I don't understand why Texas voters support such inhumane conditions. All these "Christians" who support this kind of cruel punishment need to have a "come to Jesus" moment, literally.
Fans have no cooling effect once the ambient temperature exceeds human body temperature, so "making do with fans" is literally making do with nothing.
Those citizens "making do" generally have freedom of movement, free access to cool water, air-conditioned businesses or vehicles, and are not locked down in a concrete facility.
Please take 5 seconds to fact check yourself with a very quick query against your information source of choice.
Over ~95 degrees, a fan blowing on a human acts as a convection oven, increasing body temperature while dehydrating the body.
This is greatly exacerbated in extreme heat.
CDC guidance is to avoid using a fan in extreme heat conditions unless it is combined with a cooling source and careful hydration. Once again, not exactly an option in a Texas prison.
Perhaps you should take your own advice. The reason humans do not drop dead when they go outside in >100 degree weather is because sweat evaporates and lowers the temperature of humans skin below the temperature of the air. This is dependent on hydration and evaporation, which is why you must hydrate and wear breathable clothing in order to avoid heat stroke.
You don't want to put a fan in your face, but gentle circulation of air helps to aid evaporation. Have you felt the difference between stagnant air and a gentle breeze on a hot day?
> $1.5 billion is about $10K a person. Too bad they can't just give each prisoner a window unit for $200 a piece.
The former almost certainly includes other installation part, utility, and labor costs. Even if you could give everyone a $200 window unit, you'd need to deliver, install, upgrade utilities, maintain them, etc.
Why does anyone enjoy cruelty? It seems to be innate to the human animal. People are cruel to prisoners because they enjoy being cruel to prisoners, their stated reasons being excuses (free will is incoherent; there is no logical connection between what people do and what should be done to them except on consequentialist grounds; mass incarceration and poor prison conditions seem to increase crime). Take away the shame that normally keeps it in check and people's bloodlust rises to the surface. It is a rare person who chooses to deny themselves pleasure on moral grounds.
If we are to have prisons, let's be honest about why they exist: people like them.
This is an excuse for Christians behaving like animals by racing to the bottom, you consistently overstate how evil people are for reasons beyond me.
> Take away the shame that normally keeps it in check and people's bloodlust rises to the surface
Let me guess, the anti-christ is right around the corner, Peter.
> It is a rare person who chooses to deny themselves pleasure on moral grounds
No, it isn't. This person is average among us, they are rare among the elites and politicians. You don't need to paint others poorly because of your own self-image nor is it productive to do so
It was average people who attacked My Lai, and only one pilot did anything to stop it.
Most people do not usually want to do evil things and are usually repelled from doing them by feelings of shame or obligation. The moment the average person feels a desire for violence and will not be condemned for seeking it, they are as bloodthirsty as a serial killer. The constraints on people are emotional, not moral.
Just because something happens doesn't mean that its intentional. I think this is really a byproduct of having no one that stands up for the injustice. Who is the voice for people in prison? No one wants to take credit for family members that are there and the ones that get out usually struggle to get back on their feet let alone drive change in the system.
I think another good example of this is through public infrastructure. Look at any poor neighborhood in a city and look how little public infrastructure is invested in those areas. Usually big busy roads with no sidewalks, crosswalks, etc. The city doesn't hate those areas, it's just that the people that live in those areas aren't effective (or unable) to lobby elected officials to invest. Also there is a little bit of a self fulfilling prophecy with lack of investment causing less businesses to want to invest, etc.
~30% of people are wired to feel others' suffering constitutes a 'win', even at cost to the themselves as long as they're suffering less than their counterparty. Add in selection effects and it's pretty clear such people could coentrate in particular industries.
>I don't understand why Texas voters support such inhumane conditions.
I'm in Texas. I'm a little confused as to why you think I should care. For those wrongly convicted, I don't want them to get air-conditioning in prison... and for those correctly convicted, I'm not especially worried about making them more comfortable.
The entire point of punishment is the cruelty. It doesn't really work without it... it's unclear if you're quibbling over the amount of cruelty, or if you think that there exists some sort of cruelty-free punishment that the rest of us just haven't heard of.
That's a pretty messed up morality. I don't even know where to start on this one.
