duairc

amn't is absolutely a word. It's the standard contraction of "am not" in Hiberno-English. Wiktionary says it's used in Scotland as well: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/amn't

I'm sorry, but I don't think it's fair for you to imply that I'm posting in bad faith.

The link I posted is not a "random" link, and whether you click on it or not is up to you, but it's a real video of Victoria Nuland (a high ranking US government official) speaking to the US Congress. It's not Russian propaganda.

I honestly don't really care if the US has biological weapons labs in Ukraine. I don't live in the US, or Ukraine, or Russia. I don't have any skin in that game. When I first saw rumours of it I thought it was a nonsense conspiracy theory. It wasn't until I saw Victoria Nuland's "denial" that I thought "huh, maybe there's something to that".

Post about US funded biological weapons labs in Ukraine. I've seen half a dozen Twitter accounts banned and subreddits quarantined/banned over posting on that issue alone.

I'm not saying I necessarily agree with the claim myself, though Victoria Nuland's "denial"[1] certainly raised a few eyebrows. She said that Ukraine has biological "research facilities" and implied that it would be a very bad thing if any of these "research materials" fell into the hands of the Russian forces. Whether that counts as a "biological weapons lab" or not seems to just be arguing about semantics.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y39veTO7kF4

I'm always surprised how little interest there seems to be from the international muslim community in the Xinjiang situation, given that at least parts of it really blow up over even minor anti-Islam actions by single individuals quite regularly.

You're not imagining this — Muslim countries support China. See this map of a UN vote to condemn China's treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang[1]. You'll notice that every Muslim country that didn't abstain defended China. In fact the only countries that condemned China are countries that are militarily allied with the United States.

If you look at any of the "NGOs" that push the narrative that China is oppressing Muslims in Xinjiang, every single one of them is funded either by the National Endowment for Democracy[2][3][4] (an arm of the US State Department notorious for pushing regime change in countries the US doesn't like) or the Australian Strategic Policy Initiative, which in turn is sponsored by several US arms manufacturers[5], such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, etc. — all of whom would profit massively from a war with China, for which this narrative is manufacturing consent.

Even the site that spawned this discussion seems to be associated with Adrian Zenz. A lot of the claims in Xinjiang can be traced back to his "work". He's a fundamentalist Christian bigot, is a fellow at the "Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation" and claims to have been sent on a mission by God himself to destroy the Communist Party of China. His "work" has been thoroughly debunked many times over.[6]

Frankly, the narrative is bullshit. The Muslim world that has suffered massively at the hands of US imperialism can see right through it and votes accordingly. China has never invaded or bombed any Muslim country. The US has no credibility in the Muslim world.

[1] https://graphics.axios.com/2020-10-06-china-uyghur-statement...

[2] https://www.ned.org/region/asia/xinjiang-east-turkestan-chin...

[3] https://www.ned.org/2019-democracy-award/world-uyghur-congre...

[4] https://www.ned.org/uyghur-human-rights-policy-act-builds-on...

[5] https://www.aspi.org.au/sponsors

[6] https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202104/30/WS608c1286a31024ad...

Check out XY Tech who build and distribute modified ThinkPads. Xue Yao, the person behind it, intends to build a motherboard that will fit into an X220 case soon, possibly this year.

I bought an "X2100" (a ThinkPad X200 with a 10th-gen Intel CPU) from him in 2020 and it's been fantastic.

https://xyte.ch

China is actually interested in helping people in Afghanistan. They sent aid[1] during the winter crisis and they have called for the return of the assets of the Afghan people that have been stolen by the United States[2].

[1] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3160159/ch...

[2] https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-02-17/China-calls-for-return...

It's a completely fair question to ask what is the Chinese justification.

I found this documentary[1] by CGTN about the recent history of extremism and terrorist attacks in Xinjiang to be useful in outlining some of the context for this.

These terrorist attacks were a real problem and have resulted in the deaths of over 1000 civilians (including Uyghurs). China's argument is basically their re-education "camps" are an attempt to address the underlying causes of this, which is basically economic under-development, lack of education and job opportunities. So China basically identified the people who were involved in these groups and susceptible to radicalisation by them, and set up these schools for them which would teach them skills, including Mandarin, that would help find decent jobs that could provide for them and their families, which eliminates the underlying material basis of the support from some parts of the population that the terrorists may have had.

