It's urban combat and Hamas uses human shields.
Assume five dead civilians for every soldier. "Proportional" means "120k to 240k dead Gazans."
Assume two dead civilians for every soldier. "Proportional" means "60k to 120k dead Gazans."
On day one I figured we'd be lucky to have less than 100k dead.
In 1960 the cure for cancer cost zero because it didn't exist. We're better off for having it (and hundreds of other cures), but cutting edge medical tech is expensive. On the other hand my 1980 meds cost less than a dollar per month.
Everyone in the US has access to insane levels of information compared to 1960.
That Dutch court's report apparently took Hamas' claims on the number of dead women and children at face value.
In the last couple of days the UN cut it's count for the number of dead children and women in half. The number that is left is STILL what Hamas claims, but they're still claiming the number of dead soldiers is zero.
We could deal with the whole "we know there are war crimes" by just admitting that Hamas lies about it's numbers. If we chose to believe Israel then about half the dead are militants.
Kazzy: we’re talking about about $2M in a school with a budget of $4.2B
That's just the start. They're going to be imposing costs that the rest of the system will pay.
They're going to need IT support, office space (facilities, maintenance, maybe even a building), parking, and so on.
They're also going to be insisting on giving training to everyone and focusing the rest of the administration on DEI. That's their actual job.
At my company we had an entire off-site day for my entire unit devoted to this stuff. That's a 0.4% loss to every member of my organization plus whatever the non-trivial off site charges were, and we were just doing the minimum.
This is going to range between a percent or two for a low end group to double that.
That's just overhead. If they have star chamber legal inquisitions then the U's legal fees wills be a thing because "legal" will get involved. If they're allowed to get involved in employment then that will be sub-optimal.
Chip: I haven’t seen much evidence of it being beneficial or harmful.
Bouncing resumes because of their lack of devotion to a religion is a problem.
Hiring/firing based on skin color is a problem.
Telling minorities they can't succeed because their own efforts don't matter is a problem.
Wasted resources is a problem and means hiring expenses, tuition, or other costs. My company is going to pass our DEI costs down to our customers, you won't recognize them.
Philip: Strikes me she has a LOT to teach me as a privileged white man about how to make the world better through how I do my work.
What do you do?
And what did you change because of her?
My company had all engineers go through training on the importance of not using lead.
Lots of efforts, training, documentation of training, and so on. However for all that, the amount of lead in my software was zero even before the training.
It's not that I don't think removing lead is important, that's not the problem.
I've read some deep dives on this. The middle class is mostly shrinking because people are moving up, not down. Well, and divorce is up, but presumably that's a good thing.
That "large concentration of wealth" is "large creation of wealth", and the bulk of super rich are new money.
Entitlement spending is massively up. In 1980 we spent $493.4 Billion on social welfare and in 2023 we spent $3.8 Trillion.
The math doesn't seem to support the (common) idea that there's a problem.
Jaybird: it’s still entirely unclear if they help anyone but the highly paid consultants who run those workshops and trainings.
Of course it helps, just not in the way that is advertised since the training is a joke and divorced from reality.
If a company is large enough, at some point it's going to have an employee be exposed as a serious racist.
Then the professional race baiters will claim the company knew and did nothing or even that the company itself is racist. Your brand will be dragged through the mud until you pay them off.
So just pay them off ahead of time. This training shields the company against accusations.
On “Will the Real Free-Trade Party Please Stand Up?”
Philip: more resources to do things that the US strategically opposes
Things like mass murder, genocide, invading their neighbors, and so on.
Free trade would make all of us richer. That's a bad thing in this situation.
On “Open Mic for the week of 5/13/2024”
The U.N. humanitarian agency, citing Gaza’s Health Ministry,
The "Gaza Health Ministry" is run by Hamas. We seriously shouldn't be taking them at face value. Multiple math people have looked at their numbers and decided they're made up.
That's over and above that we care about "soldier" and "civilian".
A 17 year old soldier being reported as a child is inappropriate. Of course we think that Hamas reports all of their soldiers' deaths as women and children so there's that.
