Hey, just wanted to say thanks for this comment. This is a substantive rebuttal that doesn't make any claims of what he said that are untrue, and I pretty much consider it also a response to my sibling comment in reply to you. I also agree with pretty much everything you said here.
>He did more than that. It wasn’t that he had the opinion that women were innately less qualified
He never said that in his letter. The memo was published unredacted. You can definitely disagree with what he said and there are many reasons to do so, but you should at least reference his actual statements and arguments when doing that.
> but that he tried to repeatedly discuss that at work after being told not to.
That is also not true. My understanding is the memo was a report in response to a request from a committee he was part of and wasn't intended to be more widespread. It was leaked inside Google and then outside Google and then people demonized him and he got fired. That's pretty much the high-level set of events. He definitely did not write this after being explicitly told not to, especially "repeatedly" per basically every piece of evidence about the entire kerfuffle.
I'm not a Damore apologist either, but like the sibling it really pisses me off when I see someone just straight up strawmanning or lying about what someone else did to smear them. The man was already blackballed from the entire tech industry and had to leave the country after being fired, mostly for saying factually true statements that are controversial because of the color he (and others) added to them. Isn't that enough? Do you have to lie about what he said, when it was published publicly and anyone can read it for themselves?
> The entire rest of your comment is pure fiction, by the way.
What part, specifically? The part where he's living outside the US (in Luxembourg per an article linked in another comment in this larger thread)? The part about him being fired from Google? The part about him being blackballed in the tech industry?
Seriously, the dude is as cancelled as it is possible to get, what more do you want? Argue against his actual statements, if you choose to do so, but don't be a blatant liar. This is the Internet, the Internet is forever, anybody can look this stuff up.
Damore is not the one that leaked the doc to Gizmodo, as far as I am aware. The controversy that ultimately lead to him being fired, cancelled, blackballed, and literally leaving the country were directly a result of the internal memo intended for an internal audience becoming public. It would seem the height of stupidity for him to leak the memo himself. He confirmed its authenticity because he was given the opportunity to provide a public response to the comments people had made on it, which is posted at the end of the version I linked.
What's your claim here? That the published memo is fake? That Damore didn't write the things he said that he wrote, and that he suffered serious consequences for having written?
What? The outrage was caused by the leaked memo. If it were fake...why would he have gotten fired to begin with? You seem to be intimately aware with the 'real' memo, care to link some evidence to what was in it? Person who replied to you is consistent with my memory of the events at the time.
Loads fine and fairly quickly on a Macbook Pro M3 Pro with Firefox 137. Does have a bit of delay when initially zooming in, but pans and zooms fine after.
> If you think that you have a right to shoot someone in the head, you're fucking nuts. Period. Go see a shrink.
To defend your life, liberty, and property you absolutely do have that right in most of the civilized world. Some places may put restriction on your ability to access a firearm, but self-defense is a basic necessity to have /any/ human rights. That said, I agree, trying to shoot someone in the head /is/ crazy, you should always aim for center of mass because it has a larger surface area which matters in difficult situations. That said, the person you're replying to never even uses the word "head"
You do not have a _right_ to kill anybody ever. However, you do have a _right to defend yourself_, within reason. That could in some situations mean that you take actions that kill someone. A judge and/or jury will decide whether it was reasonable. If it wasn't, you broke the law. They did not "take away your right" to kill.
FYI most of the world do not allow you to kill someone to defend your property. That is a very American thing. If someone takes your stuff, you call the police.
> You do not have a _right_ to kill anybody ever. However, you do have a _right to defend yourself_, within reason. That could in some situations mean that you take actions that kill someone.
You are trying to indicate a difference where there is none. It's not me that decides another person's life is less than what they're trying to rob me of, it's them by taking an action that necessarily forfeits their life when I must defend myself against their criminal act against me. A right to self defense is /necessarily/ a right to kill, because in many cases self-defense necessitates lethal force.
I have no desire to ever kill anyone, but the right to self-defense is absolute, it is the very basis of /all/ human rights and is based on a foundation of the simple principle of bodily autonomy.
> FYI most of the world do not allow you to kill someone to defend your property. That is a very American thing. If someone takes your stuff, you call the police.
You seem to be thinking that /property/ is the issue, it's the /taking/ that's the problem. How does someone /take/ your property? They use force. You have a right to defend yourself against that force, and in fact you MUST do so, or you will likely be killed or seriously harmed by the criminal through their use of force. Yes, you also have a right to defend your property, but the real issue is and always will be the force a criminal uses against you. Taking property is a forcible act. There is a false separation in the minds of some people between property crimes and violent crimes, property crimes /are/ violent crimes, in all but very narrow circumstances.
