How To Sell: A 6-minute video tutorial - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCUct4NlxE0

<comment><USER2> Joe Ades -- passed away last year after many years selling on the streets of NYC. He was profiled a few times, but this article sheds more light on his life and business:

<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/27/magazine/27ades-t.html>

One heckuva salesman.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Looks like he sold $70 worth of cheap peelers in 6 minutes. I know lawyers that make less than that!

<comment><USER3> That's what it looks like. Doesn't mean he sold a single one.

Sure, money and peelers changed hands, but those could have easily been all to his employees, who give the peelers back later in the day, after all the real suckers forked over their dough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you go to any market in the London suburbs you will see people like this selling all manner of crap.

It doesn't take long to learn that their talk is all talk and their product are invariably shit.

While he's making a lot of money I'd wager he has a high footfall making up for most people just thinking he's selling tat.

Doesn't make him a bad salesman, on the contrary he knows exactly what he's doing.

<comment><USER5> Sorry but no. The guy was living on the 5th avenue. Why, because he had both: A good product _AND_ a good pitch.

He had done that for years, he even told that a lot of times, people walking on the side just told "true, I have it and it is working great" when people were looking at the pitch. Free recommendations from customers along the way.

Never forget that a good product without a good pitch is nothing now and a good pitch without a good product is nothing on the long run.

<comment><USER4> With a high footfall he might not need a good product. His excellent sales skills will win him a lot of business. He's not expecting repeat custom (they last for ever) and for a few dollars most people aren't going to return a broken vegetable peeler 12 if his claims aren't true.

I know nothing about this man other than this video so I'll accept your assertion that he had a good product. The video does not show he had a good product though. A lot of people can be sold a hell of a lot of crap.

In london I'd wager he would, by most people, be lumped in the dodgy tat seller category and he wouldn't do as well. His charming patois isn't so charming when you've seen a hundred of them.

As I said though, this doesn't make him a bad salesman. He's obviously very good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A great lesson on selling - I want to buy that peeler. Even after an autotune remix I don't want to buy a Slap Chop.

</comment><comment><USER7> That is indeed a very good sales pitch :)</comment>


My son is schizophrenic. The 'reforms' that I worked for have worsened his life. - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/my-son-is-schizophrenic-the-reforms-that-i-worked-for-have-worsened-his-life/2012/10/15/87b74a98-eadd-11e1-b811-09036bcb182b_print.html <comment><USER2> You can blame the schools for misdiagnosing ADHD, and you can blame them for a poor IEP, but you can't blame them for a child not having a normal life due to one of the most tragic diseases known to man.

Schizophrenia is not the kind of disease you can treat with an IEP, and it sounds like the author's son fell out of the system from a very young age. Trying to blame anything but genetics and development for his son's state is disingenuous - treating schizophrenia is a complicated, involved, and ultimately very stressful process for everyone involved, and in the end it can only bring someone on the brink of homelessness or self-harm into a situation where they can be stable most of the time, but never _all_ of the time, or even almost always.

> The word "disability," for instance, should have covered Tim and children > like him.

ADHD or blindness are not even in the same room a schizophrenia. It's like comparing having six toes on your left foot to being comatose.

> If I were a legislator today, I'd mandate — and provide funding to ensure — > that every teacher receive training in recognizing symptoms of mental > illnesses.

Teachers have enough on their plate, and more importantly, that's not what teachers are for. It sounds like the author took his son to plenty of mental health professionals, and he still wasn't properly diagnosed until he was nearly an adult.

> I'd see that pediatricians are trained to make screening for mental health > concerns a regular part of well-child exams.

Many mental health diseases don't manifest to the levels for proper diagnosis until adulthood, and even then the process of diagnosis is not scientific.

> I'd put much more money into community mental health services...

All of that sounds great, but mental health services are one of the first things cut into in a down economy.

> Tim is where he is today because of a host of public policy decisions we've > made in this country.

No, he isn't. The author is wrong, and I'm sorry for that, but it's very unlikely that his son would have ever been a contributing member of society. Schizophrenia is a severe mental disease that cannot be treated like a 'special need.'

<comment><USER3> This fatalistic attitude isn't wrong, but it is manifestly unhelpful and surprisingly expensive. Being homeless is not a zero-cost alternative to real treatment; in many cases, the cost of lavish treatment is far lower than the cost of ER visits and criminal proceedings that would otherwise be incurred. I believe Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article about chronic homelessness a few years ago, about Denver rolling out a program to take some number of homeless folks and set them up in an apartment free of charge with on-site nursing 24/7, and it was saving the city millions just by keeping them out of the ER. I believe the program ultimately came under fire because of how essentially un-American such a system is, even when it makes both ethical and financial sense.

<comment><USER4> > when it makes both ethical and financial sense.

It saves money on a small scale because no one's trying to defraud it yet.

<comment><USER3> The article I'm remembering actually addressed that. The program was limited to a very small number of people--tens, or fewer. They actually had one that wrecked his apartment every week, and still it was cheaper to fix it back up than to let this guy back on the street, where he would incur about $1M a year in ER bills. One of the big objections to this program came from the fact that the scale was so limited.

<comment><USER5> The fraud that jumps to my mind is a hypothetical person taking a free apartment, when they are perfectly capable of supporting themselves and would do so if the alternative was homelessness. That's certainly not cheaper.

I make no claims about how common this kind of fraud would actually be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just finished my Psychiatry rotation as part of my training and there are three things, of many, that I learned: First, America has a _long_ way to go in developing the best screening and management tools for people with mental disabilities. Second, schizophrenia is an _incredibly_ complicated illness that can take manifest in a whole host of unsuspecting symptoms, and is not easily treatable. And third, diagnosing and treating a mental disorder in children is _really hard_.

The last two points, I think, are very relevant to this article. While I sympathize with you, understand that child development is a very, very complicated thing. You have naturally hyper children, naturally withdrawn children, etc, and physicians are very wary to label any child with an illness, especially schizophrenia. When we're adults and have leveled out, it's easier to discern what is "normal" from "abnormal." But children are constantly changing, being molded by their environment, and so it's much harder to outline a symptomatic threshold of what's considered normal. Additionally, children exhibit mental disorders in very different ways than adult do; there are different sets of symptoms to look out for. And these symptoms can be anything from "pressured speech" (talking too fast. some kids are just naturally fast talkers, right?) to auditory hallucinations (but the child could have a vivid imagination, right?).

The treatment for schizophrenia is an entirely different beast. The goal is usually to just suppress the symptoms and to restore the patient to a functional baseline. In many cases, the disease progresses and the prognosis worsens. In your case, your child had early-onset schizophrenia, which is associated with a worse prognosis than late-onset cases.

Although there are studies that show that early detection and treatment of schizophrenia can improve the course of the disease, chances are your kid would have still developed much of the same symptoms and issues that he has now. It really sucks, and I sympathize with you, but that's the nature of the disorder. It's terrible, difficult to manage effectively, and can ruin lives. I've seen it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Things like this are easy to say:

> If I were a legislator today, I'd mandate — and provide funding to ensure — > that every teacher receive training in recognizing symptoms of mental > illnesses.

but teachers aren't psychiatrists or clinical psychologists and can't really be expected to be.

I was recently watching a program talking about the somewhat controversial theory that schizophrenia (and other mental disorders) are either parasitic in origin or that parasites may simply contribute [1] [2].

The culprit in this case being toxoplasmosis. There's been research to show that there is correlation between the incidence of schizophrenia and the domestication of cats.

This kinda reminds me of how peptic ulcers were once thought to be caused by stress until they were found to caused by a virus [3].

At the same time the elimination of parasites is arguably related to the rise of autoimmune diseases in the developed world (the so-called "hygine hypothesis" [4]). For example, hookworms may combat asthma and other allergies [5].,

I wonder if the coming century will be a revolution in mental health as parasties, viruses and bacteria (or even the _lack thereof_ ) may be far more immportant than currently realized, possibly even causal in many cases.

