The palantiri were created by Fëanor. The kinslayer whose pride, rage, and desire for vengeance drove most of his people to their doom. The potential to corrupt was always present in them.
In the LotR, Aragorn bends a palantir to his will and uses it for good with great difficulty. He manages to do that, because he is (in addition to everything else) the trueborn king and the palantiri are his birthright. Denethor, on the other hand, succumbs to corruption. While he is a powerful lord with good intentions, he is only a steward, not a king. The right to use the palantiri is not inherent in his being, because he only wields power in someone else's name.
The banality of evil is a well-known idea. That evil is often done by people who are just doing their jobs and see themselves as decent people.
Words are cheap, thoughts are cheap, and voting is cheap. A full-time job, on the other hand, is a substantial contribution towards something, and it comes with a huge opportunity cost. The job you have is a major factor in determining your moral character. Determining what kind of a person you actually are, as opposed to the kind of a person you believe to be, or wish you'd be.
You should not adjust for inflation or even for wages, but for cost of employment. The way health insurance works in the US makes public sector jobs with average wages and good benefits expensive to the employer.
I'm in the academia, and Claude's performance in my field could be described as a very fast junior grad student. When I use Claude Code, I typically spend a few hours figuring out what needs to be done exactly, and describing it in sufficient detail. Then Claude does it in 30 minutes, while an actual student would need days. And then I spend anything from minutes to days evaluating the results, depending on if it needs to be tested with real data and how much weirdness those tests uncover.
But I also have other work to do beyond guiding the automated grad student. Which means my Claude Code usage rarely exceeds 1–2 hours/week.
As a citizen of a small country with decently long democratic traditions, I've always found American attitudes like that weird. From my perspective, if you live in a free country, any government you have by definition reflects the will of the people. If you're afraid of what the government might do, you're really afraid of what your fellow citizens might do. Afraid that your fellow citizens don't share your values, or those of the constitution.
When it comes to de-banking, the bigger threat seems to come from the banks than from the government. Your bank might choose to de-bank you, because it doesn't like you. Because you are too risky or too unpleasant, or because the computer says so. So if you're afraid of de-banking, you might want to pass a law that makes it illegal for a bank to refuse to offer basic services to you, unless one of the exceptions listed in the law applies.
Our ancestors came to the US because our neighbors in Europe decided they should die for following the wrong religion, be it catholic irish/germans or non-catholic french/jewish.
So yes, our country is founded on not letting that happen, not letting your neighbors have that kind of power over your life, via the old world/European direct killing/starvation/exile from society or a modern world reimaged debanking that basically strangles you to death with the burden of just existing in the modern world without modern finance/electronic funds/card payment.
In the US there are strict banks and then there are immigrant/human friendly banks like US Bank. I can easily change banks. I can't exist in a right to life/liberty/happiness way with no bank, and the government can't take that right away unless I have been convicted and a judge ruled that in my circumstances specifically it should be taken away.
But what happens if your neighbors no longer believe in that? Does a constitution still matter, if its values are no longer the values of the people? Who will enforce the constitution, if the people who are supposed to do that no longer want to?
If you live in a free country, your neighbors become a problem before the government does. If they become a problem, the government will often follow, and then you may no longer be living in a free country.
That is why the US government is designed the way it is, with the electoral college, 2 senators per state, etc.
It is all designed to prevent European style tyranny of the majority or mob rule, yet also create a representational state. It's a tricky balance. But our ancestors were, again, murdered or forced to flee half way around the world, so a core concern/reality we work hard to avoid at the cost of slower government/less direct democracy that like you say can change on a whim or easily be directed as a weapon against ones neighbors. We prefer a slow out of touch government that protects freedom/peoples rights than a government that represents short term opinion happy to trample.
My point was that an oppressive government cannot appear out of nowhere in a free country. The citizens must abandon constitutional values first. If an oppressive government remains in power and maintains its popularity long enough, it will infiltrate all levels of the government and compromise checks and balances.
Then, with popular and institutional support, the government can do basically whatever it wants. Regardless of what powers it had before or what the constitution says.
You should not be afraid of giving the government new powers simply because it might go bad later. (There are other valid reasons, but that's not one of them.) If the government does go bad, it can take those powers on its own just fine. You should be afraid of your fellow citizens going bad and starting to think that their personal goals and values are more important than constitutional values. Because that's a prerequisite for the government going bad.
> Does a constitution still matter, if its values are no longer the values of the people?
