This makes me realize I’ve been misinterpreting bell the cat references my whole life. I thought it was about team work.
My mother told me a version that had the mice building some rube goldberg contraption to get the bell on the cat. It’s a very different lesson from what’s described here. I wonder if she got her version from someone else or if it was her addition to avoid teaching me a cynical lesson.
renewiltord · 1m ago
Amusingly the part of the story that refers to the partially solved problem is also on its own just as evergreen.
"All you have to do is" is such a common phrase online. "why didn't they just". If one is a solo builder, yes, by all means. But why didn't the SFMTA "just build side bike lanes instead of center running bike lanes in the first place?"
Betrays a fundamental lack of knowledge of how democracies make decisions: it is the center of gravity of an object with varying mass distribution.
praptak · 33m ago
It's also a tragedy of the (anti-)commons. The mice should coordinate, tax themselves fairly and hire a ninja to put the bell on the cat.
ben_w · 25m ago
The cat can represent many things, one of which is a government easily able to mobilise against such organisation.
card_zero · 1h ago
I'm surprised that medieval Europeans apparently put bells on cats sometimes. Did they care about the lives of small fluffy animals?
bitwize · 1h ago
Or small feathered animals. Because they tended to thwart hunting, the bells could also discourage domestic cats from wandering.
esafak · 2h ago
Can anyone recommend an illustrated translation of La Fontaine's Fables for children?
> One of the earliest versions of the story appears as a parable critical of the clergy in Odo of Cheriton's Parabolae. Written around 1200, it was afterwards translated into Welsh, French and Spanish.
thrance · 2h ago
It's no secret. Jean de la Fontaine was an Academician (as in, the French Academy) around the time of the ancients vs moderns quarrel. As a member of the former, la Fontaine believed everything good had already been written and all they could do was retell old stories.
He himself claimed to have based his fables on the writing of, among others, Aesop.
Traubenfuchs · 2h ago
Reminds me of us europeans expecting Ukraine men to defend us from Russia.
Which they have kind of been doing for years now, showing us what a big fat joke Russia is.
amelius · 2h ago
From EU perspective it seems like the decisions are purely based on short-term economics. I.e., just enough weapons are supplied to Ukraine to extend the war indefinitely, as opposed to supplying enough weapons to stop it now.
ben_w · 8m ago
Yes, but not only economics, I think.
Russia cannot be allowed to win.
But also, Putin cannot loose so hard that he actually reaches for the nukes (meaning either he needs to die or those weapons are first removed from use), and even without Putin there's a fear a collapsing Russia would disperse nukes on the black market and/or oligarchs would fruit into atomic warlords.
This does mean Ukraine destroying Russian nuclear delivery systems a while back was directly useful, makes it easier for everyone else to help them.
But even so, I have no idea how this plays out: Russia's death throes spraying nukes at the west is still entirely possible; as is Ukraine developing a nuke, pointing it as stuff Russian oligarchs like, and getting them to defenestrate Putin without Ukraine even launching the weapon.
-
Other things to consider: qhich power grids, if any, can cope with a single nuke triggering a high-altitude EMP? Most extreme estimate I've heard says it would take only one to kill 90% of the USA in a year just from loss of electricity in too many places at once to repair fast enough.
How sure can we be that all post-Russian nukes get accounted for?
pengaru · 1h ago
> showing us what a big fat joke Russia is.
The only joke in your statement is how naive you must be to believe that.
AnimalMuppet · 46m ago
As a conventional military power, Russia has definitely shown itself to be something of a joke.
As a nuclear power, a cyber power, or a disinformation provider, not so much.
cedws · 11m ago
I mean the US also lost to the Taliban after trillions of dollars and 20 years.
nwellnhof · 1h ago
Russia is a nuclear power and direct NATO involvement could quickly lead to nuclear war. Doesn't sound like a joke to me.
My mother told me a version that had the mice building some rube goldberg contraption to get the bell on the cat. It’s a very different lesson from what’s described here. I wonder if she got her version from someone else or if it was her addition to avoid teaching me a cynical lesson.
"All you have to do is" is such a common phrase online. "why didn't they just". If one is a solo builder, yes, by all means. But why didn't the SFMTA "just build side bike lanes instead of center running bike lanes in the first place?"
Betrays a fundamental lack of knowledge of how democracies make decisions: it is the center of gravity of an object with varying mass distribution.
> One of the earliest versions of the story appears as a parable critical of the clergy in Odo of Cheriton's Parabolae. Written around 1200, it was afterwards translated into Welsh, French and Spanish.
He himself claimed to have based his fables on the writing of, among others, Aesop.
Which they have kind of been doing for years now, showing us what a big fat joke Russia is.
Russia cannot be allowed to win.
But also, Putin cannot loose so hard that he actually reaches for the nukes (meaning either he needs to die or those weapons are first removed from use), and even without Putin there's a fear a collapsing Russia would disperse nukes on the black market and/or oligarchs would fruit into atomic warlords.
This does mean Ukraine destroying Russian nuclear delivery systems a while back was directly useful, makes it easier for everyone else to help them.
But even so, I have no idea how this plays out: Russia's death throes spraying nukes at the west is still entirely possible; as is Ukraine developing a nuke, pointing it as stuff Russian oligarchs like, and getting them to defenestrate Putin without Ukraine even launching the weapon.
-
Other things to consider: qhich power grids, if any, can cope with a single nuke triggering a high-altitude EMP? Most extreme estimate I've heard says it would take only one to kill 90% of the USA in a year just from loss of electricity in too many places at once to repair fast enough.
How sure can we be that all post-Russian nukes get accounted for?
The only joke in your statement is how naive you must be to believe that.
As a nuclear power, a cyber power, or a disinformation provider, not so much.