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Tax the corporations something insane like 80% of their profits

You would quickly see massive capital flight and job losses, as corporations moved assets overseas. You might think that with enough totalitarian restrictions and secret police survelliance you could stop that, but China has lost $3.8 trillion over the last decade, despite severe capital controls.

Historically, capital controls have been about as effective as grabbing smoke.

International students are 70% of EE grad students.

Because the isn't ignorant about anything.

AT&T's Hank Hultquist openly mocked these groups' knowledge of such issues in August, calling them the "Church of Extreme Net Neutrality," who preach the "old time religion of the dumb network" without taking all facts into consideration.

Trump wants CEO of CNN fired.
Obama FIRED the CEO of GM, Rich Wagoneer.

What was your dipshit Obama suckup point again?
That Obama actually DID what you are complaining that Trump says should be done and you were fine with it?

Not even close to being an apt comparison.

...General Motors was financially vulnerable before the automotive industry crisis of 2008-2009. In 2005 the company posted a loss of US$10.6 billion. In 2006, its attempts to obtain U.S. government financing to support its pension liabilities and also to form commercial alliances with Nissan and Renault failed. For fiscal year 2007, GM's losses for the year were US$38.7 billion, and sales for the following year dropped by 45%. On November 7, 2008 General Motors reported it had projected it would run out of cash around mid-2009 without a combination of government funding, a merger, or sales of assets. Ten days later General Motors representatives, along with executives from Ford and Chrysler testified about their need for financial aid at a congressional hearing in Washington D.C. All three companies were unsuccessful in their attempts to obtain legislation to authorize U.S. government aid, and were invited to draft a new action plan for the sustainability of the industry. On December 2, 2008, General Motors submitted its "Restructuring Plan for Long-Term Viability" to the Senate Banking Committee and House of Representatives Financial Services Committee. Congress declined to act, but in December 2008 the Bush administration provided a "bridge loan" to General Motors with the requirement of a revised business plan.It said it needed $4.6 billion in loans within weeks, from the $18 billion it had already requested, and an additional $12 billion in financial support in order to stave off bankruptcy. On Feb. 26, 2009, General Motors announced that its cash reserves were down to $14 billion at the end of 2008. G.M. lost $30.9 billion, or $53.32 a share, in 2008 and spent $19.2 billion of its cash reserves. Mr. Wagoner met with President Obama’s auto task force, and the company said that it could not survive much longer without additional government loans. On the March 30, 2009 deadline President Barack Obama declined to provide financial aid to General Motors, and requested that General Motors produce credible plans, saying that the company's proposals had avoided tough decisions, and that Chapter 11 bankruptcy appeared the most promising way to reduce its debts, by allowing the courts to compel bondholders and trade unions into settlements. GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner was also forced to resign. ...

3/30/2009 - Why Rick Wagoner Had To Go: The fall of General Motors Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner was unavoidable. There is no way President Obama could hand out more billions to a management with a practically unblemished record of failure. Yes, it’s certainly good news; the Wagoner management was never going to turn around General Motors . Never. After all, Wagoner has been chief executive since 2000 and head of North American auto operations six more years before that. His predecessor and mentor, Jack Smith, became chief in 1992. GM lost market share in the U.S. in all but a couple of those years. The losses in Wagoner’s last four years topped $80 billion. ...

Just wrong.
Here's an article from Forbes (that bastion of left, liberal, socialist thinking) which explains how it would cost $200 billion LESS each year than the current system:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/t...

Another from Quartz:
https://qz.com/611644/we-talke...

A free market requires unrestricted competition and balanced bargaining power.

No, a free market simply means that the government doesn't interfere in business transactions; it doesn't "require" anything beyond that.

Just one pharmaceutical company creates an essential product (e.g. Epipen), makes it a requirement for organizations to have them on-hand, then jack up the price.

Epipen is not an "essential product", there are many cheap alternatives. And Mylan doesn't have the power to make it "a requirement", government did that.

