>The US mentality might be different, but at least having grown up and living in Germany, such an annoying hustler who wants to use some journalist as a marketing influencer for his private project is a huge no-no. In other words: it is a very reasonable decision (perhaps even the only right one) for any journalist to fob off such a hustler.
Yeah there seems to be a thing where in the US, what's seen as "selling yourself" or "putting your best foot forward" is considered excessive self-promotion / tall poppy behavior in other cultures.
> Yeah there seems to be a thing where in the US, what's seen as "selling yourself" or "putting your best foot forward" is considered excessive self-promotion / tall poppy behavior in other cultures.
It is a uniquely US thing & is a common struggle for foreigners who are new to US corporate culture.
Can be especially tricky if you are a 3rd culture individual that has to manage relationships spanning different cultures in your daily life. You can't easily turn "hustler" mode off and on.
It is a huge faux pas in almost every non-western culture and can wreak havoc in your personal life.
Why is excessive self-promotion considered "putting your best foot forward"?
I understand that you need the money, so you do self-promotion. But this is clearly not "putting your best foot forward", but a "put a bad foot (annoy other people by excessive self-promotion) forward because you need the money", i.e. what many US-Americans do is by my understanding the opposite of this life advice which they give.
You're coming off as clearly not understanding the other side here. Obviously "putting your best foot forward" is not simultaneously "annoy other people by excessive self-promotion" in the mind of a single person.
There are two different types of people, and they think of the same action in two different ways.
I could equally well ask why putting your best foot forward would be considered excessive self-promotion. Consider the example of contacting a journalist. Why would it be a huge no-no? Why can't the journalist just treat it as any other lead? Skim the email, if they're not interested, ignore or delete. That's not a significant burden. If they are interested, such emails actually help the journalist do their job, by providing ideas for stories.
to be clear impact groups are things like government programs (e.g. snap benefits), disabilities, immigration status, etc. They're not "democrat vs republican". The whole point of Govbase is for users to be able to follow things that matter to them and see how the government is impacting their lives.
Believe it or not Steve Bannon is quite concerned about AI development:
>Over on Steve Bannon's show, War Room -- the influential podcast that's emerged as the tip of the spear of the MAGA movement -- Trump's longtime ally unloaded on the efforts behind accelerating AI, calling it likely "the most dangerous technology in the history of mankind."
>...
>"You have more restrictions on starting a nail salon on Capitol Hill or to have your hair braided, then you have on the most dangerous technologies in the history of mankind," Bannon told his listeners.
I read through this drivel and it's nothing more than conjecture and anecdotes from someone who seems never to have been to Europe. Nearly every example of his critique is of the UK, not Europe as a whole, and each of them has plenty of counterexamples of the same thing happening in the US.
In short: nonsense. Completely made up narrative filled with quotes from same-belief people, claiming moral outrage about issues they either don't understand or wilfully misrepresent.
I'm pretty sure the President and CEO of the leading free expression organization today understands what he's talking about and is fully aware that there are bad things happening in this vein in the US.
Do you have any specific disagreements you can share with the criticism of the actual content that the parent comment gave, or do you think that the author's job title is more important than whether what they said is actually correct?
The parent comment in question has essentially zero in the way of supporting evidence. The author's first claim happened to be verifiable. I attempted to verify it, and it was pretty clearly false.
What's asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
I guess I might not have been clear. I'm specifically wondering about this part, which is what I was referring to about the critique they gave of the actual content:
> Nearly every example of his critique is of the UK, not Europe as a whole, and each of them has plenty of counterexamples of the same thing happening in the US.
Separated from the ad hominems on both sides, it seems like a pretty reasonable criticism to me. It doesn't seem obvious to me that it should be dismissed as irrelevant.
Well, I mean, I think it's pretty obvious that when someone claims that the author is "claiming moral outrage about issues they either don't understand or wilfully misrepresent" then what he does for a living matters.
Sure, but if I'm trying to verify the accuracy of their claims, their job both giving them potential subject expertise but also potential bias towards making the exact claims that are being criticized, it doesn't really clear anything up, so I'm back to trying to understand if there's any counterargument to the criticism other than their pedigree.
The guy who literally actively helped to create the current USA situation? Yeah. All the while he pointificated about free speech, he had clear favorites whose speech mattered and who should shut up.
When the left is censoring more (as was true in the run-up to Trump's election), of course a free speech organization will be opposing left-wing censorship more frequently.
Trump's election was a reaction to left-wing cancel culture. If people had listened to FIRE, and refuted bad ideas instead of censoring them, maybe Trump wouldn't have been elected: https://qr.ae/pYCVXO
>Nearly every example of his critique is of the UK
I just used a word count tool to sanity-check this claim. It said there are 1061 words about the UK and 1684 words about non-UK countries.
You appear to be fibbing about easy-to-check facts. Anyone who trusts you on your harder-to-verify claims is a fool.
There seems to be a bit of a pattern I've noticed with Europeans on HN. They criticize the US constantly, yet flip out instantly when their countries are criticized, to the point of reflexively lying about stuff which is easily checkable.
