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Facebook is bad because it purposefully drives empty digital interactions to feed empty approval for adhering to corporate marketing approved mass consumption means (the government of China basically copied Facebook https://www.bbc.com/news/world..., seriously basically the core of Facebook). It could be likened to a purposeful psychological disease, a corrupt infection of socio-political norms, to feed insatiable psychopathic greed, with a level indifference to the harm caused and to take that one step further, actually getting a pychopathic kick out of the harm they are causing to society, a mass trolling of social norms to cripple human social interaction and addict the to the platform. People turning themselves into digital slaves.

Honestly stop using facebook, stop advertising on facebook, stop supporting facebook, do not link to facebook, turn it into a corporate dead end marketing hole. Probably need to go one step further and start calling people hooked to facebook digital slaves, so 'Hi eSlave' becomes the greeting to a lame loser Facebook addict.

The Fortnite website is not "less secure" than the Google play store. One of those has been found with malware.

Epic's website maybe not. but you do realize that Fortnite for Android has already been out for over a month now right?

Oh wait, those are FAKE Fortnite apps, installed via... the same way as the real Fortnite app.

You may note that none of those apps are on Google Play. And what else is not on Google Play?

I can only imagine there will be a new round of Fortnite phishing apps to steal account credentials along with payment information.

All I can say is you know what the headlines are going to say soon with people installing all the fake versions and Apple will flatly point to those when Epic comes around asking Apple to get rid of the 30%. (Which is apparently making quite a lot of money for Epic - something like $2M a day comes solely from the iOS version).

Epic might have inadvertently poisoned the well on this one if all the headlines are about how to avoid getting the wrong version of Fortnite.

What the heck do you think representative government is, man?

Something we don't really have -- when the representative is voted in through interference by foreign governments and legitimate citizens denied their right to vote with administrative/clerical tricks.

He is supposed to be making sure we don't let industry ruin our country's land and turn us into a cesspool like certain other areas. Greenhouse gasses and the pollution of the air by automobiles is a very real thing. Reducing efforts to improve the environmental impact of automobiles is contrary to the mission of his department and his reasoning boils down do "Ye-haw! Trucks are awesome!"

One thing the atmosphere does for us is block cosmic radiation, both solar and interstellar. Once you get high enough above sea level, you lose much of that protection. According to http://www.bbc.com/future/stor...

> In the US, pilots and flight attendants have been officially classed
> as "radiation workers" by the Federal Aviation Administration
> since 1994. Staff regularly working on high-latitude flights are
> exposed to more radiation than workers in nuclear power plants.

That's from flying up to 35,000 feet ASL (Above Sea Level). According to https://www.sablesys.com/suppo... air pressure at 35,000 feet (10,000 metres = approx 33,000 feet) is approx 24% of sea level pressure, so you've lost 76% of atmospheric protection. At 100,000 feet (30.5 km) pressure is approx 1% of sea level pressure, so you've lost 99% of protection.

I can imagine warnings for pregnant women, etc.

It is all true. I agree and I do not argue with it. I would like just to pint that the quantity of gold on the surface of Earth is very limited.

It is just a cube with the side of 50 meters (some researches say 20 meters): https://www.bbc.com/news/magaz... . That's it. That is all the gold available for billions of people on several continents.

Being an amateur prospector I know only too well how rare it is. So it is in a way not like an usual commodity.

"Totally removing meat would require much more farm land to be devoted to edible crops to the point it may actually be impossible."

That statement couldn't be more wrong. All the food those animals eat has to be grown somewhere and much of the food they eat does not become the muscle fiber we eat, it either serves other purposes for the animal or gets expelled in their poop. On top of that, there's the space the animals need to live in and this space goes up the more ethically you want your meat raised.

This makes meat production an incredibly inefficient means of general food production. If we didn't eat meat we would use significantly less farm land in total.

From/; http://www.bbc.com/future/stor...

"Food, especially livestock, also takes up a lot of room – a source of both greenhouse gas emissions due to land conversion and of biodiversity loss. Of the world’s approximately five billion hectares (12 billion acres) of agricultural land, 68% is used for livestock."

Don't get me wrong in any of this, I eat meat. I just couldn't let something some obviously wrong go by without saying something.

And arming the pilots. Armed pilots was common practice for a long time. This was stopped when passengers weren't allowed to have weapons, after numerous hijackings in the 1970s as I recall. It was restored for a while after 9/11 but Obama put an end to that.

Nope That's just your bias talking. It's still a thing. All Obama did was reduce the funding. Which makes sense since you need more funding to start a program than to continue it. Which fake media are you getting your facts from?

