Your comment could be read as implying that Unified Arabic, the subject of this post, must have been useless as an idea because it wasn't widely adopted.
In reality, there are many factors, not only pure practicality, that lead people to reject reforms like these. In the case of Arabic, it was deeply held traditional values; in the case of Hong Kong and Taiwan, well, I imagine it's simply an unwillingness to appear to be aligning with a regime one politically disagrees with.
> The pedantry of being angry at the US for being the only country that actually has the word "America" in its name
That is not the reason.
People say that Columbus discovered America. They don't mean the country, they mean the continent. The people in the continent of America are called Americans. About a century ago, US Americans came to view America as two continents.
Many countries still hold to America being a single continent, but there's no name for the people of America because US Americans stole it. The is very equivalent to how the EU is stealing Europe/European.
> by saying things like terrorism is in the eye of the beholder
This is so trivially true that it's not worth bringing up in discussoon with anyone who can be taken seriously. It's true for any politically charged word, and terrorism is one of the most political words in the English language.
Do you really not care to know what the terrorist organization was before you assume that "they are fighting against oppressive bullshit"? Is A/I and ISIS the same to you?
> The irony: many native Americans believe that all of your own immigrant ancestors should never be allowed to enter the US.
And your lesson from this is that Native Americans should continue to be ignored and more immigrants let in?
If you care about Native Americans (and don't just use them as a rhetorical device to argue with people on the internet) then surely, you'd support a reduction in immigration, right?
“If you care about Native Americans, *and agree with the assertion I presented as fact that they/we are being ignored and that’s purely the fault of new immigrants, and agree with the implication I made that immigration has no value*, then surely …”. Surely.
Being anti-illegal immigration and pro-legal immigration doesn't mean you want to flood the country with legal immigrants. That's the case in the UK, by the way, where the vast majority of immigrants are legal and it's the reason for the growing anti-immigrant attitude of the natives.
People who are anti-illegal immigration and pro-legal immigration also have requirements like:
- there should be a fixed number of legal immigrants
- they should be well vetted (this may be lacking in the US and UK)
- legal immigration should be points based
- quotas for legal immigrants should be increased contingent
on the number of illegal immigrants which are expelled
- there should be checks to verify that visas are not abused (the way H1Bs are abused in the US with under qualified immigrants)
- asylum should be abolished because it's abused. It can be replaced by paying poorer countries to permanently host asylees.
It most certainly is hypocritical. You can not be simultaneously pro-legal immigration and support banning legal immigration. If you support banning legal immigration, you are by definition anti-legal immigration.
> Being anti-illegal immigration and pro-legal immigration doesn't mean you want to flood the country with legal immigrants.
If only there were something between 0 and unrestricted immigration, some sort of program where people apply for permission and the government issues approvals for individuals to enter its borders after meeting legal criteria.
> You can not be simultaneously pro-legal immigration and support banning legal immigration.
Nobody is banning legal immigration. It's being restricted. The headline itself says "pauses". Do you think no legal immigrant will be let into the US until 2028?
> some sort of program where people apply for permission
Yes, and if that program is being abused (just ask people here on HN about H1Bs to see how they feel), then you pause it until you figure out how to solve it.
> Nobody is banning legal immigration. It's being restricted.
No it has been banned. There is no legal way to do it. Even if it is a temporary ban, it is a ban. If you support indefinitely pausing legal immigration, you are anti-legal immigration.
> Yes, and if that program is being abused (just ask people here on HN about H1Bs to see how they feel), then you pause it until you figure out how to solve it.
That is an absurd strategy. Would you "indefinitely pause" schooling children until you can figure out a way to solve the problem of students cheating on tests? Would you "indefinitely pause" funding police forces until you can figure out how to prevent police abuses? Would you "indefinitely pause" money transfers until you can figure out how to solve tax fraud? Pausing any of these would create massive problems while doing nothing to speed up improvements, and it doesn't help that "solving" those problems may not even be possible. We can immediately switch to a better system after someone figures out that better system; until then we make do with what we have.
You're giving the current government the benefit of the doubt, which I never do.
In 2024, I didn't think we'd be murdering protesters in the streets or kidnapping heads of state or inciting global tariff wars paid for by US citizens or watching the president take billions of dollars of bribes using cryptocurrency.
Why do you think thos government is responding to something in a good faith attempt at improving a system?
> Leftist overreactions is what brought Trump back in power.
"Ugh! Now look at the bad thing you made me do! It's entirely your fault, this all happened because you kept on warning me it was a bad thing and that I should stop doing it."
Nonsense, the prediction coming true so easily shows it wasn't an "overreaction" in the first place. There is no iatrogenic chain of causation here.
Justifying the murder of Alex Pretti who was acting legally and defensively and was on his hands and knees disarmed when he was executed, and the (at least) fatal excessive force of the woman who wasn't trying to run over anyone is a bad thing.
Like, you know that about Pretti right? That he was shot on his hands and knees surrounded by agents who celebrated? I don't think someone on HN would knowingly lie about the government murdering citizens.
If only there was some kind of reasonable investigation by the government about those things.
You're right on one thing, defending human rights against government misbehavior and abuse of power seems to be exclusively left wing these days.
Oh, and that Venezuelan takeover we did, which likely led to massive amounts of fraud and wealth transfer to Trump and others? That illegal act and feckless obedience of the legislature is the same root cause for the illegal tariffs you seem to dislike.
The trade bazooka was an empty threat. This is somewhat similar to the trillion dollar coin[1]. It's a tool used for negotiations, not a real thing. If the trade bazooka was real, wasn't this the best opportunity to use it? What else could it be saved for?
As a previous massive cheater in RPG games (when a was young and it was easy to write your own tools) the reason to cheat is because many games (especially RPGs) have bullshit mechanics. You have to perform a lot of repetitive stuff to get ahead. Cheating is seen as honorable because it's about getting back at a system which forces you into unfair circumstances (this is akin to corruption/graft in real life).
In my opinion, this is not the same as people who use AI comment bots.
Of course, other cheaters had other reasons, but the few I was friends with had similar motivations. (Actually, a few just created tools because they enjoyed creating tools, not so much actually using them.)
Do you mean MMORPGs or single-player RPGs. Because modifying a game or game state to your likes with the goal of improving your personal enjoyment of the game is very different compared to cheating to get ahead of other people.
But if it was such a great idea, why is it not an issue in Hong Kong which does not use it?
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