pannSun

Why do you believe "remorseless" can't be used there? You are certain that Douglas Murray thinks the attackers in this alleged war are showing remorse?

The Netherlands themselves were under military pressure by neighboring countries, Spain, and Britain, and was occupied and starved by Germany in WW2, and had many of their dikes broken.

Colonization is more an expression of prosperity, rather than its cause: to colonize, a country already has to be well developed and with a strong military and navy. Ask yourself: with Africa's resources and size, why didn't it colonize Europe, instead of the other way around?

"Back" to what? Their level of development before the age of colonization?

What was the school quality in other African countries, without apartheid?

> Within a matter of years we will begin seeing famine; in a nation with some of the best and most abundant farmland in the world.

Meanwhile the Netherlands thrive, despite barely even having land - most of what they have, they had to take from the sea. There are countless similar examples - it seems resources and land quality have precious little to do with prosperity.

How do you determine at what point the key switch is activated? Or is the travel time from start to fully depressed negligible compared to measured latency?

> This seems like the kind of argument one invents when one has an axe to grind.

You could aim this statement at media selective outrage too, and you'd be much more correct.

> Everyone agrees CSE on social networks needs to be moderated, there isn't a lot of controversy around it.

Yet there wasn't a lot of controversy about Twitter ignoring it. To such an extent that, in your own words, they left even low-hanging fruit unpicked.

> I built a lighting system for <hotel chain you've heard of>

I am sick and tired of how often extremely pertinent information has to be neutered in this way. And I am utterly disgusted at how the legal system is used to protect scummy corporations like this unnamed hotel chain.

I wish we had strong laws that prevented employers from even thinking about threatening employees for talking about their work. Or collective bargaining to make sure employers don't have the leverage to impose such one-sided contracts.

How little outrage known sellers of child porn garnered previously, compared to the reaction to the brief impersonation of blue checkmarks under Musk.

It almost makes one question the objectivity of the ruling media elite, when they inflate or diminish things so arbitrarily.

I fail to see how these battles make "typical" and "normal" not synonymous.

"Typical" and "normal" are synonyms to all except those seeking a reason to be offended.

For example, we've put severe restrictions on what kind of strings employers are permitted to attach. We also look very carefully at concentration of capital and collusion.

Note that this is not necessarily a call for legislation, but certainly people should be aware of who shapes and filters their communications, and how, just as they should be aware that e.g. 90% of US media are owned by 6 companies (in 2011, down from 50 in 1983) [1].

There are entire university departments dedicated to analyzing the influence and cross-ownership of media and capital, even though one could just as easily dismiss that with "What is there to look at? It's just free markets at work."

[1] https://infographicjournal.com/media-consolidation-the-illus...

Advertisers sure have a lot of influence in what gets published. Perhaps it's time to look critically at that. They're certainly the last group of people I'd trust with... anything. Their job is literally to manipulate people, yet somehow they became the arbiters of morality and permissibility.

> I've also found it helps if you make really exaggerated "thinking gestures" (look up with a very quizzical expression on your face, tap your had, stroke your chin, etc.).

A human loading indicator.

> Is there any large group representing App developers

Why would enlightened individualists band together? It reeks of unions, or worse, tribalism! /s

I was not aware - could you explain further?

Wouldn't decolonization, in the context of Britain*, imply ridding itself of foreign influence and focusing on its native heritage? In contrast, the way 'decolonise' is being thrown around looks more like de-Europeanisation - the demands are the same, regardless of location.

*Naturally this does not apply to the examples from New Zealand.

Your experiences are anecdotal outliers. Their experiences are indicative of wider trends in society. /s

> The researchers uncovered these findings using a jailbroken iPhone running iOS 14.6. Notably, while the team discovered similar iPhone activity on a non-jailbroken phone running iOS 16, the data was encrypted and it was therefore not possible to determine exactly what it contained.

And this is why "security" to prevent user control or even knowledge of "their" devices is so important.

If discarding the old, traditional, inherited logo, and adopting a new one in line with current trends, with the intent to show a commitment to "diversity & inclusion", is "conservative", then the word can really mean whatever you want it to mean, can't it?

> Frankly, I think all of the buildings from your link 4 look breathtaking. [..] But part of the beauty of architecture is seeing different styles.