This would be a non-issue in any other western nation with socialized medicine

You're right, in the sense that other western nations with socialized medicine will likely simply tell you to use a cheap alternative when some proprietary drug or device is too expensive.

Breaking Bad would be a 5-minute short if it took place in any sane country.

Walter White was a public school teacher and had a good health plan which would have treated him, he just wasn't satisfied with that. In fact, Walter White would probably have been worse off in the UK.

I'm all for getting a UK-style health care system, but that has to include UK-style cost controls. The UK spends about $4000/person/year (PPP). If we get Medicare/Medicaid spending down to that level, we can have universal healthcare in the US without a dime of new spending. On the other hand, a UK-style health care system with US-style per capita spending is not acceptable.

So a story that has nothing to do with Trumps travel ban (which by the way worked properly, allowing in non-threat robotics teams from even counties on the watch list), yet somehow this is Trumps fault? Since the other teams who WERE from watchlist countries managed to get in, I suspect that this team couldn't make it because they put in their travel applications late or didn't pay the processing fee or some other mundane thing along those lines, but the alt-left media and their lap dogs here on slashdot automatically jump to blame Trump, yet when we find out the truth, that it had nothing to do with Trump, it will be a single paragraph on page 32...

We get it, several of the slashdot editors hate Trump. They haven't published a single positive thing that Trump has done, including the stories that I sent them. Things like:
- Trump killing TPP, something universaly called for on slashdot; we get no info from slashdot moderators
- Trump reforming the VA
- Trump banning travel from state sponsors/hotbeds of terrorisim with poor or no ability to vet potential immigrants
- Forcing sanctuary cities to obey the rule of law (regardless of what you think of illegal aliens, local municipalities ignoring federal laws is a recipe for anarchy, because why should I obey their laws if they won't obey federal laws).
- Trump slapped new sanctions on Iran for immediately violating their agreement with Obama by firing ballistic missile tests,
- Trump added 10,000 border enforcement agents and new ways for ICE to work with state and local LEOs,
- Trump has been working to replace Obamacare, which is falling apart (many areas have one or no providers in the exchange and costs have skyrocketed by 49% since Obamacare took effect, often for inferior coverage with deductibles jumping $1000 to up to $15,000/year) https://www.forbes.com/sites/t...

Media coverage of Trump is something like 92% negative, and we now have CNN caught making shit up and several CNN contributors admitting that the Russia-Trump thing is total BS. And the media wonders why Trump is calling them out for being fake news outlets...

Well there was that one time.

I wouldn't say it was purely the Puritan work ethic, but something much simpler: nearly *everyone* (save the tiny % of native Americans and the small population of slaves) that came to the US chose to 'roll the dice' on their future, or is descended from such people. I think the outlook, even perhaps genetically, is for an inherently greater tolerance of risk for a potentially better outcome. Is a penchant for gambling an inheritable characteristic?

The result is that the even American families at the poverty line live better than the European average.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/t...

The US has an abundance of food, is responsible for most of the of the world's modern innovations and conveniences, and is generally wealthier.

I wouldn't disagree with you in your comparison of the US emotionally, developmentally as an adolescent or young adult, while the European states are far more like mature adults. Then again, most peoples' great accomplishments in invention, math, science, etc are in their 20s, not their 40s or 50s or later.

Which strategy is better - gain maximizing or loss minimizing? I don't believe there IS a 'better' - just different eventual outcomes.

Nice hijack. Nobody said anything about large vs. small govt. But I'll play just because Ami knows I'm a proponent of smaller govt.

Please point to the evidence that smaller governments are easier to corrupt. Let me help you with that, and look at the chart here, and tell me the size of some of the least corrupt governments.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/m...

Actually, there's more to this article than that... or rather, there's more studies done of the same issue than this one, and they don't come to the same conclusion.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/r...

http://irle.berkeley.edu/seatt...