Yes, otherwise the incumbents could pull stunts like opening the borders to flood the nation with foreigners, radically redefining who "the people" are in order to dictate what "our values" are.
The entire point of written law is to outlive the whims of human nature.
How does written law enforce itself if the police and the judges are compromised?
Everything is ultimately enforced by people. If people stop believing in something, the government will eventually follow suit. And not just the handful of top leaders elected or appointed for a few years, but most people from the top to the bottom in every branch of the government. Especially the ones with the power to make a difference.
The written law may say something, but people in power are very good at twisting its purpose and ignoring it. Especially when that's something everyone expects from you.
> if you live in a free country, any government you have by definition reflects the will of the people.
There's no such definition, where did you get that from? The only definition is "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance".
> If you're afraid of what the government might do, you're really afraid of what your fellow citizens might do.
In non-fantasy land all power corrupts.
> you might want to pass a law that makes it illegal for a bank to refuse to offer basic services to you
We don't pass laws, our representatives do, we select reps from a pool of candidates but becoming a candidate outside of the established parties is subject to the regulations established by these parties... you get the idea.
> As a citizen of a small country with decently long democratic traditions, I've always found American attitudes like that weird.
There's bliss and then there's reality... which happens to be weird, unfortunately.
My view is that the American attitude is odd, because it is catastrophizing. The "will of the people" (whatever that means; it is usually curated by those with power anyway) is neither here nor there, and I have absolutely no concern for it. The truth is not decided by vote.
But I agree that private companies can debank much more easily than gov'ts can. I think more people are realizing that it is not a question of gov't or corporation, but of power. The gov't is your best defense against private malice.
There are estimates that the most recent common ancestor of all humanity lived a few thousand years ago. Isolated peoples are almost never fully isolated, and all kinds of rare events can happen in 100+ generations. Andamanese peoples in particular were in contact with each other, with occasional contacts to the mainland.
Tasmania may have been isolated for ~8000 years between sea level rise and European contact. But the last person of fully Aboriginal Tasmanian descent likely died in 1905.
The cost of passenger rail is high in America, because America doesn't build enough rail.
If you try building a single megaproject, nobody knows what they are doing, everything is inefficient, and mistakes will be made. But you learn by doing. If the individual projects are small enough that there are always multiple projects in various stages, you develop and maintain expertise. Then you can build things cost-effectively and finish the projects in time.
>The cost of passenger rail is high in America, because America doesn't build enough rail.
This seems backwards to me tbh. Is this a feeling or backed by hard data?
As much as anti-american sentiment is right now, there are still great engineering feats pulled off all the time.
Construction is expensive because we value public insight into projects and health factors for workers and everyone [and the environment] else impacted. Other countries not so much.
Infrastructure construction is more about administration than engineering. If the people in charge have not administered similar projects before, they will make mistakes.
Public insight, health, worker welfare, and environment are pretty universal values in developed countries. What may set the US apart is their particular version of the common law system. A lot of people have the standing to sue someone, causing unpredictable delays and cost overruns for an infrastructure project. In many other countries, most cases related to infrastructure projects are handled by administrative courts. They will determine narrowly whether all the relevant laws were followed, and do so cost-effectively and in a predictable time.
Experience with the decisions of the relevant courts in similar cases is a major component of basic competence in infrastructure projects. If you can predict what the courts are willing to approve, you can plan the project accordingly. If you can predict how much time and money the court process will take, you can include that in the plans. But if you don't have the experience or the courts are unpredictable, you are bound to make mistakes.
> Construction is expensive because we value public insight into projects and health factors for workers and everyone [and the environment] else impacted. Other countries not so much.
Railway construction in Spain and France is at least half the cost of the United States. Both "value public insight into projects and health factors for workers and everyone [and the environment] else impacted".
I think it's not feasible in America because of the culture. If you have a good chunk of people that are hell-bent against sharing space with others for one reason or another (some are legitimate reasons!), you're already discarding a significant chunk of passengers.
Another hot take is... if you want any of the infrastructure to be mass-used, you have to make it better than the alternatives, so people with the means would use it as well. Like your subway should be faster than the cars, so even affluent people would take it. Your trains should be faster than door-to-door flight time, so people would take that as well. Unfortunately that makes a lot of things more complicated in communities with high income disparity.
Culturally, though, it’s because that over half of the population doesn’t know that they would benefit from trains? In the same way outside (just as inside) the US there’s an age-old divide between farmers and city folk (see Denmark or France for the most recent protests).