Crimea actually, part of Russia proper until 1954, 60-80% Russian-speaking (depending on who's counting), annexed after a (granted,questionable) referendum after successful US-sponsored coup in Ukraine. Sounds much less villainous after you know some facts. Also a great loss of resources that were supposed to be made available to US interests after the successful coup. Oops.

There was no "coup" unless you rely on Russian sources. It was the majority of Ukrainians who VOTED to join the EU. Russia views the EU as the gateway to NATO and of course Putin would have none of that, so he decided to invade the east and annex Crimea with soldiers without insigna, all the while putting up smokescreens denying any involvement. All of which is obviously illegal under international law.

Support for a Russian-allied tyrant is different from US supporting its Allied Tyrants (say the House of Saud) by how many levels of Hell exactly? Oh, I see, the same action's evil depends of who is doing it! Also known as Hypocrisy. And no, "whataboutism" is an Orwellian NewSpeak term, a logical fallacy in itself designed to deflect from exposing actions Hypocritical. Don't even bother.

The Syrians were protesting on the streets for more freedoms and democracy as part of the Arab spring. Assad decided not to chat and gun them down instead. You can bet your ass the US or any Western country would never be able or willing to uphold support for a regime that guns down their own citizens. Putin has no problem with that, obviously.

You should read stuff by Seymour Hersh (one of those old school war journalists no longer popular for their knack of telling inconvenient truths - oh, hey this sounds familiar!) and his on-site investigations of the Great Chlorine Fabrication. There are many others. For further reference check out a girl named Nayirah and incubator babies but then again it will probably bounce off your uncritical self-smug world-view like a water off a duck.

International inspectors have performed their investigations and it is clear that the Syrian regime bears responsibility for the chemical attacks. But you might prefer to believe Putin and Assad's version, since they are clearly more trustworthy than any international organization.

Hang them now! How dare they have a preference! Wait, isn't this exactly what US is doing? Wasn't Obama actually co-campaigning in Britain against Brexit even...

Voicing support for one party or the other is one thing. A foreign state actor providing material support and finances to a party and agenda of a foreign nation is another thing altogether.

The ongoing murders of opposition figures and journalists in Russia

Having been fed a steady diet of bullshit of such high purity you probably also think that Putin is not having popularity ratings in 80% range

Putin's rating haven't been in the 80's for a while now. Not that it matters. Of course a strong leader in a police state where the media is controlled by the government will have high ratings. How high do you think Hitler's rating where?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world...
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/...
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/0...
The list goes on...
Business as usual in Putin's Russia.

So you probably think this https://www.bbc.com/news/world... is a good thing too?

World gold reserve is about 170,000 tonnes, and production is about 1500 tonnes per year.

Other posters have put $130B of gold at around 2000 tonnes (I haven't checked this.) Having no expertise in this field, I'd think that is enough to shift the gold price by a percent or two, but not to crash it. It is comparable to annual production but pretty small compared to world reserves.

I invite someone to look up real time gold prices and find out when this news broke, and see if the price shifted in response. The existence of this ship wreck gold is fairly speculative, so it may not have an effect yet. If the gold does exist, news of how much there is will probably come out slowly, making it hard to isolate the effect of this find from other influences on gold price.

.Analysis at Imperial College London finds there were 15,396 more deaths than expected at the trusts in the period between 2011 and 2016. It goes on to say deaths were caused by shortage of doctors and overcrowding.

NHS death rates four times higher than US. From research at University College London and Columbia University, in New York. The most seriously ill NHS patients were seven times more likely to die than their American counterparts.

Maybe they are closer to parity than you think.

Let's be honest, they were annihilated BY the Spanish. The Spanish get a bit too much "forgiveness" or is it just plain forgetfulness, of their history of destruction across the Americas these days. The Spanish owned slaves (African and natives), pretty much created the Atlantic slave trade, they pillaged whole societies for gold and silver to fund a religious war in Europe, they defined the very term "Love Christ or we'll cut you".

One of the most hilarious cases of modern historical blindness are the groups in California that demand we return California to Mexico. Because we "stole" it from them. As if it just fell into their possession and wasn't stolen itself. Then there's the groups of African Mexicans descended from Mexico's slaves who didn't get officially recognized until 2016, even though they routinely would get deported because Mexicans didn't believe they existed.

To expand upon this, Nigeria does have pretty substantial oil reserves that are actively being exploited, yet one of this weeks' headlines was that it surpassed India as the country with the most people living in poverty. Score one for the unregulated free market!

Als, GP should probably read up on the resource curse. Norway is possibly the first country to entirely avoid it; how they did it makes for an interesting study.

