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It's a problem that's been with us for a while.

The reality is it probably creates more de facto inflation for the average local working stiff, having so much tech and finance there. While all these CEOs would like it as it only has a positive impact for them, really who else's life would it improve? And on the other hand, creating more localized inflation, it would likely harm many more. "The middle children of history."

I suspect it's this kind of obliviousness to the average person's life challenges that got Trump, and AOC, elected.

I really wonder how many of the maladies of old age are actually deficiency disorders.

Vitamins were discovered when someone figured out that people going months without eating Vitamin C got sick. Someone empirically figured out that eating citrus fruit staved off scurvy and that led to the discovery of Vitamin C. Other vitamins are also important but take longer before a deficiency makes you sick.

Natural food has all kinds of stuff in it and I wonder if some of it is healthy in really subtle ways that take a very long time to show up.

Also, processed foods lack fiber, and you need some in your diet, to help your body control cholesterols.

Finally, omega 3: I read a book called Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill that claims that omega 3 fatty acids are essential to health but at least 95% of people in North America don't get enough of it. Omega 3 is not found in processed foods, because omega 3 oils go rancid very quickly. Before processed foods, everyone got omega 3 naturally (for example, by eating fish or eating meat from grass-fed cattle) but these days people get very little, and get other kinds of oils instead. Since your body is made from what you eat, if you don't eat enough omega 3, your body has to use the other oils and it doesn't work as well. The book claims that while our bodies can't make omega 3, our bodies can convert it from one form to another; so it would suffice to eat only fish oil or only flax oil or whatever and trust the body to convert DHA to GLA or whatever.

My wife and I buy flax oil blend and use it to make salad dressing; it's a painless way to add omega 3 to your diet.

Simple salad dressing recipe:
3-4 tablespoons of oil (flax oil, or olive oil)
1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar (or any other vinegar you like)
sea salt to taste
black pepper to taste

We measure into a convenient cup, then whisk with a small wire whisk. It's fast and easy. We have figured out how many cranks of the pepper mill or how many twists of the sea salt grinder measure out the amount we like so it's a quick grind-and-count, no need to use measuring spoons for the salt and pepper.

Sometimes we put in some tomato paste; you can buy tomato paste in a tube, and it's a handy way to add just a little bit when making just enough dressing for a couple of salads. Or garlic powder or any other spice that suits your taste. It's easy to tweak the recipe. We don't bother buying pre-made salad dressing anymore.

We used to buy omega-3 chocolate truffles. They were expensive but were a tasty way to add omega-3 to our diets. Sadly the manufacturer no longer makes them... I think they were too expensive and didn't sell fast enough.

https://www.goodreads.com/book...
"The first sleep book by a leading scientific expertâ"Professor Matthew Walker, Director of UC Berkeleyâ(TM)s Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab -- reveals his groundbreaking exploration of sleep, explaining how we can harness its transformative power to change our lives for the better.
    Sleep is one of the most important but least understood aspects of our life, wellness, and longevity. Until very recently, science had no answer to the question of why we sleep, or what good it served, or why we suffer such devastating health consequences when we don't sleep. Compared to the other basic drives in life -- eating, drinking, and reproducing -- the purpose of sleep remained elusive.
    An explosion of scientific discoveries in the last twenty years has shed new light on this fundamental aspect of our lives. Now, preeminent neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker gives us a new understanding of the vital importance of sleep and dreaming. Within the brain, sleep enriches our ability to learn, memorize, and make logical decisions. It recalibrates our emotions, restocks our immune system, fine-tunes our metabolism, and regulates our appetite. Dreaming mollifies painful memories and creates a virtual reality space in which the brain melds past and present knowledge to inspire creativity.
    Walker answers important questions about sleep: how do caffeine and alcohol affect sleep? What really happens during REM sleep? Why do our sleep patterns change across a lifetime? How do common sleep aids affect us and can they do long-term damage? Charting cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs, and synthesizing decades of research and clinical practice, Walker explains how we can harness sleep to improve learning, mood, and energy levels; regulate hormones; prevent cancer, Alzheimer's, and diabetes; slow the effects of aging; increase longevity; enhance the education and lifespan of our children, and boost the efficiency, success, and productivity of our businesses. Clear-eyed, fascinating, and accessible, Why We Sleep is a crucial and illuminating book."

See also: "Lecture entitled "Why We Sleep" by Professor Matthew Walker of the University of California, Berkeley."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

https://www.goodreads.com/work...

I'm pretty sure lots of people have read Paul Freiberger's Fire in the Valley, which is how I knew who he was. Very sad.

no one has to pay for the bits which make up your speech

Gab.com pays its own bills. They get persecuted anyway...

and the government isn't involved

No government is involved in Net Neutrality either — not any more, much to the chagrin of the folks pretending to be concerned for the "Internet freedom". And yet, they cite this withdrawal of government as a concern.

