It is remarkable that some countries actually have switched writing systems in modern times. Turkey did it in the 1920s after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, for example (replaces an Arabic alphabet with a Roman one).
Not to mention numerous ex-Soviet countries have replaced their Cyrillic system for Latin ones to demonstrate their independence from Russian colonialism.
I'm wondering what script the North American Indians† would have replaced the one given to them by their English-speaking colonizers with had they been given any in the first place and not been all but exterminated instead.
Well, anyway … “evil Russians colonialists”.
† I know the PC term in North America is “first nations” or some such but for those outside NA using the old term is perfectly fine.
> I'm wondering what script the North American Indians
The Cherokee syllabary [0] and the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics [1] are both scripts designed for use with North American indigenous languages, and both are still widely used (relative to the usage of indigenous languages in general).
> the one given to them by their English-speaking colonizers with had they been given any in the first place
Well, history is complicated: it's certainly true that the vast majority of the colonizers were trying to ban the indigenous languages, but there have always been a few people working with the local groups to understand and develop their languages, even hundreds of years ago. And over the last 50 years or so, there's been lots of support for language preservation and education.
> and not been all but exterminated instead
I'm not sure if you're talking about the languages or the people here, but there are some 6 million Indigenous people [2] and 700k speakers of indigenous languages [3] [4] [5] in North America today, so I wouldn't quite call either "all but exterminated".
Yes, my comment was a bit over the top. The moreless catastrophic decline of their languages was perhaps unavoidable. And I know there are always good people even when the dominant force is bad.
« there are some 6 million Indigenous people » — Now where have I seen that figure before? ^^ ChatGPT tells me there are even 9.7 million people in the USA who identify as "American Indian or Alaska Native" (2020 census). I was wrongly exaggerating in claiming they had been "all but exterminated".
Instead, they were removed from the territories that underwent English colonization (in which they had not yet been confined to reservations, but gradually driven from their ancestral lands "by treaty") to what was to become Oklahoma (part of the 1803 Napoleon purchase) by the aptly named 1830 "Indian Removal Act", which is why today OK has the highest absolute number of Indians (730k), followed by Arizona, New Mexico and California (annexed from or "ceded" by Mexico, formerly Nueva España).
So, I exaggerated. They were not exterminated, but they were uprooted or eradicated from the lands of their forefathers under English colonization.
> The moreless catastrophic decline of their languages was perhaps unavoidable.
Yup, this is unfortunately the case. Colonization definitely made things vastly worse than they were before, but the modern world has become so connected that it's challenging for small languages to survive: young people want to read books, watch TV, and get an education, but it's hard to support all that in a language with only 50k speakers. Bilingualism helps a lot here, but if people can only use their languages to speak to their families, then they're less likely to teach it to their children.
For some further background, I took a class in a local indigenous language last year, so I know a tiny bit of one indigenous language [0], but that language has less than 10k speakers in total. Everyone is putting in a lot of work to preserve it, and it's universally taught in all the schools on the reservation, but unfortunately that's not even enough people to sustain a local newspaper. And to make matters worse, there are two other completely distinct indigenous languages spoken in the same city, so the indigenous people can only use English to speak to each other if they're from different tribes.
> I was wrongly exaggerating in claiming they had been "all but exterminated".
To be fair, there are cases like the Beothuk [1], but that's a rarity.
Actually, before I had looked up the numbers, I had assumed that the populations were far larger than they actually are. It looks like that the US only has twice as many Indigenous people as Canada, yet 10× the overall population. I live in Canada, so I had assumed that the proportions were similar, so you're not the only one here who was surprised by the actual numbers :)
> Instead, they were removed from the territories that underwent English colonization […] but they were uprooted or eradicated from the lands of their forefathers under English colonization.
Ah, I wasn't aware of that. Canada has plenty of its own atrocities, but we've thankfully never done anything like that.
Not numerous but specifically Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan – all four countries speak Turkic languages, and they chose to do so to align themselves with Turkey. The adoption has been rather slow, and previous Cyrillic based scripts remain in wide use, though.
Moldova switched for a similar reason as Moldovans speak Romanian, and they did so to align themselves with Romania.
