That's because it's true from time to time. Journalists, diplomats, NGOs, academics, etc are the top spy vectors.
Do you really think russia is killing "journalists" because they are journalists or because they are spies or worse? Do you think the Saudi's killed kashoggi because he was just a "journalist" or because he was something else? Every major news/media organization in the world ( west, east, south , north ) are tied to the state. Whether you talk about the NYTimes or BBC or Xinhua or RT or Al Jazeera or [fill in the blank], they are all state organizations.
Of course this doesn't mean all journalists are spies. Most are just mindless grunts working for a paycheck like everyone else. But the journalists who are sent to iran, china, russia, etc are more likely than not tied to the state in one way or another.
"More than 340 tech workers at Amazon used the hashtag #AMZNSpeakOut in public statements that condemn the company for not taking sufficient action on the climate crisis."
You seem to have unintentionally conflated "tech workers at Amazon" with "all Amazon employees". It turns out that the majority of Amazon employees are not what we categorize as "tech workers", so you should be using that much smaller figure as your denominator.
No, it'd be more like 3.4 million people protesting stuff. And yes, if 3.4 million people globally cared about something while the other 7.4966 billion didn't … I wouldn't expect to see much motion on it.
As a point of comparison, there are roughly 3.4 million Venezuelan refugees, 3.4 million worldwide deaths from waterborne illnesses, 3.4 million people in the U.S. along with epilepsy, 3.4 million people on food stamps in the U.S., 3.4 million people in the U.S. with a bachelor's degree in psychology …
Alright, so many downvotes and not a single reasonable critique. I was just saying that those people would very easily find new employment, so saying that they're "risking their livelihood" is far-fetched to say the least.
I think you’re being downvoted because you’re downplaying what they are potentially risking. They could be putting hundreds of thousands of dollars in their stock plans at risk. They could be risking getting blackballed. Who knows?
> Alright, so many downvotes and not a single reasonable critique.
It's expected in a "brigadable" topic - anything to do with climate change, veganism, china, gender, etc. My original comment was downvoted within a second of being posted. So it couldn't have been a human reading and downvoting.
As awful as the theft of wealth was, the bigger crime was the prevention of industrialization. India was directly stopped by britain from industrializing because britain didn't want a competitor and rather wanted to use india for resources to power its industrialization. China directly somewhat, but mostly indirectly was prevented from industrialization by western powers ( and eventually japan ) who destabilized china and seized its major ports, industries, resources, etc.
If india and china were able to free itself and industrialize when japan did, india and china would easily have the two largest economies in the world today. It's disheartening thinking about all the wealth, knowledge, goods, discoveries etc the world missed out because of shortsighted greed and brutality.
India before industralisation, did not need industralisation. It was rich because it had the oil of the time, which was cotton, spices, fertile land. The industry was removed and moved to Britain. Britain needed the industry as it was a relatively poor country, India did not.
It had industries, but India did not need these industries. This was not trade, this was loot. Read up on the East India Company. It did not destroy competing industries, they shut down Muslin cloth production in Bengal lol.
It wasn't bullshit. Generally, the merchants and voyagers who reached china were in awe. It was why europeans wanted to get to china in the first place and not the other way around. Even decades after the opium wars, europeans were still in awe even while burning and pillaging.
"... I have done well. The [local] people are very civil, but I think the grandees hate us, as they must after what we did the Palace. You can scarcely imagine the beauty and magnificence of the places we burnt. It made one's heart sore to burn them; in fact, these places were so large, and we were so pressed for time, that we could not plunder them carefully. Quantities of gold ornaments were burnt, considered as brass. It was wretchedly demoralising work for an army. "
Now that the roles are reversed, it's the chinese that are in awe of us. It's why they send so many students, merchants, etc to the US. For a few hundreds years, it was europeans who were as eager to go to china as chinese are now eager to get to the West.
> Chinese Propaganda with their "5000 years old culture".
Yeah, the continuous 5000 years is really a stretch. If they have 5000 years, then might as well say europe has 5000 years or more.
> If you can really talk about a "continuous civilization" for 5000, 3500 or even 2000 years is doubtful.
Even 1000 is doubtful as the mongols conquered china for a while there.
> I am skeptical about the "Chinese Century"
We are 2 decades in and nowhere close to a "Chinese Century". This century will most likely become a multipolar century.
> It wasn't bullshit. Generally, the merchants and voyagers who reached china were in awe.
Well, this was after Rome, and while after the middle ages, still before the industrial revolution.
> It was why europeans wanted to get to china in the first place and not the other way around.
The reason why Europe explored more during that time says more about China than Europe.
"Even decades after the opium wars, europeans were still in awe even while burning and pillaging."
Why should they? Even if they are writings about "superior culture" from that time, we had Roman writers write too about "superior Germanic culture" (bellum germanicum).
By the way, do you know why the Opium war happened? Besides having the inferior technology on the Chinese side? Do you know what the reasons was? It should be a warning to China today.
You pic a time frame, were China was indeed ahead. But I mentioned this time frame myself and it was the only time.
>> The reason why Europe explored more during that time says more about China than Europe.
> No. It says more about Europe than China.