In China, >66% of the population lives in urban areas. In the US, <30% live in proper urban areas (a vast majority, 60%, live in historically car-centric suburban areas mostly developed post WWII).
The issue is not that those areas that would benefit the most don’t support it, it’s that the areas that would benefit the most from it are surrounded by areas that currently have no viable alternatives (and thus knowledge that something else is possible) other than a car. They’re already driving >1hr to get to work or an airport. Therefore, of course they think anything that takes away resources from wider roads is a waste of their own time and tax money, as it does not benefit them.
The reason the California HSR, if ever finished, will actually mark a cultural shift is that it’s the only megaproject attempted since the 21st century that actually puts modern alternatives to the car in rural areas: vast amounts of money could’ve been saved by connecting LA to SF and SD by electrifying and tunneling on the current Amtrak route, but that would’ve left out about half the state.
Was it too ambitious? Maybe. But in 50 years, maybe everyone will be talking about how it changed California, and the US’s, entire attitude toward rail.
> Culturally, though, it’s because that over half of the population doesn’t know that they would benefit from trains
No it’s not. Everyone in America goes to Disney World, which was made by a train nerd and you can’t even drive into the parks. Everyone goes there, rides around the trains and walkable areas, and then goes home to Ohio and drives around in their giant SUV.
It’s not because people don’t know about trains. It’s because they don’t value the things you do, and they value things you don’t, like having distance from strangers and being able to buy a lot of stuff and cart it around with them everywhere.
All my family is immigrants from Bangladesh. They’re not steeped in generations of American car culture. But, for some reason, car culture is the thing they assimilate into most easily. My cousin was living in Queens (where all the recent Bangladeshi immigrants are) and moved to Dallas. She’s thrilled about having all the space for her kids to run around, the apartment with a pool, etc. She doesn’t miss having to schlep her kids on the subway around aggressive homeless people, people singing to themselves, panhandlers, etc.
That’s fun, because I’m from a third generation Dallas family :) I hope they enjoy Dallas and all Texas has to offer.
Dallas, TX has continually voted in expanding its DART Rail funding the past 40 years. It has the most miles of intercity rail in the entirety of the South. It has the most light rail, by mileage, built in the entirety of the US. It just opened up an entirely new rail line through the suburbs (and only the suburbs) in March, and is its third(!) line which connects directly to DFW airport, which makes it the most rail-connected airport in the United States, and tied with Shanghai, Tokyo and London for the world.
I also personally currently live on a farm in California, and am an advocate of HSR. I believe many of those in similar areas are afraid of rail because they have never experienced its benefits, and change without knowledge is scary.
So please forgive me if I say that you are incorrect in both your assessment of how the majority of Dallas, Texas supports rail and your assumption of what I value.
And regarding your point about Disney World, I believe you are actually agreeing with me. Disney is one of the only places in the US it makes more sense to use the train or shuttle than a car. It does not in most of the US. Many people go to Disney World and experience for the first time how well trains can work for day-to-day transit, if designed well and intentionally. People will use what is most convenient, immigrant or not — most people (including me) do not take trains out of some principled stance, they do so when it’s more convenient. And my argument is we should make it more convenient, safety and all.
> So please forgive me if I say that you are incorrect in both your assessment of how the majority of Dallas, Texas supports rail and your assumption of what I value.
I'm correct in my assumption about what you value. But you're correct in your assumption about what other people value.
> People will use what is most convenient, immigrant or not — most people (including me) do not take trains out of some principled stance, they do so when it’s more convenient.
Right, and virtually nobody in the Dallas, Texas area actually takes transit themselves. The proof of what they value is right there in their revealed preferences.
> It’s not because people don’t know about trains. It’s because they don’t value the things you do, and they value things you don’t, like having distance from strangers and being able to buy a lot of stuff and cart it around with them everywhere.
But isn't this pretty fungible? Like it can't be that all the people genetically predisposed to like high density neighborhoods and biking to the grocery store happen to be in the Netherlands.
Frankly, if you've never lived in a place with clean, reliable, fast trains, you probably would be disillusioned and would never go to the train life. Or if your public infrastructure is deemed "for poor people".
Back to my original point, it's a cultural problem.
Funny enough, Americans are usually happy to use public transportation when the travel in Europe or in Japan. Also most New Yorkers use the subway every day.
It's just their own public transit infrastructure they don't like, and I understand them.
