People are legally required to pay into the fund to pay for
a legally guaranteed benefit. The mechanics of the program are immaterial. If the program doesn’t pay for the benefit they were promised, after taking their money, that’s theft.
You could argue that you shouldn’t have to pay for social security. But hopefully you aren’t arguing that you shouldn’t have to pay and prior payers should get screwed. Any exit to social security should ensure that the previous bargain is upheld, somehow, given the forced participation and the number of people who have planned their retirement around it.
Now that I think about it USPS is the one place I get blocked. Still, it seems like people facing an age gate should be able to circumvent it without much hassle on a regular basis.
The extreme danger of marijuana and its role as a “gateway drug” was also extensively studied and “proven” by a handful of moralist researchers and groups who had an agenda to push. The highly biased “researchers” who pursued this were often directly funded by the US government.
And now? This research has been debunked. It’s likely bad for people prone to mental illness, especially when taken regularly and in excess, and even stable people shouldn’t overdo it, much like alcohol. But it’s not going to cause lasting harm to most people.
Regarding porn, your argument from authority is extremely suspect. Porn is considered morally suspect due to lingering Puritan values, and if there is a research deficit (which I doubt) then it is likely because reputable researchers avoid the topic due to reputational damage. Sex researchers in general have often faced harassment, targeted government inquiries, and threats. So in short, I don’t believe you here.
I haven’t personally met anyone whose life was negatively affected by porn, except for a couple of people who were in relationships where one partner considered porn to be a form of infidelity. Utterly ridiculous from my perspective.
Edit: Total bunk. After looking into it, reputable meta-studies have showed no link between porn and sexual violence, ED, or mental health issues. It’s trivial to find this research, search for it if you care.
Totalitarianism has the same end state whether it comes from the left or the right. It always results in suppression of the truth, broken feedback loops that lead to poor decisions by government, economic failure, and finally either bloody repression, war, or revolution.
It’s possible to move through this to a place of stability. After all, China only had to kill 15-55 million people in the Great Leap Forward and a couple thousand more in 1989. Today they are fairly stable and prosperous, even with tight controls on information. Perhaps the UK will have a similar path!
Both extreme leftism and extreme rightism are composed of the same people - more focused on ideology rather than truth, and authoritarian control rather than voice of reason.
In the middle, there is an acceptable range of compromise. Social media is the new town square. People shouldn't be able to post stuff on there without recourse for lying and spreading misinformation, just like they shouldn't be able to do this in public. History shows that this leads to bad outcomes. Also, history also shows that we can't just have personal freedoms unrestricted.
And just because that "freedom" is being taken away, doesn't mean that the leftists are in charge.
Historically, at least in the US, people are indeed explicitly allowed to lie or spread misinformation in the town square. This is specifically allowed by the first amendment and backed by court cases. Your mention of the “town square” here is interesting, as Marsh v. Alabama and Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins both center around this idea. In both cases the Supreme Court ruled that unrestricted free speech was allowed in the town square, whether it was a company town or a shopping mall, so long as the location was effectively serving as a surrogate town square.
Now of course this is about the UK. But to my knowledge and based on research there are no laws or cases about lying in public. As long as you aren’t committing perjury or slander, or urging violence, or inciting a panic, this isn’t illegal.
This works both ways though, ie there’s no point opposing the laws on the grounds that they might be abused in future because the future sovereign parliament could just pass the same abusable laws.
By this logic, governments shouldn't legislate anything or have any kind of policy. Child benefit? Scrap it in case King Herod takes over and has an ready made hit list.
The problem isn’t the balance, it’s the police state. I don’t want an authoritarian Left government any more than I want an authoritarian Right or Center government.
The problem is most Brits, at least on HN, seem to deny what is happening and/or support it. People being arrested for holding up blank signs at Charles' coronation was ridiculous and nothing like it has happened in the US, but anytime that's brought up they pivot to mass shootings in the US or some other whataboutism.
I was curious about the "blank sign" story because it's slightly different from what I remembered reading. As far as I can tell, this is the incident you're referring to:
On 12 September, Charles addressed parliament as king for the first time. The Metropolitan police called in reinforcements in case of protests. Powlesland, who works nearby, walked from Parliament Square to Downing Street and back with his blank piece of paper. “Then a guy from Norfolk police came up and spoke to me, and that was the video that went viral.” Powlesland recorded the encounter on his phone. “He asked for my details, I asked why and he said, ‘I want to check you’re OK on the Police National Computer.’ I said, ‘I’ve not done anything wrong, so I’m not giving you them.’ I wanted to test it without getting arrested. So I asked, ‘If I wrote “Not my king” on the paper, would I get arrested?’ and he said, ‘Probably, because it would be a breach of the Public Order Act; it would be offensive.’” Was he right? Powlesland laughs. “No! Just having something someone else finds offensive is not a criminal offence because then pretty much anything could be.”
