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developed Hyde Syndrome, and became twisted caricatures of their original selves.

That is Cocaine you are thinking of not stem cells.

developed Hyde Syndrome, and became twisted caricatures of their original selves.

I was about to come here to disagree with Bezos, partly about his arguing with the caricature of Musk's position strawmanned by the press. ...but you all have a huge misconception that must be addressed:

1) Getting to space need not be ridiculously expensive, and no, I'm not talking about a tether.
Reusable rockets running on methane (or hydrogen) and oxygen can be quite efficient. Natural gas happens to be the cheapest form of energy on the planet right now, but we can also synthesize it using electricity. And rockets are actually much more efficient than we give them credit for. It principle, with reusable rockets (and perhaps launch assist for the initial portion), we can get the price to orbit down to $10/kg. Perhaps about the same as the cost to fly around the world. We may not get there for a while, but there IS NO PHYSICAL REASON why cost can't get this low. This seems outrageous now because we throw the whole rocket away each time and so it appears unyieldingly expensive at 3 orders of magnitude higher ($10,000/kg), but Bezos' whole business in spaceflight is to pursue this reusable technology. Mastering reuse (which includes using appropriate materials for the conditions in question and developing appropriate automation) really could reduce cost that much.

2) You can get iron-nickel alloys in space that are already pre-refined.

3) Putting a Gigawatt solar array in space /someday/(when prices are lower) is not insane, even if it is today. The energy it generates will exceed the energy needed to launch it in a few days or weeks if properly designed.

I actually disagree with Bezos to some extent. But let's have the conversion start with some facts.

This is precisely the problem in today's world - people who assume the other guy is out to exploit them. The vast majority of companies are small businesses, and they account for roughly as many employees as the big corporations. We're small enough that we interact day-to-day with our employees. I see them as people, and hopefully they see me as a person too, not some faceless "corporation".

When people see each other as people, they tend to empathize with them. This is what makes society work. Sometimes situations crop up out of our control, and our empathy for each other is what drives us to help - take on some of their burden to make things easier for them even though it costs us. Maybe (true story) an employee's kid forgot to take his lunch, so she has to drive to school to drop it off and will be 20 minutes late for work. Or maybe (also a true story) we're trying to find the right key for a certain door after hours, and the employee's keychain has 100 keys so we figure it'll be easier if we just call him and ask instead of try every single key. People help each other. It's what we do. It's what a functional society does.

The first sign that society is breaking down is when people stop viewing each other as people. This dehumanization is what allows you to mentally justify treating another person in a way you'd never think of treating a human being face to face. Look at some of the propaganda that's generated during wars. A lot of it shows the enemy as faceless or a caricature. That's so you won't think of the enemy as a person anymore - they're dehumanized - and you'll be more willing to do all sorts of things to them that you normally wouldn't do to another person (like kill them).

This dehumanization happens on one side of the employment equation when management views employees as faceless drones. But it also happens on the other side - when you view managers and owners as a faceless corporation. They're not drones or a corporation. They're all people. We're all people. Don't fall for the political propaganda dehumanizing other people. Everything you've learned about stereotypes and discrimination is still in play. Just because some corporate owners and managers don't treat their employees like people, doesn't justify stereotyping all businesses owners as doing the same thing. That's discrimination based on class or occupation. They're still a person, they individually deserve the benefit of the doubt until they prove otherwise with their own behavior.

If you don't give them the benefit of the doubt and treat them as less than a person from the moment you meet them just because they're a business owner, you create a self-fulfilling prophecy. The small business owner who's been trying to treat his employees right, eventually gets tired of his employees not giving a f*** about him because to them he's "the man", and decides to reciprocate by not giving a f*** about his employees. You've created the very thing you're arguing against - an exploitative corporation. And the devolution of society into hostile parties who won't treat each other as human beings is complete.

I pity this usual racist ignorant caricature of India as some kind of corrupt banana republic run by a dictator. Subconsciously such a negative view of a so-called 'third world' country is just wishful thinking because it makes you feel superior in comparison.

The reality is that many bureaucrats may be corrupt but the high level decisive policies like this are made by committees and ministers and not bureaucrats. And ministers are not all corrupt and that too not all the time. When it comes to policy level decisions that are important to the country's economy, they are not taken by some corrupt low level bureaucrat. They are usually enacted by a committee comprised of eminent economists and learned honest policy experts. The committee's recommendation is then reviewed by ministers and also if needed, in parliamentary committees and debates.