[1]: [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090311085151.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090311085151.htm)

[2]: [http://www.stanleyresearch.org/dnn/LaboratoryofDevelopmental...](http://www.stanleyresearch.org/dnn/LaboratoryofDevelopmentalNeurovirology/ToxoplasmosisSchizophreniaResearch/tabid/172/Default.aspx)

[3]: [http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/peptic- ulcer...](http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/peptic- ulcer/causes.html)

[4]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis>

[5]: [http://www.gizmag.com/hookworms-prevent-asthma- allergies/129...](http://www.gizmag.com/hookworms-prevent-asthma- allergies/12969/)

<comment><USER8> > teachers aren't psychiatrists or clinical psychologists and can't really be > expected to be.

True.

Equally: Programmers aren't operations staff.

But we can damn well learn how to call them in when we need them.

<comment><USER9> Very good analogy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some problems just don't have good solutions.

We're so used to political debates where the Republicans say "less regulation will solve X", the Democrats say "more spending will solve X", the libertarians say "X is none of the government's business", and each suggests that things will go swimmingly under their preferred way of attacking the problem.

Some things, though, just suck.

Schizophrenia is one of those things. You can't cure it. You can't treat it very well. There's not much to be done.

Sometimes bad things happen to good people, and no amount of "training teachers" or "diagnosing diseases" or whatever will change that.

It's a tragedy.

<comment><USER11> I think this is too fatalistic. This sets the bar far too low -- you could substitute poverty or crime in here without substantially altering the meaning. No, you cannot "cure" it or "fix" it, but the alternative isn't "do nothing." That's a false dichotomy.

At a minimum you can look for ways mitigate the impact it has on our society. See the pieces elsewhere in this thread which discuss the cost to our society incurred by ER visits from the mentally ill and/or homeless. That's a trivial example.

It might be worth discussing how other western industrialized nations approach this; I suspect that those countries which have some kind of socialized health infrastructure do more than the US than shrug their shoulders and avert their eyes.

<comment><USER12> Not so much...the fatalism here is not unwarrented.

If I give a pauper a million dollars, they are no longer a pauper--foolish noveau riche, perhaps, but not a pauper.

If I repeal laws pertaining to various things, drugs for example, a great many criminals cease to be so.

Mental illness, unfortunately, tends to stay with the person.

:(

<comment><USER11> That's true, but again, at least we ought to evaluate what the cost of doing nothing is. What we're doing now is pretty close to nothing, and it _does_ have a cost, in money and in more intangible dimensions (e.g. humanitarian).

<comment><USER12> Oh, don't get me wrong--I'm very much for state-run healthcare and could be considered a proponent of socialism. I think that any civilization with as much resources as we do (we here being Americans, presumably) is criminal if it does not work to support its citizens cradle-to-grave.

I was just disagreeing with your assessment that fatalism is unwarranted--we do it (caring for mental illness) anyway, because it simply must be done, but we ought not pretend that things will get better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Every year, one in every five children and one in every four adults has a diagnosable mental illness. A quarter of all mental illnesses are considered serious."

1/16 adults having a serious mental illness seemed awfully high to me, but I went and looked it up and that may actually be low-balling it: [http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers- coun...](http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-count-mental- disorders-in-america/index.shtml)

<comment><USER14> I don't really like the term 'mental illness', not so much because of the stigma attached to it, but because the term implies there is some 'normal' from which only a small subsection of the population deviates.

In reality, there is no 'normal'. There is no one person with perfect mental health; perfect clarity of thought, perception, of feeling and action. Everyone, to put things bluntly, is a little fucked up.

Thus, these figures don't really surprise me. As far as I'm concerned you can end up with any percentage of the population suffering from mental illness, it just depends where you set the thresholds.

<comment><USER15> There's a ridiculously vast difference between "a little fucked up" and serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, rapid cycling bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder.

If you think serious mental illness isn't a real, debilitating reality, I encourage you to spend some time with somebody in a truly psychotic state and see how you feel afterwards. Then imagine living _as_ that person.

There may be no absolute "normal", but there are most certainly people who live in a sad, terrible, frightening state of mental disturbance with no simple treatment.

<comment><USER14> Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to belittle those with debilitating mental illnesses.

I simply don't like the view many seem to hold that mental illness is black and white; you have a mental illness or you don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What a timely article. Just today received a call from the school that my grade 3 son had thrown a girl to the ground threatening her. This was the second incident in a week. A team of councilors and mental health workers were called in as an emergency response team.

The similarities between the child in the article and my son are startling and scary.

Although we are still at the beginning of our story, I do believe that in my area in Canada, the system has gotten better. I can only hope that this continues and the system does not let him down like it did to the child in the article.

My son will be seeing a counselor and accessing services that were previously unavailable to us starting in 2 days. Thanks Hacker News, you are always so poignant.

<comment><USER17> I'd go easy on that counselling and do my best to figure out first _what actually happened_.

It would not be the first time that the visible aggressor was in fact the victim of a long drawn out teasing campaign by a group of bullies, and girls can be bullies just as easy as boys.

One of the best bits of fun seems to be to goad someone until they snap and then let them take the blame for it all.

Been there, done that, have the t-shirt.

<comment><USER16> I know the useless tunnel that counseling can be all too well. I also know my son. He is not like the rest of the kids. Exceptionally bright, exceptionally short fuse. No energy, always tired and constant sleepwalking or night terrors, and I do believe he may have already had auditory hallucinations. There is a history of mental illness in his lineage.

That being said, I have seen the kids first hand pushing his buttons on the school yard. There are so easy to push it's hard for them to resist. We are working with both the school and some mental health workers to make the situation more livable for all parties. I appreciate your concern, and I do understand that play-yard aggression is often mis-construed. That is most definitely part of this situation.

<comment><USER17> Ok, super to see you're on top of this and looking at all angles.

School can be hell if you are standing out in whatever way, and cause and effect can be hard to separate sometimes. Night terrors could be causing trouble in school, school trouble could be causing night terrors just the same.

I wish you the very best of luck with this, and I hope that it will all come to a good resolution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One of the major problems that I've seen first hand with mental illness is that the diagnosis is so subjective and often times relies on accounts of the patient and family. If you have family who don't know what to look for or the patient doesn't know how to explain it or is under the duress of the illness at the time, you run the chance of misdiagnosis.

This happened to me. My senior year of high school I had a "breakdown" of sorts. I was suspended from school until I saw a mental health professional. After the first visit, I was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder and given meds to treat it. After awhile, the diagnosis changed to Schizo-affective disorder and more drugs were added to help. Finally, I was diagnosed with epilepsy and told that the mental health diagnosis were wrong since epilepsy can cause both depression and hallucinations if untreated.

I shared my story for a few reasons. One the brain is complex and there can be many factors that causes symptoms. If mental health professionals can't get it right, there is no way to expect teachers or school administrators to get it right. I was lucky and had phenomenal insurance at the time that I went through that ordeal. Because of that, I was able to get tests and scans that I know others wouldn't not be able to afford. I fortunate enough to have a parent who could afford for me to get a SPECT scan which is (or was) considered cutting edge and would not be covered under insurance. That was what helped the neuro-psychiatrist realize that I have epilepsy and not a mental illness. Many people can't afford these things. Had I not had that scan, I would still probably be taking 20 pills a day and having to wake up early to take Adderall so that I'm able to physically wake up in time to be functional and the worst part is, that would be all for naught. It wouldn't help me since I don't have any problems.

There is so much wrong with the mental health system (at least in the US) that it really makes me sad. You start at the education level (such as the article talks about) but then when you move to insurance, so much isn't covered that it becomes either pay out of pocket or just let the individual suffer.

<comment><USER19> Thanks for sharing that. It isn't just the US that is a bit average where mental health is concerned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> My old eyes cannot handle very very long lines of very small type, and after several tries I was not able to guess the URL for the story in human friendly form.