On “Will the Real Free-Trade Party Please Stand Up?”
No. Free trade doesn't depend on "equal" (actually it depends on different marginal productivities). It also doesn't depend on "fair".
Counter intuitively, the benefits to trade happen to the country that is the least restrictive, not the most restrictive. China's stupidly massive subsidies are giving American consumers free money.
I oppose trade with Russia and China because it would be "a win for everyone", not because it wouldn't.
On “Biden’s Israel Aid Pause”
Either Hamas needs to surrender or Israel needs to live with 10-7 events.
Ethically I'm comfortable with the former but not the latter. So that's what we should be pushing for.
Israel is doing what we first did after 911. It's ethical at this point.
They may jump the shark later but that's a different issue.
"
This has always been "what did you expect". The USA always kills a lot more of their civilians than they kill of ours. "Proportional" means "military gains should be proportional to civilian suffering".
Hamas had something like 20k to 40k soldiers at the start of this. It's urban combat and Hamas uses human shields.
Assume five dead civilians for every soldier. "Proportional" means "120k to 240k dead Gazans."
Assume two dead civilians for every soldier. "Proportional" means "60k to 120k dead Gazans."
On day one I figured we'd be lucky to have less than 100k dead.
"
Multiple people have suggested dead soldiers are reported as women or children and/or the numbers are basically made up.
"
"Total number of dead" isn't an issue when it comes to morality in this sort of thing. We killed 3 to 4 million Germans during WW2.
Ethically the questions are whether Israel had the right to go to war after 10-7 (clearly yes) and are they not targeting civilians.
This is urban fighting with human shields being used as a tactic.
Israel will be doing very well if it's only killing 3 civilians for every soldier and they're claiming much better.
At one point I compared to the total number of bombs dropped to the number of dead and got a 2:1 ratio; I.e. they use two bombs for every dead person.
That by itself suggests they're not targeting civilians.
"
On May 6, the UN published data showing that 34,735 people had reportedly been killed in Gaza, including over 9,500 women and over 14,500 children.
On May 8, the UN published data showing 34,844 people had reportedly been killed, including 4,959 women and 7,797 children.
And yes, both of those sets of numbers have the problem that the number of soldiers reported killed is zero.
On “Open Mic for the week of 5/13/2024”
"Adjusted for inflation" deals with that.
We also have increases in technology.
In 1960 the cure for cancer cost zero because it didn't exist. We're better off for having it (and hundreds of other cures), but cutting edge medical tech is expensive. On the other hand my 1980 meds cost less than a dollar per month.
Everyone in the US has access to insane levels of information compared to 1960.
On “Biden’s Israel Aid Pause”
That Dutch court's report apparently took Hamas' claims on the number of dead women and children at face value.
In the last couple of days the UN cut it's count for the number of dead children and women in half. The number that is left is STILL what Hamas claims, but they're still claiming the number of dead soldiers is zero.
We could deal with the whole "we know there are war crimes" by just admitting that Hamas lies about it's numbers. If we chose to believe Israel then about half the dead are militants.
On “From WUNC, North Carolina Public Radio: UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees votes to divert DEI funding, redirecting it to campus public safety”
Universities have been pressured to clean up antisemitism by various political masters.
They have a department which is (according to wiki) devoted to creating antisemitism.
The first fact doesn't have to be related to the second, but they probably are.
"
Kazzy: we’re talking about about $2M in a school with a budget of $4.2B
That's just the start. They're going to be imposing costs that the rest of the system will pay.
They're going to need IT support, office space (facilities, maintenance, maybe even a building), parking, and so on.
They're also going to be insisting on giving training to everyone and focusing the rest of the administration on DEI. That's their actual job.
At my company we had an entire off-site day for my entire unit devoted to this stuff. That's a 0.4% loss to every member of my organization plus whatever the non-trivial off site charges were, and we were just doing the minimum.
This is going to range between a percent or two for a low end group to double that.
That's just overhead. If they have star chamber legal inquisitions then the U's legal fees wills be a thing because "legal" will get involved. If they're allowed to get involved in employment then that will be sub-optimal.
