Sure, anyone can be an activist but it is clear that academia has been turned into an activist training centre. It is also remarkable how these supposedly intelligent people go astray when it comes to the causes they support, from supporting Hamas to defending those who'd throw them off high buildings or putting them against the wall if they got their chance.
Training would imply that it made effective activists, but activism from these quarters tends to alienate outsiders. It's more purity spiral than activism.
Well, no, I don't think training necessarily would make them effective given the context of academic activism. If the whole world would look like a college campus it might but there is such a big disconnect between the real world and academia that even the best trained academic activist ends up doing just what you describe. In some parts of society it has worked though, viz. the rise of the 'DEI' phenomenon driven in part by the infusion of academics into organisations who used their positions to bring in more academics of similar mindset while shunning those who did not subscribe to the desired narrative. Where it used to be said that it did no harm to let those silly students larp revolutionaries because they'd drop all that when they re-entered 'the real world' the truth turned out to be reversed in that they took all that ideological baggage with them into society.
Clearly that one although it is unclear if she really wanted to run him over. That was a sorry event on all sides from the 'professional protesters' who think they can just interfere with police operations without running any risk themselves - the woman's partner screamed 'why did you use real bullets' - to the policeman who, having been dragged along by an illegal several weeks ago was clearly hair-triggered when it comes to vehicular assault.
The lesson to be learned here is that a) protesters should realise that they are bound by the same laws as all others no matter how virtuous they consider their causes to be and that interfering with police operations comes with real risks and b) the combination of such actions by protesters with the experiences police officers have had during encounters with their targets can make them react in ways which it can be assumed they'd normally not have done. Shooting that woman did not reduce the risk for the police officer, at all. It actually increased the risk of damage to him or others because wounded or dead people behind the wheel can turn vehicles into unguided projectiles.
You still seem to need a Google account to be able to use the hardware you just paid for. I don't have one, don't want one either. I've been using Android without Google for about 15 years now but will hold off on getting a new device until I'm sure I can continue using it without getting a Google account.
I'm using stock Android with a bunch of F-droid apps and no Google account. I've never installed anything from Play and don't feel like I'm missing anything.
I don't use F-Droid, but I've been an Android user for several years on two different devices and I've never associated a Google account with a device. I've installed all my software from APK downloads from the open source project site releases they came from.
It was really nice last year when I moved to a new device. I restored my last SMS, call log, and contact backup with the open source app I use for that, then loaded the rest of the apps I use from their APKs. It was a lot like getting a new PC. Very enjoyable.
On some devices I run custom distributions (mostly LineageOS), others I just root and de-fang by removing all objectionable content including the Google bits. In all cases I put on F-Droid with a few configured repos to get the applications I want. On a few devices I also add some proprietary apps which are more or less mandatory - electronic ID (BankID) being the main one - either by manually installing it or through Aurora Store, an alternative play store front-end which does not require a Google account. No Google, no problem and no real hassle. My current main phone - a Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro - is 8 years old, I already have a replacement in a drawer but have not configured it yet because I first want to make a cover for it. Even though it is 8 years old it works fine, the battery holds for 2 days and all applications I need still run on it. The oldest device in use is 15 years old and also works fine but it can no longer be used as a phone since 3G was switched off where I live.
As long as there is no verification of the results and their relevancy in reaching higher numbers it means as much as nearly having won the lottery by guessing 9 of the 12 numbers correctly: you did not win the lottery.
Why did you feel the need to add this statement before saying something which might be taken as agreeing with something the man said? Why does it always have to come down to who said something instead of what that person said? Just say you agree with the statement, don't mention who said it. If the knee-jerk-downvote brigade comes to punish you just eat the downvotes in the knowledge that the downvoters just can't cope with dissenting opinions.
Maybe there are but I see far more sufferers from MDS who just have to let everyone know they really, really don't like the man. I don't know him so I don't know whether I'd like him or not. I do know he's achieved a number of remarkable things but he also seems to have a tendency to overestimate what can be achieved within a given time frame and budget which seems to make him promise more than he can deliver. There's plenty of business people who promise more than they can deliver though while there aren't that many who have managed to initiate large-scale pie-in-the-sky projects which more or less turned fantasy into reality like he's done. When it comes to things like space exploration I think it is a good thing that someone with some vision of what can be and the means to make it work is set on achieving his goal of going to ... well, whether it be Mars in the end or a permanent lunar base we'll see. Out into space at least. I think we need new frontiers to explore, something to look forward to instead of the nihilistic doom and gloom 'humans bad, they destroy the planet' narrative which has been pushed for far too long.
If this is how you think about your own species I'd hate to learn what you think about other species. Nihilism is really a horrible substitute for religion, all doom and gloom and no salvation in sight.
> We have to solve the problems we’ve created here before going anywhere off planet will become even slightly relevant.
No, it is not a relevant point, at all. There are close to 9 billion people on Earth, more than enough for some of them to focus on expanding human life out into the solar system no matter how small the chance of success. Others can work on the problems 'we created here'. If our predecessors thought like that we'd never have explored the oceans, found new continents, developed industry, took to the skies, made the first tentative jumps into space. Let those who have the means and capabilities to do so explore and 'conquer' those 'new frontiers'. If you insist on solving problems here on earth I'd say get crackin'. If you succeed we'll raise a statue for you and place it next to the ones we made for those who conquered Mars or built that giant wheel in the sky or whatever.
