<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: tropdrop</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tropdrop</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Fri, 30 Oct 2026 22:03:33 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=tropdrop" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tropdrop in "‘You Are Done’: The letter sent to King by the F.B.I (2014)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Elsewhere in the comments here, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Martin Luther King Jr (David Garrow), according to this article [1]:<p>"The most damaging memos describe King witnessing a rape in a hotel room. Instead of stopping it, handwritten notes in the file say he encouraged the attacker to continue."<p>1 - <a href="https://theconversation.com/im-an-mlk-scholar-and-ill-never-be-able-to-view-king-in-the-same-light-118015" rel="nofollow">https://theconversation.com/im-an-mlk-scholar-and-ill-never-...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 29 Oct 2026 16:53:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50292171</link><dc:creator>tropdrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50292171</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50292171</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tropdrop in "The Snow/Leavis ‘two cultures’ clash"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's interesting to think about how the culture around AI can also loosely be considered as coalescing between these two camps. But the camp who are the descendants of Leavis, if we can call them that, includes many scientists who (before AI) would have agreed with Snow.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 31 Aug 2026 15:57:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49511283</link><dc:creator>tropdrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49511283</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49511283</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tropdrop in "Being ambitious and being a dad"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I identified with this article despite being a new mom rather than dad. I was minted in the ambition track and have alighted on work I find meaningful.<p>I still wake up with a burning fire in my stomach for my work. This was dulled somewhat the first few months postpartum; it wasn't entirely gone, but it felt like a different person had taken over the reins, one who only cared about the baby and nothing else. Now the fire is back.<p>I do not know how to navigate this at all. As the author of the linked article searches for good father figures in vain, so do I. The search feels even more difficult. Everywhere I am met with young mothers who confess that whatever meaning they felt from their work feels like a distant shadow of what they feel with their child, and that they are only too happy to stay home. The other direction includes women who are militantly childfree, or who offload an unacceptable level of hours onto hired labor.<p>I wholly agree with the author's main thrust: for some people, the ambition is still there and unhelpfully competes with the ambition to be a perfect parent. When the expectation for mothers is as high as it is, the situation feels impossible; it feels as if you're doomed to either traumatize your children or renege whatever great potential you were told you had all your life.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 19 Aug 2026 17:53:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49364837</link><dc:creator>tropdrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49364837</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49364837</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tropdrop in "Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Ivy League classes usually aren't as large as their state school counterparts. At <i>most</i> you might get around a hundred students in a large lecture course; this is rare by design.<p>You can crunch the numbers on this to verify for yourself – most of these have a population of 6000 undergrads or so. 1/6 of all of the undergraduates need to take a single course for your "up to a thousand" to be true.<p>I agree that a citation would be nice, but the number of students is indeed large for Ivy League courses (as per the article, in this econ course, he had 86 students for a class that usually only has 30).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 28 Jun 2026 22:10:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48712235</link><dc:creator>tropdrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48712235</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48712235</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tropdrop in "Dostoyevsky isn't difficult"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Check out the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation of BK. P&L try to really bridge the contextual gap with a lot of footnotes/endnotes.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 25 Jun 2026 16:36:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48675919</link><dc:creator>tropdrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48675919</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48675919</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tropdrop in "Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Ha! That's amazing! Well I take it back for shower curtains (congrats to your aunt!). I do think the point still stands for Amazon sellers and Zara, but maybe I'm not giving Walmart enough credit.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 16 Feb 2026 04:13:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47030820</link><dc:creator>tropdrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47030820</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47030820</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tropdrop in "Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>What's interesting is that you don't realize how much of that stuff from Walmart had artistic processes embedded into it along the production line.<p>Did those shower curtains have a design? Did your sweater have a color and style? Probably so, but you never pay attention to how the world of "fine art" refracts into your daily life.<p>If the products were cheap, it's likely someone unpaid is responsible for the design. See, for example, the lawsuit against Zara over theft of ideas from small-time designers [1].<p>In any case, cheap Chinese brands do the same thing as Zara en masse (copying designs – note the "external suppliers" bit in its defense PR), and those products then end up in Walmart/on Amazon. The artists starve but you have your shower curtains and are happy with the price.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.grossmanllp.com/independent-artists-on-the-offensive-after-zara-allegedly-steals-designs" rel="nofollow">https://www.grossmanllp.com/independent-artists-on-the-offen...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 12 Feb 2026 03:01:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46984398</link><dc:creator>tropdrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46984398</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46984398</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tropdrop in "It's just a virus, the E.R. told him – days later, he was dead"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The same experience happened to me, but it was even better – I was told I had a "little paronychia" and lanced without anesthetic. Her scalpel  rubbing against two nerves in the nailbed of my thumb, the ER doctor lanced and scraped without so much as lidocaine (or even tylenol!)