This seems a bit nihilistic. Yes, Google is in the driving seat but it still has to deal with Apple and even Mozilla within the W3C. So a framework for open web standards exists, and a new engine is always just one fork away. Surely what is lacking is exactly this kind of antitrust regulation, which might incentivize competition at last. So thank you, EU Commission. The web standard is all we have. If it’s broken then we need to get fixing it right now.

Just to push back, a littie, on an easily caricatured picture.

China is looking far less strong economically than it was just a few years ago. In the coming years the Chinese economy will face challenges at least as big as any facing the West. The notion that China will buy up and thus vassalize Europe is not, on balance, very rational. In the 1980s the USA was seriously concerned that Japan would eat up the world. Japan.

The Economist looked into the BRI recently and came to the conclusion that the scheme was essentially economic rather than political - a way to get rid of excess capital in the 2010s, with some potential political benefits on the side. Not the other way round.

None of this justifies Chinese abuses or Hungary’s anti-EU antics.

They can’t. Hungary was protected by Poland and now will be by Slovakia. The EU Commission can theoretically act independently but in practice, this is political. And the EU Council can only take official action if Hungary has no friends at all.

Or, worse, they consider the changed world normal because they never personally knew anything better. This is the “shifting baseline” theory and it is an absolutely terrifying thought.

Here’s one theory: it’s because they live in Italy.

First off, I would just like to point out that I have not downvoted anyone in this thread. I do not censor other people’s opinions, however misguided I personally consider them. Apparently you do like to tape mask over the faces of people you disagree with.

he claims

You are getting lost in the claims and counter-claims. Their claim was that “Muslims are not more violent than non-Muslims”. Your claim is about who is committing terrorism. That is not the same thing.

The terrorist statistics have always skewed towards nationalists - but that is on the widest definition of terrorism. Arsons, letter bombs, and the like. But not the deaths caused by terrorism, which is what most ordinary folk are thinking about. That is Islamists, and has been for years. You should know that already, you seem well-informed. I will not speculate about your motives in ignoring it.

But now I am getting sidetracked too. My argument was about Islam versus other religions. And there, I’m afraid to say that the statistics are clear as day. And again, you both must know this already.

Muslims in Europe aren’t more violent than non muslims

In terms of terrorism, the statistics say otherwise. In terms of general crime, the prison statistics do too. Of course, you will explain all this away as a product of systemic discrimination. But does it not bother you that immigrants of other religions, who also may also have darker skins, do so much better in their adopted homelands?

Also violence against muslims is systematically underreported

This is conspiracism. It’s impossible to argue with, by definition.

It is just that violence commited by muslims, or people claimed to be muslim is disproporitonately sensationalized by right wing media

This common argument is interesting because the implication is that speaker is somehow intellectually superior than the person being addressed. We all have access to the same information, how come only you know how to avoid being indoctrinated? Are you saying I’m dumb? Go on, just come out and say, I won’t be offended.

Because that’s what underlies the argument. As it happens, and as you might guess, I personally am extremely well-informed, and almost entirely from mainstream professional journalists who are affiliated to boring organizations with serious reputations to protect. I am over-educated and I don’t go near sensationalist right-wing media, or social media. And in fact I don’t even vote for right-wing parties. How do you explain that? I think you should try a new tack: taking people’s opinions at face value rather than looking for manipulation, and listening to why people themselves say they think what they do.

Addendum. Downvoting is so much easier than finding a counter-argument, right? I will take it as proof that my points hit their mark. Good night.

The whole concept of apologizing for opinions is just, well, wild. To me yes but I assure you to quite a lot of other people too. Not wanting to make this personal, but I would put money on a wager that you belong to a certain generation. One that, let’s say, is particularly certain of its moral rectitude and doesn’t put much stock in the value of free speech and the exchange of ideas.

Have you never asked yourself why so many people of this one religion turn out to have “psychological problems”? What are the chances of that statistically if, as you seem to suggest, religion has nothing to do with this?

Next, this person is trying to disassociate their skin color from their opinion, and in response you are insisting on essentializing them on the basis of biology. Have you considered how close this puts you to people you claim to abhor?

At a guess, you seem to be talking to a member of a generation that never got contradicted during its childhood, that believes it has all the answers, that sees dissenters to its groupthink as social deviants who need be silenced. The Western enlightenment is yesterday’s news, we’ve moved on in the West! Well done for keeping your cool and staying polite.

Who are you to tell others how to think? Asking them to apologize, are you serious? The level of self-righteousness and self-absorption in your attitude is worrying.

This is a classic question of intuition. Personally I see your argument as a cop-out. By definition the supermarkets are just selling us what we want. That’s what supermarkets do, they’re not charities. If you want (somewhat) cruelty-free meat, it’s available in the organic shop across the road and it costs four times as much. Suddenly you don’t care so much about the chickens, right? Not blaming you or anyone in particular. This is who we are as humans. We want it tasty, we want it cheap, and the rest is something of an abstraction.

For a lot of people it’s not that easy, apparently. But well done.

So if “malnourished” is better, as you imply, let’s use that instead. The issue is not hunger by any non-academic definition of the word.

You’ve made your case. Mine is that this is a clear example of sensationalist lexical inflation. Like calling everyone right of center a Nazi, it is intended to provoke engagement and emotion rather than to describe a fact.

This seems to be subtle jab at people who buy dead animals which led lives of misery, in order to eat them and their products.

As one of those people (occasionally), I agree with you. It’s way too easy to blame the evil companies. They only exist because we voluntarily pay them to do what they do. We are all responsible.

Finally, a decent rebuttal to my argument!

I agree about the conflation of absolute and relative poverty.

Sure. I agree with all that.

I don’t agree with labelling something “hunger” which is not hunger in the way ordinary folks understand it. You are talking about addiction. Hunger is the thin end of the wedge for starvation and famine. That is a thing in the world, still. It has all but nothing to do with the West’s inequality-fuelled addiction problems, or at least is something very, very different.

I just wish we would use language more correctly.

Yes, your point is that “hunger” should be interpreted very loosely, meaning in a sort of addiction-psychology way.

I think that’s a sophisticated re-rendering, and that most ordinary folks do associate the word “hunger” with famine, with starving, with terrible deprivation. Which is a real situation in a handful of desperate places in the world. I don’t think we should be conflating these two problems. One of them is far more urgent than the other.

I see this as just another instance of disingenuously sensationalist language and I would prefer people used the correct terms for what they are in fact talking about.

For the underlying substance, I agree with you and all the other censorious downvoters. I am just concerned about vocabulary and manipulation.

You are tying yourself in knots to pretend that that fat people are “hungry”. Why bother? Why not just use appropriate language, instead of mangling English like this?

I do not deny that there is a problem. I just hate being manipulated with language. It is dishonest, disingenuous, insulting. Fat people are not going hungry. Find another word.

Routine addendum. Downvoting does not make you right. It just proves you to be intolerant of other people’s opinions.

Yes sure, I know all that. There is a real problem. Fundamentally it’s about economic inequality, like so many other social problems.

So people should stop using the damn word “hunger”.

This has nothing to do with hunger. it’s dishonest and manipulative to talk about hunger when the problem has nothing to do with being hungry.

Personally I’m fed up of being taken to be an idiot like this.