by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 03, 2018 People willing to vote against both the Dumbocraps and Repukelican'ts have a hell of a lot more passion than the goose stepping morons who blindly vote the big party li(n)e.
And nothing about your link contradicts my point: That the biggest individual beneficiaries of Apple pumping their stock price are Apple execs. And not surprisingly, they're the ones making the decisions on the buybacks (which by the way, strengthen their voting positions and enrich them greatly).
So, this all goes back to my original comment, which was a response to someone who claimed that "Apple doesn't benefit when their stock price goes up", and I explained why that was not true.
You might want to figure out what we're talking about before you jump in and beclown yourself with something you know little about.
In the little over an hour since this story about trolls being removed from Twitter was posted, 34 of the 38 comments posted here were from anonymous cowards, and most of those were trolling, with comments like, "only n i g g e r s use Twitter" and "go choke yourself" and "it's an attack against conservatives" and how "the bots stuff is bullshit".
I count five making the case for not voting and three others making the "both sides are trash" argument (which is also a case against voting).
You don't have to go to Twitter to see this effect in action. The problem is, it's not working as well this time around.
As far as I know it is impossible for a corporation to own stock in itself and I am embarrassed on behalf of pope ratzo, even more so for anyone who would take anything he says seriously, ever again.
The part your missing is that the largest tranches of stock are being held by APPLE EXECUTIVES.
And trust me, bucko, they're not retiring those shares.
That's stupid. A company doesn't care about the stock price after the first sale of stock. Regardless of how much price changes the company never receives more money or has to return money.
OK, I'm going to explain to you why a company cares about a stock price after the first sale. Are you ready? You might want to sit down for this.
Because, in Apple's case, they've been buying back as much stock as they can with their windfall from the Trump tax giveaway. In fact, Apple is one of Apple's biggest shareholders. So if the stock goes up, they will be one of the biggest beneficiaries, after Berskshire Hathaway and Arthur Levinson, who is Apple's biggest shareholder and - ready for this - also the chairman of the board of Apple.
he moment we start playing the semantics game the conversation is over
Semantics is the branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning. Semantics is at the heart of every philosophical discussion, and critical to developing understanding.
If you're "out" every time semantics enter into a discussion, then you're going to have trouble using logic and language. Don't be that guy. You have a strongly-held position, you should be prepared to defend it using your words.
For example, if someone wanted to stay cooped up in their basement all day and read books, are you saying locking said person in a basement and forcing them to read books would not be a restriction on their freedom? Or are you saying actions as a result of unexamined motivations are not a question of "freedom"? Are you saying animals or even low-IQ people can't be "free"?
I understand your confusion. The concept of human freedom is distinct from whether or not you are "free" to do something (they spring from different definitions of the word. Doing something because no one will stop you is not the same thing as freedom. No one will stop you from shitting on the floor in the living room in your perfect platonic cave. This does not mean that shitting on said floor will make you free or even demonstrate your freedom.
In the immortal words of a noted ethical philosopher, "freedom ain't free".
No one man defined the moral compass for the planet.If it is your room you are free to shit in the middle of it
I want you to really think about this. Yes, you are free to shit on the floor in your own room, but that does not mean you shitting on the floor in your own room is the same thing as being free.
You mistake the ability to do something with human freedom. They are not the same thing. They're not even in the same realm.
Not always. This is why reason and self-awareness are important.
Steiner's rationalization is that freedom is a subset of ethics
Not at all. He posited that freedom required ethics. It would be like you're saying, "a hot dog is a subset of relish".
Finally, if one is to take advice on ethics, perhaps do not do so from someone that is unethical in the first place, demeaning and insulting his way as if ethics is about winning arguments rather than cogent ones:
I did not demean or insult his "way". Remember, instruction requires correction.
Well, ok, "Freedom" as a concept is quite a bit more complex than that, and something I was trying to avoid in making my point that "concern" over trolling is contrary to freedom in this context.
Oh, come one. Here is what you said, in a direct quote:
"Freedom means the ability for anyone, anywhere, to do what they will regardless of your opinions."
If you were trying to avoid the complex concept of freedom, trying to simplify it to, "the ability for anyone, anywhere, to do what they want" was not the way to do it.
The fact is that freedom is not such a complex concept at all, unless you're trying to twist it into some novel shape in order to accommodate some negative behavior.
That means "fake news" must be allowed, even celebrated, in any society who holds freedom of expression and thought to be a high ideal.
It is allowed, but your freedom doesn't come with some special superpower that requires private businesses to help you do it. And there is no concept of freedom that requires society not to demonstrate the consequences of your lying. Freedom is not a suicide pact for society. It's why there are no laws about lying privately, but there are laws against lying publicly (libel, slander, etc). A free society gets to protect itself from those who would do it harm.