The bottom line is YOU believe that a minimum wage hurts workers and consumers, and you grasp onto anything that agrees with you and then push it as THE ONLY thing possible. How about you ask Kansas, that bastion of republican bullshit, if they'd like a 2.6% unemployment rate.

https://www.supermicro.com/pro...
https://blog.dellemc.com/en-us...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/p...

They sure have AMD now (or coming shortly).

Cutting taxes is not giving.

It is, when those taxes were paying for services received, and instead of paying for them through taxes, you issue bonds which those wealthy snap up.

They double-dip, you know.

And, let's be real the taxes are not on the 0.01 percent. They are on the 10%.

You could confiscate 100% of the 0.01's money. Kill them for good measure. And you still would only have enough money to run the US Government for 4 months. (And that's assuming you get market share for their stocks. Obviously you would not as who would buy stocks under such a situation.)

So, people play the old bait and switch: look at the evil gaziollionaires. They need to pay their fare share - and since their money isn't enough they raise taxes on everyone.

Or we could do this.

You're just being stupid, raising a pointless strawman argument that does not resolve differences or explain anything, but merely makes you look irate.

Have you read what's happening in CT? They followed the plan of tax the rich. Ooops. How's that worked out for them?

Have you read what's happening in Kansas? They followed the plan of handouts to the rich. How's that worked out for them?

Sorry, but you can believe the lie brigade about CT if you want, KS is still a failure. It's a logjam due to partisan politics.

Not all that cynical, really. The history of IT is filled with stories about massive Government and Military IT upgrades that either don't pan out or run severely over budget and end up cancelled or drastically scaled down. For instance, air traffic control modernization has been a big issue since the Carter administration: https://www.forbes.com/sites/m... Then there's the IRS modernization: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/... And various military software overhauls: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12... https://arstechnica.com/inform...

STFU.

The biggest taxpayer was the most profitable: Apple, which reserved $15.8 billion for income taxes on $59 billion in operating income.

Top google hits, try it next time.

"This is one of the difficulties of using the term artificial intelligence: it's just so tricky to define. In fact, it's axiomatic within the industry that as soon as machines have conquered a task that previously only humans could do - whether that's playing chess or recognizing faces - then it's no longer considered to be a mark of intelligence. As computer scientists Larry Tesler put it: "Intelligence is whatever machines haven't done yet." And even with tasks computers can beat, they aren't doing it by replicating human intelligence."
https://www.theverge.com/2016/...

"Artificial Intelligence is the broader concept of machines being able to carry out tasks in a way that we would consider "smart".
Machine Learning is a current application of AI based around the idea that we should really just be able to give machines access to data and let them learn for themselves."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/b...

"Machine learning is a particular approach to artificial intelligence. It is true that it is proving to me the most successful approach to AI. But, I disagree with Monica Anderson's answer: it is NOT the "only" approach.
For example, you'd be surprised to hear that some of the self-driving cars that currently describing themselves as using AI, use very little machine learning and are mostly using rule-based systems."
https://www.quora.com/What-are...

About the problems of marrying concepts whose relationships are not well understood:
https://www.technologyreview.c...

A warmer climate means LESS extremes in weather, because as the temperature grows more water vapor enters the system and it acts on a damper (ha!) for really extreme weather.

So far we have witnessed that first hand, being in an epic lull in terms of major hurricanes hitting the U.S..

It is so sad to see so many be taken in by such obvious fear-mongering, devoid even of what little real science we do know describes how the Earth works in reality... dry portions of the earth are not caused by heat, they care caused by local weather patterns that scrub moisture from the air before it reaches an area. The Antarctic even has a desert after all...

And as mentioned - why even fear anything when it means Ethiopia could simply shift where it grows the crops?? This is what I really don't get about fear mongering, the inability to realize just how good humans are at dealing with change, never mind change that takes place slowly over decades or centuries... why are you so scared of warming? The only thing there ever was to fear was runaway warming and we can see plainly that's not happening (requiring 10 times more CO2 than is currently in the atmosphere, even as countries are gradually ramping down emissions as the increase use of solar power...).

