I have read that before the Industrial Revolution, most people faced famine for about 10% of their lives. And while, historically, that would have probably been concentrated into a few bad years during their lifetime (months of starvation, during a few bad years), if we were to generalize that and make it a rule, it would work out to 3 days a month.
There is some evidence that there are health benefits that are specific to the fasting mode. This has mostly been studied in the context of chemotherapy, where fasting can protect against some of the side-effects of chemotherapy:
Most of this has only been studied in animals, not humans, but in animals the results were clear:
"Fasting before chemotherapy (CT) was shown to protect healthy cells from treatment toxicity by reducing the expression of some oncogenes, such as RAS and the AKT signaling pathway [2]. This reduction is mediated by the decrease of circulating insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) and glucose. In addition, starvation and calorie restriction activate other oncogenes in cancer cells, induce autophagy, and decrease cellular growth rates while increasing sensitivity to antimitotic drugs [2]."
If we assume that we have been shaped by millions of years of frequent famine, then our evolution has been shaped by famine. It is possible that our immune system simply makes the assumption that we will soon face famine, and therefore some important tasks, such as extreme autophagy, are normally postponed till the famine arrives. However, in the modern era the famine never arrives, and so we may have to induce it by artificial means.
I have experimented with very long fasts. My longest fast ever was in September of 2015 when I managed to go 12 straight days on nothing but water.
Obviously, any health benefits from that incident might have been psychosomatic, since I was expecting health benefits. But all the same, I did find some of the health benefits to be shocking and completely unexpected. Since at least 1995, and possibly 1990, I had a mole on my skin on my left arm. I wasn't worried about it, so I simply ignored it. I had it on my arm at least 20 years, maybe 25 years. I recall one morning in November of 2015 when I was in my kitchen, making breakfast, and I reached over to pour myself some coffee, and of course my arm was in my field of vision, and after a moment of thinking something was different, it occurred to me that the mole was gone. It had been there at least 20 years, and then it disappeared, at some point during the weeks after I had done the 12 day fast. I don't know when it disappeared, it just slowly faded away at some point between September and November. There was no remaining sign of it on my arm.
Again, that might have been purely psychosomatic, but it was interesting.
Admittedly a minor point of interest, but the last famine in England happened in 1623 and was local to an area called Westmorland [0]. That was 150 years before the Industrial Revolution, so the 10% figure might not be very reliable.
England was the first nation to escape from famine. A national market began to take shape shortly after the civil war, and the national market transformed traditional famine into a question of high prices. Jethro Tull began his experiments in 1701, and Charles Townsend began taking notes about fertilizer shortly afterwards, and when the public became aware of their work, the Agricultural Revolution began, and then, shortly afterwards, the Industrial Revolution. But obviously, most of the world continued to experience famine into the 1900s.
Braudel is the most famous of the historians from this school. His book “The Structures Of Everyday Life” established historiography on the basis of what ordinary people did in their ordinary lives: what they ate, what they wore, how they worked. And Braudel was building upon ideas already established by the founders of the Annales school. But this enormously influential group of historians were a constant source of inspiration to Christopher Hill, and I think shaped the way he wrote The World Turned Upside Down.
I recommend both Hill and Braudel, both pillars of my intellectual life.
Sadly, these tweaks don't address any of the more obvious oddities that people have with proportional representation in the legislature. While such a system won't necessarily end up with Dutch levels of weirdness, it is still possible:
If your source for "Dutch levels of weirdness" is just that article, then keep in mind that the VVD being "in power" meant that they were one of the parties in the government coalition. They have had to compromise with other parties through all of that time, and so it was not the case that those governments were only representative of a very small party of the electorate, as that article makes it sound.
