Typing with a Piano [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAYlMcyVZ2k <comment><USER3> Hey, I'm the guy who made this! This all started from a random idea I had, but then I was tickled by the thought of becoming faster than the average typist on a piano. It all culminated with a livestream today ([https://www.twitch.tv/videos/404585365](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/404585365)) where I did typing tests for about 3 hours.

I'll try to address the comments on here, so ask any questions you have!

<comment><USER4> You beat me to it! I've been working on similar thing, so I'm a bit jealous that you published this before me! Then again it makes me happy that I'm not the only one with far out ideas like this!

My approach is a tad different though. My approach works by using the microphone. And I have the code to extract notes from a microphone via a FFT. Allowing for typing with say a guitar.

Extracting single notes works quite well. I haven't gotten around to test chords just yet, but I think I have the fundamentals there.

I'm a bit short on musical knowledge and instruments so so far I've only tested it with my voice (ugh), synthesized sounds and partially filled water bottles.

Also I have a suggestion for a graphical interface that would make the learning curve easier and making it language/alphabet independent.

Please reply to this comment if you are interested in integrating this.

<comment><USER5> Been doing some pitch detection recently myself, but I went for an average magnitude difference function over an FFT. My understanding is that FFTs are a bit more intensive than autocorrelation-like solutions, but they work better with polytonal signals. Typing seems suited to single-tone instruments - <USER2> you consider using AMDF (or a similar function)?

<comment><USER4> To be honest all of this is on the border of my knowledge horizon. No I've never heard of AMDF but I will check it out for sure.

In the long run as I wrote I am aiming to support chords so that'll be necessery.

Would AMDF make the response time quicker?

For what purpose are you doing pitch detection?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It reminds me of the Michela Method which is a method of steno typing that uses a short keyboard, similar to a cut down version of a piano keyboard. It is used in the Italian Parliament to produce the official transcripts.

Video of the stenotype machine at the Italian Senate (audio in Italian) [https://youtu.be/e-z1ZAsQjio?t=18](https://youtu.be/e-z1ZAsQjio?t=18)

Wikipedia page about the writing method (unfortunately only available in Italian, you may try Google Translate) [https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metodo_Michela](https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metodo_Michela)

How to build a Michela Stenotype machine by modifying a MIDI keyboard: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9Y9jtOB7G0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9Y9jtOB7G0)

OpenSteno SW that supports various Stenotype machines including the Michela machine built using a MIDI keyboard as seen above [http://www.openstenoproject.org/](http://www.openstenoproject.org/)

<comment><USER6> I just wanted to add that, in order to use the Michela Method with Plover (the software from OpenSteno), you will also need the Plover-MIDI plugin: [https://pypi.org/project/plover-midi/](https://pypi.org/project/plover-midi/) (both "plover" and "plover-midi" are on Pip)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Early printing telegraphs used keyboards like musical ones:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Telegraph_Keyboard.jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Telegraph_Keyboard.jpg)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Printing_Telegraph.jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Printing_Telegraph.jpg)

See the article for some words on the topic: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_telegraph](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_telegraph)

> _Hughes telegraph devices, which also had piano style keyboards, were very > popular in France, where there were likely many more piano and harpsichord > players than telegraphers._

</comment><comment><USER8> See [http://annafeit.de/pianotext/](http://annafeit.de/pianotext/) for another interesting take on this idea.

</comment><comment><USER9> Wow pressing the key harder for upper case is very good. I would take that in a regular keyboard.

<comment><USER3> What's fun is that it's the only time when typing in all caps actually makes you feel like you're shouting!

But I'm not too sure how useful it is for efficiency even after practicing so much with it; there are a lot of false positives and negatives since keypress velocity doesn't matter for regular typing. With enough data, you could figure out a specific velocity threshold for each key so that you make fewer mistakes, and then maybe it'd be more helpful.

