The slow ethnic cleansing and land theft being perpetrated by a close American ally, supported by many of the biggest American corporations and capitalists, seems a comparable situation.
The whole LGBTXYZ discussion is somewhat weird to me. How about letting people's sexual preferences be their own business? I would rather be free from knowing what goes on in people's bedrooms, I don't think this is an unreasonable request.
Your example of the HR person who has to make decisions about medical issues obviously falls in a different category, but even in this case discretion could be assumed to be the default.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned: 'Friends' in your teens and twenties are often really about having someone to hang around with while looking for a mate. So you won't look like a lone loser at the club, or in social situations, or so that you get to meet members of the opposite/preferred sex through the group.
Once people get married and have kids, all of that falls away, and so do the 'friends'. You don't hook up with new people, because either they want partners to ride shotgun with them while hunting for a mate, or they are set up too. What's left are people you have a real connection with, usually people you were friends with since you were kids, and those few family members you can stand being around. For many, that is a small to non-existing group. What's left is your wife and kids, and honestly? The best company there is, IMHO. And I am not worried about what I will do when the kids leave and my wife divorces me, silly me.
To paraphrase Steve Jobs, self-driving is a feature, not a product.
I'm pretty sure once LIDARs become cheap commodity hardware then every line will have self-driving, just like it has happened with every other new thing in automobiles since forever.
I don't know that the editors and writers profit directly, beyond their salaries. More like the companies are run at a loss in order to control the conversation. Of course seats are filled with people that push the line the owners prefer.
I think the big papers (New York Times, Washington Post) have always been the voice of the establishment. I remember reading their editorials broadly condemning the labor movement while it was fighting for basic rights (and being slaughtered by public and privatized law enforcement) in the middle of the 19th century. Perhaps at times more humanist than others, but nevertheless.
I also think it is really obvious that it would be this way. There is hardly any money in selling newspapers, even well before the internet completely obliterated that business. But shaping public opinion? That is valuable beyond measure, for the right (moneyed) interest groups.
Since this is a very politicized topic, as a Muslim I feel it is worth pointing out that there is nothing in Islam that promotes having many children per se (this topic is even omitted in the linked Wikipedia article).
On the contrary, Islam does not forbid contraception or even abortion, up until four months of gestation.
I found the information about haplogroups interesting. It shows the migration paths out of Africa for both your mother's and father's ancestors (only men show the father's haplogroup). Not only was the background information about human migration very interesting, but the results also tallied well with our own speculations about parents' heritage.
Questions have also been asked as to whether Danske received special treatment from its regulator, which was until May headed by the bank's former chief financial officer.
I.e. the body that had sole responsibility to enforce anti-money laundering on the bank was its former CFO. SMH...
Toward the end of 2013, an internal email changed everything. Entitled "Whistleblowing disclosure — knowingly dealing with criminals in Estonia branch", it was written by Howard Wilkinson, Danske's head of markets in Estonia. Its content was explosive. Detailing a "near total process failure", he referred to a UK limited liability partnership called Lantana Trade which had opened an account at Danske in Estonia the previous year.
Its account was marked "dormant" at UK Companies House and yet it had a credit balance at Danske of $965,418 on the same date. A colleague later told Mr. Wilkinson that the bank did not know who the beneficial owners were but "apparently it was discovered that they included the family of Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, and the FSB [Russia's intelligence service]", according to the email seen by the FT.
Danske's internal audit team was sent to investigate the Estonia operation in January 2014. Yet Mr. Wilkinson complained in a further email in April that despite his warnings "no related client account has been closed by management" and "there appears to have been no attempt by management to identify the full scope of the problem of UK LLPs submitting false accounts".
He reported that a senior executive told him "[Danske Bank] is not the police" and "[Danske Bank] has no obligation to report false client accounts to the authorities." That same day, he resigned and sent an email to Copenhagen, signing off: "Sad to say, it seems to me that things are totally broken here."
Wow. So internal whistleblowing procedures are token efforts which are actually shortcuts to get yourself 'resigned'. I become less and less surprised when reality turns out to match Dilbert one-to-one. Which is sad.
> I don't doubt he's capable of doing that with his background
Which background is that? He has an undergraduate degree in economics and a bachelor's degree in physics.
I respect the guy but he clearly puts a lot into managing his image. As a relevant example, he used to claim to have been in the Ph.D. program at Stanford, but had to retract that (I leave it as an exercise to the reader to find that on Google).
This sentence embodies what repulses me about current Silicon Valley culture: The self-satisfied claim to San Francisco 60's heritage, only, you know, with peace and love being replaced by greed and egotism.
Steve Jobs was not deeply technical, nor was he ever a programmer. And in a way, that makes his accomplishments even more impressive.
I think one of his key strengths was the ability to know if someone knew what they were talking about and to recognize outstanding people - in any field. So many Apple stories, from early times to more recent, are about how he always hired the very best people, and then somehow made them do the best work they ever had. I think he could just tell if someone had the fire inside them, and knew how to fan those flames.
That is incredibly cool. Genius way to preserve, and even honor, the old, even though it is replaced by something newer. Wish we did this kind of thing more.
The self-conciousness, the fawning... This was a toe-curling read. And then it turns out ultimately Steve Jobs did not give a flying fuck about watches but happily wore a cheapo Seiko on the few occasions that he did use one. Ouch. Yet the author's great regret is that he did not get to spend ~$50,000 on that watch, as if it is has some special significance, rather than being a statement of the opposite, that takes missing the point to another level.
I'm not saying there is not a finer point to extremely expensive watches, beyond the status symbolism, but this article kind of makes me think, no.
> hen I get a text message, it gets archived to Gmail with a label so it's searchable. And every incoming/outgoing/missed call puts an entry with the details and timestamp in my calendar
What? I have used Android phones for many years and had no idea that is possible. Teach me your ways!
Saab designs have always been timeless (mostly pre-GM of course) and still look great today.
The easiest fix for the balance chain issue on 9000s is to simply remove it. It's a whole subsystem only there to counter vibrations for smoother engine operation. This speaks to your point about over-engineering, but is also an illustration of the kind of design that makes the car feel so good.