<p>The next day I almost lost my thumb, because this sadist that enjoyed cutting me open without any painkillers didn't bother to check whether the infection spread to my bone. I was also misdiagnosed by her, and would have lost it had my PC not found a hand surgeon in the nick of time.<p>Meanwhile, to curtains on either side of me at this hospital were people who were clearly homeless and had come in with some fentanyl withdrawal symptomps, but mostly so that they could sleep on a bed. When my partner tried to intervene and say that he's never seen me in this much pain, the doctor looked at me like I was a junkie, telling me that "it wouldn't hurt if I wasn't acting up."<p>I understand the "next, next" that happens from burnout, but this was next level sadism. No empathy; she actually seemed to enjoy my pain. No legal action was possible since this was an "emergency room environment" and she was only there "part time."<p>This was UCSF Saint Francis/ Dignity Health in Nob Hill. Please avoid this hospital if you're in San Francisco.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 07 Oct 2025 01:27:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45498425</link><dc:creator>tropdrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45498425</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45498425</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tropdrop in "Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>>artist<p>technically, it was the supervising technical director.<p>The only reason this happened (I don't think "working from home" was very common in 1999) was because she just had a baby! I love this story because it feels like good karma – management providing special accommodations for a new mom saves the show.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 06 Oct 2025 15:28:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45492447</link><dc:creator>tropdrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45492447</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45492447</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tropdrop in "Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Articles like this [1] (re: Rochdale gang) are contributing to the impression of a link in the UK.  There's also the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal [2] which affected an estimated 1,400 girls specifically in Rotherham. Population of Rotherham is 265,800, for reference. In both these cases, girls were charged and the offenders are Pakistani.<p>There is also a recent video of a girl wielding an ax and knife to protect her and her sister in Scotland [3]. She has been charged with brandishing weapons. Interestingly, the BBC has issued an article [4] claiming that it was a "Bulgarian couple" that the girls approached, and to not "spread misinformation." I am a researcher of Slavic languages, so I can tell you from watching the video in [3] that the accents featured in this video are not Bulgarian. I am not willing to stake a claim in what they actually are (someone else is welcome to comment).<p>Actually, I'm quite alarmed that the BBC is claiming this, as I generally consider the BBC reputable.<p>1 – <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdd2rld9mj2o" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdd2rld9mj2o</a><p>2 – <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploitation_scandal" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit...</a><p>3 – <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVfpSbLgiBc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVfpSbLgiBc</a><p>4 – <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3r40gylxpwo" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3r40gylxpwo</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 27 Sep 2025 00:35:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45392422</link><dc:creator>tropdrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45392422</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45392422</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tropdrop in "AI tools are making the world look weird"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In my experience, ChatGPT, at least, seems to have had multiple languages used to train its corpus. I am guessing this based on its interaction with me in a different language, where it changed English idioms like "short and sweet" to analogous versions in that language that were not direct translations.<p>But my guess is that the data sets used from the other languages are smaller (and actually, even if it had perfect access to every single piece of data on the internet, that would still be true, due to the astonishing quantity of English-language data out there compared to the rest. Your comment validates that). With less data, one would expect a poorer performance in all metrics for any non-Anglophone place, including the "cultural world view" metric.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 19 Sep 2025 04:14:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45297877</link><dc:creator>tropdrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45297877</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45297877</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tropdrop in "AI tools are making the world look weird"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>ChatGPT is worse in Russian. Example: after accurately noting that a name appeared in a particular Russian book, it asked if I wanted the direct quote in Russian. I said yes. At this point it switched to Russian output but could no longer find the name in that book, and then apologized for having used what seemed to have been "approximations" about the book before.<p>(I did then go and check the book myself; ChatGPT in English was right, the name is there)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 19 Sep 2025 04:06:44 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45297838</link><dc:creator>tropdrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45297838</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45297838</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tropdrop in "I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Seconding Meowwolf! The one I went to in Santa Fe was very hands on and physical, requiring lots of object manipulation as well as crawling through very tight spaces. Absolute delight.<p>Less so for the one in Colorado, which had more of an interactive back story done through an app; but I understand the Colorado one was also meant to be more ADA-friendly, and it was still pretty good.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 10 Sep 2025 20:47:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45203434</link><dc:creator>tropdrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45203434</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45203434</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tropdrop in "I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I know of one that "doesn't explain" the exhibits (except through an app/website where you match things hanging on walls with diagrams) – the Isabella Gardner museum in Boston; this is specifically due to the wishes of Isabella Gardner herself, who was opposed to plaques.<p>There is one room that breaks this rule – I'm guessing it got damaged and then at that point they didn't have to follow her will.<p>Still worth a visit for the garden, the Titian, lots besides.