Can't have it both ways, can they?

I'm not sure this is the exact hill on which to die.

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." — remember that grand-standing ditty?..

The number of scientists doesn't matter; the quality if the science does. That's the point - the quality is extremely poor, even to the point of saying the current climate is literally defined by the projected next 15 years of weather that has not yet happened. That is NOT science - that is faith. That you cannot understand this simple point, or choose to ignore it, speaks volumes.

As Albert Einstein famously said when there were 100 scientists who wrote a book about why he was wrong:

Why 100? If I were wrong, one would have been enough.

The quantity of scientists doesn't matter; the quality of their science does. And that is severely lacking, and anyone with an education could understand that if they just looked at the data objectively.

...gene-editing technology will be used to correct genes leading to diseases like cystic fibrosis, but people won't resist using the technology to make them stronger or smarter. "Once such superhumans appear, there are going to be significant political problems with the unimproved humans, "

True enough, and absolutely inevitable. First, you correct for genetic defects, then you choose features you want. Why wouldn't parents prefer a healthy, attractive, intelligent, athletic child over one lacking those attributes?

We already have the societal problems. As the saying goes: "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." Even if we raise the averages, the problems remain essentially the same. What do we do now, with the ineducable and unskilled? We don't currently have any good solution...

Meanwhile, imagine the potential* benefits to society, if we could increase average health, and raise the average intelligence by a standard deviation or two.

*Potential. It is also entirely believable that the people who take most advantage of this will - intentionally or otherwise - select for sociopathy or other deleterious traits.

Appeals to the masses didn't stop Einstein and he was correct in his rebuttal.

Why do idiots like you always point to the handful of geniuses that turned out to be right instead of to the millions of crackpots that turned out to be, well, crackpots? Not to mention that your whole argument only works if the Global Warming is the long held wrong belief, while "nothing is happening" is the brand new obvious truth that only a genius could come up with.

Appeals to the masses didn't stop Einstein and he was correct in his rebuttal. And even your contention of 95% is actually false as the original "study" was highly flawed in methodology, to such an extent it should never be heard from again.

Currently we see models increasingly diverging from measured data, and the biggest suspect is the value used for climate sensitivity to CO2. Most models assume 3 deg C, but research shows it to be about half that.

Oh, and if you'd actually look at those linked pages, you'll finds lots of links to real published data, peer reviewed and everything.

I've taken numerous ethics courses. None of them would admit the existence of the concept of 'wrong' behavior or explain why, other than going to jail or getting sued one should not engage in it. As long as that paradigm exists ethics will be a problem.

Have you taken numerous classes? The field of ethics in the way you are describing is the study of normative ethics. The problem is that ethics certainty is not objective. There is no measuring tape, no thermometer, no spectrum analyzer for right and wrong. Those concepts are human. We invented them. They are not part of reality separate from us. To not be so dry, let Terry Pratcht explain.

Right and wrong are not part of our physical universe. Yet ethics is critically important to our everyday lives. So what do we do? What ought we do?

Finding or creating answers to those unanswerable questions is the field of ethics.

There seems to be a massive, systematic, institutional prejudice against boys that is causing them to fail.

I know this is parody -- and you did a good job -- but there actually are academics that have argued this (in primary education), and while it is of course controversial, some of the data are interesting.

See, for example, The War Against Boys

For example.

at least in America. It's not just because they're short sighted, see here or read up some more via google

This is also why 99 cent stores are a harbinger of doom for an economy. They make most of their money selling essentials (toothpaste, soap, toilet paper, etc) in reduced sizes at very high markups to poor people who only have a few dollars left after paying their bills. Me? I buy that stuff at a warehouse store and it saves me about $100 bucks a year vs a grocery store and closer to $300 vs a 99 cent store.

The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are! We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ’cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?” Plastic asshole. - George Carlin https://www.goodreads.com/quot...

Yeah, it sounds like the rallying cry for Right Thinking People which precedes bad luck.

In 1966, as a result of a mid-air collision of US aircraft, four unarmed thermonuclear bombs dropped onto Spanish territory. Three were recovered on land. Tracking down the fourth required the largest search-and-salvage operation in U.S. military history.

The Day We Lost the H-Bomb by Barbara Moran is a fascinating read.

https://www.goodreads.com/book...

ex UK PM Margaret Thatcher said
"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
Margaret Thatcher said

Just my 2 cents ;)

You're bitching about Facebook, not the web. Don't use Facebook.

Because the goal is to merely host content in a dark room, rather than having your content seen by other people.