<comment><USER10> If you make a responsive keyboard, which would give a different tactile sensation for CAPS and for lowercase, then it would be easier. Piano gives this kind of distinction, historically it was due to a mechanism behind "FortePiano", in a modern electrical piano it reproduced for a convenience.

It can be made in a mechanical way, like a tristate button -- off, slighly-on, on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was surprised by how fast he was able to type, and despite the fact that it seemed like a terrible/funny idea in the beginning, the end result sounded interesting (if only space wasn't mapped to a single note, so we wouldn't hear it so often). I'm sure that you can't get much faster, but I'd like to see how good one can get after some more practice.

<comment><USER12> I find that space being always the same note does bring some more musicality actually! It brings structure to the sound instead of sounding like a mess of random notes

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if you could get more musical sounds by considering frequency of pairs of letters as well, and tweaking the layout to put them on nice intervals like fifths, fourths and major thirds.

Edit: apparently "bigram" is the word I was looking for instead of "pair of letters".

<comment><USER3> Something I didn't mention in the video is that I had to tweak the positioning of certain letters due to common digrams in English. For example, I originally had "v" as a right-hand thumb key due to its frequency as a standalone letter, but some common English words have the digram "ev" ("ever", "every", "never"), and "e" was also a thumb key, so I remapped the "v" to my pinky to make those words much more smooth.

To do that same process for musicality would be challenging since your average English sentence contains so many different letters. I would probably do something like assign each letter a set of sounds, then pick one of those sounds based on the rest of the sentence.

<comment><USER13> It's definitely not something you'd want to do manually. I'd want to come up with a representation of the layout that lets you run a genetic algorithm or similar on it, and score them on musicality when used to type some representative corpus of text. That's a much bigger research project, though (read: extra insane :D).

<comment><USER3> RE: "much bigger research" \- fully agreed! Sometimes, I daydream and wonder what it would be like if it were my _job_ to do something like this for, say, two whole months. Then I could try tackling issues like making this more musical. Then again, I know that if I had two months, I'd try to break the 80 WPM barrier.

In the end, I don't think there are many practical applications to something like this. I only had one real problem that could potentially be solved by this—it's when I'm working in a music program with my piano and limited physical desk space. The keyboard would be out of reach, so I could press an escape chord on the piano to enter Keyiano Mode, type whatever I needed, then reenter Piano Mode. The learning curve could be decreased by making on-screen overlays to show you what each key would do at any given time.

But yeah, that's solidly in daydream territory since I've got bigger fish to fry for now.

<comment><USER4> I am doing exactly this. As a matter of fact I am working on something eerily similar. I took a year of just to muck about with my own project to see what happens. In particular the field of user input.

Seems like we're thinking very similar on this problem as my approach would be to have a constant onscreen HUD.

Initially my target was gamepads and other things viable for Virtual Reality. To try to demonstrate the universality of the method however I am working on a musical input method. Where musical keys can turn into keystrokes.

When you think about it you'll find that having a HUD onscreen gives a lot of room to implement clever algorithms that can speed up the process. Think huffman trees and other things that'll make the necessary keystrokes compressed.

What I have in the pipeline as of now is an FFT based algorithm that extracts the notes from the microphone, opening up for all instruments basically. The FFT part was surprisingly simple when dealing with one note at least, the tricky part might be chords and noisy environments...

What's so cool about far out ideas like this that you do for fun is that someone somewhere might find a usecase for it. Say for changing note cheats while playing a guitar or something similar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Reminds me of old-school chorded keyboards[1] that allow you to type via key combinations from a small number of keys.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorded_keyboard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorded_keyboard)

<comment><USER15> Here's the chapter on chord keybords [http://billbuxton.com/input06.ChordKeyboards.pdf](http://billbuxton.com/input06.ChordKeyboards.pdf) from Bill Buxton's work-in-progress book _Human Input to Computer Systems: Theories, Techniques and Technology_ [http://billbuxton.com/inputManuscript.html](http://billbuxton.com/inputManuscript.html) . Steno keyboards [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype) are chording keyboards. The Velotype [http://www.velotype.com/en/](http://www.velotype.com/en/) and Veyboard [http://www.veyboard.nl/en_main.html](http://www.veyboard.nl/en_main.html) use a similar system that would be a lot more suitable for general-purpose text input. Then there's the important niche of one-handed chording keyboards, like the one Doug Engelbart designed for the NLS system, and the mobile, wireless Twiddler3 [https://twiddler.tekgear.com/](https://twiddler.tekgear.com/) .

