...So why is it "Sub-Saharan Africa"? Why not "Super-Saharan Africa"? "Dexterous-Saharan Africa"? "Sinister-Saharan Africa?" It's all just convention (that just happens to favor Eurocentric notions). "Free your mind." -Morpheus

Couple caveats:

1) There is a tradeoff in lower average body size/height, which doesn't seem to bother them as a whole, but which any individual athlete/model/actor/businessman might curse.

2) I know of several Japanese men in the 240-400 pound range. Many of them seem to enjoy being larger, but for those who don't, being Japanese in Japan wasn't a silver bullet.

(A lot of people are going to be very mad at me about this comment, without having the awareness to understand that this is the inevitable conclusion to, "You wanna play rough, ah?!"ing people's access to life-saving treatment. Please grok that we can preclude any more assassinations by cutting profits and letting people get the care they need.)

The reaction was short lived while the insurance companies figured out how to bolster security and return to the usual.

Look at what's happening in California with the proposed wealth tax.

>Page’s co-founder, Sergey Brin, has poured at least $45 million into the Building a Better California Super PAC specifically dedicated to blocking the tax

The reason more CEOs getting shot might make a difference is that many CEOs care about status and being able to mention it in the right places. Historically many people love it so much that they call themselves CEOs and Presidents of companies that are small businesses.

If these same people can no longer be open about their role and status, which they value, there will be some kind of change. I'm not sure what it is, but security guards don't restore their freedom to feel thoughtless about their role and lifestyle.

Whereas with taxes... Maybe some people brag about dodging them or their suspect filings that get them big refunds. But they're mostly not public and not tied to identity the same way. And even the wealth tax isn't remotely the same as the public being vocal at large.

For it to be comparable we'd have to have modern highwaymen and Robin Hoods somehow stripping the wealth, not the tax man.

Because the weight of any changes or perceived need to change come from the social burden that public violence would create in the shooting case.

And that doesn't seem to exist near at all with the wealth tax.

This is still a possitive outcome brought from the presence of a threat to their lives. Not as positive as the healthcare thing, but it's still jobs and a "tax" in that they are forced to purchase the vehicles which do have to be built and driven by someone not in their tax bracket.

Congress is our only hope, along with a president who signs reform.

Obama had a generational mandate and couldn't even pass a public option which, is far more moderate than a single payer approach. Even the abomination of the ACA that actually got signed into law was subsequently gutted to the bone in the following years.

There is room for more tweaking, but the system we're living with now is pretty close to what most voters prefer.

There would still be the option of people and businesses to buy 3rd party "extras" like private hospital rooms, vision care etc. on top the state plan, but some level of basic health care would be provided to all people paying into the state plan.

Would that work?

Sorry, that's ridiculous. Universal Health Care policies are an almost 100% partisan issue. I can literally count on one hand the number of federal lawmakers who cross party lines here.

The real problem is people like you refusing to vote for the people with the policy you want, as often as not as part of a bothsidesist stance designed to get more upvote in peer forums like HN.

The two party system may be flawed and unjust, sure. But people who want single payer are still democrats.

That's a lot of words they didn't say. It is a true statement that Congress did not give the USA single-payer healthcare nor even a public option.

Nothing about that says anything about who voted for whom, where anyone even lives for that matter, or anything about political parties.

To say this is the fault of "people like you" is out of line.

But that is what they didn't say! They said it wasn't "votable", in the sense I took that means that this isn't an issue you can get by voting. And it is, clearly. And was, in 2010, when they were within one senate vote for a "public option" in the ACA. It 100% boggles my mind that you'd look at that once again incredibly partisan voting result and decide "Oh well, I might as well vote republican" (instead of "damn Joe Lieberman").

Who said any of this? "I" said nothing of the sort

I don't think you're going to convince anyone of anything this way. If anything you'll probably end up turning people off who otherwise would have agreed with you

You quite clearly came in to defend someone who did, though. This is the second time you've tried this end-around strawman. Please engage with the discussion as it is.

> "I already have universal healthcare here in Canada"

I don't think I'm the one misreading the discussion as it is.

If you take a deep breath and re-read, maybe you'll understand the point I've been trying to make is you're jumping down people's throats that aren't disagreeing with you, which at best does your own arguments a disservice. To put words in someone's mouth and say this is the fault of 'people like you' is out of line.

Have a good one

But I'm very happy you agree that health care policy in the USA is among the most directly partisan issues and know who to vote for given those priorities.