Thanks for putting this so clearly. The way you laid out the argument really helps us make our case here in Chile. Our laws are already more in line with Europe (proportionality, duty to retreat, that kind of thing...) but we do have parallels to yours like a Castle Doctrine of sorts.
The progressives' attempts to make it even more complicated, which btw started with them outright wanting to outlaw personal firearm ownership, all failed.
And now that the rising crime has people crying out for order, plus their dismal approval ratings, they will be voted out this December for sure, they stand no chance.
What helps is how you framed the idea that the act of taking something by force IS the violence, which is what we’ve been trying to get across here, something that most people are indifferent to, until they experience an attack to their personal safety. Mindsets have shifted here in the last five years.
Yes. Very much so. We have to stand our ground against those who want to strip us of our freedoms, consolidate their monopoly on force, and leave us defenseless. This is no hypothetical situation, this happened in Chile during the 2019-2021 protests. The left tried to push like never before for drastic police reforms, including proposals to defund the police, remove their access to firearms, and dismantle units like the Carabineros’ special forces, all with daily chaos and violent riots on the streets. The outcome? It led to massive unrest, rising crime, and the erosion of public trust. Now we see a return to public outcry, with citizens demanding the restoration of law and order and reaffirming the role of police in maintaining public safety. The attempts to strip police power backfired, and now, the same progressives who pushed these reforms are facing the consequences of that political experiment. We are so back, we are coming back hard. This is the answer you wanted?
You are working under the assumption that everyone who takes property also wants to do physical harm. It's very sad. Most people who take property are otherwise peaceful individuals and more importantly, they are rational just like you and me. They do not want to risk a bigger penalty by using force. Your mindset is one that escalates any given situation. With your mindset you are putting yourself in much more risk than necessary.
I'm going to assume that you are American, and that many Americans agree with you. I can only say sorry. You can keep turning a blind eye to the stats, but it will not change the facts. You will need to change this way of thinking to save your country.
You are working under an assumption that someone who /takes/ by force is satisfied with the taking. I am working from years of data and my own experiences.
It is sad. Communities should help everyone within them so that nobody has a need to commit crime. Unfortunately many people commit crime because they don't care about others or have deep mental issues, not out of need.
On average 1% of the residents in communities in the US are responsible for >70% of the crime, including the most violent crimes. Who are those 1%? Repeat offenders. Those who have made crime their lifestyle and feel no conscience towards their victims. They are not "otherwise peaceful individuals".
I am American, but unlike most I am well traveled, speak multiple languages, and volunteer regularly in my community. No amount of wishful thinking will change the fact that a small portion of the population feels entitled to commit harm to others with impunity and they are unconcerned with killing or maiming decent people while in the process of their crimes. You should be prepared to defend yourself or all you have is hope that you get lucky.
Rather than trying to make me into a caricature so you can dismiss me, maybe you should also look at the data or go meet some of these people who commit crimes through volunteerism.
And to clarify, I'm not saying kill someone over $5. But if they attempt to steal something of high value (monetarily, sentimentally, etc.) and you attempt to prevent that or get it back, and they put up a likely-to-be-lethal resistance, you have the right to put up a lethal defense.
> If you want proof, look at the state with the highest GDP.
And your response is "left-wing" (we don't actually have a left wing in the US) propaganda. Raw GDP is irrelevant for 99.99% of people, because the gains are /very/ unevenly distributed. Reducing cost of living and cost of housing has a much bigger impact on the daily lives of people than increasing GDP, because most people don't benefit from increased GDP, in fact increased GDP is largely tied to increased cost, as it's determined by money flows. GDP is a very flawed metric that doesn't in any way reflect the quality of life of the people who live in the region the metric applies to. Some sort of PPP based metric is more reasonable and is a much more balanced look at life across different US states and is not nearly as rosy a picture for blue states, all of which are some of the most expensive places to live, in part due to political policies.
For a high earning person (say a software engineer), California has a higher effective all-in tax rate on income than most European countries but delivers /far less/. The fact it has such a high GDP is because the headquarters of some of the world's largest companies are there and it's /expensive/ which means there's significant money flows in California. That doesn't prove that California's policies are superior to say Texas. It's an entirely flawed comparison that does nothing to account for actual quality of life.
I think you'd be hard pressed to prove that someone earning a median tech income in California has a better quality of life than someone earning a median tech income in France, and yet California's effective tax rate is higher (combining state, local, and federal).
