Fivethirtyeight is not even remotely bipartisan. It’s hard to forget Nate’s role in spreading propaganda polls last election cycle and his reaction afterwards when it was clear they were all fake.
Totally agree about peeping toms. But, if a company gets to spy on you via their devices with impunity, your politicians representing you get pay bumps.
I remember last year when believing COVID may have come out of a lab made one a crank. It was only on certain news channels or specific papers. Of course, let's also assume there are no widespread liberal beliefs (the world is going to end in 12 years) that should label someone as a crank.
How can anyone read and conclude that the US is anything other than dying and on life support? Our government is ran by corporations, and it is not going to change. Not to say that we have some cyberpunk future ahead of us - that looks a bit too optimistic at this point. As much as I personally despise communism, it's hard not to admit that the Chinese have a much superior government (not that they're even communist at this point) to our own. Larry Fink and most of his associates should be getting the "Jack Ma treatment".
I think this post was fair in 2009, where there was no serious discussions (specifically in the US, certainly many parallels in Europe) over a second civil war or balkanization, a growing Marxist movement, etc. But, times have changed dramatically. To some degree people have to “pick a side”, and it may be to a greater degree in the coming decades. Instability looks inevitable. In other words, being “open-minded” and a “free-thinker” is beginning to seem like a whimsical privilege of the fading Pax Americana.
Just wait until smart home/HAR devices become more popular in ~10-20 years. We'll have grids of radar in our homes whose explicit purpose is to track our movements.
It's completely bonkers to claim that "rule of law" in the US protects our privacy from any type of digital intrusion. "cope" might be the right word if you mean "completely ignore/obseqiuously accept our lack of privacy".
I’m a bit speechless at this point. I’ve written about 5 posts so far stating that they have a bias, the actual one definitely not clearly articulated, including several you’ve responded to. No offense, I think what I’ve written is clear, but that you may be confused.
That’s great, and I’m a sea otter because it is so written. Send me a link to the portfolio of everyone who has influence over what gets written and I’ll show you how they decide what to publish.
George’s ideas are interesting to ponder now and then. I’d definitely want to be a billionaire in that system, though, you’d pay pennies on your penthouses split with everyone living below you. If only taxes were that easy to figure out.
Wouldn’t that exacerbate the tech giant problem? Currently their war chests only get opened to vulture up fledgling companies. I’m not saying it can be instantaneously transmuted into gold if the government tried to take more, but I can’t see your proposal alleviating that problem.
Yes, I'm familiar. Based on the drivel that comes out of the Economist on a regular basis, I've long made the conclusion that "they" and whomever their close friends are/they vacation with are the "editors". I don't think it's a remarkable claim. I'm not expecting to see any WaPo articles criticizing Amazon anytime soon, either.
I'm most certainly not "taking the position that the actions of some people who follow some version of a religion to be defining for it", and I'm perplexed as to how you reached that conclusion. That's quite a ridiculous claim and quite a ridiculous inference as well. But we agree that that particular statement is not very interesting!
I don't know Antonio García Martínez's ethnicity, but he looks and sounds very much like a straight white male, so I would not consider that a counterexample. Also, certainly there are no absolute laws of who is always targeted and who is never, just clear trends.
However, it is true that to some small degree I am oversimplifying something quite complex, partially because the cited example was James D'Amore. Other examples you might cite include Dave Rubin or Ric Grennell. Certainly gay white men and straight white women (specifically if they are Republican) are targeted. What happened at Disney with the treatment of Gina Carano vs. Krystina Arielle is evidence enough of that.
Great, now also link me to a cacophony of Twitter activists who've defined it the same way, I am proven wrong.
But, and of course it's a silly request, can you provide any objective large-scale studies as to who (their demographics) is being canceled, for what categorization, and the net effect of their cancellation? It doesn't matter, granted, because the Wikipedia definition of highly politicized terms is, of course, what counts.
That definition is neither empirical, nor is it collectively defined. It is selectively assigned and selectively enforced. And here we are, in a thread where the top level post provides an obvious example.
Cancel culture is not about canceling people who say racist, misogynist, homophobic, etc things. It is about canceling (read: disenfranchising and taking revenge on) straight white males, who are at the bottom (top? intersection? whichever) of the intersectional hierarchy. Kamau Bobb is not a white male, therefore this does not apply. He is receiving the same treatment that any powerful person, regardless of skin color, would have received 10 years ago in the western world: tuck them away until the scandal blows over.
Which charitable person would conclude that was a typo? I have a feeling people like you would say the same thing if he wrote “I hate Jews” in capital letters.
You are terribly correct. It reminds me of the left claiming Islam is a peaceful religion because only a ~third (whatever the numbers they allege) support violence and a much smaller fraction perpetrate it. Unfortunately, your claim is unquantifiable, so, as evidenced by your replies, the people who hate Israel vehemently deny any anti-semitism.
And Facebook will choose which of those voices get to be heard more often than others. And I wonder if the people steering the algorithms are or are not overwhelmingly against Modi (they hate him). So really, this issue does not look that cut and dry to me. There are many confounding issues here that should be addressed, but countries frankly should defend themselves against Facebook.
Then my apologies, although Israel is an apartheid state just as much as the US is a "Nazi state" with "concentration camps". Makes total sense to a certain group of super bright people.
There are active calls by many Democrats for state censorship of websites like Breitbart, which, although I'm not a huge fan, do not call for violence of any sort. Also, I don't think it's fair to simply draw the line at "there are no laws banning specific media sources". It's hard to deny at this point that politicians are actively influencing and engaging with tech executives who are performing censorship. At this point, it's also a little difficult to claim that this is a trend that will change course or not accelerate.
All other points aside, do you think Facebook constitutes free expression? Because, it looks like to me that it's a place where censorship is rampant and executives select regimes or political parties to back and affect sentiment on. "But, free speech..." does not at all seem to be an adequate response to me.