Obama did all that he could do: try to imagine how conservatives and fox news would have reacted if he had announced it. Republicans just aren't ready to hear the truth from anyone but right-wingers: Fox news is the culprit there.

He did warn Trump not to hire Flynn.

The point?

. . . I'm not really even sure what the point is anymore. Theoretically, they're weapons of war. A saber to rattle to keep our enemies at bay. If shit hits the fan these things will be used to make strikes against Russia and China and their assets. But.... not really because if shits hitting the fan, nukes are flying, and no one gives a shit about planes. But they're fun to rattle and wave around. Whole generations of stealth planes are never utilized against the targets they're made to thwart.

So if not developed nations, we can use them to kick the shit out of developing nations. So far EVERY god damned time we've done that it's been a clusterfuck that I wish we hadn't. The europeans had success bombing the Balklans back into peace. Are there ANY others?

Cruise missles are expensive, but cheaper unless you've got a bunch of stuff you want blown up.

Ship destroyers are hyper-sonic missles.

Close air support and local surveillance are about 20 seconds from being taken over by drones that are cheap enough you might as well call them decoys. I expect to hear more stories about people launching million dollar missiles at targets that cost ~$1000. oh hey, would you look at that. Hot off the press.

Surveillance? Spy planes evolved to be so fast and fly so high that they're in orbit now and we call them satellites.

I think we were so caught up in the arms race during the cold war that "making a better fighter jet" is just an expected thing we do now. There are simply too many people afraid of the concept of "not having the best plane". We no longer have ships with the biggest cannon, we gave up on battleships. So what's the point of these planes? At this point too many people have jobs tied to this whole thing to simply shut it down. I like Ike, and he said it best: "we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex". On the other hand... hey, a lot of scientific and technical advancement comes from that limitless funding that is national defense budget. Quantum radar, for instance.

Doesn't from space down to Earth count as an outdoor environment?

The reason this is bad because currently the "authoritative" sources are actually incredibly biased, manufacture stories, and often hide information to further an agenda. They understand that if you control the narrative, you can manufacture a reality, or at least keep compliant people invested in such a narrative.

For example, you might yell tinfoil hate but here are a few off the top of my head:
Dan Rather, anchor long time CBS anchor, forced to resign in disgrace for manufacturing anti-conservative news http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBI...
Funny if you read the NY times and other articles attempting to pretend this was a normal stepping down

Brian Williams, NBC making false claims https://www.bbc.com/news/world...

NPR admitting press is biased and making up stories https://nypost.com/2017/10/21/...

If i need, I can go on. The point being it is easy to paint others with pejoratives like "tin foil hat" while failing to even consider much that you believe is likely from tainted perspective. Many people rightly fear that google (aka youtube) are censoring opinions that poke holes in their world view. Fake-news is more about people who disagree, not with people posting things that are untrue.

The diver that died was delivering tanks to stockpile along the route, was supposed to be with a partner, but was not. That is expected of Thai divers.

Slur a brave dead man and his entire nation - and be utterly wrong to boot. Nice one.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world...

"The diver died after losing consciousness in one of the passageways, said Passakorn Boonyaluck, deputy governor of the Chiang Rai region, where the cave is situated.

"His job was to deliver oxygen. He did not have enough on his way back," Mr Passakorn said.

He said that Saman's dive partner tried to revive him but could not, and his body was brought out of the cave."

Yeah, I guess you can say at least he's out, but who knows who Trump will replace him with. Probably just another oil and coal industry lapdog.

Andrew Wheeler- You hit the nail on the head. A former coal industry lobbyist.

Your post is full of inaccuracies, and therefore much of your conclusions are flawed.

In the US we allow about 1.1 million legal immigrants per year, which is generous in comparison to any other country. That's enough to skew the economy, make jobs hard to get, and puts a burden on the infrastructure

Canada had 35 million people in the last census, and admits 260,000 legal immigrant annually. That is 0.74% of the population. The USA has 325 million now, and the 1.1 million you quoted would be 0.33%. As you can see, Canada admits more than double the number per capita.

Many Americans like to think they are unique and special, but they are not, and they are even less than other industrial countries. Look at health care in the G7 and compare it to the US for just one example.

The whole refugee thing started because of Arab Spring (remember that?), which was 8 years ago!

It started in 2011, but it is not over yet in many areas. The Syrian Civil War is what drove refugees from Arab countries in the following year (and that war is still on-going, check what is happening in Deraa, the cradle of the Syrian uprising). Most of the Syrian refugees are in neighboring countries (Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, ...etc). A relatively small fraction makes it to Europe.