So get your head out of your ass and look up Wikipedia or something to get the facts right.

I'm just disappointed that it took place in secret. I would have happily kicked in a few bucks to a kickstarter or gofundme for the endavour; especially if there were a tier where I could have gotten an "I helped put gawker out of business." t-shirt. (I'm picturing a nice caricature drawing of Jason Chen and Brian Lam getting steel-toed boots to the face and/or posterior here...)

Edward Jenner developed the smallpox vaccine in 1796, from cows.

This was quite controversial at the time, because it involved injecting bits of cow into humans and... what could go wrong? Caricatures of the time show cows "breaking out" of people after the cow vaccine was given.

In religious terms, how ethical is it to inject humans with pieces derived from the lower animals? Didn't Jenner's vaccine meddle with God's great plan and pollute the integrity of the human form?

Pure ethics can be based on suffering, so there shouldn't be any problem. Later on we'll develop methods for growing organs without the animal host to reduce suffering even further.

It gets murky when you think ethics is derived from some religious dogma with irrational basis and no interior logic. Once you believe there's something special about the human form/genome/purpose, you start to have ethical pangs for no good reason.

Give it a couple of years, it'll become mainstream. Like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis, eventually everyone will see the usefulness and ethics more clearly.

Really? That's your definition?

No, it isn't my definition, it is the commonly accepted definition. Go look it up.

So, Ouroboros-like, if one prehistoric person enslaves another prehistoric person, then the former has instituted a form of government, and therefore governments create slavery!

Governments create slavery, not in the sense of "inventing it", but in the sense of "causing it". In particular, US and European slavery were clearly creations of legislatures, rather than the free market.

You then brought up the red herring on the unsupported notion that somehow in pre-historic times that was no government. You're welcome to try to prove your thesis that an excess of liberalism and an absence of government caused slavery in prehistoric times. Go ahead.

It is a fabulous libertarian wank-fest, and I hope you found release in describing it. ... You should have been an Oxbridge philosophy don, with logic like that.

Gosh, you're almost a perfect caricature of the ignorance, arrogance, and narrow-mindedness of Europeans.

I get that "those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it" or ... well whatever the saying is. But this isn't a case of that. This is a case of the human race never before experiencing this kind of societal transformation. And yeah, there will be some growing pains, but the last thing that's going to happen is the whole world is going to end up as a caricatured projection of some dude's insecurities.

cisfemale hunnies

This seems to be your favorite phrase these days. It gets creepier every time you say it. It feels like those unsettling pieces of robo-thesaurus-ized grammar you find in gutter ads of shady websites and the titles of online porn videos uploaded from god-knows-where. It makes you sound not just like a troll, but like a troll who is speaking through Google translate circa 2008.

You aren't even aware of how much seething hatred there is in the feminist movement for trans women, do you?

Make that 2006. Also, you haven't a fucking clue what you are talking about. I actually live among / align with these people you are talking about, and I have no idea what you are on about. The pressures you are describing are being manufactured by whatever lunatic demagogue feeds you your daily thoughts, because they are certainly not a part of my reality. I find it quite easy to get along in life knowing that there are men/women/gay/trans people, that some subset of each of them are rabid assholes, that most of them are OK folks and, most importantly, that they are all people not caricatures painted by some dipshit who overcompensates for their own suppressed perversions by freaking the fuck out over what everybody else is doing. Please try it sometime, I think you will find it is very relaxing.

the plane vanished while cruising -- the safest part of the journey

Unless a stray air-to-air rocket got it into his infrared sensor.

I hope Charley Hebdo will not start to publish cynical caricatures about an air accident again.

I'm a brown person and I find this utterly ridiculous (yes, H1B visa and all, please dont curb-stomp me, I have 2 kids). However, the bigger issue of how people in Asia/Africa define beauty is an important cultural issue. Currently there is a lot of soul searching going on and people of color are trying to define their own standards of beauty which have so far been largely dictated by the West. That is not so much due to some racist conspiracy but because western countries are richer and so their fashion/media companies are at the forefront of their field and they get to have a bigger say in how everyone defines beauty. But i think this should be an internal dialogue and people of color shouldn't directed anger at the West, that is not helping anyone. Also people who get outraged at things like this only discredit a legitimate issue. We (colored folk) end up focusing our efforts in being outraged at "the man" and white folk get to caricaturize something that is culturally important to a very large number of people. However, as everyone says, this article is idiotic. People who are mad at snapchat have too much time on their hands. H

It sounds like you're one of those awful Republicans yourself. Deranged reactionaries tend to be attracted to toxic politics, and their caricatures of their imagined enemies tell us a lot about them. Of course the reactionary media outlets that pander to their imagined fears, instead of trying to talk some sense into them, are their real enemy.

