> Sorry, I'm simply not convinced that monetizing and marketing people's attention is all that much of a social ill. There is nothing about Facebook that's in any way worse than the old ways companies used to do this.
There is one thing about facebook and social media that is different. It allows people to interact in their own manner rather than being controlled by people with influence.
Before, you pretty much had to watch or accept what a handful of companies told you. It was a top down approach. Social media has flipped it upside down.
> C'mon. I guess bombastic apocalyptic bullshit will never go out of style.
It's a media propaganda campaign funded by some of the elites. We had apocalyptic scaremongering before. But this one is very different. Some of the media would talk about the "TV aka idiot box" for a day and move on. This facebook/social media propaganda campaign has been going on for years.
Everyday for the past few months, we had a story about facebook. Every single day. That isn't "news". That's propaganda.
> Chelsea Market is an amazing place with great offerings of food etc.
It really isn't. It's a tourist trap, especially with the completion of the High Line. The food isn't good and it's overpriced to take advantage of the tourists.
> As long as this transaction does not ruin the ecosystem of CM then New Yorkers are OK with this transaction.
Like new yorkers' opinions matters in manhattan. The only thing that matters in manhattan are billionaires - whether they be from california, israel, russia, china or anywhere else.
> Cumulative return for the S&P 500 over the past 9 years (conveniently leaving out the 2008 crash), with dividend reinvestment, is equivalent to a YoY gain of 16.25%
That's a bit disingenuous to use the generational market lows of 2009 as your starting point. It would be like using the all-time highs of 2000 and the 2009 lows as your range. Then the cumulative returns would be negative ( including dividends ).
> However I think it would be foolish to presume that the stock market will continue to post those kind of gains forever.
It's impossible for any economy/market/whatever to maintain a 16% return every year.
Europe is fairly backwards when it comes to free speech. A guy who made a silly video of his dog doing a nazi salute is getting charged in britain. Someone who criticized the turkish leader almost got prosecuted by the german government. Poland just enacted a law where if you call something a "polish death camp", you can be jailed.
Russia loved europe's censorship laws so much, they copied it.
For some ridiculous reason, people think europe is the bastion of freedom and human rights. There is a reason why these people gave us nazism and communism. Europeans have no understanding of what human rights and especially free speech means. These are american ideals alien to european shores.
What's there to be on the fence about? It's terrible and a infringement of free speech. But reddit has the right to ban it as a private company. It just make reddit look terrible and hypocritical.
But considering they are planning on IPOing, I guess they have to sell out.
> If you distribute movies and media to the public, you normally are breaking laws.
That's not what we are talking about. You can transform any public image for parody, criticism, etc. Porn is considered speech so anyone can make pornographic parodies/etc. This is especially true if fans are doing so for fun and not for profit.
Of course reddit has a right to ban it from their platform, but you as a fan can transform any public image and criticize, parody, etc it.
It's really sad how little we are taught about the opium wars. It is easily the most important war in the last 500 years. The wealth that was taken from china as a result of the opium wars provided capital to britain and the US to fund our industrial revolution. It altered the course of history.
One of the largest banks in the world ( HSBC ) was created in hong kong to launder opium money from china. FDR's grandfather was Warren Delano, one of the largest opium dealers in china. The opium money is what funded our institution building in the 1800s. The universities, museums, hospitals, etc were built with money from our opium dealers in china.
It is odd how much time we spend on ww1 and ww2 when neither war altered the balance of power. The opium wars ended the "faux parity" that existed between china and the west and it catapulted the anglosphere to the top.
We live in an anglo world ( formerly british led but now US led ) because of the opium wars.
It's amazing how these greedy people destroyed millions of lives and they get to live the life of luxury. Sell weed and you are a felon. Peddle addictive opiates to the masses and destroy countless families, you get to be a billionaire.
> The most significant to me is that all the death destruction and suffering was all to further enrich some 5ish rich dudes.
The opium wars were about more than enriching 5ish rich dudes. It was about transferring a significant amount of wealth from china to the west ( primarily britain and the US ).
The british and particularly the US industrial revolution was funded by capital extracted from china. The opium wars and the aftermath is easily the greatest theft in human history. It completely changed the west and gave the west a significant leg up vis a vis china and the east. And it set china back 150 years. Nearly 200 years on, china still hasn't recovered from it.
> Just look how our historians are happy to attribute such acts to countries(!???)
All wars are fought for wealth. But the wealthy don't hire historians to out them. Historians are hired to spin a fable. It's why every nations histories of the same event are so different. Historians of each country have to spin a tale that is suitable and furthers the interests of their elites.
It's why we are told that the american revolution was about "freedom and liberty" when it was about our desire to steal more native land. It's why everything from the civil war to ww2 to vietnam are spun into some fairy tale about slavery, nazism or the domino theory when those wars were solely about one thing - wealth.
If you want to study real history, you have to understand who stands to gain and who stands to lose.
There isn't "good intentions". It's almost pointless to talk in that terms when it comes to multinational companies. Corporations don't work that way. They aren't charities. Google is acting in its own best interests - what's good for the shareholders. There is no other consideration.
> The eternal human obsession with death explains our intense interest in the experiences that come as close to it as possible.
You could argue that "existential crisis" is the fundamental bedrock on which we all stand. From eating to sex/procreating to jobs to addictions to sports to escapisms to you know name it, existential crisis lingers over it all.
And it's been posited that this all derives from a fluke of the brain/consciousness. The consciousness's mistaken assumption that the "I" exists ( aka Illusion of the self ).
And what caused the mass hysteria? The greedy news media out for clickbait ad money.
Just off the top my head, I can list a few hysterias caused by the news media just in the last couple of years... "Trump will end the world" hysteria, north korea hysteria ( a few times ), "russians hiding in your computers and voting booths", flu hysteria ( a few time ), ebola hysteria, college rape hysteria, neo-nazi/alt-right hysteria, asteroid hysteria, AI hysteria, etc.
There is one thing about facebook and social media that is different. It allows people to interact in their own manner rather than being controlled by people with influence.
Before, you pretty much had to watch or accept what a handful of companies told you. It was a top down approach. Social media has flipped it upside down.
> C'mon. I guess bombastic apocalyptic bullshit will never go out of style.
It's a media propaganda campaign funded by some of the elites. We had apocalyptic scaremongering before. But this one is very different. Some of the media would talk about the "TV aka idiot box" for a day and move on. This facebook/social media propaganda campaign has been going on for years.
Everyday for the past few months, we had a story about facebook. Every single day. That isn't "news". That's propaganda.