And the Arab Spring is not the largest driver for migrants. There are migrants from Afghanistan (the aftermath of the American invasion, and the subsequent weak governments, Taliban, ...etc.) and Iraq (same drivers). Most of the refugees are from Subsaharan Africa. Desertificaiton, ISIS terrorism, economy, corruption, ..etc., drives people to cross the Sahara and go on boats to Italy, Malta, Spain, ...etc.

It is going to get worse, as long as we have climate deniers who prevent a world wide concerted effort to mitigate the effects: less arable land, less pasture for live stock, so people will pick up and leave.

You can see visualizations of migrant and terrorism data by a data scientist.

One important caveat, I do not believe that link (https://myaccount.google.com/permissions) automatically includes all 3rd parties. For others, here is an article about this, that is NOT behind a paywall, from the BBC dated July 3, 2018: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44699263.

The link at the end of the above https://myaccount.google.com/p...">article, has a link to Google's Security Checkup Page, funny when I went there, it said I have one app, that I did give access too, that I might want to consider removing...fyi, that site cannot read my emails, what is funny, is when I go to the link provided above looking for applications that I gave Permission to to read my email, that app is NOT listed...my guess is it is a "3rd Party application with limited (cannot read emails) access to my account.

In fact, per that page, I have NOT given any applications access to my Google gMail account. Of course I know it (Google's Primary checkup page) is NOT checking for 3rd party sites.

Like everything online, the devil is in the details and most people (me included sometimes) do not make time to dig into the details...deep in the bowls of the FREE website. Hey its FREE, we are giving them something, else its not cost effective for them to provide that service for FREE.

And if you do read the Terms of Service (ToS) of every website, there is a very good chance you would miss the sentenance where you gave them access to everything about you as they are rarely straight forward.

For Reference:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-26677607Here is a 2012 article about this same issue with Microsoft

I am sure I could find this for every other email service, especially if it is free, online, to be honest I do not want to bother looking.

An important point to consider,

my guess is all the websites work like this, to be sure check your email application's FAQs or better yet other blogs not controlled by the company that put out that email package

, is that if you have given a 3rd party access, even when you later turn it off, it will NOT automatically turn off ALL 3rd Party access, only future 3rd party access.

From Microsoft Outlook: If Integrated Apps is turned off, apps that have already been installed and have permission to access information won't be uninstalled, and the permissions won’t be removed. Even though Integrated Apps is turned off,....

Look for a place where each app is listed and can individually be turned off if you want to later block third party applications!

One important caveat, I do not believe that link (https://myaccount.google.com/permissions) automatically includes all 3rd parties. For others, here is an article about this, that is NOT behind a paywall, from the BBC dated July 3, 2018: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44699263.

The link at the end of the above https://myaccount.google.com/p...">article, has a link to Google's Security Checkup Page, funny when I went there, it said I have one app, that I did give access too, that I might want to consider removing...fyi, that site cannot read my emails, what is funny, is when I go to the link provided above looking for applications that I gave Permission to to read my email, that app is NOT listed...my guess is it is a "3rd Party application with limited (cannot read emails) access to my account.

In fact, per that page, I have NOT given any applications access to my Google gMail account. Of course I know it (Google's Primary checkup page) is NOT checking for 3rd party sites.

Like everything online, the devil is in the details and most people (me included sometimes) do not make time to dig into the details...deep in the bowls of the FREE website. Hey its FREE, we are giving them something, else its not cost effective for them to provide that service for FREE.

And if you do read the Terms of Service (ToS) of every website, there is a very good chance you would miss the sentenance where you gave them access to everything about you as they are rarely straight forward.

For Reference:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-26677607Here is a 2012 article about this same issue with Microsoft

I am sure I could find this for every other email service, especially if it is free, online, to be honest I do not want to bother looking.

An important point to consider,

my guess is all the websites work like this, to be sure check your email application's FAQs or better yet other blogs not controlled by the company that put out that email package

, is that if you have given a 3rd party access, even when you later turn it off, it will NOT automatically turn off ALL 3rd Party access, only future 3rd party access.

From Microsoft Outlook: If Integrated Apps is turned off, apps that have already been installed and have permission to access information won't be uninstalled, and the permissions won’t be removed. Even though Integrated Apps is turned off,....

Look for a place where each app is listed and can individually be turned off if you want to later block third party applications!

Is the BBC good enough for you?
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19831913

You're preaching to the choir. Most of us anyway. It's the republicans you have to convince.

FTFY. Though sometimes I wonder if there is much of a difference...

The Supreme Court decisions this week prove that Democrats place funding public employee unions above First Amendment-prohibited compelled association/speech/financial donations.