I'm glad that was only a single instance, I had misremebered it as being multiple. I think the bigger isser then is people arrested for holding up signs saying "not my king" or similar, of which there were at least 64[0].
I am convinced that a good bit of this is paid astroturfing and another segment is people who work in government or government contracting. Brits generally seem more open to government intrusion, it’s true, but in my experience they don’t go out of their way to defend things like this. It’s more of a passive acceptance.
I think tribalism is the simpler explanation. One of the worst offenders I saw was a guy on here who wrote one of the new generation shells written in go...went out of his way to say the US had the same behavior as the UK, arresting people holding a blank sign, except his evidence was the disproportionate shooting of black people by police. An entirely unrelated issue. The point was though he was flailing due to feeling defensive, and unable to take a step back and analyze the criticisms objectively. This is super common behavior in pretty much all countries, and I think it's a huge problem.
True, now that you mention it I’ve seen the same sort of thing from people who are definitely not bots. Although, you can’t discount the possibility that they do some government or law enforcement work as a consultant. The full throated defense of police state tactics is unreal. (For what it’s worth, there are plenty of Americans who show up in Palantir/Flock threads doing the same thing, and I have the same suspicions there.)
For a current example look at the other guy replying to my comments, earnestly trying to equate 'free speech zones' in the US which have not been a thing in years, maybe more than a decade, with people in the UK being arrested for holding up blank signs.
I can't imagine it's paid work because what would be the point? It's not like he is influencing anyone's opinions.
OK. SO, one city decided to do that, around a convention where there was very likely reasonable security concerns. Not sure I agree with it, but it's hardly a national issue. Look at all the no kings and anti-ice protests nation wide not confined in any way as evidence.
Fair enough. People were just arrested for holding up signs like 'abolish monarchy' or 'not my king', and the person holding up a blank sign was intimidated by police. Slightly better, I guess.
You've backtracked from your 'blank sign' position. I'm pointing out that your "People were just arrested for holding up signs like 'abolish monarchy'" might be on similarly shaky ground.
If it's not clear, I'm also heavily implying that you should be questioning the veracity of whatever source you're getting this easily-debunked tripe from.
> You've backtracked from your 'blank sign' position.
I wouldn't say backtracked. I acknowledged a correction. The pont still stands, people are being arrested and/or intimidated by police for expressing a non-hatespeech, non-violent opinion.
> I'm pointing out that your "People were just arrested for holding up signs like 'abolish monarchy'" might be on similarly shaky ground.
I gave a source elsewhere in this thread.
> If it's not clear, I'm also heavily implying that you should be questioning the veracity of whatever source you're getting this easily-debunked tripe from.
It's not tripe, and if you want to attempt to go ahead and debunk it. I was wrong about the arrest for the blank sign as admitted, I'm not wrong about people being arrested for holding up signs expressing non-hatespeech, non-violent opinions, for which sources are abundant.
And look at you - making incorrect assertions about both free speech zones (they are still used) and your central point about the arrest of a protestor who it turns out wasn't arrested.
It's sad that you're not going to walk away from this discussion thinking "Huh, maybe I wasn't very well informed, it's pretty terrible in both countries so calling out the UK as significantly worse might actually be wrong" but instead believe you were attacked by unreasonable, tribal British people defending authoritiarianism.
But that's arguing on the internet I guess.
By the way, here's another example of the use free speech zones and the arrests of people for having their say -
"Since state officials created a “free speech zone,” local police continue to make arrests that have “no apparent purpose other than just intimidating people away from that line, and sending a message that they’re going to be controlling the area with force,” said civil rights attorney Joe DiCola."
Suppression of protest is unfortunately a popular thing for governments in a lot of places right now. It's as bad (if not worse) in Australia, where I live, especially in New South Wales where they seem determined to find a pretext to ban any and all marches.
And to make it absolutely clear - I do not support any of it nor am I defending the actions of the UK authorities. Also not a monarchist, that family of parasites needs to be stripped of all powers, lands and assets stolen from the British and other peoples, and I was disgusted by what the British authorities did to suppress dissent leading up to the coronation of King big-ears.
> making incorrect assertions about both free speech zones (they are still used)
My assertion was that "they haven't been a thing", and they haven't. Your sentence implied they were a nationwide issue still, and they very simply haven't been. Again, the numerous nationwide protests easily demonstrate that point.
