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pannSun

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We are discussing whether the event is notable, not if it is legal. And as someone not from the US, I care more about making people aware that Twitter collaborates with the US to help spread their govt. propaganda (in the same way I would want them to know if the doctor they're discussing smoking with is employed by the tobacco industry), than whether Twitter complies with laws written by that same government.

I.e. claiming no laws were violated (hypothetically) is as much a defense of Twitter as claiming TikTok hasn't broken Chinese law.

[dead] 4 years ago

I don't follow. The post is long on his odd upbringing, clumsy propaganda campaigns on 4chan, the unlikeliness of some conspiracy theories, and amateur psychoanalysis casting an unkind light on various factions.

So.. what? How does that affect whether his ethnicity has a right to exist as a cohesive group, whether its members are better off as part of such a group vs. alone, whether they are better off sharing their countries with other ethnicities with strong group identities, and whether the documented relative demographic decline of his group in many countries [1] is something that group should welcome?

It is so hyperfocused on the people involved, it entirely ignores the underlying facts.

[1] 1970s: 87.5% --> 2020: 61.6% - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_US#Race

I don't know - is it interesting that the US govt. used its influence to conceal Twitter influence campaigns that served to justify and whitewash the kind of military operations whose ugliness Manning revealed [1]?

What happens in US military expeditions is 10/10, but how they are sold to the US and global audience is 2/10?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34111071

Like clockwork. When it comes to claiming Europe has always been diverse and its countries have no identity, and demographics trends must be obfuscated, different European ethnicities are looked at separately, as if they have nothing in common. But when it's time to blame white people or claim some profession isn't diverse enough, they're lumped into a single group.

Stanford hates fun 4 years ago

...When Stanford could not remove a student organization for bad behavior, they found other justifications. One such case was the end of Outdoor House, an innocuous haven on the far side of campus for students who liked hiking. The official explanation from Stanford for eliminating the house was that the Outdoor theme “fell short of diversity, equity and inclusion expectations.” ...

Next year, Outdoor House will be reinstated, but only because house members promised to refocus their theme on “racial and environmental justice in the outdoors.” Upholding diversity, equity, and inclusion is the first of four “ResX principles” that now govern undergraduate housing. Stanford reserves the right to unhouse any organization that does not, in their opinion, uphold these principles.

"Struggled" meaning tried to hide until the secret got out internally. In completely unrelated news that didn't make the cut for the NYT or Washington Post or most other wikipedia "reliable sources":

Facebook, Twitter stocked with ex-FBI, CIA officials in key posts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34101146

Facebook and Google are riddled with ex-CIA agents, many ex-FBI work at Twitter - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34096828

For those few deliberately obtuse souls that need evidence the fox may have ulterior motives for guarding the hen house:

In response to a 2017 request from the Pentagon, Twitter kept online a network of accounts that the U.S. military used to advance its interests in the Middle East, according to internal company emails that were made public on Tuesday by The Intercept, a nonprofit publication.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/technology/twitter-milita...

But I am certain you'll find a way to excuse this, or see no connection between this event and the ex-CIA staff.

There were a record 44.8 million immigrants living in the U.S. in 2018, making up 13.7% of the nation’s population. This represents a more than fourfold increase since 1960, when 9.7 million immigrants lived in the U.S., accounting for 5.4% of the total U.S. population. - https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/20/facts-on-u-s...

Given that immigration to the US has been high for decades, and 1st generation immigrants as a % of the population are at the highest levels since 1910, if immigration was the solution, wouldn't the problem* be solved already?

*Instead of calling it a "labor shortage", why not a "job surplus"?

I am struck by how incredibly mild the accusation resulting in Fiedler's removal was, and reminded of the saying: If you let the front line collapse, then you get to be the front line.

It was a thousand small steps that led to this.

One way to look at it that makes it clear CVS was deceptive: Nothing on the checkout screen donation message implied that a donation made there would differ from one made through other channels.

