bobxmax

It's only disrespectful if you're a gatekeeper.

And so sampling, dj'ing, these aren't skills? This isn't music?

No, the hubris of people deciding they can define what music is is insane

Banging two sticks together is music. Get off your high horse.

> having an ai steal a melody and add it

The fact people still think this is how these models work is astonishing

Even if that were true, sampling is an artform and is behind one of the most popular and succesful genres today (hip hop). So is DJ'ing or is that also not a skill?

The same puritanism that claimed jazz wasn't music, then rap wasn't music, then EDM wasn't music, blah blah

Gatekeepers of what is and isn't art always end up wrong and crotchety on the other side. It's lame and played out.

What about someone that's very low income, is "none is fine" then?

What is a loophole? Legally avoiding taxes isn't cheating.

What you're describing is tax fraud, and that's different from corporations using legal strategies to mitigate their tax burdens.

I always find "fair share" to be an odd argument. Who decides what's a fair share?

The title: "The United States has lower life expectancy than most similarly wealthy nations"

Comparing spend is an odd way to look at poverty - why wouldn't you look at outcomes?

I'm not sure how many pockets of, say, the Netherlands, look like Gary, Indiana.

The post you're commenting on is comparing the US to other developed countries.

Gun violence is responsible for nearly 2% of annual deaths in the US, I imagine that might skew the statistics slightly.

But yes, US poverty is much worse than poverty in other countries. But the flip side is also true - it's generally better being rich in America than in Canada, for example.

I assume he's being tongue-in-cheek

The fascination between young boys and dinosaurs must be studied. There's something imprinted in the DNA for it to be so common lol.

I didn't say they invented it. I said it's normalizing was due to them. Big difference.

I think you misunderstand my comment. When I say "public" school I don't mean in distinction from private.

I am referring to the broad modern standard of putting every child in school... which is traced back directly to protestants wanting to have the state enforce bible study to every child.

Well obviously schools have existed in any part of society. But schools have always had a purpose - whether it's training future scholars at madrasas, training sons of nobility for war, etc.

The institutionalized mass factory-farmed education system was a direct result of western Christian imperialism and the desire to enforce and spread biblical teachings.

That's incorrect.

Public schooling can be directly traced back to protestants - the idea of state-wide mandated education was to ensure the Bible was taught and spread.

Education and public schooling are different things.

It's the anxiety generation. Parents are now terrified of paedophiles and traumas. My generation needed TV commercials reminding our parents we exist.

The public school system is absurd and the biggest culprit in the vast majority of our modern problems. The idea that we would take children and put them in an environment that is essentially the same as a prison for 18 years, is ABSURD.

When in human history would teenagers spend most of their time surrounded by other teenagers?

Yet another thing we can credit to Christian expansionism. We have never put our kids in school- no bullying, just balanced happy healthy kiddos.

The same GAMAAN org that in 2020 found 33% of Iran were Shia, and in 2022 reported that number was now 56%?

Religiosity surveys in the middle east are largely bunk. Actual boots on the ground reality is very different. In the 2000s much was made about the rapid secularization of the Arab world. ... in reality, the exact opposite has happened with the youth.

None of what you said is true. They still enjoy large amounts of popularity - are you forgetting the entire country virtually coming to demonstrate when we slaughtered their commander a few years ago?

That's nonsense. This is what westerners like to tell themselves because all they read is western media coverage of Iran.

No, 80 million people don't want to end the regime. Westerners can't fathom the fact that not everyone wants to live in a democratic free-for-all.... so clearly anyone who doesn't deserves bombing.

Pathetic. Imperialism is encoded in the DNA of Americans at this point.

American & Western European chattel slavery (or perhaps more accurately, western christianity-driven chattel slavery) is uniquely barbaric historically.

The wide-scale dehumanization on a racial basis has no precedent historically.

Imperialist Christianity, of which the modern US continues to suffer from (even if it's a secular version), is uniquely brutal and violent.

That is not a full-time job. If Oog decides he's going to spend 10 hours a day doing nothing but make stone axes for the 15 other men in the tribe, Oog is going to have a bad time.

In a hunter-gatherer context, the men are hunting, fishing and fighting, while the women forage and manage the children.

> Problem is, the subordinate has encyclopedic knowledge but it's also extremely dumb in many aspects.

Most PMs would say the same thin

Do you find pleasure in being a random angsty troll deep in day old HN threads lol

What other activities would you opt out of mammoth hunts to do, that wouldn't lead to the tribe exiling you?

> jesus christ you people are so thick:

You think this comment was flagged because of sarcasm? lol

Industrial-scale slavery is a post-agricultural phenomenon and represents a very small percentage of overall human development.

Even such slavery, modern western/catholic chattel-style slavery aside, wasn't entirely transactional in that way. Many Ottoman slaves had better lives than aristocrats, for instance, and had real agency and influence.

Western European/American/Catholic imperialist slavery was somewhat unique in how dehumanizing it was.

Correct. The rapid urbanization of society has crippled us - we are pack animals suddenly thrust into an environment with a constant nascent undertone of hostility.

The feeling of constantly being surrounded by people you can't trust is a foreign and debilitating one.