Douglas Adams > Quotes > Quotable Quote

"But the plans were on display..."
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a flashlight."
"Ah, well, the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the notice, didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'."

Sometimes obscurity is a feature not a bug (though mostly for human subtype: cockroach).

Soon we'll barely be able to link to XKCD, and then what to trim this ravenous stupidity plant?

The government the American people elected. Deep state operatives tell you they're working for the American people, but in fact, they think we're scum. Scratch a member of the DC establishment, and you find a would-be aristocrat who loathes the sight, the sound and the smell of common folk. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30027384-what-washington-gets-wrong

So, if anyone had any doubts that the deep state exists, this should pretty much put an end to them. This attempt at circumventing the elected government is incredibly harmful. You want to know the endgame of this? Pakistan. Pakistan is run not by the elected government, but by its intelligence community. They take actions that are in their own interest, not in the interest of the country, and as a result Pakistan is a shithole and will never get any better.

A better way to approach the problem might be to ask what does America's deep state think of you?

Schweizer said, "Well, let me tell you, I would recommend everybody go out and get an academic book published last year called "What Washington Gets Wrong," and it's two scholars from Johns Hopkins University who do a massive survey of senior unelected executives in government, basically the deep state, and asks them a bunch of questions. And as the authors describe the deep state has contemptuous attitudes towards the average American."

"They think they're far less educated than they actually are," he continued. "They think they are far more dependent than they actually are. They're arrogant, they believe, and say in the surveys if the American people want one thing, and they think it's wrong, they're going to push something else. There's a massive disconnect, and the deep state is real, and it's a threat to our republic form of government."

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30027384-what-washington-gets-wrong

They would very much like the Pakistani model, where there is an elected figurehead, but they rule us. For our own good, of course.

"Language is a virus from outer space." William S. Burroughs.

Laurie Anderson's take on it.

Eventually, when enough people are convinced, your hypothesis is essentially voted into being a theory.

Science is NOT about convincing people. Science is a process of establishing models that are have predictive power regardless of whether people believe them or not. Eventually people tend to come to a consensus behind models with proven and confirmed predictive power but this is a second order effect and not the actual point of the process. Science is what is true whether or not you believe in it. This is why when people use the argument about scientific consensus in regards to climate change they are making the wrong argument. It doesn't matter what the scientific consensus is - it only matters whether the models have predictive power. Consensus is just opinion and opinions can be wrong - even informed opinions. The argument they should make is that the climate models correctly predict XYZ and we have lots of various models all getting the same results.

When truth-establishing processes are dictatorial in nature, you get crazy religious wars.

True but group-think can be rather dictatorial in effect. Nobody forces people to believe in certain crazy ideas (like religion) but if you get enough of them collectively to believe it then it becomes an unquestioned dogma.

In my view, the Department of Labor's unprecedented assertion of authority to proscribe SeaWorld's whale show is triply flawed: First, it departs from longstanding administrative precedent governing the extent of the Department's authority. Second, it irrationally and arbitrarily distinguishes (i) close contact between trainers and whales in SeaWorld shows from (ii) contact between players in the NFL or speeding in NASCAR races, for example, which the Department still proclaims as exempt from regulation under this statute. Third, the decision green-lights the Department to regulate sports and entertainment activities in a way that Congress could not conceivably have intended in 1970 when giving the agency general authority to ensure safer workplaces.

But you go on, quoting over-the-top, pejorative, emotional, factless bullshit such as "“Kavanaugh’s idea of making America great again apparently hearkens back to a time before the Workers Compensation laws and the Occupational Safety and Health Act were passed,”

ORLY?!?!

That's utter FEELZ!!!, devoid of fact. And does absolutely nothing to refute Kavanaugh's legal claims.

It's childish pounding the table and yelling like hell

... Russia acting as the military arm to provide security. China as the production and financial engine (supplanting the US). EU as the research, educational and cultural engine (supplanting the US). Africa as the raw materials and labor engine...

Let me guess, you are in Europe? That whole division you lay out reminds me of something I once read. One or more groups get all the hard-work low-pay shit jobs, while one small group gets the easy life. What was it called?

Ah yes. Here it is... Animal Farm

Good luck with that. I don't think it's gonna end how you think it's gonna end...

He should have taken the Fifth instead.

"Taking the fifth" is automatic, in the same way that "taking the sixth" is also automatic, or even "taking the eighth".

The US Constitution is supposed to be the supreme law of the land, As the supreme law, it's the duty of law enforcement to follow said law rather than requiring accused to appeal to the supreme court to get the right to council that they should have been entitled to in the first place, or permitting random citizens to be kidnapped and dragged across state lines.