> your central point about the arrest of a protestor who it turns out wasn't arrested.
At least 64 people were for simply holding up signs saying "not my king". The guy holding up blank paper was intimidated by the cops, which sure, is better than being arrested, but not great.
> It's sad that you're not going to walk away from this discussion thinking "Huh, maybe I wasn't very well informed, it's pretty terrible in both countries so calling out the UK as significantly worse might actually be wrong"
What's sad is you're being the very example of someone being overly defensive about the UK's decline instead of just agreeing these are real issues. This isn't a competition, I think the US is going in a horrible direction as well, andnot once did I claim the UK was 'significantly worse' - that's a strawman birthed from your defensiveness.
> but instead believe you were attacked by unreasonable, tribal British people defending authoritiarianism.
I do think you are being tribal and unreasonable, yes.
> But that's arguing on the internet I guess.
Unfortunately, but it's honestly only a minority of people who act like that. Reasonable people wouldn't be this deep into the conversation and would just have agreed, yeah, the British government overreached against protestors and some other examples of overreach appear concerning if indicative of a trend.
But, nah, let's just defend King and Country without stopping to actually analyze or self-reflect.
> My assertion was that "they haven't been a thing", and they haven't. Your sentence implied they were a nationwide issue still, and they very simply haven't been.
I gave you another example from last year, but it was in an edit so you might have missed it.
> Again, the numerous nationwide protests easily demonstrate that point.
Protest marches occur regularly in the UK as well, so that's evidence it's fine there?
People were arrested for protesting at an event, the coronation. This is the same sort of thing free speech zones have been used to suppress in the US. Sure, the last time they were used in the exact same way was probably under Bush Jnr, but they're still used where protest is considered inconvenient (like the ICE protests in the article I linked above).
> not once did I claim the UK was 'significantly worse'
Not with those exact words, but it was heavily implied with your repetition of emphasis on the guy being arrested (or not) for holding a piece of paper.
> being overly defensive about the UK
> Reasonable people wouldn't be this deep into the conversation and would just have agreed, yeah, the British government overreached against protestors and some other examples of overreach appear concerning if indicative of a trend.
> But, nah, let's just defend King and Country without stopping to actually analyze or self-reflect.
Do you have no reading comprehension at all? I have agreed with that, several times. I haven't defended the actions of the UK once. When you directly asked me if it was a problem, I said yes it's awful. The King can go #### himself.
OK, I'm done with this conversation, at some point dang will be along to put an end to it anyway I imagine, as it's fruitless.
> I gave you another example from last year, but it was in an edit so you might have missed it.
It doesn't really matter though, the point was it hasn't been a national issue in over a decade, and that remains the case.
> Protest marches occur regularly in the UK as well, so that's evidence it's fine there?
The point was people were being arrested in the UK simply for holding up signs. You tried to equate free speech zones with that, but as I said it's an entirely unrelated matter, a desperate whataboutism sprung from defensiveness.
> Sure, the last time they were used in the exact same way was probably under Bush Jnr,
So, over a decade ago like I said.
> but they're still used where protest is considered inconvenient (like the ICE protests in the article I linked above).
There are giant protests all over the country. Free speech zones don't make the news because they are not an issue. No one is being impeded.
> Not with those exact words, but it was heavily implied with your repetition of emphasis on the guy being arrested (or not) for holding a piece of paper.
Not at all, you inferred it. I've been consistently clear that I think the UK is going down a bad path but in a very different way from the US, I never said worse.
> I have agreed with that, several times. I haven't defended the actions of the UK once. When you directly asked me if it was a problem, I said yes it's awful.
Honestly, only once that I'm aware of, and I had to drag it out of you. All your posts are pushing back, which gives the impression you want to defend the problems being mentioned.
> OK, I'm done with this conversation, at some point dang will be along to put an end to it anyway I imagine, as it's fruitless.
I shan't expect a reply then. Cheers. Hopefully we can have a more productive discussion on a different topic in the future.
I was talking about protestors being arrested for holding up signs, he said the same thing happened in the US but his evidence was the disproportionate shooting of black people by police in the US, which while very bad is an entirely different issue.
Because it is massively exaggerated by those with an agenda to distract from the US.
But go on, tell me about how “free speech zones” are meaningfully different to this. You won’t be arrested so long as you stay in your zone down the street and round the corner and out of sight.
The UK has serious problems, but reading Americans catastrophising over this stuff as I have been for a couple of decades now is always incredible. Take the beam from your own eyes. And stop believing lies about the streets of London being a war zone.
> Because it is massively exaggerated by those with an agenda to distract from the US.