Edit: and even now you still put words in my mouth with your edit (so that's every message in this thread that does so). Best of luck to you

You just don't think I shouldn't have engaged with advocacy around the issue or taken offense that you and upthread commenters feel that this isn't something that can be... I guess "achieved by voting"[1]. I think that's a weird thing to troll a discussion this deep about, but OK.

[1] Does that match your understanding of the point? Genuine question! I think it's bonkers and wrong, but you seem attached to it and I'd like the opportunity to convince you.

In the 2020 debate, Joe Biden said he would veto Medicare for all*. Just this week, Hakeem Jeffries said he did not support Medicare for all and wouldn't vote for it. You already mentioned Joe Lieberman

None of what I just said implies "it's not partisan" nor does it imply "both sides are the same" -- multiple things can be true at the same time

It sure does, however, reinforce the original, plain statement: "The issue is that the people in Washington won’t make it a 'votable' decision."

*By April 8, 2020, Biden was the "presumptive Democratic nominee" -- at that time, 22 states still hadn't yet held their primary elections. As such, for those 22 states it was quite literally not a votable decision

As the joke goes, "how did God create the universe in 7 days? No installed base"

Oh for... Joe Biden was literally the tiebreaker vote in the senate when the public option was still part of Obamacare and was stumping for it like crazy. MfA is one particular proposal from one particular faction of the party. We aren't talking about MfA specifically, and that's quite clear all the way upthread.

This kind of dissembling and trickery is what's driving me crazy in this thread. You just don't seem to be arguing in good faith. No, Joseph Biden Jr. is very clearly not opposed to government-provided health care, nor is any democrat in office right now that I'm aware of.

"Mostly" partisan. Good grief.

Public option is not single-payer/universal healthcare. Medicare for All is generally used as a synonym for single-payer healthcare in the US. The article stated it models the results of implementing a plan like Medicare for All

"Public option" still results in a vast bureaucracy of "paying for healthcare machinery", and so is scarcely comparable. Note: that does not mean a public option would be a bad thing. But it is not the same thing

I've already wasted way too much time on this, against my better judgement. I tried to leave twice, but third time will be the charm. Be well

Indeed you've wasted too much time on this. And I still have no idea what it is you really are trying to argue about. You agree with me on everything I've tried to pin you down on, and want to dither over tone and jargon when challenged.

-The US has had a lot of success by letting businesses run pretty free. This has produced some of the largest and most powerful companies on the planet.

-The conservative party traditionally has been suspicious of a powerful, centralized government

-In the US, there is a common thread of "government workers are impossible to fire" as well as a common thread of "government moves at a snail's pace".

In light of just that, there are many people who would prefer that healthcare is run by a private industry, as private insurers are enormous companies in the US. Everyone knows Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, or Kaiser Permanente. Many people give a benefit of the doubt that companies are doing things efficiently. Additionally, health insurance companies in the US have a requirement to spend a certain % of their revenue each year on medical care, and will sometimes send out small refunds when they simply cannot suppress costs in certain other regions of the company enough to keep their spending at the right rates.

Beyond this, states may provide additional benefits, and many do (some with the help of federal funding, even). You may find someone in one state where they are suffering greatly, while someone in an identical economic situation in another state is not suffering at all. It's easy to convince the first man to vote for a better healthcare situation. It's hard to convince the latter.

I could go on for ages, but this is getting long. There are like a billion reasons.

The grammar is a little ambiguous around this, but you seem to be claiming that this is a majority position. It isn't. Single payer polls over 50% basically every time it's tested (the exception being some spun partisan reframings you occasionally see pushed), and has for decades.

The solution is to have both a) mandatory voting and b) a voting holiday. This is done in many other democracies around the world, and it works. Personally I would prefer term limits and age limits for congress, the president, and federal judges. Diane Feinstein, Ruth Bater Ginsberg died in office. Mitch McConnell is working on it. We have age limits for lots of professions that require high performance - political leadership should not be an exception. But of course to make any of these changes young people have to vote, but they're mostly busy being poor and doomscrolling to block out the pain.

1) In the immediate aftermath of Thompson being shot, policies were deliberately briefly softened. Anecdotally, people were helped to live longer by this. It didn’t last long.

2) The response to Thompson’s assassination was the closest I’ve seen to a class consciousness almost forming in the US, as people from across the political divide who had suffered at the hands of the healthcare insurance companies found common ground.

Probably important to point out here that leftists are looking to see a threat to a corporation's leadership change the behavior of a corporation, whereas right-wingers are looking to see a threat to a government's leadership change everyone's behavior ("overreaching government" in a democracy being the will of voters). They're not the same thing.

