Somehow none of the government proposals are about the latter though. They're probably just unaware of the possibility - I'm sure that as soon as someone tells them about it, they'll abandon all the surveillance-type proposals and switch to parental controls :)
A common myth - federal and state governments supplement school funding to roughly equalize per-pupil expenditure. See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47357203
They even spend the most on minorities: "Black and Latinx total per pupil expenditures exceed White total per pupil expenditures by $229.53 and $126.15, respectively" - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23328584198724... (see Table 1 for details)
(I admit I don't understand the deep wisdom behind presenting absolute differences in amounts, and omitting the amounts themselves, but from the rest of that article, and from the 1st link, we can see that per-pupil spending is in the $10k+ range, so a difference of $200 is negligible. In other words, it would be unfair to call Black and Latinx students privileged because of this.)
Whatever the reason for the sorry state of US education, lack of funding isn't it.
Why would the war with Iran mean rising homeland threat? Aren't we "fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here"? With how very proactive the US is with the first part of that strategy, the second part should be a breeze.
It's not the "radicalization" (hating someone that bombed your school is hardly radical) that surprises me, but the location. With all of its bombs and drones and facial recognition cameras and PRISM internet surveillance, and last but not least, the Atlantic ocean, the US can't keep the fight "over there"?
> For years, tech companies successfully resisted pressure from child safety advocates to do more to keep kids off their services
And only tech companies opposed this privacy-destroying legislation, as the Reuters article quotes several industry experts of the age-assurance industry, and not a single free speech, freedom, or anonymity activist. Journalism strikes again.
Sadly this is the norm for articles on this topic.
Rejecting any care or duty towards one's own society is a very modern, very extreme viewpoint. And I don't think it bodes well for societies where it prevails.
Just like every person dies, so does every society (no matter where you draw the lines around it). We can't justify what we do solely based on survival. What's worth doing has to be worth doing for its own sake, here and now. That we are around to do things in the future, doesn't matter if nothing is worth doing.
Put in a catchier way, if nothing is worth dying for, then nothing is worth living for either.
I think you'll find this is a very old viewpoint. As is the smear that we reject any care or duty for society. "This may seem harsh and stubborn and unconciliatory; but it is to treat with the utmost kindness and consideration the only spirit that can appreciate or deserves it."
Meanwhile Canadian government funded media research organizations are tarring resistance to going cashless as conspiratorial:
They argue that digitization will enable governments to monitor financial transactions, restrict purchases, travel, and access to healthcare, freeze accounts, and punish people for exceeding their carbon limits or for dissent.
The article title is missing "from influential accounts in Canada". From the article text (emphasis mine): According to the report, just 100 users were responsible for almost 70 per cent of online conspiracy posts from influential accounts they examined in Canada.
I read the article and skimmed the report itself, and nowhere do they define how an influential/influencer account is defined, how many there are, or how the distribution of posts differs for conspiracy content vs. other topics, like sports or cooking.
They examined 8 topics of "conspiracy" content, including "Gender indoctrination: Schools are indoctrinating kids with radical gender ideology" [1,2], "Media-elite collusion: Major Canadian media outlets conspire with political elites to manipulate public opinion" [3, 3a], and "Digital ID: Digital IDs are used by the government to secretly control Canadians". From the report:
The posts argue that government-backed digital identity systems, central bank digital currencies, and the shift away from cash are part of a broader plan to control the population. They argue that digitization will enable governments to monitor financial transactions [4,5], restrict purchases, travel, and access to healthcare, freeze accounts [6], and punish people for exceeding their carbon limits or for dissent [7,8].
I concede digital ID (even alone, without digital currency) can be very useful. But I trust the collective imagination of HN to realize how perilous it can also be (i.e. I have only so much time to waste on this post). And if imagination won't do, there's always China. Are Western governments, or the Canadian government, SO trustworthy and incorruptible and devoted to liberty, that any worries about digital ID misuse could only be baseless conspiracy theory?
[1] A list of resources and service providers have been compiled to assist [Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario] members in supporting Gender Independent Children and Trans Youth/Adults in their schools and communities. - https://www.etfo.ca/socialjusticeunion/2slgbtq/etfo-suggeste...
[3] A story from CTV, a major Canadian media house, about a former school trustee fined $750,000 in damages to LGBTQ2S+ teachers for discriminatory and hate speech (not threats, violence, or libel) that doesn't quote a single source even vaguely critical of the fine or raising free speech concerns: https://www.ctvnews.ca/vancouver/article/former-bc-school-tr...
[3a] Joseph alleges that the CBC selectively edited their interviews, including those of other families, in ways that suppressed their true views and favored Jaskirat Singh Sidhu, who is fighting deportation to India after running a stop sign and crashing into the team bus, killing 16 people, including Joseph’s son. - https://x.com/BezirganMocha/status/2030448927619821779
[4] Under GLB, companies can sell their customers’ financial data to anyone they choose, including credit card information such as the date, amount, and recipient of charges, and the personal details consumers provide when they fill out applications. [Technically this is about the USA. Practically, lol] - https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/why-dont-we-hav...
[6] https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/banking/fro... - Dear reader. Consider for a moment that this report, from an allegedly respectable organization that is the result of a government-university partnership [6a], aimed at fighting misinformation, and is approvingly cited by the National Observer, which the Canadian government trusts so much that it pays the newspaper so that all the government can have access to its reporting [6b], will pretend something as common and every-day as a bank account freeze, is a baseless conspiracy theory, and only happens in the fevered imaginations of paranoiacs.
reply