I don't think there has to be any negative motive. I'm not from the US or the UK but have lived in both countries, so feel I can be somewhat objective. What's going on in both countries is disturbing to me, but they have differences with what they are doing.
> But go on, tell me about how “free speech zones” are meaningfully different to this. You won’t be arrested so long as you stay in your zone down the street and round the corner and out of sight.
That hasn't been a thing for a long time. There have been nationwide protests the last few days not restricted to any kind of 'free speech zone'.
Consider what you are trying to defend: holding up a blank sign. Are you really OK with that? You really think that is reasonable?
> The UK has serious problems, but reading Americans catastrophising over this stuff
Pointing out a legitimate concern is not catastrophising anything.
> And stop believing lies about the streets of London being a war zone.
It’s still the law, was expanded under Obama and is used widely. It is used to control dissent at events where protest would be unsightly, much as the UK incident you brought up.
> Arresting people for holding up a blank sign is very different and much worse.
On the contrary, it’s no different whatsoever from corralling away protest until it’s out of sight in an approved zone, and arresting anyone who expresses dissent in sight.
It’s exactly the same use of police in concealment of dissent by the state.
> Do you agree it was a problem
Of course, it’s fucking awful. It’s your contention that “nothing like this ever happened in the US” that I took issue with - it does and it’s entirely routine.
This is my very point - the UK is used as some sort of out-there example of Orwellian repression, but the US, often painted in contrast as some sort of bastion, albeit a troubled one, is usually doing exactly the same damn thing.
It’s in this thread. We have your assertions above, and below we have someone decrying how unimaginable it would have been for a government to attempt to wholesale spy on people’s communications two decades ago, seemingly completely unaware of the activities of the NSA in AT&T and other companies’ data infrastructure in the US, revealed in 2006.
> On the contrary, it’s no different whatsoever from corralling away protest until it’s out of sight in an approved zone, and arresting anyone who expresses dissent in sight.
You are not being genuine here IMO, and this seems to be a case of the very tribalism I spoke of. The two are not remotely the same. One is restricting a protest to a zone. The other is punishing people for what they are saying, even when what they are saying is a blank piece of cardboard.
> It’s your contention that “nothing like this ever happened in the US” that I took issue with - it does and it’s entirely routine.
> ...
> the US, often painted in contrast as some sort of bastion, albeit a troubled one, is usually doing exactly the same damn thing.
Can you cite an example of people in the US being arrested for holding up a blank piece of cardboard?
As another poster has already pointed out to you, the person holding the blank piece of paper was not arrested. A number of the arrests of anti-monarchy protestors were subsequently ruled unlawful (e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyenzdz66wo).
All of this was widely reported in the British media and generally agreed to be a bad thing, so it doesn't really fit with your narrative of Brits being in denial about these problems.
By being sloppy with the facts you're only reinforcing Nursie's point that much of the discussion around these issues on HN is based on exaggeration and poorly sourced claims. That's what people actually object to, but you misinterpret these objections as a defense of police overreach.
> As another poster has already pointed out to you, the person holding the blank piece of paper was not arrested.
I was under the impression it was not a single incident, but that's great that it wasn't.
The bigger problem, though, was people being arrested for holding up "not my king" or similar signs. According to one site[0], there were 64 arrests that day. I don't think it matters that no charges were filed or whatever, what matters is they were taken at the time for expressing an opinion.
> All of this was widely reported in the British media and generally agreed to be a bad thing, so it doesn't really fit with your narrative of Brits being in denial about these problems.
That's also good to know. I should have been clearer, but I meant within the context of my experience online. I also don't know that they are truly in denial, it just seems they are overly defensive about it and want to point out the US is worse in various ways.
> That's what people actually object to, but you misinterpret these objections as a defense of police overreach.
I'm misinterpreting anything, and certainly not in this discussion. In past discussions, closer to the coronation, there were Brits being very active in downplaying the arrests, that to me would seem to be denying there was an issue. If it was widely reported in British media as a bad thing, it would seem these particular people being in denial were outliers.
Ok, but please just do a quick search and check your facts before kicking off a long discussion thread on a false basis. I promise you that a lot of the pushback you're getting from Brits is down to the factual inaccuracies and exaggerations in your posts, not any great love we have for police crackdowns on peaceful protests.
> Ok, but please just do a quick search and check your facts before kicking off a long discussion thread on a false basis.
My facts here would have been previous HN discussions that would have been very hard to find.
> I promise you that a lot of the pushback you're getting from Brits is down to the factual inaccuracies and exaggerations in your posts
No, that isn't the case, and you're not in a position to promise that; it's an assumption you're making, and I would ask you to question your motivation for doing so.