Please submit links for humans, not machines. Add the machine link in a comment if you wish.

PS: I'm aware of Readability and the ability to increase font sizes. There are other problems in general with print links that those do not address:

• Print links generally do not include extras like comments. This particular story had a large number of comments at the original site.

• Although not applicable in this particular case, stories often include sidebar links to related stories, and these are often omitted from print links.

• The non-print link usually includes a very easy way to get to the print version. Typically, you just click a print icon and you are there. The print link, on the other hand, usually does not include any link or other mechanism to get to the non-print version (other than the "back" button if you happened to have come from the non-print version).

Taking this all into account, particularly the last part about it being very easy to get to the print link from the non-print link, and not easy to go the other way, in almost all cases the link submitted should be the non-print link.

PPS: there are some sites that offer an "all on one page" link, which is distinct from the print link. The former simply does away with splitting the article into pages, keeping the comments and sidebar links and human-friendly formatting. Submitting "all on one page" links is great.

<comment><USER21> Press CTRL+PLUS a couple of times to increase the font size. CTRL-ZERO to go back to 1:1.

<comment><USER19> Try that link from an iPhone. I love small type usually, but that's a little small. Yes, Instapaper is what I should have done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm out of words. Here everybody seem saying smart words about being mentally disable/ill, about politics and so on but you all miss the pivot.

This (young) adult was diagnosed with schizophrenia. If the US wouldn't have the health-care system it has, this guy would receive proper treatment without hassles. Being hospitalized and so on. But he wasn't, and now he's just the last of the leasts. Why he wasn't? Because he wasn't elegible according to the insurance. Obviously he wasn't i'd say. Companies exist to make profit, this is old story, no insurance want really to treat people who are going to require life-long medications and care.

So, try to learn something from this story and realize how the US system is broken when it comes to care about people who isn't Paris Hilton.

I heard Romney saying "nobody is dying in this country because of lacks in terms of health-care, they jsut go to the first aid". He said this because he's just evil. Anyone smart realizes that being stabilized and being treated are 2 different things.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's pretty sad that the best way to get mental health treatment is to commit a crime and go to jail. What an epic failure.

It really goes to show how our society thinks of people: if we're punishing someone for a wrong, then spend as much money as necessary. But helping someone before they do something wrong: that's socialism.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is often discussed among homeless advocates, because such a large percentage of homeless have mental illnesses of various kinds.

I do think reform had quite a bit arguing for it: old-style "insane asylums" were really not nice places, and involuntary commitment was used fairly widely, at times even producing involuntary surgeries (like the notorious period in which involuntary lobotomies were performed), which I think are serious problems for civil liberties and easily abused. But the problem is that we just closed the asylums and didn't replace them with much of anything at all, in most states not even voluntary facilities that people can check themselves in to.

<comment> barry-cotter Mental hospitals suck. Some suck more, some less but if you visit people in them you will be under no illusions but that they all suck.

<comment><USER18> Depending on what you mean by "Mental hospitals suck" I disagree. It isn't supposed to be a place you go for happy fun time, but there are some really nice ones. The problem is, the really nice ones are out of the reach for many people who need them because they are super expensive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I grew up around a situation similar to this. Thankfully, it hasn't turned out that badly. People with that kind and depth of mental illness have to have someone watching out for them. One little slip, one missed pill has the potential to send them down a road that they will not be able to recover from on their own. It can get bad fast and take a long time to bring back under control.

</comment><comment><USER26> My cousin has (had?) schizophrenia. Despite the best efforts of his wealthy family and a willing mental health system in Germany he disappeared and we haven't heard anything in a very long time. He lived on the streets for a number of years but it's very hard to get schizophrenics on the needed medication and even harder to keep them on it.

I don't think there's a policy solution for this.

<comment><USER27> But wait! I thought it was because the United States was evil. And all other countries have it figured out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is quite a personal story and It's not near this level but I grew up with a parent with Schizophrenia and still am.

I'm 18 and currently live alone with this parent and am moving out soon as I work on my company. The situation is fine (for me) because there are few things to set them off these days and I've just had to learn how to deal with many of the disturbances. Like paranoia of me (What I talk about to others), using certain words in relation to illness like saying something is "mental" or even how are you. The illness only pops up at certain times. People wouldn't know they are ill from speaking to them, most of the time. It's 10X better than it was when I was much younger and lived with both of my parents.

I won't go into detail out of respect to my family but their illness has broke up their marriage (Although sometimes couples don't work) and now they refuse to take any medicine or see anyone. Because they aren't anymore at the level that they are forced into treatment there's nothing that can be done.

What I've learned from this is most policy on mental illness is under the assertion that if the person is at extreme harm to themselves or the public, they require treatment. If this isn't the case and the person refuses to believe they are ill or that they need treatment, little is done.

</comment><comment><USER29> In a former job, I was confronted with a heartbreaking string of cases of individuals who are homeless, clearly suffering from mental illness, yet repeatedly breaking into local businesses, often not to steal anything of value.

The frustrating choice for those in the prosecutorial or defense systems, is how to best perform your duty to the public and these individuals.

If you simply release them, the business owners continue to face victimization. If you send them to jail, you put them in a completely inappropriate community, and damn them to poor or nonexistent care for complex problems.

It's not isolated cases, mental health issues took up a significant portion of our resources in the criminal justice system (a system that, when overburdened, suffers both Type I and Type II errors simultaneously, leading to higher rates of hasty convictions while also letting more guilty individuals walk free).

The best solution I heard, discussed only in chambers with heavy sighs as to its political infeasibility, was some sort of mental health court, analogous to a drug court.

Drug courts are designed to take a significant number of cases and prosecute them more efficiently, while focusing on what reduces recidivism most, and helps those "offenders" (treatment and monitoring is the general template, though individual cases can be highly customized, rather than one size fits all incarceration).

Drug courts don't always work, sometimes they can be systemically flawed. This American Life presented just such a case a few years ago, describing a judge who abused the process. But in most jurisdictions, drug courts lower costs to the system while putting a lot of people in a far better place.

A similar institution, a "mental health court," might feed people from courtrooms into community treatment facilities, with monitoring and care, while putting them on probation instead of placing them in jail.

This would, of course, work best with significantly increased funding for humane and competent mental treatment facilities. But at least some of those costs would be offset by lower burdens on the justice system and systems of incarceration.

Such a system would certainly help more people, and it deserves wider public discussion.

</comment><comment><USER30> It's really sad that this isn't a priority in the United States. Somehow we have so little money for the government to pay for anything, that any possible solutions are either underfunded or written off completely. Overloaded case workers, run-down facilities, lack of facilities, lack of integrated programs, are just a few of the consequences.

It's an odd sort of poverty where all sorts of gadgets and innovations are commonplace, but where the marginalized in society still suffer through neglect and lack of funding for any viable solutions.

<comment><USER27> How much money would save this man? You going to build him a golden prison to live in. Schizophrenics hate being medicated. They are miserable. So they go off their medication and run away. It's not a question of money. Please stop the "we are so horrible because we don't spend enough money." That's the lazy minded answer to an extremely complex issue.

<comment><USER31> They are human beings though, so if they chose not to accept help or medication you can't force it on them. You lose a lot more taking away individual freedoms over what you deem abnormal or mentally ill than you do from the suffering making potentially poor life choices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This says so much about what's broken in our legislative system:

> Six weeks into my legislative career, I was the legislature's reluctant new > expert on mental health.

After six weeks, he was _not_ an expert. In nearly all cases, our legislators are not experts in any of the things which they are legislating, yet that never stops them from forming strong opinions and trying to "reform" or "fix" things. On HN, we see this frequently with Internet and technology legislation, but this article shows it's a problem with other areas, too.

<comment><USER13> I think he was using 'expert' in the sense of 'go-to guy', and maybe a bit ironically.