<comment><USER14> Wow, thanks for the treasure trove of links!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Besides learning how to type with a piano, the person in the video has been live streaming his game development progress on Twitch for the past 2+ years.

Here is the twitch channel where he broadcasts daily the game development: [https://www.twitch.tv/adam13531](https://www.twitch.tv/adam13531)

Here is the game he is developing ("An online strategy game with a focus on automation"): [https://play.bot.land](https://play.bot.land)

</comment><comment><USER12> This is very good! It makes me feel the same as when I started learning Vim actually :) the movement of the fingers and what happens on screen seems so uncorrelated, but you get used to it

</comment><comment><USER17> Integrate this with [https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware!!](https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware!!)!

<comment><USER4> 404?

<comment><USER18> [https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware](https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware)

<comment><USER4> thx

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I imagine adding the pedals as shift and/or modifier keys could make things more compact.

3 pedals and 2 feet gives you 6 I think.

</comment><comment><USER20> The Kurzweil keyboards let you type (e.g. to enter program names) using a simple A-Z mapping to keys, with a little practice it was easy to be quite fast at entering text.

I briefly tried to find a youtube video of someone using it, but no joy-- I guess it's too boring to watch someone type. :)

</comment><comment><USER21> Full circle, implement text-to-speech on a piano.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjtZxjEH6cM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjtZxjEH6cM)

(if you've not seen that video, it's a little mind-bending)

</comment><comment><USER22> Since adjacent notes don't often sound harmonious, would it be cool if you could remap your keyboard to use more harmonious notes? For example also utilizing same notes from different octaves?

</comment><comment><USER23> "uttering a word is like striking note on the keyboard of the imagination". Except this time in reverse!

</comment><comment><USER24> Ah, I remember playing the original starcraft broodwar with a midi keyboard. About 1 hour of python coding.

</comment><comment><USER25> can't tell if april fools or awesome thing. lol. definitely don't release this kind of thing on April Fools Day. Awesome idea though and I'd love to see the implementation

<comment><USER3> The April Fool's joke was that I'd even bother spending my time trying to learn this, but I assure you, it's all real! I linked to this elsewhere in the thread, but here's a Twitch VOD of practically nonstop typing tests for a few hours: [https://www.twitch.tv/videos/404585365](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/404585365)

(it's not really worth watching if you're satisfied with the YouTube video )

<comment><USER25> Yea I saw your design doc. Impressive project. I only questioned it because looking at your YouTube it seemed that you had a history of posting on April 1st. Which, I really appreciate learning how to hack. Now I am getting everything free from Amazon. But don't tell the CIA

<comment><USER25> Also "traceRT", I died

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Next make a computer keyboard sound like a piano.

<comment><USER27> This is a thing, of course. It can be used for playing midi on your laptop, and such.</comment></comment>


Processed foods that dilute protein content subvert our appetite control systems - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v508/n7496_supp/full/508S66a.html <comment><USER3> Screw it, going to try to preempt the standard responses to dietary posts on HN.

a) Yes, obviously fundamentally it all comes down in conservation of energy. But that's also a ridiculously reductionist view that neglects the layers and layers of complexity that overlays that. For example, if you were able to create a situation where a person's diet and exercise levels could be exactly controlled, then yes, we can control a person's weight from first principles, relying only on conservation of energy. But that's not a realistic situation.

