Fargren

Lips closed, teeth unclenched. That's how I sleep anyways, as far as I can tell.

You are not wrong, but bear in mind that Lorem Ipsum is not latin, is latin-looking gibberish.

> But no-one has a problem with other creative industries withdrawing their publications

I wouldn't say no one has a problem with this. It does happen, but it certainly doesn't make everyone happy. I for one would like for all released media to be available, or at least not actively removed from access.

I work at Book Depository. We ship to almost every country in the world, and certainly to every country in Europe.

> Eliminating all physical proximity with other humans for months or years is very much not.

Agreed. That is excessive and is not what I'm doing. I meet with friends roughly two out of three weekends, and I see my girlfriend every weekend (can't really see her more than that, she's working 15 hours per day during the week). But I'm not going to boardgaming meetups, to museums, to the gym, out to eat or to the cinema, which are things I would do three to five times per week on normal circumstances. I'm basically avoiding all activities where I would be in contact with strangers for more than a few minutes.

> Those friends you're sometimes visiting, after which you beat yourself up for being selfish? Probably many of them are suffering quietly, and seeing you gives them the strength to get through the day.

Thanks, that's nice to think about.

Yes, this is more or less exactly what I tell myself. I think it's a rational and logical way to look at this.

I still feel very uneasy about it though. We don't know the long term effects of COVID. I worry that I could be contributing to something terrible. It's not just the direct chance of me getting someone sick, there's also the fact that each person that goes out sends the message that going out is fine. Which maybe it is? But it seem that if everyone did small sacrifices could help a lot, so it would be wrong not to personally do these sacrifices.

In the prisoners' dilemma that we all find ourselves in, I really don't want to be the defector. And it bothers me that so many people are willing to be. I think it goes against my internal belief of what being a good person is.

I have an issue with this. I hear a lot of this argument, that we should "accept a certain risk of catching COVID". But that risk is not what keeps me from going out, I'm personally willing to catch it. What keeps me home is the risk that I might be unwittingly spreading the disease. It seems really irresponsible of me (and of other people) to go out just because I'm feeling bad and seeing friends will make feel less bad. I still do it, but I feel guilty about it and I feel really judgemental of other people doing it. And I don't like being judgy, so I bottle it up with people I'm not extremely close to, but that's not conducive to great conversations.

I'll restate what I said: In a game of Monopoly, someone who starts with more money is not playing under the same rules. A game of Monopoly where one player starts with more money is not a fair game, even thought we all move 6 spaces forward when we roll a six. The same thing is true in life.

Perhaps I can put it another way: the existing laws are not the only rules that govern our laws. We all live under the same laws, but we don't all live under the same rules. For some people, it's a rule that if they quit their job they will quickly be homeless. For other people (whose only merit is to be born in the right place), there is not such rule. This is not fair.

My definition of fair is not perfect, but it looks to resolve the most egregious cases of unfairness I can think of.

Real fairness under that definition can't exist as long as there are inheritances. People who are born in wealthier families are not playing under the same rules (just imagine if a person playing Monopoly started with ten times the initial amount of money).

I prefer a definition of fairness that is actually achievable[1]: everyone has at least the bare minimum, regardless of fitness and deserving. You can quibble about what the definition of bare minimum, but to me it should include housing, food, education and health. Any society where anyone can't get those things by asking for them is not fair, as people who don't have access to those don't have the minimum to compete with those who do.

We can't have an equal playing field. But we can perhaps make the bare minimum livable.

[1]This is almost impossible, as opposed to entirely impossible

If I dig one hole a day with my hands and ten holes a day with a shovel, I still dug the nine extra holes even if I don't own the shovel.

Android allows sideloading and this doesn't happen (too much) in Android. It's possible to support walled garden by default while giving the user advanced options to sideload, which are difficult but not too difficult to find.

Why hasn't this happened on Android ? Or has it happened and I'm not aware?

I think as long as sideloading is made inconvenient enough, most consumers won't use it and therefore most developers won't provide it. But it should still be an option for the sake of consumers that want things that the walled garden can't support.

I don't think that would happen. You can sideload into Android but as far as I know no one sideloads Tik Tok, you just get it through the store. I'm not saying it can't happen, but I just don't see it as a reason for not owning a device that allows sideloading (unless you mean that one could oppose sideloading in principle and boycott devices that allow it?)

> I want an ecosystem that works and I can rely on including knowing that little to no one can side load a malicious application onto the device.

I don't understand this, can you explain why? As long as you don't sideload on your own phone, why would having the option be a problem?

> one cannot combine ideological utopia and a functional economy.

And still we should try. It's not like California didn't have a functional economy before Uber. Sometimes it's right to make sacrifices in order to uphold our ideas.

Rights are not granted by governments, they are recognized by governments. They exist as part of our culture.

> Is it a "right" if it can be taken away?