EDIT: I'll add Daisuke Ishiwatari and Fumito Ueda. It's hard to think of someone in the West, though. A lot of them got run out. Amy Hennig's an infamous case.

  oodles and oodles of dumb, doomed small businesses and start-up companies chasing stupid products and services that will never succeed long-term

  not just top-of-class grads, but also mediocre grads and people who taught themselves from a few library books and even that one guy who can't build anything but is amazing at point out flaws and potential stumbling blocks

  learn from their mistakes at these companies and grow into knowledgeable and diligent workers from the experiences they have actually working.

There is a temptation to declare a conspiracy against Millennials and Zoomers, but it's probably more likely that our "job creators" are just that stupid and self-interested.

(And I recognize the parallels to some unsavory arguments, and would like to point out that the evidence regarding contemporary man-made climate change is strong and sound. But that's with industrialization and a couple orders of magnitude more people on the planet.)

For a clearer and possibly more settled and agreed upon example: From your or the other commenter's perspective, what caused the extinction of Moa after the arrival of Maori in New Zealand? Some claims that the Moa went extinct within 100 years of human settlement, and that it had a large population before that

>The extinction of all moa species occurred relatively swiftly, between 1380 and 1440, making it one of the most rapid extinctions in history. Contributing factors included habitat destruction through woodland burning, the introduction of non-native predators such as dogs and rats, and the birds' natural life cycle, which featured low egg production.

It's not a good example to use to prove your contention, because it's an outlier, and because it involved the use of technology that wasn't necessarily available to other incidences of megafauna extinction.

However, it happens every time, with a lag. In different climates and environments. When humans expanded out of Africa, spread out over Eurasia, reached North America, South America, Australia, new Zealand extinction of megafauna always followed.

We know that there was large scale hunting and humans are highly effective hunters. Hunting megafauna is the easiest available food source for a pre-industrial society until they get to the point where there is too little megafauna left (and changes, eventually including farming follow). Unlike large carnivores we are not dependent on hunting megafauna so our human numbers do not drop when they are in short supply.

There are two problems here:

1) It hasn't actually happened every time. Elephants, hippopotamuses, large whales, polar bears, grizzly brown bears, certain large bovines, and moose still exist.

2) Extinctions of megafauna are distributed across a time delta from human arrival. I don't know for sure, but I would wager that that delta doesn't necessarily correlate with date (as a proxy for technological development).

That is to say, "humans arrive -> everything big dies" is not so cut-and-dry a rule. It should be clear that other factors are involved.

I'll suggest a third option: humans hunt megafauna to extinction in the presence of conditions that favor such behavior - perhaps climatic, geographic, and/or cultural. So, it happens. But it doesn't always happen.

For the purposes of this conversation, I don't think you've proven the original contention wrong, which was that indigenous people in the Americas found a niche which made their presence and behavior sustainable over long periods of time. If your evidence is the total extinction of American megafauna, then you would be forced to admit that you were incorrect. In fact, you potentially argue for the opposite: in clearing some megafauna but sparing others, humans did indeed carve out a potentially sustainable ecological niche, which their continued presence helps to prove was sustainable. At least, until culturally disparate humans arrived.

> If your evidence is the total extinction of American megafauna

The evidence is the extinction of most American megafauna species.

> In fact, you potentially argue for the opposite: in clearing some megafauna but sparing others, humans did indeed carve out a potentially sustainable ecological niche, which their continued presence helps to prove was sustainable.

Humans have continued to survive everywhere, so that is evidence the the presence of humans everywhere has been sustainable.

The comment making the claim about indigenous societies in the Americas is that they are "ecologically compatible". They are compatible with an ecology they altered. This is, again, true everywhere. You might argue that industrialisation has changed this as a (relatively) stable state is not reached because of continuing rapid change, but it was true before industrialisation.

> I'll suggest a third option: humans hunt megafauna to extinction in the presence of conditions that favor such behavior - perhaps climatic, geographic, and/or cultural. So, it happens. But it doesn't always happen.

I have two objections to that:

1. Its not all megafauna, it is most. Some species can survive humans. 2. The extinctions have happened across many different climates and cultures and on every continent and many islands.

It is not proved beyond doubt that humans have always caused extinctions, but the pattern is very consistent, which makes it by far the most likely explanation. Even where hunting is not the direct cause, many things humans do (such as agriculture) will destroy their habitats.

Where humans did not arrive until much later than most places (e.g. in places such as New Zealand or Madagascar) megafauna survived until after they did, and were then gone with a few hundred or a few thousand years.

