Yep. Its not a bad idea at all, stuff like this is what made Chrome huge on Android. A lot of users will never change default settings.
I mean I would love to live in a world were people make informed decisions based on research but that's not happening. Meanwhile advanced users retain the freedom to use whatever browser they want so everyone wins.
America in general. A surgeon in the Netherlands can wait DECADES for a kid with gunshot wounds. Its just textbook stuff but if you want to see it in action the US is a good place to learn.
You posted a ton of nationalistic swipes to HN after we asked you not to. That counts as arson here. It reliably leads to flamewars. We've banned the account.
Your Netherlands comment is also hyperbole. Here's an article about a kid who was shot and killed on an Amsterdam playground a few weeks ago. Two other people were wounded by what in America would be called an "active shooter." But that only happens in America, right?
Anecdote aside, it's established beyond a doubt that the US has much, much higher rates of gun violence than European countries, across every dimension: wounds, deaths, assault, self-harm, accidents... You name it, there's a statistic documenting it.
For example, according to healthdata.org, in 2016, physical violence by firearm was the cause of 210.5 DALYs per 100,000. In the Netherlands it was 10.8.
A DALY is a standardized metric defined by the WHO as "lost years of life" to measure the burden of a disease or other affliction.
So in 2016 physical violence by firearm caused 20 times more harm per capita to the US population than to the Dutch population. I'm willing to bet that for self-harm and accidental firearm wounds the gap is even larger, given the idiotic habit Americans have of keeping guns and ammunition stored in their homes.
I'm not disputing that America has far more gun deaths than most (all?) other nations, but to generalize that the violence in Chicago is endemic to the rest of the nation is pure fantasy.
There are tens of thousands of towns, villages, and cities that see little to no gun violence each year. But they don't get written up in the Daily Fail.
It's really crazy when you look at just how many murders / deaths we have compared to anyone else.
I decided to check the right-wing conspiracy theory that if you dropped the top four Democratic controlled cities from the US numbers, we'd be in the range of other 1st world democracies. No idea which cities those are supposed to be, but I assume Chicago and NY and LA and St Louis.
Spoiler alert, we're not. Even throwing out all gunshot murders from IL, CA, NY, LA, MO (New Orleans), while keeping the population, still doesn't get us below 2x rate of CAN. You have to toss TX, NJ, MT, OK, to get in the ballpark.
Eh? Canada has a lower rate of gun deaths than ANY US state; 1.97 vs 2.78 in Hawaii, the lowest. Canada’s rate is still high for a developed country, incidentally.
Edit: sorry, missed you were talking about murders; I was using data for all deaths.
There are ~19,000 incorporated places (cities, towns and villages) in the United States so to say 'tens of thousands' of them see little to no gun violence would be a significant overstatement.
> to generalize that the violence in Chicago is endemic to the rest of the nation is pure fantasy.
That wasn't the comment.
The comment was that most surgeons in the Netherlands can wait decades before seeing a gunshot wound. If they want hands-on experience, the US is a good place to learn. I think that's a very reasonable comment (EDIT maybe "years" is more reasonable than "decades"...) and if you account for accidents and self-harm, you really don't need to go to Chicago or Baltimore. The vast majority of gun wounds in the US are accidents or self-harm and occur all over the US, including "quiet little towns". I would argue that the real fantasy is to think that the gun violence epidemic is limited to big cities with black guys in hoodies shooting at each other.
The US has 10.5 gun deaths per 100k per year; the Netherlands has 0.58. The lowest US state is Hawaii, with 2.71. Hawaii is higher than almost anywhere in Western Europe; only Finland, France and Switzerland are higher.
Obviously not everywhere in the US has the same rate of gun deaths, but compared to The Netherlands anywhere is high.
I take your point. But its also true that if you measure violent death over the last 100 years Europe is way, way, way ahead. Around 90 million Europeans have died violently over the last century -- guns, bombs, gas, starvation -- at the hands of its governments and people.
The US would have to have a Parkland style school shooting every hours on the hours for the next 600 years to catch up.
We could discuss violent deaths over the last 100 years... But that would be incredibly off topic given that we're discussing how surgeons in different countries have different exposure to gun trauma today...
My healthcare provider always opts for the generic drugs. When that's not an option they negotiate hard with big pharma.