(In my opinion, the Dutch system is one of the best implemented in practice, precisely because of its proportionality.)
this analysis of (mostly European) democracies is not based on some metric of how well the population is faring, oecd has some of those, but based on handpicked anecdata and peak examples.
the most massive political injustices, poor housing, health care, education, elderly care, affordable transportation, queer human rights, all of them despite high GDP, just to name a few quantifiable properties of a state... the worst digressions happen in FPTP systems currently.
also the article throws both hands in the air as if no mechanisms exist to further improve democracies. it doesn't mention popular vote, or some mechanisms for balance of freedom of speech vs freedom to slander and distort and lie ("hate speech", the word polemics has 'polemos', war, as root), or press codex, or application thereof on all media, including "social" media, ad engines made of letters to the editor largely left alone and unmoderated... nor does it mention panachage and cumulating of votes on lists, the right to adjust the party list proposals in the voting booth.
the article does mention the brazen influence of financial power as a problem though.
but really, proportional representation is part of the solution.
That didn't really make sense. On the one hand, the author complains that proportional elections favor a limited number of parties, which don't always give voters good options to choose from. And on the other hand, the winner usually doesn't get the majority of seats, forcing them to negotiate with other parties instead of governing unilaterally.
Then there the focus on the left vs. the right, which is no longer as relevant as it used to be during the cold war. If you choose a single faction (such as the left, conservatives, or environmentalists), that specific faction is almost always smaller than everyone else combined. When there are multiple major issues instead of a single overarching question, political divisions become more nuanced than simple X vs. not-X.
Intelligence requires bigger brains, which comes at a cost - huge energy requirement (20% of total for humans), weight (for birds), head size (issue for human birth), etc.
Many animals have no need for intelligence/generality since they have a very limited behavioral niche (e.g. herbivores, crocodiles, sharks), so it wouldn't have evolved in the first place, but even for those that do the benefit has to outweigh the cost.
If every animal was a generalist they they'd all be in competition with each other, so I'd expect if you ran simulations you'd find that an ecosystem full of species that don't compete head-on is more stable, and therefore likely to result.
Inteligence is the endgame answer, brute forcing it gets you 85% of the way, but only inteligence will get you to 99.9%. Sometimes the local maximum is enough.
I agree with the emphasis on networking. At the risk of sounding like I am doing an advertisement, last month I gave away 5 free tickets to graduates of Fullstack Academy to come to my event, and one of those people found a part-time connection to a startup via the event. I'll do the same again, if you're in New York City, I offer 5 free tickets. Reach me at lawrence@krubner.com. Mention this Hacker News post. We will have entrepreneurs at this month's event who are hiring. Come join us. Details:
Here in the USA we currently have a regime that is focused on destroying all forms of American power: they are destroying our economic power, they are destroying our cultural power, they are destroying our military power. They are destroying the idea called "America." They have gone to war against each of our traditions and values. Some critics ascribe this to rational motives, such critics claim that the goal here is to make Trump wealthier, or to make Elon Musk wealthier, or to make all rich people wealthier. But I think it is a form of psychological denial to want to believe that Trump or Musk have rational motivations. It is more accurate to see this as an expression of the primitive impulses that rule them. There is no rational calculation in what they do, only rage, and a desire to destroy. Fighting against them is honorable, virtuous, and moral.
Unrepentant incompetence, especially in the presence of a counter/restoring force being actively ignored is indistinguishable from malice.
The U.S. is not unanimous in this dismantling effort, great controversy has been and continues to be brewed, which to any competent leader should signal a slower, more cautious approach. We see no such thing.
Hanlon's razor does not apply in such a circumstance. It only serves to ease the process of bloodletting by acting as a thought terminating cliche.
I think there's an easy answer for Elon's motivation in particular: he wants to damage the US as revenge for ending South African apartheid (https://www.flyingpenguin.com/?p=65793).
Nate Silver has shifted his politics very far to the right. That's simply a fact. He used to do reports on polling in which his math was straightforward and very reasonable, and back around 2016 he gave the public a good education about what probability actually meant -- in particular, he performed a real service by reminding people that "a 66% chance of winning" does not mean a person is going to win, it actually means one-third of the time they will lose. But nowadays Nate Silver argues on Twitter in favor of whatever Peter Thiel is doing, even as Peter Thiel endorses a completely illegal coup aimed at destroying the USA.