  First Laughing Man Incident - Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (2024)

  Third Impact - Neon Genesis Evangelion (2015)

  Fourth Corporate War - Cyberpunk (2022)

  Geisel Library Walk - Rainbows End (2025)

  2020 Tokyo Olympics - Akira (2020)

Very good timing, not for walking houses and sharding of consensus reality with ubiquitous AR, but for physical destruction of books to speed up scanning.

Manned mission to the Moon by giant gun - Jules Verne (1865 ish).

Manned trip around Saturn by comet - Jules Verne (1877).

Time traveller sets off to the future - H.G. Wells (1894)

Martian invasion of Earth - War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells (1905)

Global telephone network reaches as many connections as a human brain and wakes up - Dial 'F' for Frankenstein, Arthur C Clarke (December 1, 1975)

Birth of Dr Susan Calvin, founding of US Robotics & Mechanical Men, development of 'Positronic Brain' - Asimov's robot stories (1982 and after)

British space station under construction - The Outward Urge by John Wyndham (1994)

Portal to parallel universes - Sliders (1994)

Doctor Samuel Beckett steps into the Quantum Leap Accelerator and vanishes - Quantum Leap (1995)

Skynet becomes self-aware - Terminator 2 Judgement Day (August 29, 1997. at 02:14 am Eastern Time)

HAL 9000 AI computer operational (1997), first human voyage to Jupiter system (2001), first landing on Europa and alien life discovered (2010) - Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 A Space Odyssey

Moon leaves Earth Orbit after nuclear waste explosion, taking human-occupied Lunar colony with it - Space:1999 (13 September 1999)

Efficient international flight, using Zeppelins and blimps - Rudyard Kipling (2000)

Global climate disaster - The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

Replicants - Bladerunner (2016)

Keanu Reeves smuggles digital information in his brain - Johnny Mnemonic (2021)

Arnold Schwarzenegger kills to survive in a typical American TV show - The Running Man (2025)

Woman relifed into robot, rich people discover workers' rights - Fritz Lang's Metropolis (2026)

First colony mission to Mars, 100 colonists on the largest spaceship ever built - Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars (2026)

Tibetan monks finish listing all the names of God, stars start going out - The Nine Billion Names of God, Arthur C. Clarke (when computers were rentable and could print 1000 names per second)

and many more: https://scifi.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_of_fictional_future_e...

2001: A Space Odyssey (2001)

The nature (infamy?) of his activities over the past few years should also be noted. (And maybe chuckled at if you have a bit of a dark sense of humor.)

His popularity may have corrupted him...

https://appleseed.fandom.com/wiki/Shirow_Masamune

The most recent manga he involved with was Ghost Urn, which explores the world of GitS from a different protagonist. He did not do the drawing, but did most of the worldbuilding and mecha design.

Whatever narrative you've invented of Shirow changing over time is a stretch.

Shirow's manga is horny though, partly why I dislike it.

It's arty but there's no doubt it's done that way in part due to horniness.

I view the portrayal of Kusanagi as being steeped in aspects of the male gaze in a metatextual way. Japanese society has a high emphasis on traditional beauty standards, and the artists depicting her as a character use her beauty as a foil against the audience, by contrasting her beauty with her strength, and by subverting the desires of the audience by drawing our attention to her humanity by alienation through destroying her body at multiple points in the series. Her desire to protect her comrades at the cost of her body shows us how she is willing to sacrifice her femininity, being forced to regress to a childlike body.

The series have a lot of fan service, but I believe that it’s intentional so that the audience is forced to confront their own biases and stereotypes about women and about cyborgs/robots. The cyborg nature of her body as it is destroyed reads to me as a visual metaphor for the Madonna/whore double standard women are subject to society.

I guess I don’t disagree with your view, so much as I think that how she is depicted works on multiple levels in-universe and with respect to the viewer, and said depictions serve multiple functions in the text.

Movie Kusanagi is her own thing, mostly unrelated to the manga or other adaptations.

The manga is different.

I agree that you can find genuinely disturbing things in the manga world and that Masamune's work is relatively benign (though some of his depictions of less-developed adult women might upset some). In general, I find the idea of commercialized erotica amusing, especially when coming from sources with more mainstream claims-to-fame. In these cases, I don't attach a connotation of moral bankruptcy or anything like that to the idea of them being "infamous", though maybe that's just me using the word wrong. I intend it more in the sense of, "Hahah, oh wow, THAT guy did THAT? That's crazy." Kind of like when we found out about Tezuka's softcore furry/snakewomen doodles.