“What you should in fact do is employ all the world's top male and female supermodels, pay them to walk the length of the train handing out free Chateau Petrus for the entire duration of the journey. You'll still have about 3 billion pounds left in change and people will ask for the trains to be slowed down.” ~Rory Sutherland
> I think it's not feasible in America because of the culture. If you have a good chunk of people that are hell-bent against sharing space with others for one reason or another (some are legitimate reasons!), you're already discarding a significant chunk of passengers.
That's why America never layed any railroads in the 19th century, and everyone just rode by horse instead. Oh wait, that's not what happened at all.
You are ignoring major cultural shifts - people also lived tightly packed into tenements then too. The tolerance for such space sharing without common purpose has declined.
Which means that culture could easily shift again. It's not like Europe wasn't just as car-obsessed immediately after WWII (and East Asia a few decades after that), they just realized that it was a bad idea and that cars were fundamentally incompatible with dense settlements.
> Another hot take is... if you want any of the infrastructure to be mass-used, you have to make it better than the alternatives, so people with the means would use it as well. Like your subway should be faster than the cars, so even affluent people would take it.
These days cities often achieve this by purposely hurting the alternatives like driving. And that just isn’t the solution. Mass transit has to be fast period. Not just faster than a bad alternative. And it needs to be safe, and 24x7.
> These days cities often achieve this by purposely hurting the alternatives like driving.
The point is not hurting the alternative of driving, it's to ensure that drivers don't actively hurt the more space-efficient alternatives of biking and walking on foot. The people who still have a real need for driving actually have a far better experience as a result due to the reduced traffic.
I support all kinds of transportation. I think everyone should have access to trains, cars, bikes and etc. But I also think each has its own merits. Like the car ownership over here is huge, but most commute to work on trains because things aren’t really invisibly subsidized.
I haven't read much from Reich, so I don't know his position. But I've understood that the current best practice in human genetics is to explicitly justify the population descriptors chosen for each study, rather than using any fixed set of descriptors given from the outside.
There are two main types of genetic descriptors: those based on genetic similarity and those based on ancestry groups. Genetic similarity is quantitative, and individual samples often have multiple labels attached to them. Ancestry groups are discrete categories based on quantitative measures. If it's appropriate to use descriptors based on genetic ancestry groups in a study, it's usually also appropriate to drop samples that don't fit neatly in any single group.
Sometimes it's more appropriate to use descriptors based on environmental factors, such as ethnicity or geography. Environmental descriptors tend to be correlated with genetic descriptors, but they are not the same.
Most PhD topics are incremental, because you are supposed to do a PhD very early in your career. Because the American system won and the PhD become the terminal degree. Which you often do as a student rather than even a junior professional.
In my experience, academic researchers are more likely to do significant independent work in their 30s than in their 20s. Some academic cultures have higher doctorates, habilitations, or similar milestones to wrap up this period of peak productivity, but those remain national oddities.
This is a good point. Regrettably, most get pushed out of the current system before they have a chance to hone their skills. Society doesn't get to benefit from their best work.
Bioinformatics is an outlier within HPC. It's less about numerical computing and more about processing string data with weird algorithms and data structures that are rarely used anywhere else.
Distributed computing never really took off in bioinformatics, because most tasks are conveniently small. For example, a human genome is small enough that you can run most tasks involving a single genome on an average cost-effective server in a reasonable time. And that was already true 10–15 years ago. And if you have a lot of data, it usually means that you have many independent tasks.
Which is nice from the perspective of a tool developer. You don't have to deal with the bureaucracy of distributed computing, as it's the user's responsibility.
C++ is popular for developing bioinformatics tools. Some core tools are written in C, but actual C developers are rare. And Rust has become popular with new projects — to the extent that I haven't really seen C++20 or newer in the field.
Bioinformatics is also seeing huge gains from rewriting the slow Python code into highly parallel Rust (way less fiddly than C++ for the typical academic dev).
This is not new either. Most of numpy and pandas and other stuff you use the Python C interface and pass arrays in and get data back. You can write small embeddable C libraries pretty easily for real crunching and you get the ease of writing python (basically comprehensible to researchers who understand The MATLAB )
In the LotR, Aragorn bends a palantir to his will and uses it for good with great difficulty. He manages to do that, because he is (in addition to everything else) the trueborn king and the palantiri are his birthright. Denethor, on the other hand, succumbs to corruption. While he is a powerful lord with good intentions, he is only a steward, not a king. The right to use the palantiri is not inherent in his being, because he only wields power in someone else's name.
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