121–130 of 147 posts
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I have no horse in this race, but you are not more logical than your brother. First of all, "conspiracy theory" is often taken to mean one of the tinfoil variety ("government and gay aliens experiment with mind control beams" style, or "immortality treatment hidden by pharma for the last 100 years in attempt to increase profits and for eugenic purposes"). But a "conspiracy" simply means an act of collusion done secre…
A conspiracy theory typically involves a pretty large group of people doing something big to deceive a massive group of people. Like a faked moon landing, a large false flag operation like 9/11, or a hillary clinton/democratic party death squad murdering leakers. Has anything like this ever happened in all of history? The whole snowden thing is the best example I can think of but I don't remember actually being surpr…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
But of course, this will be dismissed, as will any other example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
Want some more?
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=noam+chomsky
Spend a few hours there and then come back and tell me the image the US government portrays is highly consistent with its actual reality.
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Yes, I can elaborate. Standards are a set of procedures to cooperate and provide a certain level of minimum quality. For many single person hackers not having standards may result in much better quality, but for teams of people who do this because they need to pay rent the quality is always pointed towards the possible minimum, not maximum. Therefore standards usually improve the work of paid teams. But standards are…
The same argumentation is usually used to argue that people have to be in the office or they won't do work - it's wrong in that case, it is wrong in this case. People often do good work without being forced to.
But none of that is true for the NSA.
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As much crap as people give the civil servants in the US, I feel like our government does a pretty reasonable job at finding competent employees. I'm from Chicago, so I definitely know how false that statement can be, but most other places in the world seem a lot more about who your parents were and who you know. I mean, the social stratification of the public/private school thing is somewhat baffling to me, as someo…
In Britain we have state schools, private schools and most expensive of all the old 'public schools', with a name almost designed to confuse. Most of them are ancient, and look a bit like Hogwarts. The real power of the schools is the 'old boys network'. When you need help getting into university, or beginning a career, there will be an old boy of your school you can write to for help. It seems daft in 2017, but ex p…
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Another example: Cameron. Led us into Brexit due to a massive miscalculation. Not a capable man but the Brits insist on picking leaders from a few thousand upper-class twits. His Chancellor and Eton chum was also a disaster.
Actually, by traditional definitions definitions Cameron is middle class, very upper middle class, but middle class. His father actually worked for a living and he probably had to buy his own furniture...
And hid away significant amounts of cash in offshore tax havens
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Another example: Cameron. Led us into Brexit due to a massive miscalculation. Not a capable man but the Brits insist on picking leaders from a few thousand upper-class twits. His Chancellor and Eton chum was also a disaster.
Americans don't seem to be doing much better in that regard. In fact, Trump has the worst education of any president in recent memory.
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Americans don't seem to be doing much better in that regard. In fact, Trump has the worst education of any president in recent memory.
He graduated from Wharton which is one of the most prestigious business schools in the country.
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Generously, politics is The Thick of It . All kinds of scheming and malice, but none of it ever amounting to anything.
Same creator as Veep! I think he left Veep though and the show is becoming more cartoonish as a result.
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> What success did the CIA have, ever? * Operation Ivy Bells (joint with USN and NSA, according to Wikipedia) * Stuxnet, possibly (unclear who was responsible for it, although it's generally thought to be joint US-Israeli effort)
The ones we've never heard about, which would be the highest form of success?
Maybe their jobs are also absurdly hard.
sounds pretty hard to me