I'm disappointed by the discussion on this submission. Here's a list of things that would be encouraged by the main text of the request [1]:
- The national anthem / pledge of allegiance (explicitly suggested by the text)
- Civics-related stuff -- information about voting, how laws are passed, the branches of govt, the separation of powers, etc.
- Arts that are "truly" American -- Blues, Jazz, Rock n Roll, etc. I know there will be disagreement about what counts as "American", but it's clear that there are some art forms that wouldn't exist without America's unique mixture of cultures.
- Things about America's history -- speeches from George Washington/Lincoln/MLK/Other significant figures, the musical Hamilton, the emancipation proclamation, the text from the statue of liberty, discussion of Japanese internment camps, the history of Hawaii/Peurto Rico/Alaska/Any relevant state, etc
I think those would all be positive. I'm sure there will also be some less inclusive parts that will endorsed by some broadcasters (I think discussion of that is good, but not endorsement). Carr's message is not asking for that, it's just encouraging an increased focus on America.
> Things about America's history -- speeches from George Washington/Lincoln/MLK/Other significant figures
Is there a source for this? I'd be little surprised if they encouraged airing MLK's speeches, but the linked document doesn't mention MLK, or encourage airing historical speeches of any kind.
> “That is why I am inviting broadcasters to pledge to air programming in their local markets in
support of this historic national, non-partisan celebration. As an example, this could include:
> • Running PSAs, short segments, or full specials specifically promoting _civic education,
inspiring local stories, and American history_.
> • Including segments during regular news programming that highlight local sites that are
significant to American and regional history, such as National Park Service sites.
> • Starting each broadcast day with the “Star Spangled Banner” or Pledge of Allegiance.
> • Airing music by America’s greatest composers, such as John Philip Sousa, Aaron Copland,
Duke Ellington, or George Gershwin.
> • Providing daily “Today in American History” announcements highlighting significant events
that took place on that day in history.
> • Partnering with community organizations and other groups that are already working hard to
bring America’s stories of unity, perseverance, and triumph to light.
MLK's speeches are certainly included in civic education, inspiring local stories, and American history.
Hi pinkmuffinere, please do me a favor and consider the context surrounding this request and Carr's behavior in general. Others have provided it, you've chosen to ignore it. Choosing to be ignorant does not help here, you can do better.
You claim that the request does not encourage "speeches from George Washington/Lincoln/MLK/Other significant figures". I believe I've provided quotes and sources proving otherwise. I am not here to discuss more generic American politics, I'm here to discuss the main text referenced by the submission -- to wit, the Gizmodo article misrepresents the main text. I'm defending that (fairly narrow) claim.
> I am not here to discuss more generic American politics
This entire submission is about generic American politics. If you don't want to comment on this submission and participate in discussions about it, that's okay, but I think folks are confused by your insistence on discussing generic American politics (this submission) while omitting other generic American politics about the very same topic (the context of this submission).
If you want to discuss a thing, you should be okay with thinking and talking about the critical context around that thing. As an engineer, I'm sure you can understand.
I guess I am interesting in discussing the much narrower question. And I can see you are not yet sick of replying to me :P, so I'd like to ask your view ImPostingOnHN -- do you feel that the text of Carr's request seems on-net good? If not, what is it in the text that you object to? To be clear, I actually do find one line objectionable (and maybe you'll show me others). He calls on broadcasters to air "patriotic, pro-America content". I feel 'patriotic' is just on the line of making me uncomfortable, and 'pro-America' slightly crosses over it. I think the right to criticize the powers-that-be is quintessentially American, and asking for explicit pro-America content betrays that. But I can also see ways that both of these could be interpreted in a positive-for-humanity way, even though they don't naturally jump out to me in that way.
There's really no good reason for me (or you) to exclude critical context from the announcement, given that they're both "generic American politics". Plenty of bad reasons though.
If you want to discuss "generic American politics", however, I have some questions already posed to you earlier which you thusfar have ignored because they were "generic American politics".
"...and I am the government, and I order you to broadcast my message, and also you can't say these other things I dislike, or I will revoke your ability to operate at all."
It's disappointing to see this point missed: this isn't a random person sharing their opinion, it is both government-mandated speech and literal censorship.
Did you read the text? It _does not_ order such broadcasting, your quote is made-up. Here's the closest quote I find:
> Chairman Brendan Carr issued the following statement:
... "I am inviting broadcasters to pledge to air programming in their local markets in
support of this historic national, non-partisan celebration."
Are you aware that this government, and indeed this government rep which we're discussing, has threatened to revoke broadcasting licenses from companies for airing content the government disagrees with? Or worse? On multiple occasions?