Literally. Read Janus for Kagan's long-winded dissent in response to:

Under Illinois law, if a public-sector collective-bargaining agreement includes an agency-fee provision and the union certifies to the employer the amount of the fee, that amount is automatically deducted from the non-member’s wages. 315/6(e). No form of employee consent is required.

This procedure violates the First Amendment and can not continue.

Yet it's Democrats and "progressives" who justify compelled association, speech and financial contributions in violation of the First Amendment because
it funds the Democratic Party.

Who are the Nazis here?

I'm thinking it's the group who wants to force people to join organizations they don't want to.

I'm thinking it's the group that wants to force those people to fund political speech they don't agree with.

Large-scale protests in Iran haven't been getting much press in the US the past couple of days because of the Supreme Court news.

Iran economic protests shut Tehran's Grand Bazaar

Apparently, crowds in Iran have been shouting "Death to Palestine" and "Our enemy is right here!"

Maybe the Iranian secret police has caught Iranian civilians using Proton Mail?

You're preaching to the choir. Most of us anyway. It's the republicans you have to convince.

FTFY. Though sometimes I wonder if there is much of a difference...

you claim socialized medicine somehow prevents opiod addiction from prescription meds.
So go ahead, pretend this is an American only issue.

I think you might have missed the conditionals I've been using :

maybe lots of these addict would have been able to afford going to the doctor, would have had better managed problem and wouldn't be resorting to illegal channel and fueling the drug market.

Noticed ?

I don't claim that socialized medicine is magic wand that you can wave away prescription meds addiction.

I claim that is possible that maybe, by making medicine more affordable, some potential addicts will get their problem better treated, and this could help avoid these to try instead some botched forms of self-medication that turns into addictions.

i.e.: some of the addict are actually patients that started with chronic pain problems, but couldn't afford to have them correctly handled by a professional. And by correctly, I mean considereing *All the options* to manage pain (see randomly quickly googled ref, still corresponds to the complexity I've learned in my studies). The problems is that all of these solution cost time and money.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-43304375

From the exact same source (BBC) :
- Why opioids are such an American problem. In addition to the title :

When it comes to taking opioids, the United States has the dubious honour of leading the world.
For every one million Americans, almost 50,000 doses of opioids are taken every day. That's four times the rate in the UK.

and if you look about it, several of the listed problems boil down to "not enough resource in health care" (Pill being better re-imbursed than physiotherapy, US doctors earningn more money from kickbacks than salary, no ressource spent in proper pain-management training, etc.) though some are entirely cultural (population brainwashed by ads into "asking for {brand name} pill", unrealistic age-related expectations, online rating of doctors, ...)

- 'Growing problem' of addiction to prescription drugs probed says :

Public Health England is launching a review into the "growing problem" of prescription drug addiction. {...} PHE wants to avoid a situation like the one in the US, where there's been a massive increase in addiction to opioids.

. (i.e.: BBC and PHE thinks that though UK has a problem, it isn't as bad as US).

you claim socialized medicine somehow prevents opiod addiction from prescription meds.
So go ahead, pretend this is an American only issue.

I think you might have missed the conditionals I've been using :

maybe lots of these addict would have been able to afford going to the doctor, would have had better managed problem and wouldn't be resorting to illegal channel and fueling the drug market.

Noticed ?

I don't claim that socialized medicine is magic wand that you can wave away prescription meds addiction.

I claim that is possible that maybe, by making medicine more affordable, some potential addicts will get their problem better treated, and this could help avoid these to try instead some botched forms of self-medication that turns into addictions.

i.e.: some of the addict are actually patients that started with chronic pain problems, but couldn't afford to have them correctly handled by a professional. And by correctly, I mean considereing *All the options* to manage pain (see randomly quickly googled ref, still corresponds to the complexity I've learned in my studies). The problems is that all of these solution cost time and money.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-43304375

From the exact same source (BBC) :
- Why opioids are such an American problem. In addition to the title :

When it comes to taking opioids, the United States has the dubious honour of leading the world.
For every one million Americans, almost 50,000 doses of opioids are taken every day. That's four times the rate in the UK.

and if you look about it, several of the listed problems boil down to "not enough resource in health care" (Pill being better re-imbursed than physiotherapy, US doctors earningn more money from kickbacks than salary, no ressource spent in proper pain-management training, etc.) though some are entirely cultural (population brainwashed by ads into "asking for {brand name} pill", unrealistic age-related expectations, online rating of doctors, ...)