Ill generally start off by saying that it should be pretty clear that when Republicans are given free reign of all 3 branches of Government, US goes down the shitter. So there isn't even a real argument you could ever make in support of anything Republican, other than saying that you don't mean "those" Republicans. And this argument will hold until the entire party uniformly denounces Trump, Musk and their cronies.
But in the spirit of conversation, you are fully wrong. GDP is an indicator of economic activity. Its not irrelevant. It ties in things like jobs and COL (because you need people to actually be able to live normal lives to contribute to the economies). Likewise, higher taxation rates with high GDP also means that in general a lot of money is moving hands. If you look at population growth of Cali, the only time it dipped was during Covid, specifically because WFH. I.e you are still making California money, but now you don't have to pay taxes. And since then, its on its way up.
This effect also applies in general. You can't claim that Texas economy is growing because Republicans, when the economic powerhouses of the 4 major cities all uniformly vote blue, and start hiring for companies that started in very left leaning areas on the west coast. There is a reason why silicon valley started in Cali and not any other Republican states - Cali left leaning environment attracted more educated people, and the concentration of those people is what allowed tech companies to flourish. If Musk started Tesla in Texas, and asked the state for subsidies and grants, he would have gotten laughed at and Tesla would not be a thing.
The author conveniently ignores this, and Im not even going to mention the horrible statistical analysis of the plots.
Here is a good article comparing economies of Texas and California.
So no its not "leftist" propaganda - its reality. Whether or not you value that more than your ideological alignment, I don't know. Republicans generally don't have the critical thinking skills to parse reality from ideology - if they did they would be Democrats.
> So there isn't even a real argument you could ever make in support of anything Republican
I didn't make any arguments in support of anything Republican. The fact I put "left-wing" in quotes and pointed out that there is no left wing in US politics should have been an indication that I'm not supporting Republicans.
> But in the spirit of conversation, you are fully wrong. GDP is an indicator of economic activity.
Yes, it's what I described, it's economic activity in the frame of movement of money, it says nothing about the quality of life of any individual or how that GDP is distributed, this is why PPP is a much more reasonable metric. I am very much correct in my statements, you are intentionally misunderstanding or you don't understand how PPP vs GDP differ when making comparisons between regions/economies.
> You can't claim that Texas economy is growing because Republicans,
I don't think the Texas economy is growing due to Republicans. The Texas economy is growing because it's cheap to live there at the same quality of life that it's expensive to live in other states, so people move to Texas because they can't afford to live in other states due to the growing wealth disparity in this country, something that GDP conveniently ignores but that PPP doesn't.
> Republicans generally don't have the critical thinking skills to parse reality from ideology - if they did they would be Democrats.
If people in the US had strong critical thinking skills we wouldn't be stuck with first past the post elections causing us a false dichotomy between two shitty right-wing parties that are both run for the benefit of wealthy elites, but sure, we'd all vote Democrat, whatever floats your boat, given you've displayed a really sore lack of critical thinking in your response.
I'd nitpick the rest of your comment, but since you clearly didn't read and understand what I wrote, it's a wasted effort. You somehow bucketed me into the "Republican" bucket and replied to a strawman instead of acknowledging that GDP doesn't account for wealth disparity, which is why PPP (especially as a per capita metric) is superior for understand QoL differences vs GDP. Last I checked Republicans aren't lamenting the lack of a real left-wing party in the US and talking about the impact of wealth disparity, but go off I guess.
>I didn't make any arguments in support of anything Republican.
The article you linked is written by a prominent Republican blogger. You have to be pretty right wing to think its a good piece.
>GDP is distributed, this is why PPP is a much more reasonable metric.
Your original claim was that Republican run states "have Higher economic growth" among other things, which is just not true, because economic growth by definition implies more money being traded, which is GDP. Now that you realize you are wrong, you start running to derivative metrics like PPP, without doing the due diligence of proving how PPP is actually economic growth.
You also mentioned higher population growth, which is a false narrative (see below), lower state debt, which you have to go in depth to prove how thats actually good, and lower unemployment, which is not only not generally true, but again, you have to prove that unemployment is bad (as opposed to having people between jobs relying on social safety nets due to higher GDP, which creates favorable conditions for economy as history shows)
> The Texas economy is growing because it's cheap to live there at the same quality of life that it's expensive to live in other states, so people move to Texas because they can't afford to live in other states
If you are actually going to respond, please take the time to a) read what I wrote previously, and b) think what you are typing. The population of Cali is currently growing. It can't grow without all sectors down to the lower income service workers also willing to stay in Cali.
The people that move are a) firstly in a financial position to move, which requires funds, and b) moving to optimize salary vs cost of living. But they are also not moving to deep red areas.