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 10 Sep 2025 20:40:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45203345</link><dc:creator>tropdrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45203345</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45203345</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tropdrop in "I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>But I'm pointing out that just because NYC fails the claim does not mean that the claim is wrong.<p>I think there's a goldilocks zone of walkable, at least for the purposes of this "urbanist-I-know-everyone-utopia" feeling – you could have perfectly walkable places that aren't dense enough (people wise), so they won't work. I'm thinking of Gorham's Bluff, Alabama, which is an attempted New Urbanist project. Or, you could have Manhattan, which is also walkable but frankly mind-boggling in its density.<p>No offense to New York. I sometimes find myself in wordless awe of its sheer power.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 30 May 2025 20:52:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44139776</link><dc:creator>tropdrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44139776</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44139776</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tropdrop in "I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Backing up a sister comment on this thread: I've lived in SF and Chicago, both also as walkable as it gets for the US, and in both had relationships as a "regular," whether at a corner store, cafe, or the grocer. I remember our Albanian corner store guy in particular, who would comment on me gaining or losing weight. Our neighborhoods felt like a small town where we all knew each other (including the homeless!).<p>I live near New York now, and while I hear from friends that they find that kind of community in some faraway boroughs of NYC, everyone in Manhattan reports your profound and deep sense of alienation from their fellow man, though some with a positive spin.<p>I have not seen this alienating anonymity in any other part of the country, though I have felt it whenever I'm there. As there is no other place in this country even remotely as dense or with faster turnover (not even SF), I'm fairly confident Manhattan is unique (in this country).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 30 May 2025 20:08:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44139487</link><dc:creator>tropdrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44139487</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44139487</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tropdrop in "Show HN: I made an app to create personalized stories for children in 5 minutes"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I am not an expert on children's stories, but I wondered about the vocabulary – "magnificent," or "newfound confidence." I'm imagining one might want to tailor the difficulty of the vocab based on the age of the child.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 20 May 2025 19:09:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44044832</link><dc:creator>tropdrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44044832</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44044832</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tropdrop in "Quit Social Media (2016)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Interestingly this changed somewhat with the clickbait-based model – now, I would disagree that advertisers "want, more generally, to avoid programs with serious complexities and disturbing controversies."<p>I think this does describe legacy advertisers (and TikTok, for different reasons) – we might remember Tumblr's hyper-specific LGBTQ-friendly (often NSFW) communities being completely liquidated in the transfer of Tumblr to Verizon, arguably killing Tumblr on that date. Verizon's handling of Tumblr validates Chomsky.<p>But ad-fueled journalism seems to operate from exactly the opposite principle, so long as the controversies that drive engagement do not threaten the sensibility of specific large funders. I've seen a few times in recent memory where an article from the New York Times aired something quite sensational, only to quietly update later that what was initially reported didn't quite occur as depicted. But by that point it is too late, and profit was made.<p>The overall point still stands – that ad-based always results in a conflict of interest.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 25 Oct 2024 04:09:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41942148</link><dc:creator>tropdrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41942148</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41942148</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tropdrop in "Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>FWIW Turnitin does treat things like quotes and footnotes a little differently on the academic side – on the instructor end, it simply gives you an estimation of the amount of text it found that has appeared somewhere else. Citations usually account for about 5-10% "potentially plagiarized" but anything below 10% is treated as fine by the software. You can always go check each of the sections and see if it's a quote or not; if you have a paper that consists of more than 10% quotes it's not a good paper anyway and should be revised.<p>I did have a very interesting case once of a student who copied and pasted someone's Master's thesis for sections of her paper, but also listed that thesis in the citations... it remains up to the jury (not me) to decide whether she just didn't understand what plagiarism was. I would not have known if Turnitin didn't mark it as 30% plagiarized.<p>Disclaimer: Someone more senior than I was in charge of the decision to use this software, but it was interesting to see it in action</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 21 Oct 2024 13:22:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41903899</link><dc:creator>tropdrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41903899</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41903899</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tropdrop in "Cats are (almost) liquid"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In addition to the vibrissae explanation, I also wonder if their eyes (vertical pupils) just see better when it comes to height and not width, necessitating greater hesitation when it comes to judging things at their height and not high in the air. I am thinking they might need to move their head or eyes a bit side to side, though it may still be too fast to be readily apparent to the researcher. Relevant article [1]:<p>"If you have a vertical slit, you're very likely to be an ambush predator," says Banks. That's the kind of animal who lies in wait and then leaps out to kill. He says these predators need to accurately judge the distance to their prey, and the vertical slit has optical features that make it ideal for that.<p>But that rule only holds if the animal is short, so its eyes aren't too high off the ground, Sprague says."<p>Ergo, cats have vertical pupils but tigers have round pupils. The tiger can probably judge horizontal distances better than the cat.<p>1 - <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/08/07/430149677/eye-shapes-of-the-animal-world-hint-at-differences-in-our-lifestyles" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/08/07/4301496...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 18 Oct 2024 06:49:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41876947</link><dc:creator>tropdrop</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41876947</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41876947</guid></item></channel></rss>