RichardGibbons

The judge is likely confused about how language works. Something is a possible conflict of interest if there is not evidence to decide whether there is a conflict of interest. i.e. if I hire someone for my company that nobody else knows anything about, that's a possible conflict of interest because there is the possibility that they are my spouse. Once it becomes known whether or not that person is related to me, it either becomes a conflict of interest or not. Then, the conflict of interest is either problematic or not. If the conflict is disclosed and steps are taken to ensure that the conflict isn't problematic (e.g. recusing oneself from decisions related to the conflict) then it can be a non-problematic conflict of interest. If the conflict is not disclosed and no steps are taken, then it might still not be problematic, but IMO the balance of probabilities tilts to it being a problematic conflict of interest.

100%. On top of that, the thing I find quite concerning is that otherwise pretty smart people on here largely seem to view it as a game. Like, as long as their side is burning the other side, it's a good thing. They basically don't care about their democracy, or see how the great system they have now is being destroyed. Or maybe they just think that their side is the one that's "winning", so losing democracy doesn't actually matter. But I think the world is more chaotic than that. Things can change quickly, and things can quickly and unpredictably flip, and then the authoritarian powers that were created by one group can be brought to bear against that same group.

+1. Like everything, there's more to it than that, but this is a huge component of it that basically seems to be ignored by everyone.

This is the exact quote: It seems very clear to me that he was strongly imply that the person was MAGA. And it's pretty clear, because sure, it's the truth that MAGA was accurately trying to characterize him as leftist and make some political hay, but it's simply the truth, and not really funny. But the reverse joke actually has some humor, because it's actually kind of ridiculous. Like, he could have said, "We hit some new lows over the weekend, with the Democrats desperately trying to characterize this kid as MAGA. Yep, they're suggesting that the dude dating the trans woman was actually a huge fan of the Republican party. And what, him shooting MAGA's poster child was just a case of missing identity?!?" That said, there should have been no government response or censorship from him saying it. But saying that the MAGA gang was DESPERATELY trying to characterize him as non-MAGA, implying they were grasping for anything ("anything other than one of them") certainly strongly implies that he was MAGA.

Well, not quite an outright lie, but close. He said: To me, that's implying strongly that the guy who killed Kirk was MAGA, or at least a right wing. But he clearly wasn't. So, while it technically isn't an outright lie, it's close enough that I find it contemptuous.

Don't worry about it, Reds. I think almost everyone is fine with governments threatening people who want to exercise free speech. There's no need to contort yourself to try to justify what the government did. You can just say that you're fine with the government taking authoritarian actions to restrict free speech in this case. Heck, it's pretty clear that what Kimmel said was pretty close to an outright lie, and there's many people on the left and the right who think that outright lies on major networks are a problem that needs to be addressed.

Absolutely what's best for the company. And probably what's best for the executives, too. Like, when the authoritarian state is willing to use its power to attack individual companies, they're not likely to stop at the company. There's a good chance they'll try to ruin the lives of the top executives as well. And even if the company tries to defend it legally, they'll burn their own resources fighting against a state that basically has unlimited resources it can deploy against the company. It's clear the right legal strategy is to buckle. So, the best way to navigate the obstacle of an authoritarian government is to give in, lest the business and business leaders get completely screwed.

Yep, it was totally the right thing to do. You certainly don't want an authoritarian state to come down on your business hard. Best to bow to the threat.

Oh, it's certainly a business decision as well. A business decision to buckle to the state because that the optimal path for the business when the state is threatening it.

Oh! I can help you understand this. ABC was threatened by the state because Kimmel said things that the state didn't like. Some people believe strongly that the state shouldn't threaten people simply for saying things that the government doesn't like. So, they complain when the state does such things, particularly when the target of those threats is forced to buckle under the pressure.

I mean, in Canada, the Liberals are constantly trying to restrict free speech. They tried to pass a law that could potentially make the punishment for "hate speech" equivalent to rape or murder. Maybe it's a result of virtue-signalling rather than having thin-skin. But the results are the same, or worse.

I mean, it's pretty obvious, and clearly not one-offs. Every grant proposal requires a section discussing how people will be discriminated against based on race If your proposal's discrimination section isn't properly racist, you won't get funding and are basically fucked as a professor Most professor jobs postings in both SFU and Canada say that they will discriminate against candidates based on race. Universities discriminate on the basis of race for entry into schools, particularly grad schools If you argue against racist policies as a professor, you will be unable to be promoted, and potentially run out of town. As someone with less power on campus, you're more screwed. You can pretend everything is just fine. But the consequences are push-back from the right, defunding of eduction, and various bad things like that. I used to be a strong CBC supporter, and now I believe in defunding it because it's now clearly a net-negative to Canada. If universities continue the same way, they will be too, and I'm the type of guy who, 20 years ago, might have given 80% of his estate to universities. There are terrible consequences from installing broken ideologies in your population.

Ok, yeah, there's a bunch of racist stuff at SFU, and the fact that you believe lawsuits would be filed kind of indicates your lack of understanding. It's pretty clear to me at this point, it's you are likely just choosing not to see it. Which is fair enough--people typically don't care too much about racism when it isn't targeting the people they care about.

I guess another factor is I have family who work in resource extraction, so the NDP's racist policies in those areas also have a disproportionate impact on people close to me. If most of your friends are city-dwellers, you likely wouldn't see that, either.

Thinking about it, the reason it is likely different is because I have two kids who are university age, and many of my friends work at various universities. At this point, I think universities are the most reliably racist places in Canada, so that's probably why I have been seeing it so much recently. It could also be that most of your friends are progressives--progressives generally believe that certain types of racism are good. So, that type of racism is likely completely invisible to them. (Though when you say your friends are diverse, I suspect you probably mean diverse politically, too, which is why I think my first hypothesis is more likely.)

