I appreciate what you’re saying but I thought McCarthy was not suggesting this is a world without good and evil. But rather the forces at work are beyond our ability to control or even understand. Termites never know why pesticide is being sprayed. At least that was my take from Blood Meridian, the Road and No Country. For instance, the scalp hunters are often horrified but in awe of the judge, subconsciously aware their souls have been signed away. And that part at the end where the kid falls before the dying woman and almost begs for some explanation for what is happening. As McKenna said, trying to use our reason and science is like “throwing an ice cube into a blast furnace.”
And I should say McCarthy is not fixated on just evil, but equally on the goodness that miraculously finds us. Only time I’ve ever openly sobbed from a book was the end of The Road.
> Static typing? One study, presented at FSE 2014, found no evidence that static typing is helpful—or harmful
And yet the abstract of the linked paper says:
> Most notably, it does appear that strong typing is modestly better than weak typing, and among functional languages, static typing is also somewhat better than dynamic typing.
Agreed. Currently reading the biography of Disney, and it’s so depressing to hear he was the punching bag of every writer, journalist, critic, and university professor throughout the 60s.
Was Disney the conformist racist simpleminded backwater troglodyte they claimed, or were they?
It’s hard to not be bothered by the pettiness of the “cold and timid souls who neither know victory or defeat”. But I once felt hacker news had fewer of those voices.
He was also known for massive investments into wind farms, divesting his petroleum portfolio, and rallying fellow conservatives to take climate change seriously.
You admit you’ve never heard of him, then read Wikipedia, and feel sufficiently armed with the knowledge required to self-righteously proclaim judgement on the life of another human being.
Segment the continental United States into quadrants. In which quadrant would the Notre Dame pin fall? It’s also about 1.5 hours from downtown Chicago. Tuscaloosa, Alabama is about 3.5 hours from the nearest major city with a sports team, Atlanta.
I don’t disagree the sport started in the ivies, but not where it became massively commercialized. Right now the Northeastern football programs are not very competitive, with the exception of Notre Dame. I can’t do this analysis right now, but I’d bet that there is a strong correlation between college football revenue and distance from professional teams, adjusting for the date at which the professional teams were founded.
This Alabama coach is famous for erupting in anger during the last play of the game if his player makes a mistake, even when they are winning 60-0.
To him, every moment matters equally, whether in practice or in the championship. And he considers support of the students and fans to be key in the performance of the players.
The students there LOVE being apart of a winning program. They enjoy the first half when Alabama walks over almost every team in the country.
Saban, i think, feels that the students are threatening the part they enjoy by not staying to the end.
I agree with you that he's probably wrong about that, but I also kind of respect the attitude. And so do most of the fans as you'll see them now happily sitting in the rain until the last second to show their solidarity.
The prejudice and ignorance in these comments are astounding, so I'll try address the major themes.
I'm defensive because, though I rarely watch the games, I enjoy listening to postgame interviews with the Alabama coach, Nick Saban. He's found unprecedented success in a brutally competitive field by following a textbook stoic philosophy people in the south call "The Process", by encouraging relentless pursuit of perfection in each individual's role, and showing little concern if that results in a win or a loss.
In every speech to players and fans he recites a quote by Martin Luther King, Jr: "If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music ... Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well."
-------
> "If students are leaving early, they must not be enjoying it"
Alabama typically wins games by 30-60 point margins (a touchdown is 7 points). Like any sport, close games are more exciting than blowouts. The students are getting bored in the last quarter, and leaving to return to tailgate parties and get drunk or avoid the traffic. Saban felt it was disrespectful and demotivating to the players who worked hard to win such staggering victories. In the genesis postgame interview, he yelled, "I've never been to a tailgate in my life!"
-------
> "American obsession with college football is absurd"
Generally, we hear this from self-hating Americans who wish to be European and American-hating Europeans who feel America is the source of all of their problems.
And generally, they share an obsession with soccer, or superhero movies, or something equally ridiculous as football.
American public universities are spread relatively evenly throughout the country, but major cities that support a professional team are not. So in the southeast and midwest, people rally support around local universities in the way that people in cities do for professional sports in America and in Europe.
Most of the fans of these university football teams never attended the university, but they are proud to still be apart of these traditions and it contributes tremendously to community cohesiveness. If you go to any southern tailgate, you'll see people from all ethnic groups and economic classes enjoying their time together.
Yes, this is tribalism. But maybe a little tribalism is good when half of the posts on hacker news are about the profound loneliness emerging in American society.
-------
> "It costs too much money"
Small private school football programs are struggling, yes. But many of them will not survive education changes in the coming decades regardless.
But football is very profitable for large public universities and funds other Title Nine sports programs like, most importantly to me, women's soccer. Title Nine is the best explanation for why we are so dominant in the Women's World Cup.
-------
> "Sports are a waste of time"
Yes, as are many of the things we choose to do with our time. Hopefully, no one is judging you for your unproductive time. But it sounds like many here are apart of a subgroup, like me, that didn't have much of a connection to the popular or well-adjusted kids in school. And so we find solace in looking down upon the things they enjoy. But being unjustly judgmental does not make us better than them, it makes us pathetic.
This is nonsense. Gmail is free. Inbox was free. Google Search is free. You can launch a profitable business on Google Cloud or Firebase in the free tier. They built Kubernetes and Go, for free, and it's very easy to port your Cloud infrastructure anywhere. You can translate text to any language, for free.
What exactly do they owe you?
Not enough people were using Inbox. It was an experiment and now they're moving on.
Honestly, I'd love to see examples of rotted code that could be made exponentially faster. I'm likely guilty of this.
And I agree that it's disheartening to watch how horribly we use these incredible tools. But thankfully as programmers we're in a position to design these tools to offset the worst parts of humanity.
And one field in which more powerful computers will be needed soon is deep learning. It appears that progress is beginning to stall, as larger networks are necessary. Better tools for distributed computing will make up the difference in the short term, but the current infrastructure appears to be insufficient for general intelligence.
The Botanical Garden setting could be part of the problem. The article says that your location is weighted into the results, considering past occurrences of species found near you. If you tried non-native flowers to the garden, it could have been weighted incorrectly.
And I should say McCarthy is not fixated on just evil, but equally on the goodness that miraculously finds us. Only time I’ve ever openly sobbed from a book was the end of The Road.