In the previous posts I was using as an example discussion the coronation, people were downplaying protestors being arrested for holding up signs. Nothing was being exaggerated, all the facts were accurate as they had just happened - sources were abundant.
As far as it is known, Kelly walked a mile (1.6 km) from his house to Harrowdown Hill. It appears he ingested up to 29 tablets of co-proxamol, an analgesic drug; he also cut his left wrist with a pruning knife he had owned since his youth, severing his ulnar artery. Forensic analysis established that neither the knife nor the blister packs showed Kelly's fingerprints on their surfaces [0].
and a letter to the editor:
As specialist medical professionals, we do not consider the evidence given at the Hutton inquiry has demonstrated that Dr David Kelly committed suicide.
Dr Nicholas Hunt, the forensic pathologist at the Hutton inquiry, concluded that Dr Kelly bled to death from a self-inflicted wound to his left wrist. We view this as highly improbable. Arteries in the wrist are of matchstick thickness and severing them does not lead to life-threatening blood loss. Dr Hunt stated that the only artery that had been cut - the ulnar artery - had been completely transected. Complete transection causes the artery to quickly retract and close down, and this promotes clotting of the blood.
The ambulance team reported that the quantity of blood at the scene was minimal and surprisingly small. It is extremely difficult to lose significant amounts of blood at a pressure below 50-60 systolic in a subject who is compensating by vasoconstricting. To have died from haemorrhage, Dr Kelly would have had to lose about five pints of blood - it is unlikely that he would have lost more than a pint.
Alexander Allan, the forensic toxicologist at the inquiry, considered the amount ingested of Co-Proxamol insufficient to have caused death. Allan could not show that Dr Kelly had ingested the 29 tablets said to be missing from the packets found. Only a fifth of one tablet was found in his stomach. Although levels of Co-Proxamol in the blood were higher than therapeutic levels, Allan conceded that the blood level of each of the drug's two components was less than a third of what would normally be found in a fatal overdose.
We dispute that Dr Kelly could have died from haemorrhage or from Co-Proxamol ingestion or from both. The coroner, Nicholas Gardiner, has spoken recently of resuming the inquest into his death. If it re-opens, as in our opinion it should, a clear need exists to scrutinise more closely Dr Hunt's conclusions as to the cause of death.
David Halpin - Specialist in trauma and orthopaedic surgery
C Stephen Frost - Specialist in diagnostic radiology Searle Sennett [1]
> This is a bigger problem that should be fixed ASAP. OS vendors should never critically break graphics on a OS like this.
> Again, the QA department or automated tests of your OS vendor should not let this get released. If such a bug happened there should be a fix rolled out immediately.
On a Linux system, if you go messing around with your configuration enough, you will eventually break something. You are effectively your own QA department in this case. As a kid I did this often, it’s part of the learning process.
> Why do you need to run the browser on the server? I can't think of a case where you would want to use a text browser there instead of a regular browser on your actual machine.
You just need to look something up quickly to fix something and you are in front of the server. Or you need to download a configuration file from GitHub and the URL is really long, but you can get there in a few seconds from a web browser. There are other means to get the files to the server but they require more effort, and you are lazy (as is your right).
Is it an OS vendor “bug” if I delete system32.dll (despite all the warnings) or remove my hard drive and flush it down the toilet?
Maybe we have a different idea of what constitutes a “bug.” In my view, preventing users from running their preferred software or configuring their machine however the hell they want to is the “bug.” Forcing AI into every nook and cranny is a “bug.” So your OS vendor can shove it. I am my own OS vendor.
Well mine allows it, and if it is ever “locked down” to the point where I can’t do what I want to with it then I will patch and recompile to regain whatever I lost. Such is the beauty of open source. I can twist it, shape it, or even break it if I want to.
There is no benefit in allowing critical components of the OS to be deleted. Why would you add such functionality back when the only practical ability you gain is the ability you break your system and have to waste time fixing it. It's bad design.
Just because something is free. It doesn't mean you can call out unprofessional behavior. Since macos is free should all macos users ask for a refund when they encounter something they don't like?
MacOS is included with the price of Apple hardware.
I’m glad the Linux community doesn’t engage in too much professional behavior. It would be really annoying if Linux was as locked down as a proprietary OS is, and I suspect contributors would find the whole thing less fun, so they’d share less code as a result.
You could argue that you shouldn’t have to pay for social security. But hopefully you aren’t arguing that you shouldn’t have to pay and prior payers should get screwed. Any exit to social security should ensure that the previous bargain is upheld, somehow, given the forced participation and the number of people who have planned their retirement around it.
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