Do you count Forbes as 'some rag'? https://www.forbes.com/sites/c...

Again, the laws of your country still need to allow this.

The seller would be based in a country that allows disclaiming implied warranties and not ship to countries that do not. A seller from one of the countries that does not may consider bringing $100,000 or more of investment to a country that does on an E2 visa.

Solar and wind have very localized fluctuations...across areas though it starts to be quite stable. The wind is always blowing somewhere, etc. Storage tech is growing by huge margins. linky. We need more work to get to grid scale but fortunately we're starting now and not waiting for it like you suggest.

Yes this is a small milestone. The rate-of-growth for this realm is on an exponential curve (see: https://www.forbes.com/sites/r... ). Perhaps the 10% that would impress you for Kansas will take some time, but globally generation is increasing quickly. The EIA projects the next 2 years to be steady at 10% (see: https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/s... )

Percentage of load is a different stat entirely. There, it may be better to look at the conversion channels of energy (fuel vs electricity) via something like https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/ which show large opportunities for renewables. Load is increasing each year, so this skews all percentage claims.

I agree with you wholeheartedly. The US has seen a massive decline in violent crime in general, along with a decline in teen pregnancies. There is no correlation between increased gun-ownership, increased conceal-and-carry, and increased violent crime.

While it's only a theory and correlation does not strictly imply causation, I cautiously subscribe to the lead-crime hypothesis:

"Second, this correlation holds true with no exceptions. Every country studied has shown this same strong correlation between leaded gasoline and violent crime rates. Within the United States, you can see the data at the state level. Where lead concentrations declined quickly, crime declined quickly. Where it declined slowly, crime declined slowly. The data even holds true at the neighborhood level - high lead concentrations correlate so well that you can overlay maps of crime rates over maps of lead concentrations and get an almost perfect fit.

Third, and probably most important, the data goes beyond just these models. As Drum himself points out, "if econometric studies were all there were to the story of lead, you'd be justified in remaining skeptical no matter how good the statistics look." But the chemistry and neuroscience of lead gives us good reason to believe the connection. Decades of research has shown that lead poisoning causes significant and probably irreversible damage to the brain. Not only does lead degrade cognitive abilities and lower intelligence, it also degrades a person's ability to make decisions by damaging areas of the brain responsible for "emotional regulation, impulse control, attention, verbal reasoning, and mental flexibility."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/a...
http://www.motherjones.com/env...
  http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi...

Aramco is prepping for an IPO so technically, they won't be privately held for much more than another year or two.

http://www.latimes.com/busines...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...

P.S. Learn to use he shift key, motherfucker.

> That my friend is the difference between you, and I (the peons) and the
> CEOs of the world. The driven continue to be driven, not just by money,
> but by their desire to create, innovate, and sometimes destroy.

BULL FUCKING SHIT. I *might* believe that for a *second* if they didn't ALSO get paid RIDICULOUS sums, REGARDLESS of their performance. Or did you miss the news that she will walk away with $186 million?

Show me an America CEO who makes within TWO ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE what the average employee earns and I *might* believe that they're doing it for anything other than the money.

Think she doesn't like money? Maybe she'll share her newfound wealth with the 2,100 who were laid off last week. $186 million divided by 2,100 = $88,571 per employee.

Or share some with these people. (Feb 2016)
Or these people. (April 2015)
Or these people. (June 2013)

Don't you fucking DARE tell me that she is more driven by a desire to create or innovate than any of those THOUSANDS of people -- that THEY were only driven by money. Becoming CEO is basically like winning the lottery.

By the way, she was already worth $540M last week.

Marissa Mayer
CEO, Yahoo!
2017 AMERICA'S SELF-MADE WOMEN NET WORTH â" as of 6/8/17
$540 M

Add today's $186M and she's now around $720M. She's three-quarters of a BILLIONAIRE. But she's not driven by money -- just her desire to create and innovate. Gotcha. Too bad for the thousands of shallow, selfish former Yahoo employees who were only driven by money.

