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I will add this to my long list of reasons I feel sorry for city dwellers :(


> For the vast >95% of human history, if you could walk to somewhere and survive there, you could live there

For 95% of human history we were hunter gatherers living in extremely sparsely populated areas.


When was the last time you heard of humans going somewhere where other humans weren't already there?

How do you think they got there?


People aren't simply interchangeable units of economic output, and when they live together for long periods of time they develop unique and distinct cultures that are dear to them. Letting the entirety of the world into your country without stops is cultural suicide. If you put any a value in preserving culture you will find it ethical to put some limit on immigration. Assimilation is possible but there is a limit to the rate and amount of foreigners a place can absorb before changing significantly.


'Cultures' have never been units of 'insiders' isolated from 'outsiders'. Cultural change is inevitable and there is no reason assume 'changing significantly' is inherently bad. That's what history _is_.


We're not talking about being completely isolated. We're talking about no limits on migration and permanent settlement. Of course cultures change and aren't static. But these no borders people are just as foolish as the no immigration people imo


> Letting the entirety of the world into your country without stops is cultural suicide.

The natives of the Americas, Australia, and the many nations previously colonized by European countries, know that better than any descendants of the colonizers.

Did they get to have any say?


Yes that is a great example. You certainly don't want what happened to them happening to you.


Yeah that's a great example of hypocrisy


No one actually thinks this is hypocrisy. No one is giving up their houses to Native Americans. They do an land acknowledgement and call it even. Even the most liberal among us don't feel it's necessary to sacrifice any meaningful amount of their own comfort to right some past wrongs.


The hypocrisy is:

Taking the lands of native peoples → outright massacring them in most cases → treating the original natives as second-class citizens with restricted rights → starting the worst wars in human history → preventing other people from traveling and immigrating under the excuse of "pReSeRvInG cUlTuRe" or jobs


Land acknowledgement where the most ancient natives get the most marginal and inhospitable land. Plenty of people think it's hypocrisy and are willing to collectively sacrifice to right the many, many wrongs.


No I mean land acknowledgement as in proclaiming "I'd like to acknowledge we're on the land of the..." before a meeting. No one's trying to give up any of their own land or property to anyone. It's always someone else's land somewhere else.


There's no real Us culture to preserve.


The US is too large to have one monolithic culture but it certainly contains many subcultures on the regional level. I won't dispute they're on the decline though.


>There's no real Us culture to preserve.

Fish Fails to Detect Water

The easiest way to see it is look at Japanese portrayals (outsider perspective). Cowboys, horses, guns, pride in our military and our free speech, fireworks and BBQs.

Just because you look down on the culture doesn't mean there isn't one.


That's one subset of Americans and not representative of all.

NYC and Los Angeles are the biggest cultural exporting centers in the US and have none of that.


LA has a lot of that actually. Simulated and on screen, but that's what they export.


Big cities are indistinguishable from other big cities in other countries. All big cities mostly have the same culture. That's why I liked the Japanese perspective on us. They saw cool things that they liked and included in their fiction that contained us.

If you want to experience American culture I recommend https://www.youtube.com/@PeterSantenello

America doesn't have one culture. It has 500 cultures. But the ones that other cultures notice are the ones I listed. Cities literally stink.


I'm American lol why are you sending me YouTube video like I don't know the country live in. Red necks in Appalachia aren't representative of Americans. They're a joke.

There's no singular American culture. You can't even get a consistent slice of pizza in the North East let alone the whole country.

More people live in Brooklyn then West Virginia. Why isn't hip hop out that area more representative of the US then Appalachia?


Please don't post like this on HN. We've asked you multiple times to observe the guidelines. We have to ban accounts that continue to do this after repeated appeals. Please take a moment to read the guidelines again and make the effort to observe them if you want to participate here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


Which part of the guidelines do you think I didn't follow?

I'm guessing I didn't explain my self clearly when I mentioned that people use the red neck stereo type to make fun of us? I wrote that in an unclear way?