If you don't have that context, none of my post will have made sense to you, which it appears is what happened.
This submission claims to be about this announcement [1]. It is not about the full context of American politics right now. In fact generic politics is off-topic for HN [2]. I am responding to the main text of the announcement, not to general American politics.
So you AREN'T aware that this government, and indeed this government rep which we're discussing, has threatened to revoke broadcasting licenses from companies for airing content the government disagrees with? Or worse? On multiple occasions?
The omission of that critical context might be why none of my post made sense to you: you would be unable to realize that the 'invitation to participate' we're discussing involves a degree of coercion, based on those threats. If you threaten somebody to give you their money 3 times, and then a 4th time you 'invite them to participate in giving you their money', that is 4 threats total, not 3.
Of course, anything in the world can be justified if you omit enough context, even government-compelled speech and government censorship. Just omit the context of the 3 times you threatened your mugging victim to comply, and all you have left is a polite invitation to share money. Totally okay, right?
My claim is -- the main text of the announcement is _good_. I make no claim about the larger context. Obviously I don't like Trump. But IMO that kind of generic discussion is not what HN is for.
Right, and I am adding the critical context that the 'invitation to participate' in spreading government propaganda and silencing government-disliked speech, is actually a veiled threat couched in numerous previous explicit threats made by the same party, making it both government-compelled speech and government censorship.
As for your personal politics, you can have whatever ones you want. I'm focusing on the issue here, not you personally. Hope I didn't say anything that came across as too personal.
Feel free to downvote or flag my comment if you personally feel that way, the mods here are pretty reasonable.
Indeed, feel free to flag this submission, and not comment in it, if you feel it is too political for HN. HN thrives because of a multitude of views, of which you are a part.
In the meantime, feel free to respond to the substance of my comments rather than complaining because I added critical context to an already-existing submission/discussion.
I am obviously not wholesale endorsing the administration. The request as-issued is a positive thing, and indeed _would encourage_ discussing why we have term limits, why we should push back against autocrats, bigotry, etc. If they go around arresting people for not obeying their request, I'll feel differently.
The only use for lofty values or nuance that fascists have is for distracting from their plain agenda. At the point we're at, it's prudent to wonder why someone would help carry water if they don't support the regime.
Also, setting your criteria at "arresting people" seems like straightforward denial, especially as we're talking about broadcasters where the actual threat being wielded is to shut down their transmitters.
I'd say the GP comment was entirely appropriate, despite it being flagged by the tone police. The context is very important here, and you seem to be deliberately ignoring it.
Thankyou for your well-moderated reading of the text, you're absolutely right that Gizmodo's article is blowing it out of proportion. The actual ask is not so absurd. My reading of the text is that all of the following are encouraged:
- The national anthem / pledge of allegiance (explicitly suggested by the text)
- Civics-related stuff -- information about voting, how laws are passed, the branches of govt, the separation of powers, etc.
- Arts that are "truly" American -- Blues, Jazz, Rock n Roll, etc. I know there will be disagreement about what counts as "American", but I think it's clear that there are some art forms that wouldn't exist without America's unique mixture of cultures.
- Things about America's history -- speeches from George Washington/Lincoln/MLK/Other significant figures, the musical Hamilton, the emancipation proclamation, the text from the statue of liberty, discussion of Japanese internment camps, the history of Hawaii/Peurto Rico/Alaska/Any relevant state, etc
I'm sure there will also be some less inclusive bits of history that are endorsed by some broadcasters. But Carr's message is not asking for that, it's just encouraging an increased focus on America. America is a melting pot, and has a great history of including downtrodden people, as well as a long history of injustice. A focus on America _doesn't_ mean we endorse the injustice. If anything, I think the injustice should be discussed, because they make the big shifts even _more_ palpable. There are people alive today that went to segregated schools. That's insane, and personally I do think that knowledge changes my behavior. I'd be very happy to be reminded about those things by public radio.
There is one line that I felt was a bit concerning, but I think it really depends on your reading of the text (emphasis mine):
> The Pledge America Campaign [encourages broadcasters to air] ... _pro-America_ content"
I think the page is just a lie. It's an add for vivgrid. The next-page button doesn't work. Many of the Chinese entries have emojis in their names, which seems to me an unrealistic amount of whimsy (I suspect instead that the data is manufactured, and the AI ~helpfully~ included emojis for the webapp owner's easier understanding). Almost every entry with latin text is named just "Assistant" (wow what a coincidence!). There are plenty of English and Chinese entries, but seemingly none for the other major languages (eg Spanish is second-most-spoken, but there's only one possibly-Spanish entry). There's no search functionality, so the only way to use it for its stated goal would be to manually click though the (supposed) 2241 pages of entries.
