Hey HN! I want to hear the arguments as to why this is or isn't a positive development for society. Not whether or not it's the right business decision, or whether or not they should have the right to do it.
I think some might argue that any sort of service that gives customers more choice is a good thing, but recent research seems to be pointed in the direction that too many choices available is causing anxiety [+] (which might outweigh the utility the additional choice is providing).
Its good for Instagram, and its good for the economy. Society? More data needed. I worry its going to turn into Tinder for purchasing, and it simply greases the pipeline of purchasing things you don't need with money you don't have in the name of social status ("We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like.”) [++].
Instagram is where we reflect the interesting life of the kate spade new york girl through relatable social moments which highlight the products that are characters in her story
I think you can work up a good lather of doomsaying from just that quote, but it's all been said before -- so it's not really a new development. It reminds me indirectly of David Foster Wallace's essay E unibus pluram: television and U.S. Fiction:
It's true that there's something sad about the fact that young lion David Leavitt's sole descriptions of certain story characters is that their T-shirts have certain brand names on them. But the fact is that, for most of the educated young readership for whom Leavitt writes, members of a generation raised and nourished on messages equating what one consumes with who one is, Leavitt's descriptions do the job. In our post-'50, inseparable-from-TV association pool, brand loyalty is synecdochic of identity, character.
you take the red pill, you read Marx, Althusser, and Adorno and your eyes are forever opened. you take the blue pill, you agree with the posts up voted above mine and go back to sleep. your choice, kid
I think this is great for the economy. It's one more venue for small businesses to get their products to the masses and it'll create jobs as these 'stores' will need to be updated and managed.
Remember, we just elected a black man who was the head of the Harvard Law Review. Whatever you think about him, he did not succeed because of know-nothingism. We have bifurcated in some ways, but there's still a lot to be excited about!
> Remember, we just elected a black man who was the head of the Harvard Law Review. Whatever you think about him, he did not succeed because of know-nothingism.
I can count on one hand the number of political positions Barack Obama has held with which I agree, but you're right on this count. Obama was successful because he's probably the greatest campaigner in my lifetime. That skill includes the ability to build, manage, and inspire a large organization. His campaign "machine" will have an impact on American politics for decades to come.
> We have bifurcated in some ways, but there's still a lot to be excited about!
I agree, but I would also like to point out that the bifurcation is not along party lines. It's obvious to me that there are not-insubstantial factions of both major parties who simply do not care about the policies of their party's candidates. They identify with the tribe, see them as the "good guys", and therefore the opposing party are the "bad guys".
Yeah, the tribalism isn't really based on party lines so much. Identity politics has gained primary importance, perhaps in part because of social media.
Yeah, I've read that article and largely agree with it.
Personally, I'm as anti-authoritarian as can be, to the point of considering myself an anarchist. My childhood was spent around conservatives though, so I guess you could say that I'm "culturally Republican". I noticed early on that Trump's support within the GOP was predominately among those who had no problems with using the power of government to shape society to their own notions.
I used it at work last summer, and it was fine-- did everything you'd expect it to, etc. I found that I missed my Mac for a few reasons, but those seem to be mostly idiosyncratic.
Well, I'm assuming that the ease or difficulty of recognizing the difference between two notes bears some proportion to difference between their frequencies (the frequency of one minus that of the other), and not just their relative frequencies. The intervals in the 432Hz are "tighter" in the sense that, because the interval they correspond to in 440Hz is smaller for every possible interval, there are more notes in 432Hz tuning in any given arbitrary frequency range (say, from 100Hz to 1,000,000Hz) than in 440Hz tuning. And this makes the problem of recognizing them harder. I should've made this out clearer.
For instance, a half-tone from 432Hz is 457.69Hz, which gives out a difference of 25.69Hz; but a half-tone from 440Hz is 446.16Hz, which gives out a difference of 26.16Hz. Between 432Hz and 864Hz we can fit a whole scale, while in the same frequency range we'd be missing a note with 440Hz tuning.
Of course, this is a slight difference and it might not be noticeable at all. I personally don't hear much difference between the two tuning. Instead, I'm playing devil's advocate.
If I understand correctly, he's guessing that pitch discrimination is finer at lower frequencies, so tuning at 432Hz would allow our ears to be more 'exact'. Of course, this advantage would be negligible, and pitch discrimination decreases past a certain point. The songwriter intended their piece to be heard by human ears at A=440Hz, knowing the various propensities of human hearing at various levels.