Having said that, there is still a huge discrepancy in what China says it's doing and what the west claims it's doing. Western sources claim that these are actually "concentration camps" and that there are as many as one or even two million Uyghurs interred there. These allegations are dubious for a number of reasons, but that's a topic for a different post.

Like I said, your question is the right question: what is the Chinese justification for this? And I think it's fair to say their answer is at least plausible on the surface of things and internally consistent. But it leads us to another question: if the claims of western sources of one million plus Uyghurs in "concentration camps" are true, then how does the west explain China's motive for that? China isn't stupid. Why would it put 10% of the population of an entire province in a concentration camp? Are they just that cartoonishly evil? It doesn't really add up to me.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqlzunwilGM

CCP has proven to us that we can't trust their word. Over and over again.

Are you able to substantiate that claim?

Writing my own docx parser? Sure, that will be one mythical man century of work.

I'm not sure that's actually a great example. I had a project a while ago where I needed to extract certain information from Word and Excel files, and it was less work to just write my own parser (it's just XML in a ZIP file) that got exactly the information I needed than to figure out all the complexity of using a full-blown docx/xlsx parser. It ended up being 100 lines of Haskell, and half of that was imports.

https://gist.githubusercontent.com/duairc/db3e99a7808668e84e...

Edit: The docx part of it is only 10 lines of code.

Okay, I think we can all agree this guy is an asshole, and surely doesn't represent the views of most techies in San Francisco, right?

Obviously it's fucked that so many people are homeless in San Francisco. Everybody blames us (techies with loads of money) for the homeless problem because we gentrifying the shit out of the place with all our money. And then this guy comes out and says this shit, and that only reinforces the narrative that we're the problem. And that's shit for us.

But why don't we do something about it? We don't want to be seen as the cause of the homeless problem, and surely we don't want assholes like this speaking for us. But people are right that we are rich compares to most people. Why not use this as an opportunity to show people that we can be part of the solution? Being rich doesn't have to make us evil, and anyway what's the point of being rich if we can't use our wealth to help the people who need it?

And it's not just our wealth: what about our skills? Take Homes Not Jails, for example. They're one organisation off the top of my head that does work that directly houses homeless people. They're renowned by squatters all over the world for the work they do to get homes for homeless people in San Francisco. But I just checked, and it looks like their website (http://homesnotjailssf.org/) is down? Surely one of us techies could get in contact with them and offer to help fix their website, or even just pay their hosting costs and domain name renewal for a few years? I've been involved in organisations like that and that kind of stuff can be a real hassle.

I'm sure there are countless grassroots organisations like this that are already working to help homeless people that probably don't even have proper websites and shit, that desperately need money. Fuck this guy, it's not worth wasting our time arguing over his stupid words. Let's show people that he doesn't represent us with our actions!

Let's face it, humans need somebody to be on top. We don't know how to function otherwise. At least not for very long.

What's your basis for saying this? Do you have any way of verifying this claim?

If you want real understanding of music in a useful way for real people, I recommend Bob Snyder's book "Music and Memory: An Introduction" which was actually written to teach creative artistic people about how music actually works rather than how aristocratic European music notation works.

Thank you! I've long been suspicious of so-called music theory for exactly the reasons you outline. I always wanted to learn more about music and why it "works" as you say, so I assumed what I wanted to learn was music theory, but then when I tried to learn it it didn't seem to explain any of the things I was looking for. I'll have to check out that book.

Communism is not the opposite of individualism, that's nonsense. Have a look at "The Right to be Greedy: Theses on the Practical Necessity of Demanding Everything". Greed in its fullest sense is the only possible basis for a communist society.

https://libcom.org/library/right-be-greedy-theses-practical-...

No, not at all. I would argue that one implies the other. Historically, and still to this day in much of Europe, the term "libertarianism" is a synonym for anarchism, i.e., libertarian communism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_communism

You could make it work for any colour with:

    color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);

We have a democracy, and obviously only a minority consider this to be an issue of concern. > If you have a problem with it, stand for election.

There must be a name for this kind of fallacy.

I agree that people should earn a living wage that enables them to live in the community that they serve, but all cops are bastards[1].

