pchristensen

I think the main reaction (at least in tech circles) is that companies like Meta have the power, the legal protection, the political cover, and the indifference to shut down anyone on their platform. So making them the sole provider for your tech and communication is a huge risk.

And this incident (negligent takedown of a community on an important day) demonstrates the point perfectly.

That is definitely part of the history, but there is no reality where the USA wouldn't have taken Hawai'i, one way or another, because of it's strategic location and the 19th century attitude toward conquest. Hawai'i couldn't defeat Western powers militarily, especially after disease wiped out so much of the population, and none of the Asian countries had developed enough to compete at that point.

But that inevitability doesn't excuse the specific deceit and treachery around the annexation of Hawai'i.

This is a multi-sided conflict. Ignoring reality and history won't help, even if you feel very strongly that one of those sides is right.

  - 1948 - Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon invade Israel
  - 1956 - Israel invades the Sinai
  - 1967 - Israel preemptively strikes Egypt in response to military buildup 
  - 1973 - Egypt and Syria invade Israel
  - 1982 - Israel invades Lebanon
  - 2006 - Hezbollah attacks Israel

On the contrary, I was using those charters to establish shared blame, rather than singling out Israel for every act of aggression in the conflict.

I’m well aware of the history.

What I meant was, I don’t think Israel is the only guilty party in that decades old conflict, nor the only side with agency to choose how to react in the conflict.

Read the Hamas charter, Iran’s statements about Israel, etc. Israel is not unique in choosing violence.

If you watch Top Gear, do you think it's fine for your data to go to Raytheon? Alcoa? Goldman Sachs? Saudi Aramco?

Netflix has to know what you're watching in order to show it to you. Sony doesn't have to know what you're watching to render HDMI output. All companies are not created equal in every single transaction.

Israel is definitely a threat to its enemies, but even if you think it's all their fault and they deserve it (I do not think that), it's pretty obvious that Israel also faces many threats.

That is only one part of Israeli society.

2nd largest manufacturer by dollar value, not overall activity, employment, share of employment, value relative to other industries, percentage of consumption manufactured domestically, etc etc etc. America's manufacturing is specialized on highly valuable outputs.

Different companies have different track records and incentives with regard to privacy. There may be companies more trustworthy than Apple, but there aren't many companies less worthy than most TV manufacturers.

Over the years, readers learned what to expect from Joel and Paul, which gave them freedom to continue writing in their own style. I'm curious how the same writing would be received today in a very different environment - much more crowded and driven more by social media than the open web, not to mention the shift of attention towards video. I just don't think writers today have access to the attention that tech bloggers of an earlier era built up.

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are indeed Christian.

I havent read PSS but I loved The Vital Question and Transformer. It was so much better than a book on the Krebs cycle had any business being. I probably liked VQ better though.