You sound like you know things, and I have questions! What are the chances that we see infrastructure move to less-developed-but-more-stable regions of the world? What even are the candidate locations that wouldn't be an absolute headache to set up? I'm thinking perhaps West Africa? Or South Africa if it can stabilize a bit? Maybe other coastal locations that have good-enough transportation hubs nearby?
It would be really interesting if this pushes infrastructure further into countries which are less developed but also less war-torn. I'm not really familiar with the region, but I imagine parts of West Africa might be good candidates.
It won't. This article misses the almost certain reality that the support of the Gulf states for this conflict (and the others that passed, and those that will follow) came from incentives like having infra investments on their soil.
Divesting away from the Gulf after something as trivial as this would be a complete rug-pull. And it would end the Abraham Accords.
Don't get me wrong: it will happen at some point. But not now. Not until the Abraham Accords have served their purpose.
I love gimp, it is the only “heavyweight” image editor I ever learned to use, and that choice has saved me so much money in software subscriptions! Thankyou maintainers!
I love the contrast between this and one of the next comments:
>In my honest opinion, GIMP is a horrific piece of software.
Both are absolutely true!
GIMP has been, for many years, the best free graphics software available. At the same time, it's so horribly anti-user (and anti-usability) that if it wasn't free software, the company behind it would have gone bankrupt a long time ago.
"Anti-user' and "anti-usability" are far too harsh. Outdated, yes. A product of 1990s-era UX design, absolutely. But every changelog has some mention of a UX improvement, and actually using the product at version 3.0 is, dare I say, pretty enjoyable once you unlearn things and pretend it's Photoshop 6.0. Single-window mode by default helps a ton.
I have used far worse software from commercial outfits. You would not believe how much aerospace and specialized CAD stuff still uses Motif and doesn't support scroll wheels or extra mouse buttons.
Don't sleep on the command palette (`/`). It's a really useful tool when even if you don't know _where_ things are, you still know what they are called.
The one saving grace one might find is that a lot of people trying it already had some experience with e.g. Photoshoot and are already influenced by it. And just because Photoshop does it one way doesn't mean it's the way. But honestly, no, it's just bad bad. Thanks for all the hard work for free, but it's just really difficult to use[1]. It would've been better to do less.
[1]gave up on it 10 years ago, so don't know, maybe things changed
GIMP UI was always bad whereas Paintshop Pro (don't if you remember) and later Paint.NET each had a UI that you'd be up and using without thinking twice.
My biggest beef is the UI constantly goes through massive changes at each release. Options moved, mysterious new configs, literally it is as if you're using an entirely new piece of software every few years.
For those of you who daily drive GIMP, well you'll be up to speed quickly. For those of us that use it once a month or so, for a day, it quickly becomes exceptionally annoying.
I'm happy if the UI isn't the best. I frankly don't care what the software looks like, or if the GUI is purdy. I just want it to work, work well, and frankly that menu items don't magically disappear, get merged into other sub-menus, or that now you can suddenly close a tool, and never ever get it back without finding some obscure menu item to re-activate it.
And if you use GIMP frequently, and are about to say "But, that's easy, you just..." then you're not a casual user.
There are more casual users than you think.
(this goes right up there with devs who change config options in files from option= to Option=, and configs= to config=.
I mean, leave it alone. Forever.
"Updated config options to bring them inline with StudlyCaps" or whatever turns my day into a ragefest filled anxiety attack on upgrade.
"Changed all config names to US English from British spelling." What?! OK b112, you now have to deal.
It's funny to hear that, because we get a large number of complaints that we haven't changed GIMP's interface at all from 2.10 to 3.0 and that's why we're "failing".
We try to be respectful of existing users (and again, we get lots of complaints that doing so "holds GIMP back"). If you have some examples of massive changes you've dealt with (and from what version to what version), I'm happy to look into them further.
Please finally implement pie menus, like Blender has had for many years. There have been various pie menu implementations for GTK for decades, and it's always been easy to roll your own if you suffer from NIH so much that you refuse to look at or use anything anyone else has ever done.
I believe GIMP's deep seated NIH syndrome, and refusal to look at or acknowledge anything else, and lack of respect for users' requests and usability itself, are GIMP's actual deep seated problems (which the Blender project so successfully doesn't self-sabotage itself with), and I have no reason to believe it's ever going to change, because it's so deeply baked into the GIMP "culture", if you can call it that.
Photoshop doesn't have pie menus, so if you must, think of pie menus as a way to be even less like Photoshop, if that is what mission drives you instead of usability. But I think your design goals and motivations should focus more on usability and supporting users than simply spiting Photoshop.
