Thanks. It is sometimes hard to keep track of what the different national Green parties stand for once you get past the basic environmental stuff. In my country if they could get Thanos to run for president on their ticket they’d be delighted; aside from his deep ecological commitment, he’s not as self-important as Nader and less afraid of electromagnetism than Jill Stein. (Though I gather Thanos was once beaten by a Green.)
The EU is regulating companies who do business in the EU, which as I understand US law is neither unconstitutional nor illegal.
My understanding is that FB, as a private entity, is free to suppress speech in any way it cares to and has no obligations with respect to freedom of speech.
The US government, on the other hand, is bound by the strictures of the Amendment. It can’t force FB to suppress types of speech… Only foreign governments can do that. And of course, they can’t force FB to do so, they can only have FB make a choice: conform to the law or stop doing business in that country.
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No, no. no. Facebook wants to be in every country. Including China. I hold no torch for FB and wish it would instantly disappear from the universe with all its data. But it would be much worse than it even is now if it applied that policy and the world ended up with a lowest common denominator FB based on China’s rules (or a few other places I could list) for example.
Was hoping someone else would remove my need to say this. Thanks.
Homonyms, eh? How do they work?
Yep, King George should have come down hard on anonymous publications like this.
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So true. But we have to recognize the down-sides to it as well, especially as technology has amplified them.
There is no down side to freedom of speech except in the case of direct incitements to violence, which are already illegal.
When I can fine or jail you for what you say about me, then I’ll allow our politicians to decide who can be fined or jailed for what I say about politicians, and not a moment before.
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Control yourself. 
“Neanderthal” is also commonly used as a pejorative, however unfairly its use to some. When used as I suggest, though, its intent would be entirely clear. Context, context, context.
It’s not legally libel if it’s true.
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shrugs He definitely looks like a pig to me… shrugs
Can we compromise on that he is a boorish boring boar?
(ETA: If we had the equivalent words for the concept of Bull to Steer for pigs, I’d use that word…)
I think that’d be a slur on a noble animal.
But of course we do. A castrated pig is a barrow. Although obviously that only applies to domestic pigs not wild boar. But then steer wouldn’t apply to wild cattle if we still had any to speak of.
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Weird world is both of these things at the same time: https://boingboing.net/2019/06/04/youtube-carves-policy-exceptio.html?_ga=2.69083089.1178565167.1556077861-1621836031.1487083500
liges hiesler forstinskin zuckler
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I don’t get why Facebook, Apple, Google, etc… don’t simply ignore these demands (with the possible exception of ones from the USA, as they are all incorporated here.)
What are the countries going to do, block them? There will be riots.
These apps and services do and have gotten blocked. The issue is that these companies are so hungry for growth and more money that being kicked out of a market is a bigger problem to them than taking a stand against overreaching requests and regulations. Ultimately they don’t care about consumers, they exist to give value to shareholders.
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Big Brother must be stopped
Control myself. Funny.
You might have misread my tone of voice.
I’ve “known you” probably since you started commenting here, and like some others here are almost beyond reproach in these matters.
I wasn’t critical of you, but of it.
Others do it all the time, it just happened to be you that used ‘Neanderthal’ degradingly just when I felt like expressing this thought of mine again.
Not sorry though, the thought is interesting enough to be entertained for at least a moment. To have had. Philosophy.
I’ll be facetious:
“N…” is also commonly used as a pejorative, however unfairly its use to some. When used as I suggest, though, its intent would be entirely clear. Context, context, context.
It’s true, isn’t it? Racial or genetic make-up never lends itself for good use as an insult. Even if everybody else is doing it. It just doesn’t work once you thought about it.
I think you agree entirely.
The difference being that there is nobody left of that people whose feelings could get hurt. Nobody claims Neanderthal heritage.
They are near and dear to me, relatively. I have thought a great deal about them, so I empathize with Neanderthalers, the vanished indigenous population of Europe, and those few that became ancestors to most of us, to a small degree.
All of our ancestors are those that managed to eek out enough Lebensraum to reproduce. The winners not just of evolution but also war in every generation.
Eurasians were late. When they started going places, everywhere was occupied.
Europeans went nowhere first, but parts of Scandinavia, Arctic and most of the Antarctic, that I can think of. The moon if you’re generous.
Every place else we discovered had long been settled.
Generally, the ancestors of the current Europeans, over and over invading from the Levant, appear to have always had a thing for going places where some other, disrespected, people lived and then not getting along with those, greatly reducing their numbers.
It happened to themselves a few times throughout. One Y-DNA haplogroup after the other largely displacing those of the previous male inhabitants one way or another.
Pretty much everybody else in the world was doing it, when given an opportunity, but the Europeans, and there weren’t even that many of us, got really exceptionally good at it.
We built empires that way, the tempered ruins of which we still live in. We did this from Europe, the place previously inhabited by these othered humans.
I have lying next to me, just held, one of their tools, a hand axe.
Hand axes are the longest-used tool in human history. (well, we still use sticks too)
1.6 million years or so.
Our hands evolved into their current shape holding a hand axe.
But recently we quit using them.
This one here, considering the known circumstances, might be 60.000 years old, if it isn’t older.
