thrden

This country is an enigma to me, I hear conflicting and convincing arguments as to its economic strength and weakness, that it is on the precipice of collapse or overtaking the United States. I tend to believe that they are weaker than they are strong, but this is based in bias rather than sound evidence.

The party leadership appears to be tightening their control over the party and the very wealthy. To me this feels like they are preparing for upheaval by eliminating their likely competitors before a catalytic event.

I could imagine a four way split as follows:

Instagram Whatsapp Facebook the site, which is required to sell its user data to third parties (think large ad services) Facebook the advertising service, which buys userdata & advertising space from Facebook the site and sells it to third parties.

The final two separations are not particularly likely in my opinion.

One of the things that I find so striking about south korea is their success with cultural exports, specifically k-pop. Its surprising how many Americans consciously consume k-pop, particularly when compared to Western European media. I've never met anyone who consciously consumes german-pop, or italian-pop

While I understand that people are frustrated by this outcome, she worked as a federal government contractor. This is akin to being fired for flipping of the chairman of the board of directors in a company. I understand that there are issues of free speech that can certainly be discussed, but the outcome was anything but surprising given her position.

Perhaps, but then you run into the problem of defining racism. It can be obvious, but you can also have situations like the one in yale where the english curriculum was "Colonized"[1] by the fact it had too many white male writers. Would someone who advocates for teaching the traditionally accepted cannon of english literature be racist. According to some definitions, yes. Further, some are willing to call the fundamentals of math racist[2]. Racism can be subtle as well as obvious, and to define the parameters of acceptable speech based on subjective understanding of that subtlety seems that it would likely lead to abuse.

[1]http://college.usatoday.com/2016/06/10/yale-undergraduates-a...

[2]www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5018223/Professor-says-math-perpetuates-white-privilege.html

it'd likely be found unconstitutional on the basis of discrimination against someone due to nationality.

Oh I completely agree, Chomsky has a terrible track record when it comes to being critical of Communist/Socialist regimes. He is very intellectually dishonest in that regard.

In 1933 The United States recognized the Soviet Union, however Walter Duranty wrote his work defending Stalin in 1931. Further, it has been argued that his work and the New York Time's work played an important part in the United State's formal recognition of the Soviet Union [1]

Additionally, the United States had joined a military Intervention in the Russian Revolution against the Bolsheviks (we sent almost 11,000 troops). As such relations between the two countries could not reasonably be considered friendly before recognition. [2]

Finally, The United States had gone through the First red scare just 10 years prior to the articles being written. As such it's unlikely that the U.S. Populace had an overwhelmingly positive view of the country. [3]

Whereas the two had a strong trade relation as you pointed out, the countries were very adversarial and as such I believe it is incorrect to imagine that the NYT's strings were pulled to show the USSR in a positive light.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty#Reporting_the_1...

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Rus...

[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Red_Scare

I'd be interested to see if this ends up playing out like ban the box (banning employers from asking about former convictions), where it ends up hurting the applicants the law intends to help.

ban the box source: https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/ban-the-box-does-more-har...

The New York Times actually covered up the holodomor, and were incredibly supportive of Stalin in the 1930's [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty]

Further, The NYT had favorably reviewed books that denied the Khmer Rouge, and as late as 1990 published editorials denying that governments human rights abuses as being statistically insignificant[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial].

I think that this has less to do with manufacturing consent and instead realizing that the New York times isn't a bastion of truth but rather a flawed human organization that often makes terrible mistakes.

Between the rising cost of a college degree, anti-free speech movements on campuses, and the declining employability of non-STEM degrees it's not surprising. Hopefully, this will work to reduce the overall cost of colleges.

the first was cited as well, though news sources removed the citations.

I agree, they said that they were basing the externality on how much people would theoretically pay for longevity. That number is very likely to be inflated, as people are likely "willing to pay" more than they may be actually able to pay. Further not all research is medical longevity enhancement research. Overall it seems very sloppy.

Same one that bootstrapped Silicon Valley. The government.

Lots of countries had widespread Chemical weapons usage.

Iraq used chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_chemical_weapons_program

Israel used white phosphorous till 2013: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-22310544

the Soviet Union was accused of using chemical weapons in afghanistan: http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/afghan/report.pdf

The UN stated that Cuban units used VX as well as Sarin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_warfare#Angola

even the vietnamese used chemical weapons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_border_raids_in_Tha...

None of these examples include the use of chemical weapons in WWII or WWI. During these wars most major european countries used chemical weapons of some kind.

these instances don't excuse their usage, But I don't believe much is gained by pretending the rest of the world is blameless.

They have a tendency to become more ideologically extreme, which means overtime the country as a whole becomes more divided, which would likely result in higher volatility and cyclical levels of representation.

kinda weird the hells angels club in dogpatch isn't mentioned...

It's worth noting that the "respectable" news organizations that you listed repackage associated press or reuters stories.

The timing of this announcement does not seem to help assuage fears that facebook was using its platform to push an agenda. It was this accusation that initially forced them to switch from human editors to an algorithm for trending news. I suspect that we as a country are going to have a conversation regarding the nature of privately held nearly public spaces on the internet and what their obligation to us is, if any.

I'm fairly sure it means that you work 80 hours over 9 days (instead of 10), which can actually be pretty nice, because its fairly rare for professionals to actually work 9-5. To me it seems to codify an existing trend, and provide a benefit that acknowledges the reality of work. personally I don't think this represents a lack of workers rights, but an improvement by offering a more flexible schedule.

the source also claims that the iPhone 7 is of a comparable speed to the macbook pro 13-inch from 2013, which is a computer I use daily for my programming. I'd love to see a way of using an iphone as highly mobile work station.

Sorry I didn't mean to knock it/you in any way. its pretty awesome building something like this. Even if someone's done it before, as others have said this is a marketing game so you can totally make it into something bigger. You have their phone numbers, if you want you could send people text messages before christmas reminding them to send postcards.

thats fair. I figured higher quality card stock/printing might help prevent scratches.

Seems similar to "thesimplepostcard" https://www.thesimplepostcard.com but for a dollar more. I used simple postcard, but the photo arrived damaged. I'd be willing to give this a shot if I had some sort of assurance that the photo would arrive undamaged.

Actually the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo extended citizenship to the formerly Mexican citizens of California at the end of the Mexican-American war, 90% accepted this offer. Legally the United States considered individuals of Mexican heritage, "white". America certainly has a difficult history, however it is incredibly misleading to say that they killed all the Mexicans in California. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Guadalupe_Hidalgo

This wikipedia article describes a restaurant chain run by the North Korean government. It serves dog meat soup and an aphrodisiac made of bear. I was wondering if anyone had experience eating here.

In all this backlash, I wonder if the people who have come out strongly remain, realize that they are trying to help massive corporations subvert a democratic referendum. Its my understanding that the people who are most strongly for remain, fits nicely within the demographic that defines itself as progressive, whose policy choices take an often anti-corporate form.

tl;dw: Happiness is fleeting, chasing an emotion is intrinsically difficult/impossible. too often we say we want team happiness but what we really want is happiness of specific members whom we consider important, thereby creating a two class system(at which point she makes reference to the holocaust?). what we really want is equanimity on our teams, i.e. calmness. This allows for more nuanced discussion of issues, because when you optimize for happiness you and your team can hide reality from one another in order to ensure happiness.

feel free to add anything i missed, it was an hour long and I zoned out during some parts.