A company is not separable from the regulatory environment and culture in which it's based. A British company opening a diamond mine in Botswana is a very different story from a Namibian company opening the same diamond mine.
> If it is legal in the US, it should be legal for everyone
That's a strawman. No one is arguing against that.
How a resource is being used by foreign corporations is an important input to policy decisions.
We're at a point in today's society where the mere suggestion that nationality might be relevant is met with accusations of xenophobia. It's the same way with race or sex.
It's wild to me that we frame legitimate concerns as xenophobic.
The second sentence explains why the nationality matters:
> Some farms are foreign-owned and are shipping the crop to Saudi Arabia, where it's illegal to grow because it takes too much water.
In this globalistic world it's worth considering that stringent policy in one area of the world can be worked around by taking advantage of lax policy in another area of the world. It's not xenophobic to talk about that. It would be ignorant not to.
> I didn't notice anything different about addresses
I mean.. they don't have any. So maybe you didn't pay attention. Sure, if you're typing in the name of a tourist destination, that's fine. But how do you find a person's house?
In CR the addresses are referential. So you might live "300 meters south of the retirement home, 100 East, red door".
Indeed. If former employee startups were the major concern, they wouldn't pay so much. It's financial independence from working at faang that enables lots of devs to leave to start or join startups.
This may be true, but it doesn't explain the problem. If there's a bigger problem with bullshit today than in the past (and the article certainly does zero work to convince us of this), it's not because it takes too much effort to refute bullshit -- it's because there are no social consequences to being marked a bullshitter.
> if Obama and Pinker are bullshitters, I'm not sure the label has much meaning
They aren't. Nathan J. Robinson (author of this article) is. Here's the full quote from the Obama speech.
> I face this challenge with profound humility and knowledge of my own limitations, but I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs for the jobless. This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.
You can read this charitably (a passionate person who's excited about the collective project being embarked upon) or uncharitably (not very humble to connect your own presidency to the salvation of humanity). But it's total bullshit to read that as:
> a man who manipulated people’s emotions with stirring messianic rhetoric about how his election would mean the oceans would stop rising and change would come to the land, then delivered eight years of milquetoast centrism
If this is manipulating people, then literally every politician (not to mention every football coach) to ever have existed has manipulated people, and the core argument of the article shrinks to nothingness.
Also, it's a plain lie. Obama never said he would solve these problems -- much the opposite, he conditioned the solutions on the people being willing to work for it.
Funnily enough, if anything this irony bolsters the author's point that bullshit can be found anywhere. Even articles about bullshitters are themselves full of bullshit.
> The child is more akin to the reward the lottery gives out than the person getting the lottery.
You seem to be missing the point that we are stuck with who we are. Our mental and physical faculties are handed down to us. We receive them, even though they define us. We experience ourselves.
Nothing about the parent's comment assumed a metaphysical identity.
It's unambiguously true that no one chose their genes or their childhood environment. That statement doesn't require a metaphysical chooser who might have made the choice.
I think it's more correct that people appreciate being liked. If you don't feel liked by this person, you'll gravitate to a different person. Calling it "servility" is really stretching it.
> seem 'interesting' without saying much is to elicit intrigue - or mystery, so you want to seem mysterious.
I'm sure there are people to whom that applies. But it doesn't seem likely to be widely applicable to me. Most people just aren't going for the "dark and mysterious" vibe.
It needs to be subtle. So maybe "profuse" is the wrong word.
For example, throwing in phrases like "with your experience, you would know that..." or "that thing you said was hilarious" make people feel good, hopefully while also being true. This is a huge part of likeability.
> there will be some blur for anyone with less than absolutely perfect eyesight.
Computer graphics are meant to be perceived through human eyeballs. So we can count on the eyes continuing to blur point lights whether you're looking at a screen or at outer space.