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Nope, by a German speaker in good but imperfect English


I would argue the bomb was only part of it though--the other hazard was area bombing. All of those planners had seen (or participated in) the aerial bombardment of Europe and Japan during the war, and one take-away was that areas with different uses should be separated (like in the sim game Cities Skylines), e.g. industrial zones should be separate from residential zones, and all of the above should be as sprawling and low-density as possible to minimise damage from the air, be it nuclear or conventional. And yes the US highway system started out as a civil defense project as well, modelled on the German 'Autobahnen'.


Very good observation. The significance of an apology is entirely dependent on the cultural context.

The fallout from BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill comes to mind. British executives failed to provide the gushing (but meaningless) apology the Americans expected until it was too late, and they were skewered in the American press for it. And that particular example concerns two closely related cultures. The results are often more jarring when quite dissimilar cultures are involved.


BP did a lot more to admit culpability than Exxon did with the Valdeez. BP was penalised more than Exxon because of this.


The higher penalties was probably the result of more than just admission by BP. Environmentalism had much more of a focus by both the American public and the presidential administration than it did with Exxon’s disaster. The calls for consequences were much louder and supported.


This shouldn't have been voted down. It is actually a sound question and one that should be examined.

Edit: I looked at the previous replies. All of this talk of 'society' this and 'we' that is of no use whatsoever when you are talking about global phenomena and companies like Facebook/Twitter/etc. Under the given circumstances, the ethical questions are much larger. The problem is probably totally intractable.


Ultimately I think the best solution will be universal 'deamplification', i.e. disabling all features that facilitate virality/contagion. It is unfortunate that Facebook, Twitter, et. al. have tweaked their entire platforms and business models to profit from phenomena that appear to be almost without exception socially corrosive and destructive. Modern soc med platforms work like factories for the memetic reproduction and dissemination of bad ideas, half-truths, and other rubbish, as well as for disturbing mob behaviour. Regarding the article, providing 'mea culpa' tools would only reinforce the dictatorship of the online mob, who would invariably bully users into issuing apologies.

It might seem like a stretch, but I suspect that ultimately all of these platforms are going to end up being carved up by regulators, co-opted by governments, subjected to national firewalls, etc. on account of their potential for mischief, misuse, disinformation, misinformation, open source intel gathering by hostile powers, meddling, etc.


In agrarian societies, children are economically productive. In urbanised industrial/post-industrial societies, children are expensive and thus an economic liability.

Many of the conditions that accompanied falling fertility rates in Europe and America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are now evident in the developing world.


There is a fundamental problem with claims that the infection fatality rate (fatality rate for all infections, including undetected infections) is ridiculously low.

New York City has seen over 18,000 deaths directly attributed to Covid-19. The actual number may be higher, but probably isn't lower. How many actual (including undetected) cases would there have to be in NYC to produce the given number of deaths at any given IFR? Figures at the low end suggest a number of cases far in excess of the total population, so they are naturally impossible. The real IFR is somewhere between the lowest plausible number based on the total population and the implausibly high case fatality rate (based on detected/confirmed cases).

Anyone want to do some math on that?


Even discussing this issue has become a serious taboo in itself. An anthropologist would say you are correct.


I'm glad at least a few people here can recognize a blatant advert using scaremongering to sell a product.


This is nothing but covert advertising. Almost everyone here seems to have missed this fact. Re-read the 'article' carefully. This text was carefully crafted to go viral by scaring parents.

Again, this is not about a 'police sting' or anything like that. It is about a 'project' (stunt) carried out by a private company that sells software for monitoring kids. The author works for the same company.


The text was certainly crafted to go viral (what in the world is Pete providing security against?), but the claim they're making is still very troubling. If a typical 11 year old girl is getting multiple messages from pedophiles every time she posts a picture on Instagram, that doesn't fit my understanding at all and has very serious implications.

We shouldn't rule out that they're being substantially misleading, but I don't think we should just assume that either.


There's about 25 million kids between 12 and 17 in the US ( https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/101-child-popul...)

I find it dubious that each one of them gets over 50 predators attacking them the moment the post a selfie on Instagram. Either a small number of pedophiles would be targeting thousands of kids per hour, or there are millions of pedophiles.

The basic premise of the article rings true (posting selfies on can lead to getting attacked by predators), but the numbers are just ludicrous.


I think you’re right. My intuitive guess of how many teenage kids there are would have been a full order of magnitude lower. At that count, even adjusting for not everyone being on Instagram, I agree there’s no way the numbers can check out.


I think this company is selling panic and hysteria to make a quick buck. The whole thing could well be made up, pure fiction. Their claims aren't worth a discussion.

I don't doubt that this stuff happens. The web is full of filth and excrement. But using the language of moral panic to sell a dubious service is just crass.

If we must wade into the debate about whether kids should have access to it, my answer would be a resounding no. I know of ten year old girls with smartphones. I try to tell people that those things are portals to hell, and they look at me like I have two heads.

The web has morphed into a raging monster, and 'mobile devices' are the devil incarnate.

We should step back from the abyss, or at least refrain from looking into it, lest we discover that we are but monsters ourselves, and the abyss is only a mirror.


Yeah, I have trouble believing this article isn't quite a lot of fiction. If trapping pedophiles is this easy, the police need to get off their asses and do their damn job.

The fact that it takes three letter agencies multiple years and inter-country coordination tells me that it isn't quite this simple.


I don't think anyone is missing it, it's just that it's too obvious to warrant discussion (they article does not try to hide that) and beside the point unless your specific allegation is not that it's advertising, but that it's fabricated.


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