Look at it like Celsius vs Fahrenheit (this isn't a perfect analogy because both scales measuring the same value, where we're discussing different values, but it'll do).
The boiling point of water in Celsius is 100 degrees, and the freezing point is 0 degrees; in Fahrenheit, 212 and 32, respectively. What's significant is the scale of each unit. 99C is colder than 211 Fahrenheit.
In the case of music, which is all about relative frequencies, establishing A determines the size of the steps. The above poster is proposing that A=432 yields more interesting frequency relationships than A=440. I have no idea.
I wouldn't say that's the case for most songs, but rather only for simple melodies. But yeah, a graver voice would sound better in most cases.
Consider the beggining of Bach's "Little" Fugue in G Minor (BWV 578), where the subject of the fugue is first introduced by a soprano voice and then repeated by an alto voice, while the soprano voice does the coutersubject. I'd say that, played in isolation, the melody sounds better when sung by the alto voice. But lowering the whole Fugue by a half-step wouldn't make it much better.
With respect to recorded music it tends to be the opposite: if you pitch up a track then the rhythm feels tighter and the vocals more steady, because the differences between the intent and the performance are relatively smaller. Hence an old studio trick dating at least back to the Chipmunks was to record in a lower key. Listener discrimination seems relatively less important in practice, on the other hand.
Or it's a stand against a movement which opposes their moral principles. To Pao (and, to the extent that it matters, me), D. Trump's movement is so vile that any prominent supporters of it waive their right to being tolerated. I am sure you'd agree that doing so would be acceptable if Thiel supported Strom Thurmond, Viktor Orban, or Mao Zedong; it's just a matter of how bad D. Trump is.
How about Hillary Clinton's "friend and mentor", a man of "eloquence and nobility" (her actual words) Robert C. Byrd? You know, "KKK Kleagle" Byrd? "Tried to filibuster the 1964 Civil Rights Act" Byrd? "I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side. ... Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds." Byrd?
"I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times ... and I don't mind apologizing over and over again. I can't erase what happened." -- Robert Byrd
"Senator Byrd reflects the transformative power of this nation," stated NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous. "Senator Byrd went from being an active member of the KKK to a being a stalwart supporter of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and many other pieces of seminal legislation that advanced the civil rights and liberties of our country.
"Senator Byrd came to consistently support the NAACP civil rights agenda, doing well on the NAACP Annual Civil Rights Report Card. He stood with us on many issues of crucial importance to our members from the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, the historic health care legislation of 2010 and his support for the Hate Crimes Prevention legislation," stated Hilary O. Shelton, Director of the NAACP Washington Bureau and Senior Vice President for Advocacy and Policy."
You'll need to source that. Despite some evidence in his later actions, Strom never vocally repudiated his earlier racism. I couldn't find any sources on it.
His filibuster against the Civil Rights Act put him in this position. Had he succeeded, his impact would have been far more detrimental to the rights of those protected under the act today then anything Byrd had/has done.
Both are disagreeable sorts, but Strom's lasting impact would have been much, much worse.
Second sentence: "U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., no longer supports racial segregation."
Actual quote from Thurmond below:
"I may have said some things that I could have left off because I favor everybody receiving equal treatment," Mr. Thurmond said. "Race should not enter into it. It's merit that counts."
And in a (probably futile) attempt to stave off another misstatement of my position: I don't believe Strom Thurmond stopped being a racist. I don't believe that Robert Byrd stopped being one either.
I should have been more specific. The 24 hour marathon filibuster, the longest in history, put him in this position. There were others who filibustered the Civil Rights Act bills, but none of them made such a dramatic show of it.
When was it that he repudiated his racism? Because he said in a 1998 interview when asked if he wanted to apologize for running as a Dixiecrat. He said "I don't have anything to apologize for," and "I don't have any regrets." He was also asked if he thought the Dixiecrats were right and said "Yes, I do."
Presumably the OP thought Strom Thurmond was still a racist, which, as those quotes prove, is clearly true.
> Edit: if this "1998 interview" exists, Google appears to have no knowledge of it.
