You don't get to come back a year (or a century) later and say, "Hey, I just found out what that painting is actually worth. Give it back."

Actually... Why not? You said yourself you're in the wrong and you certainly acted in bad faith, so why shouldn't your victim have their demand to annul the deal enforced?

As opposed to people with nativist and inward looking views, companies like Apple HAVE to work overseas, and if you keep following the US govt kool-aid, then you will only be able to do business with Western Europe and other allies.

Try to understand that a big part of the world actually sees the US as the big bad empire that they portray China to be and it makes sense that they ask Stewart to tone it down a bit.

It's not that China is a big bad empire, it's that Xi is an emperor who's unable to placate his people with promises of a better tomorrow due to China's economy having caught up enough that the rubber band has gone slack and dictatorships being inherently incompatible with the rule of law which a strong economy requires, so his only hope for survival is to placate them with promises of glory which makes a confrontation with China and West pretty much inevitable, and Xi knows that. It's the same deal as with Russia, US is simply being wiser than EU was.

Basically, what's business to Apple is a weapon to China, and China is a fundamentally hostile nation to anyone who doesn't think Xi would make a great world leader, which he wouldn't judging by everything I know about life in China and also because he's a genocidal tyrant. That's not "nativist" or "inward looking", that's simply realism.

I recently saw a very insightful interview where dictatorships are defined by things you cannot criticize, like the CCP in China, Kim Jong-un in Korea, etc. In the US the thing that will absolutely get you canceled will be talking about the Israeli lobby and the influence such a small group holds over US culture in general.

Seriously? You're equating getting canceled with getting disappeared?

Note that such a system would also prevent Slashdot from leaning left and censoring conservatives, which they're doing now by institution an idiotic "karma". Slashdot karma is all about politics. And Slashdot is left leaning. One could express that cutely as "CowboyNeal is an imbecile".

But you're not being censored. Your comment is right here, readable for all who care to engage with users with bad reputation. That you have managed to earn a bad reputation through your own actions does not reflect badly on Slashdot or CowboyNeal, it reflects badly on you. It is the consequence of your actions, in other words, your karma.

That most people ignore you doesn't mean you're being censored, it just means that they think you and your opinions are not worth listening to. That your response to this is that the government should force them to pay attention just serves to demonstrate that their judgement is completely right. It's not a political judgement, it's a judgement about you as a person.

Given your vitriol here, I think you know that too, and judging by the fact that you keep posting on Slashdot despite hating the place I doubt you're more welcome elsewhere either. So perhaps you should reflect on the only common factor for a change, try to see your self from other people's eyes and maybe, just maybe accept that you might actually be the one who's in the wrong and needs to change? It's painful, but so is eternal bitterness, and there is no government big enough to make other people like you, so those are your options.

We have no idea whether we are improbable life on a perfect planet, or inevitable life on a sub-par planet - or something in between.

AFAIK we could currently detect a civilization at our technological level or higher from across the galaxy, yet haven't detected any, and that Milky Way contains some quarter trillion stars, so it would seem we are very improbable indeed.

Climate science has a vast oversupply of skeptics as it stands. It's highly counterproductive to hand them legitimate fuel for scornful dismissal of the legitimate science, just because some romantic nitwit on a poesy jag can't keep it in her pants ...

Climate "skeptics" are arguing in bad faith for a conclusion necessitated by their ideology or personal interest (or both), and will simply make shit up whenever needed. Any excuse will serve a tyrant. It's pointless to worry about it.

On the plus side we get to be the god kings of a future Universe if we don't blow ourselves up.

Judging by the entire human history and present that's not a plus for any being, human or otherwise, living in that future Universe.

The solution is a labor union strong enough to force a mandatory minimum wage sufficient to live on. Don't blame robber barons exploiting desperate people on those desperate people, blame it on the barons. Such attribution errors simply serve to divide and conquer the working class, and thus make you yourself easier prey.

Is anything worth saving if everyone's an asshole? Should we just hope for a giant meteor? Is that our new social religion?

Funny you would say so, seeing how the majority religion of the US is a literal doomsday cult wishing for the world to end since it's full of sinners.

