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War is part of the animal kingdom (ants, termites, and some primates engage is 'war'). We are also part of nature making our wars an act of nature.

When did nature become a teletubbie caricature of unicorn farts and marshmallow sharts? Nature is a cold hearted bitch that gives zero fucks about hippies and their stupid drug trips being "one with nature".

Sounds like you didn't beat her with jumper cables enough, tbh.

Selling a home quickly is stupidly easy. Not losing a fuckton of money in costs while selling and buying repeatedly, however, is not.

That's why we don't fucking move every three months like some kind of spastic millennial gigster economy caricature. 10.1% of adults moving in August is a catastrophically bad thing, because that number is way too fucking outrageously high.

The Europeans don't actually care about whether the internet is "local." They care about whether the profits made from the internet are "local." Google makes a lot of money off search and advertising, which are naturally related fields of making people aware of things, but Google is a US-based company. The Europeans would like to see European companies make that money instead, so they have decided to try to investigate and legislate that wish into reality, bypassing more onerous routes of obtaining money like innovation and competition. The EU is very much a living caricature of the government in Atlas Shrugged

Your ignorance of popular culture shall be forgiven. After all it's pop culture and mostly garbage.

In the cartoon South Park there are fictional goth children who are depicted as being extremely pretentious in their own right while also being condescending towards other groups of people like Emos. Their 'leader' has the annoying habit of ending all his sentences with the phrase "per se".

It's a TV show that pokes fun at everyone and they use a lot of hyperbole with their caricatures. And who hasn't seen the odd person on internet forums ending every one of their sentences with ellipses or exclamation marks for whatever reason to a degree that makes their posts hard to read.

Now if you're a nitwit who doesn't understand basic logic, you may tend to generalize and get the impression that people who use the phrase "per se" must all be such obnoxious and pretentious individuals. Even if those people used it appropriately and only once.

"This was not something that "just happened." It was planned"

Yup, we agree on this: The gutting of America's industrial base, and the concomitant impoverishment of the working class, was not an accident. It was public policy for decades under both faces of the Establishment Party.

"long hours working in dangerous situations with low pay"

Pay was not low. You're right that no one wants to go back to a bad caricature of pre-union "satanic mills" dangerous factories and inhumane hours. Fortunately that's not the only way to run industry.

What people are calling for is rebuilding our national industrial base. Yes, it will most likely be more automated and less labor intensive than in the past. That is not any sort of argument against it.

Yes, the American people demand environmental protections. Which means our manufactured products will cost more than those is countries that despoil nature to save a few bucks. Environmental equalization tariffs will be needed when trading with pollution-happy partners. Sorry if that interferes with your liberturdian fantasy of "free" trade at any cost.

"the bullshit you hear in Fox News"

Sorry, broham, you're the only one here who watches TV news.

That's what we've been doing, bilaterally and multilaterally for over twenty years. The result is that factories and people who used to be making stuff here are out of work and the Chinese are pocketing the difference. They have raised a generation of optimists (which I don't begrudge them) who believe there is no way to go but up and their system of government can do no wrong.

The cost of that is that we have raised a generation of pessimists who don't see any way but down, and don't believe in making things anymore, don't believe in taking responsibility for the material wealth they still enjoy, don't believe in making the hardnosed decision to trade hard work for prosperity, cutting down a forest to make room for people, building a factory at the expense a pretty landscape.

Meanwhile folks like yourself (and we have no shortage of them here as well) who are white collar, whose parents were white collar, who've never worked the soil with their own to two hands or built anything other than a pile of papers and meaningless abstractions, who practically need to hire an electrician to plug in their TV, they still think it's 1991, that America and the West are strong and victorious, and that by merely telling the Chinese to open up, they will. Twenty years ago, that was a defensible position. Even maybe ten years ago that was a defensible position. That is no longer a defensible position. The Chinese do not mind hard work and their government has been playing hardball on their behalf for a quarter century with generally good results to show for it. The inveterate diplomats and statesmen on our end do not seem to believe in hard work, they believe in outsourcing and they are isolated from the negative effects of their kumbaya-we-are-all-one-people policies while a large number of Americans are not.

The English language, in fact nearly all human languages, have an extensive vocabulary to describe all manner of cognitive biases and sloppy thinking. This is because we have had tens of thousands of years of behavioral modernity to see it all play out, to categorize it, and to name it. The names that are appropriate here are "echo chamber" and "solipsism." All my friends who went to Harvard Law and make six figure salaries think it's OK to outsource dirty smelly manufacturing to China, mandate 100 mpg vehicle milage, import tens of millions of low-wage workers to cut our lawns and scrub our toilets from south of the border, and ban plastic bags if we can preen about how green and woke our laws are. If anyone complains, well they didn't go to Harvard Law, did they? They don't live in the right zip codes, do they? They're just dumb and racist and sexist and the faster we kill them off by attrition the better.

