<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: slothtrop</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=slothtrop</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sat, 04 Apr 2026 15:04:41 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=slothtrop" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by slothtrop in "Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Man, I'd like to do this. My suburb doesn't have much foot-traffic though. I do my best to greet the neighbors, and sometimes chat up people at the coffee shop. Time constraints are a factor when it comes to socializing, as a parent to toddlers.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 25 Mar 2025 20:41:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43475730</link><dc:creator>slothtrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43475730</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43475730</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by slothtrop in "‘Bluey’s World’: How a Cute Aussie Puppy Became a Juggernaut"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think that's it. They've found a balance in "family" entertainment that is sophisticated enough to please adults, much the way Pixar and 90s Disney films had. The Simpsons at outset was also sort of like this for older kids. There was moral panic at the time, but it didn't prevent the show from being an incredible phenomenon, heavily merchandised the way Bluey is now. I must have been obsessed with the Simpsons since 7-8 years old.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 21 Mar 2025 19:04:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43439730</link><dc:creator>slothtrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43439730</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43439730</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by slothtrop in "The Origin of the Pork Taboo"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>We have moral duties to the extent we collectively share values, which are arrived at subjectively and change with time.<p>In the secular world in the West, even human life in itself isn't considered sacred, as exemplified by sentiment on abortion. The moment we pop out into the world though, we assume personhood and are protected by the social contract.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 20 Mar 2025 12:54:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43422467</link><dc:creator>slothtrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43422467</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43422467</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by slothtrop in "The Origin of the Pork Taboo"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's the lack of personhood, and low demonstrated consciousness, in spite of sentience. We have a social contract with each other, not animals.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 20 Mar 2025 00:57:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43418914</link><dc:creator>slothtrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43418914</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43418914</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by slothtrop in "The Origin of the Pork Taboo"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Still not much methane compared to cows. Also, methane doesn't persist in the atmosphere nearly as long as CO2 does.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 20 Mar 2025 00:54:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43418892</link><dc:creator>slothtrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43418892</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43418892</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by slothtrop in "The Origin of the Pork Taboo"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> unsustainable demand<p>Scales with population growth, and immigrants don't come to the U.S. just so they can eschew meat. I don't see what's unsustainable about it. Land-use has barely budged. At any rate if the population didn't grow, the demand wouldn't either. As it happens, global population growth is projected to stall in less than 100 years.<p>Growth in the 1st world means more emissions and land encroachment, until innovation catches up. Electricity is being abated with renewables, but not concrete, ammonia, plastics, etc. There's no free lunch, if we want the juicy GDP growth, that's the price.<p>> again - the percentage of meat that comes from these conditions is so small as to be virtually irrelevant in the context of the animal agriculture industry<p>There's the consideration of our own personal choices and options having a place in the conversation, and the other consideration of prescription for improving conditions and/or emissions.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 20 Mar 2025 00:46:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43418836</link><dc:creator>slothtrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43418836</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43418836</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by slothtrop in "The Origin of the Pork Taboo"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> conditions will still be a living hell<p>I've seen what better farms look like and I disagree. It most closely matches what consumers want and expect. Suffering is non-zero because it necessitate slaughter, but not as egregious as in commercial agriculture.<p>In other words, there is a threshold of suffering consumers are ok with.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 20 Mar 2025 00:41:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43418811</link><dc:creator>slothtrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43418811</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43418811</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by slothtrop in "The Origin of the Pork Taboo"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's not that the price increase itself leads to better conditions, it's that better conditions necessitate price increases.<p>There are ways to assess whether a product meets one's standards. They may not be <i>your</i> standards, but it would meet the median for consumers.<p>I can purchase poultry from a local farm that has an on-site health inspector, where chickens are free-range. In ovo sexing is coming later for eggs. On the poultry side, life in battery cages by far leads to the most suffering. Absent that, given the right conditions, I find the poultry inoffensive and most consumers would too.<p>I agree there should be legislation, and that has been happening at the state-level.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 20 Mar 2025 00:37:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43418785</link><dc:creator>slothtrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43418785</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43418785</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by slothtrop in "America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Leaving aside that older people aren't as enthused about FT work they've known for 30 years, many of them keep jobs or get bored and lonely without them. Not everyone wants to sit around crafting useless projects, or consuming. Creating value for others and connecting (<i>and</i> status signaling) can provide meaning, and granted in retirement there are other vectors for that made available such as volunteering.<p>It's not a good argument against UBI, but there are better arguments against UBI.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 11 Mar 2025 20:07:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43336497</link><dc:creator>slothtrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43336497</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43336497</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by slothtrop in "Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> The main difference between China and India is China makes it's urban centers de facto independent of rural hinterlands within the same prefecture, while in India, urban and rural are both under the same state government.<p>I don't see the significance of this.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 11 Mar 2025 14:57:03 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43333098</link><dc:creator>slothtrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43333098</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43333098</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by slothtrop in "Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Most politicans in India are from the lowest castes - "Other Backward Caste" and "Scheduled Castes" [0].<p>Now, but the argument concerns development over the 20th century, not the current makeup.