AC
Refuse to compromise. Call everyone a bigot who doesn't agree with you. Insist it is your radical SJW bullshit way or the highway.

silentcoder
long list of liberal platform requirements
You will NEVER escape that accusation unless you change on ALL those things.

So basically the point of your post is that you agree with the AC's caricature.

For my own .02, I'd mention that there are already a number of restaurants, both singular and small chains, in my area that already have iPad kiosks for ordering, or an iPhone app I can use to pre-order. Usually these are an optional convenience, but at Eatsa they're the only way to order. I've come to prefer these, when available, over placing my order with a cashier. And I'm not some Scrooge McDuck caricature who hates interacting with anyone who makes less money than I do. It's just because it's a superior way to do what fast food cashiers do.

With a self-order kiosk or app, the menu is clear and unambiguous. It doesn't suffer from the lack of space on menu boards, leading one to wonder if an item is discontinued or simply not being actively promoted. What modifications and substitutions are available, and how much they cost, is also clear and unambiguous. Done correctly, these systems can be tied into the inventory system, so an ingredient is unavailable it's simply not shown on the app. ApplePay or a credit card swipe is more convenient and sanitary than handling cash. And if there's a problem with my order, the emailed receipt with the details of what I entered makes it clear exactly who was at fault and whether I should suck it up because I ordered the wrong thing, or if they didn't deliver what I'd ordered and I need to have them replace it.

As more places try this system of ordering, I think more customers will realize its advantages. And whether the restaurants are motivated by the wage increase or not, the writing is on the wall here. After all, how often do people actually go into the bank and withdraw money via a human teller, vs. just using an ATM?

Seriously, picture the old Uncle Sam character — wearing tall head, the blue jacket and striped pants. Now try to imagine other contenders — from both major parties — in the outfit.

Trump is the only one, who can possibly fit.

So...Trump is a fictional caricature whose sole purpose is to appeal to people on an emotional level to earn their support and get money from them?

*Looks at Trump's campaign to date*

Yep, sounds about right actually

This is the core problem. Everything comes down to ad-hominems.

What else can I say about someone who I have a low opinion of though? I suppose I could phase it less harshly and say that I don't think they are very good people, and then qualify all of that with examples, but what does that really change? You, who considers them a member of your tribe will just find a way to dismiss the evidence or rationalize the bad behavior or make other excuses for it.

Kinda like you just did to me.

I don't ever recall calling you an SJW or accusing you of something like that and if I have, it's something that I realize does not lead to healthy thinking or discourse. At most I've stated that I expect you'd identify yourself as a feminist, but like many other things it's an overloaded term and has almost become a bit of a pejorative. You post a lot of other things where we're in agreement and I suspect that we have more beliefs in common than not, even though I suspect our reasoning for arriving at those beliefs are different.

I'll concede that I have called people that in the past. I stopped a while back because I realized it is counter-productive. Even so, I'd point out that when I did, it was because the person was following MRA ideology. Unlike Social Justice Warriors, Men's Rights Activists are an actual organized group with a number of web sites, conferences and books on the subject.

SJW as I understand it is just a placeholder for what much of modern feminism has become. Couldn't you make the same argument that calling someone an SJW simply means that they subscribe to third-wave feminist philosophy and then further point out the large number of web sites, conferences, books, etc. on the subject? I think both groups have some legitimate points to be made, but the problem is that they've been taken over by crazy idiots who are very counter-productive.

I think the anti-feminist caricature of feminism is that, but not the mainsteam or even radical feminist movements. This goes back to what I was trying to get at. People say feminism is awful because of feminists like Anita Sarkeesian, but then rebut some imaginary arguments which show they have no idea what her actual opinions are. All they know is what the anti-feminists told them, they don't even watch the videos and then answer the actual points being made.