Imagine what you would say if they actually did so: invest (more than) a few billions in making part of Mars habitable by, say, building one of those 50's SF domes or something outlandish like that. Move there with their billions locked up in the new colony. Make it work, prove it actually was feasible. Manage to stay alive long enough to make the colony largely self-sustaining. Never mind the how, never mind the likeliness of it happening, just be John Lennon for a second and Imagine.
Those fat cats took their billions to create their own colony on planet X while we're left here on a dying Earth
Why should those greedy capitalists get their own planet? They should open it up to refugees from Earth!
Mars wasn't built by Musk & Co., it was built by $(insert_favourite_group) and belongs to them
Etcetera. Same old story, same old song. Quite a tiring one at that. I'd say let them have a go at creating a Mars colony and if they succeed - which is rather unlikely - they get to decide what to do with their settlement.
> The clearest example of lobbying (chat control) has repeatedly been struck down.
They can try as often as they want and they only have to win once. We - as in those who don't want this Orwellian monster to be written into law - have to win all the time.
That comment was quickly voted down. It is unclear whether this was the usual "don't like this person so I'll downvote all his last posts" or targeted at my statement on how these proposals keep on popping up no matter how often the people - in Greek that spells 'δημόσιο' or 'dèmosio', the root of 'democracy' - have made clear they don't want it.
One reason to downvote it is because laws having some stability is generally a good thing. It also doesn’t prevent laws being passed that strengthen the right to privacy.
The argument is a too simplistic criticism of the legislative process. And it’s independent from criticizing the actual laws that are attempted to be passed. It applies equally to desirable and undesirable laws.
In that case the down-voters could have replied with something like that instead of knee-jerk-pressing that down-vote arrow in an attempt to get rid of a dissenting opinion. I would have responded by pointing out that the repeated attempts at pushing through laws which are clearly unwanted by the voting public has no stabilising effect and only undermines the trust in the legislative process. That my argument of 'they can try as often as they wish because they only have to win once while we have to win every time' is not simplistic but realistic.
I would be interested to hear your reasoning behind that statement by the way, in what way is it 'simplistic'? Why should it be acceptable for politicos to keep on attempting to push through unwanted laws while it is clearly not allowed for e.g. commercial entities to keep on pestering you with unwanted offers? Here's the very same EU on the subject [1]:
Persistent unwanted offers
Under EU law, companies may not make persistent and unwanted offers to you by telephone, fax, e mail or any other media suitable for distance selling.
I propose a similar law for politicos:
Persistent unwanted law proposals
Under EU law, politicians may not make persistent attempts to push through law proposals which have been voted down several times before.
The law text needs to make clear that it is not allowed to keep on trying to push through essentially identical law proposals which have been voted down by $X sessions of the EU parliament. After having been voted down $X times there is a mandatory moratorium of $Y years before a similar law can be brought up to the vote again.
> Why should it be acceptable for politicos to keep on attempting to push through unwanted laws
Think about what would happen if it was somehow prohibited to propose “sufficiently similar” laws again. Opposing parties would start gaming that rule by proposing the weakest flawed version possible for a law, so that it is rejected, which will in consequence prevent a better version of it from being admissible for consideration. Factions being in the majority will proactively propose and reject some laws just in case that, in the next legislative period, other factions gain majority. Similarly, minority factions will be discouraged from even proposing any laws, for fear of canceling future chances when they are rejected. Furthermore, who will judge what is “similar enough” to fall under the rule? Politicians will just start playing games to make it just dissimilar enough to go through.
Sometimes you downvote things because they are so obviously amiss that they aren’t even worth discussing. I understand that it can be frustrating if you don’t think they are amiss, but that’s just how it is.
Well, no, that is not a realistic scenario. If a law like the one I propose was in place it would be up to the politicos to make sure their law proposals would be up to snuff before they put them up for a vote in the knowledge that they could not keep on adjusting a line here, changing a word there to finally have it pass. If the proposed law is relatively uncontroversial it will pass the vote. If it is totally abysmal it won't pass. If it is debatable it will be debated. That is the political process as it was meant to be: come up with solutions to problems.
The whole spiel about 'majority' and 'minority' factions is not relevant here, what matters is whether the laws they propose stand a chance of gaining enough votes to pass. Assuming that the parliament is representative of the voter base - and that is a very big assumption - it can be stated that laws which are voted down are voted down because the people - the dèmos in other words - don't want those laws to be passed.
Do you think it is a good thing to have more laws on the books? If so I do not agree. I'd rather have fewer laws, the fewer the better. Regulate those things which need to be regulated, leave the rest to the people. It is up to the people to decide what needs to be regulated, not to those who have based their careers around regulation. There's a big conflict of interest between the needs of the former and those of the latter which has been tipped towards those of the latter in heavily bureaucratic institutions like the EU. I'd like to see the balance tip more towards the needs of the people, not the bureaucrats.
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