plantteacher

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/35035916

There seems to be a trend of collective punishment becoming socially acceptable. Examples:

1. The relentless onslaught of AML/KYC banking laws, which punish everyone because criminals exist (and law enforcement has apparently lost competency in catching them).
2. Israel has the audacity to argue that recognising Palestinian state “rewards Hamas”. It’s factually true but they should be embarrassed to push the crazy idea that all Palestinians should be denied sovereign governance on the basis that some specific group would benefit symbolically.
3. Europe decided it’s okay to prohibit cash transactions above €10k on the basis that criminals use cash (neglecting that non-criminals need to use cash).
4. Some European nations decided it’s okay to prohibit cash operations with “basic” bank accounts (the only bank accounts that cannot discriminate against demographics of people).
5. Many suppliers of essential resources (water and energy) are discontinuing cash acceptance. Punishment may not be the intent; they likely want to employ fewer people. But collective punishment against non-criminal cash users is the effect and people are not challenging this new form of oppression.
6. Roughly 50% of US voters are happy to punish all undocumented people on the basis that some¹ of them have committed crimes. (¹Research shows the crime rate of US-born citizens is DOUBLE that of illegal immigrants. Although we also have to account for folks in the right-wing bubble not being well informed. It’s publicly endorsed collective punishment either way.)

Given the above, I have no doubt that collective punishment is widely considered acceptable. But my question is about the trend of it -- whether it has worsened in the past decade. It was probably a shit-show up to the 1970s, but likely improved after the 70s. Are we regressing?

This will be cross-posted to history forums to get an answer on trends and whether this has been studied. I was tempted to post to a human rights forum, but I was surprised to find that no human rights treaties cover collective punishment. So it’s apparently irrelevant to human rights.

I did a search for communities with “history” in the name. It came back with !history@links.hackliberty.org even though that instance has been down for over a year. If I did not already know of that instance going down, I would just post there expecting my post to be seen, because there is no indicator of when the server was last up.

We are sitting ducks. The tech giants will likely try to harvest all fedi content so their AI machines can exploit the data. How can we get ahead of this?

Suppose the author of post or comment has a tickbox that says: [] allow AI bots to grab your data? (default: NO)

Using the power of defaults for a good cause, knowing that almost no one will tick the YES box on this, it would create a situation where every participant individually has an explicit indicator disclosing their non-consent. So when an AI bot slurps up every post, the freeloading exploitive corps have less of a leg to stand on because each post has two objectors (the author and the admin).

An administrator could still say: “scraping anything from this site for LLMs is prohibited”, in which case breaches would be legally actionable both as an abuse of resources (trespassing) and also from a copyright standpoint.

Consider how many people park a hot car when they get home and then go immediately cook food. The heat energy in the engine block is wasted as they burn more energy on the stovetop. So why not design engine blocks with a flat cast iron topside that can give a good heat transfer to a skillet or copper pot? If it would bring water to a near boil, that’s tea water, or perhaps a start on cooking.

I recall an Australian steak house that would bring a raw bloody steak to your table along with a flat lava rock so screaming hot that you could cook your own steak as completely as you want. So of course I’m thinking: why not transfer this idea to engine blocks? The lava rock is somehow fastened onto your engine block, and when you park you bring the hot rock into the kitchen for cooking heat.

Of course we must factor in the payload weight added to the car as it moves. So carrying the rock might be foolish in a cross-country trip but perhaps efficient on commutes exactly long enough to get recoverable heat energy. In the winter, the rock could be put into the air ducts of a forced-air heating system and add warmth to the house.

Could be rediculous ideas here.. but I guess the job of thought_forge is to sort that out.

I know it was already studied to transfer ICE¹ heat to a steam engine to continuously convert (otherwise wasted) heat energy into more power to the drivetrain. Superficially it sounds brilliant, but apparently the complexity of the whole system was found to outweigh the benefits. I.e. many more things can go wrong with the car. But what if the steam engine does not directly complicate any essential car functions? Instead, it could generate power that charges the battery instead of the alternator. If it breaks down, it’s just the charging system. A switch simply puts the alternator back in the loop. Or it could mechanically power fans that blow heat into the cabin.