b) Just "cutting your carbs" is probably a reasonable piece of advice on an individual scale, and probably a reasonable thing for a person who is worried about their weight/health to attempt. But as the article points out, the carb increase is systemic, and while its certainly possible to address systemic problems from a purely ground-up, individual basis, it's certainly easier to tackle the issue from as many perspectives as possible.

c) Just "cutting out the processed foods" is exactly the same as above

d) Just "try <insert name> diet" is once again probably the same as above, with the added bonus that nearly any diet is probably going to work and generate short-medium term results just by shocking the body, and forcing some level of structured discipline on an individual, especially discipline laced with all the extra goodies of being from "experts" and all the other fun social stuff we work in.

e) Natural obviously does not mean 'better'. However, it's clear that we have adapted for a certain environment, and while we certainly don't need to replicate that environment in it's totality, that does not imply that our current environment is any good at all from any number of perspectives.

f) This does mean that 'paleo', especially the way the that the paleo- diet/lifestyle is marketed is the way to go. Really all we got to go on is that our macronutrient ratio is out of whack. That does not mean that if you're doing paleo, or are considering paleo that you're doing shit wrong. If it's work, its working, but that don't mean it gonna work for everyone.

<comment><USER4> Now if we could just get this to autopost if the referenced article mentioned nutrition and obesity. :-)

Looking at the software that is probably not feasible, but it would make for some interesting forum software which did an autoFPR[1]

[1] Frequently Posted Responses - probably needs a better acronym.

<comment><USER5> Isn't tokenadult a biological implementation of an autoFPR system? ;). His posts are long, well-thought, full of references and appear so quickly that I'm damn sure he's copy-pasting things from his personal Wiki or research notes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's also the "a calorie is not a calorie" when it comes to comparing fat / pure sugar / carbs / protein. [1][3]

Calorie content printed on foods is done by calorimetry not by bodily uptake. [2]

And research suggests it is important how you eat foods in combination. Even the simple process of drinking water with food will increase your calorific uptake, just ask any dairy farmer; they give water with dry feed for that reason. Fibre, wholewheat and fat will give you less bodily calories than the same calories of sugar.

I'm not advocating any special dietary regimen but time and time again the research points to : each your food with plenty of fresh vegetables, particularly leafy greens - for iron, fibre, calcium - and the rest will pretty much look after itself.

If you want to keep up with research then [http://www.reddit.com/r/advancedfitness](http://www.reddit.com/r/advancedfitness) is a good place to keep tabs on.

[1] [http://home.trainingpeaks.com/blog/article/a-calorie-is- not-...](http://home.trainingpeaks.com/blog/article/a-calorie-is-not-a- calorie)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorimeter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorimeter)

[3] [http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/79/5/899S.full](http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/79/5/899S.full)

<comment><USER7> Could you share any links regarding studies that suggest drinking water with food increases calorific intake? My Google searches come up with studies that say drinking water with food increases weight loss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My personal experience is that the there is something about food in the US that really pushes you towards obesity.

I recently spent 2 months in the US (conference + work + road trip). It was relatively sedentary, but probably no more than my day-to-day life. I was careful not to consume any soft drinks - just water, tea (the coffee is unbearable) and the occasional beer. I ate very few snacks and sweets and usually swapped fatty side dishes with salads or cooked vegetables.

I did eat out a lot, but I also eat out a lot at home. I don't think my portion sizes were any bigger. The result? Gained nearly 8 pounds! I was really surprised by this.

In contrast, during a 2-month long trip to china that included more physical activity, but also tons of very oily noodles, I lost around 4 pounds.

Btw, my typical diet is roughly mediterranean+beer (Tel-Aviv). In particular it includes lots of salads with olive oil, lots of hummus, chicken, fish, pasta, pizza, and various forms of junk food.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is, at least, an appealing simple explanation for obesity. Much simpler than "Impurities in high-fructose corn syrup disrupt a particular metabolic pathway in the liver causing ... increased fat storage". Simply: humans crave protein and will eat things that taste like protein until they have enough.