I didn't used to think people actually thought that way in any significant numbers. But Trump brought out the worst in a lot of people, and I no longer think that that caricature is just a scary story we righties tell our children before bed. It's real, if not always articulated in quite those terms, and it has real world consequences. And they aren't good for us. They're great for the Chinese though.

There's no consumer friendly message from IBM, nor user friendly, citizen friendly, friendly to the people. Under the guise of bitching about the social and search companies the head of IBM pushes for 'regulation of the platforms' or 'responsibility' or 'liability' which is a code word for you know what. The grand project of sanctification of reasonable truths and punishment of the deviants? I don't know to call this or exactly describe and explain it to people concerned. i.e. everyone in fact due to the changing nature of the regimes we'll be living under let alone even something as a bug tracker or a church e-mail newsletter would have trouble operating.

I've shamelessly pasted the end of the article :

Rometty called on the European Union to change laws that have previously handed web platforms immunity from what appears on their sites. The EU’s so-called e-commerce directive from 2000 was designed to boost innovation among young firms. The bloc has since introduced targeted measures giving tech companies liability over specific content, like ordering them to remove terror propaganda within one hour [ link to https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-12/tech-firms-face-hefty-fines-under-new-eu-terror-rules ], but it’s yet to formally change the law.

Brussels has become eponymous in the tech world with tough digital rules, such as the EU’s strict GDPR privacy regulation, which came into force earlier this year.

Like Rometty, Cook also made his comments at an event in Brussels attended by top EU officials.

in which they have used an astonishing name for the grand project. They've called it the "EU terror rules" and it is fitting, don't you think?
That won't translate sadly, as a quirk of English and headline speak made it "the EU terror rules".
Chief Executive Officer Rometty went to shill for them "terror rules" before an assortment of "top EU officials" i.e. a caricature of whom we the people hate.
I can suppose the rivalry is feigned : she complains of irresponsible behavior but then sponsors a EU project that will likely hand over the whole world to the few dominant, consumer-facing platform companies.

"EU Terror Rules"
Turn out at the EU Parliament elections in late May 2019 and don't let this happen please. Obviously the liberals, centrists, right-wing (same as the liberals) and social democrats (same as the liberals) are probably all-in on this.

Silicon Valley has this Janus-like political stance where they behave like caricatures of the most amoral greedy sociopathic businesspeople while ostentatiously parroting progressive dogma as if it somehow balances the whole thing out anywhere outside of their twisted little minds.

Money corrupts (some) people regardless of politics but in many cases corrupt people excel in business because they already are amoral greedy sociopathic people.

The real question is, how do stop corrupt behavior from benefiting? The correct answer is laws and regulations because you cannot force ethical behavior to occur but you can penalize unethical behavior.

Silicon Valley has this Janus-like political stance where they behave like caricatures of the most amoral greedy sociopathic businesspeople while ostentatiously parroting progressive dogma as if it somehow balances the whole thing out anywhere outside of their twisted little minds. The left happily and hypocritically ate it up while the negative aspects of their behavior were carefully hidden away, but now that the curtain has been pulled back the infighting has begun and now it's funny to watch.

This isn't a blanket condemnation of business or progressives (there are plenty of outstanding people and organizations in both areas), but representative politics has a horrible way of bending the path of humanity towards kakistocracy (government by the worst possible people).

If that gibberish gets mod'ed up, I will link to that comment as a prime example of some of the ignorant loons on this site.
Far starters, "progressive" and leftist" isn't what he thinks it means. And I think it laughable that the area of the country that has produced that most self-made millionaires and billionaires than any part of the World as being labeled as such is just absurd.

But this is what political discourse has devolved to in the USA - and many parts of the World - just slinging labels that appear to be an insult to the author or speaker.

But to address the article, facebook is doing exactly what a business does, makes money and mitigates any public relations damage anyway it can. There isn't any political agenda behind it at all and I can't believe anyone could possibly believe there is when there isn't a shred of evidence to support such a premise.

Silicon Valley has this Janus-like political stance where they behave like caricatures of the most amoral greedy sociopathic businesspeople while ostentatiously parroting progressive dogma as if it somehow balances the whole thing out anywhere outside of their twisted little minds. The left happily and hypocritically ate it up while the negative aspects of their behavior were carefully hidden away, but now that the curtain has been pulled back the infighting has begun and now it's funny to watch.

This isn't a blanket condemnation of business or progressives (there are plenty of outstanding people and organizations in both areas), but representative politics has a horrible way of bending the path of humanity towards kakistocracy (government by the worst possible people).

I'm beginning to think PR isn't as malevolent as once assumed. If I frame him as a South Park caricature, he's rather benign.

Oh hey, there's an autistic guy in my office who still likes South Park too!

I'm beginning to think PR isn't as malevolent as once assumed. If I frame him as a South Park caricature, he's rather benign.