>If people in the US had strong critical thinking skills we wouldn't be stuck with first past the post elections causing us a false dichotomy between two shitty right-wing parties that are both run for the benefit of wealthy elites
Funny you mention strong thinking skills, but equivocating what Trump is doing now to anything the Democrats ever did in the past decade is quite funny. Mentally this is pretty much the Republican cope, you can never admit that your side is horrible, you basically have to say "Democrats are just as bad" and point to some obscure things and make up fantastical projections to try to match what Republicans are doing.
>You clearly didn't read and understand what I wrote
You don't understand it either. You first posted an article that has horrible stats, then you use PPP to prove your point because GDP doesn't fit the narrative. I doubt you understand what PPP is. Because if you did, you realize that PPP is a very derivative measure, and its used to compare economies across countries, not states that often have very intertwined economies with lots of market forces (i.e same companies in every state controlling prices nation wide).
>You somehow bucketed me into the "Republican" bucket
You are not fooling anyone anymore. Centrist or libertarian = republican.
> The article you linked is written by a prominent Republican blogger. You have to be pretty right wing to think its a good piece.
My dude, you have me confused with someone else. I didn't link any article in this subthread.
> Your original claim was that Republican run states "have Higher economic growth" among other things
I never made that claim. I made the claim that PPP is a better quality of life metric than GDP when comparing between regions/economies, because of wealth and income inequality. Which it is. In fact, nothing I've said has been disproven by anything you've responded with, you are just trying to bucket me because you have mistaken me for someone else and decided to apply the most uncharitable strawman lens to my entire commentary.
> but equivocating what Trump is doing now to anything the Democrats ever did
It's super rich to spend hours deprogramming my Boomer father from being a Trump supporter to come online and get accused of being a Trump supporter by people too dumb to read what I actually wrote.
> You are not fooling anyone anymore. Centrist or libertarian = republican.
You continue to fail to have any reading comprehension, inappropriately bucketing me as a Republican, which is frankly insulting. Be better. I'm done with you.
Because people like sharing photos and videos and MMS is hot garbage? My phone can record 4K60 video and take 48 megapixel photos, but MMS can only handle 0.72 megapixel photos under 300KB and 240p video capped at 30 seconds. Why would /anyone/ in 2025 want to use SMS/MMS when they could use iMessage or RCS, or even WhatsApp, Signal, Messenger, Discord, et al?
> I've no doubt it may be the case in the US, I did not mean to suggest it's not. It simply doesnt have the same sway everywhere.
You're correct, of course. WhatsApp was significantly more popular than SMS in the majority of Latin American and European countries before iMessage even really picked up steam in the US. But it doesn't matter, because the US, by revenue share, is the world's largest market, full stop. One of the lessons we can learn from the social media business model is that you can get incredibly large entirely off the US market before it even makes sense to engage in the rest of the world.
The person you're replying to is correct in context of the US market, which if you're Apple is basically the only market that matters other than China, since in the rest of the world most people use Android, usually due to cost differences (flagship Android models sell extremely poor volumes compared to iPhones, even globally).
The worst part is I have never figured out a way to spend any of my Uber credits. I have hundreds of dollars in Uber credits I've accumulated over the years, and I regularly use Uber, and yet have never spent any credits.
When you choose your payment method in the ride selection screen you should be automatically using credits (unless those credits are for something specific, like Eats, or something else).
I'm able to see this in my Uber app today (set a destination, then at the bottom of the screen is a row for payment options, clicking that will show you Uber balances (uber cash), payment methods, and vouchers) and am located in the US.
If you are not seeing this, I'm thinking you need to reach out to support via email and have a long (probably frustrating) conversation.
I do not see this, it always direct-charges my Amex. The only credits I get auto-spent are my $15/monthly Amex credits. Definitely will reach out to Support at some point (whenever I get fed up and have time to burn, probably while sitting waiting to board a flight).
Okay, are you able to at least see your vouchers and other credits? I currently have a $5 credit applied from a cancellation dispute so I think it should be working for all credits.
Just figured I should reply here as a follow-up. I had a friend see my comment on HN and reach out to me directly. I found out I had enabled some option somehow that disabled the use of credits. I fixed it, and now everything is working correctly.
Got 18/20, which I credit mostly to my calibrated display and photographer's eye for color. That said, both of the ones I missed were blue and I am wearing glasses that have some blue light filtering, which likely negatively impacted my perception of the blue parts of the color spectrum. It's food for thought as to whether or not I can effectively do post-processing of my photos while wearing glasses like these.
Interesting idea though. I wonder what the distribution looks like?
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