<comment><USER33> Yeah, he was clearly being sarcastic. Sarcasm is generally a bad rhetorical device.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is a tough story of a state legislator who became an adoptive father finding out that policies that he thought were humane reforms didn't end up helping people in this generation like his adoptive son. Some of my perspective on these issues comes from knowing Irving Gottesman,

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Gottesman>

who was credited as the main adviser on schizophrenia relied on by the author of the book _A Beautiful Mind._ Gottesman has spent much of his career researching schizophrenia and debunking former theories about the origin of schizophrenia. Twin studies, especially studies of the unusual cases of monozygotic twins reared apart, and adoption studies have consistently shown that schizophrenia develops from an underlying genetic vulnerability (probably varying greatly from patient to patient, according to the best evidence from genome-wide association studies) that makes a patient all too likely to develop full psychotic symptoms over the course of childhood without careful treatment. Gottesman's research goal is to define "endophenotypes" that can be reliably measured clinically to identify patients who need one kind of preventive or supportive treatment rather than another. But we are nowhere near identifying endophenotypes for any major mental illness.

"Self-medicating with marijuana, Tim's drug of choice for lowering the volume of the voices in his head, got him suspended from the first high school he attended — a public, vocational-technical school in Middletown, Conn. — and placed on court-ordered probation." We do know that young people whose family history suggests genetic risk for major mental illness (which might not be known for a particular adopted child) are playing with fire if they take schedule I drugs without medical supervision. Many of the worst outcomes found in families in which some relatives become mentally ill and some do not are among the persons who "self-medicate" (that is, abuse drugs) rather than reduce risk of perturbing their brain chemistry.

"If I were a legislator today, I'd mandate — and provide funding to ensure — that every teacher receive training in recognizing symptoms of mental illnesses."

Teacher who are credentialed to teach elementary school receive specific training in how to teach reading, and receive specific training in how to teach elementary mathematics, but mostly do a remarkably poor job in those important tasks anyway. There are not today any reliable lists of early symptoms of mental illnesses to guide an adult who sees young children as to who will develop severe mental illness in adulthood. Diagnostic criteria for psychology and psychiatry are not that well developed yet, and communicating criteria for best practice to future teachers in schools of education or to in-service teachers through in-service training programs is already a vexing problem in reading instruction and mathematics instruction.

"I'd see that pediatricians are trained to make screening for mental health concerns a regular part of well-child exams."

I think some of that is already done today. At least, my four children certainly seemed to be asked routine questions in well-child pediatrician visits that could raise red flags on the basis of certain answers to those questions. Again, there simply aren't that many effective early screening tools for mental illness today of any kind. One of the best tools for identifying people at highest risk for developing mental illness is to know the complete medical history of their nearest relatives--but that is the hardest tool to use for some adopted children.

"I'd require school administrators to incorporate recommendations from pediatricians and mental health professionals into students' IEPs."

What I hear from parents whose children have IEPs (individual education plans, under federal law about special education) is that it is often annoyingly difficult to get a school to follow an IEP, even though that is mandatory by law. It is the parents's responsibility, in the first instance, to make sure that all relevant information is provided to the professionals who work with the parents in drafting the IEP. The parents have to push back if the IEP isn't drafted helpfully at first, and they have to keep an eye on whether or not the school implements the IEP.

All in all, this sad story is a good reminder that EVERY parent, and maybe especially an adoptive parent, needs to be cautious about reducing risk of future harm for all children in the parent's care. The author's description of his situation makes his situation sound very rough. He surely hoped that his son would be living independently and thriving by the son's current adult age. What I've learned about parenting after two decades is that parenting never completely ends. Launching a child into self-sufficient adulthood is wonderful. (I have done that once so far.) But there will always be scary issues for parents to watch out for that they have to take care of themselves.

AFTER EDIT: Several comments below this comment talk about the risk of drug abuse for persons who have underlying vulnerabilities to mental illness. I agree with the suggestion that alcohol (legal for all adults) is surely dangerous in such cases and perhaps tobacco (also legal for all adults) is too. But I will remind all readers here that marijuana was specifically mentioned as the now homeless person's "drug of choice" in the submitted article, and marijuana alone, plus the genetic vulnerabilities, is enough to turn some formerly productive young people out on the street unable to support themselves. (It was probably observations of situations like this decades ago that helped convince legislators to change marijuana's legal status from permitted to largely banned. The article submitted here makes the correct point that sometimes legislation has unintended consequences, and perhaps the "drug war" is ineffective policy for reducing the harm that mind-altering drugs cause individuals and society.) Richard Branson has argued that Portugal's different pattern of regulating drugs has reduced drug use and has reduced various social harms from drugs that are Schedule I drugs here in the United States.

But that said, I will stand by my statement "We do know that young people whose family history suggests genetic risk for major mental illness (which might not be known for a particular adopted child) are playing with fire if they take schedule I drugs without medical supervision. Many of the worst outcomes found in families in which some relatives become mentally ill and some do not are among the persons who "self-medicate" (that is, abuse drugs) rather than reduce risk of perturbing their brain chemistry" because it is a factually correct statement. I don't know of any physician who regularly treats psychotic patients in emergency rooms who recommends that young people with family history medical risk for psychosis use marijuana. That is a distinctly bad idea.

ONE MORE EDIT:

I shared the article submitted here among my Facebook friends, and one thoughtful friend suggested the article, from the same newspaper in 2005, "Social Network's Healing Power Is Borne Out in Poorer Nations"

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2005/06...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2005/06/26/AR2005062601091.html)

as an interesting contrast to the situation described in today's article. There is some good back and forth among experts on schizophrenia in different countries in the previous article. Diseases influencing human behavior often manifest differently in different cultures.

<comment><USER35> _We do know that young people whose family history suggests genetic risk for major mental illness (which might not be known for a particular adopted child) are playing with fire if they take schedule I drugs without medical supervision._

That marijuana is classified as a "schedule I drug" is, itself, obscene and a result of politics, not science.

Therefore, the rest of your suggestion regarding them "playing with fire" does not apply in this instance.

<comment><USER36> It's still a major mood and behavior alterer. A trained professional should be directing the patient's use.

<comment><USER37> Certainly it, and _any_ other drug or medication, should be taken with care in this particular situation. "Schedule I" has _nothing_ to do with it though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Author's first impulse is to look to the state for the care of his child. WRONG!!!! YOU and your family are the primary folks responsible for this kid. Your wife had about the same chance of success as any set of teachers or state gov't goons but with much more incentives. What the hell was she doing? (probably getting her 'career' on - woo hoo!)

Why are ppl so apt to think that state employees are miracle workers? Central command/control and one-size-fits-all solutions (or any approximation thereof) are bound to fail for most of us who have special needs.

<comment><USER39> I'd speculate that anyone "political" enough to be elected to the legislature at the tender age of 25 will never be able to step outside the mentally- crippling assumptions of the total-services state. Note the unrecognized contradiction between "the state should provide this service and provide it well" and "when I was in charge of things for the state, the LAST thing I or any of my colleagues cared about was providing this service".

<comment><USER38> exactly; he's just a bloke like you and I - not some super-helper-expert- because-i-work-for-the-state guy.

I'm not saying we shouldn't expect any return for our tax dollars; but certainly not as the primary source of help (read 'assistance'). also, perhaps the problem shouldn't go after our tax dollars in the first place .. it's a warm/fuzzy idea to 'help', but you're taking my dollars and supposing a solution to which you have no idea what you're doing. stop it please ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I have a very dear loved one who suffers from schizophrenia. I've seen firsthand how useless the system is. Before a diagnosis, everybody (schools, friends, etc) are judging the parents because their child doesn't fit into "norms". After a diagnosis, they have no idea how to handle it, so things don't get better.

We pushed everybody out of state hospitals (which were _horrible_ places) but never really answered the question of where those people need to go.

Fortunately, my loved one's disease is being well treated at the moment. I constantly fear the day that a serious psychotic event occurs, especially if it occurs after she moves out of her parents house (which, like most teenagers, she really wants to do).