But once you finally get tired of spiting Photoshop at the expense of usability, then why don't you finally declare Mission Accomplished, and move on to trying for once to be as good as Blender's user interface and responsiveness to user's needs?
>One example is that Blender embraced the use of pie menus, and Gimp ignored them. The Gimp team is just not open to outside ideas, and gets really annoyed when users of other tools request features from those tools that Gimp refuses to support, and reacts by digging in deeper and clinging to their bad design decisions out of frustration and spite. A really sad culture of NIH and 4Q2.
>In general and with many other things, Gimp could have been so much better and easier to use, but they systematically and spitefully ignored their user's needs and requests about so many things, while Blender did just the opposite, listened to users and improve the user interface and mouse bindings, instead of being stubborn and parochial about it. [...]
>[...] All of these ideas could be applied to Gimp too, of course, but I've found the Blender developers to be much more open to entertaining other people's ideas and contributions about user interface design than the Gimp developers, who have been historically NIH-limited and stubborn (especially about changing the name to something less offensive to the general public). At least Blender already supports pie menus well, and changed the default mouse bindings in response to user demand, and has made huge strides in usability lately. At this point I think it would be much easier to just add a great image editor to Blender, integrated with its video editor, than try to change the minds of the Gimp developers. [...]
Do you happen to have a reference to GTK implementations of pie menus? The challenge we've run into is that newer versions of GTK "streamline" and remove features, so we have to either discard things or build our own replacement (as one example, we've received many complaints about icons no longer appearing in menus in GIMP 3.0, but that was due to the feature being basically removed in GTK3).
We currently have over 13,000 user-requested issues resolved in our issue tracker, so I don't think we're opposed to user requests. :)
I think that's a holdover from an earlier group of developers (there's been a lot of people coming and going in the 30 years that GIMP's been around!). We're also just limited by how fast we can implement certain things due to the number of developers. For instance, I focused on vector layers for GIMP 3.2 - a feature requested by many users! But that meant that I wasn't working on other features requested by other users.
I think that the weakness doesn't lie within GIMP itself.
Imagine that you are a car hobbyist. You know your way around a wrench.
But then you step in to an F1 garage or even your local repair shop run by that one guy who inheritted his father's shop in the 50s and has thrown a tool away since the Reagan administration.
It's going to be possible for you to do everything that you know how to do, and even to learn some things along the way, but you're not going to be anywhere near as efficient as you were in your garage where the only tools you have are the ones you regularly use and you know the locations (perhaps roughly) of everything.
The same could be applied across any number of domains. Knowing your way around and ambulance isn't going to go as far as you might think it would in a surgical suite.
Knowing some python isn't going to get your pulls accepted in Canonical, Debian, etc.
Knowing your professors preffered citation methodology isn't going to gaurantee academically succesful searching of The Library of Congress or even the New York Public Library.
etc etc etc
GIMP represents nearly the totality of knowledge relating to image manipulation, and you can lay it out to perfectly match your personal knowledge and workflow, but it simply is not possible to have it automatically laid out to perfectly match everyone's workflow.
Could it be more intuitive? Perhaps, but moving things around now is liable to break the workflows of tens of thousands who have learned to use and love GIMP the way that it currently is.
For instance, having only ever used GIMP as my primary image manipulation tool, I can and do have some of the same complaints against [insert other software] that people routinely level against GIMP. The last time I tried to use Photoshop I spent more time in tutorials and help pages than doing actual image editting because Photoshop is as unfamiliar to me as GIMP is to a Photoshop user.
I get where you’re coming from but as somebody who has bounced between three different major NLE’s, a lot of these tools are not radically different from each other.
The differences are pretty substantial sometimes don’t get me wrong, but your previous experience usually carries over in more ways than it doesn’t and you’re able to get up and running with like…80% of proficiency you had on your preferred program after a month I’d say.
GIMP isn’t quite that smooth of a transition and you can feel it. I don’t think it’s necessarily a fault or something they should spend resources addressing, but it is noticeable
I wonder what would it take o implement layout compatibilty packs , to allow the user at install to select which layout they are most comfortable with , v2.0 , Photoshop compatible , stable or experimental. All calling into the same base.
Of course such an effort most likeky would need to be a paid effort fulltime rather than volunteerr work.
It always felt sad to me it never reached the usablility/familiarity that Blender has.
So basically, you could download plug-ins, themes, shortcut presets, etc, directly into GIMP. We have a lot of pieces done - we just need someone to focus on it to finish.