[1] http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/atoz/fuckpolice.php

I completely agree, except I am advocating shoplifting. I also wish there were more hackers who would use their lockpicking skills for more than just recreation. I feel like the idea that “hacking” can only be motivated by pure curiousity, and not by anything political or in any way threatening, is an idea that serves the interests of the people in power. They don't want us to think about or analyse our political situation, or to try to change it; they would rather divert our attention and our abilities towards solving rather pointless puzzles, which at best are inconsequential, or at worst just make them even more money.

Shoplifting can be a bit of an art. I agree with you that the “hacking” thing is overused, but I think it makes sense to call something like booster bags a “hack”, for example. There are lots of “hacks” for shoplifting.

Would would a perfect drone make the world a better place? What would be better about that world?

Could you explain to my why being “anti-GMO” necessarily implies being “anti-science”? What definitions of “GMO” and “science” are you using to make that proposition true?

I actually am anti-science, in the sense of “science-as-religion”. The comment I originally replied to is a good example of what I'm talking about: being anti-science is blasphemous, it's heretical. I'm against this kind of nonsense. Not that I think it necessarily is, but so what if being anti-GMOs is anti-science? What's the problem with that? We should be able to have a frank discussion about the merits of GMOs and indeed of science, but we can't, because science is a religion, and you get denounced as a heretic if you criticise its underlying assumptions.

My own position on genetic engineering is that I'm not inherently against it in an abstract way, but I'm against almost all of “actually existing” genetic engineering. Most of the debates about genetic engineering focus on whether or not genetically engineered crops are safe, or whether they provide better nutrition, but I think these are distractions from the real issue. The issue is about control: whether farmers save and choose their own seeds, or whether they must get them every year from a corporation.

Haha, good troll. GMOs = science. Anti-GMOs = anti-science.

“I own property”

Are you saying that the political left would be more effective if it never used violence ever?

Abolition of property rights is usually down through coercive means by some agent of the state, hence it is top-down.

No it's not? Property rights themselves can only be enforced through some agent of the state, hence they are top down. Abolition of private property means abolition of the state.

I mentioned this in another post in this thread, but take the example of a house you rent from a landlord. Under capitalism, it's not your house, even though you use it. It's the landlord's, because ultimately the landlord can use the coercive power of the state to remove you if you stop paying rent. If you abolish the state, then it simply becomes your house, and the landlord can no longer claim ownership over that which they do not use.

You have it completely backwards. Private property itself can't exist without the use of force and the state. If you abolish the state, you abolish private property.

Let's say you're renting a house from some landlord. You live in this house, so it should be yours, right? The landlord already has another house that they live in. But it's not yours, it's the landlord's. Why is it the landlord's? Because if you stop paying rent, they can kick you out. How? Ultimately, by using the force of the state to remove you. If you get abolish private property (i.e., the state), then there is no “force” that makes the house the landlord's. It simply becomes your house.

Abolishing private property doesn't mean getting individuals to “give up” their property, it means people can no longer use force to claim ownership over that which they do not use.

Why is socialism a top-down technocratic solution? What is top-down about the abolition of private property and workers owning the means of production?

Also, what is “human thriving”? I find that capitalists use vague terms like this to mean “good”, and when you push them for a definition, they give you a contrived one which makes capitalism look good, but no satisfying justification or explanation for why this is should be what the structure of society should be optimised for.

I'm not a parody, I'm 100% serious.

Sexual boundaries were already crossed at the stage of people willingly doing body shots off each other.

You completely misunderstand. I'm pretty sure you're doing it deliberately too, but let's assume you're not. If people were “willingly” doing body shots off each other, then in what way were “sexual boundaries” “crossed”? You just mean to say that something “sexual” was happening, therefore the “boundary” between “sexual” and “not sexual” was crossed? Okay, fine, that's trivially true. But given that this was apparently “willingly”, then nobody was being violated, nobody had their own personal boundaries crossed without permission. When the perpetrator kissed the woman without her permission, then he crossed her boundaries without her permission. Do you see the difference?

You are discussing rape. Nobody at any point has alleged rape. Rape is a serious criminal allegation you really shouldn't be bandying about lightly.

