I don't doubt your observation, since it does seem to align with what I have seen, but it is possible that the distribution has changed. As you observed, the top 25% (give or take) seem as bright and driven as ever, but if the rest of their peers are falling behind, it could drag the overall average lower.
Because innocent people are dying and western governments are capable of intervening but choose not to.
Your line of argument is an interesting one though. You're tacitly admitting that western protesters don't actually care about innocent Palestinians. They're just using Palestine as an excuse to undermine their governments.
A lot of American support for the Palestinian movement is a proxy for leftist anti-imperialist and anti-government sentiment, yes. Many Americans had never even heard of Palestinians or Gaza or any of it until it went viral on social media.
If the US weren't actively involved in aiding and abetting Israel's genocide of Palestinians, awareness and protest would probably be at about the level it that was for China's persecution of Uyghurs. Not nothing, but also not particularly radical.
> Your line of argument is an interesting one though. You're tacitly admitting that western protesters don't actually care about innocent Palestinians. They're just using Palestine as an excuse to undermine their governments.
That’s not true and definitely not the “gotcha” you’re looking for. Americans protesting on American soil, the actions of the American government supporting atrocities against lives they do care about seems perfectly reasonable. We’re not protesting against Iran in America because there’s no government action we want to stop. The administration already opposes Irans actions and has publicly stated that military intervention is being considered. There’s just a lot less for Americans to be mad at their government in this situation. That doesn’t mean people aren’t upset. They’re just not taking to the streets because there is less of a reason to ask the government to change direction they’re already going in. I’m not sure what is so hard to understand about that unless you’re intentionally being obtuse.
In America at least, we saw protests against some of the things Israel did in Gaza because the US government is supporting Israel. Since the US is not a supporter of Iran, and in fact has been strong adversary for decades, there is less reason to protest here. Plus, we’ve got some serious problems of our own that are keeping us occupied at the moment
It's true that the recipient of the protest might be different, but that's no reason to be quiet.
China in Tibet, China's treatment of the Uyghurs, Russia's war against Ukraine, Kony 2012 etc, there are lots of causes where the local government in whichever country you look at isn't actively involved, yet there was a lot more public noise and campaigns.
I don't know what the answer is, but "my government doesn't deliver weapons to them" hasn't been a reason before, so I don't see why it would be now.
US government policy is completely aligned with the goal of stopping Iran from doing this, there is no reason to protest the US government on this issue.
It's not always a protest against government, sometimes it a campaign of lobbying, sometimes it's international attention.
The US government wasn't a friend of Kony in 2012. Before Trump 2, the US were not that friendly with Russia, yet people protested in many places around the world to show support for Ukraine and to voice their opposition to Russia's imperialistic wars, being aligned with their governments' position.
It's different with Iran. Some of that is likely to be Iran's lower profile, but not all -- it's not like media outlets are not reporting on it at all and you have to get your information from niche sources to hear about events in Iran.
China in Tibet manifestation were mostly thanks to the Dalai Lama. Without a spiritual chief in exile, no one would have cared.
The Uighur is easy: Nike and a lots of western brand used Chinese work camps. In my neighborhood that's what people protested, not really Chinese treatment of their minority, but the fact our brands used slave labor. Nike and all no promised they wouldn't use slave again, the Uighur are still discriminated and forcefully sterilized, no one care anymore in the West.
Russia war against Ukraine is very different, it's the first war in Europe since the 90s, and the first "real" war in europe since 45 (I guarantee you if Ukraine folded in 3 days, no one would have said much). Also, Europe is financing the Russian war economy, which is easy to protest.
Westerners treat Tibetans like pandas, which is why China has travel restrictions into Tibet proper for foreigners. Most westerners don’t know the Uighurs exist, and anyways they are Muslims. Accordingly, China doesn’t bother with travel restrictions into Xinjiang. The fact that they have any attention from westerners at all these days is kind of amazing.
But the protests weren’t limited to Ameica, there were protests all over the world, including in Muslim countries.
And the outrage wasn’t always directed at the government. We don’t see Iranian students in the US being attacked. We don’t see Iranian places of worship in the US being attacked. We don’t see as much outrage in the comments on HN - there were some event justifying it.
Iranian-Americans are almost universally people who fled Iran during or after the revolution, they are almost all hostile to the current ruling regime. Why would anyone attack them over what Iran is doing? Even Jewish Americans haven't been attacked over what Israel is doing in Gaza, despite them having large numbers of dual-citizens and majority support for Israel.
If you get into a situation where you are dependent on any tool for 90% of your engineering output, the maker of that tool has a lot of leverage when it comes to setting prices. So my guess is that if we get into that situation, the AI companies will be able to set prices to make sure they don’t lose money.
As someone who was fully on board with masking during COVID, I never want to wear one again unless there is high level of infection of either COVID or flu in my immediate area. I think a lot of people feel similarly. There just isn’t going to be much support for masking all of the time unless you work in a hospital.
When you have a cult following and control of all three branches of government, you can pretty much do and say whatever you want with little consequence.
I wouldn’t phrase it like that but I do wonder if democrats will moderate a bit in response. It would be so easy for them to win in the midterms. But it’s not. Lear if they’ll disavow DEI or defund the police or open borders.
If you’re a Tesla shareholder, there is no better leader than Elon. For of all his many faults, I can’t think of anyone else who could keep that stock price pumped at a level so far far detached from reality for so long.
I actually get a kick out of Eletrek’s roasting of Elon and Tesla, but if you read a few of their articles, it’s clear they don’t like him. Lots of opinions and editorializing in the articles. I have no problem with that, you just have to realize where they are coming from and base your interpretation accordingly
Its not that they dont like him, its more of Editor was big believer until Tesla scammed him out of half a $mil worth of fake roadsters that never materialized.
If that's really the reason, that's the most idiotic reason possible. So he "earned" a couple of Roadsters by spamming his referral code, and it turns out his free cars might be a decade late, and maybe not as awesome as promised?
If your employer said they'd pay you half a million if you worked for them, and then you did and they didn't pay you, I doubt you'd be dismissing it so frivolously
Is it fraud if he paid $0 for non-existent roadsters? Referral credits are legal fictions, much like how Tesla Roadsters are physical fictions. Trading one fiction for another isn’t fraud, it’s cosplay.
>Is it fraud if he paid $0 for non-existent roadsters?
Is it fraud if you worked for a startup that promised you options, and then refused to honor/issue those said options? After all, because those options never existed, you also "paid $0 for non-existent [options]"?
> Leveraging an existing monetised readership for referral credits isn’t “work”.
> Is it fraud if he paid $0 for non-existent roadsters?
How do you think readership gets monetised in the first place? The biggest way is ads, which includes referrals.
Do you dismiss paid ad placement the same way you dismiss referrals? If not, what makes it different?
> Referral credits are legal fictions
A promise for $100 of stuff isn't exactly the same as a promise for $100, but it's close. Debt is a "legal fiction" but that doesn't mean it's not legitimate, or that you can pretend it doesn't exist.
The reason for that is actually very funny. Electrek guy (Fred) was one of the main propagandist for Tesla's cult - he 'earned' 2 free Tesla Roadsters for his convincing enough people to buy a Tesla.
It was only once he realized that he has been duped and those will never materialize that the coverage turned negative.
Thanks for this - I've paid much less attention to Tesla over recent years, but my memory of Electrek was that it was a distinctly-pro Tesla outlet, but this was a few years back now.
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