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 11 Mar 2025 14:55:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43333072</link><dc:creator>slothtrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43333072</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43333072</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by slothtrop in "Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Check this out: <a href="https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-how-asia-works" rel="nofollow">https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-how-asia-works</a><p>The odd one out in this assessment is India, because it did some similar things (land reform) without success. A difference might be that India sheltered businesses from foreign competition and didn't encourage and invest as much. Another, is that you need caste connections to do business. Culturally I intuit that the upper-castes that controlled government were less interested in rapid nationwide progress, unlike the ideologues that led South Korea and China. They lived comfortable lives and hung their hats on that.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 11 Mar 2025 13:49:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43332420</link><dc:creator>slothtrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43332420</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43332420</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by slothtrop in "Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p><a href="https://www.unicef.org/india/reports/indias-progress-malnutrition-and-non-communicable-diseases-insights-nfhs" rel="nofollow">https://www.unicef.org/india/reports/indias-progress-malnutr...</a><p>Malnourishment is also steadily diminishing. Effectively because food affordability improves as poverty diminishes. It's a good proxy.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 11 Mar 2025 13:38:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43332322</link><dc:creator>slothtrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43332322</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43332322</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by slothtrop in "Finland applies the “Housing First” concept (2020)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That's right, it scales most closely with housing cost. That tracks with homelessness generally being temporary, being priced out. California is also infamous for rent control policies in NIMBY cities that have been an abject failure. The supply of rental units was low because they are artificially risky and promise too little in return.<p>Zoning and regulatory reform spurs more building including smaller, dense units, which lowers prices. There's a fantasy among leftists that developers are snubbing mixed-density and dense mid-rises because condos pay more. No one leaves money on the table. Everything is built on credit, and banks deem these builds riskier in large part owing to the impact of zoning and regs. Condos have <i>a lot</i> of overhead, which checks a lot of boxes, while this would be unaffordable for other units. They also ignore that there are small developers in cities that try to compete, but can't get loans, because of these regulations.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 07 Mar 2025 14:05:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43290244</link><dc:creator>slothtrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43290244</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43290244</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by slothtrop in "Finland applies the “Housing First” concept (2020)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> With 4 out of 5 people keeping their flats, “Housing First” is effective in the long<p>80% of people get out of homelessness on their own, seems like basically the same rate. How are they certain the initiative had any bearing on the long-term outcome? That's the part I'm not understanding. It doesn't seem to suggest it leads to a difference in rates.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 06 Mar 2025 18:59:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43283856</link><dc:creator>slothtrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43283856</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43283856</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by slothtrop in "Finland applies the “Housing First” concept (2020)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Since homelessness is mostly transient in general, I'm skeptical of the claim to effectiveness, since it's likely that a large portion of a sample would move on within a year anyway.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 06 Mar 2025 18:50:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43283745</link><dc:creator>slothtrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43283745</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43283745</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by slothtrop in "Finland applies the “Housing First” concept (2020)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Most homelessness is also temporary, with around the same range of 80% moving on within a year.<p>That being the case, the value-added of free housing appears marginal compared to the cost. It would best target those who are a) chronically homeless, but b) neither addicted or mentally unfit to be employed, which sounds like a vanishingly small demographic. Mind you I take "effective" and desired outcome here to mean that they won't continue to roam out in the streets, either to be close to dealers or from being mentally unwell.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 06 Mar 2025 18:44:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43283649</link><dc:creator>slothtrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43283649</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43283649</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by slothtrop in "Youth and what happens when it's gone"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> That finding one woman anything less than immediately perfect will cut me off from all the small, lovely moments I have had with women across the world in my life.<p>You had those moments. You could keep trying to chase that bouncing between different partners going forward, but consider: a) more women exit the dating market with age (especially the good ones), b) there is a richness of experience also to be found with a devoted lifelong partner which can't be had with a mere fling.<p>As time goes on, your odds of success are harsher either way, risking being alone much of the time. But in particular, good long-term prospects more rapidly diminish.<p>Opportunity-cost goes both ways. Speaking from my own bias and experience, investing and relishing in a life-long relationship with a flawed-but-loving partner is worth it, having had the non-committal phase when I was younger.<p>It's difficult to maximize for some characteristics in a partner. Beauty, sure, you know what you like so you can ball-park. Many traits/qualities are difficult to discern and luck-of-the-draw: reliability and trust, compatibility and love, capacity to raise children well, etc.<p>No one is perfect and there is no unicorn, novelty is attractive in itself. My heuristic is if a partner can be assessed as "good", holding on is the right move.<p>I think about Voltaire's Candide often, and the lesson applies here.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 03 Mar 2025 16:53:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43243742</link><dc:creator>slothtrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43243742</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43243742</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by slothtrop in "Why so many children in America have ADHD"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>No, a description of ADHD features is easy to find, but not "robust metrics".<p>When searching specifically for metrics used in diagnosis, some choice words come up from med central:<p>"A challenge with diagnosing ADHD is that the characteristics associated with the disorder – such as difficulties with focusing, shifting/dividing attention, managing frustration, organization/poor time-management, working memory, and staying engaged – are common symptoms that could have a breadth of etiologies.<p>As noted, *more often than not*, ADHD coincides with another disorder. "<p>Then for narrow-band symptoms will list examples of neuropsychological measures like D-KEFS, and finding details for each of these is again like pulling teeth. But looking at the description, all of what is tested could be impacted by other issues, including instability in home life, lifestyle factors, anxiety and depression, insomnia, etc</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 02 Mar 2025 18:39:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43233508</link><dc:creator>slothtrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43233508</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43233508</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by slothtrop in "Why so many children in America have ADHD"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Fair to say for an adult.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 01 Mar 2025 20:00:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43223045</link><dc:creator>slothtrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43223045</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43223045</guid></item></channel></rss>