Jared Diamond: What Makes Countries Rich or Poor?

cbr · 2012-05-24T23:02:27.961085+00:00

Lots of people seem to have gotten 8/12 or worse. I suspect there is some selection bias where people who did well are more likely to post while people who scored less than 50% less likely. So I don't think it's "pretty easy".

Lenh · 2012-05-24T19:34:44.167740+00:00

This is charity, and it was a good thing for him to have done, but it makes me a little sad because he could have done so much more if he'd spent the same money differently. Giving $200K directly to Clark County Community Services probably would have helped them more than $200K worth of assorted KMart goods. In general, charities can do a lot more with money than stuff because they can buy what they need instead of what you happen to be giving them.

Even better, a $200K gift to one of GiveWell's top charities would save 100+ lives while I would be surprised if this has 1/10th the impact.

(Disclaimer: I'm a mod over at r/smartgiving)

cbr · 1 day

On a chaotic stage in a noisy dance hall the durability and cost of dynamic mics generally outweighs the marginally better sound quality of condenser mics. There is a difference, and you'd hear it in a recording, but I don't think it's very noticeable in the hall.

cbr · 1 day

It is definitely nicer to play a real piano. But if you're playing to make dancers happy, which we are, the main thing is how it sounds.

(If you want to say that playing a keyboard makes the musician less happy and so the music is worse, that's a claim about how it sounds and should show up in the recordings.)

cbr · 1 day

wonder how the acoustic piano was miked

If I remember correctly the top was open about 2 feet and there was a single mic on a boom stand, probably an sm57, pointing in at an angle. I wasn't running sound.

The piano was often buried in the mix compared with the violin which made it harder to hear ... This type of repertoire doesn't take full advantage of the range of the piano ... more dynamic contrast

In this sort of music that's generally where the piano is and what it does. That does make this test less generally applicable, though.

I'd love to see future tests like this

I record most of our gigs, and they're a mix between ones where the venue has a piano and where we bring my keyboard, so I definitely could post more some time. It's tricky though because I want to be fair and most of the real pianos we play with aren't very good. (Often they're bad enough that we use my keyboard anyway.)

I did do a vaguely similar test on mandolin microphone placement.

cbr · 1 day

That's what the dancers will hear. In this style of music the piano pretty much never plays on its own.

cbr · 1 day

We play for dances in big halls where people will hear the piano coming out over the speakers. I agree that this test doesn't tell you much about situations where people hear the piano acoustically.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KphO2Uja0t0

cbr · 1 day

In this environment, a big dance hall, almost everyone is hearing just the amplified sound. There are definitely other environments where people will be hearing it mostly (or entirely) acoustically.

cbr · 1 day

What do you mean "tuned for the style"? Just that it happens to be a good fit for fiddle music?

(It's on it's default setting.)

cbr · 3 days

The fringe is only for graphical displays. I run emacs in the terminal, and there it uses the rightmost column but doesn't seem to make it configurable.

I do want an indication that a line has wrapped, but I don't want to reserve a column for it on lines that don't need to wrap. It's like a badly written horizontal scroll bar that determines whether to show up based on how much room there will after it's added instead of before.

Poo-Flinging-Baboon · 10 days

I'd ask for $100 and see what they said.

Poo-Flinging-Baboon · 10 days

(USA Specific, don't know where the submitter is from)

If you report both the income and the donation to the IRS there is no tax benefit compared to them giving it away. All that "tax deductible donations" means is that when you give money away in a tax deductible manner then as far as the US government is concerned it's as if you hadn't earned the money.

If you live in a state like Massachusetts which has a state income tax and no charitable deductions, then it's definitely better for them to be doing it.

cbr · 29 days

One place working on existential risk.

cbr

TROPHY CASE

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