I hereby suggest Occam's diet: avoid things that taste like protein but aren't.

<comment><USER10> The explanation for obesity is simply a caloric surplus. You can't get much simpler than that.

<comment><USER11> That's just shuffling the question around rather than answering it. Why are more people running caloric surpluses than before? It is not happening deliberately.

<comment><USER10> I'm absolutely not shuffling around the question rather than answering it.

In a practical sense, the question doesn't matter at all to people trying to live healthier lives.

The reason we have fatter people is we have more calorically dense foods readily available (meaning greater calories in) while people live more sedentary lifestyles (means less calories out).

This function to lose weight is so incredibly simple (paging jacques chester and his steam machine blog post).

<comment><USER12> A proper solution involves solving the 'Willpower Issue'. We want to address the problem in a way that can be nearly invisible to those who want to spend their willpower and intellect elsewhere. As someone in the nutrition industry, I spend a lot of _my_ time considering what I eat, but we also have to solve the problem so that everyone can eat healthy without it having to also be a full time hobby.

<comment><USER13> Yea, it seems that people have this historical fantasy that people used to just exercise all day, and voila... were thinner. I've lived in Boston, NYC, and SF... all of which have had transit systems for a century, and people presumably lived extremely similar lives as far as passive exercise is concerned (though air conditioning is an obvious change). Still, many people in these cities are incredibly obese. The biggest difference is the automobile (for which i'm assuming these cities would be good control groups), after that, the clearest difference is food. More of it, yes, but why are people eating so much more... cost doesn't fit. It's not as though my stomach says, well these are cheap calories, better get my money's worth. No, it just doesn't make much sense if the food itself isn't causing the increased consumption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is it me, or does the reference don't even match the article? Number 4* state:

      Longevity and health were optimized when protein was replaced with carbohydrate
      to limit compensatory feeding for protein and suppress protein intake.

Overall, the science behind the claims seem weak, there are no clinical studies on human for example.

*[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?holding=npg&am...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?holding=npg&cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=24606899&dopt=Abstract)

<comment><USER15> It doesn't really contradict the article, which isn't _really_ saying that eating protein is healthy, but that people scarf up carbohydrates trying to find protein - but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the article.

[http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-03/cp- cpi022714....](http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-03/cp- cpi022714.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The article mentions a 0.8% decline in protein concentration. That seems negligibly low. Does such a small variance really matter to foods?

The interesting part seems to be the increase in carbs/fats at 8% over the same 35 years.

<comment><USER17> I think the point is that protein concentration is staying almost constant but people are achieving it by eating more over all.

<comment><USER18> s/concentration/consumption/

Protein _consumption_ is staying constant, because _concentration_ has dropped, and people eat more total food to bring total protein back up. Acc to the article.

Which is a win/win for industrial food. The article says industry is incented to replace protein with cheaper fat and sugar. So a volume of food sold costs less to produce. And then people turn around and eat/buy even more, to make up for the lower protein concentration.

I sometimes feel played.

<comment><USER19> You could interpret the comment as protein concentration _in humans_ stays constant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >Many processed food products are protein-poor but are engineered to taste like protein.

I think MSG may be the culprit here. In college I worked in a large Chinese restaurant, we didnt use it but many people would ask if we did. It go me thinking so I did little research. MSG gives the taste called umami. I started looking through my pantry and many items I snack or junk food items contain it.

</comment><comment><USER21> > An optimal diet includes a mixture of foods that provide dozens of different > nutrients in appropriate amounts and in the right proportions.

I wonder if we're any close to understanding what these "right" proportions are, and whether they are at all close to what is recommended by the USDA (which I believe is 45-65% carbs, 10-35% protein and 20-35% fat).

<comment><USER22> I have read that the USDA's recommendations are influenced by the huge grain farming lobby in the US. It's well known that a carbohydrate heavy diet works to fatten up a wide range of farm animals, though the impact this has on people is under some debate.