People continue to sell contraband tobacco and moonshine,

Tobacco has an artificially high price; that creates a black market. The government causes this. Not legality of tobacco.

As far as moonshine goes, I know people make it - it's very inexpensive to do, not unlike growing your own pot - but I've never, ever come across any for sale. Likewise, I had home-made wine quite a few times back in the day, but never had anyone offer to sell me any, ever. My SO likes to drink more than I do, so it's not like we don't get exposed to drinking culture and habits. The "moonshine black market" you're suggesting simply doesn't exist on any noticeable scale.

In any case, these alcohol efforts are tiny little subcultures; the recreational drug market is huge. According to Forbes, the market for marijuana alone is more than seven billion dollars a year. That's not moonshine scale, not even close. And that's just pot. Moving drugs to a regulated, known dose, reasonably priced model would utterly destroy the black market. Tobacco is actually the poster child for pricing controls: when cigarettes were inexpensive, there was almost no black marketing. Once the price per pack was 90% add-on fees and taxes, of course a black market developed. Dealers could make 300% and more and still price at only a fraction of government-addled prices.

That's bullshit. The anti-vax crap is on both sides of the political spectrum. The current President (a far right-winger) has spouted anti-vax BS, and there's been a bunch of it among religious groups who've then had outbreaks.

https://www.omicsonline.org/op...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

http://scienceblogs.com/insole...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/e...

But it's not just religious idiots who've latched onto the anti-vax hysteria, it's also some elements on the left, namely the loony ones who are also into various other "alternative medicine" hokum.

Remember, the "left" isn't a coherent, homogeneous group of people by any stretch, in fact it's a coalition of basically everyone who isn't right-wing. The right-wingers are generally conservative, which means they like the status quo, "traditional values", etc., so anyone who departs from this mindset is automatically left-wing, even though that can mean completely different philosophies ranging from simple "progressivism" (basically what Nordic countries have--democratic republics with a bunch of welfare state services and heavier regulation) all the way to actual communism. So the "left" includes irreligious people who want science and evidence-based thinking to determine public policy, and also fruity people who believe in garbage like "metaphysics" and the "ascended masters".

This is why Trump won the election, instead of trying to actually debate, you just immediately jump to insulting the poster for being stupid instead of actually trying to convince them of your side.

You might be surprised, but Trump didn't win the election because of any such thing.

He underperformed George W. Bush. He was below Obama, and Hillary. Only chance let him slink into office.

No landslide. No great gains. Not that you'll accept that, you have to blame the evul mean libruls.

The left might be surprised at the number of people they could persuade if they actually debated people instead of insisting that every issue is not open for discussion because the other side is wrong.

You might be surprised, but the left is used to dealing with the number of people on the right who are non-persuadable and who can't be debated, because they insist that the left isn't worth discussing anything with since they are wrong.

What can you in that circumstance, except move on?

Because at a certain point, you wash your hands of somebody, and that's what is happening with most of the discussion on AGW, pollution, and more.

Ever think about that?

According to google, the primary greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone. CO2 makes up 0.04% of the atmosphere which is a very small percentage. Water vapor ranges from 1-4%. Another way to say that is there is 25-100 times more water vapor that CO2.

See, this is where you show a lack of integrity, because you know what? According to google, the folks talking about Global Warming know that, and can give you intelligent responses on it.

You'd think you'd mention that.

I remember just a few years ago, everyone was freaking out about the ozone disappearing (which is a greenhouse gas), now it's too much co2.

It wasn't ozone disappearing. It was the Ozone Layer a beneficial shield that blocks UV radiation. And yes, we were worried about the effects of various human activity, including CFCs on it.

Of course, once the Montreal Protocol was enacted, it became less of an issue, like leaded gasoline> or Acid Rain.

Amazing, huh?

The percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere is a rounding error compared to water vapor and should have a negligible effect unless it somehow behaves differently than water vapor. I honestly would like to know is C02 that much more potent than water vapor or does it somehow behave differently?