That is a total of five countries.
The actual history is rather more nuanced, as after the 1917 revolution, the Bolsheviks – intent, at least in principle, upon eradicating Great-Russian chauvinism and weakening the Russian cultural dominance – introduced the policy of «korenizatsiia», or «nativisation».
The new policy encouraged non-Russian populations to cultivate distinct national identities, use their own languages in administration and education and, where indigenous languages had previously lacked established writing systems, develop scripts and literary standards of their own:
«Politically and culturally, the nativization policy aimed to eliminate Russian domination and culture in Soviet republics where ethnic Russians did not constitute a majority. This policy was implemented even in areas with large Russian-speaking populations; for instance, all children in Ukraine were taught in the Ukrainian language in school. The policies of korenizatsiia facilitated the Communist Party's establishment of the local languages in government and education, in publishing, in culture, and in public life. In that manner, the cadre of the local Communist Party were promoted to every level of government, and ethnic Russians working in said governments were required to learn the local language and culture of the given Soviet republic»[0].
For that reason, nearly all new writing scripts developed between 1920's and mid-1930's were Latin based.
Joseph Stalin, a Georgian himself, ended and reversed the policy in the mid-1930's and instructed the Latin-based scripts to be replaced with the Cyrillic-based ones.
This somewhat counter-intuitive bolshevist policy of regionalization and decentralisation starts making sense if Richard Poe is right, who says they (them being mostly Jews) were working for the British.
How the British invented Communism (and blamed it on the Jews) • Richard Poe @ RTF (Matthew Ehret) • 2h01 • https://youtu.be/Cxen-IzX-Gw
I will admit that "you can barely buy a sedan in the US anymore" was a bit of hyperbole, but certainly they have declined precipitously, from 80% of the US new vehicle market 40 years ago to about 25% today [0]. You can still buy sedans in the US, but not from american car companies [1].
To rice something must mean to customize and decorate. I'm guessing that it references the "rice rocket" term, originally a derogatory ethic slur. That term likely originated in the USA in the 70's or 80's, at first referring to Japanese motorcycles (which were fast, rightfully deserving the "rocket" designation: classic Japanese racing bikes are fully-fledged crotch rockets).
Sometime in the late 1990s, a Rice Rockets website appeared, making fun of people decorating their under-powered import econobox cars (not rockets in any sense) to look like racing cars with features like rear wings (on a front-wheel drive, lol), exhaust modifications ("fart cannons"), stripes, stickers, rims, steering wheels, etc.
If the cats decorating the desktop are Hello Kitty, she is really ricing it.
> I do not see problems with fake ad clicks and have no sympathy for ad companies.
I am not shedding any tears for the ad companies, but I don't exactly expect or want a consumer device to be doing this in the background without the owner's knowledge.
Sure. And you'll quite literally never be able to get any meaningful reduction in this practice unless you attack it at the level of big, publically known companies; the warnings about these local dinky things I suppose are not harmful and help individuals a bit -- but I'm concerned they give the entirely false impression that the extremely similar stuff coming from the big boys is definitely a-ok.
"If you buy a device to do a thing, then the device does something else that is not readily apparent to the user that user would find objectionable if they had clearer knowledge."
This is immoral and harmful regardless of precise vector/action.
Well, Twitter isn't worth much, or at least not what Elon paid for it in 2022, it just carries on like a zombie under a different name and investors got bailed out by being rolled into xAI and then the SpaceX IPO.
Though your point that Twitter's value was never in the code stands.
Considering that the whole industry, including the big AI companies, is built on top of open source now, I would have to say it did matter. That doesn't mean every project mattered (in a larger sense), but certainly thousands of open source projects have value, and dozens have contributed enormous value. The fact that the value has been disconnected from the maintainers has been a problem for a long time, but it is getting worse, and this is one example of a maintainer near the breaking point.
I'm not convinced by the time argument, as astronauts would have limited time on Mars dictated by orbital mechanics and return schedules, but the bigger problem is cost. You are replying to a comment about how rovers and probes are cost effective; there is no way that crewed exploration could accomplish more science than Mars rovers without orders of magnitude more cost.