How do you align this with "to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God."
Its also messed up ethics.
The purpose of having the government administer punishment for crime is to prevent vendetta. And from the first time this ever came up it came up as the government saying justice should be balanced. "eye for an eye" == "Punishment fits the crime"
Just because these people don't worship or believe the same things as your sect of christianity does not stop them from believing in the teachings of Christ. They just don't agree with you while holding positions of power.
Prosperity gospel is a real thing too, also the fastest sect of christianity growing in the world.
Just because people don't follow the teachings of Christ doesn't mean they don't believe in the teachings of Christ? Hey, what did Jesus have to say about hypocrites?
> Prosperity gospel is a real thing too, also the fastest sect of christianity growing in the world.
Which goes to show you the state of Christianity today. Pretty sad.
Yup! I was raised evangelical and the pastors would brush away this passage as not being translated accurately where they would twist it to justify why you needed to give more money to the church because in the next life you'd be rewarded with riches.
God does. Judging by their actions and the hate they show towards their neighbors, I get to draw the conclusion they’re not following Jesus Christ’s teachings or the Bible.
It's because Texas is the OG of human suffering. Texas gave up territory than end slavery: This is why Oklahoma looks so weird (the "panhandle"). After the so-called Missouri compromise, in order to remain a slave-state, Texas gave up that piece of land. Also, Texas declared independence not once, but twice, to remain a slave state. First, from Mexico: "Many Anglo-American settlers were from the southern United States and brought enslaved workers, using legal loopholes like indentured servitude to bypass Mexican restrictions against slavery. They feared Mexico would abolish the practice entirely". And then, famously, of course, fighting to remain independent during the Civil War.
"TDCJ has acknowledged that at least 23 people died from heat-related causes in its facilities between 1998 and 2012 — a likely underestimate, Pitman wrote in his order last year. Inmate advocates say at least 10 additional deaths between 2022 and 2025 can be attributed to the high temperatures, including three people whose autopsy reports reference heat as a possible contributing factor."
We have a situation where about ~1000x as many people are dying in Europe as in Texas prisons. For ideological reasons, people prefer to focus on the Texas prison deaths. I'd call that propaganda.
>We have a situation where about ~1000x as many people are dying in Europe as in Texas prisons.
Right, because Europe has much higher population than Texas prisons. In fact, many more people are dying by heat exhaustion in Texas prisons per capita than in Europe.
Not entirely sure what European A/C regulations you’re referring to. Europe doesn’t have A/C because historically it’s not been needed, and when you have cities that are hundreds of years old, often filled with buildings that are designed to passively keep cool, it’s a right pain in the arse to retrofit everything.
As a result Europe doesn’t culturally expect A/C every where, and has been slow to adopt it. But obviously climate change is forcing many to reconsider those cultural norms.
>...In the Swiss canton of Geneva, installing an air conditioner requires an exceptional permit demonstrating “real need” (such as a doctor’s certificate). During the recent energy crisis, Spain and Italy barred public buildings from cooling below 27°C—hot enough to dull your cognitive powers by 5 percent. In the midst of the current deadly heat wave, my own city of Ghent is officially advising people to “avoid air-conditioners”.
>The resistance is baked into European regulation. In many countries a conventional air conditioner lowers your building’s energy rating. The result is entirely predictable: owners and landlords decline to install units, or rip out the ones they have. Those left without built-in cooling fall back on drafty, inefficient portables that can scarcely make a dent in the temperature. I own one myself—a wheezing box with a fat hose shoved through a rickety fabric covering the window. It is the thermodynamic equivalent of mopping the floor with the tap running, but that’s simply the direction in which Europe’s regulations have nudged me.
If it was better than the conditions they endured on the outside people would enticed to commit crimes.
They don't give you a handshake and a complimentary tube of lube in a paper-lined welcome basket when you get to prison. How difficult is this to understand?
While I agree, it can’t happen. The Puritanical strain runs too deep, to say nothing of Barbary Slave culture which absolutely continues to persist in the South despite slavery being outlawed.
Punishment is among the most American things that exist — and this is part of the reason I won’t mourn the passing of the US.