It amuses me how in the ostensibly capitalist US nobody cares about efficiency. You would think that the insurance companies in the US would care about profits, instead billions are being wasted every year. It wouldn't even be so bad if healthcare was actually the best in the world so people would get what they pay for but it is not even close...
Well most countries have living constitutions. I think its only natural to update the constitution every once in a while, a document from 1848 predates gay rights for instance.
Or you could just do away with it all and go for a one man one vote system. Why a vote in Kansas needs to be tallied differently from a vote in New York in the 2020 elections is beyond me.
Districts don't matter for the presidential election. They only affect apportionment in the House of Representatives, which is region based and is 1 man 1 vote (within state boundaries. Even across states the differences in voting power isn't as aggregious as the Senate or overall electoral college).
Like many features of the original constitution, protecting slavery (the slave states were modtly low population states, with even smaller voting populations, and were particularly concerned that equal representation would eventually turn against them—abolitionism was already a thing at the time of the Constitution, and they were very concerned about it taking hold) was a major concern. The representation structure (and it's special protection against revision by amendment) plus the 3/5 compromise plus the explicit, limit term, protection of the slave trade, among other provisions of the Constitution, were protection against that eventuality.
Because presidential elections are not popular elections. Kansas has proportional representation in the House but is absurdly over-represented in the Senate and slightly over-represented in the Presidency.
This is of course by design. The founder's obviously knew about proportional representation and they deliberately chose to disregard it. Shouldn't that give you pause to figure out why?
> The founder's obviously knew about proportional representation and they deliberately chose to disregard it. Shouldn't that give you pause to figure out why?
Turns out the reason was slavery. A huge proportion of the Southern population was enslaved, and slaves didn't vote. The free staters didn't want slaves to even count toward state population for the purposes of congressional apportionment, while the slave staters did, so they compromised on counting the slave population at 3/5 of the free population. As a result, prior to the abolition of slavery, the votes of free men in slave states were always represented at a higher proportion than the votes of free men in free states.
Many of the founders were wise and educated men who thought carefully and critically about how to establish a sustainable republic. But to do so, they had to win the votes of a cross-section of the American establishment of the time, many of whom thought that owning human beings, using them as farm labor, and whipping them if they disobeyed were morally acceptable things to do. And upon making a series of political compromises with these people, they had to rationalize those compromises in such a way to make them palatable to the general public.
Indeed. With our current system, rural voices are at least marginally relevant. With a purely proportional system, rural voices would not even be heard.
The major reason is that smaller states wouldn't have joined any proposed Union that made them irrelevant, so the founders had to have things like the Senate to get them to join at all.
I think if you had some way of forcing the issue, and telling states like Kansas and Mississippi that they didn't get to have disproportional control over the federal government anymore, and if they didn't like it, they could just stop being subsidized by California and New York, either they would go along with it, or they would secede from the union and deteriorate into third world countries.
They also didn't choose to tie electors to the per state popular vote and chose the electoral college in part to prevent the election of terrible candidates.
>Why a vote in Kansas needs to be tallied differently from a vote in New York in the 2020 elections is beyond me.
population of Kansas (state): 2.9 million
population of New York (city): 8.5 million
Without some sort of balancing mechanism, you wind up with a single populous city's votes mattering more than the votes from every city in a less populous state.
This is something our founders debated. It's never good to let the whims of the majority trample on the minority. It's why we have both the house of representatives (based on population) and the senate (flat number per state).
If little states have no say in our government, what point is there for them to remain?
It's a pity some folks devalue others simply because they don't wish to live in NYC or LA.
Why is the rural minority so special? We don’t give other minorities this sort of treatment.
For example, the percentage of rural Americans is similar to the percentage of black Americans. Yet somehow nobody ever argues that black Americans need power disproportionate to their numbers to avoid being trampled.
It's not about rural vs urban. It's about the assumption that the US is a union of separate _states_ with separate legal structures, cultures, etc, etc. So it's not the "rural minority" that's special; it's states that are special.
Now you may disagree with the premises there, of course. But if one accepts the premises, then one needs a way to prevent "big" states from just imposing their will on "small" ones.
(There are in fact people who argue that black Americans need disproportionate power, and some voting districts are set up to effectively produce that, but that has nothing to do with the setup of the US constitution per se.)