Well, the first line of the “In Comments” section is “Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.” There's also: "Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer”, “Eschew flamebait”, and “Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle”.

It's common for people to not recognize that their commenting seems more escalatory when read by others than it does when it's being formulated in their mind, which is why we need to keep reminding people and asking people to make a conscious effort.


[flagged]


We've banned this account for going on tilt about political controversy, including this vile racially-flavored personal attack, which crosses the line egregiously. This is not what HN is for and it destroys what it is for. If you don't want to be banned, you can email us ([email protected]) to discuss ways of demonstrating your intention to participate earnestly in future.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


I’m think the weird irony is - and your example may exemplify this - a lot of the culture the right may want to preserve might be improved through immigration.

If you want more religious conservatism and traditional values, Americans are naturally moving away from that. Americans aren’t creating a whole lot of cowboy movies. China is innovating in fireworks.

David brooks has specifically called out this nihilism of the modern right. I think people attributing intention to policies like this are sadly externalizing their own values into an administration that doesn’t have them.

Because I think nobody is unified in this stuff. The people representing the culture you purport to imply a desire to preserve I don’t think agree with you, and certainly not with each other.

This is like Cracker Barrel all over again where most of the liberals I know loved Cracker Barrel and all the conservatives complaining about it almost to a one never went!

The sad truth is there is some sense things might be better if you were right.


Yeah, people leave their things to their children. It's been happening for quite some time now. You should look into it.


It's hard to overstate how poorly this whole thing was thought out and executed. They obviously had no plan for what we'd do when Iran seized the strait. This is going to go down as the definitive beginning of the decline leading to the eventual end of US global hegemony. To think anyone ever mentioned defending Taiwan from China lol


Your phrasing implies that someone with real authority tried to think it out, and had realistic plans.

Vs. I see an angry, frustrated C-in-C, who has maybe a 1-move look ahead, playing out his emotions. Hopefully he is too weak to flip the chess board.


The US military actually knew exactly how it would end, they've been wargaming this scenario for decades. Look up things like Millennium Challenge 2002. The US lost heavily.

They then re-ran the simulation along a script designed to guarantee the US couldn't lose a second time. Unfortunately through some sort of oversight the IRGC were never sent a copy of the script before the current mess.


How so?

"They obviously had no plan..."

How does that imply someone had realistic plansm


This "Strait of Hormuz War" is the "Suez Crisis of 1956" for the US Empire. You know, the one that ended the British Empire.


> To think anyone ever mentioned defending Taiwan from China lol

There are still countries willing to defend democracy out there - Ukraine/Europe/Canada/Japan/S-Korea/Australia.

Just not USA.


Europe explicitly does not provide security guarantees to Taiwan. A large majority of Europeans would not support an intervention. Seen from here sure it would be a loss for Democracy, but there are bigger problems today like climate change and global stability. War for and democracy at all costs narratives doesn’t work like in the US.


Yeah it is obviously mainly a problem for the countries in the eastern hemisphere.

But I expect Europe would help economically and Ukraine (the new military superpower in Europe) would help with planning and strategy and software Just like Japan, south Korea, Australia and New Zealand send support to the war against the muscovites.


I think that war for democacy first need to happen at home. Europe is at risk, altrough holding up much better them USA did.

US does not war for democracy anyway. It wars for own interests using democracy as a fig leaf or even intentionally destroying it.

It did defended democracy after WWII, really. It did helped Ukraine, initially. But then took autocrats sides and in between did quite a few definitely-not-pro-democracy wars or coups.


> Just not USA.

US does whatever the most expedient is. Democracy was the 'flavour of the month' some time ago. Even then, one can only assume it was front to some "friendly" bullying. Now the mask slipped.


Do you think any of those countries are going to try or see capable of stopping China from taking Taiwan?