Just out of college I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I took a job at a prison near Phoenix AZ. It was outdoors, the cells had no AC. In a 10 hour shift in 115 (46c) degree weather I would go through 1.5 gallons (5.6 liters) of water. Every single day at least one inmate would pass out from the heat. At least they got heat for the winter.
Thankfully I left all that behind a long time ago. Though I just checked and they still don’t have AC.
There is a fairly famous quote: “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons” - Fyodor Dostoevsky
No I worked at a state run prison. All I know about the private ones is 1. The staff get paid less, and 2. They mostly only get “good” inmates. That was over a decade ago so idk if the 2nd part is still true.
Not really. The precolonial southwest was fairly densely populated, with some areas exceeding their modern density. Population density grew sparser for various reasons after the mid-14th century until Spanish colonialism created some dramatic demographic changes. The southwest remained a pretty lawless place on the frontiers of empires where armed conflict was commonplace for the next few hundred years, until after the turn of the 20th century. Would you want to move into a civil war even if it had AC?
AC was coincidentally invented as all of this was clearing up, but it wouldn't become ubiquitous until decades later after the major cities had been established with large populations. And even then, I'd blame cheap accessibility of long distance transportation more than AC for the modern state.
What parts of the pre-14th-century american southwest corresponding to modern Arizona were more densely populated than they are today? I'm a bit skeptical of that claim, given how much more human density is possible under conditions of technological modernity compared to anytime prior to the 14th century.
Bits of Mesa that are now extremely low density suburban development were at one point large Hohokam pueblos. It's not an entirely fair comparison because it's essentially comparing high density midrise apartments to some of the least dense suburban sprawl in the US, but it's not wrong.
At a more regional level, the area around Cortez, CO is less densely populated than it was simply because virtually no one lives there now. Kayenta, much of the Navajo nation, the upper Gila region, etc are similar.
I don't believe that 14th century Indian population counts have any reliability. Estimates of pre-Columbian populations in the US area vary from 10 million to 100 million.
Yeah, it's understood that it's meant as translated though for a translation to be attributed to him there has to be a line in Russian with the same meaning, right? And, as far as I know, such a line doesn't exist in Записки из Мертвого дома, which is trivial to prove with a simple text search for words starting with "цивилиз", which would have caught any form of "civilization". It's really curious why people who never read Dostoyevsky make up quotes for him with phrases that nobody with a good command of the Russian language could have written.
> It's really curious why people who never read Dostoyevsky make up quotes for him with phrases that nobody with a good command of the Russian language could have written.
It's a solid quip, almost serviceable as a Reader's Digest Condensed Book one page summary of Dostoyevsky prison book save for being too good (in English at least) for that sad US affront to literature.
People make up quotes for all manner of reasons, imperfect memory, a need to summarise, it's a joy to tumble both rocks and words to knock off some rough edges and brighten up a gem. Attribution to "elsewhere" is also common enough -- it can upsell your own work by attribution to a great name, it can deflect criticism if you've only polished a turd.
As curious questions go though, why not attribute it to a translation of Solzhenitsyn or Henri Charrière, (it's in the spirit of Oscar Wilde or Stephan Fry perhaps, but their works are already in English and a little too familiar for the bogoquote treatment (maybe)).
People make up random quotes and attribute to random famous people but, at least, they follow the famous person's character. For example, I never doubted "The coldest winter I've ever spent was a summer in San Francisco" was by Mark Twain. He lived in San Francisco and it looks in line with his other jokes. I only found out because someone complained about a cold summer in Slack and I wanted to reply with a link to the quote so I asked an AI to source it.
With any Dostoyevsky quote I see in English, I immediately ask an AI to check because none looks like anything any 19th century Russian writer could have possible written, least so Dostoyevsky. Also, I've never ran into a real Dostoyevsky quote in English even as tortured one as Beauty will save the world (which is probably the most often used one in Russian even though it's a fragment of a sentence with an opposite meaning).
A great many people that read Russian novelists simply don't read Russian.
Translators can and do create translations that aren't faithful to the original in at least one or two significant ways. It's a challenge somewhat like Flattening the Earth - there's always some compromise on angles or areas.
As a result, there are many English readers who see Dostoyevsky through a clouded lens; they imagine him to have traits more unique to some translation than to his core.
