darkpuma

I don't care about freedom of the tobacco industry, nor the freedom of teenagers to smoke, nor the freedom of adults to smoke flavored cigarettes. I take it you can't identify any other 'harm.'

> If nicotine addiction is relatively harmless without conventional cigarettes, who cares?

Because we aren't doing anybody any favors when we permit the industry to give teenagers a chemical addiction to their commercial product, even if their product were harmful in no ways other than financial.

(Yes, I also object in strong terms to other addictive substances in consumer products, don't even bother replying with whataboutism.)

> "Changing the flavor sounds needlessly draconian, as adults like apple and bubblegum, too."

I heard this same sort of thing back when Obama banned flavored cigarettes. I wasn't very sympathetic to it back then and I'm still not. But with the passage of several years I think we should be able to evaluate the impact of banning flavored cigarettes. Have any adults been unduly impacted by this restriction? I can't imagine how anybody would be, but there is no reason to speculate since it's been several years. Is there any demonstrable harm caused by the banning of fruity flavor cigarettes?

NFS will give you better performance if you've got a trusted LAN.

I don't think "war with the US" was meant to imply "A war in which America was on it's own and did everything"; that's a cynical read of it. A less cynical read would be that "war with the US" means "war in which the US was a participant."

Germany did declare war with the US, hence there was in fact a war with the US. Of course, Germany was also at war with lots of other people. All Americans are taught that in schools. It's called a World War for a reason and people do understand that, even when they're going out of their way to mention it. If Americans don't mention Canadian participation much it's simply because they don't talk about Canada much in the first place. It's not because they're unaware that Canada participated in the war. Canada is a commonwealth country, of course they participated in the war. Everybody here knows that.

Americans do call it a World War, don't they? I think you're being a bit too cynical.

I think you're discounting the roll of America's massive industrial output, which shipped more than 17 million tons of goods to the Soviet Union throughout the war, including more than 400,000 trucks/jeeps, 7,000 tanks, 11,000 airplanes, and 1.75 million tons of food, just to name a bit.

Relative to national size, the Soviet Union received more tanks and planes from the British than the Americans, but the American trucks in particular were incredibly important for the Soviets. During that same period the Soviet Union only produced a fraction of that many trucks and Soviet trucks were frankly inferior trucks. Beyond the obvious logistic advantages of trucks in a war largely characterized by mobility, receiving American trucks allowed the Soviet Union to dedicate more of it's (relatively limited) industrial capacity to the production of tanks and airplanes.

Incidentally, here is something else American students aren't taught (I wonder if Japanese students are?): The leadership of the Japanese military considered the emperor to be a figurehead and after the 2nd atomic bombing when the Emperor was preparing to surrender, the staff office of the Ministry of War as well as several members of the Imperial Guard seized control of the Imperial Palace, with the goal of preventing surrender. They failed of course, but only due to the bravery and good luck of a few people in the Palace. The point here being, there were high ranking elements of the Japanese military that wanted to continue fighting even after the second bomb, and even with the Soviets preparing an invasion. Nationalism is a hell of a drug...

> "aren't those ads targeted to the viewer (you) rather than the content of the video?"

That shouldn't matter; youtube should not be showing adult ads to an adult when the adult is watching a children's show. Did nobody at youtube consider the probability that the adult's account is watching a children's TV show because there is a child in the room and the adult put the tv show on?

Oh, I completely agree. Youtube should stop pretending they have a service suitable for children. Youtube should be making it clear to consumers that their service is for mature viewers only because they are incapable of vetting content for children with the accuracy consumers rightfully expect from a children's entertainment company.

It may be the case that they do it with sufficient accuracy to stay in business, but insufficient accuracy to provide quality content streams for children.

My above comment seems a bit unpopular, but I really don't think youtube is deliberately trying to show inappropriate content to kids. I think it's happening despite their efforts to do something about it. In other words, they are trying and failing. Maybe I'm giving them too much credit, but you've got to remember a lot of youtube employees have kids too.

> " The fact that this isn't a difficult problem to solve is the strongest indication that A) YouTube knows exactly what's going on"

It may also be the case they're totally incapable of doing it right, despite trying their best. I'm not sure that possibility really changes the situation though; either way the outcome is not quality entertainment for kids.

If kids 'need' TV shows to watch and parents need a source of children's entertainment they can trust, isn't that were we normally expect an organization like PBS to fill the need?

With an organization like PBS, they have a reputation of manually curating what they show, while something like Youtube Kids just has automated systems and manual reports to supplement it. It's hard to believe Google/Youtube could ever provide automated curation as well as PBS. How many media articles that boil down to "youtube showed this to kids but PBS never would have" are we going to have before people get the idea?

Yep, people saying Breezewood isn't special probably haven't been there. The experience isn't something you can really derive from looking at any picture. I've driven across America numerous times, been to more rest stops and exit towns than I could ever remember. Breezewood is a uniquely frustrating experience.