The CIA knew it was bullshit but Cheney wanted there to be WMDs so chose to believe bullshit artists instead, if John Kiriakou is to be believed. One of the only times in history where CIA might have been the good guys.
You must live in a pretty privileged country if you can compare the LGBT rights movement to the anti-slavery movement, a nice "it's done, let's go have some beers now" state of things, eh?
It's certainly not so clear cut in a lot of the world. People are still fighting for their rights and pride is part of it.
If you were in 1850s or 1860s in the US, hell, even some time after that, and your company said "We support black people's rights", that would be very political. Morally the right message to put out, but you suddenly lose half your customers and a bunch of idiots want to kill you. Not a smart business move tbh. Now if you said that for years in a row and then decided "We'll stop our black people's rights campaign", now you're making a whole new political statement, in the exact opposite direction to the original one, and significantly worse. Now you're also alienating the people who DO agree with what you originally said, and hoping that the people you originally alienated, are coming back. They are not.
I didn't say cancelling it was neutral. I was commenting on the people's opinions that companies should take stances.
Jagex here, clearly already took a stance (they had pride for several years) and then canceled it last minute after already announcing event dates for this year. That's straight up cowardice on their part. Like I've said before - if you're going to do pride as a company, fucking stick to your guns or you'll reveal you were never really an ally.
fake frames
And that's my main problem with what the industry has become. Nvidia always had sizable jumps generation to generation, in raw performance. They STILL get better raw performance, but now it's nowhere near impressive enough and they have to add their fake frame technologies into their graphs. Don't get me wrong, they always had questionable marketing tactics, but now it's getting even worse.
No idea when I'm replacing my 3060ti, but it won't be nVidia.
I first noticed the shift in pop culture around 2003. There was a russian pop singer duo/band called tatu. Terrible music, but they kissed in their one hit wonder music video.
Unrelated rant following:
Back in around 2002-2003 as I started becoming cognitive enough to appreciate different artists and styles, I didn't have Internet at home (Eastern Europe yay), but we had a couple of non-local TV channels somehow. One being VIVA (the German channel, not the UK one), which at some time of day just played the week's top 100 hits for Germany, many of which were one hit wonders. Tatu was one of them, though they were more of a 1.5 hit wonder (they're not gonna get us was half a hit compared to the big one).
This was wonderful, because it got me hearing all kinds of music as a 7 year old that I normally wouldn't have. Where the hell else was I going to hear The Rasmus - In The Shadows, a bunch of songs by Eminem, and then suddenly Las Ketchup Song? Or for something way less commonly known: Travel Time by Starsplash
Not the person you replied to, but agree with them to some degree, at least on the fact that any strong political stances are dangerous for a business.
If I ran a service and gay people are celebrating pride on it, that's none of my business and they can keep on doing whatever they want. Similarly, if conservatives want to throw a straight party without outright saying gay people deserve fewer rights, it's fucking weird, but it's their business. The moment anyone advocates for harming someone else, THAT's when it becomes a problem for me. Goal of a business, in my opinion, is to serve as many people as possible.
I just wouldn't want to voice support for, or against, anyone's rights, as a business. It's horrible that LGBT rights are a politicized issue, sure. But if I ran a business, and there are 30% otherwise quite well-behaved customers who would drop my business because I changed my logo to a rainbow colored one... I just don't see myself doing that. If I'm providing a service at the best price/quality ratio, it would just mean they drop me to go pay a homophobic business owner even more money for the same service. Does that actually benefit anyone, other than the hypothetical homophobic business owner?
But the worst, most cowardly thing, is supporting LGBT rights and then WITHDRAWING that support. If you're political already, fucking stick to your beliefs. Don't abandon them the second the political landscape starts changing.
No, it's definitely political. So was the Civil Rights movement in the US. So was Womens' suffrage.
Pushing for change is political, even if it's nearly universally agreed that the particular change is necessary and good. I agree with LGBT rights and as far as I care, they can have a month long pride if they want, it doesn't in any way chafe my willy. However, I agree with the person you replied to. As a business, ANY stance on ANY political cause risks alienation of some part of your customer base. Doing a 180 on your stance like Jagex did is of course the worst thing you can do, because then you alienate the people who agreed with you, but the others will still remember when you disagreed with them. Once they decided to do pride, they should've fucking stuck to it, at least for the year where they already had events scheduled!
