Knowledge Nuts publishes short articles on odd facts, history, and science stories, such as Edison's animal electrocutions and urine-derived penicillin.
HN links it as a source for curious facts and history, and commenters use its posts for corrections, such as bonobos versus chimps.
As the article notes, many non-profits are often little more than tax avoidance structures - one sign of this is bloated salaries paid to the upper-tier executives. This is described as 'the economic theory':
> "From an economic point of view, it could be said that a fair percentage of America’s non-profits are phony non-profits of a sort. In these cases, the non-profit isn’t a major vehicle for social change; rather, it is a bunch of profit-seeking vehicles with a tax break, masquerading as non-profits."
The religion and television theories the article introduces are very interesting - i.e. the notion that non-profits are 'seeding ideas into media', and the fact that religious non-profits "have yearly revenues around $378 billion." This points to the role of non-profits in what might be called deliberate social engineering attempts of various sorts.
An addition category, however, could be "the government theory", since non-profits have been heavily utilized by governments as cutouts for state propaganda, often in partnership with private interests. Non-profits are not very transparent when it comes to sources of funding. In this context, they're generally referred to as 'non-governmental organizations' (NGOs). A fairly notorious example is the Ford Foundation and the CIA, dating back to the 1950s, e.g.
https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/FordFandCIA.html
It's hardly just the US government doing this - other actors include Israel, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, etc.…
> This specific issue has nothing to do with Trump.
I can certainly agree with that. In these sorts of discussions I work hard to ignore the 'people are complaining about ...' sorts of inputs because people complain about everything, it is hard to develop understanding from that.
However it is useful to understand economic value is changing. For example, gasoline was a 'waste product' of refining oil for kerosene[1]. When the economic value of gasoline changed, it changed how the companies were viewed. Nuclear power was once the power of the future with high economic value, until it was perceived (or maligned depending on your point of view) into being a threat to civilization.
So where does economic value arise? It is the ratio of the cost of production over the price of a good. So raising tariffs allows the cost of production of a foreign good to rise, and assuming the buyers are all trying to get the same price, the economic value of aluminum production goes up in the local (tariff free) economy.
So the price of aluminum goes up, and now it can be made profitably in Spokane, so an aluminum plant (mill?) opens up and jobs are created and the town becomes more prosperous.
With tariffs it is possible to raise the effective cost of any good to the point where it can be made profitably locally. However it requires that the local economy be able to pick up production. That is generally not a problem for the US economy, not as easily done on places like Brazil for example…
Advertising isn’t the problem, the processing of data to target those adverts is the problem.
That said, given how often they insist on showing me (literally) revolutionary marxist content no matter how often I click “Show me less of this” — and from the same specific groups no matter how often I click “Never show me ‘Demexit Memes For Green Teens’” (I’m not a teen, I can’t exit the Democrat party because I’m not an American and can’t join in the first place, Brexit riffs give me a negative affect[0], and while I am vaguely green-ish at least in regards to UK politics I feel negatively about the USA Green Party) — I don’t think they’re even very good at using this data for targeting content.
> It would be like saying it is unfair that meat I buy in the supermarket costs the supermarket less than they charge me.
Something about buying Manhattan island for some beads comes to mind, although the actual history behind that meme is rather more interesting: https://knowledgenuts.com/native-americans-didnt-sell-manhattan-for-24-of-beads/
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affect_(psychology)
Caesium 137 has a fucking halflife of 30.7 years. There is still a lot of that material in Ukraine and Belorussia. The economy and agriculture of both countries sustained severe damage as a result http://www.greenfacts.org/en/chernobyl/l-3/5-social-economic-impacts.htm
now were just very lucky that there was no full meltdown of the reactor core. Can you claim without flinching that this will never ever happen? I doubt it.
Just look up 'heroes of Chernobyl' - we were very close http://knowledgenuts.com/2014/04/13/when-three-divers-swam-into-the-jaws-of-chernobyl/
The fact that an accident of similar magnitude happened after Chernobyl sort of invalidates the point that it was all exclusively due to faulty reactor design.
In Germany this assessment led to a full shutdown of all nuclear power plants.
You know you can research this stuff right? Gasoline was a waste product in the refining of crude oil (specifically, into Kerosene [itself a replacement for whale oil] they were making anyways). It used to be considered garbage. [1] It really only became valuable once they realized they could power cars with it. They used to dump it in rivers, making them catch fire. [2]
In what - concrete - way is bitcoin related to the success of Amazon or the internet? Please be specific and don't hand-wave if you're going to make such bold claims.
[1] https://knowledgenuts.com/2014/02/24/gasoline-used-to-be-considered-garbage/
[2] http://www.attendly.com/rockefellers-unconventional-approach-to-getting-rid-of-waste/
Electrocuting dogs, cats, horses, and even an elephant, says a lot more about you as a human being than the person you're trying to discredit by electrocuting dogs, cats, horses, and even an elephant.
https://knowledgenuts.com/2013/10/19/edison-publicly-tortured-animals-to-discredit-ac-power/
https://www.wired.com/2008/01/dayintech-0104/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrocuting_an_Elephant
NSFL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlPYikt_qvo