We didn't see massive uprisings in Nazi Germany also, and there were some Jewish individuals collaborated with the Nazi regime. Your argument couldn't be less convincing.
The comparisons with Nazi Germany are truly disgusting. In my view, it borders on Holocaust denial.
Nazi Germany murdered 6 million Jews. Nobody is being killed in Xinjiang. Before the Holocaust, the Nazis very openly espoused a theory of racial purity, called the Jews parasites, and passed race laws that systematically separated Jews and "Aryans." Nothing of the sort is happening in Xinjiang. In fact, the Chinese government espouses exactly the opposite view: equality of all ethnic groups.
It's possible to talk about abuses in Xinjiang without engaging in massive, offensive exaggeration and comparing it to the Holocaust.
This could be the reason why iPhone 6 has not been approved in China. With heavy smuggling they will get plenty. A lot of arguments assume the (American) government is decent, but iPhone is a global device. Let's hope Apple products have the same security all over the world.
I would expect people hooking up nearby would identify themselves a little specifically - I'd be "the guy in the tux with the red carnation". A spammer from across the globe isn't going identify themselves with a description fitting the woman in the table over. I mean, she would be "blue and white scarf" rather than "nearby pretty girl" (unless it's a spammer, yeah).
Well, 'nearby pretty girl' would not describer herself as such, but would have a plausible looking profile picture. :) Also the distances are a bit bigger than the bar you're sitting in (up to a few kilometers).
How can an entity which consists of between dozens to hundreds of thousands of people, each of whom has limited agency over the aggregate actions of that entity, and can be replaced at any time while fulfilling the same function (on paper) be remotely capable of demonstrating human-like moral agency?
Here's another question: "How can a human being, which consists of many neurons, each of which has limited agency over the aggregate actions of that entity, be remotely capable of demonstrating moral agency?"
Incidentally, I noticed that you substituted 'human-like moral agency' for 'moral agency' in the OP. I never said states have human-like moral agency (nor am I making a claim to the contrary per se).
No it's a rhetorical question, turn it into one with an answer and you'd have rebutted the argument.
You might also note that the answer to your question is that they don't. It is a problem applicable at scale - and we do terrible things to single neurons all the time in the name of science.
States have not-human-like moral codes: agree
Amoral states: don't agree
I believe each group of people have their own social and moral codes that guide their behavior. I don't believe its something easy to understand, determine or represent.
I don't have experience with other mobile phone companies in the US, but T-Mobile's customer support line is unlike anything I had ever experienced in Europe. It made my experiences with China Unicom not seem all that bad—and that's saying something!.
I have experienced the following things:
- I would be on the phone for ten or twenty minutes before I could speak to an operator;
- The voice recognition software utterly failed for me (granted, I'm not a native English speaker but I have few to no problems with Siri);
- I would be connected to different departments several times, in circles;
- I would have to enter my mobile phone number over and over again;
- The operators were entirely clueless about SIM cards for iPads and about their inability to accept foreign credit cards.
It's very much reminiscent of calling a national phone company for support in Europe in the 80s.
Also, I've been in T-Mobile shops where they didn't know the term 'SIM card'. They would literally ask me if it was one of those cards you put into an iPhone, and then tell me I could only buy those online (indeed, they're not free!).
They're also very, very expensive by European standards. Again, my previous horrible experience with China telcos made a lot more sense after being a T-Mobile customer. I now realize they just copy the US a little to eagerly!
Edit: Here's an example. When you would call to top up your SIM card they would enumerate all the plans you could get starting from the most absurdly expensive plans that you wouldn't otherwise realize existed. A reasonably priced plan would only come in as the 7th option and it would take a minute or more before they'd tell you what button to press. It was a very painful process to top up my SIM card and I imagine that if I lived in the US longtime I'd ultimately give in and just get a monthly plan that I didn't really want.