I have not read English translations but they cannot possibly be so bad that they inverted the meaning, can they? I.e. the actual quotes from the "House of the Dead" go like these: "A man is a creature that can get used to anything and I think it's the best definition", "There are people like tigers, yearning to lick some blood", "Almost every modern man has latent qualities of a torturer", "The most elevated and the most characteristic quality of our people is the sense of justice and the thirst of thereof" etc.
It's very similar to the Stanford Prison Experiment and has nothing about "degree of civilization", which is a common concept in Anglo culture but very alien to Russians, who never figured that you can just subjugate and exterminate peoples with free conscience if you proclaim them to be "uncivilized".
To recap; the quote, as given here upthread on HN, was "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons", and I described it as "an attributed quote, translated, from discussions on and around his semi-autobiographical novel about time spent in prison."
So not an actual quote of his, but one sprung from the minds of people who imagined him to have said that or meant that.
There's an article that claims to have sourced the origin of that attributed quote (or bogus-quote) to 1964, the Canadian playwright and ex-inmate John Herbert [1]&[2] which I imagine you'd enjoy reading as the article author, Ilya Vinitsky, argues that Dostoyevsky would have been _aware_ of the Western notions of "civilisation" and prisons while not being _aligned_ with them.
A strong case is made for Herbert having started that attribution to Dostoyevsky, and for inspiring the spread of the quote as Herbert and his work were latched onto by prison reformers of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The articles trace far more than I can (I'm not in the least bit fluent in Russian), and the specific blame likely falls to a non Russian prison inmate reading as widely as possible in prison, jumbling multiple sources, taking "literary licence" and not having access to a lot of background on Dostoyevsky.
Was this "tent city"? I recall "tent city" was a Joe Arpaio creation that was ultimately closed down in 2017 after he lost reelection as sheriff. My closest experience with "tent city" was when a relative got busted for DUI and ended up spending a weekend there. Was quite the deterrent, as it should be, and his drunk driving was dramatically curtailed. Ultimately that's good for society.
May we teach our children the only thing that truly matters is how we regard the dignity of people.
I find most successful Americans I meet are so self-obsessed they are left with an incredibly low capacity for empathy for those in lower classes than them. Wild how they think they are so different than Nazis.
>incredibly low capacity for empathy for those in lower classes than them
"The European Commission’s headquarters was forced to shut down its air-conditioning system on Friday due to the heat wave.
Staff working at the Berlaymont building received a text at midday, reading: “BERL — URGENT — Due to extreme weather conditions, forced shut down of air cooling system from floor 1 to 7 for the rest of the day.”
The 13-story building is home to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, her 26 commissioners and about 3,000 staff. Von der Leyen works on the 13th floor, and most of her commissioners’ offices are housed on floors eight or above."
So. 1/3 of the prisons in Texas have A/C. Meanwhile, in Europe, the bottom 7 floors of the building where freakin Ursula von der Leyen works, get the A/C turned off.
US billionaires are highly overrepresented in philanthropic giving, by the way. The US has about 30% of global billionaires and about 75% of Giving Pledge signatories.
I suspect the reason what I wrote is hard for you to read, and elicits that reaction in you to find some story that might contradict my statement, is because people need to think of themselves as good people. It's too much of a cognitive dissonance and shameful to think otherwise.
>I suspect the reason what I wrote is hard for you to read, and elicits that reaction in you to find some story that might contradict my statement, is because people need to think of themselves as good people. It's too much of a cognitive dissonance and shameful to think otherwise.
I'm more curious personally about the legal side here. Setting aside the actual object level issue (I personally support A/C for prisons), it seems to open up a lot of interesting questions to me:
* was it cruel and unusual punishment for Texas prisons to not have A/C before the invention of A/C (obviously not)
* was it cruel and unusual punishment for Texas prisons to not have A/C before A/C became widespread and affordable for regular people? (probably not)
* what is the main reason why this wasn't an issue 50 years ago and is now? Climate change? People being on average more sensitive to heat than they used to be? Better legal recognition of prisoner suffering? Broadening of 8th amendment protections in the court system? Changing public morals, i.e. "evolving standards of decency"? Ubiquity of A/C in ordinary Texans' day to day life? The random chance of this particular case getting sent to this particular judge?