They called out NYC and LA so I don’t think they were thinking along the same lines you are.
Of course you need this if one accepts the premise that states are special. You’re basically just assuming the conclusion at that point.
I’m not aware of any voting district that’s set up to give black Americans a disproportionately large amount of power. There are some that are deliberately set up to ensure proportionate power.
I called out NYC and LA because they’re high population areas.
My point is this: delegating power to solely the majority is a bad idea, full stop. In a properly functioning society, the majority needs to work cooperatively with the minority, which means the minority needs some sort of functional advantage (like we have in the US Senate, with respect to states).
How individual states set up this power balance internally is up to them. Obviously I think it should follow a similar model to the one we have at the federal level with our collection of states.
It annoys me when people rag on smaller areas like RI or WY because they get “extra privileges” or some such nonsense when it comes to elections or the US congress.
This seems to assume that there is some fixed “the minority” that needs to be advantaged in order to be fair, and further that “the minority” corresponds to the smaller states.
In reality, there’s a different minority for every issue. Giving states with low population a disproportionate amount of power doesn’t necessarily balance the minority with the majority. Depending on the issue it may allow the majority to more easily trample the minority, or it may allow a minority to impose its will on the rest.
The solution to requiring cooperation with the minority is to require more than a simple majority to do things. See for example: removal following impeachment, constitutional amendment, treaty ratification, or the de facto situation in the Senate for most legislation at the moment.
We're a federal republic made up of 50 states plus DC. Balancing the power between _states_ is standard among federal republics (Germany, Switzerland, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, ...).
Federal republics _need_ the power balance among _states_, otherwise there's no point in the states participating in the republic, thus no point in even having a federal republic. If that's your point, fine. But you can't have your cake and eat it too.
How states want to balance out things internally is up to them, and that can be used to help the minority on specific issues.
A federal structure is a means to an end, not the goal itself. If it doesn’t serve the purpose we want then we should change it.
In any case, even if you take the state as the unit that needs to be balanced, my point stands: you can’t balance “the minority” by picking some arbitrary minority and giving them more power.
I can see an argument either way. More populated areas to legitimately represent commercial and cultural centers, but also, the needs of the entire system have to be considered.
That... kind of sounds like you need to relearn how to write. Which sounds silly, but there are 100% good ways and bad ways to write (both right and left handed writers suffer from insane 'who taught you to write' hand positions). Learning how to properly hold your pen helps a lot with not smudging ink even when it's a long drying ink.
And not unimportantly, a fountain pen requires writing _without_ any pressure on the pen; the ink gets drawn out simply by there being any kind of contact at all, so if you write with a fountain pen the way you're used to writing with a ballpoint pen, or pencil, both of which require pressing into the paper, you're literally doing things wrong (and probably through no fault of your own other than not having realised there might be different ways you need to write).
I'm lefthanded and I really doubt this is easily fixable.
From grade 1 to 7 I was exclusively using fountain pens (germany, this is a requirement, so there wasn't a choice) and there was no end of teachers trying to "fix" the lefthanded children in the class.
Writing lefthanded with a ballpoint pen is simply easier than using a fountain pen where I have to either put my hand into a position that cramps after a minute of continuous writing or hover over the paper which also cramps or using a blotting paper, which reduces my ability to keep the last few sentences in mind while writing.
Left-handed writing will also push the pen, inevitably, you will put pressure on it, the light contact required for fountain pens is extremely tired.
After grade 7 I've switched to ballpoint pens, much easier to handle and write. About 4 years ago I managed to find a gas-pressure ballpoint pen which has been the most relaxing way to write.
Unlike normal ballpoint pens, they have gas cartridge behind the ink which expands. They push the ink out of the pen meaning you don't have to press at all to get writing while still getting the benefit of minimal ink usage and quick drying that left-handedness almost requires.
Your teachers shouldn't have tried to "fix" your handedness. They should have taught you valid writing techniques for lefties. A common and fairly easy one is to rotate your paper counter-clockwise 45-90 degrees and write bottom-to-top.
If you're hovering or strongly bending your wrist you've been taught wrong.
People who say "you should do it differently" but without specifying exactly how are just engaging in a mild form of victim-blaming. Or instructing left-handed people to write with their right hand.