Let me check if I get this right: you're making the argument that if USA won't defend Taiwan, Ukraine/Europe/Canada/Japan/S-Korea/Australia will?

I mean, obviously Ukraine won't. Does that need saying? It's insane to think about. Look at the history of WW1 and WW2: Russia will fight until the Russian state collapses and we're, at minimum, years away from that happening. And Ukraine, if they have any sense whatsoever, will do exactly very little for anyone else until that happens. Only a German dictator is stupid enough to answer "What do you do if you're stuck in a land war with Russia?" with "open 3 extra fronts" and we all know what happened to him. Ukraine is fighting from the underdog position and that means: no stupidity. And that means: no fighting China, no defending Taiwan, even despite the fact that China is fighting Ukraine. Sorry.

Europe and Canada utterly depend on China in 1000 different ways. They have chosen not to defend anyone, and will need a decade (minimum) to rearm. And even rearmed ... will they be able to challenge China? At that distance? Other than France none of these countries currently have the ability to project power outside of their borders at all, so they will do exactly nothing, because they've chosen to be utterly powerless (google "the peace dividend")

These countries are actually smug about those decisions, despite how stupid they are. I was recently in Ireland, and in a pub I found that that NOT ONLY Irish people were proud NOT to support Ukraine, but they were "proud" (their words, not mine) that they were still supporting Russia, because that matters to them personally (ie. jobs from Alumia exports and cheap Russian gas for everyone)

You know, people kept screaming the same thing with the USAID cuts. Everyone else will take over and get goodwill from everywhere instead of US. Reality then was that nobody took over, and where they did, it was to support armies, not people (e.g. UAE "helping" Sudan, Russia "helping" Mali, ... of course all of that happened with UN approval or at least silence)

Reality here is that if the US doesn't help defending Taiwan, nobody will. Not even Japan or South Korea. MAYBE Taiwan will get Ukraine-style loans, if that even matters (without US help, China will be able to fully control both sea and air routes into Taiwan in a matter of days. So even if Taiwan has money to spend, delivery of anything they buy will be utterly impossible)


The litmus test for where a country stands on international issues boils down to a conversation you had with some lads over pints?


What? You want some news links over Ireland's position at the EU about their magnesium and Russian gas imports?

What it means is that not only is that the government position, but it's got wide support from Irish people. The position being: no support for Ukraine (only loans), Irish jobs and cheap gas are more important.


Ireland took in an incredibly large number of Ukraine refugees per capita.

The alumina thing is pretty bad, and reflective of Irish peoples relatively confused understanding of geopolitics.

Now do the Greeks ;) one of the big problems with the EU is that it's a collection of national governments who have their own interests. Given that, they've done incredibly well on the Russian stuff.

And btw, Ireland does not have either Russian nor cheap gas.


Support for Ukraine from USA is almost zero now and they still hold up and event advance with help from Europe.

And obviously knowledge from Ukraine would be of huge help for Taiwan.

Your USAID example is depressing though. You'd wish the cutbacks had been done in a more controlled manner. They seemed a bit rushed, to noones benefit.


Wait what? Ukraine hasn't had elections since 2019. Also do you genuinely believe that the power play in geopolitics is about "spreading democracy" ?


Well, Iran is a huge mess, but in terms of strategic lessons, it actually tips the balance closer to "Taiwan, with US help and proper preparation, can deny China control of the strait of Taiwan" (and vice versa, of course). It's clear that asymmetric warfare is good now at denying access to ocean and turning it into no-man's-zone.

In a lot of ways, helping defending Taiwan (a very well-scoped objective, "do not let China land troops") would have been a lot easier than convincing a nation of 90 million to just roll over and give up rather than chucking drones across the gulf every so often.