It is the most northerly ever found on the European continent, on a squid of land that remained ice free during Last Glacial Maximum yet isn’t currently covered by ocean.
There is very very little of that around here on the eastern edge of Doggerland.
The size and shape of the original owner’s hand must have been very similar to mine, but if anything, slightly smaller.
The user was right-handed. It has just the right weight, insanely good balance.
Holding it feels slightly empowering, like holding a tool always does.
Clearly a capable tool. A multi-tool with scraper, hammer, and the pointed axe face.
Use and wear marks on it suggest strongly the splitting of very large Mammal bones by driving it into the joint socket, then prying and twisting in the resulting crack to split the bone lengthwise to get access to the marrow. The wear marks are remarkably similar to those found on a well used oyster knife.
The ‘hard hammer’ method was used in making it, so it has very few facets and looks simpler, less artful than most that were made for almost a million prior years using the soft hammer method.
Once one holds it, it becomes clear that the facets are exactly where they need to be, the ridges fall exactly into the creases of a medium to large right hand closing around it to grip it tightly.
Furthermore It is ingeniously asymmetrical following the angle of the wrist and hand to the tip of the axe blade. Ergonomically shaped to minimize twisting and strain to the wrist when using the axe with great force without the dampening effect of a handle.
Angled two ways, like a bicycle grip is.
This tools simplicity is the result of fantastic engineering and generations of passed on craftsmanship. It is unfathomable that everybody made their own. Producing this tool out of this tool-grade-hardness rock took great talent, trade secrets, expertise and specialization.
The degree of craftsmanship is mindblowing. I feel pretty sure that there isn’t a person among the 7.5 billion of us that has know-how and ability to produce this tool’s equal.
It is obvious to me that some Neanderfolks made these ‘for a living’ and taught the trade because others really appreciated that, after more than a million and a half years, somebody was producing a perfect product most thoroughly tested, a tool in its final form.
Even after inventing different types of bindings to attach handles to things, it took us ‘most modern humans’ a very long time to quit using hand axes. Maybe whenever all the large mammals had gone extinct in a place, this plus sized bone picking tool had lost its purpose entirely. Everything else a more modern tool did better already. Maybe.
With its weight and shape set in stone to be entirely utilitarian, its only concession to fashion is its red ochre color, which is of great cultural significance to all stoneagers anywhere evar. It feels like it was a valuable object. Anyhow, a nomadic hunter wouldn’t lug around a big rock with sharp edges unless he really wants it around.
Perhaps, during fowling, fishing and mushroom/berry season, or something, the hand axe was stored where it was found, on top of what must have been a landmark hilltop once, with sweeping views over the wide Grassland, lush and green in short summers with very long days, nerved with meltwater steams from the glaciers at the horizon on three of its sides, in a very dry ice-age world. Herds of large herbivores annually wandering in to graze.
And then, one year nobody came to retrieve the axe from its cache between larger rocks at the hunting camp.
It lay right there while the Atlantic rose to cover all the land between it and the island Britain, and turned its hill into a sea cliff covered by dunes for thousands of years.
Ironically this is the same cliff the sagas claim that in the fifth century, Hengist and Horsa left home from, for a better life in the west, in a land peopled by the Welch, which at the time was their pejorative word for all culturally romanized people. An island of wimps who didn’t even speak English.
When I hold this hand axe, this tool belonging to a person whose family lived in Europe for more than 300.000 years and long before any other part of my family made it here from the middle-east, I feel its heft.
It is first cold to the touch then slowly warms up a bit in my clench, but stays cool and heavy.
The same sensation that its users experienced a long while back, right before butchering a wisent, mammoth or a rhinozeros. Right before he put it down onto the ground, or into a ocher colored shallow grave covered with rocks, not to be touched by another living human through the aeons.
It compresses time. It is close to magic. I’m sharing an experience, a sensation, a physical object, with a Neandertalperson.
I don’t know how to express just how that touches me.
They don’t seem so distant, I can almost shake their hand. So similar to mine.
Not everybody knows the same things, is sensitized to the same things.
You probably gather by now that from my admittedly unique perspective it really would be utterly silly to pejoratively call Neanderthal the type of person that did, and would again drive Neanderthals to extinction.
And now you know it is stupid to do so.
I do and say things that are stupid every day. Convention and societal norms force me.
I will say things like OMG or ‘bless you’ because everybody I meet agrees on what they mean. I still know it really is stupid.
So you do you.
You did no wrong, I meant no harm.
This was the second time I caused you to reply to me with the words: “Control yourself.”
Nobody else ever has. (But I have read: “What the hell is wrong with you?” Does anyone else still fondly think of Antinous?)
While each time I neither tried to control you nor was I in danger of losing control over myself, I will try to not evoke that response in you again. Should be easy.
At least on my side it was pure chance I did it to you twice, but maybe you say that to all the guys.
I really have no bone with you at all. I wouldn’t hold back telling you in very few words.
“Neanderthal” is just a shitty pejorative because it really doesn’t work. If you think about it. There really isn’t anything negative one can justifiably say about them without resorting to body shaming. But they probably didn’t think we were pretty either and we cannot hurt their feelings.
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