- 'Growing problem' of addiction to prescription drugs probed says :

Public Health England is launching a review into the "growing problem" of prescription drug addiction. {...} PHE wants to avoid a situation like the one in the US, where there's been a massive increase in addiction to opioids.

. (i.e.: BBC and PHE thinks that though UK has a problem, it isn't as bad as US).

I was all ready to mark your comment insightful until the end when you claim socialized medicine somehow prevents opiod addiction from prescription meds.

Here's a recent BBC article claiming the exact opposite, that the NHS is creating drug addicts.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-en...

So go ahead, pretend this is an American only issue.

You're assuming that genocide is a genetic trait, when it isn't. Ethics are taught.

Genocide is a word with moral implications. You should ask if the drive to advance your own species / family line over others is a genetic trait. Which it will be, because any species / family with this mentality is going to wipe the floor with one that doesn't.

If we met an advanced space-faring species, what would be their advantage in treating us with respect? Anything they want to know about us they could learn through subjugation. Leaving us to our own devices leaves open the chance that in another 10,000 years we'd be competing with them.

Ethics are taught.

Humans have been warring since they figured out that banding together offered a survival advantage. There were no "ethics", just the drive to survive and propagate.

Who taught our closest relatives, the Chimps, their ethics?
https://www.usatoday.com/story...: https://www.usatoday.com/story...
Murder 'comes naturally' to chimpanzees: https://www.bbc.com/news/scien...
Monkey see, monkey kill: The evolutionary roots of lethal combat: http://www.latimes.com/science...

This minor news item reminds me of the classic phenomenon of eyelash mites. A great many of us are infested with tiny, arguably disgusting but really, really small buggy-wuggies that live on our eyelashes. Few of us are any the wiser for it. Unsurprisingly, "The Beeb" has a reasonable statement about the scuttling insects that probably live on your face and have regular mite-pizza parties:

http://bbc.com/earth/story/201...

The original source article is much more informative about the causes. Basically it's a confluence of at least 4 different events. Seasonal low demand for ammonia fertilizer (whose production produces CO2 as a byproduct). Several of the plants being down for maintenance (because the seasonal low ammonia demand). Unusually high demand for carbonated beverages due to hot weather and the World Cup. And prioritization for CO2 use in dry ice production for chilling food, and slaughterhouses to stun meat animals, meaning fizzy drinks end up bearing the brunt of any shortfall.

There is apparently plenty of CO2 available in Southern Europe. The shortage is just not yet bad enough to warrant paying to have those supplies trucked to Northern Europe, meaning market forces haven't even come into play yet.

The "walled garden" doesn't keep malware out.

I bet Android users wish they had such problems. https://yro.slashdot.org/story...

The walled garden is a pro or a con, depending on your perspective.

There is no perspective from which disallowing side-loading is a pro. The "walled garden" doesn't keep malware out.

Only the Sith talk in absolutes!

I understand the perspective, but given the shit show of security that is the PC and Windows, I don't mind having one platform that is locked down: I can recommend devices to people which won't be turned into something that needs to be shot in the face in thirty minutes. Having a walled garden is not 100%, but it certainly improves things.

If you want to side-load applications get a developer account and load the app 'from source'.

The walled garden is a pro or a con, depending on your perspective.

There is no perspective from which disallowing side-loading is a pro. The "walled garden" doesn't keep malware out. It's a nice convenience, just like Debian's package management system is a nice convenience.

Sideloading disallows you freedoms you could have. If you don't want those freedoms, then disallowing it is neutral for you: it's not a pro.

Rubbish. There are loads of perspectives where disallowing side-loading is a pro. The walled garden approach is no different from what the vast majority of companies do on their corporate network: verify applications before allowing them onto the network. Your link to the Xcode Ghost malware also refutes your argument more than it supports. That was three years ago and Apple fixed the problem for every user within hours. How many bits of Android malware of the same era are *still* sat on users' devices?

For the 1% of geek iPhone users, you can sideload if you have Xcode. Most of the 99% of iPhone users who aren't geeks would rather be able to download any app safe in the knowledge that an expert has checked that it's not going to hose them.

The walled garden is a pro or a con, depending on your perspective.

There is no perspective from which disallowing side-loading is a pro. The "walled garden" doesn't keep malware out. It's a nice convenience, just like Debian's package management system is a nice convenience.

Sideloading disallows you freedoms you could have. If you don't want those freedoms, then disallowing it is neutral for you: it's not a pro.

Ask yourselves why North Korea and Russia are constantly made out to be this big threat

OK, first of all, it's not "North Korea" and "Russia" that are the threat, it's the regimes governing North Korea and Russia. I don't know any North Koreans, but all the Russian people I know are fine people. I have no problem with them.

