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I don't think we have ever had the kind of free society or democracy people think of when they say "we have a free society and a democracy." From jailing anti-

I don't think we have ever had the kind of free society or democracy people think of when they say "we have a free society and a democracy." From jailing anti-war protestors (WWI) to jailing anti-war protestors (Vietnam) to allowing corporations to put serious, nearly life-ruining heat on whistleblowers, to the way the media largely operates by uncritically republishing press releases and communiques, I would say it's pretty clear that we're living in a closely managed society with a severely manipulated democratic process.

kragen 5y ago
It's a continuum. Just because Gary Webb "committed suicide" with multiple gunshot wounds to the head doesn't mean the CIA in the 01990s was just as unaccountable as Beria's NKVD, much less just as oppressive. Dan Rather's CBS Evening News was no Wikileaks, much less Wikipedia, but it wasn't Pravda either. Serpico got shot in the face for being the first honest cop in the US, but you could still do business in New York without paying all your profits out to the cops. People in Peoria had enormous freedom in 01930, 01960, and even 01990 that people in Minsk, Shanghai, and Alexandria just didn't. Today we enjoy many freedoms nobody had in 01990, largely thanks to the internet, but those freedoms are probably not going to last much longer, also thanks to the internet.
- School-Cotton 5y ago
  Just FYI the zero-padded date thing is incredibly distracting and weird. (Yes I know there’s some “foundation” pushing this, but still).
  - kragen 5y ago
    You say that as if it's a bad thing.
    - 01acheru 5y ago
      It is totally useless to zero pad a date in a sentence, it is human to human communication. BTW it is also useless in any other scenario.
    - School-Cotton 5y ago
      It makes your post come off as an ad for this foundation that 99.9% of people don’t care about and that has nothing to do with the topic being discussed; it’s as if I inserted [DRINK MORE COCA-COLA] into random parts of my comment. Yes, distracting from your main point by intentionally attracting attention to something completely unrelated is bad.
      - kragen 5y ago
        People who are looking for an excuse to give others grief for harmlessly violating social conventions probably should not be posting on a site named "Hacker News"—after all, hackers have always been weird, think of Turing. In any case they are not capable of engaging with my substantive points, should I have any, so I'm not losing anything by discomforting them. And it's good to know who those griefers are before that becomes a life-or-death question, as it eventually was for Turing, Swartz, Assange, and so many others.
    - nate_meurer 5y ago
      To be consistent, you should pad the other numbers you use too. Like money amounts. And I think you should pad dates out to eight digits, just to be safe.
      - kragen 5y ago
        I think I'll also pad out your name, Nate______.
        nate_meurer 5y ago
        Ok that's funny. Thank you for not padding me with zeros.
        kragen 5y ago
        That would be inhumane.
  - missingrib 5y ago
    What foundation?
    - School-Cotton 5y ago
      The Long Now Foundation

kragen 5y ago

It's a continuum. Just because Gary Webb "committed suicide" with multiple gunshot wounds to the head doesn't mean the CIA in the 01990s was just as unaccountable as Beria's NKVD, much less just as oppressive. Dan Rather's CBS Evening News was no Wikileaks, much less Wikipedia, but it wasn't Pravda either. Serpico got shot in the face for being the first honest cop in the US, but you could still do business in New York without paying all your profits out to the cops. People in Peoria had enormous freedom in 01930, 01960, and even 01990 that people in Minsk, Shanghai, and Alexandria just didn't. Today we enjoy many freedoms nobody had in 01990, largely thanks to the internet, but those freedoms are probably not going to last much longer, also thanks to the internet.

School-Cotton 5y ago
Just FYI the zero-padded date thing is incredibly distracting and weird. (Yes I know there’s some “foundation” pushing this, but still).
- kragen 5y ago
  You say that as if it's a bad thing.
  - 01acheru 5y ago
    It is totally useless to zero pad a date in a sentence, it is human to human communication. BTW it is also useless in any other scenario.
  - School-Cotton 5y ago
    It makes your post come off as an ad for this foundation that 99.9% of people don’t care about and that has nothing to do with the topic being discussed; it’s as if I inserted [DRINK MORE COCA-COLA] into random parts of my comment. Yes, distracting from your main point by intentionally attracting attention to something completely unrelated is bad.
    - kragen 5y ago
      People who are looking for an excuse to give others grief for harmlessly violating social conventions probably should not be posting on a site named "Hacker News"—after all, hackers have always been weird, think of Turing. In any case they are not capable of engaging with my substantive points, should I have any, so I'm not losing anything by discomforting them. And it's good to know who those griefers are before that becomes a life-or-death question, as it eventually was for Turing, Swartz, Assange, and so many others.
  - nate_meurer 5y ago
    To be consistent, you should pad the other numbers you use too. Like money amounts. And I think you should pad dates out to eight digits, just to be safe.
    - kragen 5y ago
      I think I'll also pad out your name, Nate______.
      - nate_meurer 5y ago
        Ok that's funny. Thank you for not padding me with zeros.
        kragen 5y ago
        That would be inhumane.
- missingrib 5y ago
  What foundation?
  - School-Cotton 5y ago
    The Long Now Foundation