¹ internal combustion engine

I try to resist the urge to turn off the heat immediately before serving food because the pan is still hot for tens of minutes -- all wasted energy. I try to turn off the heat ~10—15 min before the food is done cooking. Most people are impatient, addicted to convenience, lack self-control, and probably don’t even consider the wasted energy.

Electronic pressure cookers at least steer people toward using residual heat because when the cooking is done pressure protections block access to the food until pressure drops. OTOH, that’s due to temps being higher to begin with (above boiling).

Anyway, cooking food is rarely critisised as a significant climate factor. But you have to figure 8 billion people worldwide are wasting energy in this same way on a daily basis. Maybe it should be studied?

It seems like few people have noticed how privacy proponents rightfully show discontent at every new policy or action that emerges that claws away more of our privacy -- unless it is in any way tagged as “anti-money laundering”. Then automatically people shrug it off, look the other way, etc, without questioning it.

Lawmakers have figured out that the magic words to avoid scrutiny are “Know Your Customer” (KYC). So they are even experimenting outside of the banking sector with the KYC tag, such as in telecom (GSM registration and even VOIP). They are getting a blank cheque on privacy abuse.

From where I sit, the non-stop onslaught of KYC/AML law that strips our privacy down to nothing while denying us the autonomy and dignity of using cash looks like lazy policing to me. Skillful police can catch traffickers of people and contraband without this assult on literally everyone’s privacy to the point of forcing people to patronize banks which then impose the risks of an absurdly large digital footprint of poorly protected data as they discriminate against some people on the basis of birthplace, finance fossil fuels and private prisons, etc.

Considering the broad blanket assult on privacy that worsens as forced banking takes a stranglehold on countless people worldwide, there probably needs to be some scientific research that exposes the extent that these privacy-abusing policies actually impact crime, compared to the loss of freedom of everyone the law claims to serve. We need to see what is being traded for what.

This thought_forge idea is somewhat inspired by Edward Snowden, who said at one point that mass surveillance has /never/ actually led to a terror plot being foiled; that every single terrorist caught has been caught using traditional (targetted) detective work.

I needed to cross-post to !language@hilariouschaos.com but so many results match “language” that they cannot all be in the pull-down list (a separate bug in itself to not have a scrollbar). But extra stupid that communities a user is subscribed to do not get prioritized to the top of the list.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/34234868

The immersion style of language learning essentially entails an instructor who speaks only the target language, not the language you already know. The same way children learn their first language.

Immersion has irrefuted widespread acceptance and respect touted by pretty much everyone as the best way to learn.

I think that needs to be challenged. One of my wise profs once said something like:

You don’t /need/ school. Everything you learn in school can be self-taught and learnt informally the hard way from books and experience. What formal instruction does is accelerates the learning. I am here to organise the information for maximum absorption over time. What you learn here in 4 years would take you a decade to learn in an ad hoc disorganised way…

^ (Paraphrasing from memory). Seems spot-on to me. IMO, immersion is comparable to learning the slow way, by experience. The first language someone learns must be immersion, of course. There is no choice but to learn that the hard way through experience. But then the first language can be used to learn the next.

I was listening to a Brit (possibly Thomas Michael) teaching French on an audio tape. He said (in English) consonants at the end of words are not pronounced, but exceptionally if the consonant is in the word CAREFUL then it is pronounced (the “CaReFuL consonants”). He quickly conveyed a lot of information in a short time because he was able to give an English memory aid. At another moment he said something like: all words ending in TION, TY, ABLE? (I don’t recall all the suffixes) are all French words. Just like that in 1 single sweeping English sentence, I learned thousands of French words. He just needed a minute to give some examples of the French pronounciation (liberty→liber-TAY, revolution→ray-voh-loo-see-own).