Of course. Every person that was ever murdered had a right to live, even when it was taken away. Would you say that they didn't?

Rights exists regardless of whether they are respected, that's what makes them rights.

I think you are bringing your own biases to this problem. The US is not as decentralized as it once was, it's true. And that has pros and cons. But many countries that are more centralized than the US have handled this crisis better, and the same is true for countries that are less centralized. It's not clear at all that the reason for the US failure had been the level of centralization.

Most of the world has reacted better than the US. I agree it's not easy, it has not been easy for anyone. But the unwillingness/incapability of the US to suffer backlash from their own moneyed interests is not the norm. It's a symptom of a dysfunctional system. It shouldn't be normalized.

I didn't put my e-reader back into my backpack after passing security in Heathrow. Two days later I received an email telling em they had found an e-reader configured with my email address. They asked me to describe it, I mentioned which was the book I was reading at the time, and they sent it back to me. My only complaint is that the fee was quite high, almost as much as the reader itself. Still better and less wasteful than buying a new one.

> if there is no fetus-person claim

This question is essentially unsolvable from a philosophical point of view. Laws and people will take their stand about when human life beings, but there is no objective definition that will solve this. Making the debate about an unsolvable question makes the debate unsolvable. This makes it very difficult to change existing laws. This "debate" favors whichever side the current laws already favor.

I come from a country were people are still often denied abortions after being raped, so maybe my perspective is a biased (though the laws say they should be allowed). But even in other cases, I assume if a person is looking for an abortion they didn't expect to get pregnant, so I can hardly say that they chose to get pregnant. If someone gets pregnant because of lack of education or faulty birth control products, I really find it hard to say they are entirely responsible for the pregnancy.

> if a foetus is a life (i.e. a person) from day one, then it follows women shouldn't have a choice

This is not the case. Even if the foetus is a human person, body autonomy tells us that no person should be forced to give up their own bodily well being in ensure the survival of someone else.

Let's say that a person needs a kidney or they will day, would it be OK to force the only compatible donor to donate his because he can survive without it? If not, how is it fine to force a woman to go through nine months of pregnancy? Pregnancy and birth can be harmful to the body, and even put the mother's life at risk.

It's common to say that the "pro-life vs. pro-choice" debate is all about whether the foetus is a person of not, but that's a misdirect. You can resolve that question and still find yourself trying to solve essentially the trolley problem.

I like being praised for my work, and would be annoyed if I was never congratulated for doing a good job. But if I'm often praised and never see a compensation increase, that will make me feel the praise is fake: if my work is so valuable, why am I not being compensated for it?

And you would be correct. Apolitical media doesn't and can't exist. The existence of media is a political statement.

You can restrict partisan media, or identity politics media, or other subsets of politics. But politics as a whole is implicit in every action that involves the public.

I think the point Scarblac was trying to make is that by the biological definition of race, there is only one human race, and all human belong to it. We have historically said that Black people, White people, Asian people, whatever, belong to different races, but that's not accurate and it is that error that lets racist ideas (in the discriminatory sense) to exist. Those "race" categorizations have no basis in biology and have shown to be flexible over time. A hundred years a go, an Irish person would not have been considered white, and a Spanish person might have. Today the Irish man is white, and the Spaniard might be called a Latin.

I think it's better to say that race exists, but it's a cultural construct, not a biological reality. It's clear that in the USA the largest part of people with black or dark brown skin color have a shared history and culture that comes from the capture of native African population. They clearly have something in common, and they exist as a group. The term "race" is problematic, but it's the best one we have.

Quoting a message from this thread:

> If you are black, you are less likely to get a small business loan, and if so you are likely to get worse rates [1]. They also are encountering more resistance to accessing COVID-19 bailout funds [2]. These are just two examples specific to being a business owner, not to mention the systemic racism they face as individuals.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jan/16/black-owned.... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/business/minority-busines....

The definition of racism is not treating a race different from others. Racism is a belief that one race is better or worse than others, and the politics that arise from that belief. Recognizing that a group has been treated unfairly and compensating for it is not racism.

I have tattoos and went to some very nice public Onsen in Japan. It's more work to find them, for sure.

Regarding what the police should have done, I think the Wikipedia article is quite clear:

> 'a call was dispatched to officers on the street as a "Code 2" assignment, although calls of a crime in progress should be given priority and designated as "Code 1."'

> ' This second call was received at 0642 and recorded merely as "investigate the trouble;" it was never dispatched to any police officers. '

The dispatchers failed twice to notify correctly about the situation.

> Also, if you haven't done it, there's a really sobering mental exercise that you might want to try.

I'm not sure what your point is here. For what it's worth, given where I live I don't see how they could break in less than ten minutes (with a key I guess?), and without alerting neighbors in at least 5 adjacent units, who I could ask for help through the window.