<comment><USER23> i lost significant weight (>33% from start) eating 50% protein (non processed, mostly fresh fish) 30% vegetable fats (olive oil, avacados, etc) and 20% non- starch carbs (berries, veggies - no breads, pasta, rice, beans)

i have kept it off past 2 years and replaced remaining fat with muscle (eg 48 inch waist -> 30 inch waist) slowly replacing protein with more veggies, beans, and some whole grain breads...fat % same. about evenly split 1/3 fat, carbs, protein.

i couldnt maintain exercise at higher protein levels...i could feel a physical response in energy levels by adding in say 1/2 cup beans or 2 apples 30 min before a workout allowing me to sustain target activity levels

Ymmv

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Good piece, and makes sense, but some examples would be helpful -- there's a lot of talk about foods engineered to taste like protein but that have carbs.

Anyone have some examples? Chicken and Beef are, in their un-seasoned form, pretty bland, so I'm not sure what "engineered to taste like chicken" actually means....?

<comment><USER25> Engineered to taste like chicken means pretty much that - they try to reproduce some of the texture and mouthfeel. They make it a bit bland and chicken-like, then use it for something that would have chicken.

Not sure about your first paragraph. I know tha. If you take a rel chicken and roast it, and serve it with vegetables, that you'll have a tasty nutritious meal. But if you take that same chicken you can take the breast meat off and sell that as fillets; same with the legs; the wings get sold too. You do that with all the bird. Eventually you have a carcass from which you mechanically recover as much meat and meat-like protien as possible. That gets sold off for low value meat style products.

So, you take some meat and chop it and re-form it into small lumps. You cover those in a salty spicy coating (which will soak up fat) and you fry those. You serve them with a sweet sauce (ketchup; bbq; anything with sugar).

Now you have a low value bit of meat that you can sell in high volume to many many people for incredible markup. It is really tasty - some people think there aee combinations of sugar / salt / fat that are hyper paletable - <USER2> really easy to eat.

This kind of popcorn chicken will have less protien, but more salt and fat and carbs than a regular chicken.

<comment><USER26> "(ketchup; bbq; anything with sugar)"

Sadly those don't even have sugar in them for the most part, it's all high fructose corn syrup these days. HFCS along with trans fats have been linked to inflammation and should be avoided.

<comment><USER25> I'm in the UK. We use sugar, not HFSC.

We also have obesity over here. Drinking 42 oz drinks is going to cause problems whether they're using HFCS or regular sugar.

<comment><USER27> We do have HFCS in the UK, but we call it glucose-fructose syrup. I've noticed it in the ingredients of an increasing number of beverages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The core research looks very interesting, but Nature should probably hire a few economists to read through all the crap that scientists believe they know about economics, and maybe a few psychologists, too.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm curious _why_ processed foods contain less protein now than before.

<comment><USER30> From the post: "Food manufacturers have a financial incentive to replace protein with cheaper forms of calories, and to manipulate the sensory qualities of foods to disguise their lower protein content."</comment></comment>


Wall Street loves socialism for bankers – but not for ordinary people - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/08/wall-street-socialism-jpmorgan-jamie-dimon-bailout <comment><USER2> Everyone wants socialist benefits for themselves and free-market benefits for everyone else.

<comment><USER3> Socialism means that the workplace are owned and controlled by the workers. You can still have a marketplace of such workplaces.

There are forms of socialism that do include a free market (i.e. left-wing market socialism, etc…)

<comment><USER4> > Socialism means that the workplace are owned and controlled by the workers.

I always thought this was communism, and that socialism roughly means the workplace is owned by the government.

<comment><USER3> > I always thought this was communism

Communism can be slightly confusing to talk about as it describes both a specific kind of society, ideology/ideologies and a kind of state. It's certainly one kind of socialism.