</comment><comment><USER41> As someone who was diagnosed with Schizophrenia, had several bouts of psychosis, and settled into BiPolar disorder without the psychosis, I can speak on this subject a bit. As a kid I exhibited the typical, thinking fast and trying to talk just as fast. My first major manic episode I recall was while studying for a midterm, where instead I had inspiration and handwrote a 8 page business plan. After my my first psychotic break, a year later I spent all night down the rabbit hole of importing raincoats from China. I showed no Schizophrenic symptoms until a major psychotic break that triggered my underlying proclivity towards Schizophrenia, partially by roadtripping to a new place and excessively smoking marijuana. I ended up in an out-of-state hospital for several days before transferring to a local one. My family thankfully had insurance, but the profit-driven company battled with us to deny paying for that expensive out-of-state care and treatment, thankfully they paid. I couldn't get non-group insurance until insurance companies could not as easily deny you coverage for pre-existing conditions.

Before that event I had genuinely enjoying smoking for nearly 2 years in college with no paranoia. Uncharacteristically, I got into minor legal trouble thanks to a dumb, drunken night. The day my probation ended I lit it up again, leading to a mild psychotic episode with friends who were freaked out. That was the end of marijuana for me. Never tempted to touch it again as I know that is seriously playing with fire given my tendencies. I've had one other paranoia-fueled episode where I went off my medications because I didn't like the side effects. I somehow got tangled with a local urban gang, after they broke into my house and stole my roommate's golf clubs and spotted my expensive studio equipment only to stake the place out for another burglary. I avoided hospitalization with the help of close family this time.

 _The_ biggest thing for people with BiPolar or Schizophrenics is to stay on their medication. It's a very tragic feedback loop, you feel good or normal so you go off your meds. Then you are OK for a while, then you are nearing a nervous breakdown, manic episodes (which are really fun for most people), paranoia, or deep depressive episode (which is why so very many BiPolar people commit suicide). Every time I went off my medication, a break down was near, and you had to basically hit the "reset button" on your life again. Start a new job, new location, try again. This time, you pledge to stay on your medication, your family reminds you as well. Things can stabilize when you get on the right medication with the lowest effective dosage, get regular sleep and exercise. I am stable now, with the help of family, friends, low dosage medication, and exercise. (In that order)

</comment><comment><USER42> Title "The 'reforms' that I worked for have worsened his life" - That's interesting. Let's read further.

Extract : _The 1980s was the decade when many of the state's large mental hospitals were emptied (...) I jumped at the opportunity to move people out of "those places" (...) to help manage the transition of people back into the community

(...)

When he was in jail, with its regular routines and meals, Tim usually stabilized. But when he was released (...) he destabilized right away_

Ok, we get your point.

But they why giving in conclusion the idea that more money thrown at a problem that seems intractable could solve it??? [Extract: _I'd require school administrators (..) I'd put much more money (...) I'd get rid of laws (...)_ ]

This begs the question : was it considered only once that maybe "humane reforms" had been pushed too far, and that the best outcome would have been reached in a place with " regular routines and meals" where stabilization could have been provided- in other words a good old hospital.

Maybe in the past there were many people in that shouldn't have been there, and the "humane reforms" were then a good idea. But maybe we overdid them and now we make people worse, based on our own idea that people suffering from schizophrenia would be better outside the hospital.

Extract again from the post : "His only furniture was a bare mattress on the floor; a rat and flies were his companions. Sadly, he seemed content. This is the mental health delivery system that I helped build".

Yes the author did, since he considered a patient own evaluation of his situation to be perfectly valid and not in any way damaged by his disease.

It is usually better to respect a person will, self evaluation, etc. But maybe, just like for suicide, when the best judgement seems to no longer work, it is a good thing to ignore it until it can be fixed - if it can.

</comment><comment><USER43> I don't believe that the author thought he was doing the right thing as a legislator! I think he was trying to save the state some money, without thinking carefully about how those savings would impact people's lives. As you sow...

</comment><comment><USER44> The word "reforms" in this article, and in recent political parlance, is being used as a euphemism for "cuts."

It seems inevitable that euthanizing a long neglected mental health system could lead to further difficulty amongst the mentally ill and the people who have to live around them and/or love them. It must seem shocking that any bad outcomes could ever come out of "reforms."

As a person who was alive in the US when all of the crazies were thrown out into the street without a net in preparation for their future jail/homeless/jail/homeless/dead therapeutic cycle, I'd like to add that more than this guy's son was screwed by Reagan.

</comment><comment><USER45> The path to hell is paged with good intentions, in this case by young, well- meaning, but unqualified and overly-ambitious people who like the sound of their own voices and think they know what is best for others, but come to realize 25 years later that they really fucked things up for a lot of people they were supposed to be helping (guys, you are supposed to be helping the 99%, not the 1%). Better late than never, but what's he going to do beyond write an article to make himself feel better. Nothing, probably (that's a challenge to the author, if he's even here).

</comment><comment><USER46> Timothy D. Wilson's "Redirect" is relevant here and shows that a significant number of treatments for all manner of childhood and young adult issues skip one crucial yet obvious step: simple scientific testing. Instead, "common sense" often ends up the preferred approach to treating problem children, usually making the problem worse.

[http://www.amazon.com/Redirect-Surprising-Science- Psychologi...](http://www.amazon.com/Redirect-Surprising-Science- Psychological-Change/dp/0316051888)

</comment><comment><USER47> The problem isn't the particular reforms, it is the idea that any reform could evoke the needed individualization from centrally planned institutions.

My heart aches to think of the hell this man is in, and that his father is in watching him. I have worked with people in this condition, it is heartbreaking. I get the screaming urgency to do SOMETHING.

But if that something doesn't make sense it just isn't going to work.

</comment><comment><USER31> Nobody brought this up (what?) but how is this relevant to.. _hacker_ news? I get that someone on here might be schizophrenic, but is this really on topic with startups, software, etc? If I want to get sad over incurable mental illness I'll go read r/politics or atheism (oioioi).

<comment><USER48> Maybe it's useful because you might hire staff or have co-workers who happen to have a mental illness and being informed about it is a good thing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> It was a very interesting article and I really enjoyed reading it but why is it on Hacker News?

<comment><USER50> Ideally politics of healthcare are avoided, and then people can provide information about how this stuff is handled in other countries, or discuss better systems.

You have a flow of 'patients' through a system. You also have a flow of information about those 'patients'. Some people need access to (some of) that information (doctors, the patients, their carers) but the information needs to be kept private from others.

Already there's an interesting problem that plays to the strength of many people on HN.

Given that health care spending is so large - about £120bn in the UK[1], about $800bn US[2] - it would seem that big money is available for a good solution to these problems.

There are people doing interesting things in health care IT. But I don't know what a minimum viable product looks like when you're aiming at over 60 million records (UK population) or 300 million records (US population).

[1] ([http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_health_care_budget_2009...](http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_health_care_budget_2009_1.html))

[2] (<http://www.usfederalbudget.us/health_care_budget_2012_1.html>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> My sympathies. My brother has this condition. His is manageable, thank goodness, but he went through a lot early on.

Charlie Rose had an interesting program about this topic and its biological causes:

      http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12269

</comment><comment><USER52> Why does he let his schizophrenic son lives as a homeless man on the street?

</comment><comment><USER53> Thank you OP for linking to print version, it's much better for reading.</comment>


Please review KartMe - <AUTHOR> http://www.kartme.com

<comment><USER2> I found the design to be pretty confused, and I suspect that most visitors will leave immediately because of this. You need to communicate what the site is useful for, and how to start using it simply. For example, I wasn't sure whether to start by searching for an item, or clicking the 'Start KartMe' button on the right.

