spaced-out

>Then if either side attacks the other, all the other members are obligated to defend against the aggressor.

The reason Ukraine hasn't been allowed to join NATO already is because the rest of the alliance isn't willing to make that promise (that they'll go to war with Russia to protect Ukraine).

That's an irrelevant formality. The people who will have to do the fighting, and even Xi himself, were not even alive during the Civil War. If he orders people to start shooting after >70 years of peace, he's starting a war.

The Chinese Civil War is over, it ended 70 years ago. If something starts now it would be a new war.

I've seen a lot of posts lately about people being low balled by Google, Meta, etc lately.

I am concerned about an authoritarianism in America, even more so if the president started saying stuff like: "Canada and the US are essentially the same people and should be one country. The Canadian government has always been propped up by foreigners to weaken us. Reunification must happen, by force if necessary."

We've seen what happens when authoritarian governments which start locking minorities up in concentration camps progress to inventing historical grievances to start seizing territory. Appeasement doesn't work.

>The right wing is being forced in to a position where it needs to build its own internet infrastructure

The "right" does not have to build it's own infrastructure, plenty of right wing media personalities and publications maintain a presence on Facebook/Twitter/etc... as long as they follow the rules of the platform. That headline is just clickbait nonsense.

>Working with a deadbeat teammate is an awful experience. If you need to get anything done, the only way forward is to plead with them to get some work done, or just do it yourself. More often than not, the team ends up doing it themselves.

I've never had this issue with the projects I've managed.

Create a doc/Jira for the project, including timelines and tasks. Allocate tasks to all teammates. Daily/weekly go through those tasks, updating progress. If timelines are being held back by someone, I'm going to make management aware because I'm not taking the fall. If they're not then I don't care.

The average person is focused on problems in their own life and doesn't have time to keep track of every dollar they spend and what it supports.

When a hole was developing in the ozone layer advocates spent years trying to get people to stop buying the chemicals that were responsible, to no avail. Same with the issue of lead in gasoline and white phosphorous in matches. The solution in all those cases was to simply pass laws to stop a handful of companies from producing those products rather than try to raise awareness in millions of people.

>Somewhat also applies to buying your stuff mostly on Amazon, hurting your local business.

What if you can't afford to buy real estate in your local community, and don't own any stake in any local businesses? How does spending more money, and driving 20+ minutes, enrich your experience in any way?

That's the risk you take buying things from randos on EBay. Buy from authorized resellers if you don't want this to happen.

>It could be changed through legislation that companies need to put the needs of all stakeholders first.

The problem is that it's the shareholders who sign off on the CEO, upper management, and their salaries and bonuses. I don't see how you can incentivize people to not put the needs of those who control their paychecks above all else under this model.

Disagree, people should be allowed to open up social media accounts without showing ID. Anonymous speech is important too.

Back in 2018 it was nearly half, people don't realize how much market share they've lost in the last few years

> Google and Facebook are the only companies that have access to data on basically every sale on the internet

Amazon? eBay? WeChat?

>A physical store presence has way more positive effect for a society as a whole than online shopping has.

Yeah, but not for the planet.

It's incredibly inefficient for people to drive their car to a store and pick up items that take up like 5% of the total space in the vehicle; the ratio of fuel burned to goods shipped is terrible. Maybe grocery shopping isn't so bad, but going to the store to buy one TV or a few linens for the bedroom? What percent of the fuel burned was actually used to move the goods vs. to move the car? Not even 1%.

Compare this to filling up a diesel delivery truck to ship goods around town, optimized by algorithms for maximum efficiency.

>You are talking about a company that helped foster the "revolutions" in the middle east and europe that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands/millions of people.

Google caused revolutions in the Middle East? How exactly?

So when will regulations stop companies like Fox News and OAN from spreading vaccine misinformation?

>"Sparta, the city, was not 80% slaves. That stat only true about the state. This distinction only matters because the author is critizing sparta society on the basis that Sparta's seat of power was slave-cornucopia. But this is false. Sparta the city is mostly spartan citizens, making the author's criticism-by-sleight-of-hand dishonest"

Except, as the author points out, the Spartan system that he's criticizing requires the Spartiates to have a plantation of helots to support them so they can spend all their time training for battle. A man in ancient Sparta could only be a Spartiate if they had a plantation of helots (if they lose their plantation they lose their status as a citizen), so the helots were just as much a part of Spartan society as they were.

>The idea that "Sparta" was close to "80% enslaved people" is confused and I hold the author of the linked article responsible for not clarifying the confusion.

...

>The people inhabiting the greater area of the Lacedeamonian city-state, the inhabitants of the settlements in Laconia and Messinia, were never referred to in any ancient text as "Spartans" or "Lacedaemones" and they were only referred to, to the extent they were ever mentioned, as "helots" ("είλωται") or, simply, as the Spartans' slaves.

He's referring to the entire Spartan state, which at that time included Messinia. It's accurate to say it was composed of ~80% enslaved people. That's clear if you read the article. The fact that most helots were from other ethnic groups doesn't change the fact that they were living under the rule of the Spartan state.

>It’s really easy to say that but I have heard of no viable proposals to actually replace the police with “something better”. Nor do such proposals ever elaborate on how the new system would operate without vagaries and wonderful nice-to-haves like unconditional free housing for the homeless and UBI.

Police should only be involved when an armed person is needed. Things like filling out police reports of crimes, noise complaints, and traffic violations can be handled by social workers who can call in cops when needed. That will allow for a huge reduction in the police force.

Technically, they only need probable cause if they don't have the dogs with them.

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-police-use-dogs-...

He still should not have cooperated, of course. Any extra effort you force the cops to go through gives you some protection.

> You can never convince someone by calling them stupid, selfish, irresponsible or in general blaming them. All you will do is create hatred toward yourself as well as your viewpoint and further the disagreement.

Who's calling them stupid? I don't recall any politicians or government health officials calling anyone stupid. Sure, there are people on Facebook/Twitter/etc... name-calling, but that's always been the case, and there's plenty of it on both sides.

Nonetheless, thanks for posting that 7 year old article. I've followed Afghanistan news on and off and I was not aware of how widespread that practice is. It's almost certainly a factor in the Taliban's resurgence.

If the Taliban is so opposed to pedophilia, why are there so many reported stories of girls as young as 12 being forced to "marry" men more than twice their age?

>yeah if you’re on the non-pedophile side

You're assuming there's a non-pedophile side?

That sounds awesome. I've been ignoring VR, maybe it's time to look into getting a headset.

True, but it make it easier to regulate things like price hikes.

It's weird that there's so much talk about Google and Facebook being public utilities and no talk about ISPs, which obviously are public utilities and treat their customers like crap.

I think Big Tech needs to shake up their lobbying division.

>Teachers can work with over extended students to help them while they are in school

They can, but will they? Plus, it seems like GPA would be even easier for the wealthy to game, many fancy prep schools sell themselves on their ability to place kids in good colleges. If those kids no longer need to perform well on a standardized tests they just need a high GPA, that seems even easier from the school to guarantee.