* Is it cruel and unusual punishment for Texas prisons to not have A/C now, when not all non-imprisoned Texans have A/C (and if so, does that imply that A/C is being codified here as basic human right, and is that really constitutionally tenable? How is it possible for a judge to order that something is a constitutional right for prisoners, but an optional private luxury for non prisoners?)
* Is A/C the only option, or might other, cheaper cooling methods be allowed, if the core of the complaint is reducing preventable heat-related injuries and deaths? Hypothetically (not a real proposal obviously), if instead the prison put hotel-style ice machines in every cell, would this solve the issue or is the judge's decision very specifically about A/C?
82 comments
[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 265 ms ] threadThose citizens "making do" generally have freedom of movement, free access to cool water, air-conditioned businesses or vehicles, and are not locked down in a concrete facility.
There is a absolutely no nuance to this.
Sweat is a wet-bulb cooling process which always cools below ambient for any humidity less than 100%.
Over ~95 degrees, a fan blowing on a human acts as a convection oven, increasing body temperature while dehydrating the body.
This is greatly exacerbated in extreme heat.
CDC guidance is to avoid using a fan in extreme heat conditions unless it is combined with a cooling source and careful hydration. Once again, not exactly an option in a Texas prison.
You don't want to put a fan in your face, but gentle circulation of air helps to aid evaporation. Have you felt the difference between stagnant air and a gentle breeze on a hot day?
ambient and body temperature arent coupled items there
have you never used a convection oven?
Yeah. A one-shot investment of 10k$ per prisoner to avoid more manslaughter cases is peanuts, really.
The former almost certainly includes other installation part, utility, and labor costs. Even if you could give everyone a $200 window unit, you'd need to deliver, install, upgrade utilities, maintain them, etc.
Some times people walk into supermarkets just to cool down.
If we are to have prisons, let's be honest about why they exist: people like them.
> Take away the shame that normally keeps it in check and people's bloodlust rises to the surface
Let me guess, the anti-christ is right around the corner, Peter.
> It is a rare person who chooses to deny themselves pleasure on moral grounds
No, it isn't. This person is average among us, they are rare among the elites and politicians. You don't need to paint others poorly because of your own self-image nor is it productive to do so
It was average people who attacked My Lai, and only one pilot did anything to stop it.
Most people do not usually want to do evil things and are usually repelled from doing them by feelings of shame or obligation. The moment the average person feels a desire for violence and will not be condemned for seeking it, they are as bloodthirsty as a serial killer. The constraints on people are emotional, not moral.
I think another good example of this is through public infrastructure. Look at any poor neighborhood in a city and look how little public infrastructure is invested in those areas. Usually big busy roads with no sidewalks, crosswalks, etc. The city doesn't hate those areas, it's just that the people that live in those areas aren't effective (or unable) to lobby elected officials to invest. Also there is a little bit of a self fulfilling prophecy with lack of investment causing less businesses to want to invest, etc.
~30% of people are wired to feel others' suffering constitutes a 'win', even at cost to the themselves as long as they're suffering less than their counterparty. Add in selection effects and it's pretty clear such people could coentrate in particular industries.
I'm in Texas. I'm a little confused as to why you think I should care. For those wrongly convicted, I don't want them to get air-conditioning in prison... and for those correctly convicted, I'm not especially worried about making them more comfortable.
The entire point of punishment is the cruelty. It doesn't really work without it... it's unclear if you're quibbling over the amount of cruelty, or if you think that there exists some sort of cruelty-free punishment that the rest of us just haven't heard of.
That's a pretty messed up morality. I don't even know where to start on this one.
How do you align this with "to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God."
Its also messed up ethics.
The purpose of having the government administer punishment for crime is to prevent vendetta. And from the first time this ever came up it came up as the government saying justice should be balanced. "eye for an eye" == "Punishment fits the crime"
But hey, you don't seem to be very empathic about your luck in life.
You could have been just the person in prison.
Btw. some religions believe in rebirth, you might become a prisoner.
Some believe in an infinite rebirth of universities, which will lead you to be in a prision in another reallity.
