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I'd like to address the YouTube claim-- I find it really quickly leaps from my algorithm into a terrible place, from innocent clicks. One of the more common examples of this in my experience is: I want a video demonstrating the form for a specific lift. I watch it. My feed is immediately 80% weight lifting content, much of which overlaps straight into toxic material I would never engage with. I run into this issue constantly, to the point where I often avoid clicking on things I am genuinely interested because I am worried it is too adjacent to something else that is adjacent to something toxic. When I give in and watch it, I often enjoy it but find afterwards that I was right and my feed has a load of objectionable material on it.


I really wish there was a way to tell all of the algorithms like "I found the info I needed on <niche topic X>, STOP SHOWING IT TO ME". You want to buy a new dishwasher, you look up dishwashers, you buy one. You'll still see nothing but dishwasher ads and content for the next year across the entire internet....


Funny enough, I've had the opposite experience. Easy access to books and reviews has me reading conservatively 10x as much as I did a decade ago


It’s unfortunate that many Americans are comfortable with this guilty even if proven innocent approach to justice


Ultimately it comes down to the utter lack of accountability we've had for decades. Our system has been rotting, the elites claim everything is fine as they look at the numbers, especially their own numbers, go up up up. The average person's frustrations have built up to the point that people just want to see other people hurt for a semblance of accountability. See the outpouring of support for Luigi.

So then along comes a new demagogue, covers his face in orange makeup to signal he's not part of that elite ingroup, talks like he's mentally handicapped to make it seem like he lacks the capacity to lie, and claims to care about the plights of the common person. All the things that politicians previously wouldn't talk about, rightly or wrongly. "This one is different, and he really hears us!". But then rather than any sort of reform, he merely directs that anger at other powerless scapegoats - a series of revolving spectacles that leave supporters with no time for it to set in just how much they're being had, or the wide trail of societal damage in his wake.

I keep waiting for even half these people who claim to care about the Constitution and individual liberty to realize how their country is being mortally wounded. How every day they waffle and continue give this societal arsonist a pass, how much worse off our country will be. But being eternally hopeful that people will come around to seeing the truth is one of my personal flaws. So the cynical part of me is just waiting for Trump to start supporting gun control again.


> From statements made and queries in law enforcement databases, [redacted] has not violated his visa; however, the Atlanta Field Office Director has mandated [redacted] be presented as a Voluntary Departure. [Redacted] has accepted voluntary departure despite not violating his B1/B2 visa requirements.”

The article worded the whole thing very carefully, in a way to me is intentionally misleading. The director mandated that the visa holder be labeled as a voluntary departure. That could simply mean the person decided he would return, and was allowed to do so, and the director simply informed whoever filled out the paperwork that this was a voluntary departure. There is nothing in the article that actually indicates the person was forced to leave the country with a valid visa.

The fact that they dance around this tells me that this article is bullshit. And knowing what I know about The Guardian, it almost certainly is.


If I was rounded up in an ICE raid, I would enthusiastically depart the country, even if I was fully compliant with every rule.

That’s to say that a voluntary departure doesn’t mean no harm was caused.


But if harm was caused, The Guardian would probably be more explicit about it. They wouldn't beat around the bush in how they word it.


Baseless detainment and coercion, kicking a law-abiding America-contributing worker out of the country, interrupting the building of a new domestic factory, and making an allied country wary of working with us are the harms. You're just ignoring them, because you've been propagandized to think the victims deserved it.


That is a very different issue than what the article implies. The implication of the article was that something very illegal happened. What you're implying is not necessarily illegal, but I agree it is harmful.


I mean, someone was kidnapped, and then coerced into giving up their visa. Kidnapping is very illegal, and so is extortion.


Kidnapped or detained? These words mean the same thing to you?


I don't know what distinction you're trying to draw. I assumed they moved the victim some time in the course of the detainment. Call it unlawful detainment if you want.


If Ice detained me, kept me in kafkaesque isolation, shuttled me around for a few hours from one detention centre to another, but did no other harm, I'd probably also be happy to GTFO, and might even concede no harm was done.


Does controversy cause articles to slide on HN? I noticed that this had more points in less time than several articles ranked above it, which surprises me a bit

e.g. at time of writing a post about MentraOS has 11 points in 1 hour compared to this article's 51 in 53 minutes, but this is ranked 58th to Mentra's 6


It has dropped to 100th while the MentraOS post remains at 5th. Is HN pushing negative PR for AI down the ranks?


Some people must be flagging it

Dang, can we chat about collaborative filtering bubbles please?


Yes. Too large a comment/vote ratio causes articles to be defrontpaged, as well as some domains. Moderators do a lot of manipulation behind the scenes to keep what they deem ‘hot-button topics’ down in 3rd page or shadow-banned altogether. Then there’s the user flagging system that is abused whenever some popular article goes against the grain.

That’s why I use https://news.ycombinator.com/active to find the interesting topics instead of having to rely on the strict moderation algorithm


As far as I am aware, wealth inequality is significantly better in Europe than it is in the United States (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/wealth-in... as an example) and I still wouldn't characterize democracy in Europe as "perfect" even if we narrowly define the rubrick to be only concerned with money tipping the scales of power


That site is weird. As far as I can tell, it's measuring income inequality, not wealth inequality, and it doesn't... appear to know the difference? Quoting it:

> The Gini index, or Gini coefficient, is a statistical measure of wealth distribution developed by the Italian statistician Corrado Gini. The Gini index is used to gauge economic inequality by measuring income distribution, also called wealth distribution.

It's a kinda big red flag if they say that income and wealth are the same thing!

There are a few notable cases of European countries having very high wealth inequality despite lower income inequality (my take which may not be shared by many: having low income inequality makes it hard for people who aren't generationally wealthy to overcome old money). Notably, Sweden has a higher wealth inequality than the United States.

However, I don't think it's true that Europe in general has higher wealth inequality than the United States. Here's the wikipedia list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_we...


> It's a kinda big red flag if they say that income and wealth are the same thing!

Wealthy and old people love when income is used as a stand in for wealth. It deflects political action onto the young and hard/smart working, and helps keep their dynasties and rent seeking assets intact.


I think the frog and the scorpion were both wrong


Peasant has a more specific meaning than this. More importantly, it has been used as a pejorative for a very long time now and that is clearly the intent the vice president had in mind.


Not likely to be a workable system in a home with children, then


No, which is the dilemma I find myself in


I would say in your toy example the hospital has been shutdown due to the PE firm "cashing out" excessively


This aligns with my experience with a couple of DEI (or similar) programs at large tech as well. Coupled with really basic training that amounted to "Unconscious bias exists and it can happen to you, make sure you judge candidates by their performance and nothing else", which always seemed pretty reasonable to me.


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