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kansface commented on The World Happiness Report is beset with methodological problems   yaschamounk.substack.com/... · Posted by u/thatoneengineer
dosinga · 2 months ago
I don't know. The World Happiness Report relies on one simple question, which is easy to criticise but at least it applies a clear and consistent method. The paper referred to does not. It uses a special US dataset for states and a much smaller global dataset for every other country, then treats the results as if they measure the same thing. This setup almost guarantees that US states look unusually good. The authors present this as evidence, but it mostly reflects differences in survey design rather than real differences in wellbeing. In that sense the methodological problems here are more serious than the ones they point to in the World Happiness Report.
kansface · 2 months ago
> I don't know. The World Happiness Report relies on one simple question, which is easy to criticise but at least it applies a clear and consistent method.

The simplicity is nice, but for the (probable) fact that suicide attempts/rates and emigration don't correspond... so lets not call it happiness.

kansface commented on Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly   mathstodon.xyz/@tao/11525... · Posted by u/bertman
nostrademons · 5 months ago
Matches my experience. Our kids' co-op preschool went out of business last year; their actual preschool got bought by private equity and is struggling to survive. Longtime neighbors say the spirit of volunteerism in the upper schools is suffering. And institutions that were big civic centers when I grew up - freemasons, Boy/Girl/Cub/Brownie Scouts, 4-H, YMCA/YWCA, local bowling/skating rinks, etc - are now shadows of themselves.

I'll posit a mechanism: when times are good, small organizations are born, growing out of people's spare time and sense of security in the future. After all, by definition organizations start small. And then when times are bad, small organizations are the first to die, because they lack the economies of scale and financial reserves that allow them to weather a contraction. We've entered a time of scarcity since COVID; that's put severe pressure on many smaller organizations, leading to them withering and shrinking away.

Interestingly, bad times often lead to large organizations becoming dysfunctional, but not dying because they have sufficient reserves to weather the storm. We see this with Big Tech now; we saw it with American automakers in the 1970s. During the next expansion period they often lose competitiveness to new startups, and then in the next contraction they die and their replacements become large organizations.

kansface · 5 months ago
People's time is conserved, so a couple of questions: 1. What percentage of decline can be attributed to social media purely as a time sink? 2. What percentage of decline can be attributed to increased political polarization encroaching/claiming/colonizing formerly and nominally neutral spaces?

One remarkable counter example in my neck of the woods is the Orthodox Church, which has done extraordinarily well since covid, picking up tons of converts. Of course, people themselves are conserved, too. That growth has come at the expense of protestant churches which in my reckoning sorta stopped being churches during covid. I'd estimate 1/3 of my local congregation is non-Greek converts who seemingly have no intention of learning the language (services regularly run 1.5 to 2 hours, largely in koine Greek)!

kansface commented on Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down   pcgamer.com/games/masterc... · Posted by u/croes
dec0dedab0de · 6 months ago
I think the mint should maintain a payment processor, and the post office should maintain an official email address for everyone.

these are basic things we need to exist in society, we should not be at the whims of private organizations.

kansface · 6 months ago
What would the post office do with spam? Their existing business model is chiefly predicated on delivering junk mail.

I’m not sure how the federal government would deal with fraud on the payment side, either. The US does not have a strong system of identity.

kansface commented on FBI arrests judge accused of helping man evade immigration authorities   apnews.com/article/immigr... · Posted by u/eterps
whoknowsidont · 10 months ago
This is a real news story with a real arrest on a real judge.

There is no hypothetical here.

kansface · 10 months ago
Yes, but the judge has not been shipped to El Salvador in the middle of the night. Resolving the matter in court _is due process_.
kansface commented on FBI arrests judge accused of helping man evade immigration authorities   apnews.com/article/immigr... · Posted by u/eterps
whoknowsidont · 10 months ago
How are you or anyone else going to remedy anything when you're half a world away, with no access to anyone let alone _anything_ outside your death camp?

Absolutely yes. This needs to stop right here, and the consequences for violating the rule of law, for violating due process, for violating human rights, must be real.

kansface · 10 months ago
You advance civil war as the remedy for the hypothetical. I’m squarely with Lincoln on the matter.
kansface commented on FBI arrests judge accused of helping man evade immigration authorities   apnews.com/article/immigr... · Posted by u/eterps
whoknowsidont · 10 months ago
Democratic states really need to start disallowing federal agents to operate within their borders and band together.

Activate their respective national guards and make it happen.

Yes, that means defying federal law. Yes that means exactly the consequences you want to draw from those actions.

There is no other option at this point. The law is dead in the U.S.

kansface · 10 months ago
No, absolutely not. Trump would federalize the national guard as did Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson and charge the governors with treason. You advocate for de facto succession of the states - we settled that matter with blood last time. The next time will be far worse.

The rule of law does not prohibit bad arrests nor can it. The rule of law provides the opportunity for remedy after the fact.

kansface commented on Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries   cnbc.com/2025/04/09/trump... · Posted by u/bhouston
davidguetta · 10 months ago
I still wonder why this was not done instantly by EU.

US has an imbalance on goods that was used to calculate the tariff amount, but it has the opposite imbalance on service from what I've read

kansface · 10 months ago
The EU effectively backdoors tariffs against US software vendors via fines and the occasional if ineffective subsidy for local competitors in the local language.
kansface commented on Back From The Future: 1995's predictions of 2025 life   newslttrs.com/back-from-t... · Posted by u/rbanffy
rbrownmh · 10 months ago
> "Passenger planes with speed beyond Mach four" and "superconductive magnetic levitation railways at 500 km/h" probably seemed like reasonable extrapolations of current trends at the time.

I'm a bit upset we can't have this today.

kansface · 10 months ago
I was going to comment that air fair is comparatively cheaper since 1995, but its only ~15% in the US (and increasing).
kansface commented on xAI has acquired X, xAI now valued at $80B   twitter.com/elonmusk/stat... · Posted by u/rvz
redox99 · 10 months ago
I don't understand the relation with TSLA.
kansface · 10 months ago
Musk leveraged TSLA stock to buy Twitter.
kansface commented on Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska   washingtonstatestandard.c... · Posted by u/vinnyglennon
vkou · a year ago
It's been considered, but it's not going to help much. A tiny percentage of Alaska's goods come through BC.

Instead, alternative markets and surcharges for potash, minerals, energy, counter tariffs and bans of American goods, expanding interprovincial trade, bans on government procurement from the US, bans on American propaganda and media should be sufficient. And re-armament.

Given that it's clear that America cannot ever again be trusted, (electing Trump once was an accident, twice is actively malicious), and given that it's likely compromised by Russia, it should be considered what it is - a dangerous, unstable, suicidal foreign adversary. A kind of North Korea, but with nuclear weapons.

kansface · a year ago
North Korea _has_ nuclear weapons.

u/kansface

KarmaCake day2357January 2, 2012
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