They’ve been enshittifying for the better part of a decade. The model 3 launching without rain sensors and taking years to get any where near comparable with cameras comes to mind.
There has been much prognostication about the internet blackout but it misses the real issue. The internet blackout only works perfectly when there are no media backed journalists on the ground. The absolute absence of any reporting from foreign journalists on the ground anywhere in Iran is striking.
There was even some reporting from Tiananmen Square in 1989, and from Baghdad in 1991.
News media has ceased to be a meaningful investigative endeavor.
There are plenty of Western journalists in Iran, but they are subject to the same internet blackout as everyone else. Embassies can use satellite communications due to diplomatic immunity, while journalists are just average nobodies who face extra scrutiny due to their jobs.
I would be surprised if there many western journalists left in Iran…
Here is an excellent podcast from a Washington post journalist that was captured and held as a hostage - it’s called 544 days (that’s the amount of time he was jailed there)
Starlink is illegal in Iran. Being a foreign journalist is a huge red flag in totalitarian countries, making it harder to smuggle in illegal devices than for the average citizen or visitor. And because journalists are probably under surveillance by the regime, it's harder for them to obtain Starlink terminals in the country than for the average person.
The government was ignoring Starlink until it was being used by western clandestine agencies & Israel to foment violence and burning down property. People were being paid for each act of violence they committed, by those spy agencies.
The Iranian government then used Chinese tech to block Starlink, shutdown the external internet and the violence stopped.
Immediately when the blackout started an Iranian living abroad told me there will be a massacre. No journalists needed to know that but journalists do bring credibility to a claim.
The tiny part of the population that is whitelisted is spreading lies, which doesn't help.
> Also what's up with the people hiking (by themselves) with a bluetooth speaker. You're by yourself, in nature. If you want to listen to music wear headphones!!
I used to hold this same opinion. Unfortunately, times have changed and now everyone is constantly in their phones, isolated in their own universes, typically with earbuds or headphones. At least the obnoxious speaker dude is present; in a shared physical reality with the world around him. A lesser evil.
> And the research was out there! Does everybody only read this single Harvard literature review? Does nobody read journals, or other meta studies, or anything? Did the researchers from other institutions whose research was criticized not make any fuss?
They did. But Ancel Keys, one of the bribed researchers, author of the infamous seven countries study that laid the groundwork against fat made it his life’s mission to discredit anyone who researched sugar. He effectively made the topic academic suicide. His primary target, that served as a warning example for others was his contemporary in the U.K. John Yudkin.
I agree. It's objectively nonsense with regards to AirPods and Apple Watches in particular. Both are extremely dominant in their respective categories for many years at this point. Objectively, Apple is not alienating its "long-time customers". Someone raging about his perceived wastefulness of AirPods is out of touch with the vast majority of people.
But people love to rage and be enraged on the internet. So anyone pointing the vacuity of the enraged is downvoted and cast aside.
America is founded on the principle of human selfishness. People are selfish, so let’s harness it instead of pretending that people are utopian selfless creatures.
More recently, selfishness has taken second seat to hurting the “other” (whatever other happens to be) even to the detriment of one’s own self interests. America is not built for this.
Maybe you don’t understand the role of the BLS or what it does. Maybe you’ve been sold a bill of goods that it is supposed to be an infallible oracle, when it is, in fact, a useful measurement device with limitations that have been well known for decades.
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