I acquired the "overhand" left-handed style at a very early age, which needs a piece of blotting paper under the hand to not smudge everything. This at least is somewhat natural to write with since it's mirrored in the plane of the nib and it's possible to read the word you're currently writing.
To be fair, we're on hacker news. There are hundreds of videos on Youtube that explain it better than I ever could in text if you know to actually look for them (and if no one ever told you to, why would you?), and this is not the crowd that would not be able to find those.
The biggest problem with left-handed fountain pen writing is that unless you adopt some horribly bent-over position you’re pushing the nib into the paper instead of dragging it across. That damages pens and leads to horribly scratchy writing, even if you can get over the constant smudging. It’s OK though, there are plenty of other writing implements - personally I chose the keyboard.
This is interesting: I'll have to look into relearning how to write.
With regard to the "who taught you to write" hand positions, I wonder if the problem is worse for lefties. My kindergarten teacher actually spent time trying to get me to write with my right hand until my father wrote her a letter clarifying that I was, indeed, left-handed.
I'm a lefty as well, and initially my hand would smear the ink as I was writing. I think I had that problem with rollerball pens to begin with, so after I did some research on proper handwriting technique, I learned I needed to hold the pen such that my hand was underneath it much like a right handed person holds it by default. It took some time to adjust but I'm more comfortable writing with any pen now than when I used to have more of a claw grip. Once you get that down, using a fountain pen will never be a problem for you and is far more of a pleasure to write with than most other writing implements will give you.
Same. My folks signed me up for a weekend calligraphy course around the same time frame (primary school). I've avoided calligraphy and fountain pens since. I avoid most pencils, too, so I don't end up with graphite all over my hand and smudges all over my paper.
After a reasonable amount of experimentation I've ended up just going with Uni Jetstream 101s because they feel smoother than most ball-points but dry fast enough that I don't get ink on my hands. I played around with modding various pen pieces to assemble a franken-pen but having to trim/tape ink refills wasn't much fun.
I'm always on the lookout for other recommendations from lefties. I've seen a couple in this thread already.
Why is that? I'm a righty, but I write in Hebrew (Right to Left) so I assume that I would have similar issues to what you face. However I have no problem writing with my fountain pens.
I'm genuinely curious why many lefties have trouble with fountain pens, not trolling.
One thing is the smudging thing (avoided by putting the paper at an angle), another aspect is that left-to-right movements push the pen instead of pulling it, and that might be the difference to Hebrew? Do you do mostly right-to-left strokes inside Hebrew characters, or left-to-right?
Whether I'm writing English or Hebrew, I tend to do the strokes in a downward fashion, in the direction of writing. So English writing goes mostly Northwest to Southeast, and Hebrew writing goes mostly Northeast to Southwest. There are two letters in Hebrew which require a significant upstroke (Aleph א, and in my handwriting Vav ו as well), but I suppose that I've perfected those over the years. Circular letters, such as O or Samech ס, start at the top and end at the top.
I also use a children's fountain pen, the terrific Faber-Castell Scribolino School Fountain Pen, which I find more comfortable and more fluid than fountain pens which have cost me almost 100 Euros. I highly recommend it, you can find them for about $20-$25 on Ebay.
I am a lefty too, and actually had to change my writing style - well, my pen holding style, in primary school to adapt.
If you hold the pen in a very curled grip where your palm is right next to the nib, then I can see you may have a problem, but I've found that nowadays, most modern inks dry quick enough and don't smear as easily as the inks I used in school 30-40 years ago.
Also, I learned to write slower with a fountain pen, which is probably better for my mental processing. It also means I make less mistakes by focusing on my writing word by word rather than thinking 2 or 3 words ahead while writing.
Get a Lamy Vista "left hander", it's a great, and cheap starter pen. If you get into it, upgrade to a TWSBI, which is a little more expensive but a really lovely fountain pen.
The Lamy lefty nib is the only fountain pen nib that really works for me (so of course I got three and a stack of ink, dammit). It even works for the German schoolkid skinny-line flip, which a simple grind shouldn't do. I've given up thinking about how and just enjoy them!
I mean I would love to live in a world were people make informed decisions based on research but that's not happening. Meanwhile advanced users retain the freedom to use whatever browser they want so everyone wins.