That ADA agreed to the terms does not make them any less deceptive.

I don't really see how your point invalidates any of it.

Correct, it does not. Just wanted to emphasize part of it.

Others are even less misinformative; there are lots of articles about members of some group Infowars doesn’t like committing a crime or doing an offensive thing; usually other sources confirm that these crimes or offenses are real.

Thankfully established media would never sink so low as to resort to cherry-picking anecdotal events.

Yes, your wildly misleading characterization of marriage does sound bad. But here in the real world (at least the West, unlikely it applies to the Middle East), "Women drive 70-80 percent of all consumer purchasing, through a combination of their buying power and influence." [1]

By the way, nice rhetorical trick of reducing half of all of one's wealth, plus child support and/or alimony to "a cheque".

[1] https://www.inc.com/amy-nelson/women-drive-majority-of-consu...

Evidence of editorial and policy decisions subtly favoring US government agendas? No, there will always be plausible deniability that someone willing to play as dumb as you will interpret as innocence and impartiality.

And if I may be more direct for a moment, perhaps other Americans will play along with your charade, but those of us in other countries won't be as willing to turn a blind eye to "ex" foreign (to us) intelligence agents meddling with communication platforms, just as you would not be so placid if it were ex-FSB agents instead of your people.

Unpaid? Did they not share household income/expenses, and in case of divorce, were entitled to part (half, I believe) of their ex-husband's wealth? In addition to child-support.

the good of software

But it's not just the good of software, because software is eating the world. Software is in your phone, in the tractor that grows your food, in the gene sequencing machine (and gene sequencing software) used to fight disease, in self-driving cars, and in non-self-driving ones too. And you can bet there will be software in automatic weed killing robots.

It's how you access your bank, the news, even government services. It's how you find a date, a taxi, how you order food. It. Is. Everywhere.

On net, if you were at risk of malaria, he is not hostile. But to the average global citizen, and especially their descendants in the future, he is hostile. Because the line between software freedom, and just freedom, is vanishing, and fast.

[dead] 4 years ago

Also NPR: Saying the BLM protests involved riots or looting is "misleading", because most of them were peaceful [1].

(570 riots over the course of 3 months breaks down to 190 riots a month. That’s 47 riots a week or 7 riots a day. See if they are so willing to ignore violence of a cause they dislike.)

Also also NPR regarding the Hunter Biden laptop: We don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don't want to waste our listeners' and readers' time on stories that are just pure distractions [2]

Unlike the Pence statement on riots, which did rise to the level of significance that NPR considers worthy of reporting. So forgive me if I take their word on anything with a grain of salt.

[1] https://apps.npr.org/liveblogs/20201007-debate/#overwhelming...

[2] https://twitter.com/NPRpubliceditor/status/13192811012239400...

Bill Gates isn't doing good - the money he stole [1] from us is doing good. And he didn't have a change of heart - he hasn't opposed any of the IP maximalist, pro-corporate lobbying that helped MS grow so wealthy. Do you see him calling to end software patents?

I can forgive the stolen money, even credit him for how he's using his loot [2], but he hasn't lifted a finger to undo the damage he did to software freedom - our freedom. Objectively, that makes him hostile to any non-corporate entity.

[1] Acquired by underhanded means through the mentioned anti-competitive and lock-in practices.

[2] The parts used to fight malaria and such, at least. Not so much the $319 million he sent to his pet media outlets, to give but one example of what is counted as "philanthropy": https://www.theblaze.com/news/bill-gates-bankroll-media-outl...

Another small step to make people even more rootless. How can local communities form, when what used to be inter-generational homes become as transient as a hamburger? Our only links to society will be through corporations and government.

But as usual, our sick society looks at it through an exclusively financial lens.

It’s safe to say the investment was amply repaid: by the end of 2021, the EU had signed €71 billion worth of confidential contracts, securing up to 4.6 billion doses of vaccines (more than ten doses for each European citizen).