>But nowadays Nate Silver argues on Twitter in favor of whatever Peter Thiel is doing, even as Peter Thiel endorses a completely illegal coup aimed at destroying the USA.
Link to such tweets? I've gone through two pages of his most recent tweets and couldn't find anything obviously matches "argues on Twitter in favor of whatever Peter Thiel is doing, even as Peter Thiel endorses a completely illegal coup aimed at destroying the USA". The closest I could find were
"Don't neglect how tedious this platform is becoming. Democrats "won" the battle of being the most annoying party for several years running, but their grip on the title will probably be broken soon."
and a series of tweets talking about how smart Musk is.
Is that what you meant by "very far to the right"? Is not being infinitely rabid against Trump/Vance/Musk count as "very far to the right" now?
>Is that what you meant by "very far to the right"? Is not being infinitely rabid against Trump/Vance/Musk count as "very far to the right" now?
Yes, political discussion has ceased to be rational and has degraded into merely emotional outbursts today. I'm trying really hard to stay away from any political discussion. They're all very predictable and I feel like engaging in them is making me dumber. I see a political post with 500 comments, I don't even have to read it to know the main arguments.
I see a political post with 500 comments, I don't even have to read it to know the main arguments.
It amazes me that in this day and age people still (500 as your example states is actually quite low for some of the political shit on HN lately) continue to "argue" and discuss politics. It is 2025, literally everyone is in their own echochamber.
minds of people that still use "X" are basically being ran by state-sponsored media (amazing no one realizes this, would wonder what would happen if say Hillary bought X tomorrow...lol), minds of other people are being ran by whatever other place they do their own research - in 2025 no one will ever be able to "convince" someone else about anything or "open their eyes" to what they are being subjected to - it is suuuuuuch a waste of everyone's time to discuss politics. then you have droves of people complaining that many posts get flagged - the flaggers I believe are just people trying to save 500+ people from wasting their precious time :)
"But what does this mean for frontline engineering managers? Is the new normal just about writing more code and doing less of the other things that peacetime managers would normally do?"
"Should they be able to do code reviews? Yes."
There is no standard answer here. At many companies it is the Head Of Product who also oversees the tech team. They may not know how to write code, and will not know how to do code reviews. Some project managers lead engineering teams without knowing how to code. That's especially true outside of the tech industry.
For anyone interested in specific numbers, I interviewed Eric Garside about his experience scaling Freshly from 3 engineers to almost 80 engineers, see here:
What we are seeing is clearly an act of malice. We need to be honest about that. Trying to obfuscate what we are seeing helps no one. We should use plain English and talk in a straightforward way about what is happening.
I disagree. The nameservers still respond to requests on 53/tcp. It seems like someone messed up a firewall configuration or rolled out a bad server configuration. Shit happens - maybe exacerbated by the DOGE insanity. But there is no indication that this was done on purpose.
It's like shouting that the bridge is going to collapse because you see a few supports buckle. Anybody with eyes can see the bridge is standing and heavy ass trucks are driving on top of it.
Trumps first term was relatively neutered because people just refused to do what he asked. Those supports are gone now though and like the bridge collapse the observable changes happened slowly and then suddenly all at once.
I would agree with you if I had been talking about using "fascism" to describe first-term Trump and his hardcore supporters, but I was very specifically referring to the application of the term toward liberals and progressives who were deemed too moderate on identity politics. And to be clear, by "too moderate", I mean stuff like "advocating nonviolent protests" and "criticizing the weaponization of Title IX at universities".
I think warning about Trump fascism was appropriate and legitimate, but I think using the label as a lazy cudgel to get liberals and progressives to toe a poorly-conceived line did a tremendous amount to erode the term's significance and rhetorical power.
We can rebuild the government. We will eventually rebuild the government. All of these agencies will eventually be rebuilt. It might take 20 years, but eventually the USA will get back to where it was in late 2024, in terms of state capacity. But the damage being done right now almost guarantees a "Lost Generation" that has to spend its life rebuilding what we had, rather than moving into the future.