Maybe the design mirrors the fact that the site is trying to do quite a lot of stuff. It's a pretty impressive feat technology/coding-wise, but it might be worth tweaking the homepage (and maybe moving some stuff off it) to help ease the new-user experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> I clearly struggle to simplify the message. Thanks for encouraging me to focus on this.

Any ideas for what one thing i should ask users to do on the homepage?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Your description here makes sense, though I don't see a description on the actual website. Really had no idea what it was. Not sure what Kart Me means either at the moment. Looks nice otherwise. Cool design.

<comment><USER4> I was able to figure out that's for storing things I like, but I don't know what the benefits of that are. Why do I want to use this service? The "Save time & money" section doesn't tell me anything that it seems like it should.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. What problem do I have that this is trying to solve? I poked around a little and did a couple searches, and I still don't know what it's trying to help me with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's my 2c. Feels like information overload. If I click on 'Books to read' on the homepage, I'm expecting a list of books to read. Here's what I get:

* Picture of Phil with some unrelated stats.

* List of karts created by Phil, with the option to 'watch them all' (is that ever useful?)

* The list of books to read. Each entry has 8+ possible actions. The only useful visible info about each book is its title and a comment.

* Another unrelated list of 'most watched karts'.

* list of karts watched by Phil.

<http://www.kartme.com/user/115/karts/47>

I'm not sure new visitors would stay long enough to understand that page.

I would suggest you decide where the focus should be for each page and remove everything that is a distraction.

For instance,

* remove Phil's data from the left column (belongs to a profile page)

* remove the redundant title "Phil's Kart Books to read" from each entry in the list.

* remove or tone down the right column.

* show a summary extract for each book, show the price and option to track price (or automatically track price when 'karting')

* strip down possible actions for each entry to 3 or 4.

<comment><AUTHOR> So helpful! Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've enjoyed Hacker News the past year as I worked on KartMe, and now would greatly appreciate your thoughts on this free service for easily organizing and sharing favorite books, restaurants, gadgets, recipes and more. Thanks!

* What would get you to use KartMe every week?

* What would get you to tell a friend about KartMe today?

<comment><USER7> I wasn't able to understand _really quickly_ what KartMe is offering. That's my biggest hurdle to either using it or telling people.

What would get me to use it would be something that makes it easier, faster, or cooler than tweeting, blogging, or however else I might let people know about this stuff. (Not that I actually do any of those things while working 12h days at a startup.)

Also: name issues. When I see "Kart" i'm thinking "shopping cart" or "mariokart" -- what's the relationship between that and sharing gadgets or recipes? For me at least, you've got a gap right there. The "K" for "C" substitution also gives me "KMart" associations, which probably isn't want you're going for.

Good luck! Don't give up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

Maybe i should say: "The easiest way to create a shareable list of real world stuff"

<comment><USER7> Go for fewer words. "Share lists of real world stuff"

<comment><AUTHOR> "Wishlist for the World" ?

<comment><USER7> I think your ideal tagline describes what you're doing _and_ has a call to action.

Look at posterous -- currently "the dead simple place to post everything. just email us." Pretty wordy, there's really not much else to say about it. But it calls you to action.

Maybe you're "Share anything with your friends and save". Depends on where you want to take it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You seriously need to take a look at minimalism. As all others have said, I couldn't understand what your site is about. But best of luck, it seems you have put a lot of effort on this. It looks nice too.

These guys sum it up nicely what I want to say. <http://commandshift3.com/about.html>

>>I was going to write a sentence about why this site exists, but when I asked, Darrell said "If it's not self-evident then fuck off." Feisty.

</comment><comment><USER9> I didn't understand what the site was about. Seems like a wishlist of all items.

</comment><comment><USER10> My first thought on going to the site: "WTF is a Kart?" Spent about 30 seconds looking around trying to figure it out and left.

</comment><comment><USER11> I gotta say, the domain just makes me think of red turtle shells.

<comment><USER12> haha... yes indeed

<comment><AUTHOR> funny. i definitely hear different allusions depending on the audience. i guess i'm not surprised no one here focused on "kart wheels"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My impression is that the site is like social bookmarking for real world items.

<comment><AUTHOR> really well said!</comment></comment>


Augmented reality could help you learn to dance better - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2017/07/09/dance-reality-arkit-app/?param=july-10-2017 <comment><USER2> When is Apple releasing iGlasses?

</comment><comment><USER3> This should be on Apple's upcoming iGlasses ;)</comment>


Ask HN: Looking for open-source project - <AUTHOR> I would like to participate in an open-source project that is using mainly C language. I hope to use this medium to learn and deepen my understanding of C. If you have projects that you would want someone to join you in then let me know. I am also ready to work in none C language codebase depending on how easy the target language is to learn. <comment><USER2> New developers welcome: [https://github.com/freeciv/freeciv- web](https://github.com/freeciv/freeciv-web)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I will have a look.</comment></comment>


You can't smell metal [video] - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/BqLH-nTZEOc <comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr Metal/rust do not give off any smell, and even if they do, they would be odorless. The smell you associate with metal (coins, nails, etc) are actually formed when you touch the metal, at which point the metal acts as a catalyst to speed up oxidation of your skin oils, which forms odorful (?) molecules. So you are really just smelling yourself. The predominant compound attributed to the smell is 1-octen-3-one. The rest of the video is him trying to create and isolate this compound.</comment>


If you applied this cycle and haven't heard from us, please check your spam folder - <AUTHOR>

We replied to all the applicants last night, but some say they still haven't heard from us.  Many if not most of our replies got classified as spam.  GMail classified it as spam, for example.  So if you think you still haven't heard from us, please check your spam folder. <comment><USER2> I guess this has to do with the spam funding offer that was going around a couple of weeks ago claiming to be from PG. Maybe that whole bayesian mail filtering thing wasn't such a great idea after all..

Sorry, I just couldn't resist :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I got it....didn't think I did at first. The email address I have on my Y Combinator account is different than the one I put on my application. Maybe some of you did the same????

</comment><comment><USER4> I applied but haven't received anything, including spam (gmail).

<comment><USER5> same here. bizarre.

<comment><USER3> gmail.....not in spam... still waiting

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> also, consider that your mail service for your ISP might just SUCK (as mine does) and perhaps that's the reason you haven't received a reply

i had to get a copy of the response from my co-founder. i think i'll use Gmail from now on :D

<comment><USER7> That's important to note, I know specifically that some non-major service providers (meaning: not Verizon, Comcast, etc.), sometimes don't even show you what spam you get. So, if your using a smaller service provider and you still haven't got it and its also not in your "spam box" there's likely two things that happened.

A) You didn't put your email in your profile "email" box. I would direct you to pg's post last night but its gone now.

B) Your service provider may use a special filter in front of your mailbox which means not only was it marked as spam but it was marked before it actually reached your email and just got tossed overboard in cyberspace. Though, one would expect the number of people to suffer from this problem to be small but it does happen.

What's unfortunate is if that e-mail that got lost was an invite. =C

<comment><USER8> Even gmail, etc. will reject a fair amount of spam outright, and you'll never see it; however, for those messages, the mail server won't even accept responsibility for the email, and the sender will instead get a failure notice. YC should be getting bounces if that happens.</comment></comment></comment>


The UK to open its first sex doll brothel - <AUTHOR> https://mic.com/articles/175784/the-uk-to-open-its-first-sex-doll-brothel-because-men-need-more-ways-to-objectify-women#.UngNWckoa <comment><USER3> Huh, this is the kind of silly moral outrage I'd expect from far right religious conservatives.

The arguments here that

> While certain sex doll manufacturers have argued that their products might > act as an outlet for customers' aggression or criminal predilections, > sparing potential human victims, experts worry that those behaviors could > easily bleed into real life.

remind me strongly of the old, tired lines about how violent video games are "training our kids to be killers". And it sounds just as specious here.

> For sex workers, 45% to 75% of whom experience violence during their > careers, the possibility that their customers' conduct with dolls might be > transferable is very real.

