cld8483

The wacky derivations of their beliefs doesn't change the fact that most businesses in red states would kick you straight out the door for antisemitism or any criticism of Israel. Anti-semitism is far outside the mainstream anywhere in the country you choose. The closest you'll find to mainstream overt antisemitism is probably Idaho, but even there it is very fringe. You'll be hard pressed to even find a church that accuses Jews of killing Christ, while a century ago this was common doctrine. The American public at large no longer tolerate this sort of thought.

This app should have been banned from both appstores when it was found to be exfiltrating all clipboard data. Insane that it's still permitted by Apple and Google after such an obvious display of malevolence.

What differentiates boys like this from plain bigots is they think they can put it next to their resume.

Yes, if they hand you the evidence then it should be obvious.

A gut feeling is all you need to tell. It's the "quiet kid in class" energy.

If they handed you the evidence, then you don't need a "gut feeling", which is nothing more than a manifestation of your personal biases.

Or just live in a red state?

Heh, in red states where unconditional support for Israel among white evangelical protestants is more popular than in the Jewish-American community itself? Where every other car seems to have a bumper sticker featuring the Israeli and American flag depicted together in unison? Hating Jewish people is very fringe in any American state, the mainstream will ostracize you for it anywhere in the country. Obviously so in blue states, but also in red states as well. Speaking out against Israel is a good way to get yourself banned from most red state businesses, and as many red states as blue states have passed anti-BDS laws.

"just because of stress"

Where is that narrative coming from? It doesn't seem to be what the article is pushing.

The perp seems like a nutjob who had a violent melt down, no need for a grander narrative. This sort of thing happens thousands of times a year all across the country, the only reason this case is on HN is because of who they worked for. If this were about a Redmond retail worker stabbing another, in the same town, it wouldn't be here.

You can tell the difference by looking to see if any of their research helped in developing the vaccine (it did not.)

The research out of this lab didn't help develop the vaccine, so what were they doing in the first place? Weapons research, it's as simple as that. As soon as the virus started circulating through the public, that was their chance to shine! They could have released everything they knew and jump-started vaccine development.. but they didn't. They covered it up, because fighting bugs was never their interest in the first place.

Why should anybody believe otherwise? Principle of charity? Please.

I'm not sure what world you're living in but we've been shooting missiles at Chinese military objects

Only after several days of failing to resolve the balloon matter diplomatically. Shooting it down was not their first resort, and that's probably because diplomatic considerations with China were being weighed against the domestic political situation. When the diplomatic situation can be kept relatively smooth and normal by keeping the public in the dark, that's the 'rational' choice.

What should the consequences be?

The abolition of modern virology, roll the clock back on them a hundred years. Allow the development of vaccines for extant viruses, but completely ban all Dr Frankenstein activities with viruses. No more "invent a virus in a lab to beat nature to the punch" horse shit, with is flagrant weapons development under the cover of civilian research. As soon as the virus started circulating through the population, did these researchers share their knowledge and help develop a vaccine? No, they buried their involvement and covered up everything they knew. They were no help at all, and never intended to be. Burn their books which describe how it is done, and silence the people who already understand it with the threat of criminal imprisonment for sharing their knowledge. Encourage major religions to amend their rules with strong taboos against this research, and institute harsh economic sanctions against any nation that doesn't participate in this ban.

Does this seem extreme? It shouldn't. This field of research has the power to kill billions and no demonstrable upside. It is even more dangerous than nuclear weapons; because at least a technician at a nuclear weapon production facility would be hard pressed to release his work on the global public of his own initiative. Smuggling a virus out of any lab is trivial, all it takes is a single madman's willingness to sacrifice himself as patient zero.

We're the villagers in an "evil wizard" scenario. The wizards have been meddling in dangerous forces beyond the understanding of common people, and it's getting people killed. The solution is to storm the wizard's tower and throw the wizards off the top of it.

It can be. Is there an abridgement of The Count of Monte Cristo that has the hashish chapter? The abridgement I read as a kid didn't have it.

Same. It took me a few years to get past the first few pages, but once I did that book just clicked for me.

> The research, which was funded in part by the National Wildlife Federation and U.S. Department of Energy

Can't imagine there's any conflict of interest there.