A manned mission to Mars isn't even on the table yet (sorry, Elon) until we solve several huge problems, including cosmic radiation, landing heavy payloads, and a feasible alternative to chemical propulsion (most likely nuclear, but untested).
We as humanity have to believe we are not in zero sum game to stay decent…
Unfortunately last years are showing us how ugly it is with rare earth elements, energy etc. It is also showing what you wrote is true. No one really believes that we can affordably space mine for rare earth and no one believes in Martian colonization that would bring tangible benefits.
For anything to become reality, the 1st step is be able to imagine it.
Also a big problem can be attacked by solving a small part of it, see what's left & repeat until remaining bits are easy.
Over time, what used to be 'impossible' becomes easy. What matters is deciding what to focus on for the foreseeable future, and spend resources wisely. See eg.:
Yeah a human mission to Mars, colonizing the clouds of Venus, asteroid mining or Dyson spheres may not be achievable now (if ever). But exploring the problem space, or having a good look at the required engineering, is. And may be cheap as well.
If you held the same logic back towards the beginning of humanity then we'd all still be wandering about the woods poking each other with sticks. Most people don't believe things are possible which is probably some sort of evolutionary thing. A society full of people with their head in the clouds probably wouldn't work so great, but humanity would also stagnate without at least some people looking to the stars.
This could very well be why planned economies seem to struggle with innovation. People being able to devote significant resources to endeavors, that might not make sense to most, is how you get lots of failures, and the occasional revolutionary successes. Do everything by committee and all you get is a shinier version of what you had last year.
With the power of hindsight many decisions look obvious. But many others look silly. For every "discovery of the Americas" there were thousands of expeditions that fizzled out in a worthless desert, middle of the ocean, dead end cave.
The argument that "progress always needed bold steps" can lead into dead ends too. Past experience isn't enough to justify future steps without additional evidence. Exploration and learning are always good reasons but if you jump to the "it's good business" step before knowing all you can reasonably know, it's probably a fad. It's shooting in the dark. It could still hit the target, or it could miss. You only really know if something is a fad or not with hindsight.
It's hard to say with certainty today whether Mars is a viable target for colonization in the long term compared to other places like Titan or even the Moon. Before you drill for oil you do a lot of exploratory activities. If those bring back solid positive results then you go for the full blown thing. Before you launch a business you build a business case. Did anyone provide a solid business case and exploratory evidence for why "going for Mars" is the viable future?
As far as I can tell it's not scientists pushing for colonizing Mars. All we have to go on is the push from a man widely known to pump up the value of his own companies (which this would do and then some) by repeatedly making sweeping promises he failed to keep.
This [1] is pretty much exactly what you're looking for. Zubrin is one amongst countless voices, of all back grounds - certainly academic included, pushing for Mars colonization. Even as far back as the 60s NASA, under Von Braun, had drawn up extensive plans for settling Mars. This was all cancelled by Nixon, in large part because he was worried that a catastrophe under NASA would look bad on his political career. If he only knew what was coming.
Musk has become demonized mostly because of his politics. He's made bold claims and overwhelmingly fulfilled them in space. For instance there was a time when something we now take for granted - autonomous landing reusable rockets - was deemed impossible by the powers that be. They were even taunted by Boeing et al along the lines of 'yeah, we tried that long ago - the economics don't work. it's cute to see you having a go at it though.'
He's also brought the price to get things to space down multiple orders of magnitude relative to the Space Shuttle. And similarly before him, electric vehicles were glorified go-karts for virtue signaling hipsters. Having any public political opinion in a country as divided as America is going to make a whole lot of people hate you, but I think the efforts to try to marginalize what he's done are a mixture of silliness and ignorance. If he died tomorrow he'd already go down as the Edison of this generation, and there's yet many a decade remaining for him to cement what may be the ultimate legacy of the first man to make humanity truly multiplanetary.
> This [1] is pretty much exactly what you're looking for. Zubrin is one amongst countless voices, of all back grounds - certainly academic included, pushing for Mars colonization.
