539 karma · joined December 29, 2013
I really balk at these fatalistic one-liners. Voters vote for packages of politicians and views. Particularly in the UK with its silly voting system there are very few options for voters to tell the politicians what they feel with any acceptable degree of nuance.
Politicians do stuff the majority disagree with all the time. That alone shows your statement to be false.
A common issue is, of course, that the solutions politicians come up with for problems we want solved, doesn't always agree with us.
E.g. the fact that we do not want paedophiles in our lives doesn't mean that we want the politicians to cover up scandals like Jimmy Savile. It is a perversion of intent. Or would you claim that that is what the voters demand?
But the thing is, of course, that you are framing your answer to not include the original case. In my book that is just a non-answer.
You even started out with "a funny" saying "look at this site you're reading". You didn't care if it fitted the case, you just wanted to say something clever. Very Reddit-like (and I do like Reddit).
But in what we could call an open environment where people do not care about their reputation - such as Vice - what can you do?
Oh boy, was I wrong. Don't do it!; you'll wish they'd have invented something even more potent a decade before the interview...
A wonderful interview though.
I believe "manslaughter" and "murder" should be switched around here.
IIRC, Harry Frankfurt argued that bullshit was worse than lies, since it corroded this simple but for-society-to-function-in-the-long-run incredibly important distinction (or aspiration).
Thank you for linking it, hadn't reached my interwebs yet.
I think it is a pretty difficult conundrum, with stalking and annoying ads being unethical, but easy advertising services being a good thing for website producers.
I'm working on my first commercial site, but don't know how to go about funding it in a way that wouldn't bother me - not everyone is willing to pay for membership and I'd like to be able to use ads without being an douchebag.
I just don't know how yet.
Or maybe not THE only, but it is a fine excuse.
That said, I think the moderation Pao symbolised on Reddit as a whole was a very wrong move. The Community certainly did. All the subreddits are individually moderated and the subreddits are opt-in; there's very little need for an overarching moderation of Reddit major.
Combine this with the rules for moderation being so vague everyone was asking what they actually were, and the reason given was "safety". Safety?
To me, "Safety" is a red-cloth term. It smells of the agenda used to rule the masses by fear and security, and to me Reddit is the exact opposite. But in reality, it was probably just an honest answer to Reddit's Community and investors both, that they wanted Reddit to be a safe product.
Well, nobody joined Reddit because it was "safe". It's the wild west of the interwebs, subreddits progressively darker as you find more weird stuff and you have to tell yourself "no - I don't need that" (who hasn't ventured to r/aww - darkness comes in many shades).
tl;dr Reddit is set up as a wild west with moderated towns, it is counter-productive to clamp down on everything with "safety" as the rallying cry.
Promises following broken promises from and interim CEO, seemingly set in place to make Reddit-users into a more tasty product.
I don't blame anyone for not believing her and downvoting her, because the only thing they want from her is a farewell note.
I'm not saying I don't believe it, just that I'm keeping my mind open.
I think there's an unspoken non-political agreement in Denmark, that when it comes to military actions, we'd rather build our connections with a party of resolve (be they wrong or right) than a fragmented alliance.
On top of that, Denmark has a special treaty with the EU, which states that we will not and can not join military forces. The Danish politicians wanted to go further into the EU adventure than the population in Denmark, so at first we voted "no" to a EU treaty which we then accepted the second time around, given these 4 "reservations" (no EU citizenship, no EU currency, no EU defence policy, no EU meddling with our "internal laws").
Isn't the exact reason for such planes to be able to have a credible defense vs. Putin and his ilk, so as to not tempt Russia to make advances on Europe. AFAIK, Denmark is patrolling the skies of the Baltic nations vs. Russia right now. I don't think Denmark wants to do that in an obsolete 1970s fighter plane.
The F-35 looks like a disappointment, but we can be 100% sure it will be able to carry the newest weapons-systems for the foreseeable future. That begs the question; is it preferable to have ageing weapons on a nimble plane, or the newest weapons on a clumsy plane?
I don't feel Europe has the luxury of skipping the F-35 (or equivalents, which the Saab is not, AFAIK) for a successful successor, when Putin is going crazy with propaganda inside Russia.
When I want to look up something factual I know nothing about, DDG is the right searchengine. I finde that DDG is best at giving short, concise results.
When I'm searching for something within the (very) broad "entertainment" category, I go with Google.
But I am very much against the "For Safety!" stance. That is not what Reddit is about. I don't think angry Redditors is for Hate, they are against Safety.
IMHO, that is pretty simple.
I think these products are meant for journos and NGO workers who want some level of protection without knowing much about what they are doing.
The way I see it from under my tinfoil hat, is that this is a bit of protection paid for by making your work instantly indexed and searchable by the US for various purposes.
But stupid? Disappointing? These labels are not fit for fate of a severely depressed mind; logic sense ends and the risk of suicide is a roll of the dice, NOT a matter of commitment to who or what we love.
All I see is the selfpity of those left behind transformed into cynicism. It is unbecoming. In my humble opinion.
If you start doing that stuff when people just want to chat, then you're being annoying.
But it is also used for intellectual/leadership coaching, called Protreptic. And if the one doing the coaching knows what he or she is doing, it should be very good.
(I see my belief as simple mathematics)
Sabu was caught and played ball, Snowden acted on moral grounds. Russia is simply the only nation willing to anger the US and deter "payback", hence his only choice.
This is people willing to die not be part of Russia and not to live in a kleptocracy. This is blood being spilled for freedom. It is terrible, but necessary if you do not want to live under the rulership of the most brutal.
I think we're all feeding the troll.
Don't think of it as an increase in warmth, think of it as increased pressure in a closed system.