I know two very successful startup founders who were forced into bootcamps in Texas. One of which is a really honest, trustworthy, productive engineer.
The other is a masterful conman who has made 10s of millions of dollars as a developer “evangelist” who in the 20 years I’ve known him has never much launched a product or committed a line of code.
If you get a few coffees in him he’ll tell you, “It’s a huge scam. I don’t work. I get up on stage at 30 conferences or workshops per year and say the things the ‘thoughtleaders’ are saying, but with a devilish grin and a couple of sarcastic jokes.. and that’s why I live in a mansion”.
> Well deserved. Apple Daily is not pro democrazy but pro-chaos. It routinely manufatures fake news and rumors that only matched by the mainstream fake news.
Whereas the chinese dictatorship is a bastion of transparency, honesty and democracy?
Monarchies are the greatest scam ever perpetrated on modern republics. Spend a few hundred years invading, colonialising, conquering, raping, pillaging, committing genocide, destroying countless civilizations and enslaving many millions.
In the end, the taxpayers are forced to keep ensure you and your heirs remain billionaires without having to do more than wave your hand at a public appearances and attempt to stay out of the tabloids.
(I prefer using dollars because it has a more vague meaning of currency whereas the word “pound” has 30 meanings and uses on Wordnik. The English language sucks, but I digress.)
> It's precisely because morality is viewed as fluid that the world is in the mess it's in. And yes, it's in a mess, after all, it's when a nation forgets God, that tyrants forge their chains
Your argument is that pious nations are more peaceful than non pious nations? That nations which believe in an abrahamic god will always be “moral”? That somehow believing in a violent, perverted, vengeful, haateful 3,000 year old sky daddy myth from Palestine makes everything good?
English tax dollars pay for an unfathomably large amount of money preserving antiquity, much of which was flat out stolen from other nations or came on the backs of slaves.
The whole “give one inbred family billions of dollars per year to maintain their long-since-neutered monarchy” scam always impresses me. As if the Trump family convinced tax payers to give his family a couple of billion dollars every year for the hell of it.
This is only partially true. There is no “policy” aim any city do do this.
What does happen is that charity groups like catholic churches or st vincent de paul will buy homeless and runaways one-way tickets, but only if they have a verifiable destination.
Just the mere idea of visiting the USA gives me more stress than I care to experience. After 7 years away I don’t even have a desire to visit.
It takes a solid 5 years to get over what my friends call “that American Fight or Fight instinct”, and I don’t miss the amount of fear,distrust and readiness to fight that is always in the back of your mind being from the USA.
Also, remotely siphoning $$$ off of bay area tech companies while living in the third world helps with stress a lot.
Consider a significant number of Googlers are upper middle class kids, possibly on the spectrum, who go straight from the ivy league to google’s cafeteria. These made up numbers seem reasonable and accurate to them because they never had to take care of themselves in the real word.
> Then again Turkey could go full Islamist crazy and be more Saudi Arabia and Erdoğan could declare himself president for life.
It would never happen. Turks are Turks first and Muslim second. Erdogan is a neo-ottomanist, not a salafist.
He’s as much of a Muslim as Trump is a Christian.
Now I do see him trying to sell more of the nation to Saudis and Emirates while also forcing enough pro-sunni legislation down our throats to keep the Conservative / Nationalists happy and ensure that Saudi / Qatari investment coming and to ensure he can profit like a bandit off of his pre-doomed “Islamic Finance” initiatives.
However, Turks are fairly centrist by American standards. They drink, a lot (alcohol tax revenue is crucial to the government, as well as direct sales as the government still owns some of the Raki and Beer production), smoke weed, party, are getting married and having children later in life, and fewer.
I watched the sweaty shirtless guys beating mislead soldiers to death during the failed coup a few years ago. They weren’t shouting allahu akbar while they did it. They waved Ataturk flags and sang the Izmir march.
> What about the Iranian approach to the U.S.? What if Iran stopped development of nuclear weapons and attacking U.S. forces in Iraq and elsewhere, or sponsoring organizations that are destabilizing the Middle East? It's not like they're not also agitating the situation. It's in their best interest because that way they can maintain power.
It takes threee to tango in this situation
Provocations and aggressions that maybe the US should perhaps stop doing:
- presidential candidates gleefully parodying beach boy songs about bombing Iran. [1]
- spending many 10s of billions of America’s hard earned tax dollars surroinsing Iran with several dozen military bases. [2]
- Assassinating or supporting Israel in assassinating Iranian scientists abroad.[3]
- or assassinating Iranian military leaders [4]
- Organizing violent military coups to replace democratically elected governments with Radical Islamist puppet dictatorships [5], [6]
- Gatekeeping nuclear power by releasing destructive viruses into the world to destroy Iranian Nuclear research labs [7]
Nobody has the control issues you do bro. Smoke some fucking weed and get laid.