Is it really true about the unpalatable chickens? Every mention of "caloptine" that I can find is from 1878, and derives from the annual Report of the United States entomological commission, which expressed hope of making commercial locust products, mainly formic acid. That entomological comission is the cited Charles Riley. Nobody ever seems to mention the substance again.
For most of my sources I didn't trace back to the original source but rather just cited the first source, if it ends up being inaccurate let me know and I'll revise it! The main focus of the article is breadth not depth =)
On that page you can click “read sample” and then search for “chicken” and the reference on page 3 seems to be the main source of that claim. Where that is quoting, I’m not sure.
Thanks! So the connection between the tainted taste (source on that still unknown) and this essential oil of locust is just Lockwood spitballing:
> Although the insects had no defensive chemicals in their bodies, a diet saturated with locusts rendered the eggs and flesh of chickens inedible. Studies at the time found that the locusts were remarkably rich in a “reddish-brown oil of very pungent and penetrating odor,” and perhaps this accounts for the tainted meat.
That line doesn't really work, since I'm not Sam Beckett and I won't suddenly Quantum Leap into anybody's body. Why shouldn't I take an asymmetric attitude? These kind of arguments try to derive impersonal values by starting from principles of self-interest. But there's no need, because self-interest is impersonal values, in disguise. Maybe you value getting personally improved in one way or another, like getting richer or more popular or stronger or acquiring offspring, but we can play the "why" game on that until it turns into some motivating abstract impersonal goody-goody value such as "I value people".
I mean, why do you wish to feel valued by others and get respect? Is it just so that they stay out of your way and give you things? What are you going to do next, with the space and the things? This assumption, that you care what they think of you, pretty much begs the question about valuing them back. What you value is what you want to do, and the other people are involved in that, and asymmetry doesn't help get it done, except very locally (that's privacy).
Personally I often wish that all the people would go away, but I value creating knowledge, and I have to admit that I'd be crap at doing that on my own, so fine, I value people really, you can all stay.
> I mean, why do you wish to feel valued by others and get respect?
I believe we have evolved to be a social species whose brain innately rewards prosocial behavior. Your question is akin to asking why cats chase mice or why birds fly.
No, that wasn't the meaning. In context, the lead-up to the quote was:
> people have been given to understand "I have a problem, it is the Government's job to cope with it!" or "I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!" "I am homeless, the Government must house me!" and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing!
In subsequent years she often invoked society in phrases like "civil society", "free society", and "responsible society". The quote means that government won't help you very much, and indeed that you should be self-reliant. But it would be a distortion to extrapolate that into "be bad and inconsiderate and uncooperative". Individualism doesn't require the individuals to be unpleasant to one another. It just means they aren't an organized collective or hive.
Here the "reasonable expectation of privacy" is not because they were in the nude, but because they were secretly using your home to test clumsy robots and wouldn't like to be caught.
Well, they just had a failure, so that spells great success, right?
I'm unclear on the point of why having a rocket blow up when you're being slow and careful is more of a setback than having one blow up when you aren't.
Information theory. If you are doing lots of small, incremental tests, burning through a lot of hardware doing all sorts of characterization and qualifying tests, learning a little bit from each one, you can make steady progress, finding your mistakes as you go.
If instead you try to work out everything in painstaking detail, build a small number of prototypes that your calculations assure you should work, and one blow sup, you learn that...your calculations are wrong.
Imagine developing software with no CI tests, where you only get to run one full system test every couple of months. Slow and careful means avoiding lots and lots of early learning opportunities.
This post is excellent, measured, sensible, long and comprehensive. Nobody will like it, because it doesn't say "social media is pushing an electronic drug through your phone that makes your brain fall apart, and that's why you like it so much". That's the popular and exciting meme.
But why is that? What's so unappealing about "looking at your phone is fine for your brain but is possibly not what you were supposed to be doing"? Be free, enjoy your stupid ticky-tocks.
I probably don't have as strong an opinion as some others but there is a whole genre of blog posts out there with a contrarian take that people just won't believe because they are informed by their own experience and observations.
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