It's not that she's evil, just that her "philosophy" is what you said: one person's view (i.e. opinion). She couldn't reconcile many critiques of Objectivism and didn't do much self-analysis on it. So despite how good many of her individual ideas sound, together they're thin and don't really make up a coherent theory that many people can take seriously. Unless you're a jerk using her name to justify being self-centered :) (just kidding)
Yep, nailed it. For those of us who still read despite all that, here's the browser extension you've been looking for (Make Medium Readable Again): https://github.com/thebaer/MMRA
> Mr. Trump, who is known to watch Fox News while he is tweeting, posted his tweet shortly after a Fox News legal analyst appealed directly to the president during a Thursday morning segment about the coming House vote. The analyst, Andrew Napolitano, turned to television cameras and said, “Mr. President, this is not the way to go.” He added that Mr. Trump’s “woes” began with surveillance.
lol.
But seriously we need someone in the oval office who feels strongly about protecting the privacy of Americans (and everyone else!). Trump is just another one in the line to rubber-stamp this. Not holding my breath though...
Nope. A lot revolves around them, but there are plenty of ultra-rich ideologues pushing their agenda this way. You can find some good investigative research on this in "Dark Money" by Jane Mayer, which details a lot of the history behind dark money influencing politics, and the ideals these guys are trying to advance.
The Mercers are another influential family she's written about [0]
The formula works! If it can get that guy in the White House, it can sell anything.
Also, I think it's kind of delicious when a variant like this is used to actually describe a previously "Y/Great" thing (Medium was readable at some point). Kinda hijacks the meaning from the original phrase and makes it less shitty.
> society at large is unquestionably a cesspit of low consciousness, and self-centered thinking
That's a heck of a personal projection :)
And pg disagrees with that last sentiment in the footnotes:
> Many think successful startup founders are driven by money. In fact the secret weapon of the most successful founders is that they aren't. If they were, they'd have taken one of the acquisition offers that every fast-growing startup gets on the way up. What drives the most successful founders is the same thing that drives most people who make things: the company is their project.
People in the intelligence community consider Snowden a Russian asset now. Russia could've flipped or co-opted Assange since the Bush years, or maybe it's only now coming out. Either way much of this stuff is classified, so we can't really know details one way or the other. But if you keep up with folks in the IC and look into how Russia does warfare, you see they've been doing this forever, and they're pros at it.
That's the point -- the CIA, FBI, and NSA determined with "high confidence" [0] that Russia worked to influence us through (among other outlets) the media -- especially social media. It worked, and because of it our votes weren't free.
> Moscow’s influence campaign followed a Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operations—such as cyber activity—with overt efforts by Russian Government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or “trolls.”
> The Kremlin’s principal international propaganda outlet RT (formerly Russia Today) has actively collaborated with WikiLeaks. RT’s editor-in-chief visited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in August 2013, where they discussed renewing his broadcast contract with RT, according to Russian and Western media. Russian media subsequently announced that RT had become "the only Russian media company" to partner with WikiLeaks and had received access to "new leaks of secret information." RT routinely gives Assange sympathetic coverage and provides him a platform to denounce the United States.
It could be you or your family having connections to powerful people. Being famous. But what's important as it pertains to our conversation: being in an authoritative position, e.g. a teacher, law enforcement officer, manager, or company executive. All of these people can have an influence, or "power," over others -- including, but not limited to, women.
As your question doesn't really have anything to do with our debate, I respectfully decline to answer. It was nice talking.
> You honestly come off as hostile and even childish. You're fabricating complete strawmen and attacking them.
> You also seem to be extremely self-loathing, and you want to project that onto others.
These are funny sequences of statements.
Anyway I wasn't attacking you; I was arguing against the ideas presented, that we should "think about the men!" first when we're discussing women reporting sexual assault. The paragraph I deleted implied that anyone who holds this worldview either hasn't ever listened to a woman or is self-centered. I could've put it better, but frankly I was tired of arguing.
And I was fixing the record because you said "blackrose is exclusively thinking of rich and powerful men when framing his argument." Which is false, and I believe I offered good evidence for in my simple example.
I was mostly trying to point out how ridiculous camelite's argument sounded. I thought maybe we should instead have a serious conversation about the events leading up to Uber's current troubles, and how they reflect on our society and our own individual mindsets. But apparently this isn't the place for that.
Anyway, yeah, of course everyone has different circumstances. I didn't mean literally no men, just as the grandparent comment didn't mean literally believe all women. I was speaking generally in order to be comprehendible to a guy speaking generally and hypothetically.
I see what you're saying, but I've laid out many other, less aggressive points and remained open to any good counter-argument.
I'll take the downvotes for this, but I think certain stances people are spouting on this thread are aggressively perpetuating the poor societal values I've been arguing against. They're aggressively playing down the consequences of their sexist mentality and normalizations. And because I'm a not-impoverished white dude who doesn't worry about being persecuted for my opinions, I expressed them.
(Also, the "selfish dick" part isn't meant to be taken personally. Many people are selfish, and own up to it, and wear the badge proudly. That's great. But to argue for sexism under some pretense of a noble cause is bullshit.)
And trusting people to have free speech is definitely going to be abused by people who want to say controversial things. And trusting people to use encryption is definitely going to be abused by criminals who want to commit crimes. And trusting people to own kitchen knives is definitely going to be abused by people who want to stab others.
Yes, we can all make factually true, but totally irrelevant arguments that don't change anything.