Pro-nuclear bias you figure? Does the DoE have another reason to dislike corn?

I have, and it isn't. Have you actually read any of his novels, or are you relying on Achebe to do it for you?

The author is dead, any "ownership" of the work today is purely a legal concept.

But ownership in any sense irrelevant. Being the owner of a work does not preclude censorship. If the author himself censors his work, as Roald Dahl did do, that is still censorship.

I like it; it often has the hands symbolically painted red.

You may be right, but I'm not convinced. I believe many Jules Verne novels were once considered "young adult" fare, but (in the original unabridged forms) became challenging for young adult readers in the 20th century. I think natural drifts in language are a major factor in this. The stories and characters are generally simple, but the texts themselves become more challenging as time passes.

Or take Shakespeare for example; he wrote for the unwashed masses yet his writings are considered sophisticated and challenging today. I have an anthology of English renaissance drama from various playwrights that I revisit from time to time. The stories are usually quite crude and funny (example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27Tis_Pity_She%27s_a_Whore), but understanding them well enough to appreciate that humor can be a chore. I don't think these stories were considered difficult originally, but became so over time.

The sentiment Joseph Conrad expressed in his books is that colonialism is evil and corrupts the souls of anybody who participates in it. If you can't read his books because you can't get past the dated language he used, then you are rendering yourself culturally impoverished.

Ok why aren’t there Hitler statues in Germany then? Are they going to forget Hitler was bad and have another Holocaust?

Perhaps it is the reason why the Reichstag still today has a mailbox with Hitler's name on it.

The most common form of "sanitation" is probably abridgement, and I think there is a strong argument that abridgement is a net positive because it allows people who would never be able/willing to read the full book to get the gist of the story and still participate in / understand at least some of the cultural significance of that story. Not terribly unlike reasonably faithful film adaptations.

But what the publisher did in this case was not like that; these modifications weren't designed to make the books more accessible to people with low reading skill ('fat' is not a hard word.)

But what if you could get the original text cancelled? No right-thinking publisher would print it, no God-fearing bookseller would stock it

Modern book "cancelling" is not (yet?) so effective as that. Huckleberry Finn is a popular target for cancelling, yet is still widely available. Being in the public domain gives the book relative safety; even if one publisher gets cold feet, another will jump in to fill the demand. The real threat is to books which aren't in the public domain and won't be for a long time.

the teachers say teens are increasingly finding late-20th-century kids' books hard to read

That doesn't surprise me at all, I'm sure 20th century teachers found the same trend in 20th century students trying to read 19th century books. It's a shame, but it is what it is. I wouldn't draw too many conclusions from this, except that we should do what we can to encourage kids to read the classics despite (or even because) of the difficulty.

Perhaps it should, I don't know much about the statue or the way the community that hosts it perceives it. My point is only that harsh criticism of Leopold II doesn't rely on retroactive application of modern values. He was a fiend even when judged by the standard of popular contemporary European values: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casement_Report

Which is exactly what we should expect of any censor.

Exactly. If they weren't artless hacks they'd write their own books instead of butchering others.

Those who can't write, edit.

So you're evidently privy to the company's reasoning when it comes to the initial decision to censor the books, but when it comes to the backtrack you just don't know. Got it.

The values of opposing the European subjugation of Africa. Which you'd know if you read his books and weren't fixated on the outdated language.

Leopold II, judged by the values of his time, was still a fiend. He was widely and rightly criticized by his own contemporaries.

Real left-leaning English newspapers haven't been tried, or something like that...

But yes, to say that somebody is a "Guardian reader" is say they are somewhere in the left to center-left part of the spectrum.

The publishing company holds the copyrights, they make a lot of money from Roald Dahl, but they're worried about the long term prospects for that revenue stream due to social change.

If they were following public demand, then why did they get so thoroughly blindsided by public opinion? They were clearly listening to a handful of fringe nuts and didn't actually have their finger on the pulse of the mainstream zeitgeist.

They have now realized their error and are trying to backtrack from it.

There is nothing liberal about censoring books. Stripping the word "fat" out of children's books is progressive, but certainly not liberal, and certainly not mainstream.