"
If you're applying to be a professor of engineering then "devoted to DEI" is not one of the requirements.
Why should devotion to a seriously flawed ideology be one of the U's top priorities?
And this jars pretty seriously with Chip's entire "it's not proven to have any effect".
Picture Universities hiring people based on their horoscopes. "He's sub-standard in every way but he's an Aquarius, he's what we want".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity,_equity,_and_inclusion#Mandatory_diversity_statements_within_academia
"
Chip: Like, some documentation of these charges would be nice
That wasted resources result in higher costs being passed down to consumers is a math thing.
The rest of it is basically from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity,_equity,_and_inclusion#Criticism_and_controversy
We could add, DEI consistently sees Jews as "oppressors" so it's going to contribute to antisemitism.
It's super focus on equality of outcomes opposes the concept of equality under the law.
Claiming that it's worthless and has no effect isn't a great reason to then claim it should have a share of educational and fiscal resources.
What are the good things that it does to justify it's share of public dollars?
"
Chip: I haven’t seen much evidence of it being beneficial or harmful.
Bouncing resumes because of their lack of devotion to a religion is a problem.
Hiring/firing based on skin color is a problem.
Telling minorities they can't succeed because their own efforts don't matter is a problem.
Wasted resources is a problem and means hiring expenses, tuition, or other costs. My company is going to pass our DEI costs down to our customers, you won't recognize them.
"
Philip: Strikes me she has a LOT to teach me as a privileged white man about how to make the world better through how I do my work.
What do you do?
And what did you change because of her?
My company had all engineers go through training on the importance of not using lead.
Lots of efforts, training, documentation of training, and so on. However for all that, the amount of lead in my software was zero even before the training.
It's not that I don't think removing lead is important, that's not the problem.
"
Chip: #2 Again, what sort of statements are we talking about here?
There are Universities where resumes which don't include a pledge to increase DEI aren't considered for employment.
As a matter of policy, the DEI adherents in HR don't forward the resumes to the appropriate department.
On “Open Mic for the week of 5/13/2024”
We don't teach that Plato was correct.
We most certainly don't try to change the definitions of "truth" and "evidence" so we can claim Plato was correct.
Nor do we hire administrators to enforce his views on the world.
"
UN has halved the number of women and children killed in Gaza.
If Israel is right the new number is still too high.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-800772
On “From WUNC, North Carolina Public Radio: UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees votes to divert DEI funding, redirecting it to campus public safety”
By that measure half the administration can be let go. And probably should be.
On “Open Mic for the week of 5/13/2024”
This is like saying Marx has some very good points.
It's correct, but it shouldn't be believed and followed (much less taught) because a number of the core tenants are wrong.
"
I've read some deep dives on this. The middle class is mostly shrinking because people are moving up, not down. Well, and divorce is up, but presumably that's a good thing.
That "large concentration of wealth" is "large creation of wealth", and the bulk of super rich are new money.
Entitlement spending is massively up. In 1980 we spent $493.4 Billion on social welfare and in 2023 we spent $3.8 Trillion.
The math doesn't seem to support the (common) idea that there's a problem.
"
Jaybird: it’s still entirely unclear if they help anyone but the highly paid consultants who run those workshops and trainings.
Of course it helps, just not in the way that is advertised since the training is a joke and divorced from reality.
If a company is large enough, at some point it's going to have an employee be exposed as a serious racist.
Then the professional race baiters will claim the company knew and did nothing or even that the company itself is racist. Your brand will be dragged through the mud until you pay them off.
So just pay them off ahead of time. This training shields the company against accusations.
"
Ditto on all of that.
The people clamoring most loudly for authoritarianism seem to be the people who are well taken care of by the modern economy
Yeah that's weird. My impression is we're looking at fall out from the rise of social media and targeted news.
"
Presumably that increases equality by a lot.
Military spending is down a lot, from 7-8% of the GDP to about 3.5%
Overall spending of the gov is massively up, almost all of it is entitlements.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.