Arthur C Clarke, I think, or it may have been Asimov, suggested all art is deliberate caricature of reality, in order to communicate symbolically.

So real art must distort perspective with intent to convey graphically ideas through the symbolism of distortion.

That means real art requires an artist who has ideas they wish to communicate and a metaphorical language of their own devising they wish to communicate those ideas in.

So, does the AI have such a language they can both send and receive in? And can they describe these ideas and their relationship to the language?

That's simple. The fundamental rule has always been that facts are universal, opinion is personal. Virtually every respectable media outlet has a version of that doctrine.

You can say what you like, think what you like, feel what you like, but you can choose only these. You cannot choose a different set of facts.

No, that doesn't stop you writing fantasy or fiction. As the late, great Terry Nation once said, if on your world rocks can talk, then that is fact. On that world, rocks talk.

It does not stop caricatures. Britain has incredibly strong libel laws, but TW3, Spitting Image and HIGNFY are not just applauded by those they put down, the famous and powerful were/are integral to them.

All it stops is malicious, twisted Misty Mountains nastiness. Gollum! That doesn't take a Ministry of Truth, any Bagginses will do.

In our neck of the woods, a person can vote online as many times as s/he wishes, and only the last vote counts. And even then you can actually go to the polling booth a week later and vote on paper, thus cancelling your e-vote. So your abusive husband example does not apply. Besides, if the husband is as abusive as in the caricature that you depict, the wife is on such a short leash that she probably does not get permission to go voting at all.

Sooo, we're supposed to give the clowns that pawned Obamacare off on us ANOTHER chance?

Yeah, that's the freaky part about this whole business. Nobody is interested in actually correcting the problem. The back and forth is sickening. It's the idiocy of the voting public more than anything else. I think the politicians reflect that perfectly, with maybe minor embellishment, kind of a caricature, but still very accurate.

BTW the asshole mods are really on the attack, I guess we should expect that today. Sorry you got modded down.

It's usually the nerd types that ignore context, think caricatures real, and let words get to them like a physical beating.

People don't understand caricatures anymore, and I am not sure what happened to change that. Now everything is taken as literal truth, offhand remarks are thought to have been planned and meticulously worded over the course of years with no possibility of using imprecise words or terms.

It is the Age of Offense, where people seem to only be truly happy if they've discovered at least two new ways of being offended every day.

People do, it's just that caricatures and other things like satire require thinking and effort in order to be understood. Problem is, US culture shuns intelligence in favor for brute strength. It's not even "let's make fun of nerds" it's an active shunning of even trying to be knowledgeable, Intelligence is seen as a negative - to be well read, or worldly is seen as something to be avoided.

Ignorance is king, and thinking (not even critical thinking) is something that should be avoided at all costs. Likewise, anything that requires higher thought (like complex humor vehicles like caricatures and satire) is more effort than what US culture expects. If you can't resolve things without shooting things up with guns, then it's not worth doing.

It's the celebration of id over ego. To be dumb is to be king. Lazy in thought is smart. Learning is uncool.

People don't understand caricatures anymore, and I am not sure what happened to change that. Now everything is taken as literal truth, offhand remarks are thought to have been planned and meticulously worded over the course of years with no possibility of using imprecise words or terms.

It is the Age of Offense, where people seem to only be truly happy if they've discovered at least two new ways of being offended every day.

You can even imagine some distant future where a corporate AI conglomerate that takes over Netflix vanishes some Netflix original content you enjoyed, for some inscrutable reason...

I'll be zapped for this, but fine: Disney and The Song of the South. Findable, but basically gone. I understand Disney bought all of the available copies and buried it, intending for it never to be released again. Fantasia? There are a couple of Framing Improvements in the current release. And we won't even talk about the "improvements" to Star Wars from the original 1977? release. (Han shot first. And: Star Trek TMP3: Keep Spock Dead.)

Also, there are some cartoons which I remember fondly which are now "culturally insensitive". I thought cartoons were supposed to be a caricature of reality. I loved the two hopping minor birds and the little boy always chasing them. (AKA the Coyote?)

My mom loved Little Black Sambo -- she though he was so ingenious climbing the tree and letting the tigers turn to butter.

Oh, and there's Polock jokes (I told one today as a matter of fact), there's Blond Jokes which I used to collect (Do you know why a Blond Woman had bruises by her belly button? Gurer ner Oybaq zra, gbb.) and Black and White and Asian and Eskimo and English and American jokes as well.

In an old popular Nature/Science show, The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, I understand JC used cattle-prods and such to make the animals do what he wanted on demand for the camera. I understand he thought it was better to coerce a few animals in order for people to understand the species in general. Now-a-days those shows would probably be burned as heresy. Oh, and if I got it right here, That Terrible Evil Person is also the inventor of scuba, as in underwater scuba gear.

Having things online is extremely handy. But like all important things, you need multiple copies in your possession or you DON'T actually have them.