But I have watched a few of her videos and while she does have some good points, eventually she drifts off into patriarchy theory, which is utter nonsense when looking at modern western societies. Feminism incorporated too much nonsense with no empirical basis and has drown or driven out the rational members of the group. Take a look at someone like Warren Farrell who was a longtime feminist, but then the fringe element of the group has essentially driven him out or famously protested him speaking because he doesn't buy into the patriarchy theory nonsense. There are plenty of others just like him who might call themselves feminists, but the majority (or in some cases the noisiest contingent that shapes public perception) of other people who call themselves feminists don't feel the same.

Just because you agree with some points that a person makes doesn't mean you have to defend everything they say because it somehow invalidates the points you agree with. There are particular positions where I agree with Donald Trump and others where I agree with Bernie Sanders, but that doesn't mean I have to defend the things I dislike about them or argue against anyone who thinks they're not a good candidate. Much like labeling people in order to put them in a certain mental box is counter-productive, so to is trying to defend someone just because you feel as though you're on the same team, which is just another aspect of human behavior that we do out of habit. I don't think you're a bad person for doing it, just one th

Both of them are awful people

This is the core problem. Everything comes down to ad-hominems. The actual arguments being made are ignored, it's just "look how awful these people are", typically backed up with a bunch of stale links to some shitty blogs as "proof".

I think the term SJW is worthless as its just a convenient way for people to label someone and group them in with other people they dislike and then hate by association

Kinda like you just did to me.

However, you've done the same and accused people of being an MRA

I'll concede that I have called people that in the past. I stopped a while back because I realized it is counter-productive. Even so, I'd point out that when I did, it was because the person was following MRA ideology. Unlike Social Justice Warriors, Men's Rights Activists are an actual organized group with a number of web sites, conferences and books on the subject. They have a philosophy and an ideology that is identifiable. Interestingly a lot of it is the same as the alleged SJW ideology, which is difficult to define because the only people who even try are critics of it.

modern feminism has become a cruel jape

I think the anti-feminist caricature of feminism is that, but not the mainsteam or even radical feminist movements. This goes back to what I was trying to get at. People say feminism is awful because of feminists like Anita Sarkeesian, but then rebut some imaginary arguments which show they have no idea what her actual opinions are. All they know is what the anti-feminists told them, they don't even watch the videos and then answer the actual points being made.

Classic example is Thunderf00t's "busted" video where he claims to dismantle her section on Hitman. Never mind that it was 0.2% of her output, but in his rebuttal he doesn't address any of her points. He talks about something completely different, e.g. he points out that you can avoid the stripper changing room area completely even though Sarkeesian never said otherwise and it isn't at all important to the point she was making. Then he throws in some half truths that seem to add credibility, e.g. the claim that the player is penalized for murdering the strippers. It's true that the player loses 100 points, but they get them back the moment they hide the body.

The whole thing is peppered with ad-hominems and starts with some ranting to poison the well. When you look at comments by others it's clear that they are basing them on his and similar videos, not the Sarkeesian's actual arguments.

Funny. When lefties talk about illegal immigration from Mexico they're all "tear down the wall" "no human is illegal" and so on. But when they talk about H1B, i.e. something that makes THEM loose jobs, instead of some "dirty rotten fascist Republican-voting redneck in his farm in Texas" then suddenly it seems that all men may be made equal, but when it comes to techie jobs, Americans are more equal than Asians.

You know what's even funnier, other than your caricature of "lefties"? That you think the Right gives a crap about illegal immigration. There is one sure way to stop illegal immigration: aggressively identify and prosecute the businesses that hire them. If they can't get jobs, they won't come here. But you don't hear or see anyone doing that, do you? That's how you know that no one, left or right, gives crap. So forget "lefties". Look to the Chamber of Commerce and the politicians they have in their pocket.

First of all, what you have is anecdotes, you have nothing to back them up, other than your claim. It doesn't take into account types of clouds, other possible conditions that could lead to cooler temperatures. I'd say we're at the point where your hypothesis isn't even wrong. It's a cartoon caricature of science.

Second of all, for clouds to be asserted as a means of reducing the overall effect of CO2, you have to demonstrate that cloud cover is increasing. At the moment, scientists, even if the entire effect of clouds isn't known, treat them as a relatively stable constant. If you have some evidence to demonstrate that there is significant increases in clouds, go to it, provide that. Otherwise, this is just another version of the rather brain-dead "but clouds!" meme that pseudo-skeptics throw out there; another example of an objection whose veracity, or even logic, doesn't matter. All that matters is you said the words.