If you can access this 30 min radio programme from the BBC about chips (from June 2010), you might find it interesting. It features a segment on Belgian fries
"In Belgium the oven chip hasn't caught on. Instead friterie shops proliferate, and Belgians take their chips very seriously. How the potato arrived in Europe remains contentious, but the Belgians are confident that it was them, and not the French, who invented the "French" fry. Ray Kershaw visited the Friet Museum in Bruges established to celebrate their national fry with director Eddie Van Belle."
Just to clarify on this crucial topic, note that us people of France do not claim to have invented french fries and we find it odd that American people call them french. We generally also see it as a Belgian speciality.
What happened is that at the end of WW2, the Americans learned about the fries in Belgium, but since the people spoke French, believed to be in France.
Anyway, in Belgium people still use beef fat for the perfect fries.
Exactly. The article was almost annoying as it talks about "perfect" fries like everybody on the whole planet has the same taste. There aren't many things more subjective than taste. Just saying a fry should be salty in order the perfect is already a mistake. Not everybody likes that taste. Which is why you get asked specifically if you want salt or not. At least in Belgium, where we like to enjoy the one and only true superior real fries. Lol.
Anyway, still appreciate the article, it just started with the wrong premises.
Talk to anyone about food, and everyone will have a different opinion of what/who/where the "perfect" is: the perfect pizza, the perfect burger, the perfect sushi, the perfect pie, the perfect ____. Everyone obviously has different tastes and it's universally acknowledged to be a subjective, if not contentious, topic.
If nothing else, I appreciate that the author laid out his criteria for selection, and didn't just jump straight into it.
People may not agree on perfect, but I think a lot more people agree on what "bad" is. Bad pizza, bad fries, etc. At the very least it should be universally easy to avoid those.
I am italian living in hungary and I never considered McD fries "amazing". I have never met anyone who didn't prefer home made ones/random shop one's either.
So, last time this article came up on HN I generously filed it under "maybe fries in fast food chains in the US are different than fries in US fast food chains everywhere else".
I think they are. I'm a Canadian living in France, and I pretty much hate McDonalds here. Fries are soggy and not salted enough, burgers are completely messed up, and the service is impressively slow. I tried several places, it's all more of the same.
Everytime I go back to a McDonalds in Canada I find the food just tastes better. It's still fast food, but I'm enjoying it so much more.
It's funny because it's the exact opposite for me as a French guy living in the US. I find MacDonald's to be vastly superior in France, and it's also the opinion of all my French friends who have tried both.
They say that McDonald's adapt their recipes to the taste of the country they're in, which these anecdotal observations would support :)
I don't remember McDonald's fries tasting better in the US than in Europe, but then I don't go to McDonald's all that often. (I do grant that there are subtle differences between McDonald's restaurants in different regions.)
There's actually a second type of American fries that I think is somewhat better than the ones at McDonald's. They're called Cajun fries [1]. They're made in an oven and are a bit spicy. You can get them at cheap fast food places like Checkers or fancier hamburger places like Five Guys.
Cajun fries at 5 Guys and probably most fast-food restaurants are made by simply sprinkling Cajun spices on fries prepared in a fryer as usual, the oven is an implementation detail Rachel Ray choose in the linked recipe that is uncommon.
Confirmed, an American who has made the trip to Belgium, the fries in your country are ridiculously superior to anything we get here, except certain places that specialize in them, where they occasionally manage to achieve par with Belgian frites.
The author acknowledges that other types of fries are also great, but this article is about the perfect "thin and crispy" fry, rather than the perfect thicker style fry.
"my thick-cut pub-style fries are super-potatoey and fantastic, and when I'm in the mood for them, my seasoned steak fries can't be beat, but for thin, super-crisp fries..."
The "taste like cardboard" is probably because McDonalds no longer fries in beef tallow.
They don't believe in nations, they believe strongly in their own country as a "nation", but not in the common meaning of a nation which is ethinically based.
If they believed in nations (in the way other countries believe), irish-americans would identify more with being irish than with being americans for example (and the same for other ethnicities).
