> Both of those people condone(d), support, amplify and drive horrific violence.
This seems to be the point of contention. What constitutes "violence"?
A lot of people seem to define violence as a purely physical act: a missile strike during a war, a fist hitting a face, a molotov cocktail thrown over a property line.
What has become clear to me, especially when I saw the discourse around Luigi Mangione and the public opinion polling on it, is that a lot – a lot – of people define it much more broadly: a health insurance denial, a job lost as a result of some CEO's careless ambition, or mere words.
The problem with a very broad definition of violence is that it permits a pretty barbaric worldview. If I cut someone off in traffic, or if a careless administrative action on my part costs someone money that then puts them in a financial pickle that month, is that violence? Do I then deserve to be tracked and assaulted? What about the doctor who is complicit in the refused treatment because the insurance company won't pay a bill?
"I understand the insurance company isn't paying the bill but you are still going to treat me, and to not do so is a violent act."
The list goes on. Can society function if the default action at real or perceived injustice is to just kill?
Of course there are different levels of violence. One person inciting hate online is different to bombing a country back to the stone age, but they are both violent. No a traffic offense shouldn't get you assaulted.
But big ceo or president shouldn't necessarily be surprised about consequences to say it bluntly, and to tie it back to our original point, its funny its such an issue now to dang and others here.
Its like suddenly an issue when that violence is directed at someone who does have a lot of power rather than the other way around.
I feel you could argue denying health claims is violent, its intending to cause harm - there is a choice there.
Difficult to reconcile the justification of current efforts of "Iran can't have nukes" with the unequivocal claims made less than a year ago that Iran's nuclear capabilities had been "obliterated".
I helped administer the CheckPoint commercial version of this before 2010 in a large enterprise (Checkpoint Integrity it was badged as). Really good product though we did have some bugs with it - I do remember the developers from Israel got involved and were very capable.
It mostly worked exactly as you would want a desktop firewall to, and integrated nicely with Cisco VPN tech, so you could ensure Integrity was operating correctly before fully opening up the tunnel for access to corporate assets.
Public discourse is a speed bump not an immovable barrier. The proof is in the state of things advancing in the same direction for the past few decades at least. Speed bumps are still valuable but not if you want to block the road. So public discourse alone isn’t the silver bullet you make them out to be.
It's quite a defeatist perspective. You're saying that because we can't fix or prevent everything, then we should choose not to fix or prevent anything?
Many US states do not impose government surveillance or have age verification laws.
But the point I was mainly making was regarding the comment equating USA and the West to Russia or China. Go to one of those countries and we'll see how long you can openly complain about government surveillance before you end up in jail.
I'm not telling you what can or cannot be done. I'm telling you that the example you chose to counter GP's "wild exaggeration" statement, was in itself an exaggeration. It doesn't make the point you think it makes. I'm telling you that if you want to change something, continuing to only do the thing that proved ineffective in the past won't cut it.
> Go to one of those countries and we'll see how long you can openly complain about government surveillance before you end up in jail.
Those people never had it any other way so their complaints are either "the usual", or come from people who can cause real trouble. Those people get silenced almost everywhere in the world. Want to know what Germany does if you "insult" a politician?
In Russia people openly complain about the government all the time, as long as this doesn't cause real trouble no one bats an eye. Russia has nowhere near the capability of the US and China to surveil people anyway. And in China most people don't openly complain because their lives are orders of magnitude better than just a few decades ago, many see it as the price for the better life.
"I'm not that bad yet" is never a strong argument. 50 years ago the press was "impeaching" presidents. Today presidents are "impeaching" the press. See the progress? It accelerates.
They all go in the same direction. Russia and China are closer to the end-goal, but the USA and the West now run faster, so there's a good chance they all reach the end goal at the same time.
> You're saying that because we can't fix or prevent everything, then we should choose not to fix or prevent anything?
No, it is just being realist.
Public discourse is like wind. It comes and goes. But incentive based motivators are like gravity. It is a constant force, and sooner or later, it will win.
Main point is that the public discourse doesn't matter. These lawmakers are jamming what they want because they know Twitter is a rant box with no action.. If we want change we need proper coalitions at the worst and a working government at best. Yelling on social media is useless.
Over some Democratic party campaign wedge issue like illegal immigrants (who I guess are the only people who should be protected from constant surveillance, so special.) They will immediately not care about this at all when they are in charge of ICE, or whatever they rename it. Democrats love Flock (i.e. get paid by Flock.)
That wouldn't really make sense since amount of water could vary. Anyway the article says "Each oat meal comprised 100 × g of rolled oat flakes... boiled in water."
From a UX and simplicity standpoint, in terms of what a typical user touches and experiences in an OS, I think XP SP2 was Windows at its peak. The UI seemed minimal, balanced and practical compared to the obtrusive mess that exists today.
Whatever the U.S. feels it needs to do in that regard can be accomplished with the current arrangement. It doesn’t need to invade or unilaterally annex or violate international law.
Anytime I see something like this my mind immediately thinks of the 'Full House' episode where Uncle Jesse keeps getting interrupted in his basement recording studio so he installs a red light at the top of the stairs. Red light = DND.
Watching other people use Google, the predominant method of searching for information involves a query followed by getting their answer from the AI summary that appears above any search results.
I'm not sure what impact this would be having on Adwords, but another commenter mentions that Google isn't hurting in the ad revenue department.
While TFA is anecdote, the author mentions maintaining their spend, being gifted adword budget, and getting lower returns so increasing spend.
This suggests adword revenue is up, conversion to adword 'dollar' balances is inflating those balances, so both return per dollar in is down and even more down is return per adword balance dollar.
It's a leading indicator that quarterly-return focused Google must be scrambling to fix right now - they inflated themselves out of Q4 2025 but 2026 is a question mark, or to parle some Boxton Matrix, is the cash cow dying and if so is the extension strategy ad injection in AI responses, product placement in your AI videos, background changes in your family snaps, etc.
This seems to be the point of contention. What constitutes "violence"?
A lot of people seem to define violence as a purely physical act: a missile strike during a war, a fist hitting a face, a molotov cocktail thrown over a property line.
What has become clear to me, especially when I saw the discourse around Luigi Mangione and the public opinion polling on it, is that a lot – a lot – of people define it much more broadly: a health insurance denial, a job lost as a result of some CEO's careless ambition, or mere words.
The problem with a very broad definition of violence is that it permits a pretty barbaric worldview. If I cut someone off in traffic, or if a careless administrative action on my part costs someone money that then puts them in a financial pickle that month, is that violence? Do I then deserve to be tracked and assaulted? What about the doctor who is complicit in the refused treatment because the insurance company won't pay a bill?
"I understand the insurance company isn't paying the bill but you are still going to treat me, and to not do so is a violent act."
The list goes on. Can society function if the default action at real or perceived injustice is to just kill?
reply