I love the honesty of actual science.
This could be this decade's Citizen's United. Neo-liberalism especially among the court has been whittling away at the economy of regular people and the ability of the government to regulate business since at least the 70's. Privatization never stopped or even abated, regulatory capture has been common, and businesses themselves write the bills for the congresspeople whose campaign they bankrolled to pass quid pro quo. We already have a severe lack of regulation and now we're going to have no regulation. We just handed the entire country over to a class of gangsters whose morals are exactly the same as Donald Trump's but wield a much greater degree of violence domestically and worldwide.
I have been reflecting recently that I was not learning the same lessons about the Holocaust as some of my classmates. I got the impression nothing like it should ever be allowed again and we should do everything we can to stop it when we see the signs. I assumed everyone got that impression but I'm realizing that was not the case.
A lot of Congolese children died in humiliating and painful ways for that e-waste. Now many more will suffer and die. The good news is that Microsoft executives are probably getting a great bonus out of it for their stellar leadership and business acumen.
What frustrates me is that the crypto scene didn't have to develop in this direction. While I'm not sure how to get around the electricity requirements necessary for any "coin" to exist on a large scale, the concept of a blockchain doesn't seem to me like an inherently predatory idea. The idea that coins or NFTs were investment vehicles really provided the opportunity for those with the knowledge and resources to manipulate a poorly regulated market and literal con artists to move in and be the main influence as to how everything played out. Although it's somewhat of a relief that it's widely recognized by most people as being a racket, the missed opportunity of the concept of permanent and intangible "objects" to be used for some purpose other than scamming does bum me out a bit.
Talk is cheap. Pull the plug.
The pointless persecution of trans women by people whose lives would be no different if they didn't bother with their bigotry campaigns never ceases to confuse me. Why go through all the trouble just to screw over a stranger? Surely their sadism can be satisfied in some other less harmful way?
This is a lie. In the late 70s and early 80s even the PLO was pushing for a two state solution and even removed "Anti-Zionism" from its official goals in the 90s. I'm not going to say everyone in Palestine has always supported one solution or another like you're saying. I'm not going to say that everyone in Israel wants to eliminate all Palestinians from Israeli territory either, although many do, especially the political powers who blocked the two state solution from the other side during that time. This simplistic reading that Palestinians are nothing more than frothing-mouthed mass-murderers is disgusting especially considering who has had power over whom in recent decades.
War is not a heroic struggle of good vs evil, it is a series of economic and political developments which have been transpiring for decades. There has been a lot of bad behavior generally which lead us to this point. Let's not offer absurd ideas in times of turmoil like this. That's not going to help any innocent Palestinian or Isreali civilians getting caught in the crossfire.
Freedom has two components: Positive Freedom and Negative Freedom. Negative Freedom is a lack of restriction from doing something, while Positive Freedom is the ability to do something. For example, I am free to go to Mars through the lens of Negative Freedom but not through the lens of Positive Freedom.
Restricting Negative Freedom can enhance Positive Freedom. If a terrorist hate group is not allowed to exist, then those who would have been their victims can be free to live their lives without having them cut short by this disallowed association. This is a pro-freedom move in the direction of greater fairness and safety in Germany.
Weird article. I'm all for not arresting students in classrooms as happens in my country, but in this case the kid was arrested for a pattern of behavior including explicitly documented terroristic threats which ultimately ended the life of their classmate. Too little too late by the French government since they were aware of the problems and only decided to take any action after it could have helped the victim. Hopefully this at least sends the message they intended to send rather than an unintended message associating vulnerable people with the otherwise oppressive state.
I would like to see this poll again with "no one" as an option. No one won anything at this debate. Anyone pleased by Trump's performance would have been pleased no matter what, and everyone else is horrified.