I can sorta understand lying about claims which are hard to verify. It's distasteful, but I can understand why a certain type of person would do it. But, why lie about stuff which takes under 60 seconds to check? What are you trying to accomplish?
BTW, I hope you aren't in Germany. It's a crime to insult someone or spread malicious gossip online in Germany. Your usage of "drivel" might be considered an insult which could get your phone confiscated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bMzFDpfDwc#t=3m
People will engage with and promote that stuff even without a recommendation algorithm. Lots of subreddits are full of ragebait if you look at the most-upvoted posts.
>There has most certainly been a major decline in values over time that corresponds quite strongly with the rise in the perceived importance of wealth.
Are you sure that people in the past viewed wealth as less important? If anything, the 1960s hippie movement would represent a shift away from a cultural emphasis on wealth, no?
I would suggest that internet commenter nihilism and politician nihilism form a self-reinforcing spiral. If commenters will take a nihilistic view of your actions no matter what you do, you might as well secure the bag. And if politicians are always securing the bag, you might as well write nihilistic internet comments about them.
But parties typically have to compromise with other parties in their coalition, so it would seem to amount to the same thing (compromise is required to pass legislation)?
Correct. The difference between FPTP and PR systems (Or countries with very strong regional parties) is that in a multi-party PR system, the coalition happens between party, in a FPTP two-party system, the coalition happens within the big tentpole parties.
There are many reasons for why two-party FPTP sucks, but this phenomena is present in multi-party systems, too. And, of course, sometimes politicians end up crossing the aisle, much to the chagrin of the party whip.
"In fact, [proportional representation] robs him of personal responsibility; it makes of him a voting machine rather than a thinking and feeling person. In my view, this is by itself a sufficient argument against proportional representation. For what we need in politics are individuals who can judge on their own and who are prepared to carry personal responsibility."
It would be worth looking at how other countries with comparable legal systems do it.
Eg., members of the Supreme Court of the UK are appointed by the King on the advice of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is required by law to recommend the person nominated by an independent commission.
The selection must be made on merit, in accordance with the qualification criteria of section 25 of the Act, of someone not a member of the commission, ensuring that the judges will have between them knowledge and experience of all three of the UK's distinct legal systems, having regard to any guidance given by the Lord Chancellor, and of one person only.
This seems to work fairly well and, although specific decisions are argued over as part of normal political discourse, it is generally seen as being non-partisan.
Ireland (which also has a common law legal system) has a similar setup, with the President appointing supreme court justices based on the recommendation of the government who, in turn, are advised by an independent panel. That advice is technically not legally binding, so this is in theory a less-strictly non-partisan system - but in practice it works out about the same.
I think the difference is that you can specify independently verifiable criteria for the selection process and require participants to decide based on those criteria alone without forcing them to become political actors who must directly bear the consequences of political decisions.
Not totally immune to issues of partisanship, but at least somewhat insulated.
BTW, the original intent of the Electoral College in the United States was pretty similar to this. Electors were supposed to be independent actors exercising their independent judgement in selection of the president. It wasn't sustainable for long.
I actually agree with you that the independant commission can lead to partisanship with extra steps.
Possibility to beat this deadlock: one party picking few candidates from the commission and OTHER party (parties) accepting one of them. Still can lead to "choose the lowest evil" and I can imagine Repiblicans not accepting anyone of Democrata were ruling.
This understates the failure: it was about as close to “immediate” as it could be. The whole structure was pointless just about as soon as the new state began to operate.
The electoral college is basically an appendix, except it was never a useful organ. It malfunctioned completely, right out of the gate.
Sure, so that suggests that these so-called "independent nonpartisan panels" are likely to fail immediately as well. It illustrates the principle that good intentions are no match for incentives.
It works fairly well because your PM and King aren't complete loons. At the end of the process there has to be someone making decisions, and when that person is a narcissistic 8-year-old in an 80-year-old's body, bad things are going to happen no matter how the system is written.
Given that the current system maximises partisan bias, it's actually hard to do worse.
Ideally you'd want to reform this hierarchically, but supposing we can only fix that final court, you want say a committee consisting of roughly a couple of academics who've taught this stuff, a couple of real on-the-ground attorneys who've argued before this court, a couple of retired judges from this court (if it had age limits, but today it does not) or the courts below it who've done this job, and five otherwise unconnected citizens (no specific business before any court now or expected) chosen at random the way most countries pick their juries.
That committee is to deliver a list of several people best qualified to fill any vacancies on the court which arise before the next committee does the same, if such a vacancy arises you just go down the list.
>roughly a couple of academics who've taught this stuff, a couple of real on-the-ground attorneys who've argued before this court
How are these members of the committee chosen then? Seems like you're just moving the problem around, if choice of committee member is also subject to partisan incentives.
Yeah there seems to be a thing where in the US, what's seen as "selling yourself" or "putting your best foot forward" is considered excessive self-promotion / tall poppy behavior in other cultures.
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