If I ran a public-facing business at all, it would have literally no political allegiance or opinions. No stance on LGBT rights, no political donations (not really a huge thing in my country anyway), etc. Just do my thing, provide a great service, make sure my employees and customers are happy, and... The LGBT folks can do whatever they want, I'm just not voicing support for them as a business. Even if I as a person root for equal rights, I just don't want to take a stance as a business owner. Donations to charities, including LGBT charities, are fine - I just don't want it to be particularly public. But then I just prefer privacy in these kinds of matters.
I don’t know much about Iran, but do they have legalized slavery?
It's debatable, and I'm by no means an expert. But forced marriage is still a thing, where you sell your daughter to a man to clear your debts. If you ignore all the sex slaves, there are still about 600k people living in "modern slavery" conditions. The government isn't doing anything about it either from what I gather.
So no, it's not legal the way it is in the US through prison systems, but it is very much a huge issue that isn't being corrected.
But I mean between the US, Israel and Iran... There really are no good guys. Each of these governments does some real horrible shit.
Euro SUVs can not be compared to American SUVs.
You go buy a hunking monster of a German SUV, a BMW X7 or a Mercedes GLS right now, they're actually shorter than the LWB versions of the 7 series or S-Klasse, at around 5.1-5.2 meters for the SUVs and 5.3 for the flagship luxury sedans (Maybach versions and such are longer ofc)
The SHORT version of the GM full-size SUV (Escalade/Yukon/Tahoe) is about that size. The full size version (Escalade ESV/Yukon XL/Suburban) is almost half a meter longer than that, at over 5.7 meters. Full-size pickup trucks get over 6 meters in length and those are completely normal commuter vehicles too. The Cybertruck isn't even a very big truck in the US.
Japanese, Korean and American manufacturers all have models that they consider normal for North America, but won't sell in Europe - though for the Koreans, those aren't even THAT big - the Telluride is only a bit bigger than an X5.
That's not to say that I disagree on the fact that we need to limit car size growth. But you can NOT compare Europe to the US. You drive around in more rural areas in the US on a single holiday trip and suddenly things like the Jeep Grand Cherokee start looking like small cars. The super popular "C-SUV" in your graph is a smaller vehicle than an Audi A4. A normal family car that can fit 2 proper child seats in the back and a stroller in the trunk in your graph is anything between C and D segment car or SUV. The average taxi, the Mercedes E-Class, is E segment.
Really the most stupid part to me is when people buy these C-SUVs. They don't generally fit more people or luggage than C-Cars, and because of the extra weight and height, handling and ride quality is more compromised. They also cost more than equivalently sized cars. Just get a C-Car or D-Car in the form of a wagon. E-Car if you really need space. Most of my cars have been executive sized wagons (5 series Touring, E-Class T-Modell, A6 Avant are all cars I've owned) and they'll beat a similarly priced compact SUV in pretty much any metric I can think of. I currently have about 200 kilowatts of power after a remap, do over 1000 km on a tank of diesel in mixed driving scenarios (1500+ on all highway), can sit in comfort all day long or race you on a curvy road, and carry half my furniture when I fold down the rear seats.
view more: next ›
Kabul was always a lot more progressive because it's a big city. The rest of the country is a bunch of goatfuckers in the mountains. They think of women as objects. They were pissed off that women were given rights, so they took over. The women who do live in those regions, more than likely supported it - hating on those "liberal" Kabul women. The snake didn't impose the ideology on the Taliban, it (and Pakistan) equipped students of Islam (talibs) to fight communists. These people themselves were already quite nasty. There was an uprising in response to the mandatory literacy program for girls, before the US got interested in them (which was during the soviet intervention)
In the 1970s, when the communist revolution took place, the people of Afghanistan became increasingly restless due to all the reforms. They literally did not want progress. Then in the 2000s, the Americans tried to pick up where the soviets had left off... And as soon as they were gone, the Taliban was back. There was little resistance. Not enough people cared about equal rights. In particular, not a lot of people outside of Kabul, the biggest and most progressive city, cared.
It's all fucked up. Both the Soviet Union and the US tried to improve things, but of course the US and Pakistan funding Mujahideen, out of which the modern day Taliban grew, made it near impossible.
These people, the Talibs, were always anti-progress. They were poor boys who were sent to school, often in Pakistan, to study Islam and become clergymen. In the absence of any real government in poor rural areas, these guys were the closest things to civil servants. In the context of the period and place, you might consider them to be good guys even. But they were always very much fundamentalist muslims, and giving them any power was never a good idea.