Freedom means the ability for anyone, anywhere, to do what they will regardless of your opinions.
That's not what it means. That's never been what it means.
The philosopher Rudolph Steiner had the most comprehensive discourse on freedom in his book from the late 1800s, The Philosophy of Freedom. He wrote that any definition of human freedom required an "ethical individualism", that required a level of consciousness of self and one's motivations. In other words, taking a shit on the living room floor just because you need to take a shit and happen to be standing in the living room at the time, is not freedom. Your "freedom" in absence of an ethical framework is basically just trolling.
And if you need to ask, "Well derp, who gets to make up what is ethical?" then you're in luck, because this was also pretty well established by about 300 B.C., and the answer is, "We all do, based upon reason and moral behavior".
Now, if you need to ask, "Why should we be moral at all?", then you need more help than I can provide in one Slashdot comment.
This has been another edition of, "Why you should have taken a few Humanities classes when you were working on your Associates degree in Computer Science."
Starting with the fact that we've had fallible bodies throughout history, and it didn't lead most people that conclusion. It's not like we just discovered that bodies are fallible or in some ways non-optimal.
So, the perfect being, the embodiment of Love, who created the universe made us "defective by design"? Is that your assertion?
I think it's more that it became a standing joke that it was a synonym for racism so incidents of blatant racism such as BBQ Becky would be described as "economic anxiety" (which was the joke but I guess you missed that I was joking, not everyone moves through the same circles I suppose)
I don't do sense of humor on Halloween. It's part of my costume as an angry Leftist mob coming to drink your milkshake.
"Economic anxiety" is a code phrase the mainstream media concocted because they didn't want to admit that pure xenophobic racism was fueling Trump and the entire Republican party. You don't hear it so much any more, because 1) supposedly those people are doing so much better off now, and b) even though they're doing better economically, it hasn't attenuated their xenophobic racism one bit.
Why are you so unwilling to accept the obvious? Observe Trump. Observe his base. Use Occam's Razor.
but this is exactly the kind of rhetoric that lead to Trump in office.
No, and fuck you. This has been how Trumpist jackoffs have been spinning anything they don't like: "This is how Trump got elected". It's all horseshit and you should not believe it.
Trump got in office by lighting up the lizard brains of racists, nazis and the most fucked up 20% of our society who respond to authoritarians and bullies. He got in office through voter suppression. He got in office because 304 members of the electoral college voted for him, even though most voters did not.
Also, by maximizing the oxycontin vote, as has been proven by peer reviewed studies:
Why are you blaming the GOP? You Dems/far lefties are the ones blocking nuclear power.
We're not opposed to nuclear power. In fact, you will find more nuclear power plants in Democratic states than in red states.
We're just opposed to letting the same jackoffs who befouled the world with their fossil fuel effluvia be the ones to run those nuclear power plants. Because they cannot be trusted.
Slashdot Mirror
If you can still honestly say to yourself that both sides are the same, you're either being dishonest or are willfully trying to misinform people.
In either case, you are playing your role, Anonymous Coward.
Right. Individuals who are making the decisions at Apple.
Gosh, you're just so close to understanding. Don't give up.
And...my point is made. The prosecution rests.
Yeah, yeah. The only problem is, the top five shareholders of Apple stock are all Apple executives.
https://www.investopedia.com/a...
And nothing about your link contradicts my point: That the biggest individual beneficiaries of Apple pumping their stock price are Apple execs. And not surprisingly, they're the ones making the decisions on the buybacks (which by the way, strengthen their voting positions and enrich them greatly).
So, this all goes back to my original comment, which was a response to someone who claimed that "Apple doesn't benefit when their stock price goes up", and I explained why that was not true.
You might want to figure out what we're talking about before you jump in and beclown yourself with something you know little about.
In the little over an hour since this story about trolls being removed from Twitter was posted, 34 of the 38 comments posted here were from anonymous cowards, and most of those were trolling, with comments like, "only n i g g e r s use Twitter" and "go choke yourself" and "it's an attack against conservatives" and how "the bots stuff is bullshit".
I count five making the case for not voting and three others making the "both sides are trash" argument (which is also a case against voting).
You don't have to go to Twitter to see this effect in action. The problem is, it's not working as well this time around.
The part your missing is that the largest tranches of stock are being held by APPLE EXECUTIVES.
And trust me, bucko, they're not retiring those shares.
They could make the price go down any time they want, just by releasing sales figures again.
OK, I'm going to explain to you why a company cares about a stock price after the first sale. Are you ready? You might want to sit down for this.
Because, in Apple's case, they've been buying back as much stock as they can with their windfall from the Trump tax giveaway. In fact, Apple is one of Apple's biggest shareholders. So if the stock goes up, they will be one of the biggest beneficiaries, after Berskshire Hathaway and Arthur Levinson, who is Apple's biggest shareholder and - ready for this - also the chairman of the board of Apple.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...
