Israel is purging the land it wants to take, which is contained within the "borders" of what Israel considers its own land, whose citizens are restricted by the Israeli military, socially and economically.
Yeah, civilians die. But Israel targets civilians, not combatants.
> Israel is purging the land it wants to take, which is contained within the "borders" of what Israel considers its own land
Israel left Gaza in 2005. Why leave the land “ which is contained within the "borders" of what Israel considers its own land”?
> Yeah, civilians die. But Israel targets civilians, not combatants.
You would have to prove that. So far, if targeting civilians was the goal, then Israel why send ground forces into Gaza in the first place? It makes no sense.
> oh no, not students checks notes exercising their rights.
Yes, this was the joke that the news were calling the people rioting "young scholars". I'm not sure you're meant to repeat this crazily positive characterisation still, unless you're also paid by whomever funds the media to look silly.
> > you get "fiery but mostly peaceful" campus protests
> oh no, not students checks notes exercising their rights.
Check your notes again. At least part of the "fiery" was not within students' rights. The "not peaceful" was definitely not within students' rights. Harassing Jewish students is not within students' rights; not being harassed by other students is.
Didn't know the IDF was active in UK universities.
Students can be stupid and this is a special demographic that thinks it was touched by Jews. And yes, if they use violence and intimidation, their hobby perhaps needs some examination.
For the unrelated conflict in the middle east it certainly isn't helpful in preventing any death. On the contrary, they often demand and justify "holy" wars, fueling even more hatred.
"Here we report five hiring experiments in which faculty evaluated hypothetical female and male applicants, using systematically varied profiles disguising identical scholarship, for assistant professorships in biology, engineering, economics, and psychology."
The study found that that female applicants have 2x the positive vote rate as identically qualified male applicants when applying for faculty STEM positions (the study investigated other fields too). I'm not sure how this isn't evidence of bias.
If I create identically qualified black and white applicants and the latter are reviewed positively at 2x the rate as the former is not not evidence of racial bias?
Err, "today" today? Today looks more like May 15 to me.
The 19th century closed on December 31, 1900, right? Do you disagree with that? That the 20th century began on 1/1/1901? Not in dispute?
I would say we're at 124.5 years after its close today, if you really mean today. I suppose if you want to be sloppy and round up we could achieve 125, but technically, we're still, like, 7.5 months away from December 31st.
Technology increases the size of the pie, but it is always possible to make the distribution of slices extremely unequal. More gdp and tech does not guarantee a better quality of life, as many countries today demonstrate.
Musk waving a chainsaw is one out of many hundreds of millions of rich people. And there's reason to believe that he believes he's doing something that's good for society in the long run, even if you disagree with him.
It's not often I come across someone who so clearly identifies as a temporarily embarrassed millionaire.
By definition, 1% of the world's population is 80MM people, so your "hundreds of millions" statement bares your ideological slant more than you may realize.
Your comment has two lines but manages to be very puzzling indeed.
"temporarily embarrassed millionaire" is a term that bares your ideological slant, which I hope and I'm sure you realize. But that you pose our ideological differences as a problem is bizarre. You do realize the world contains left- and right-wingers, and that probably 90% of the population is somewhere in the middle, right? And that this is OK? Or do you insist that everyone see things 100% as you do?
Also, who said only the 1% is rich? If I say it's the top 2% then we're well into the hundreds of millions, no? And what about all the rich people who were alive in the past, can we not use their attitudes for our discussion too? And what if we pick a numeric cutoff to be considered rich, or a qualitative one?
> "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" is a term that bares your ideological slant
It's a relatively common term in discussions around inequality and the ways we conceive of its moral qualities. John Steinbeck, the famous American author, coined the term to describe a widespread phenomenon in how people justify their advocacy for pro-oligarch policies despite not having the same levels of wealth themselves. It's not ideological so much as it's an explication of the implicit aspects of ideologies expressed by others.
> You do realize the world contains left- and right-wingers, and that probably 90% of the population is somewhere in the middle...
Politics is not a one-dimensional spectrum, and no one believes it is except those whose view of politics is exclusively derived from American media conglomerates who reinforce the illusions that prop up the two-party system. Further, refusing to have opinions by first drawing a false dichotomy and then rejecting both fictitious poles is cowardly.
> Also, who said only the 1% is rich?
We live in a society that's based on certain conceptual scaffolds. One of them is the base-10 system. Divining these assumptions and using them to discuss these ideas with others is just how society works with respect to communication and discourse, it's not some massive conspiracy designed to make you look foolish. That appears to be your prerogative regardless.
Empathy is intelligence, a void of empathy is lack of intelligence. Empathy is the only means to "put your self in someone else's shoes".
I would also classify narcissism as a void of intelligence, they cannot be honest with others and themselves. They always must be right and know everything when they are wrong and know nothing about the subject.
Lacking empathy and being a narcissist does not benefit society, only one's self interests. That is billionaire, not millionaire, Elon Musk. He is just selling the idea of "doing something good" to improve his self interests.
How many charities does he fund? How much of with wealth goes to studying the eradication of disease like cancer or parkinson's?