1) Why the Kim regime is a threat: Kims regularly have their political enemies murdered (including family members) including one who was strapped to an anti-aircraft gun and vaporized.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world...

2) Why the Putin regime is a threat: He regularly has his political enemies murdered, sometimes via terrorist attacks on Western countries. He also used state intelligence machinery to attack elections in the United States, the UK, and the Ukraine, and in the case of the US colluded with criminals to throw the 2016 presidential election to a mobster.

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

You are behind the curve. The gag order on his arrest and conviction has been lifted. Even the BBC are now reporting it.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-en...

And the gag order was there by the way, because of the reporting restrictions on the original trial that Robinson was violating.

Not only that, Comey WAS NOT BIASED, they found! "Comey 'broke norms but not biased' - agency watchdog report" https://www.bbc.com/news/world...

Probably the most unbelievable part of that whole report. He was absolutely biased or Hillary would be in jail right now just like you or I would be if we did anything like that.

Please stop making shit up.

This is easy to prove: For example, the copyright on Mein Kampf only expired in 2016, 70 years after the death of the author.

Did you use your own money this time?

https://www.bbc.com/news/busin...

[The NRA] didn't get shot at, but sure is happy to exploit the fact that other people were in order to collect $ and logistical support from people like [Dennis Veilleux] as it goes out to gin up partisan fund raising and votes. [McConnell] and his types couldn't be more thrilled when a crazy person murders people, because they love a good emotional lever to use when trying to strip away ever more [firearms regulations].

You're right, someone should put a stop to that. *sarcasm*

That's not the only cost to future generations that we need to think about--and hey, the future is already here.

So Brazil has decided to go papertrail-less on voting, how strange, I wonder why. Could it be perhaps that in such systems systematic tampering is impossible to prove after the fact & very unlikely to be detected at the time. No, the Brazilian government are all honest upstanding people who would never stoop to such. https://www.bbc.com/news/world... On the other hand...

[sarcasm] Does that mean they will reinstate Active Shooter? [/sarcasm]

I can't see any legal reasons to forbid games that are in incredibly poor taste. You have to defend offensive speech the same way you defend speech you like. That being said, its a private company. It is perfectly fair and appropriate for people to organize to stop buying stuff from them if they provide offensive and well sick content.

At the very least there is no provable link between violent video games and gun crimes, though the link between gun availability and gun crimes is pretty well established. You can get some idea of it here. The purpose guns are typically bought also matters, since it appears in a gun rich country like Finland it is mostly for hunting and it is standard rifles.

If you wanted my realistic attempt to solve the problem with minimal restrictions...

1. Make sure there is a process where schools can follow, such that if a kid seems unstable he can't buy a gun until it is proven otherwise. A licensed psychiatrist is probably required.

2. Raise the age to purchase a gun or use a gun without supervision to 21.

3. Raise the requirements for assault rifles and other weapons with the potential for mass carnage. Require a more thorough background check. If you can't get the equivalent of a security clearance, then you probably shouldn't be owning a weapon of war.

4. Raise the requirements on handguns to 25, and require regular certification if you are going to carry a concealed handgun. Can you hit what you shoot at and can you reasonably identify appropriate targets from bystanders? This wouldn't be to produce a marksman, but to at least make sure of a minimal level of knowledge, including keeping a gun secure.

5. Limit the amount of ammunition you can buy at once for assault style weapons. A licensed gun range maybe able to get unlimited, but only for use at that range. If someone brings in the spent casings they can buy more.

6. Teach critical thinking in schools. Too many people don't learn how to think logically. Include funding for after school programs. Keep people busy doing something, not messing around in some gang or something.

7. School uniforms, because they equalize things somewhat for students, and give people a bit more even chance.

8. Harden school's with fences and limit access points where guns can come in to something with a metal detector. Yah, I'd like to live in a world that is not required. We aren't in that world.

9. Offer to pay for training for school teachers who wish training in firearms. They must pass with a high degree of competence to be allowed to carry a likely concealed weapon. Don't pay them more to do it. Don't pressure them to do it. Just make it something they can get if they want it. Spread teachers that are armed out so that they are somewhat distributed. Add additional resource officers if need be.

10. Have teachers or someone randomly visit homes now and then, particularly if they suspect something is not right. The time to stop a school shooting is ideally well before the person seriously considers it.

11. Allow schools to drug test suspect students. This might require a court order. The purpose here is to catch destructive behavior early and somehow stop it. It is certainly not easy.

12. Consider zoning fire alarms and building design such that if a fire alarm goes off in one building, it doesn't necessarily mean those in the next building have to evacuate. Try to come up with a way a false alarm can be correctly identified quickly and silenced, so as to minimize abuse by school shooters.

