throwaway123x2

Yeah I mean, it probably depends on how deep a thinker you are. Religious folks integrate religion with modernity in all sorts of ways, from "God's trick/test" to "God signalled this in my scriptures."

Sure, that's the Prime Mover theory, which would be extraordinarily hard to prove or disprove. I don't think it's fallacious reasoning.

The discovery isn't attributed to God, but the existence of the phenomenon. So in your example, God made radium. God made the raw materials to make computers and gave man the intellect to make them.

This definitely used to be true, but I don't think it survived colonialism. Nowadays as kids are growing up, there are pretty much two paths: secular (in a manner of speaking) Western style schools, or traditional madrassas (not dissimilar to pre-colonial schools in the region). At least in my middle class socio-economic circles, people who undertook exculsively religious study (as opposed to studying it on the side with western education) were looked at with derision.

I'm from a Muslim country and now living in the West: and I can say that this is incorrect. Generally speaking where I am from, the best minds go to medicine, the next best to engineering and law, and the leftovers go to the military / religious study.

The failure of those best minds to produce results is an artifact of non-reason based education (in my country there was a huge emphasis on rote learning) and a lack of institutional support.

My friends in the West from other Muslim countries have corroborated this. It's always the bottom tier of students or the particularly devout that end up in the clergy.

What's wrong with snaps?

Sure that happens in any big city. It has more to do with systemic poverty and gang violence than it does with imaginary "antifa" bogeymen Fox News keeps yammering on about.

Also OP mentioned American cities burning. While 40 murders is awful, nothing is "burning". And keep in mind this 40 is in a city of 4 million... ie a bigger population than the 20 least populated US States.

What burning? I asked my friend in Portland about how the anarchy in Portland is, and he responded, "Eh, a bunch of people are pissed in about one city block."

Here in Chicago, things are completely fine and have been except for the day or two after George Floyd was murdered.

Europeans in that time did a lot of things that were bad and wrong and laid the groundwork of a lot of bad and oppressive ideas (racism just one of them) but to view modern medicine as anything short of a modern miracle is ridiculous. I personally would have been dead three times over by now if not for modern medicine.

We're going to see 5G in the next 5-7 years... you think I'll stay on 3G for the purported 5-7 year lifespan of this 3G only device? Leaving out 4G (at least) defeats the purposes.

Everyone I've talked to has said they're leaning towards the PS5 because their exclusives are so much hotter than Xbox's. Halo is the last thread holding people to Xbox, and even that is weakening because it's available on PC now.

Looks like MSFT is attempt to correct the imbalance here.

Who is this "we" people keep referring to. I find the blanket "we's" so annoying.

This rang true for me. Systems are more powerful than goals.

One example I can cite is that I've always struggled to keep a diary until recently, when I finally got into a groove and did it for six months straight, not missing a day. Then my wife moved my desk, the habit died, and a week later I had missed too many days and lost the motivation to keep going.

Definitely. We don't buy any off-brand cookware any more, for example, and are now extending that out to other categories. I'd sooner trust walmart's discount brands (eg mainstays) than most chinese brands.

I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted... it's true. If you can't afford to move, you don't.

The point is that Industrial Revolution capitalists used the same argument that you're using. Those people were "freely" working, except that it was the only real work that could be had. Are people working for Uber/Lyft for whom it's the only way to feed their families, or to supplement their income enough to pay the mortgage or make the rent still "freely" working? If everyone had secure salaries with healthcare and vacation days, how many of those people would "freely" choose to continue working for Uber and Lyft?

People freely worked under abusive conditions in factories in the Industrial Revolution before the labour rights movement. No one wants to go back to that.

Can you even buy those any more? I looked into it and there's nothing of quality available.

This is probably the best TODO app that I've used. Nice, simple workflow.

What do people think of KFC's fried chicken in the US?

I've only ever enjoyed using Ubuntu with Gnome 2. Nothing else has come near meeting that standard.

fanfiction.net :D

Google has yet to build a chat tool better than the old GChat / GoogleTalk-Gmail integration. It had voice and video (though not amazing quality, but it was 2006) and the chat was top-notch. It worked, it was integrated in my Gmail and it had text statuses which was honestly the best social media I ever used in my college days.

oo this is fantastic. Def gonna keep it in mind when I'm ready to change phones.

They pay their taxes that which helps provide social safety for those Americans. Should they be paying more taxes? Probably. Vote someone in who will increase corporate taxes.

Criticizing successful people isn't the answer.

Pakistan was perceived as a secular state by its founders, even if that's not how it panned out.

The riots and violence in India today is directly caused by the current government's policies. I know that before Modi, even my religious but western-educated Pakistani friends would point to India and say we should be like them. Not so any more. Something has changed in India in the last decade - blaming an event from three generations ago does Indians and their intelligence a disservice. It implies that they are not in control of their own destiny and are instead held hostage by a three-generation old event.

Are you seriously blaming the formation of Pakistan for Modi's anti-Muslim policies three generations later?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-51719204 it goes both ways, buddy.

It would be better for everybody if there was a whole lot less of that feeling going around.

You could apply the same argument to Pakistan - it's just less strong because Pakistan is smaller and by extension less diverse. I know the Pashtuns have lots of thoughts about having to straddle Pakistan and Afghanistan.

I'm not peddling theories, I'm raising honest questions that I hope rational minds on HN can challenge me on. Peddling hate won't convince me. :)

I'll assume for a second that you're Indian... let's say your brother were to become Muslim tomorrow. Would he be any less Indian after the fact? Or any less your brother? No he wouldn't. Muslims in India aren't Arabs who invaded and settled, they're Indians who converted. Go back far enough and you probably have a common, Indian ancestor with most of them.