Ever wonder why Fox News routinely beats the shit out of its competition on a regular basis?

It tells assholes they're actually victims and thus don't need to change. Flattering tyrants and easing their consciences have always been a profitable proposition, just as long as you're willing to sell your soul.

there is a bombshell hiding in those tax returns that Trump is deathly afraid of the world seeing

Why? The people who support Trump will continue doing so no matter what because Trump is not a librul. And the people who don't support Trump can't possibly think any less of him or his supporters. So what could Trump's tax returns possibly reveal that would change matters any?

The reason I have no problem with surveillance in public, is because there are already other people about who can see what i'm doing.

There's a qualitative difference between "somebody might see me" and "I'm under 24/7 effective surveillance". In the past, even the most tyrannical of states could not do the latter because both the surveillance itself and actually doing anything with the information had to be done manually. These robots seek to solve the former problem, and our friends at Google are busy at work developing data mining techniques and AIs to solve the latter. Add automated weapons to the mix, and you'd better hope you can trust anyone who takes power from now on.

I'm far more concerned about unwanted surveillance in private homes - such as the google and amazon speakers everyone seems to be buying. That is a line that I hate that people are falling all over themselves to cross.

The private things I do in the privacy of my own home are of little interest to Lord Tyrant Crushemall: I use the bathroom, I have sex, I drool in my sleep. It's what I and the rest of Le Resistance does in public that's important: we gather to express grievances, we gather to plot, we recruit new members, we cross public spaces to meet in someone's home (where we can always just unplug the spy devices)...

It matters little if you have privacy in your home if that home is completely surrounded by a wall of eyes. You'll have no more freedom than a prisoner in their cell.

Can't shake the devil's hand and say you're only kidding.

No, but child molesters don't smell of brimstone so you might not realize that the person who's hand you're shaking is actually the devil. People sometimes successfully keep big secrets even from their closest acquaintances. That's why you need to actually gather evidence to prove someone's guilty, even if they became a suspect due to mere association.

Confirmation and Survivorship bias.

Also known as Evolution. People who insist on acting like rabid werewolves whenever given a chance are slowly but surely being selected out, both from the gene pool and online communities (memetics). The world is getting better because Nazis and their ilk always end up getting themselves killed due to the spirit of their ideology ultimately being that of death.

The thing is, as soon as life emerged it's preferences became a part of the fitness function in Survival of the Fittest; and for us self-aware beings that comes down to what we want. Since most of us don't want to be abused and miserable, we don't associate with people who make us so, thus selection pressure is now set against the nastier aspects of human nature. As such, they're living on borrowed time, doomed to disappear.

Editorial bias is one thing, blatantly burying a major news story(WikiLeaks) because it doesn't fit the agenda is equal to being "fake news site". Oh sure, they ran a one or two minute piece once, but TRUMP IS A RACIST runs for 38 minutes every night.

There is bias (accidental unintentional) and then there is rigged reporting. Calling it bias is ... cute..

Accurate reporting on the sayings and doings of deplorable people tend to make them seem deplorable. It's not the fault of news outlets, mainstream or otherwise, that the right chose to rally behind a racist demagogue.

When people decide they're only going to trust news from sources that we know make up stories (and repeat stories from similar sites), how do you prove anything to be a lie?

You can't cure wilful self-deception, but reality will, once the problem gets bad enough. Of course, since we now have nukes it could well be there's nobody left to dig themselves out of the ashes.

A very large segment of the population no logner cares if trump is good or bad, they are just sick of getting screwed by the politicians, and if trump ends up screwing them just like every other president in recent history, at least some of the elites are likely to take it in the shorts as well. Its the scorched earth mentality, and it is the logical result of 30+ years of policy that favors the wealthy at everyone elses expense.

They're tired of elites, so they elect a guy who flies around in a literal gold-plated private jet plane. They're tired of getting screwed, so they elect a professional conman. And they're tired of the wealthy getting everything, so they protest and condemn as socialism every attempt to equalize incomes or provide basic services, such as Obamacare, to the less wealthy.

You ever wonder if maybe there's a reason nobody much cares what these jackasses want?