I'm am not bandying it about lightly. Sexual assault and rape, if not synonymous, are obviously very related acts. I gave some statistics for how often rape is punished. I think it's reasonable to assume that the statistics for sexual assault are similar if not the same. My point was that you need not worry about “serious criminal allegations”, the justice system does not care about women who are sexually assaulted or raped.

She /survived/ an unwanted kiss? Are you sure that is an appropriate definition of 'survived'?

The term “survivor” is preferred to the term “victim”. I'm not a huge fan of it but it's better than “victim”.[1]

"The 'dumb guy' doesn't deserve to have his life ruined? Maybe..." You're "maybe" sure someone doesn't deserve to have their life ruined?

If you look at my comment history, you see I oppose prisons and the justice system in its entirety. But I don't feel like it's my place to say what this guy “deserves”. But anyway, you're still ignoring that this is an abstract, theoretical discussion: the fact is that this woman's life, in all likelihood has actually been ruined, for the time being at least. The perpetrator will never face any criminal repercussions. Yet, you're still empathising with the perpetrator, and not at all with the survivor.

What defines one person as the victim and the other as the perpetrator? Who do you think came out worse for this interaction, the person blogging about their assault or the person who, when asked not to do sexual things, stopped, and then was accused of sexual assault across the entire internet?

The perpetrator is the person who kissed the woman (who didn't want to be kissed) without her permission. The “victim” is the one whose left the situation feeling sexually violated. It's pretty clear and you know it is.

I don't know who came out of it worse, but you're acting like this person was wrongly accused of sexual assault, but it's exactly what they did. If you don't want to be publicly accused of sexual assault then you shouldn't sexually assault people.

Please use grown up language. 'fuck you' is not grown up language. See: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You're using the tone argument.[2] This is pretty weak. In any case, I'd like to think I'd be able to say “fuck you for victim blaming” to your face in real life (in accordance with the guidelines), but realistically I would probably just hold it in.

Me pointing out that two people did stupid things is not 'rape minded'. You are attempting to shame me for disagreeing with you, which is morally reprehensible.

I never said that you're rape-minded, that's a ridiculous misreading of my post. I'm saying that the perpetrator of this assault was rape-minded. The point of the definition of rape-mindedness is that there are lots of things like this which are “not rape”, but are still leave the survivor feeling sexually violated, and the concept of rape-mindedness captures what it is about the behaviour of the perpetrator that leaves the survivor with that feeling.

Also, you keep insisting that the survivor is as responsible for this as the perpetrator. You're completely ignoring the social power that the perpetrator had over the survivor.

[1] http://akhilak.com/blog/2012/03/13/why-words-matter-victim-v...

[2] http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Tone_argument

I don't think feminists have anywhere near as much social power as you seem to think they have. And the ones that do are white, liberal feminists. Most other feminists dislike them too (but not for the same reasons).

Kissing someone who doesn't want to be kissed is sexual assault! I don't understand how you can be denying that? It definitely definitely is sexual assault. If you want to kiss somebody and you want to not sexually assault them, you have to ask them first. And you have to give them room to say no and consider the social power you have over them. Did this person do that? No, absolutely not. If you don't think this stuff is important then it's because you're obviously a man who has never had to deal with this kind of stuff.

And even if for some reason, you feel so strongly that the definition of sexual assault should not include the incident you're talking about, and you don't have any problem with taking away the power of survivors to define their experiences as sexual assault, then okay, fine, you can have your own private definition of sexual assault. But do you really think that's the most important thing here? You obviously have no empathy for the survivor at all. The “dumb guy” doesn't deserve to have his life ruined? Maybe, maybe not, but you shouldn't worry about it, because only 3% of rapes ever punished anyway.[1] But it's not about the perpetrator, it's about the survivor. Does she deserve to have her life ruined? Of course she doesn't, because she's done nothing wrong (fuck you for victim blaming). But this could have ruined her life, and maybe it did (I don't know her, I don't know).

And by the way, "escalat[ing] an existing sexual situation" are just your weasel words for "crossing boundaries without permission". You always have to ask permission, and it's not hard to do so, and it's nice as well. If you're not a rapist, then you don't want to cross people's boundaries, so you don't want to do something if the other person doesn't want to. You might want to read the definition of rape-mindedness.[2]

Thanks for proving my point.

[1] http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-ra...

[2] http://radtransfem.tumblr.com/post/30163502692/tw-what-rape-...