joogabah

lkrupp said:

So we as a society must accept the fact that if we want to remain free a good number of us must be prepared to die in terrorist attacks? Is that what this argument boils down to? 

— You are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack

— You are 12,571 times more likely to die from cancer than from a terrorist attack

— You are 11,000 times more likely to die in an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane

— You are 1048 times more likely to die from a car accident than from a terrorist attack

–You are 404 times more likely to die in a fall than from a terrorist attack

— You are 87 times more likely to drown than die in a terrorist attack

— You are 13 times more likely to die in a railway accident than from a terrorist attack

–You are 12 times more likely to die from accidental suffocation in bed than from a terrorist attack

–You are 9 times more likely to choke to death on your own vomit than die in a terrorist attack

—You are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist

–You are 8 times more likely to die from accidental electrocution than from a terrorist attack

— You are 6 times more likely to die from hot weather than from a terrorist attack

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/06/fear-of-terror-makes-people-stupid.html

mknelson said:

Slower speeds of chip card transactions? Do you guys process them "weird" in the US?

Insert card, hit OK, enter PIN, done. Doesn't really take any more time than signing.

In the USA, you don't enter a PIN (I know, it's stupid).  You insert the card and wait 15 to 20 seconds (which feel like an eternity standing in line with people waiting behind you) until the terminal sounds a loud, sometimes startling series of beeps to indicate you should remove your card.  

dewme said:

No matter what the system is, from taxes to patents to college admissions to product warranty claims to insurance claims to ... whatever, smart and/or devious people always find a way to game the system to their advantage. It’s a survival trait that’s deeply baked into the human condition. Whether it’s good or bad depends on which side of the exploitation equation you find yourself living on. Sometimes you’re the mole and sometimes your the mole whacker. 

It’s not baked into the human condition or everyone would do it.  It’s baked into the capitalist “self interest” doctrine.  Humans are the most profoundly cooperative and social species on the planet. And then there are a small minority of intra-species predators who vary in number from society to society.  How to cure it?  Firstly, eliminate the primary cause: deprivation or the threat of it without wealth. Cause even if you can pay your bills today who says you won’t be destitute tomorrow.  The ethos and inertia doesn’t go away even with great wealth.   That is is the SOCIAL condition from which this sort of behavior springs.  People need a basic level of security and we live in a time of super abundance and waste that could easily be marshaled to ameliorate this.  

Paparazzo666 said:

When this goes to the Supreme Court the government will look a the clowns they all are. They hire idiots like Snowden and bark at their own people for not doing their F-Ing JOB! They should put all those efforts in helping companies protect us from Chine- Russia- Korea and all other cyber attacks on our companies and institutions! MORONS!!!

Snowden is an idiot?  You prefer to have the government spy on you and not be told?  In whose interest do you speak?  Are you so identified with the nation state that you support it no matter what it becomes?

chutzpah said:

So mean of the USA!  Bombing peaceful neighbouring countries is much more polite.

No hypocrisy there at all.  America never bombs other countries or invades and topples other governments, even on false pretexts.  And America had nothing to do with Ukraine's 2014 coup either.  And it didn't state explicitly its plan to balkanize Russia as a prelude to war with China which it can't compete against.

I wish people would stop writing about Apple as if it is a luxury product.  It is the only USEABLE product.  It is qualitatively different from Android, not a wasteful indulgence like jewelry or premium branding for snob appeal.  

SpamSandwich said:

This needs to be an automatic death penalty offense.

And if China is behind this, it’s as good as a declaration of war.

Of course you think that.  But most people in the USA are opposed to fascism, thank goodness.

tmay said:

waveparticle said:

22july2013 said:

Xed said:

LOL I can't wait to hear the contortions of people ... that hate private US companies from doing any business outside the US, especially in China.

I buy from non-dictatorships any time I can, even when it costs more. But I don't hate. Don't make it sounds that I'm motivated by hate. I'm motivated by love for freedom and democracy. 

If you want to imagine that I'm motivated by hate, I guess that's your right to be wrong.

Are you an American? You are illogical. You do not live in China. Why are you afraid of losing freedom and democracy because of China? 

Gee, if only the PRC would limit itself to occupying Mainland China.

Instead, it's all about invading Taiwan, occupying the South China Sea, and the First Island Chain, as if those were exclusive economic zones for the PRC. Moreover, the PRC is more than happy to export its brand of authoritarianism. Fortunately, the West is quite aware of the PRC's broad expansionist plans, and while late to constrain the PRC, the West is strengthening alliances to resist that expansionism, both militarily and economically.

Meanwhile, the PRC has a limited timeframe to do all of this before its heavily senior demographics overwhelms its shrinking working population, all with a birth rate that is too little to maintain the population. It's probable that the PRC won't ever be a rich country, and can expect its population to halve by 2060.

What the West is concerned about is that Xi will launch an invasion of Taiwan by 2025, and will attempt to challenge the West's military supremacy in the Pacific in this decade, but that risk diminishes by 2035.

Both the PRC and Taiwan officially consider themselves to be the governments of ALL of China.
You can't invade your own country.  This is an internal matter between factions within China, part of a stalemate in a civil war, and it is wildly inappropriate for the USA to be dictating who should prevail.  It should be up to the Chinese people to forge their own destiny.

red oak said:

What a bizarre, meandering diatribe against common sense.  Apple pro-actively included it

I can't even understand the point your trying to make here 

There is an anti-feminist push to erase women's liberation by literally taking the term for men.  Men are breaking records in women's sports.  You must use she/her pronouns for men if they request it.  Trans has completely eclipsed gay and lesbian liberation and women's liberation.  If you don't go along with this absurd agenda, you're ostracized as "transphobic" and that reaction is so intense and ubiquitous that most people have been intimidated into silence.  Women are adult human females, and trans women are men.  Men are adult human males, and trans men are women.  This is not hate speech.  It is just stating the obvious, mundane truth.  A top down push from billionaires funding trans ideology is trying to replace sex with "gender identity", a reversion to old sexist stereotypes, and gay conversion therapy, literally on steroids.  It's almost successful, and has taken over liberal polite society, even when most liberals disagree completely.  It sterilizes children.  40,000 girls are lined up on GoFundMe to get their healthy breasts chopped off.  This is the lobotomy of our age and people in the future will wonder how we let it happen.  Have you seen the "nullification surgery" for non-binaries? https://www.alignsurgical.com/gallery/gender-expansive-bottom-surgery/03/

Because it is illiberal and opposed by the vast majority, right and left, numerous forms of gaslighting and manipulation are employed to work it into the mainstream anyway.  This is just another example.  It only makes sense in that context.

I wonder when we'll get the "neural text-to-speech" demoed for iOS 13 last summer and then forgotten by everyone it seems.