Nationally, there are less than 10% of incarcerated people in private prisons. This number starts to vary widely from state to state though, with some states having more than 50% and some having 0%.
Public prisons's use of forced labor is not better than private ones.
And people in prisons (private or public) count towards total population in counties, giving them more weight in elections, despite none of the prisoners having chosen to be there voluntarily nor having the right to vote.
https://www.vera.org/news/how-mass-incarceration-shapes-our-...
True, but there is this mythology that all prisons in the USA are private prisons controlled solely by corporations, which is wildly untrue. Public prisons aren't much better than private prisons, due to the fact that they are just punishment and not rehabilitation.
On your second point, undocumented immigrants also count in the census and give more weight in representation and elections, even though they cannot vote. In a perfect world, we would expect elected officials to represent all of their constituents, not just those who voted for them, but we are far from that.
>On your second point, undocumented immigrants also count in the census
Except immigrants choose where they want to live.
The prisoners are where they are because the party in power (usually Republican, borderline neo-Confederate) creates laws that lead to extensive incarceration (such as "three strikes") and is the one which decides where to build prisons, which results in biased elections in their favor. Which reeks of the pre-civil war rules that slaves count for political weight.
Thanks HN, for helping me force Vineet's hand into accepting that the app is worthy of being used by not-Vineet.
He demo'd Captrice last week, to a bunch of friends here in Bangalore. And I knew he was going straight to the "infinite bikeshed", based on his tepid answers to questions like "Wow this is cool! So... Launch, when?".
Plus, you made m'dude earn his "First Internet Dollar". To whomever did the "buy me a coffee" thing... you're awesome! There is a stark psychological "before/after" of earning your F.I.D. Now he can't ever go back.
As someone stuck in his own Infinite Bikeshed, I take heart from this event, and hope to follow in his footsteps sooner than later :)
Well I honestly think "10x" Engineers exist... even 10,000x ones.
It's about creating leverage.
So, the great ones aren't lone mercurial artists.
They are the ones who are, in fact, very good at the craft. AND they also got good at writing things down for self/other, and teaching other people what they know, and creating a culture of enthusiastic open-minded curiosity, whether on an IRC channel or in a packed fancy conference auditorium.
Once-in-a-generation brilliance is optional. The rest is not.
e.g. Brian Kernighan will be the first one to tell you that Ken Thompson was in a league of his own compared to Brian. But Brian himself is a 10,000x programmer. How much leverage have his book(s) and software and generous public education created in the world?
Anyone can become a 10x version of themselves (next-year you is radically better than today-you) if they think about that and learn to be like Brian (think, do, self-teach, other-teach, spread infectious enthusiasm).
Edit: clarify prose, and fix embarassing name snafu
Indiscriminately hobbling your best institutions is like setting your middle-aged self up for recovery after falling off the workout wagon. I know because I'm an expert on falling off that wagon... One month off requires three or four months to just get back to the previous baseline. Three months off, and I need a year.
Hopefully enough of the culture of curiosity and open-minded inventiveness stays so that they have a fighting chance of making a comeback.
Otherwise, the US of A stands to experience net-brain-drain at a scale rivalling only India since Y2K to present day, and the former USSR after its heyday.
OMG the tenor of the writing, the terrible puns... I love it! 'tis as if I am reading a sibling from a mirror universe :) Uncanny resemblances to the first post I wrote when resurrecting my blog: https://www.evalapply.org/posts/hello-world/index.html#main
> On the need to sustain your creative drive in the face of technological change
> https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/multi-disciplinary...
nb. I recently submitted it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43759204
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