168 posts tagged with "in-English"

or, why Soylent is A Good Thing

Humans evolved mainly to be active during daytime and to rest and sleep when it’s dark — the duration of those “days” and “nights” being fixed in ecuatorial Africa long ago. The natural thing for us, humans of the 21st century, would be to go to bed around sunset, and get up when the sun rises.

However, not all humans can do that, all the time. Someone has to watch museums, factories and streets at night. A&E needs to be staffed. Someone has to work in the wee hours to bake the bread you eat for breakfast. People live in high latitudes, where nights are very short in the summer and very long in the winter. People travel and have a hard time adapting their sleep cycle to a new time zone.

Politicians often manipulate and abuse electors and taxpayers (instead of working for them) to serve their own interest first, and then the interests of their cronies (eg, powerful businesspeople).

Businesspeople often manipulate and abuse investors, employees and customers (instead of working for them) to serve their own interest first, and then the interests of their cronies (among them, politicians).

In the wake of a certain Trump presidency

1. Electoral systems are borken​

Clinton’s delegates got ~59,923,000 popular votes; Trump’s, ~59,693,000. So, Clinton got ~0.39% more than Trump. Clinton should win the presidency.

However, it is estimated that Trump will get 306 delegates, and Clinton 232. There will be 24% fewer delegates voting for Clinton than voting for Trump.

George Steiner on El País’ “Babelia” magazine, last weekend (in Spanish). A modified version is online:

“People are like, ‘oh, he lives in Russia.’ But that’s only partially true — the reality is that I live on the Internet. Where I always have. I’m a child of the Internet. It helped shape me, it helped to give me my values. It’s simply a way of bridging geography, it’s a way of crossing space and ending the tyranny of distance. We’re creating bonds of fraternity, new communities, we’re crossing the span that divides human hearts. In new ways — but they are real. And no less real than you and I sitting across the table right now.”

China is like Switzerland.

One country is 9,600,000 km² large, and contains almost one fifth of the world population. The other one is a mere 41,000 km², and has slightly more than eight million inhabitants. One country tops The Economist’s Where-to-be-born Index, while the other ranks #49.

“Great Yurikamome”

Last night I rode the Yurikamome line from Odaiba to Shimbashi Station after spending the evening at Ōedo Onsen Monogatari with friends. I recorded in video part of the trip.

Today, I thought I should 4× the video, find a fitting CC-licenced soundtrack for it (thank you, Jamendo), and upload it somewhere — for my future self, if for nobody else.

Spanish new digital newspaper “El Español”, born this year, lets you read only 25 articles per month unless you pay. Reading it in incognito mode or disabling JavaScript on the page are the simplest ways to get past that limitation (as they are for other paywalls too). Here, for the sake of learning, is an alternative way.

tl;dr​

1. Install one of these two extensions in your browser: Tampermonkey (for Chromium or Chrome) or Greasemonkey (for Mozilla Firefox). You may need to restart the browser after it’s installed.
2. Install the user script Lily Luna Potter (click “Install this script”, and in the next page, “Install”).
3. Browse “El Español”. That pop-up should not hide the content any more!

How it’s done (boring technical stuff)​

First, we browse the site and open several articles until we reach the limit. In a different browser session (for example, in a private window), open another article. Using the developer tools and looking at the HTTP traffic, notice the differences.

One: geographical and cultural proximity is decisive to determine how much we feel affected by this kind of tragedies. But, is that right?​

Leave aside your gut feelings, and the fact that you once attended a gig in the Bataclan or that you have strolled so often next to Stade de France: why are we so much more concerned about these deaths, compared to similar unexpected attacks in other parts of the world, in other times? All the immediate expressions of shock, sorrow, rage and perplexity we saw on social media, all the changed avatars, all the people who told us they could not sleep that night — isn’t all that also a sign of ethnocentrism and chauvinism? I am not blaming the French; it’s a European/Western thing. The bombings in Madrid, London, Oslo, created reactions that were far bigger and quicker than similar massacres in Colombia, Mexico, India, countries of Africa. Is that rational? Is it fair?

Someone told me that France is a democratic, developed country that is not at war, and that it’s supposed to be a safe place. It’s a country were you can be very confident you will not die unexpectedly because someone immolates next to you. According to this person, that is what makes this tragedy more relevant, more meaningful. I think that is a factor, certainly. But I’m not referring to the rational analysis of the practical consequences of this attack in the context of geopolitics, or even day-to-day life. I’m talking about feeling worse, or about shouting your anger louder in Twitter.