But don't worry, his statement from 2014 about full self driving cars are just around the corner and will help humanity reach it's peak. Just like traveling to Mars. /s
His actions actually harm society. Hungry children have reduced mental capabilities to advance in school and their futures. He choose to actively harm future generations and those he doesn't deem worthy.
I feel an intense hatred for him and his "colleagues."
And I want to do something about his atrocious actions.
But I'm afraid that the things I would do are as wrong as theirs.
I see it all the time on Reddit, on social media, and sometimes occasionally on this site when I was scrolling amongst it's various pages.
Some on the left claim "There's a reason for a 2nd amendment" or "Time to kill the rich" and more varying levels of obscene and violent rhetoric.
But there's a problem there, both sides are becoming more extreme, hateful, and violent; and from my perspective- perhaps others won't share mine- I see the world becoming more colder, becoming more cruel and hateful.
The world is losing its empathy, and as you wrote...
The world is becoming more stupid quite plainly.
And I want to do something about it, I try to research, to analyze, and I try to use what's left of my critical thinking skills that haven't already been eroded by social media and A.I.- But I just can't. I genuinely don't know what to do.
So here is my question, for others on this site:
What can we do about these outrageous individuals, pushing the U.S. and the world back generations and years of scientific advancements, how do we stop them?
And how do we stop the growing coldness that is growing slowly through the world?
Forming the union is step one of a long road before you actually reap the benefits. It can take year(s) to negotiate the CBA with your employer. Sounds like fear of layoffs was a huge factor, but the employer must agree to those terms, and that remains to be seen. So for now that's all rhetoric. Show me a team that has gotten to the other side with these terms in a contract.
the Riot Games union is bargaining for better pay and less brutal working hours. at Blizzard they did employee walkouts, leading to better pay and changes in work culture. at Kickstarter they negotiated better remote work policies and reduction of discriminatory actions.
I work in a data center with electricians, tower climbers, and systems and network engineers. ALL of us are blue collar. Including me, a systems/network engineer. I suggest you investigate this aspect of tech — there’s more to it than VS Code and JavaScript
Data Center and Operations people absolutely are blue collar in attitude and mindset, but you DC folks get to be isolated.
If you're in a working environment that hires SDEs straight out of Tier 1 Universities, start talking about what it's like to grow up poor and you'll see quickly how everyone's eyes glaze over and you get treated like a pariah.
Kickstarter only voted 97.6% after absolutely bitter internal conflicts and a semi-forced exodus of people who weren't on board with the plan. The in-fighting was extremely bitter, extremely personal, included death-threats and I know several former Kickstarter employees on both sides of that mess who are in therapy over how that all went down.
Yeah but the question is "are there any examples where unions obviously helped the workers". You responded "blue collar unions", where there's a pretty common perception that they did help, but when it comes to white collar unions you can only come up with examples that aren't really known for having done anything. UAW isn't even white-collar.
The whole conversation is about the novelty and usefulness of something that doesn't exist in the mainstream. Those who are skeptical can eternally say "show me more examples". Maybe your critique isn't as useful as you think it is.
the "tech industry" is somehow totally isolated and completely different from all other types of labor in the history of the united states? how?
here's an answer i gave to this question downstream: "the Riot Games union is bargaining for better pay and less brutal working hours. at Blizzard they did employee walkouts, leading to better pay and changes in work culture. at Kickstarter they negotiated better remote work policies and reduction of discriminatory actions."
Why is tech not blue collar? Because you use your brain instead of your hands? You are closer to a plumber or an electrician than to Sergey Brin, griping that you should be working 60 hours a week to develop AI to replace you for Alphabet shareholders.
Doctors have unions [1] ("among actively practicing physicians, approximately 70,000 currently belong to a union, representing 8% of physicians" [2]), lawyers have essentially guilds. If your wealth is closer to Brin’s than the median, than you’re an outlier whom I would not expect to need nor value a union (congrats on your luck). Unions are for the median, not the very wealthy and lucky [3].
The median annual wage for physicians and surgeons in the US was $239,200 in 2023. In May 2023, the median annual wage for lawyers in the U.S. was $145,760, with the lowest 10% earning less than $69,760 and the highest 10% earning more than $239,200. Stats shamelessly stolen from the US BLS website.
We don’t have feathers in our caps. Blue, white, red, whatever - we are all resources working for the capitalists, and should try to learn whatever we can from each other.
So, why are there no major tech unions specifically? Tech is a “new” field (relatively speaking), is generally well paid, and comes with relatively better benefits compared to other fields. This is not something inherent to the field: it’s just a supply vs. demand thing combined with easy access to money (low rates, VCs, etc).
Unions will start to become more prominent as shit hits the fan for us tech workers. Because without a unifying threat, there is no realistic way to convince a bunch of people who are living relatively well to join forces - as demonstrated by this thread.
Unfortunately, the existence of a common threat is necessary imo but not sufficient (in the US at least), as we’ve witnessed over the past few years of layoffs and forced RTO.
Yeah, civilians die. But Israel targets civilians, not combatants.