I certainly remember hearing about immigration being a suspected cause of high Vancouver housing prices back in 2005. I didn't believe it then, but it's certainly a factor now. I actually think the primary cause of high housing prices in Vancouver is government--adding massive fees, delays, bureaucracy. It's the usual thing where well-meaning people put in rules that basically break the system. But I think all the things you say have also contributed to the problem. Canada is certainly more racist. Before about 20 years ago, I never had racism directed against me. In the last decade, my kids have had racism directed at them, and a significant percentage of my friends have had their careers negatively impacted by racism. It's certainly far, far higher than it was historically. I'd guess that at least monthly I see racism directed toward people like me. It's all over the place. I think a large part of the rise is that, historically, racism was seen as bad, a thing done by bad people--people were shamed by the left for racism. Now, the left has abandoned that position, and generally believes in things like Kendi's "the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination", intersectionality, and grievance politics. As a result, there is no moral high ground where racism is simply bad. As a result, racism on the right is justified by racism on the left, and racism on the left is justified by racism on the right. Nobody actually sees racism as the absolute evil that it is, an evil that needs to be fought against and abolished. Instead, they basically all just want to argue that their brand of racism is good.

I think this is not at all accurate. The consensus view is certainly that immigration is a major factor in housing unaffordability (though not the only factor). For that matter, immigration is seen as a major factor in the decline of Canada's social systems, wages, and employment levels. That said, I would agree that left-wing politicians strongly claim that it's related to speculation, foreign buyers, and AirBNBs. Largely I think that's because most politicians thrive on hate, and for left wing politicians, that means brewing hate against groups where they can justify new taxes. It's certain that Canada's more racist than it was a decade ago, and two decades ago. That's the consequence of politicians focusing on identity politics and hate. The primary difference between the right and the left is the groups that they target for hate. In terms of not really seeing it in real life, I think that's natural. The media and public commentary are so focused on certain narratives that it's impossible to express counter-narratives in public without massive negative personal consequences. So, you'll end up with a "silent minority" group that disagrees with the narratives, but won't express it in public. There's more of this whispering than I've ever seen before in my life. And that's how we get people like Trump elected, even voted for by many minorities who were supposed to be lock-ins for the Democrats.

Yeah, I think it's fascinating that people on this thread still actually believe that there will be any sort of consistency or intellectual honesty from the Trump supporters. It's not that they're stupid. It's that, while it's optimal to direct your intelligence to understanding the world, they are directing their intelligence to justify anything that Trump does. Double standards are irrelevant because it's always possible to contort the view of reality to something insane that supports Trump. That's why Newsom has taken his current tweeting approach. If people are willing to support the perversion of reality just because it comes out of Trump's mouth, the counter isn't logic, it's mockery--showing them how they look in others' eyes.

Wow, that Canadian is really not very bright--strange that people want to speak to him. Canada and America both have their own version of censorship right now, and it's completely unclear to me which type is worse. America also has a king right now, while Canada has a figurehead, so it's pretty funny that he thinks it's the reverse. Both legal systems are pretty messed up right now, bogged down by politics. But one of the big things Canada has that the USA doesn't is due process. I think that's pretty important, and could easily make a big difference to outcomes in the two countries.

The funny thing is that Canada's response to the tariffs has basically been the same thing--rules being replaced with politicians capriciously picking winners and losers (when it should have been just removal of a massive number of rules.) I do wonder if this is a normal thing in the natural life cycle of nations. Government becoming huge and onerous, followed by the powerful abandoning the ideals that spawned the country's success so that they could tear apart the rotting carcass of the nation for their own benefit.

Yep, this is right. In general, as a society, we should be against censorship. The community itself should be able to cut down bad ideas through criticism. (In fact, if someone wants to censor discussion about a particular topic, I think it increases the chance that they are proposing ideas that can't actually stand up to scrutiny.) One of the other nice side effects is that it creates a nice filter to evaluate people's reasoning abilities, and weigh their non-political comments appropriately. For me, the model isn't based on whether I agree with the politics, but rather whether the reasoning is nuanced. I think people completely lacking nuance when it comes to political topics are likely to have a similar lack of nuance in their thought processes when it comes to investing.

A bunch of people used to think that big government was a bad thing, that government interfering in markets made them less efficient, that one of the key reasons for the massive success of the USA was that the government didn't mess up business. One of the wild things about Trump is that those people now suddenly believe that big government interfering in free enterprise is a good thing, that it'll make the USA a better place. They are now genuinely mocking the people who want free enterprise like it's completely silly to think that free enterprise could be responsible for any of the success of the USA. It's really neat seeing this complete flip over such a fast time period. It's reminiscent of when the left went from supporting free speech to supporting censorship, and the right did the opposite flip. That also happened pretty quick, but not this quick. I suspect that the politicization of news might have made it easier, providing justification to help both the left and the right to resolve their cognitive dissonance.

Yay! Luke's back. We missed you!

Which is an interesting thing to say, considering at this point it's clear that Trump is a "grow government and increase taxes" sort of guy. (Just like Harris, LOL.) That's one reason why I say that the supporters will support him regardless of anything.

Your logic is broken. Relative to every other president in recent history, both Trump and Biden both have frequent stumbles, both physical and verbal. Yet one was rejected by supporters, and the other is canonized. That said, I think it's pretty understandable voting for Trump over Harris. It's just that it's clear that it's irrelevant what Trump says, most of his supporters will support him regardless. He's roughly akin to Chavez in Venezuela.