You would? You know this discussion has come up before, right?

You know, if you showed some awareness that we've already been over this, maybe you'd persuade people that you're worth convincing, and not just consumed by your own hand-wringing as you feign disgruntlement over a couple of anonymous cowards being uncivil.

Hiding behind the mantra of "the other side is evil and stupid so I won't engage" doesn't help anyone.

Hiding behind t

"One of the interesting comparisons is between American non-union jobs and union jobs in Europe, particularly Germany and Scandanavia, where salaries are about twice U.S. rates."

I have to ask your data because I find it hard to believe.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/fr...
How Germany Builds Twice as Many Cars as the U.S. While Paying Its Workers Twice as Much
Frederick E. Allen
12/21/2011
In 2010, Germany produced more than 5.5 million automobiles; the U.S produced 2.7 million. At the same time, the average auto worker in Germany made $67.14 per hour in salary in benefits; the average one in the U.S. made $33.77 per hour. Yet Germany's big three car companies-BMW, Daimler (Mercedes-Benz), and Volkswagen-are very profitable.
How can that be? The question is explored in a new article from Remapping Debate, a public policy e-journal. Its author, Kevin C. Brown, writes that "the salient difference is that, in Germany, the automakers operate within an environment that precludes a race to the bottom; in the U.S., they operate within an environment that encourages such a race."
There are "two overlapping sets of institutions" in Germany that guarantee high wages and good working conditions for autoworkers. The first is IG Metall, the country's equivalent of the United Automobile Workers. Virtually all Germany's car workers are members, and though they have the right to strike, they "hardly use it, because there is an elaborate system of conflict resolution that regularly is used to come to some sort of compromise that is acceptable to all parties," according to Horst Mund, an IG Metall executive. The second institution is the German constitution, which allows for "works councils" in every factory, where management and employees work together on matters like shop floor conditions and work life. Mund says this guarantees cooperation, "where you don't always wear your management pin or your union pin."
Mund points out that this goes against all mainstream wisdom of the neo-liberals. We have strong unions, we have strong social security systems, we have high wages. So, if I believed what the neo-liberals are arguing, we would have to be bankrupt, but apparently this is not the case. Despite high wages . . . despite our possibility to influence companies, the economy is working well in Germany.
At Volkswagen's Chattanooga plant, the nonunionized new employees get $14.50 an hour, which rises to $19.50 after three years.

http://www.remappingdebate.org...
A tale of two systems
By Kevin C. Brown
Remapping Debate
Dec. 21, 2011
American autoworkers are constantly told that high-wage work is an unsustainable relic in the face of a hyper-competitive, globalized marketplace. Apostles of neo-liberal economic theory - both in the public and private sectors - have stressed the message that worker adaptation is necessary to survive....
But the case of German automakers - BMW, Daimler, and Volkswagen - tells a different story. Each company produces vehicles not only in Germany, but also in "transplant" factories in the U.S. The former are characterized by high wages and high union membership; the U.S. plants pay lower wages and are located in so-called "right-to-work" (anti-union) states. ... the UAW has made significant concessions on wages, especially through the creation of a permanent "Tier 2" level for all new employees. Whereas incumbent "Tier 1" workers earn about $28 an hour, all new UAW hires at the GM, Ford, and Chrysler earn around $15 per hour.

There have been other stories about this in the New York Times, as I recall.

Anyway comparing US to EU unions is an apples-to-oranges exercise. In EU you don't have a union for a single company but more like a party across the cou

Everyone screws up now and then, most often small, sometimes big. There's sometimes a small screw-up where you accidentally reboot the wrong server. Once is just an oops. It's when people screw up frequently and tries to get away with it you should bury them somewhere safe or remove them. If they admit their mistake then it's better to work on salvaging the pieces and patch together the remains or recover from a backup.

Companies that don't have backups that they test - they are toast as it doesn't even have to be a mistake that causes the need for a backup, it can as well be a hardware failure or thunderstorm.