In an immersion class that would have been impossible. It would have taken an absurd amount of time playing sherades one word at a time in an immersion class to accomplish the same learning task.

Yes, there are good reasons for immersion. E.g. a gov-administered public French class in a French-speaking region has students with all different mother tongues coming together to learn French in the same classroom. Such classes have no choice but to use immersion style.

But I conjecture that if you have 25 English speakers who want to learn French together, then that group is best served by a teacher who is good (better than fluent) in both languages. Those English speakers have the same uniform advantages and disadvantages that the instruction can account for. E.g. they would all benefit from the vocabulary tip (words ending in TION). They would likely all equally have the same struggle with pronouncing the R’s, and gender of objects. So the instruction can be tailored exploit the language simularities and differences.

I have never met anyone who agrees with me on this. But I think it should be studied (hence the post to !thought_forge@mander.xyz). It would be easy to take two groups of English speakers who don’t know a word of French and teach one group immersion style and the other group without the immersion limitation. Have a race measuring how many hours of instruction and study to reach the same passing level of fluency.

The immersion style of language learning essentially entails an instructor who speaks only the target language, not the language you already know. The same way children learn their first language.

Immersion has irrefuted widespread acceptance and respect touted by pretty much everyone as the best way to learn.

I think that needs to be challenged. One of my wise profs once said something like:

You don’t /need/ school. Everything you learn in school can be self-taught and learnt informally the hard way from books and experience. What formal instruction does is accelerates the learning. I am here to organise the information for maximum absorption over time. What you learn here in 4 years would take you a decade to learn in an ad hoc disorganised way…

^ (Paraphrasing from memory). Seems spot-on to me. IMO, immersion is comparable to learning the slow way, by experience. The first language someone learns must be immersion, of course. There is no choice but to learn that the hard way through experience. But then the first language can be used to learn the next.

I was listening to a Brit (possibly Thomas Michael) teaching French on an audio tape. He said (in English) consonants at the end of words are not pronounced, but exceptionally if the consonant is in the word CAREFUL then it is pronounced (the “CaReFuL consonants”). He quickly conveyed a lot of information in a short time because he was able to give an English memory aid. At another moment he said something like: all words ending in TION, TY, ABLE? (I don’t recall all the suffixes) are all French words. Just like that in 1 single sweeping English sentence, I learned thousands of French words. He just needed a minute to give some examples of the French pronounciation (liberty→liber-TAY, revolution→ray-voh-loo-see-own).

In an immersion class that would have been impossible. It would have taken an absurd amount of time playing sherades one word at a time in an immersion class to accomplish the same learning task.

Yes, there are good reasons for immersion. E.g. a gov-administered public French class in a French-speaking region has students with all different mother tongues coming together to learn French in the same classroom. Such classes have no choice but to use immersion style.

But I conjecture that if you have 25 English speakers who want to learn French together, then that group is best served by a teacher who is good (better than fluent) in both languages. Those English speakers have the same uniform advantages and disadvantages that the instruction can account for. E.g. they would all benefit from the vocabulary tip (words ending in TION). They would likely all equally have the same struggle with pronouncing the R’s, and gender of objects. So the instruction can be tailored exploit the language simularities and differences.

I have never met anyone who agrees with me on this. But I think it should be studied (hence the post to !thought_forge@mander.xyz). It would be easy to take two groups of English speakers who don’t know a word of French and teach one group immersion style and the other group without the immersion limitation. Have a race measuring how many hours of instruction and study to reach the same passing level of fluency.

I just posted about a hum that I hear. There is a science project to track the people who hear the hum, which I was looking to contribute to. Then I noticed the survey is inside the private walled gardens of Google. The researcher’s email address is gmail, the survey form is in Google Docs, and they exclusively use Twitter as well. There is apparently no free-world way to contribute data.