Okay, but a) does any data show that that _actually_ happens, or is this just the pearl-clutching it sounds like, and b) do we ban activities because they might cause our attitudes to change in a negative way? If a study showed that, say, eating Doritos made one more likely to rob a bank, would we then start banning different brands of tortilla chips?

> It's also real for any woman whose partner might be sneaking off for sex > with dolls, which raises yet another pertinent question: Who asked for this?

Lonely dudes, presumably?

<comment><USER4> I remember a heated debate between someone from the union of sex workers in the Netherlands and the woman behind [https://campaignagainstsexrobots.org/](https://campaignagainstsexrobots.org/) Kathleen Richardson.

From the industry there was little opposition namely. The main argument was this: "The job of a sex worker is much more complicated than you think. It's not just sex. It's about human contact. It's about communication. It's so much more that to confuse a human sex worker with a robot doll is demeaning to what it constitutes to be a sex worker."

It's still a taboo. That's what's the issue here. That on itself means human trafficking, no pension, no support from police, etc.

Of course, when robots can sentient, we have an interesting situation. It is rather weird that people quick to pinpoint discrimination issues between male and female (which seems irrelevant) are so slow in pinpointing discrimination issues between human and artificial beings. If anything, it is important not to wait to long with establishing the rights of the latter.

<comment><USER5> > Of course, when robots can sentient [...]

But what sort of proclivities would go with the sentience? Not necessarily the sorts of things we'd expect in an evolved animal. I'm reminded of a scene from Douglas Adams' "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe".

Excerpt from Chapter 17:

A large dairy animal approached Zaphod Beeblebrox's table, a large fat meaty quadruped of the bovine type with large watery eyes, small horns and what might almost have been an ingratiating smile on its lips.

"Good evening," it lowed and sat back heavily on its haunches, "I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body?"

It harrumphed and gurgled a bit, wriggled its hind quarters into a more comfortable position and gazed peacefully at them. Its gaze was met by looks of startled bewilderment from Arthur and Trillian, a resigned shrug from Ford Prefect and naked hunger from Zaphod Beeblebrox.

"Something off the shoulder perhaps?" suggested the animal, "Braised in a white wine sauce?"

"Er, your shoulder?" said Arthur in a horrified whisper.

"But naturally my shoulder, sir," mooed the animal contentedly, "nobody else's is mine to offer."

Zaphod leapt to his feet and started prodding and feeling the animal's shoulder appreciatively.

"Or the rump is very good," murmured the animal. "I've been exercising it and eating plenty of grain, so there's a lot of good meat there." It gave a mellow grunt, gurgled again and started to chew the cud. It swallowed the cud again. "Or a casserole of me perhaps?" it added.

"You mean this animal actually wants us to eat it?" whispered Trillian to Ford.

"Me?" said Ford, with a glazed look in his eyes, "I don't mean anything."

"That's absolutely horrible," exclaimed Arthur, "the most revolting thing I've ever heard."

"What's the problem Earthman?" said Zaphod, now transferring his attention to the animal's enormous rump.

"I just don't want to eat an animal that's standing here inviting me to," said Arthur, "it's heartless."

"Better than eating an animal that doesn't want to be eaten," said Zaphod.

"That's not the point," Arthur protested. Then he thought about it for a moment. "Alright," he said, "maybe it is the point. I don't care, I'm not going to think about it now. I'll just ... er ..."

The Universe raged about him in its death throes. "I think I'll just have a green salad," he muttered.

"May I urge you to consider my liver?" asked the animal, "it must be very rich and tender by now, I've been force-feeding myself for months."

"A green salad," said Arthur emphatically.

"A green salad?" said the animal, rolling his eyes disapprovingly at Arthur.

"Are you going to tell me," said Arthur, "that I shouldn't have green salad?"

"Well," said the animal, "I know many vegetables that are very clear onthat point. Which is why it was eventually decided to cut through the whole tangled problem and breed an animal that actually wanted to be eaten and was capable of saying so clearly and distinctly. And here I am." It managed a very slight bow.

"Glass of water please," said Arthur.

"Look," said Zaphod, "we want to eat, we don't want to make a meal of the issues. Four rare steaks please, and hurry. We haven't eaten in five hundred and seventy-six thousand million years."

The animal staggered to its feet. It gave a mellow gurgle. "A very wise choice, sir, if I may say so. Very good," it said, "I'll just nip off and shoot myself." He turned and gave a friendly wink to Arthur. "Don't worry, sir," he said, "I'll be very humane." It waddled unhurriedly off into the kitchen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm somewhat skeptical on the cleanliness. A real vagina is somewhat self cleaning (STD's aside). Anyone that's owned a fake vagina (or a george forman grill) can attest to how hard they are to clean.

<comment><USER7> Disclaimer: Not a good idea to put body parts in a george forman grill

<comment><USER6> I meant the ribbed nature of both devices...

<comment><USER8> We meant the problem of prolonged burns on body parts, although the crust smells delicious.

Someone ordered a hotdog?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article is oblivious to the concept of a male sex doll. It is also oblivious to humans treating objects as well or better than they treat other humans. I wish I could downvote this, it appears to be flamebait.

</comment><comment><USER10> "because men need more ways to objectify women" .. But they're objectifying actual inanimate objects, not women.

<comment><USER11> I know - If this is objectification, is a woman buying a dildo in the shape of a penis objectifying men?

If fake sex objects are fine for one, they are fine for another.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This reminds me of the Robosexuality episode of Futurama: [http://futurama.wikia.com/wiki/Robosexuality](http://futurama.wikia.com/wiki/Robosexuality)

It seems like these sex dolls are basically the (extremely primitive) precursor to the sex robots that are likely in the future.

</comment><comment><USER12> Read title: "The UK to open its first sex doll brothel, because men need more ways to objectify women"

...instantly close.

</comment><comment><USER8> The usual organizations trying to protect the long fallen mono-drug supplier monopoly with shoddy arguments.

The usual attempts of the well meaning, to prevent what they presume as self- destructive behaviors.

Nothing in this brothel, which doesn't happen every day in a thousand homes anyway.

So carry on while the caravan wails?

</comment><comment><USER13> I think this article is a prime example of the things I hate about advocacy journalism.

It's clear that the journalist started with a narrative in their head - <USER2> second sentence is _" It's a creepy concept that cues an avalanche of questions"_. I don't think pursuing an agenda is bad per se, but it's not really reporting work, and I think it must follow different rules - specifically, it needs to have argumentation for its assertions, provide evidence for factual claims, and analyze alternate explanations.

> "I think we know enough about human psychology that if you can get yourself > to mistreat a very lifelike, human-like thing, then it's probably just good > rehearsal to doing that to a real human," Pizarro added.

The quote from the "expert" is illustrative - it is an appeal to authority with no further investigation, no sources to back it up, etc. While that might be the standard formula for a news report, it's not enough for an argumentative article. Is David Pizarro a leading scientist on this subject, does he have publications and research to link to? Who knows, it's not presented in the article.

There's a pathetic attempt at presenting the "counter-argument" but the link is to a site that is debunking it(and also advancing the same narrative) - this doesn't give me much confidence that the counter-argument was presented fairly and not just straw-manned.

The proliferation of sex dolls and sex dolls brothels may be an interesting topic worthy of a discussion. "The previous Mic article" hints to one interesting issue: _" When I tried to find a sex robot for straight women online, options were scarce."_ However, it then immediately tries to shoehorn the discussion into the narrative with an 'explanation': _" That is likely because not only is the tech industry dominated by men, but also because companies founded by men are more likely to get funding. "_ (How about the 'likely' explanation that women aren't looking for sex dolls? How would that not possibly cross your mind?)

This article and the ones it links to are just poorly written agenda pushing. They are what you would look for in an evangelism blog, a strongly opinionated presentation with very little research and argumentation, no thought put into alternate possibilities.