Disclamier:
I work for a school district, and I am a Liberal Libertarian. I am former Military, and law enforcement. I am a gun owner, and I stopped paying my dues to the NRA because of their messaging in the last few years. I support the 2nd amendment.

For the people commenting that now the elections will be rigged etc, please notice Brazil has been using e-voting machines for 20 years, that boat has sailed a long time ago.

I prefer the electronic voting, it is a lot faster to vote and get the results, and it is not like paper voting is any safer: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/wo...

The best reason to go electronic is to avoid pressure on voters. People used to "sell" their vote for pennies, the ticket from paper voting was the proof they voted for the buyer.

I assume you are one of those American gun nuts who says things like "pillows can suffocate people, so if you ban guns, you should also ban pillows".

I assume you're one of those useful idiots that have lost the plot. Guns were supposed to be the problem with US cities. Then London overtook New York City in homicides per capita.

It's almost as if the problem wasn't the guns, but the people -- like when East London became dominated by migrant ghettos. But here you are rattling on about "gun nuts".

If you RTFA, you find it's just one judge who said that in his retirement speech.

Judges are supposed to be learned and wise men. That he's even saying this is a sign of the times.

MIT proved that. Our entire political system (the Senate & Electoral colleges in particular but gerrymandering and how our voting system makes voter suppression easy) is built from the ground up to protect the interests of wealthy land owners. This isn't a popular thing to say because, well, it goes against deeply ingrained mental conditioning you got when you were a kid. It's hard to get past the lies you're told before your brain is well formed enough to know what a lie is.

[sarcasm] Does that mean they will reinstate Active Shooter? [/sarcasm]

I can't see any legal reasons to forbid games that are in incredibly poor taste. You have to defend offensive speech the same way you defend speech you like. That being said, its a private company. It is perfectly fair and appropriate for people to organize to stop buying stuff from them if they provide offensive and well sick content.

At the very least there is no provable link between violent video games and gun crimes, though the link between gun availability and gun crimes is pretty well established. You can get some idea of it here. The purpose guns are typically bought also matters, since it appears in a gun rich country like Finland it is mostly for hunting and it is standard rifles.

If you wanted my realistic attempt to solve the problem with minimal restrictions...

1. Make sure there is a process where schools can follow, such that if a kid seems unstable he can't buy a gun until it is proven otherwise. A licensed psychiatrist is probably required.

2. Raise the age to purchase a gun or use a gun without supervision to 21.

3. Raise the requirements for assault rifles and other weapons with the potential for mass carnage. Require a more thorough background check. If you can't get the equivalent of a security clearance, then you probably shouldn't be owning a weapon of war.

4. Raise the requirements on handguns to 25, and require regular certification if you are going to carry a concealed handgun. Can you hit what you shoot at and can you reasonably identify appropriate targets from bystanders? This wouldn't be to produce a marksman, but to at least make sure of a minimal level of knowledge, including keeping a gun secure.

5. Limit the amount of ammunition you can buy at once for assault style weapons. A licensed gun range maybe able to get unlimited, but only for use at that range. If someone brings in the spent casings they can buy more.

6. Teach critical thinking in schools. Too many people don't learn how to think logically. Include funding for after school programs. Keep people busy doing something, not messing around in some gang or something.

7. School uniforms, because they equalize things somewhat for students, and give people a bit more even chance.

8. Harden school's with fences and limit access points where guns can come in to something with a metal detector. Yah, I'd like to live in a world that is not required. We aren't in that world.

9. Offer to pay for training for school teachers who wish training in firearms. They must pass with a high degree of competence to be allowed to carry a likely concealed weapon. Don't pay them more to do it. Don't pressure them to do it. Just make it something they can get if they want it. Spread teachers that are armed out so that they are somewhat distributed. Add additional resource officers if need be.

10. Have teachers or someone randomly visit homes now and then, particularly if they suspect something is not right. The time to stop a school shooting is ideally well before the person seriously considers it.

11. Allow schools to drug test suspect students. This might require a court order. The purpose here is to catch destructive behavior early and somehow stop it. It is certainly not easy.

12. Consider zoning fire alarms and building design such that if a fire alarm goes off in one building, it doesn't necessarily mean those in the next building have to evacuate. Try to come up with a way a false alarm can be correctly identified quickly and silenced, so as to minimize abuse by school shooters.

With modern forecasting, getting people out of the way (who want to get out of the way) is not a problem.

Oh boy, are you wrong.

https://www.wired.com/story/hu...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world...