> I know, I live in one such apartment. I have a very good relationship with my landlord. I'd be among the first to profit if NYC decided to force landlords to lower rent. It still does not feel right.
Then leave your rent stabilized apartment. What do you think rent stabilized apartments are? They are apartments with legally and artificially lowered rents. Would you feel better if they called it stabilizing rent rather than lowering rent?
> The cell is a living organism because we have largely defined the cutoff for living organisms at the cell;
Isn't that because all living organisms are composed of one or more cells ( cell theory )? It isn't an arbitrary cutoff but rather a result of observation that the smallest thing we can confidently called a living organism is a cell and all organisms are composed of cells.
> it's much more interesting to consider if viruses are machines or not and that really is a hot-topic in the biology community.
They are not self-contained self-replicating machines. But are they machines nonetheless? I'd say they are non-self-replicating machines. But I guess it all depends on how you define machine. Just like how do you define life or living determines whether viruses are alive or not.
> Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait?
Define unsubstantive comments and flamebait. Is this not unsubstantive flamebait?
"What propaganda? That it would be nice if Britain wasn't being beaten in the supercomputing industry by a totalitarian dictatorship and warmongering dictatorship? As a Brit, I think it's just common sense rather than propaganda."
That's the definition of flamebait and propaganda. But it wasn't flagged. Why do you allow unsubstantive comments and flamebait while flagging every substantive comment that responds to and opposes flamebait?
This comment I replied to dehumanized arabs by calling them extremists and barbarians.
"I don't know much about Israel or the politics, but just want to say I deeply admire the country. A shining light of democracy, technological progress, innovation, and prosperity in the midst of many countries ruled by dictators and extremist barbarians more concerned with infighting and grandstanding than the progress of their people."
Who did you flag? You flagged me and let this bigot alone. It was only after days of complaints that you finally flagged him. Did you give him a warning? Of course not. You wrote "As for anti-Semitic comments, I've personally banned plenty of accounts for posting like that." You do realize that arabs are semites. How come you haven't banned boeingUH60 for his antisemitism? Or is antisemitism directed against arabs okay?
> We don't really care about your views on the underlying topics
No you do. Anyone who reads my flagged comments and the comments I replied to can see it.
You can say all kinds of nasty shit about russians, chinese, arabs, indians, etc but that's not flamebait. It's only flamebait when you defend them. So I'll keep fighting flamebait til you learn to do your job better. In the meantime I share your concern about unsubstantive comments and flamebait and will do my best to deal with them accordingly.
Edit:
You forgot to flag another of boeingUH60's flamebait in the same thread. You couldn't be bothered to read the thread to flag his responses?
pwsh never took off because it doesn't fit the spirit of unix system administration. pwsh is object based while on unix systems, it's all about shredding text. If you are on windows, use powershell as it makes your life easier. But I don't think anyone wants to use powershell on unix, linux, etc.
> But this just does not feel right. It feels like tyranny of the majority.
It's not tyranny. It's just democracy. Asset owners get lots of tax deductions, capital gains benefits and other goodies because they are the majority who voted it for themselves.
> Ordering them to decrease the rents is not that different from confiscating part of their property.
There have been rent stabilized apartments in new york for decades now. It's nothing new and it's nothing like confiscating property.
> I hope the US takes the EU approach and regulates what data is collected
The US and the EU have different goals. EU's goal is to protect their control of propaganda within their borders. Ours is to control propaganda within our borders and protect our social media companies from foreign competitors. There is a reason why the government attacks on tiktok coincides with youtube shorts, facebook reels, instagram reels, etc. EU doesn't have a social media company to champion so they don't have that extra burden of protecting market share.
> I've been living in Turkey for some years now and I promise you, it's not fun.
Tiktok isn't going to go away. Too many companies have invested in tiktok for it to be simply banned. Tiktok is most likely going to be "confiscated". Tiktok parent will most likely be forced to sell tiktok to a US based company.
No country should allow foreign social media to spread propaganda within their borders. Every country should nationalize social media within their borders. It's insane that only the US, China and Russia seem to be protecting their social media space. I just don't get it. Social media can be used to brainwash, divide and destroy any country. It's almost like most of the world's leaders are incompetent.
Yet you fail to name a single one. No revolution in history was by the populace. All revolutions in history have been a group of elites trying to pry power away from another group of elites. From the american revolution to the french to the bolshevik all the way to the "color revolutions", it's always one group of elites leading the charge.
> Instagram democratizes the mental illness that used to only affect child stars and the hollywood famous.
It also democratizes the clout, power and protection that the hollywood famous have. Without social media harvey weinstein would not be in jail. A "relative nobody" wouldn't have been able to "out shout" and expose a media mogul like weinstein.
As with everything, there are positive and negative aspects.
> I find interesting that HBO, a US TV network, has become a worldwide brand name in a way that CBS,[1] NBC, and ABC didn't;
That's because CBS, NBC and ABC are national broadcast networks while HBO is a cable network, like CNN. CNN is broadcast internationlly.
> only BBC has also transcended its home country this way,
That's only because of the british empire. Who but their former slave colonies watches BBC?
> None except Netflix has yet gained worldwide recognition for their shows and brands, yet, though (not even Disney and The Mandalorian).
Isn't Friends the most popular tv show worldwide? People may watch it on Netflix but it was originally broadcast on NBC as part of the "Must see tv" thursdays.
One of my favorite stories concerning primes is how fermat thought he discovered the formula for primes ( Fermat's primes ). He only checked his formula for the first few primes and assumed it worked for all primes. Euler checked for the next prime using fermat's formula and discovered the number to be composite and proved fermat's formula didn't work.
There is always value in truthful statements. You are right that 91 is not the smallest number as was implied by the parent. -91 is. After all it was the parent who brought in the negative integers into the mix.
> Oppressive regimes (of whatever sort) can only persist with the consent of the populace
No. You are believing in modern nonsense about "people power". The populace has never done anything. "Proles and animals are free" for a reason. Any change has always been done by the elites.
The american populace didn't rise up against britain. It was only a tiny portion of the elites. The slaves didn't rise up against the masters. The populace never rises up because they have no means to do so. No more than cows can rise up against the ranchers.
History has always been elites vs the next level of elites.
> Find the amount of oppression that people are willing to put up with, and you've found the amount of oppression they are subjected to.
Nope. The elite oppress as much as they need to. The opinions of the populace never matters - in a monarchy, democracy or any other form of government.
It's astounding how much "research" is part of an ad campaign. Company and industry wants to sell you X and they fund studies to say X is good or competitor Y is bad. It's all marketing.
Then leave your rent stabilized apartment. What do you think rent stabilized apartments are? They are apartments with legally and artificially lowered rents. Would you feel better if they called it stabilizing rent rather than lowering rent?