otalp

24 ms·

181.
by otalp 10y ago
The Fountainhead is just bad writing. You hit it on the head when you said "the protagonists are always perfect and the world around them is fundamentally flawed". Its difficult to take a book seriously with such caricatured and p
182.
by otalp 10y ago
Absolutely. I had like one page in my textbook dedicated to evolution, so when I read The Selfish Gene and everything clicked and it all made sense, it was the sort of 'eureka' moment I'd always heard about. Yet sadly 90% of
183.
by otalp 10y ago
1984/Homage To Catalonia by George Orwell Manufacturing Consent/Necessary Illusions by Noam Chomsky(Possibly even more relevant today than it's ever been) The Selfish Gene/The Extended Phenotype by Richard Dawkins The Re
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How to Argue Well by Daniel Dennett(boingboing.net)
8 points by otalp 10y ago|0 comments
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by otalp 10y ago
Sure, but it's easy to be humble when you're essentially an institution. In fact, it's better that way, because it appears honest. It's far harder for an unproven fund manager to admit making egregious mistakes without m
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by otalp 10y ago
"In Berkshire’s 2005 annual report, I argued that active investment management by professionals – in aggregate – would over a period of years underperform the returns achieved by rank amateurs who simply sat still. I explained that the
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by otalp 10y ago
1)'Justify' meaning: https://www.google.co.uk/#q=justify+meaning "show or prove to be right or reasonable" 2) > That book was published by the goverment of Sweden. Probably, but pictures on "pdf-
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by otalp 10y ago
Is there a link to an actual government site instead of pictures of a book in Swedish that was published decades ago? > Besides, socioeconomic factors to justify rape....really? I'm sorry, but it is really difficult to have a seriou
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by otalp 10y ago
You're presumably reading the graph of the % of population polled every year who say "they've been exposed to sex offences"(not necessarily in that specific year), not the actual yearly crime rates, which are lower down
190.
by otalp 10y ago
What are your sources that try to prove that socioeconomic factors are not 'the major ones', to the extent that that you can confidently state that it is 'plainly' wrong to attribute differences to poverty and lack of ed
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by otalp 10y ago
There's a difference between 'people from foreign backgrounds' and refugees. Even in Germany, I wouldn't be surprised if 'people from foreign backgrounds' commit crimes at a higher rate when you don't adju
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by otalp 10y ago
According to the official statistics on The Swedish Crime Survey, the sexual violence rate in Sweden remained about the same between 2005 and 2014. The refugee crisis began around 2014, and since then, the rates for sexual violence went do
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by otalp 10y ago
I don't think he's a traditional American libertarian. If you read his book Zero To One, he states that he thinks a fundamental truth that most people don't realize is that improving technology is more important than globaliz
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by otalp 10y ago
There were numerous pieces on The Guardian, Intercept, NYT and Vox decrying Obama's mass surveillance as a huge blot on his administration and his biggest stain alongside illegal drone strikes. It was literally one of the biggest reaso
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by otalp 10y ago
A huge number certainly haven't succeeded massively. A few have. Also a lot of legal migrants already come from (relatively) rich families since US migration can be expensive and favours the educated.
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by otalp 10y ago
I'm thinking of doing my masters in(and eventually moving to)Canada instead of the US. For the country that I'm from, the waiting time to get permanent residency in the US is much more than a decade, and with the political instabi
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by otalp 10y ago
>Would plans to make the requirements more strict(such as requiring them to work a high-paying job..) help alleviate this, since the queue will be shorter If it does, the effects will only be seen in a couple of decades. A lot things can
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by otalp 10y ago
I was not the OP who you replied to but I assumed that this was what he was referring to. When asked about students staying back in the country after going to Ivy league schools the quote is “When two-thirds or three-quarters of the CEOs in
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by otalp 10y ago
http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/16/13653490/steve-bannon-tru...
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by otalp 10y ago
Iran is a huge bed for talent. As the article mentioned, 2 of the 3 people who created Google's Ad Services came from Iran, which came under the recent EO. But in general it is the rise of anti-immigration sentiment, and the instabilit
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by otalp 10y ago
Difficult to stop giving them money when they sell products billions use, and also employ millions. It's probably easier to overthrow the half the states in the world than to bring down Apple.
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by otalp 10y ago
>whats happening to gays and women in Muslim countries. Does he allow gay men or muslim women to enter then? I would applaud such an initiative. Why doesn't he do that? Muslim women far outnumber christians in these countries, if yo
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by otalp 10y ago
An Oscar Nominated director cannot attend the ceremony[1]. Ironically he's been persecuted by his own government, but he's unfortunately not a Christian so Trump doesn't care. People with green cards aren't being allowed
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by otalp 10y ago
>sacrificing freedom People can still pay for sugary refills, this will simply protect the uninformed and the poor who take this as an opportunity to fill up to the detriment of their health.
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by otalp 10y ago
Well, large parts of the Right "Libertarians" are already in charge. All they do is remove healthcare, slash spending on PBS, environmental agencies and Science, while giving corporations and billionaires gigantic tax breaks.....T
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by otalp 10y ago
>Nationalism The last time anti-intellectual forces that praised authoritarian figures, promised to take the country back to a more glorious time and zoned in on people of a particular religion, we called it a word stronger than 'Na
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by otalp 10y ago
Considering how immigration has in large part made the tech industry what it is today, and considering the CEOs of both Google and Microsoft are immigrants- not from the countries Trump banned today but nevertheless a country with hundreds
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by otalp 10y ago
The original Libertarians were left wing anti-government anarchists. The word was appropriated by the far right in the US, and The ones today are Ayn Rand fanatics- the likes of Paul Ryan, who are anti-labour and pro-business. Reducing the
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by otalp 10y ago
He's talking about Steve Bannon, Trump's main advisor, who ran Brietbart, which hosts plenty of White Supremacists. That's basically the argument- Asians aren't Americans, we need more of 'us' at the top. That&
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by otalp 10y ago
>2.7 billion people are trying to survive on less than 2 dollars a day 2 dollars a day isn't all that little in places like say, India. Sure, they're not going to be living a life of luxury, but it's very different from $2

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