HiYaBarbie

> The primary consideration of helping people in need is not necessarily to reduce the number of welfare recipients, but to meet their immediate needs on ethical grounds.

We've been meeting their "immediate" needs for decades now. When do they stop being immediate?

> There is a simplistic "fuck them" attitude coming into vogue again right now which I think is fundamentally unethical and, if implemented, threatens to deepen existing problems.

Well, how exactly do I have an obligation to support some African person I don't know and will never even meet? Not that I have a choice in the matter now, but would it be unethical of me not to send my money to Africa to support whoever ends up with it?

Would that work the other way round? Suppose I developed some "immediate needs". Would Africans have a moral obligation to send money my way?

Obviously for there to be a moral obligation on my part, it would have to apply to all other people too. Otherwise some people would be more equal than others.

> Big sums are also lost to corruption on all levels. The average citizen of a poor nation will never see a single dollar of that aid money, and it's not going into the local economy either.

Yeah, I know. But.. maybe our governments don't, judging by how they just keep throwing billions of dollars of our money at the local warlords etc? :D

There are at least two different ways Aid could be "working".

> The typical poor African nation has problems on all levels: cultural, educational, infrastructure-related - everything is broken.

Yes, and again, while that's certainly unfortunate, why and how is it my problem, let alone to the extent that money should be forcefully taken from me, and sent to Africa?

The worse off a country is, the more egregiously it's been looted by its rulers.

Have we got enough data on whether Aid works, though?

Untold billions of dollars have been poured into the general direction of poor people in Africa, but they're still very much poor over there.

Do our welfare systems lift people out of poverty? For how many decades have we been handing out money to 'the needy'? Has the percentage of poor people in our welfare states decreased as a result?

But let's send a few trillion more to Africa! This time it will be different!

> Not following FCC rules seems a stupid and pointless transgression

Perhaps unless the FCC rules themselves are pointless?

The reason why Uber and Lyft are given a hard time is that they're a serious threat to state-maintained taxi-cartels all over the world.

Are you trying to make an argument? What is it?

From the article:

In the United States, individuals join the military as a way to serve their country with honor and pursue new career opportunities. But that’s not the case in Eritrea, where men and women risk their lives and those of their families just to escape military service.

Both are nation-states though, and both have governments that pass laws and then punish the masses for disobeying them.

In other words, the people of both countries have rulers, and the main difference is in the rulers' degree of "benevolence" towards their subjects.

You're fine with your particular government ruling over you because you think they would never do what Eritrea and North-Korea are doing.

But that's how German people thought before Germany turned into a mass-murdering Nazi-Germany, so that kind of thinking is clearly misguided.

Any nation-state is just a police state waiting to happen. Then it does happen, and years or decades pass until tyranny subsides, and then people go back to "it could never happen here!"

How crazy is that?

> The key to identifying difficult people is first realizing that the interactions with the person leave you mostly feeling worse.

But you're not a psychiatric professional so how could you possibly identify "difficult people" like that? :p

Even if it happens over and over again with some specific individual, you're still not in a position to conclude anything based on that, because you lack psychiatric credentials!

> Most people use a custom class loader, container and module system.

Huh? That sounds like a lot of work reinventing the wheel. Could you give me some details on how that's arranged?

> I'm not comfortable in general about the idea of labeling people based on their neurological makeup, unless one is in a therapeutic/psychiatric setting.

The setting you're in has no bearing on whether people actually differ greatly based on their neurological makeup, though, so I don't see how that matters.

We're not on the same page here, but that's to be expected, even if you're actually not a psychopath yourself.

But what the world really needs to know is that because the difference between humans and psychopaths is so counter-intuitively vast, even seemingly small things are strong signs that someone is a psychopath.

For example, if someone keeps talking over you, he's probably a psychopath. Because he has no respect for you as a human being, he'll just casually interrupt you whenever he feels like saying something.

An actual human being wouldn't do that, because he naturally respects you as another human being.

One central reason for why psychopaths are having such a great time in the world is that we keep giving them the benefit of the doubt.

In general, it's good to be "rigorous", but in this case, it's not.

For the record, your boss there is a psychopath, which means he's physically incapable of feeling remorse or guilt, and has no conscience.

That's why he was able and willing to screw you over like that.

Here's a brief overview: http://www.sociopathworld.com/p/portrait-of-sociopath.html .. but the rabbit hole goes pretty fucking deep.

While I sympathize with your situation, it serves as a good reminder to others that you should put off having kids until you're financially secure.

On a more positive note, just "fake it till you make it", and everything will be alright. There are plenty of dev jobs out there.

> My mom has no idea what force touch is. She'd not going to get 3d touch.

She'll get it if she uses it. It's not any more difficult than using the current touch gestures.

Twitter at least helps people from different countries follow global current events, but do we even want a competitor for Facebook?

So you're proudly sticking your head up your ass, or something?

Do you also think Greece's problem of having way too much debt was fixed by loaning it ~80B dollars more?

That's certainly true, but not really relevant :)

> What was the pitch for such a bill? I can't think of any reasoning that benefits the consumers of france.

Obviously, consumers don't benefit from bills like that, but they're not meant to either.

> A stock market crash is always coming.

And you complain about a statement containing no information?

The thing is, no one knows exactly when a crash will happen.

But some people know that one will happen say, within the next five years, and that it's going to be worse than 2008 and 2001 because the underlying problems have only been getting worse.

A stock market crash is coming either way. Why? Because nothing has been fixed since 2008, the official US unemployment rate is a sham, and so on.

Oh come on. As if governments all over the EU weren't monitoring their people as best they can, just like the US does.

In theory, they might bicker a bit behind the scenes over who gets access to what data etc, but it's also in their self-interest to co-operate in their spying activities.

It's all about maintaining their rule over the masses, after all, and that's a goal they all share.