The big question that pops up in my mind is, "of what use is this to me"? I don't know who Claire Lampen is, why I should respect and value her opinions. She doesn't really present any serious argumentation for her position. She doesn't even seem to be concerned with the actual consumers who are seeking out this product, just how this will "negatively affect women"...which reminds me of this quote from Hillary Clinton:

 _" Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat..."_

It's hard to take the pleas for subscriptions from magazines and "newspapers" such as this one seriously. With this kind of low-effort advocacy journalism, Mic competes with every opinionated blog on the subject, and it will always come short - I can at least develop some kind of emotional connection and relationship with a blog writer by following their writings; the online "news media" still treats them mostly as replaceable cogs.

<comment><USER11> It's not just that the quoted expert doesn't really flesh out their assertion, it's that the premise "" comes from nowhere in the first place:

> There's no lack of male disrespect toward women already, and those might be > the men who are most drawn to sex robots.

He's suggesting that men may be drawn to robots in order to abuse them, like a kind of self-initiated sexual abuse training. Here's a thought: most most that use the brothels will just _have sex_ with the things!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sex doll brothels, SpaceX making it cheaper to go to space... When will the Rastafarian migrate to low earth orbit?

<comment><USER15> around the time Tessier-Ashpool start constructing Freeside, if my watch is accurate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> i think its an improvement over real prostitution for sure. also it kind of negates some of the power women have over men.

isn't it better if women are not put at risk of stds, no human trafficking et cetera? i could buy a sex doll or even go to such a place but i would never go to a whore.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is the United Kingdom, right? The nation with the highest concentration of videocams per unit area in the history of humankind, right? No way this development won't turn into blackmail on a national scale.</comment>


Tim Cook: Apple Won't Create 'Backdoor' to Help FBI - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2016/02/17/cook-open-letter-backdoor-fbi-san-bernardino/ <comment><USER2> Sure. AFAIK they are a U.S. company. So how do they even have a choice?</comment>


Fed paper says 1918 pandemic led to German austerity and extremism [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr921.pdf <comment><USER2> Actual title: Pandemics Change Cities: Municipal Spending and Voter Extremism in Germany, 1918-1933

Specifically, the paper states:

> In this section, we show that the 1932 and 1933 vote share won by extremists > was related to influenza mortality of a decade earlier. This mortality was > positively associated with right-wing extremist vote shares, such as the > national socialists, and negatively (though insignificantly) with the share > won by left-leaning extremists.

So, the 1918 pandemic did not lead to just _extremism_ ; it led to _right wing_ extremism. (I'd suggest changing the title to reflect this, if possible.) This is a danger that we are facing right now in the US.

<comment><USER3> > So, the 1918 pandemic did not lead to just extremism; it led to right wing > extremism. (I'd suggest changing the title to reflect this, if possible.) > This is a danger that we are facing right now in the US.

Are we? Show me some actual evidence.

Yes, there are some similarities between our situation and 1918. But there are massive differences. We should certainly observe the situation to see if the pandemic causes people to radicalize, but it's rather alarmist to conclude that it is already happening, based solely on this.

<comment><USER2> I am not suggesting we are facing an issue with right wing extremism because of the pandemic. I am merely suggesting that we are facing an issue with right wing extremism.

From [https://www.csis.org/ground-combatting-rise-right-wing- terro...](https://www.csis.org/ground-combatting-rise-right-wing-terror) :

> Right-wing terrorism is on the rise in the United States and across Europe. > In the United States, right-wing extremists were responsible for nearly 50 > killings in 2018, a 26 percent increase over the previous year.i,ii > According to the Anti-Defamation League's latest report, 2018 was the > fourth-deadliest year for domestic extremist-related killings since 1970 and > of those attacks, right-wing extremists were responsible for almost 78 > percent.iii

From [https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/reports/201...](https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/reports/2019/03/07/467022/confronting- domestic-right-wing-terrorist-threat/)

> The murder of 11 Jewish worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in > Pittsburgh more than four months ago was the most deadly U.S. domestic > extremist attack since the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, but it was far > from an isolated incident. The University of Maryland's Global Terrorism > Database showed that, from 2010 to 2016, right-wing inspired terrorist acts > in the United States have grown from 6 percent of total domestic terror > attacks to 35 percent. The Anti-Defamation League's report, "A Dark and > Constant Rage," catalogued 150 right-wing attacks from 1993 to 2017, noting > that "right-wing extremists have been one of the largest and most consistent > sources of domestic terror incidents in the United States for many years."4 > The Center for Strategic and International Studies also reported that, > between 2016 and 2017 alone, right-wing inspired violence had quadrupled in > the United States.5

Do I need to quote anything more from the first page of a google search for "right wing extremism in the united states" or is that enough?

<comment><USER3> Before you confidently snark about how I could have researched your point for you, consider that you just demonstrated how small of a problem right wing terrorism is. According to your own post, 2018 saw 50 killings from right wing terrorism in 2018. Compare to 36,560 motor vehicle deaths in the same year[1]. Or, you know, the over 70,000 people who died of Covid19 _so far_ this year.

Keep in mind, right wing extremism in 1918 grew into the holocaust, which killed 11 million people[2]. This from the Spanish flu which killed 17+ million people[3]. I don't think 50 deaths in a year is comparable, and I stand by my claim. In a conversation where events that caused millions of deaths are being discussed, comparing something that caused 50 deaths two years ago as "a danger that we are facing right now in the US" is alarmist.

I'm not saying it's not a problem, and I'm not saying we shouldn't talk about it. But I am saying, we should keep some perspective.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust) [3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> how does this possibly have any accuracy, it doesn't even mention the treaty of versailles.

This is despite the the treaty of versailles having large and well understood economic impact and crushing costs of that treaty. Those costs and consequences are largely understood to have driven the economy into the ground.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wasn't the spending dip because of war reparations? That the austerity caused right wing extremism is not in doubt. But this paper seems to ignore what caused the austerity.

Edit: after reviewing some charts, I don't think causality has been established. The high influenza mortality was probably a result of pre- existing economic and political inequalities.

<comment><USER6> Finding out what countries have been particularly stricken by the pandemic and have had austerity measures imposed on them recently on account of "paying one's debts", very much like Germany's situation in the 30s, is left as an exercise for the reader.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Led To" is a bit of a stretch</comment>


Ask HN: Hobby "space" projects for developers? Or something like that? - <AUTHOR> Hello, I have a Master in Computer Science and I almost 15 years of experience working in the private sector, developing API, architectures designs, in large companies, startups, etc. I am currently working as a "CTO" (between quotes) in a new startup, defining scopes, architectures, doing dev work, also devops, etc.
However, I noticed I enjoy everything space related: books, films, tv shows. And I thought it would be nice to work on a place like that (although the dream is to work a place like NASA, I know it is impossible). Anyway, I wonder if there are any amateur projects to do as a hobbyst, space related. I dont know if you can rent a satelite and do stuff (a là DigitalOcean), or something like that.
Does anyone has any resource on how to start doing some projects that could land in a career in space-related?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Not strictly what you are looking for but I can recommend the Orbital Index Newsletter ([https://orbitalindex.com/](https://orbitalindex.com/)). You might find some interesting projects in their awesome space repo: [https://github.com/orbitalindex/awesome- space](https://github.com/orbitalindex/awesome-space)

</comment><comment><USER3> I know nothing about the space related career, but have you checked out AstroPy tutorials? They seem pretty nice to wet your appetite and maybe spring up some ideas.

[http://learn.astropy.org/](http://learn.astropy.org/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Exodus Orbitals[1] say they will rent one to you.

[https://www.exodusorbitals.com/](https://www.exodusorbitals.com/)

</comment><comment> 4x5-Guy You could always start doing high powered rocketry. Some of the current rocket companies started that way. You could also develop a payload and test it as well.

</comment><comment><USER5> How about AMSAT?

[https://www.amsat.org](https://www.amsat.org)

Plus you get to have all the fun of learning and getting your HAM! (73 VE7XML)</comment>