Can't make Kool-Aid without water. I think this is a bit more like Heaven's Gate. Maybe everybody will wear the same blockchain Nike sneakers.
Semantics is the branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning. Semantics is at the heart of every philosophical discussion, and critical to developing understanding.
If you're "out" every time semantics enter into a discussion, then you're going to have trouble using logic and language. Don't be that guy. You have a strongly-held position, you should be prepared to defend it using your words.
Considering the totality of human history, neither of those is particularly controversial.
I understand your confusion. The concept of human freedom is distinct from whether or not you are "free" to do something (they spring from different definitions of the word. Doing something because no one will stop you is not the same thing as freedom. No one will stop you from shitting on the floor in the living room in your perfect platonic cave. This does not mean that shitting on said floor will make you free or even demonstrate your freedom.
In the immortal words of a noted ethical philosopher, "freedom ain't free".
I want you to really think about this. Yes, you are free to shit on the floor in your own room, but that does not mean you shitting on the floor in your own room is the same thing as being free.
You mistake the ability to do something with human freedom. They are not the same thing. They're not even in the same realm.
Not always. This is why reason and self-awareness are important.
Not at all. He posited that freedom required ethics. It would be like you're saying, "a hot dog is a subset of relish".
I did not demean or insult his "way". Remember, instruction requires correction.
Oh, come one. Here is what you said, in a direct quote:
If you were trying to avoid the complex concept of freedom, trying to simplify it to, "the ability for anyone, anywhere, to do what they want" was not the way to do it.
The fact is that freedom is not such a complex concept at all, unless you're trying to twist it into some novel shape in order to accommodate some negative behavior.
It is allowed, but your freedom doesn't come with some special superpower that requires private businesses to help you do it. And there is no concept of freedom that requires society not to demonstrate the consequences of your lying. Freedom is not a suicide pact for society. It's why there are no laws about lying privately, but there are laws against lying publicly (libel, slander, etc). A free society gets to protect itself from those who would do it harm.
Any place with koala bears is by definition better.
That's not what it means. That's never been what it means.
The philosopher Rudolph Steiner had the most comprehensive discourse on freedom in his book from the late 1800s, The Philosophy of Freedom. He wrote that any definition of human freedom required an "ethical individualism", that required a level of consciousness of self and one's motivations. In other words, taking a shit on the living room floor just because you need to take a shit and happen to be standing in the living room at the time, is not freedom. Your "freedom" in absence of an ethical framework is basically just trolling.
And if you need to ask, "Well derp, who gets to make up what is ethical?" then you're in luck, because this was also pretty well established by about 300 B.C., and the answer is, "We all do, based upon reason and moral behavior".
Now, if you need to ask, "Why should we be moral at all?", then you need more help than I can provide in one Slashdot comment.
This has been another edition of, "Why you should have taken a few Humanities classes when you were working on your Associates degree in Computer Science."
So, the perfect being, the embodiment of Love, who created the universe made us "defective by design"? Is that your assertion?
I'm pretty sure this underlines the fact that humans were not designed by some intelligent superbeing in the sky.
Actually, the full name of my costume is, "Sexy Angry Leftist Mob Coming to Drink Your Milkshake" because it shows off my ample bosom.
I don't do sense of humor on Halloween. It's part of my costume as an angry Leftist mob coming to drink your milkshake.
Not Halloween parties. This is my day to shed my usual genteel and civil manner with others and let my Id take over.
"Economic anxiety" is a code phrase the mainstream media concocted because they didn't want to admit that pure xenophobic racism was fueling Trump and the entire Republican party. You don't hear it so much any more, because 1) supposedly those people are doing so much better off now, and b) even though they're doing better economically, it hasn't attenuated their xenophobic racism one bit.
Why are you so unwilling to accept the obvious? Observe Trump. Observe his base. Use Occam's Razor.
No, and fuck you. This has been how Trumpist jackoffs have been spinning anything they don't like: "This is how Trump got elected". It's all horseshit and you should not believe it.
Trump got in office by lighting up the lizard brains of racists, nazis and the most fucked up 20% of our society who respond to authoritarians and bullies. He got in office through voter suppression. He got in office because 304 members of the electoral college voted for him, even though most voters did not.
Also, by maximizing the oxycontin vote, as has been proven by peer reviewed studies:
https://jamanetwork.com/journa...
We're not opposed to nuclear power. In fact, you will find more nuclear power plants in Democratic states than in red states.
We're just opposed to letting the same jackoffs who befouled the world with their fossil fuel effluvia be the ones to run those nuclear power plants. Because they cannot be trusted.