pnako

The last few cases that come to mind (Breivik, Tarrant) are from lone wolves that had radical ideas but were not affiliated with any group.

It must be very difficult to catch (unless you want a surveillance society where everyone is suspect).

Even in cases where it's planned and announced it's difficult to stop (Al Qaeda did announce they would assassinate Charb, editor in chief of Charlie Hebdo, and despite police protection they managed to do so).

I suspect you're just disagreeing on what "keeping tabs" actually means.

The government shouldn't put someone under (specific|personal) surveillance without strong evidence of course. But I don't see what prevents them from reading twitter, going into public chat rooms, etc.

It's hard to disagree with this point, really.

I don't see how you can prevent the police from reading stuff that's being broadcast for everyone else to see.

And threats of violence, or evidence of organizing to cause violence, should be investigated.

Do you have a problem with grammar anarchists?

The cartels would obviously immediately stop chopping up journalists in pieces and would retrain to become car mechanics, bakers, factory workers, etc.

Indeed. We also use this logic for juries.

Twitter is a modern-day gladiator arena, where all the spectators are also actually inside the arena.

Here's a concrete, practical solution:

Radical affirmative action. Not radical in the rioting / revolution understanding of the word, but in its application.

So, if the issue with systematic racism is such that it endangers the foundational core of American society, it's time to take a big risk: literally pull random people to sit on VC and companies boards, in skilled jobs, etc. (a bit like the Diversity Visa Lottery the US already does for immigration). And train them on the job.

Sure, there will be issues here and there, but it would definitely solve the issue once and for all. It wouldn't even have to be explicitly racial. If it's truly random, you would end up with an accurate representation of the population.

It would also desegregate schools and neighborhoods, too, because with such a disruption people would have to move to match their new jobs.

Now, an exception should be made of course for professions where an error would mean life or death (or injury): doctors, airline pilots, etc. But I suspect 95% of careers at least could be desegregated in this way.

And perhaps an exception for jobs that truly require special abilities: professor of physics, professional athlete, etc.

You cannot possibly avoid testing software, unless the software is literally useless.

So testing will definitely happen _at some point_. The debate is about where it happens: on the developer's computer, on a tester's computer, on a CI agent, or on the user's computer.

I like to cover as much code as possible before the software reaches the user, but that's just me.

What do you mean exactly by "brown" people? Who do you include in that category?

You're on Google, the 21st century version of AOL

There are many risk factors, not just this one.

Humanities departments becoming de-facto meetings of the party, as opposed to a cafe where philosophers of all strokes meet to exchange ideas.

I despise the woke newspeak, but if we have to replace master and slave, I think master and puppet would be pretty cool.

In this case, the analogy works even better because the puppet replicates exactly the movements of the puppet master.

More important than this change of terminology, I think it's good that Twitter decided to donate ten million dollars to NGOs fighting slavery around the world (it's still prevalent, especially in Africa and Asia)

https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/data/maps/#prevalenc...

An even bigger mistake than starting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is the mistake of keeping those wars going forever.

And that mistake is still ongoing.

Of course, I'm assuming it's a mistake and not a deliberate strategy. But the people advocating for keeping troops there should make explicit again their reason for doing so.

If you're scrolling through your feed you haven't left Facebook either.

Point taken, although I don't think I was engaging in that.

I did not make comments about Islam specifically, and whether it is "good" or "bad" in the absolute sense. I could have made the same argument by pointing out that protestant and catholic Christians have had trouble living together in Europe. My point is more generally that cultures that are too different can't live together in the same place; Islam in France was just a contemporary example I'm familiar with.

I think your view of the world is very naive. You can't inject political Islam in the French secular-with-deep-Christian-roots culture for the same reason you can't inject San Francisco LGBT culture in Baghdad.

Peoples and nations have histories, cultures, roots. You can't just copy/paste people around and expect everyone to be happy. The world has never worked this way.

"Democracy is like a train: when you reach your destination, you get off" -- Erdogan

Because the state stamped out every regional language during the creation of the Republic, and that was that.

They had signs on the walls in Breton schools telling that "it's forbidden to spit on the ground, or speak Breton".

The scarf is an issue in the sense that it was a way for militant, political Islam groups to test the waters. Which has led in less than a generation to much more extreme ways to openly show support for radical Islam (including burkas or more commonly niqabs).

It's an issue because a nation, a society must have a common bond, a common culture. It's not a giant supermarket or a hotel.

They used to run on OpenVMS. I don't know if that's still the case.

In France, about 20 years ago there was a lively debate about whether north-African girls, in high school and universities, should be allowed to wear a "foulard islamique" (scarf over the hair).

Now we are completely past that, and we have women wearing burkas and niqabs; things covering the entire body. This also increasingly includes indigenous French women. So not only some groups don't assimilate, they actually proselytize and convert others.

It used to be politically incorrect to say it but nowadays the entire political class, including the left, is forced to recognize that it's an issue.

It's especially a tremendous issue in France because it used to promote assimilation: the idea that anyone, racially, could become French as long as they completely abandoned their culture of origin (i.e. the opposite of multiculturalism). In practice it mostly worked with other Europeans like Spaniards, Italians, etc. Now we have an issue since we have de-facto (and non-working) multiculturalism in a country that still officially promotes assimilation.

So yes it's definitely a problem, and as far as I can see it's been a problem everywhere, and throughout history. The idea that people with radically different cultures can live in the same place is not confirmed anywhere. In fact we can see that even people of the same racial background, with slightly different cultures, cannot really live together (a good example of that is Belgium, where Wallons and Flamands can't find political agreement).

Well, he got an airport and nuclear aircraft carrier named after him!

The good news is that the drug that actually works is a generic one.

We have a culture in common which encompasses languages, religion, music, architecture, food, etc.

I've only ever heard that question asked about us Europeans, for some reason.

I have the same problem with my BBQ. I bought it to keep my food cold, but systematically it heats the food to the point where it becomes burned.

Just in case my attempt at analogy is not clear: on a free speech network you'll get free speech.

exclusionary

Aren't you arguing for banning them, though? You can't have it both ways.

In a marketplace of ideas, unpopular views would get... unpopular view counts (on Youtube and elsewhere).

If you want to keep with this analogy, censorship is a form of protectionism, so your marketplace of ideas is not a free market.