It's always interesting to me how technologically literate HNers suddenly forget how to use a search engine when they don't want to acknowledge a point. It took me like 15 seconds to Google. Bottom half of the page:
Oh, I found that one, but the quote isn't sourced there either, and this appears to be a hit piece biography of Thurmond.
Even taking it at face value, the quote is grossly taken out of context, just as I said.
"I don't have anything to apologize for. I don't have any regrets. I may have said some things that I could have left off, because I favor everybody receiving equal treatment. Race should not enter into it. It's merit that counts."
In any case, I'm not trying to claim that Thurmond wasn't a racist, no matter how much you'd like to pretend that I am. Strom Thurmond absolutely was a racist. So was Byrd. Both later denied it (Byrd with his "change of heart", Thurmond with his "state''s rights" argument). But, oddly, only Byrd's denial is given credence. Why?
Which also says:
"U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., no longer supports racial segregation."
So much for Thurmond never having repudiated it. That's literally the second sentence in the piece.
> If this "1998 interview" exists, Google appears to have no knowledge of it.
You then dismiss it as a "hit piece", apparently out of nowhere - the author (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Bass) appears reputable and I can't find anything Googling that indicates it was controversial in any way.
> Which also says: "U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., no longer supports racial segregation."
It has been pointed out to you elsewhere that the "state's rights" pivot is something of a dog whistle - moving away from explicit support for racial segregation was a political necessity (see also: the famous Atwater quote in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy).
The significant difference between Thurmond and Byrd is, IMO, the level of contrition. "No longer supports" isn't the same thing as "happy to apologize and keep apologizing", especially when the latter comes with demonstrable action to right the injustices.
"If this "1998 interview" exists, Google appears to have no knowledge of it."
Your book link does not describe it as a "1998 interview", and in fact doesn't cite the original source at all.
And no, I don't just dismiss it as a "hit piece". I dismiss it because Thurmond claims to have given up segregation in the very next sentence. Thus making paulv's claim that these "quotes" show that Thurmond never repudiated segregation clueless at best, and likely actively dishonest.
"No longer supports" isn't the same thing as "happy to apologize and keep apologizing","
>You did know that Clinton called Byrd a "friend and mentor" but didn't know that Byrd repeatedly & profusely apologized for his racism.
No, actually, I did know that. I just didn't believe him at the time, and still don't.
>You did know that Thurmond "apologized" for his racism but didn't know that Thurmond didn't really mean it.
According to whom? You?
> You call me out for not providing a source (which ceejayoz provided below)
A source which a) showed that your "quotes" were grossly out of context and b) when tracked back to its actual source showed that Thurmond did repudiate his segregationist stance.
> Not to mention that we started this thread with your (incorrect) claims about Byrd + Clinton but now we're talking about Thurmond.
1) No, this thread started with Thurmond.
2) My original claims about Byrd were:
a) Hillary Clinton called him a "friend and mentor" and a man of "eloquence and nobility". That is correct. I even provided a link to the video of her saying it.
b) Robert Byrd was a Kleagle (recruiter) in the KKK. That is also correct. He was also later the Exalted Cyclops (head) of his local chapter.
c) Byrd once wrote "I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side. ... Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds." That is also correct.
I can only conclude that by "incorrect" you mean "100% correct".
If you have any factual links to refute any of those claims, please provide them. Not "Well, he later said he was sorry, yadda-yadda".
Are a), b) and c) above factually correct or not? A simple yes or no will suffice.
> Maybe next time you should try googling for a few minutes before you press submit.
Maybe you should try reading for a few minutes before you press submit.
Despite his repeated apologies and support of legislation that helped people of color, you're not willing to believe that Byrd was genuine when he apologized. But you do believe Thurmond was genuine. Okay.
It has become clear that this conversation is a waste of my time.
I believe nothing of the sort. I explicitly said "Thurmond absolutely was a racist." How is that not clear?
You are, to be blunt, lying. Hint: that doesn't actually work when my original words are here for all to read. I would recommend sticking to out of context quoting from obscure sources in future.
I take it, then, that you can't refute my factual statements, despite declaring them to be "incorrect", repeatedly?
You cited Thurmond's "I have nothing to apologize for" out of context as evidence that he never claimed to have given up segregationist views, even though when (laboriously) tracked down to its original source, his very next sentence was in fact just such a claim.
And you have the nerve to call someone else "intellectually dishonest".
> It has become clear that this conversation is a waste of my time.
