rvense (u/rvense) - Readit News

rvense commented on All clothing is handmade (2022) ruthtillman.com/post/all-... · Posted by u/panic

somat · 5 months ago

No it's not, a major technological advancement was a machine that sews for you, there is very little hand sewing done any more. The second perhaps more important technological tour de force were the weaving machines, there is even less hand weaving than there is hand sewing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewing_machine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loom

The problem with the term "hand-made" is how vague it is, you would not a call a car "hand made" even though most of the parts are put together by hand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTZ3rJHHSik (Model T Ford Assembly Line) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQPFVouph-w (honda factory tour) here are two car assembly lines 100 years apart notice how many people are still required to do final assembly.

Personally I think the sewing machine was a trickier problem than the weaving machine, We take them for granted today but it took 100 years and a real stroke of genius to figure out how to invert the process in order to make it simple enough for a machine to do it. while weaving has always utilized complex machines to make it possible.

rvense · 5 months ago

I obviously meant sewn by hand, using a sewing machine. Not by a robot. The fabric is cut and passed through a machine by a human.

rvense commented on We're Still Not Done with Jesus newyorker.com/magazine/20... · Posted by u/diodorus

throw0101c · 5 months ago

> Why can I point to just as many Christian movements who are anti-science, pro-slavery, anti-individual?

Because people have free will,† and can choose to accept or ignore orthodox teaching.

This is especially true after Protestantism came about which caused a splintering into (tens of?) thousands of denominations,[1] rejecting even some tenets that were present since the beginning of Christianity (e.g., the Real Presence).

Whereas if you look at Catholicism (and Orthodox churches), they generally have consistent teachings going back to their beginning.

† Which of course some Christian denominations (and some modern materialists like Sapolsky) deny.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denomination...

rvense · 5 months ago

I just don't see how it holds water at all to say that Christianity was what caused the abolition of slavery, when just as many Christians were in favour of it.

rvense commented on All clothing is handmade (2022) ruthtillman.com/post/all-... · Posted by u/panic

tialaramex · 5 months ago

I wonder how true this is. There's a lot of machine sewing, done by humans, to make more complicated articles of clothing (for example a dress, or a pair of trousers), and doubtless that won't be mechanised even though it could be because humans are cheaper to retrain. Your basic little black dress will be hand made, maybe by a person you know, maybe by near slave labour, but humans made that.

But say socks, the actual garment manufacture is entirely mechanical, thread goes in, machine works, socks come out. There are a bunch of human processes we add, including a QA step (the machine doesn't care if it makes occasional non-socks, a QA can see that's not a sock and dispose of it or summon maintenance if the machine starts to do this a lot) but so far as I can see the socks are made by the machine.

rvense · 5 months ago

Yes, socks, but nothing else is: underwear, t-shirts, jeans... all sewn by hand.

rvense commented on We're Still Not Done with Jesus newyorker.com/magazine/20... · Posted by u/diodorus

throw0101c · 5 months ago

> There's no denying the place of Christianity in European history, but that doesn't mean that the good things about our societies are due to Christianity.

Well, the elimination of slavery, and development of human rights (every human is a 'child of God', whether king or peasant). Which is tied in with the concept of individualism:

* https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/27/inventing-indi...

The modern idea of science needed certain metaphysical assumptions that weren't really present in many other religions (and to the extent they were present in philosophy, aspects of said philosophy(s) were often mainstreamed by Christianity (e.g., Aristotle)):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy)#Provid...

* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:God_the_Geometer.jpg

And where "science" (or what passed for it at the time) existed elsewhere, it often withered or was snuffed out; the invention of the telescope was transformational in Europe, but not so much in Muslim lands, Mughal India, or Imperial China:

* https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/intellectual-curiosity-...

Various legal forms were promulgated by the Church (including that the authorities themselves were not (notionally) above the law: not something you'll find with (e.g.) the Chinese Emperor), as were universities:

* https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo562094...