Communism as society (sometimes called "full communism": A) Is class-less This means that there are no groups of people who hold own/power of "means of production" (workplaces) at the expenses of those who don't. B) State-less: a society that is not organised through a state at all. (This is why the term "communist state" is funny.) C) Resource philosophy organised along: contribute based on ability, get based on need. D) It doesn't really claim to solve any other problems. This would not be a perfect society, only one without class conflict and state violence.

Communist ideologies are ideologies whose goal it is to attain communism as society. Examples of this are Leninism (what is often meant by "communism" in the west), various forms of Marxism, Anarchocommunism/Libertarian Communism.

Leninist and other Marxists want to attain communism through a specific kind of state, but this state is a means to an end and the state itself is meant to vanish in the transition to "full communism".

Libcom/Ancoms argue that you should just skip the whole state part (and that it would ruin it anyway) and just try to build a communist society (stateless, remember) directly.

(Some philosophies fall between these philosophies.)

Of course, nobody has managed to achieve a communist society (and AFAIK few if any have claimed to do so). If this is possible or not I leave to you consider.

> and that socialism roughly means the workplace is owned by the government.

State socialists (i.e. Leninists, many Marxists, many radical democratic socialists) argue that workers can own their workplaces through a state in which they hold power.

Non-state socialists (i.e. anarchists, libertarian socialists, etc, ) argue that the worker control and ownership much be more direct and that society should be organised in a decentralised fashion.

There are some that fall between these dichotomies.

\-----

I'm not a political science academic by any stretch, so sorry if I got some details wrong here.

\---

EDIT: One difference between communism and other forms of socialism is that the communists generally more negative to markets than others. This is most clear in anarchist circles where you'll find libertarian communists argue with left-wing market socialists and such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just like congress likes pensions, government healthcare and yearly raises ( voted on by congress conveniently enough ) for themselves but not for ordinary folks.

It's strange how the elites want the best for themselves but not for the masses.

Money for me, none for thee. Rules for thee, none for me. It's good to be king.

<comment><USER6> To get to the top you have to in some way be competitive. Many of these people are hyper competitive, and while it is great in many ways, it sucks because it makes a person always want more. They don't want poor people to be poor, they just want to have more money than their other peers.</comment></comment>


CPRC: Mass Shootings Are Higher Outside US and Increasing - <AUTHOR> https://crimeresearch.org/2018/11/new-cprc-research-mass-public-shootings-are-much-higher-in-the-rest-of-the-world-and-increasing-much-more-quickly/ <comment> who-knows95 i feel like this is kinda misleading. i know the first/second/third world classifications aren't really as effective as they were in the cold war era.

but, america isn't below average when it comes to gun related death, 39,773 in 2017 (CDC). this includes suicide, homicide, murder and accidents.

while 39,773 is no small number, compared to the america population of the time 325.7 million, it's only 0.012%.

I feel like, the argument breaks down into a few groups.

1\. true first amendment followers, they spend their spare time teaching and encouraging anyone to safely and responsibly use a firearm in line with the amendment.

2\. people who use the first amendment as a shield to carry and use a gun irresponsibly.

the main difference being, one group is for everyone being armed, while the other is only really interested in protecting themselves from immigrants/blacks/police.

whenever i discuss firearms in america, it's nearly always a completely fruitless endeavour, because the people who are first amendment supports do normally agree that common sense gun laws should be implemented.

the other group screams if you so mention it.

from there, it's a simple few questions. "should a former murder have a gun", "should children have guns" and "should someone mentally ill have guns".

after that, they normally resort to insults or block me. i do understand some people are far more radical than i when it comes to gun banning.

in your experiences, what do you think about this? common sense gun law and such?

<comment><USER2>
      first amendment

_Second_ Amendment, I think you mean.

<comment> who-knows95 ah yes sorry, second amendment.</comment></comment></comment>


101 Ultimate Timeline Covers for your profile - <AUTHOR> http://teckzone.in/blog/2012/01/101-ultimate-timeline-covers-for-your-profile/

<comment><USER2> So you stole a bunch of artwork, resized it completely unprofessionally, and put it on your shitty site?</comment>