> It's just shocking to me how certain demographics are so eager to vote against their own interests.
Nobody votes against their own interests. That is something that only stupid caricatures do, not actual people. If it seems that way to you, that should be a very strong signal to reevaluate your understanding of the situation. Most likely, that means either nobody is representing their interests or you have misunderstood what their interests are.
> That's the biggest problem here: People using "flag" as a mega-downvote to eliminate things they don't want other people to read from the front page.
I've seen the moderators (tomhow specifically) explicitly encourage people to use the flag option on posts which are low quality. I believe that the behavior you are complaining about is working as intended.
I would be more amenable to political discussions on HN if they weren't almost guaranteed to turn into flame wars. But as it is, every single thread I see on current events in the US turns into an absolute train wreck. No insight is generated there, just culture warriors flinging hate at each other back and forth through the comments. I flag such posts because they are so reliably low quality, and I'm sure I'm not alone.
No, just because there are no universally agreed upon values does not make everything political. People can, and frequently do, agree to live and let live when they have differences of opinion rather than wage bitter wars over those differences. We can, and must, have spaces where we can enjoy things in life rather than having division fostered between us 24/7. There is no idea more toxic to the well being of society than the idea of "everything is political".
No. It means "sick to death of hearing about politics everywhere I go and I am desperate for the occasional respite from that madness". Your interpretation is extremely bad faith.
> I wish HN users who want "no politics" would admit that they are just asking for a different kind of political bias from the site.
You're asking for them to admit something that isn't true. There's nothing political about recognizing that political discussions are a complete shitshow and wanting them to not crowd out everything else.
It is indeed not even close, but not in the way you are asserting. It takes a second to dip a measuring cup into the flour and level it off. So if I need 4c of flour, it takes me about 4 seconds. Meanwhile, to measure with a scale I have to slowly, carefully pour into the bowl so that I don't overshoot the amount I'm going for (and then then sometimes I overshoot and have to try to scoop the ingredient out a bit). Volume measurements are damn near an order of magnitude faster than weight measurements. And it's not like the extra accuracy from weight measurements is actually that important 95% of the time. Baking is not that precise, contrary to popular belief.
Welp not much I can say to that or to RandallBrown's response, seems obvious our experience and way of thinking is pretty different on this matter.
(EDIT: Also fwiw I often use a spoon or whatever to scoop things into the bowl, vs. pouring, which means I have more control but can still offload the measuring part to the scale...)
Whatever gets the delicious baked goods in your mouth I guess
In many cases we are, though. A ton of machined things use metric units (and thus need metric tools), and that’s spreading into a lot of other areas like medicine and food packaging. It’s nowhere near absolute but the trend is noticeable.
People get bogged down in arguments about what's better or more natural, but in my opinion those always miss the point. The truth is, there's no incentive for the US to switch. If you're a typical adult living in the US, you already know all the conversions you will need (12 inches to a foot, etc etc). The math isn't hard, because you always have a calculator at hand in this age. In short, imperial units have zero downside for most people. On the other hand, switching units of measurement does have a major downside as you have to relearn to estimate everything in the new units. That would be fine if metric was solving a problem for you... but it's not, so why switch?
The only people who benefit from a switch to metric are kids (cause they won't have to learn the imperial conversions). And they, for better or for worse, don't get a say. If people really want the US to switch measurements so badly (which I have no idea why anyone gives a shit what our country does, it's not like it affects them), then they need to come up with an actual compelling benefit to adults in the US if they switch. 100 years ago there was one: you can do conversions more easily. But today there is not, and until one surfaces there's going to be zero pressure to switch units.
Nobody votes against their own interests. That is something that only stupid caricatures do, not actual people. If it seems that way to you, that should be a very strong signal to reevaluate your understanding of the situation. Most likely, that means either nobody is representing their interests or you have misunderstood what their interests are.
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