I wonder how much science is encumbered by technofeudal fiefdoms and if there are efforts to make scientific research more open. In principle, science is peer reviewed. So whoever would be the peer reviewers for the research would ideally spotlight this problem.

I was glad to hear from BBC crowd science (the linked show) that I’m not alone in hearing a hum. People around the world hear a low frequency (50 Hz) hum.

What I hear often when waking up in the morning is a high pitch buzz, comparable to the sound of your ears ringing the day after a concert. My theories:

• it’s microwave radiation, perhaps from wi-fi
• the eardrum itself is making noise due to a physiological condition, despite not being around loud noise (BBC mentions this as well)

I recall hearing about a woman who could hear wi-fi, to the surprise of scientists who would emit supersonic sounds and the woman would raise her hand to indicate when she hears a sound. IIRC, she moved to live in a small region where wi-fi is banned to prevent interference with an array of radio telescopes.

Here’s another link to past stories:

• https://www.tinnitusjournal.com/articles/manifestations-of-a-lowfrequency-sound-of-unknown-origin-perceived-worldwide-also-known-as-the-hum-or-the-taos-hum.html
• https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/mar/16/can-you-hear-the-mysterious-global-hum-apparently-many-of-you-do

I am not quite sure I would call the hum low pitched. What I hear is very similar to the ringing ears experience after a concert. Isn’t that a high pitch?

I have to say I’m bothered that the research for this requires participants to use Google. I will not submit records to the project because of that.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/30792667

Tea drinkers:

Most people use water kettles, either stovetop or electric. Some of us use realtime hot water dispensors, which are sometimes a function of coffee machines but in some rare cases they are dedicated stand-alone units.

Pros and cons to each:

stovetop water kettle on ⌁electric stove:
— slow to boil and brew
— wasteful/lossy, esp. if not induction (fuel→heat energy→steam→turbine→AC power→grid transmission→conversion back to heat energy)
— no temp control (green tea drinkers must wait for water to drop to 80°C)
+ BifL: never breaks down and generally outlives you

stovetop water kettle on 🔥gas stove:
— slow to boil and brew
+ energy efficient (fuel→transmission→heat energy); more heat loss on the stove than with electric, but still much less loss than all the electric stages
— …but all city gas pipelines are inherently leaky and unburnt gas is 25× worse for climate than CO₂ (OTOH, this leakage happens wheter you consume gas or not)
— no temp control (green tea drinkers must wait for water to drop to 80°C)
+ BifL: never breaks down and generally outlives you

⌁electric water kettle:
+ fast to boil (1m 20s to boil 25cl in my kitchen)
— …but slow to brew (brewing cannot start until all water is boiled)
— wasteful/lossy (same chain of energy losses as stovetop electric but less waste between the wall and the water)
± /some/ kettles have temp ”control”, but you have to watch it. Some exceptional units can be set to shutoff at 80°C.
+ BifL: never breaks down?

hot water dispensor (⌁electric):
— slow to boil (1m 50s according to YT video X2VdGK2t5vo)
+ …but overall faster to brew because the infusion begins instantly, and this is what matters. So what if it takes 30s longer for hot water if brewing is 1m 20s ahead of the kettle method?
— wasteful/lossy (same chain of energy losses as stovetop electric but has the least energy waste between the wall and the water as the water passes through a small heated pipe; OTOH some energy is used on the pump)
+ all appliances have true temp control, so green tea can be instantly infused with 80°C water automatically and without excessive heat
— non-BifL; it breaks! The usual electro appliance shitshow: complex design; no service manuals; no wiring diagrams; undocumented commands; booby-trapped; spring-loaded… self-destructs when disassembled; spare parts cost more than a new unit [if you can find them] because they bundle several parts together instead of selling individual components… the market seems to have abandoned the dedicated (water only) hot water dispensors

My question: after boiling water in an electric water kettle, I poured it into a glass with a meat thermometer, which went up to ~88°C. Where did the other 12 degrees go? Is it normal for water to fall so rapidly in temp, or is my thermometer dodgy?