Yes. It basically tells us, that while China was ahead, the culture had big weaknesses. So big, that they left the world for Europe. What happened to Zheng He?
"Yes. China has superior products that europe desired and ran a deficit..."
You are right with the deficit. They did not have superior products, they had unique products (silk, tea, porcelain) and only wanted to export but never buy anything. Not so different from today. They always said, in the arrogance "we don't need anything!". After the military trouble with the west, they realized there was something they should have bought. Technology.
> They did not have superior products, they had unique products (silk, tea, porcelain)
Those products were superior in their respective categories of textiles, beverages and tableware in the sense that wealthy Europeans preferred them over locally made goods.
> they realized there was something they should have bought. Technology.
Already the Ming dynasty had bought Portuguese cannons and were using them very effectively at first against the invading Jurchens. Of course then the Jurchens got their own cannons, conquered all of China and renamed themselves Manchu, establishing the Qing dynasty. They kept buying Western weapons, ships etc. over the following centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_the_Qing_dynasty#T...
However, it seems they didn't improve much on the bought technology, or didn't build up high enough production capacity. The British had started experimenting with adding steam engines to their sailboats in time for the First Opium War, which contributed to their defeat of the Chinese fleet (which included bought Western ships). If the Qing had put their energy into building an even larger fleet of steamboats, they might have been able to avoid a repeat of that defeat, but of course I have the benefit of hindsight.
We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines. You can't attack others like this on HN, nor keep posting in the flamewar style.
> So the argument today that psychiatry lacks any scientific basis and rigor for its practices is still very valid and legitimate.
It's been said that psychiatry is the new religion and psychiatrists the new priests for a reason. Any good actor with enough information can pretend he has a mental illness and fool psychiatrists. Not only that, you can have psychiatrists come up with different diagnoses for the same individual - even to the point of contradicting each other. And there is no scientific way to show one psychiatrist is correct or not.
Just like religion was the best we could do with level of knowledge we had in the past. Psychiatry is sadly the best we can do with the current level of knowledge. It's pretty much voodoo, but it's better than the voodoo that came before it. If neuroscience ( an actual science ) lives up to its potential, then we'll finally be able to toss psychology into the same waste bin we put astrology in and perhaps psychiatry can have a scientific foundation.
> The real effect is that Turkey will get more and more behind the rest of the world because its citizens do not have access to information
Considering the censorship that goes on in Britain, Germany, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, etc, I'm not so sure about your claim.
> Regimes that block access to the truth
Lets not kid ourselves and pretend wikipedia is the "truth". Jimmy Wales has come out as being partisan and agenda-driven like much of tech. Wales/Wikipedia represents "truth" no more than Google or Facebook does. Not only that we know that there are unsavory actors ( including government, ngos and especially PR groups ) who are manipulating wikipedia articles.
Sure, no single person is completely objective, but Wikipedia is not a news outlet with Jimmy Wales as editor-in-chief. It's an encyclopedia crowd-sourced from an immense number of volunteers, all with different knowledge. So popular articles can generally be trusted to be informative, as they were overseen by many people with overlapping knowledge. Surely this is a more objective source of information than most state–run or commercial media where the voices are far fewer and often kept on a short leash of agenda by management (TRT's agenda, for example, being presenting the current Turkish government as the best possible one).
Not just Apple. Microsoft had quite a rally itself over the past decade. So did tesla, netflix, facebook, AMD, Amazon, nvidia, etc. The tech sector did very well during the loose monetary period since the financial crisis.
It's insane looking at Apple and Microsoft. They are valued at about 1.39T and 1.25T respectively. The trillion mark by itself is amazing, but if you just look at the fraction alone, Apple's fraction is nearly 2X Disney and Microsoft's fraction is 2.5X Tesla. And microsoft pays you a dividend every quarter.
Rising tides lift all boats, but some more than others.
You have to pay to watch movies at the movie theater. The movies you rent from the library are free. And if your library is part of a network of libraries, then you probably could find any movie you want to watch.
Mix that with youtube, netflix, prime, etc, and you really have little incentive and time to go to the theater.
> The problem is that on Twitter they’ve become more like activists rather than journalists/reporters.
They've always been activists. Twitter just makes it visible to the public while in the past, their biases were shielded behind the fake PR-driven reputation of an institution.
The first newspapers in america were created to lie and spread political ideology. And that has been the case ever since.
"As for what is not true you will always find abundance in the newspapers." – Thomas Jefferson
"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle." – Thomas Jefferson
I wish everyone was taught about the history of the news industry. Also, I wish every media company was forced to notify/warn their audience on who founded the company and why. Like how cigarette and tobacco companies have to put warning labels to notify their customers of the dangers of the product they are selling.
Do you really think russia is killing "journalists" because they are journalists or because they are spies or worse? Do you think the Saudi's killed kashoggi because he was just a "journalist" or because he was something else? Every major news/media organization in the world ( west, east, south , north ) are tied to the state. Whether you talk about the NYTimes or BBC or Xinhua or RT or Al Jazeera or [fill in the blank], they are all state organizations.
Of course this doesn't mean all journalists are spies. Most are just mindless grunts working for a paycheck like everyone else. But the journalists who are sent to iran, china, russia, etc are more likely than not tied to the state in one way or another.