Good Employees Make Mistakes. Great Leaders Allow Them To. From the article: ...As John Wooden once said, “If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything.”...

Millennials' employment problems aren't "not having a job." They're competing with a more experienced generation that isn't retiring at the age when previous generations did, and they're competing for fewer jobs.

With smartphones and social media to distract them are you kidding? They'd love to work in auto plants while posting selfies on twitter. Millennials would be the most contented generation ever if they had the same low-skilled, highly paid job opportunities with great benefits, cheap houses, and no student loans boomers had.

This is so true. You'd never find entry level jobs now that paid as well as the boomers had it. It's almost as if the boomers are sticking their fingers in their ears, closing their eyes, and screaming "nah nah nah nah" while the next generations are trying to explain how badly they fucked things up for us.

Millennials' employment problems aren't "not having a job." They're competing with a more experienced generation that isn't retiring at the age when previous generations did, and they're competing for fewer jobs.

With smartphones and social media to distract them are you kidding? They'd love to work in auto plants while posting selfies on twitter. Millennials would be the most contented generation ever if they had the same low-skilled, highly paid job opportunities with great benefits, cheap houses, and no student loans boomers had.

Let me Google that for you... https://www.forbes.com/sites/e...

Why waste money supporting them when you can send it to a lean organization that is run by people who are ruthlessly dedicated to not repeating Wikipedia's mistakes?

Would you put it on an Infogalactic fact page that the original Nupedia editors were anything less than "ruthlessly dedicated"?

No, you would not.

This is a high-risk social technology fork.

When in doubt about how to apply the rules or interpret the philosophy, ask your fellow Galaxians. If they don't know the answer, ask a Starlord.

Their ruthless dedication to going boldly forth with new, improved post-cosmic-rapture mistakes is alarmingly evident.

I've personally never held the WMF up as a paragon of wart-free social order. In the end, they're probably far less corrupt than many upstanding institutions with a long history of presenting a clean front.

Superforecasters always ask themselves this question: what's the base rate?

* How Donald Trump Shifted Kids-Cancer Charity Money Into His Business

Well, it's not good. Not good at all. And I didn't even regard this as being more than a single bogie, as these things go. There needs to be an offshore bank account involved just to add one more stroke.

Corruption is an exponential scale.

I know that if I donated my blood thinking it was going to save a life, and it was instead sold for profit, I'd be a little disturbed.

Do you honestly think blood isn't already sold for profit to hospitals?

Trump has already imposed travel restrictions that have been estimated to cost more than $7B annually in lost tourism spending. These new restrictions will add to that.

More than 14 million American work in the tourism industry. That is about 200 times more than the number of coal miners.

And what's the economic cost of all the Obama regulations that Trump has promised to eliminate?

If the travel restrictions Trump has imposed cost $7 billion, what's the cost of Obama-imposed regulations like Net Neutrality, CFPB, regulations on oil and gas drilling, regulations on electrical power generation, etc.?

And what about Obamacare regulations? How many people work in the THREE FUCKING TRILLION DOLLAR-A-YEAR healthcare industry? If you're bitching about the cost of some travel regulations on the piddly little travel industry, you must be screaming at the top of your lungs for the repeal of Obamacare because of it's economic impact on the tremendously larger healthcare industry. Right. RIGHT? Or maybe you just cherry-pick bullshit to bash Trump?

If Trump's regulations are so damn economically onerous, what the hell should we make of the huge magnitude of Obama's regulations?

Today, Friday the 30th, is the last federal workday of 2016.

And the printed version of the Federal Register, the daily depository of all things regulatory, has topped off at 97,110 pages, by far an all time record.

Skips and blanks will lower the official count a tad later when the National Archives issues final data, but not by much.

That dwarfs last year's count of 80,260 pages, and it shatters the 2010 all-time record of 81,405 by 15,705 pages.

Indeed, the 2010 level was passed November 17, making each day since a new record-breaker.