Even on a logically viewpoint it would be better for your 'other lives' to not be cruel to other human beings.
They don't want cruelty, just their livelihoods taken away.
Prosperity gospel is a real thing too, also the fastest sect of christianity growing in the world.
> Prosperity gospel is a real thing too, also the fastest sect of christianity growing in the world.
Which goes to show you the state of Christianity today. Pretty sad.
"If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_a_needle
It's a sick belief system.
They choose to be evil.
(from OP)
Meanwhile in Europe tens of thousands are dying: https://econofact.org/factbrief/fact-check-do-tens-of-thousa...
"European A/C regulations have been ruled cruel and unusual punishment by the state of Texas"
Right, because Europe has much higher population than Texas prisons. In fact, many more people are dying by heat exhaustion in Texas prisons per capita than in Europe.
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/european-countr...
Also, these measures kinda look similar to what exists in Texas prisons without A/C...
As a result Europe doesn’t culturally expect A/C every where, and has been slow to adopt it. But obviously climate change is forcing many to reconsider those cultural norms.
>The resistance is baked into European regulation. In many countries a conventional air conditioner lowers your building’s energy rating. The result is entirely predictable: owners and landlords decline to install units, or rip out the ones they have. Those left without built-in cooling fall back on drafty, inefficient portables that can scarcely make a dent in the temperature. I own one myself—a wheezing box with a fat hose shoved through a rickety fabric covering the window. It is the thermodynamic equivalent of mopping the floor with the tap running, but that’s simply the direction in which Europe’s regulations have nudged me.
https://maartenboudry.substack.com/p/how-europe-became-the-w...
If it was better than the conditions they endured on the outside people would enticed to commit crimes.
They don't give you a handshake and a complimentary tube of lube in a paper-lined welcome basket when you get to prison. How difficult is this to understand?
Punishment is among the most American things that exist — and this is part of the reason I won’t mourn the passing of the US.
Thankfully I left all that behind a long time ago. Though I just checked and they still don’t have AC.
There is a fairly famous quote: “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons” - Fyodor Dostoevsky
AC was coincidentally invented as all of this was clearing up, but it wouldn't become ubiquitous until decades later after the major cities had been established with large populations. And even then, I'd blame cheap accessibility of long distance transportation more than AC for the modern state.
At a more regional level, the area around Cortez, CO is less densely populated than it was simply because virtually no one lives there now. Kayenta, much of the Navajo nation, the upper Gila region, etc are similar.
It is an attributed quote, translated, from discussions on and around his smemi-autobiographical novel about time spent in prison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_of_the_Dead_(novel)
I find it best to never underestimate how pedantic strangers on programming related forums can be, so good we've got that out of the way.
I imagine you'd enjoy Martin Porter's four Principles for Quotations and his two pieces on sourcing the Edmund Burke BogoQuote:
* https://tartarus.org/martin/essays/burkequote.html
* https://tartarus.org/martin/essays/burkequote2.html
( and possibly even Porter's paleoCompSci work on stemming: https://tartarus.org/martin/PorterStemmer/ )
> It's really curious why people who never read Dostoyevsky make up quotes for him with phrases that nobody with a good command of the Russian language could have written.
It's a solid quip, almost serviceable as a Reader's Digest Condensed Book one page summary of Dostoyevsky prison book save for being too good (in English at least) for that sad US affront to literature.
People make up quotes for all manner of reasons, imperfect memory, a need to summarise, it's a joy to tumble both rocks and words to knock off some rough edges and brighten up a gem. Attribution to "elsewhere" is also common enough -- it can upsell your own work by attribution to a great name, it can deflect criticism if you've only polished a turd.
As curious questions go though, why not attribute it to a translation of Solzhenitsyn or Henri Charrière, (it's in the spirit of Oscar Wilde or Stephan Fry perhaps, but their works are already in English and a little too familiar for the bogoquote treatment (maybe)).
With any Dostoyevsky quote I see in English, I immediately ask an AI to check because none looks like anything any 19th century Russian writer could have possible written, least so Dostoyevsky. Also, I've never ran into a real Dostoyevsky quote in English even as tortured one as Beauty will save the world (which is probably the most often used one in Russian even though it's a fragment of a sentence with an opposite meaning).