> We can rebuild the government. We will eventually rebuild the government. All of these agencies will eventually be rebuilt. It might take 20 years,
They're going to a lot of effort, and exposing themselves to a lot of risk, if this is all likely to be undone in a few years time. My worry is that they won't be able to resist trying to permanently lock-in these changes, even if the most obvious way to do that is to abandon democracy.
It is possible, but why do you believe this is a necessity? It's also possible that the US becomes an oligarchy dictatorship like Russia. All the assets are seized by a small group (crashing the economy, removing oversight, removing national park maintenance, etc. makes it possible). Then give people just enough money and fear not to revolt. Feed them propaganda all day, find some enemies to direct their hate towards. I mean, it's pretty much Vance and Thiel's playbook, rule by 'wise' tech CEOs.
We're already far too balkanized as a country for a central dictatorship to make much sense in the long run. Especially when the money tap starts running dry. I think we'll just have an extremely weak federal government (or perhaps we will finally split.)
What has bound us together as a people is the massive ocean of cash we collectively float on. Abundance that's actively being slashed and burned as we speak. Apologies for the mixed metaphor.
I was hinting at building an alternative system that would be resilient to this kind of tampering. Decentralization fanatics might be of use right now.
The only thing I can think of would be.... weakening the federal government and giving up on the idea of centralized control outside of the military and the dollar. Which is exactly what republicans are doing now.
On the bright side, this might also mean the end of rampaging around the globe in the name of democracy. I think that ship has fully sailed, alhamdulillah.
Every citizen of age is entered into a lottery. From this pool you will be selected, at random, to be assigned into a government management role (eg: president, law maker, justice) supported by staff. Any citizen, randomly in roles of power. No voting. Then you serve your role for 4 years and never get another one. Now the incentive is to do the least harm?
Sorry if I misjudged the way to approach this, I still think that the 'method' (or technology) matters because it influence the social and political layer too. How would you approach it, genuinely curious.
Our global influence and wealth will almost certainly never be this high again. I think that's probably a very good thing for the globe in itself, but we can wreak a lot of destruction on our way out of power.
There is some evidence that there are health benefits that are specific to the fasting mode. This has mostly been studied in the context of chemotherapy, where fasting can protect against some of the side-effects of chemotherapy:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5870384/
Most of this has only been studied in animals, not humans, but in animals the results were clear:
"Fasting before chemotherapy (CT) was shown to protect healthy cells from treatment toxicity by reducing the expression of some oncogenes, such as RAS and the AKT signaling pathway [2]. This reduction is mediated by the decrease of circulating insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) and glucose. In addition, starvation and calorie restriction activate other oncogenes in cancer cells, induce autophagy, and decrease cellular growth rates while increasing sensitivity to antimitotic drugs [2]."
If we assume that we have been shaped by millions of years of frequent famine, then our evolution has been shaped by famine. It is possible that our immune system simply makes the assumption that we will soon face famine, and therefore some important tasks, such as extreme autophagy, are normally postponed till the famine arrives. However, in the modern era the famine never arrives, and so we may have to induce it by artificial means.
I have experimented with very long fasts. My longest fast ever was in September of 2015 when I managed to go 12 straight days on nothing but water.
Obviously, any health benefits from that incident might have been psychosomatic, since I was expecting health benefits. But all the same, I did find some of the health benefits to be shocking and completely unexpected. Since at least 1995, and possibly 1990, I had a mole on my skin on my left arm. I wasn't worried about it, so I simply ignored it. I had it on my arm at least 20 years, maybe 25 years. I recall one morning in November of 2015 when I was in my kitchen, making breakfast, and I reached over to pour myself some coffee, and of course my arm was in my field of vision, and after a moment of thinking something was different, it occurred to me that the mole was gone. It had been there at least 20 years, and then it disappeared, at some point during the weeks after I had done the 12 day fast. I don't know when it disappeared, it just slowly faded away at some point between September and November. There was no remaining sign of it on my arm.
Again, that might have been purely psychosomatic, but it was interesting.