And if they were not due to Christianity, I'd say [citation needed] on how they developed otherwise. And more than developed, but became 'mainstream' thinking in many parts of the globe (though certainly not universally, as Chinese Uyghurs are experiencing).

rvense · 5 months ago

But if these things are because of Christianity, and it is often implied that western modernity is present in it from its beginning, almost an unavoidable consequent of it... then why are they not universal in Christendom? Why can I point to just as many Christian movements who are anti-science, pro-slavery, anti-individual?

rvense commented on We're Still Not Done with Jesus newyorker.com/magazine/20... · Posted by u/diodorus

throw0101c · 5 months ago

> Countries with strong secular foundations regularly top global indexes of well-being, prosperity, and social progress.

And which countries have "secular foundations"? Anything in 'the West' would have Christian foundations:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WEIRDest_People_in_the_Wor...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_(Holland_book)

In the Middle East it would be Muslim, India would be Hindu. Perhaps you mean China, which historically tended to be be Confucian, which could perhaps be considered more of a philosophy than a religion? But modern China is (notionally) Marxist-Communist, which is materialist/atheistic in teaching, but born out of the Enlightenment, which is certainly Christian inspired.

The idea of secularism—a separation of Church/Temple/Mosque and State, and religion being a private affair—is itself a Christian/Protestant one.

* https://pragyata.com/secularism-as-a-colonial-project/

* https://www.jstor.org/stable/4417675

* https://research.flw.ugent.be/nl/projects/secularism-colonia...

rvense · 5 months ago

The interesting question is whether the West is succesful because of or inspite of our Christian base. There's no denying the place of Christianity in European history, but that doesn't mean that the good things about our societies are due to Christianity. Christianity has changed a lot since Roman times, and its place and expression in various societies have been affected by other ideological currents and reinterpretations.

I'm Danish, which while nominally Christian has been a fairly irreligious country for a few generations now, and it certainly seems to me that the less influence and visibility Christianity has had, the better off we've been. Most of the things that make this country a good place to live come from socialism/social democracy and feminism, whereas many strands of Christianity has mostly been a reactionary force (with some exceptions).

rvense commented on Boston Dynamics shows off another major leap in humanoid mobility newatlas.com/ai-humanoids... · Posted by u/matthewsinclair

RaSoJo · 5 months ago

Is it just me, or do these new "leaps" from Boston Dynamics feel tiresome?

People would surely appreciate automation that helps with household tasks like cleaning, chopping vegetables, and ironing clothes. But such delicate activities don’t seem to be part of BD’s vision....not even on the periphery.

What is the end goal that BD has in mind? Yet another Police/Military toy?

rvense · 5 months ago

I wonder what this will cost to build and how often they break. I doubt it's going to be able to compete with the price of human labour anytime soon. So it's either for going places people can't go (rescue bot?), or doing things people really don't want to do, like walk towards gunfire.

rvense commented on Harvard study: open-source has an economic value of 8.8T dollars heise.de/en/news/Harvard-... · Posted by u/codeman001

rvense · 5 months ago

Sounds low. None of the companies I've worked for would have existed without open source.

rvense commented on Claude can now search the web anthropic.com/news/web-se... · Posted by u/meetpateltech

Sargos · 5 months ago

Any AI tool I make will ignore robots.txt on principle. Artificial humans should have equal rights as real humans.

rvense · 5 months ago

People like you are ruining the internet.

rvense commented on Turkish university annuls Erdogan rival's degree, preventing run for president reuters.com/world/asia-pa... · Posted by u/perihelions

eru · 5 months ago

As long as they have jobs elsewhere?

rvense · 5 months ago

Brain drain means you have great politics, gotcher.

rvense commented on GIMP 3.0 testing.gimp.org/news/202... · Posted by u/wicket

necovek · 5 months ago

UI, where I stands for "interface" just like in HCI, used to mean all those things.

But in the industry the focus turned to aesthetics, so a new term was invented to differentiate between focusing on the entire interface ("experience") vs just the look.

Just like "design" encompasses all of it, but we add qualifiers to ensure it's not misunderstood for "pretty".

rvense · 5 months ago

And that has happened again. Changing the colours is "improving UX".