And if there was a multitude of styles being built, I would be inclined to agree to disagree, subjective opinions will differ, and leave it at that. But they are not - 90%, if not more, of new buildings, especially large ones, all strive for that minimalist, steel & glass, unpleasant sterile aesthetic. It is not 30% modernist monstrosities, 30% art deco skycrapers, 30% art noveau, 10% classical revival.

> I'm sure architects will eventually have their fill with brutalism

Ironically I am quite fond of some brutalist buildings. They can be quite pleasant. But if any of those count as brutalist, they are far too 'cold' for my taste. Again, that would not be a problem if it wasn't all of architecture striving for that same 'cold' aesthetic.

> A triple threat of economic globalization, generational transition, and new technology has flattened the aesthetics of our digital and physical lives. What are the origins of these regressive trends?

Given that things used to be less flat, uniform, and globalized, and now they are more, with no signs of the trend stopping, it would be more accurate to call these trends not regressive, but progressive.

Is it really 'neglect', when ornamentation is deliberately attacked and avoided [1,2]? When this [3] is what modern architecture thinks a church should look like? They'll give excuses that it's due to cost cutting, then build things like [4] when funding isn't an issue.

Not that we should be surprised by lies - all war is waged by deception.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornament_and_Crime

[2] https://theculturetrip.com/europe/articles/ornament-is-crime...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiser_Wilhelm_Memorial_Church... - The initial design included the demolition of the spire of the old church but following pressure from the public, it was decided to incorporate it into the new design.

[4] https://www.format.com/magazine/galleries/design/best-contem...

> I assume all unarchived content is unarchived because of their established policy for not archiving things, which is the copyright holder refusing archiving. Why would I assume otherwise?

Because of their deliberate policy of secrecy that forces you to assume, instead of know. As this is the 3rd time I repeat this same point, it will also be the last.

> You're making a documented legal requirement sound like a shady partisanship

Unless keeping the cause of removal secret is also a legal requirement, then this is by definition shady. And you assume that because some removals are results of legal complaints, then all are. It is Archive's choice to keep us in the dark regarding removals, and it is our choice not to trust them for it.

This forum thread documents that websites can be excluded for various reasons, including complaints by people other than the website/domain owner: https://archive.org/post/778/exclusions-from-the-wayback-mac...

I'm sure there's some guideline somewhere giving themselves blanket excuse to do anything they want, then hide behind secrecy and hope people will assume the best. What I'm not sure is why such duplicity being "standard" makes it any better.

Yes - the Archive's refusal to provide a reason. They don't get to have both the privilege of opaquely excluding content, and the assumption that all exclusions are for the most faultless reasons.

Previously in Nature: "Please don't publish anything that would undermine the liberal worldview"

Advancing knowledge and understanding is a fundamental public good. In some cases, however, potential harms to the populations studied may outweigh the benefit of publication. [..] Harms can also arise indirectly, as a result of the publication of a research project or a piece of scholarly communication – for instance, stigmatization of a vulnerable human group or potential use of the results of research for unintended purposes (e.g., public policies that undermine human rights or misuse of information to threaten public health). - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32595083

Scientific American: "Don't even study such topics"

For another thing, scientists must do some soul-searching about why they are so motivated to look for evidence that traits like intelligence or propensity to violence are written in our genes, or that they would be different for people in different racial groups. Of all the bits of truth they could discover about our complex world, why this focus? - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/science-must-not-...

Sweden: "You will be suspended if you even accidentally find the wrong results"

After studying more than 3,000 convictions in rape cases passed between 2000 and 2015, researchers found that most of the convicted perpetrators are immigrants. [..] Kristina Sundquist and her colleagues are suspected of violating good research practice. Scientists are also criticized for insufficient evaluation as they failed to indicate how their research should ‘reduce exclusion and improve integration’. - https://news.tvs-24.com/world/1714.html

They use any excuse to move programs out of user control and onto the cloud. They won't even download fonts without blanket agreement to all of their "connected experiences" [1].

And the marketing is excellent. "Connected experience" conjures up such warm and fuzzy feelings, the very opposite of "surveillance as a service".

[1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/cloud-fonts-in-of...

> the "what" could be: "A method of reducing the number of online sales that are attempted but somehow aborted".

That's a good point. But it does open the door to patenting so many things it would make business impossible - store layout? Ad composition? Sales timing? Employee treatment?

Fortunately the law does not seem to have such a broad view of what is patentable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patentable_subject_matter#Unit...

The other problem is the 'could' in your hypothetical - as far as I know, that's not what Amazon put on the patent application. Probably because they knew it is not patentable subject matter.