I converted to the Baha'i Faith from Christianity about 15 years ago, after investigating Islam and Buddhism. Very happy to see this topic trending on HN. Our daily practice consists of reading the Holy writings every morning and evening, daily prayer and meditation, and service. There's a prayer from our tradition that says may "this American democracy become glorious in spiritual degrees even as it has aspired to material degrees ... ." I cherish this hope for this nation and all humanity.
Very nice to see to genuine interest on HN in solving our Democracy's problems, instead the general cynicism, apathy and self-interest we all too often see. But to be fair, I think it's first important to realize that we are discussing historical forces. The kind of movements that we all read about in school, are happening now. And I think when we look at history we'll see that social forces strong enough to reform empires have always started in the marginalized communities. Our role here is to become active participants, on a day-to-day basis, in these communities and aid them, both technically and morally, in building -- and here is the key concept -- decentralized quasi-autonomous [1] communities. No amount of reform, sorry being a cynic, will "fix" Washington and its relationship with "corporate capitalism". The Supreme Court settled this question, campaign money is "free speech". [2] But we can build new social structures in the gaps. It happened about 2,000 years in empire built in Rome. Why not today?
Those that like this episode would also very much enjoy
VOY, Episode 6x12, Blink of an Eye [1]. Fascinating premise, essentially a pre-warp society views Voyager as a sky deity, eventually Voyager becomes the raison d'etre for the scientific progress of an entire civilization.
To put some context on this, the underlying social problem is the overcriminalization of behavior and the alarming growth [1] in incarceration rates here in the U.S.
People that enjoy listening to music -- audiophiles, DJs, music producers, musicians, etc -- often search out and download their favorite tunes, .flac and .wav specifically, simply b/c these formats have higher fidelity to the master mix. Granted, not everyone cares about high-fidelity audio, and that's ok too.
The issue here isn't legality but performance royalties. Music played over the internet is considered a performance. These royalties should be collected and paid out to recording artists, or whoever owns the master recording copyright, whenever that song is performed publicly. It's seems that FB doesn't want to pay artists these royalties.
"It's not so much the volume of interactions Black Americans have with the police that troubles them or differentiates them from other racial groups, but rather the quality of those interactions."
Not sure what "preferred narrative" you are referring too, but most black people think America has a "police problem". Define that however you like. Bunch of other polls from the same organization for those curious enough to dig deeper. Seek Higher Things friend.
Frankly, this kind of hubris is dangerous. The point here is not that financial instruments are 'fake' wealth or 'nothing more' than the value that people put on real assets, that is the entire crux of the matter. You literally require expertise in higher maths to understand the valuations. And even those with that understanding sometimes fail to manage the risk. The guys who literally wrote the book on modern finance bought the global financial system to its knees b/c of their mismanagement [0].
The systemic risks that these insanely complex valuations pose to the economy are real and matter. I'm talking about food, housing, education, infrastructure, health care ... real things the matter for long term growth. This concept needs to be thoroughly appreciated. The notional values here are important b/c they are powerful indicator of the impact of default on the real economy [1]. The impact is in fact so great, that the Fed is willing to print trillions and trillions of $$$ to save financial systems from their failure. But a maxim of economics is that "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." And right now our government is literally feeding the capitalists while watching millions of people go w/o food, housing, health care. It's egregious injustice and insult to people of Enlightenment everywhere.
Sharing one of my favorite quotes on this topic that James Clerk Maxwell was said [0] to tell his students:
"In this class I hope you will learn not merely results, or formulae applicable to cases that may possibly occur in our practice afterwards, but the principles on which those formulae depend, and without which the formulae are mere mental rubbish. I know the tendency of the human mind is to do anything rather than think. But mental labor is not thought, and those who have with labor acquired the habit of application often find it much easier to get up a formula than to master a principle.”
+1 for Walter Lewin's explanations. I also can't say enough about the clarity of explanations and examples in Feynman's Lectures [1] and the HyperPhysics [2] tutorials.
Google is not building a nationwide website, just a trial one for Bay Area:
"We are developing a tool to help triage individuals for Covid-19 testing. Verily is in the early stages of development, and planning to roll testing out in the Bay Area, with the hope of expanding more broadly over time. We appreciate the support of government officials and industry partners and thank the Google engineers who have volunteered to be part of this effort."
From the blog ...
"As of now, 'module' and 'packages' no longer exist. Instead, they’ve been replaced by 'skills'."
New link is https://github.com/leon-ai/leon/tree/develop/skills