What about the countless voices, academic included, against it? It's not whether someone thinks it's a good idea but if we have a reasonable consensus on it. 50/50 is a coin flip, not a "peer reviewed" conclusion. It took the blink of an eye to realize putting things in orbit is greatly beneficial. We've been looking at Mars from all sides for decades and the business case is yet to be clear except mostly for people making money by selling you the idea, or the book.
> Musk has become demonized mostly because of his politics. ... He's also brought the price to get things to space down multiple orders of magnitude relative to the Space Shuttle. And similarly before him, electric vehicles were glorified go-karts for virtue signaling hipsters.
Let's not make this the core of the discussion, my objection to him isn't ideological. The companies he has led have a history of fraud, misinformation, and lies. Tesla is the poster child of this. If I can pick just the most obvious examples, FSD has been promised just around the corner for close to a decade now and the recent retroactive change of the contracts really drives the fraud home. Solar Roof was a sham from the start. Boring Company, sham. See how I'm not listing just a "normal" business failure, like xAI failing as a frontier AI lab. Not everything is destined to be a success. I'm just mentioning the things that were overtly lies told for money. SpaceX is probably successful because by all accounts Musk left the leading of the company to the CEO. His history of lies to enrich himself legitimize the attitude to start with the baseline that any wild claim that could enrich him is a lie and wait to be proven otherwise.
For a hammer everything looks like a nail, so for Musk everything is in space. As it happens, he's one of the few parties in the world with easy access to that resource, and acts as a gateway for almost everyone else.
I'm not losing or making money on his success so this for me is just a matter of common sense. If someone lies as often as he does, it's "shame on me" to still assume truth until proven lie.
Well then you loop back to where we began. You implied nobody had made the 'business case' for Mars, as in something tangible. That's been done repeatedly, to quite a high standard. Now you're back to claiming well what about some sort of consensus, but again do everything by committee and all you get is a shinier version of what you had last year. It's easy to critique things, even things that are completely and absolutely sound - before people know that.
For instance here [1] is the NYTimes claiming that human flight would be impossible, published just about 2 months before the Wright Bros achieved human flight. Incidentally they also said space flight would be impossible, and were actively patronizing towards the concept. They felt that any child with a basic understanding of science would understand that there's nothing to 'push back against' in space, so spaceflight simply can't work. Until that's proven wrong by actually doing it, some might actually think 'wait that's kind of reasonable - omg maybe it is impossible.'
As for Musk, you're simply assuming malice when e.g. everybody thought full self driving was just around the corner when he made his claims about Tesla bringing it to market. It's kind of the same way that today everybody thinks that in a decade LLMs will be replacing knowledge workers left and right. It's just extrapolating outward from a trendline that exists at one point in time. But it may well be that in a decade we're still predicting that in a decade LLMs will finally be there. Or maybe there will be some revolutionary change, as promised by by all the people pushing LLMs. If it fizzles out, I wouldn't jump to calling them all fraudulent hucksters.
That I did. Most people don't tend to think probabilistically, and my responses tend to assume that. Heh, kind of ironic.
However, I'm quite curious of something. I don't understand how one can think Martian colonization would never happen. We went from horses (for most at least) to putting a man on the Moon in about 60 years, and that's it? Or are you implying that you think Mars may be less desirable than other targets for colonization?
Almost regardless of what motivation you put forward for people - greed, curiosity, adventure, desperation, or whatever else you can imagine - it ends up with us expanding beyond Earth. The only way this might not be true is if it's somehow literally impossible, but the ISS is already an unstable hellish nightmare relative to Mars, and people survive there just fine for years at a time.
It wasn't that long ago that HN had a spirited discussion about how data centers in orbit could not possibly work. But it looks more and more like Musk is going to deliver.
This is the first time I've heard of that. What are some of the carcinogens? I know the radiation is bad there, but I didn't know the regolith was toxic.
The precision implosion of the type used on the plutonium core of Trinity (and then Nagasaki) isn't exactly trivial, but a number of nations have pulled it off. I believe the details of the precision explosives and timing for Trinity are still classified.
The Little Boy gun-type detonation of enriched Uranium is indeed fairly trivial, and end for its first use at Hiroshima they were confident enough to deploy it without full scale testing.
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