basetop

North Korea became north korea because of censorship. It is the most censored country in the world. And the point is that there is not "extremism" in north korea because censorship allows only "authoritarianism". That's the world you want to live in?

I agree with you that censorship is extremism and it should be fought against.

Historically, a combined effort by corporate and government interests to take away your rights was called fascism. But I guess if it is the far left doing it, it's okay.

Of course not. They are going to promote it. They are going to give the pro-war "authoritative sources" preferential treatment.

It's funny how so many of the pro-censorship comments here reference ISIS. These same people would defend the pro-war news companies which has spread false propaganda leading to illegal wars that killed millions of innocents in the past few decades.

If these companies are going to censor "extremism", then they should start with the "authoritative sources".

I rather live with the remote threat of extremism rather than live in a censored world.

Would you rather live in North Korea with no extremism?

You have a greater chance of getting struck by lightning than dying from extremism and yet you'd give up your right to free speech for some remote threat?

That kind of thinking is the cause of north korea and nazi germany. Authoritarians always use remote threats to justify taking your rights away.

When Assange exposed Bush/right, the journalists and leftists loved him and the right hated him. He won a bunch of journalist/humanitarian prizes. Now that Assange exposed Hillary/left, the journalists and leftists hate him.

24/7 anti-assange propaganda by foxnews, cnn, msnbc, nytimes, wapo, etc and you get the current anti-assange sentiment.

Trump hates him, Hillary hates him, the establishment hates him because he exposed corruption. Corrupt people don't like their corruption exposed. Also, the elites want to start wars in venezuela, syria, etc so punishing assange and setting an example and possibly discrediting/getting rid of wikileaks is in their interest. Wouldn't want truth to get in the way of more wars.

Considering how politicized wikipedia ( like most of tech industry has gotten in recent years ), doesn't shock me. Jimmy Wales has pretty much come out and said wikipedia will no longer be user driven but ideology driven. Which is one of the reasons the other co-founder of wikipedia has criticized wales and wikipedia.

Wikipedia is great for most generic topics, but for "sensitive" topics, it's pretty much propaganda. Considering how heavily wikipedia is censored by wikipedia itself, maybe a taste of their own medicine will make them change their position, but I doubt it.

Sadly, as more and more people use the internet, it'll be censored more and more by the elites in china, US, russia, EU, etc. What we are seeing is the internet becoming an overt tool of propaganda rather than a platform of discussion or exchange of ideas. Even worse, it seems like there are tons of support for censorship, especially amongst the young "educated" demographics.

It is a declarative language like SQL. If you come from traditional imperative programming side, it is very difficult for you to get used to. I forgot who said it : "With imperative style, you code the precise steps to get what you want. With declarative style, you describe what you want and you let the language/runtime/OS/etc get it for you."

If you're used to C/C++/Java, then SQL or Prolog seems frustrating, unnatural and non-intuitive. But once you have the eureka moment and realize they are declarative, you appreciate the elegance and power of SQL or Prolog.

"Europe has a special place in the venture because it was the final destination of the original Silk Road."

Is this really true? Wasn't China the final destination of the original silk road. Isn't it why we call it the "silk" road.

My understanding was that the silk road was primarily a loose idea of trade links between the middle east, india and china. Europe was an afterthought.

You could argue Europe is the final destination today since it is china wanting to get access to europe. But in the past, wasn't it the other way around?

But more to the point, Europe ( especially western europe ) is significantly wealthier than China. Why is it that China is investing in poorer european countries and not the wealthy western european countries? They can find money to fund wars all over the world, but can't find money to invest in tech/science in central and eastern european countries?

You forget the key words in my comment. "Like a cow". I know you can process some vegetation. I eat a lot of vegetables. But your gut biome can't process vegetation like cows. Go try eating grass or vegetation exclusively and see how well you do.

Lets put it this way, you cannot survive on a locally sourced vegan diet. This is true whether you live in alaska or the amazon. The only way you can survive on a vegan diet by shipping vegetation from all over the world ( tons of environmental destruction and oil use for transport ).

Maybe some vegans have good intentions, but as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. While vegans virtue signal and pat themselves on their backs about being pro-environment, anti-oil, pro-animals, pro-health, pro-local source, pro-natural, their diet is the worst for the environment, kills 1000X more animals than any other diet ( admittedly "small" animals ), needs tons of oil for petrochemical fertilizers and transportation, is anti-local source ( there isn't a place on earth where locally produced vegetation can sustain you ), is anti-natural ( since you need lab produced supplements ), etc.

If you rather kill 1000 billion animals rather than 1 billion animals, then veganism is for you. If you'd rather use 1000X more oil, then veganism is for you. If you'd rather eat a globally sourced oil dependent diet rather than locally sourced diet, then veganism is for you.

Vegans are the worst people pretending to be the best. But that's not exclusive to veganism. It's true for most people who pretend to be the best. Every cult claims to save the world while being vicious and illogical.

That's only for city folk who essentially trap their cats or dogs in their apartments to help with their loneliness. Frankly I think pet ownership in cities should be made illegal because it's harmful to the pets and wild animals.

What a dog is like or a cat is like depends on setting. A dog is far superior to a cat on a farm or out hunting or in nature. You'll notice a lot more "quirks" out in nature with a dog than a cat.

It's why dogs were domesticated long before we domesticated any animal.

The only thing cats have over dogs is their athletic ability. But in terms of human qualities and interactions, dogs pretty much evolved to be with humans. People who think otherwise might have that parasite that cats give to their owners.

Simply not true because humans can't process vegetation like cows can. It's why we feed animals vegetation and we eat the animals.

Also, even if what you said were true, that only applies to human raised livestock. Even under you assertion, eating wild animals ( elk, moose, bison, etc ) would cause far less animal harm than a vegan diet which destroys thousands of animals for each bowl of salad.

So I'm guessing every Vegan Society member is a hunter?

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