Nobody is happy about killing civilians. But Khamenei did more than that every day he was alive. Personally I feel there is some amount of immediate civilian casualty that is worth putting a stop to continuous suffering.
It's easy to excuse the collateral damage of people you will never meet, just remember that this reasoning has unleashed hell on Earth for countless innocent people, many kids, and it makes you sound like a ghoul.
Hope to hell that you or anyone you care about isn't on the receiving end of such sentiments.
It's not "easy" but it remains true. We can play the moral-decision game and I'll ask you whether killing one child is justified to save 5,000,000. If you answer "yes" then from that point it's just about agreeing on numbers.
What is the alternative you propose? Just to give a hypothetical-but-realistic example, let’s presume that khamenei’s continued existence results in 100 civilian deaths per day. Under that assumption, what one-time cost would you accept to end his life?
Whether or not one would accept deaths of civilians to get rid of Khamenei, I don't think anyone should accept a school full of children being blown up for no obvious reason. If there was somehow a reason why Khameni could not have killed without attacking that school, then those reasons should be plainly spelled out and evidence presented. As things stand with the limited information we have now, it just looks like a war crime with no strategic upside.
I remember that the alternative has also unleashed hell on Earth for countless innocent people.
At some point, you have to take the path that offers at least some hope for the future. To turn into something that has lost all hope - there is no fixing that.
While this is a minor point; whether or not it was an Iranian misfire doesn't move the moral responsibility away from the invaders. Unless the IRGC took advantage of the chaos to purposefully hit the school (seems unlikely) then the entire situation was teed up by the external aggression and can still pretty reasonably be blamed on them.
If you try to shield your armed forces using children, and then accidentally kill them because you used them as a shield, you can't blame someone else.
... I'm just going of Wikipedia here but it seems to have been a standard small city [0]. Attempting to educate Iranians in Iranian cities isn't really trying to shield armed forces. Is the expectation here that Iran should send their students out into the wilderness to make it more politically convenient for US/Israeli to launch unannounced strikes on them?
Apart from the fact that Iran is a bad place to be right now it actually looks like a pleasant city to visit. Sounds like they have lots of fruit, warm weather and have some interesting history vis a vis the Mongols. Very middle eastern.
Instead of looking at the entire city, just look at the google maps data for proximity of their armed forces to their school.
Look, maybe it was a school specifically for the children of army personnel, but that's a long shot. From the geolocation data, the school was right at their missile launch site.
They had choices.
Locate the school or the launch site elsewhere, for one.
Evacuate the school before they tried to launch munitions, for another.
Why does that seem unlikely? It makes people argue that the price is not worth it. After killing thousands of protesters you think they would shy away from killing some dozens of kids?
Weird that you're so delighted to shift the blame for the tragedy of children being blown up in school, even more so that you're relying on unsubstantiated claims to do it.
Since you know more than the rest of the world about this, please update Wikipedia with a reliable source for your claim as has already been requested by admins here[1].
> Weird that you're so delighted to shift the blame for the tragedy of children being blown up in school, even more so that you're relying on unsubstantiated claims to do it.
Where in my message does it seem that I am delighted?
No doubt the truth will eventually come out, what I have seen is that the school was sited unusually close to an Iran launch site.
You can judge me all you want for "being delighted", whatever the hell that means, but I'm not advocating that schools be used as shields for rocket launchers, am I?
Okay, I get it - for you this is a laughing matter; your goal is something other than discussion.
But I gotta know - you are talking about a regime that had no problem gunning down thousands of innocent citizens in the streets just a month ago, why are you so sure that they won't use other innocents as shields for their soldiers?
I think you’re right that it would be a puppet state under trump. But in three years it will be a puppet state under somebody else! And maybe that somebody would relinquish the strings.
- The national anthem / pledge of allegiance (explicitly suggested by the text)
- Civics-related stuff -- information about voting, how laws are passed, the branches of govt, the separation of powers, etc.
- Arts that are "truly" American -- Blues, Jazz, Rock n Roll, etc. I know there will be disagreement about what counts as "American", but it's clear that there are some art forms that wouldn't exist without America's unique mixture of cultures.
- Things about America's history -- speeches from George Washington/Lincoln/MLK/Other significant figures, the musical Hamilton, the emancipation proclamation, the text from the statue of liberty, discussion of Japanese internment camps, the history of Hawaii/Peurto Rico/Alaska/Any relevant state, etc
I think those would all be positive. I'm sure there will also be some less inclusive parts that will endorsed by some broadcasters (I think discussion of that is good, but not endorsement). Carr's message is not asking for that, it's just encouraging an increased focus on America.
[1] https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-418890A1.pdf
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