I see what you're saying. But China wouldn't be just trying to control the strait, they'd presumably be trying to take the island over and willing to commit ground troops. Also I'm not sure if you're aware of the extent of the damage Iran did to US bases on the area but you can count on the same thing happening to any of ours in the region. I just don't see what we'd be able to do other than lob some missiles at them. And we're already low on those too now


> actually tips the balance closer to "Taiwan, with US help and proper preparation, can deny China control of the strait of Taiwan"

Sadly not true. So long as the US is unwilling to launch a large-scale invasion and occupation of Iran, Iran can make the strait riskier than commercial shipping traffic is comfortable with. Vs. occupation of Taiwan seems to be the CCP's goal.


Is Taiwan going to construct a hundred secret underground missile and drone cities like Iran? It would take decades to make them in the best case.


If anything, Iran has proved that is what they should be doing right now.


Yes — the US has helped Taiwan build them all over their mountains.


Yeah the ability to build bespoke apps in a reasonable amount of time is awesome. Cool stuff!


Damn these steak advertisements are getting sneaky



Other stats you could show:

- average time to correct answer - correct percentage

I think you should leave it hard like this. Make people earn that perfect score. Maybe add a dedicated clear button. Others have mentioned shuffle but I think you should leave as is, it's more challenging. Awesome stuff I'm going to send this to my mom she will be addicted.


> Maybe add a dedicated clear button.

It's tedious to have to hit DEL 6 or 7 times towards the end of the game. Maybe ESC could clear the whole word?


You might want to rethink your position on avoiding ultra processed foods not having any positive health effects...


If someone comes out with a study that shows, all other things being equal, decreasing or increasing the amount of ultra-processed foods causes a respective increase or decrease in health, then I will rethink my stance.

Until then, I'll keep eating foods consisting of proven healthy ingredients, even if they are classified as Nova 4 ultra-processed, such as lasagna made using my great grandmother's recipe or ancient Mayan dishes like pavo con achiote and also cochinita pibil, while avoiding foods that are proven unhealthy despite the not-ultra-processed Nova 3 and lower status, like Cronuts, potato chips, and bacon cheeseburgers.


Why would those be nova 4? And it sounds like you're already avoiding some processed foods. Did you mean avoiding ALL processed foods?


I don't know why their ingredients are classified as Nova 4, or why the processing level is defined by ingredients, in the first place. Lasagna contains ricotta which is made from whey, and whey automatically makes something Nova 4. Many ancient Mayan dishes contain achiote seeds, also known as annatto, which also automatically makes something Nova 4.

Achiote seeds add a bright red to yellow color, depending on the concentration, and add a mild earthy flavor. This puts it in the Nova 4 ultra-processed foods category, ostensibly because the color can make food more attractive. This is as opposed saffron stigmas, used in some traditional European dishes, which add a bright red to yellow color, depending on the concentration, and add a mild earthy flavor. Why adding achiote makes something ultraprocessed and adding saffron doesn't isn't explained, but I wonder if there's a predilection toward traditional European foods.

The Nova classification only counts fresh fruits and vegetables as unprocessed, which is Nova 1, so almost all foods are processed foods, Nova 3, or processed ingredients, Nova 2.

I eat healthy food and avoid unhealthy food, but the Nova classification system is so poorly done that it is meaningless. Even going off of actual levels of processing, instead of the ingredients, doesn't help much. One of the earliest processed foods, hominy, is much healthier than the unprocessed counterpart, and when Italians relied on polenta made from unprocessed corn, they became malnourished and suffered from pellagra, while those in America relying on the otherwise identical grits, made from hominy, weren't malnourished.

That's why I go off of actual research proving which ingredients are healthy based on the effects of adding them to or removing them from a diet that otherwise stays consistent in volume and calories, instead of the vibes-based categories the Nova classifications use, and the vague research showing that rich healthy people who exercise eat some things and poor unhealthy people who don't exercise eat other things, but never showing that eating some things actually makes you more healthy and eating other things actually makes you less healthy.

If similar levels of research into ultra-processed foods were applied to other statistics, they'd find that ice cream sales lead to drowning and owning a Ferrari makes you rich.


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