tallest skil

dysamoria said:

Francules is talking about bigotry; the word used was "hate".

And it’s a statement so beneath contempt that it didn’t warrant recognition. It’s also, incidentally, a strawman itself.

People do demonstrate considerable hatred toward vegans in certain places.

The evidences, here, being what?

They seem to view mocking vegans as a safe type of bigotry in which to participate. It's almost like some kind of pressure release valve for the other bigotry they've been suppressing, in order to present themselves as progressive and welcoming to others.

They have to have an outlet somewhere; they’re psychologically prevented from telling the truth anywhere else, after all.

...then they'll throw myths about human biology/diet that aren't held up by actual science.

The non-vegans do this? Hmm.

It's still bigotry. Refusing to accept that bigotry exists is part of the reason that it continues.

Learning what bigotry actually is would help a huge portion of the population get over it. I agree.

andrewj5790 said:

My brother in law said “why do we care that we’re being tracked, again?” I’d enjoy reading some of your reasons.

Not sure who you’re asking, but I have something, if you like.

“You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide.”

This is a very dangerous mindset. The argument is frequently raised in debates by pro-big brother hawks, and doing so is dangerous, cowardly, and dishonest. There are at least four good reasons to reject this argument, solidly and uncompromisingly.

The rules may change.

Once the invasive surveillance is in place to enforce rules with which you agree, the ruleset that is being enforced could change in ways with which you don’t agree at all. But then it is too late to protest the surveillance. For example, you may agree to cameras in every home to prevent domestic violence (“and domestic violence only”), but the next day a new political force in power could decide that Christianity will be illegal and they will use the existing home cameras to enforce their new rules. Any surveillance must be regarded in terms of how it can be abused by a power worse than today’s. 

It’s not you who determine if you have something to fear.

You may consider yourself law-abidingly white as snow, but that won’t matter. What does matter is whether you set off the red flags in the mostly automated surveillance. Where bureaucrats look at your life in microscopic detail through a long paper tube to search for patterns. When you stop your car at the main prostitution street for two hours every Friday night, the Social Services Authority will draw certain conclusions from that data point and won’t care about the fact that you help your elderly grandmother–who lives there–with her weekly groceries. When you frequently stop at a certain bar on your way driving home from work, the Department of Driving Licenses will draw certain conclusions as to your eligibility for future driving licenses–regardless of the fact that you think the bar serves the world’s best reindeer meatballs and have never had a single beer there. People will stop thinking in terms of what is legal and start acting in self-censorship to avoid being red-flagged out of pure self-preservation. It doesn’t matter that somebody in the right might possibly and eventually be cleared–after having been investigated for six months, you will have lost custody of your children, your job, and possibly your home.

Laws must be broken for society to progress.

A society which can enforce all of its laws will stop dead in its tracks. The mindset of ‘rounding up criminals is good for society’ is a very dangerous one, for in hindsight it may turn out that the criminals were the ones in the moral right. Barely over 200 years ago, if you promoted republican ideals, you were criminal. It is an absolute necessity to be able to break unjust laws for society to progress and question its own values, in order to learn from mistakes and move on as a society.

Privacy is a basic human need.

Implying that only the dishonest people have need of any privacy ignores a basic property of the human psyche and sends a creepy message of strong discomfort. We have a fundamental need for privacy. I lock the door when I go to the mens’ room, despite the fact that nothing secret happens in there. I just want to keep that activity to myself, I have a fundamental need to do so, and any society must respect that fundamental need for privacy. In every society that doesn’t, citizens have responded with subterfuge and created their own private areas out of reach of the governmental surveillance–not because they are criminal, but because doing so is a fundamental human need.

darren mccoy said:

Well, that's every Google app removed from my phone. Now to decide if I can live with Bing as my search engine.

You can’t. It refuses to search for strings of text. Also, Microsoft engineers have admitted to using Google to search Microsoft’s own internal knowledge database because Bing can’t do it.

Try Searx.me

gatorguy said:
EDIT... and then this story appears on my feed. Apps are using the way you tap your screen, the speed you type, the angle you hold your phone, or the swipes you typically use to better identify who is who, even recognizing changes in health??

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/13/business/behavioral-biometrics-banks-security.html

Oh, that’s old hat. I had a client many years back who couldn’t bank on his iPad because the bank’s website required Flash (!!!!!!!!!!!!!). Ignoring how odd that was, I installed one of those “flash-supporting” browsers and got the login to show up, but he still couldn’t log in because the site RECORDED THE SPEED AT WHICH HE TYPED IN HIS USERNAME AND PASSWORD and rejected his input. I hope to hell that his bank has fixed that shit by now, but who knows.

inlupineways said:

I agree, this is nothing more than taking the ownership away from the customer. 

Coachcasa said:

there doesn't seem to be a way to turn on notifications if it doesn't ask me.

This doesn’t work?

If it isn’t asking even with that on, the site may not have them at all.