Translators can and do create translations that aren't faithful to the original in at least one or two significant ways. It's a challenge somewhat like Flattening the Earth - there's always some compromise on angles or areas.
As a result, there are many English readers who see Dostoyevsky through a clouded lens; they imagine him to have traits more unique to some translation than to his core.
* https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo363285...
It's very similar to the Stanford Prison Experiment and has nothing about "degree of civilization", which is a common concept in Anglo culture but very alien to Russians, who never figured that you can just subjugate and exterminate peoples with free conscience if you proclaim them to be "uncivilized".
So not an actual quote of his, but one sprung from the minds of people who imagined him to have said that or meant that.
There's an article that claims to have sourced the origin of that attributed quote (or bogus-quote) to 1964, the Canadian playwright and ex-inmate John Herbert [1]&[2] which I imagine you'd enjoy reading as the article author, Ilya Vinitsky, argues that Dostoyevsky would have been _aware_ of the Western notions of "civilisation" and prisons while not being _aligned_ with them.
A strong case is made for Herbert having started that attribution to Dostoyevsky, and for inspiring the spread of the quote as Herbert and his work were latched onto by prison reformers of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
[1] https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/dostoyevsky-misprisioned...
[2] https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/beyond-reasonable-do...
The articles trace far more than I can (I'm not in the least bit fluent in Russian), and the specific blame likely falls to a non Russian prison inmate reading as widely as possible in prison, jumbling multiple sources, taking "literary licence" and not having access to a lot of background on Dostoyevsky.
It's just been credited to him.
I find most successful Americans I meet are so self-obsessed they are left with an incredibly low capacity for empathy for those in lower classes than them. Wild how they think they are so different than Nazis.
"The European Commission’s headquarters was forced to shut down its air-conditioning system on Friday due to the heat wave.
Staff working at the Berlaymont building received a text at midday, reading: “BERL — URGENT — Due to extreme weather conditions, forced shut down of air cooling system from floor 1 to 7 for the rest of the day.”
The 13-story building is home to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, her 26 commissioners and about 3,000 staff. Von der Leyen works on the 13th floor, and most of her commissioners’ offices are housed on floors eight or above."
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-commission-heatwave-hq-fo...
So. 1/3 of the prisons in Texas have A/C. Meanwhile, in Europe, the bottom 7 floors of the building where freakin Ursula von der Leyen works, get the A/C turned off.
US billionaires are highly overrepresented in philanthropic giving, by the way. The US has about 30% of global billionaires and about 75% of Giving Pledge signatories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_charitabl...
I think your dehumanizing stereotypes say more about you than anyone else.
What dehumanizing stereotype did you read?
I suspect the reason what I wrote is hard for you to read, and elicits that reaction in you to find some story that might contradict my statement, is because people need to think of themselves as good people. It's too much of a cognitive dissonance and shameful to think otherwise.
Speak for yourself.
* was it cruel and unusual punishment for Texas prisons to not have A/C before the invention of A/C (obviously not)
* was it cruel and unusual punishment for Texas prisons to not have A/C before A/C became widespread and affordable for regular people? (probably not)
* what is the main reason why this wasn't an issue 50 years ago and is now? Climate change? People being on average more sensitive to heat than they used to be? Better legal recognition of prisoner suffering? Broadening of 8th amendment protections in the court system? Changing public morals, i.e. "evolving standards of decency"? Ubiquity of A/C in ordinary Texans' day to day life? The random chance of this particular case getting sent to this particular judge?
* Is it cruel and unusual punishment for Texas prisons to not have A/C now, when not all non-imprisoned Texans have A/C (and if so, does that imply that A/C is being codified here as basic human right, and is that really constitutionally tenable? How is it possible for a judge to order that something is a constitutional right for prisoners, but an optional private luxury for non prisoners?)
* Is A/C the only option, or might other, cheaper cooling methods be allowed, if the core of the complaint is reducing preventable heat-related injuries and deaths? Hypothetically (not a real proposal obviously), if instead the prison put hotel-style ice machines in every cell, would this solve the issue or is the judge's decision very specifically about A/C?
Way down at the bottom is a dead comment: "Texan here, schools are managed locally, prisons are managed at the state level"