It's true that the Federal Register is not a great gauge, since it's full of notices and such. But the sheer magnitude of it signals a new era in the Administrative State as opposed to a representative one, and a challenge to new president Donald Trump to do something about a runaway federal government.

We noted here last week that until Obama, ninety-thousand pages was unheard of. Up until this year, the 80,000 page mark shocked, having been passed just three times (in 2010, 2011 and 2015, all by Obama). In fact of the 10 highest-ever counts, Obama holds seven.

Nuclear is the most expensive and most dangerous power. Solar and wind are cheaper than nuclear, gas, coal, etc. (everything).
Burning natural gas creates CO2 (in case you didn't know) and the methane leaks are 30 times as damaging to the climate as CO2.
The US is the greatest contributor to global warming so it should pay the most to clean it up.

Really... Nuclear is safer that many of the others, including solar. Even accounting for nuclear accidents. It's also cheaper than solar according to Wikipedia. There is a huge startup cost and shutdown cost but produces a huge amount of energy that ends up making it cheaper in the long run. Plus, you are comparing 1970's and 1980's nuclear technology to modern energy sources. There have been huge advances in nuclear power design and safety but we'll never see it in the US except on subs and aircraft carriers...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Each year the US loses $600 billion due to the health problems caused by using coal as an energy source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... . That doesn't include any negative effects from climate change.

Gasoline-related health problem estimates are $1.7 trillion per year: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... . Again, that doesn't include any negative effects from climate change.

So yes, I'd like to spend $1.3 trillion a year in an effort to stop harming my neighbors.

The US is not really that dependent on foreign oil anymore. In fact, about 70% of our oil needs are met by our own oil production. Of what oil from 'foreign' sources we do get, about half comes from that far-off land called 'Canada'. We're exporting quite a bit now, to be honest, the US could be basically self-sufficient at this point.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/r...

Change.org is a for-profit corporation.

When is the last time Russian or Chinese produced a movie that became a global "blockbuster"?

How American movies would be blockbusters without Chinese funding and ticket sales?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/markhughes/2017/03/04/how-china-has-taken-over-the-worldwide-box-office-in-2017/

When is the last time you saw any large political protests in the US targeting any foreign leader?

How about Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan?

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/05/turkey-demands-apology-beating-up-us-protesters

Disclaimer: I'm one of these terrible, no-good, lazy, overspending millennials. I have actually a pretty good job situation, but that doesn't mean I'm going to lie to myself that somehow I've done better because I'm somehow a better person. I've been very lucky, and a lot of millennials are being screwed over through no fault of their own at all.

But it WAS related insofar as Netflix became the poster child "proving" that the EVIL ISPs were taking advantage of the poor streaming services by unfairly throttling them for the ISPs gain (and even though that turned out to be an entirely false and manipulative sham, uniformed people still incorrectly refer to it years later). Netflix apparently wanted a free ride, and special consideration by legislators based on this pretense.

But it WAS related insofar as Netflix became the poster child "proving" that the EVIL ISPs were taking advantage of the poor streaming services by unfairly throttling them for the ISPs gain (and even though that turned out to be an entirely false and manipulative sham, uniformed people still incorrectly refer to it years later). Netflix apparently wanted a free ride, and special consideration by legislators based on this pretense.

That evil Comca... oh wait...

That non-example was already adequately refuted by others in multiple posts (in short the Netflix thing was COMPLETELY FALSE, not even merely misleading).
And before you say Citation Needed:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/larrydownes/2014/11/25/how-netflix-poisoned-the-net-neutrality-debate
This has been widely known for years and yet the original, and false, allegations still float around because the suit certain people's purposes.

Studies have shown that men interrupt women more than vice versa. So it is a real thing.

How else are men going to get to say anything? Wait for the woman to stop talking??

<ducks for cover>

Studies have shown that men interrupt women more than vice versa. So it is a real thing.

Well, duh. The men make a point and then stop talking, so they do not need to be interrupted.

Studies have shown that men interrupt women more than vice versa. So it is a real thing.