Perhaps it's the news feeds I subscribe to, but there's a disproportionate number of civil rights violations within the United States, as if it's a systemic issue. I should be hearing similar complaints from adjacent countries, yet it's as if those legal systems have those issues under control.

Pfft shock collars. I'm expecting decapitation collars like in The Departure.

See Hans Moravec's informed speculations like his book "Mind Children": https://www.goodreads.com/book...

Or going beyond that to the nature of consciousness and reality:
http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm...

And see also Vernor Vinge's various writings on a "Singularity".

That said, hedging our bets by making the world a happier and healthier and more resilient place for everyone right now before a singularity is probably not a bad idea given our trajectory out of any singularity may have a lot to do with out path into one.

An AI with a survival instinct experiencing intermittent power failures can start doing unexpected things: https://www.goodreads.com/book...
"Survival test. Civilization had grown so complex that only a world-wide computer network could control everything. But the computer was only logical - it lacked common sense. And its all-too-logical decisions were beginning to cause too many near-fatal accidents. The solution was on the drawing-boards - a universal, self-aware and self-programming computer, equipped with judgement. But...could it be controlled? Or would it attempt to take over, disregarding its creators? if so, could it be turned off? Raymond Dyer and his team of computer specialists knew they had to find answers to these questions, but the project was too dangerous to test on Earth. So they installed the super computer on an orbiting [space habitat] and programmed it to survive at all costs. Then they sent a group of men to attack the computer...to goad it into trying to kill them. Then they would turn it off. Obviously if things went wrong, they might lose a few men - but the [habitat] and the computer could always be destroyed. Obviously... But the computer didn't quite see it that way!"

Liberal Fascism

I don't see a lot of consistent application of principles from them. I've yet to meet one that turned down free medical care when they needed it. I've known a lot of libertarians who go to the VA long after they've left the military. I know a lot that work in psuedo private sector jobs like the defense industry. My personal favorite is a libertarian friend of mine who gets it from his dad, but has severe health problems. He's come up with some of the craziest justifications to square his LIbertarian ideas with the fact that he needs medicine to live but can't afford to buy it himself (and wouldn't be able to even in a perfect libertarian world since his illness is bad enough he can't work).

Even Ayn Rand took social security in her old age. Though to her credit she had to be convinced to take it rather than die in the street. Her writings weren't profitable until the Republicans decided they needed an intellectual

My experience with Libertarians is they're folks who never grew out of that phase in your teenage life where you really, really hated being told what to do. You know the one. It's when you're just starting to realize how capable you are, when you're at your peak of learning capacity and you're figuring things out faster than the adults. And you really are (teenage brains work that way).

What I find especially maddening is the libertarians who rail against coastal elites and SJW and are perfectly OK with billionaires having unlimited wealth because, hey, they earned it by virtue of having it. Never mind the fact that money is power and you can't be free in a world with that much wealth inequality. After all, you're not free if somebody controls your access to food, shelter, healthcare, education and transportation (the latter needed to access the former). You're one week's food, one winter's cold or one pill away from slavery. True freedom only arrives when everybody has their needs cared for not because they can threaten or cajole people into getting it but because they're humans, and humans have a right to those things.

— John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar

True character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure - the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character's essential nature.

Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

Being murdered by the emperor of the galaxy after not murdering your own father is about as much pressure as you can get.

Hence the noob screenwriters took a dump all over Luke.

On his part, Mat Velloso, who is technical advisor to CTO at Microsoft, said, "I don't think people understand how many of us at Microsoft love GitHub to the bottom of our hearts. If anybody decided to mess with that community, there would be a riot to say the least."

The intended imputation here is that if only we understood, we'd behave differently.

Not true.

Our behaviour can only be influenced by a loud, long, thorough, sensible, and credible disclosure about how a newly kinder/gentler Microsoft plans to operate, maintain, intervene and intercede with their newfound toy and it's non-trivial powers.

Leading Change — 1996

This book explains how most corporations under-communicate change by an order of magnitude.

We're not talking one soul-baring High Commission of the CTO blog post here. We're talking an entire Kotteresque full-court press, set into stone for the long haul.

The book depicts a clear path from creating the urgency to sustaining the change in the culture while using visual examples & proven practices.

What Kotter doesn't cover (time for an updated edition?) is the New World Order, where the urgency and sustained campaign lies in communicating a credible backbone of non-change.

Far more eloquent than how I would put it.

https://www.goodreads.com/quot...

. Yup, this science is definitely settled.

I'm sorry: the science is NEVER settled. If it is, it's dogma. You might as well stay with religion, because random($Holy_Book) is singularly, literally correct and everything else is absolutely wrong, and they'll TELL you that upfront. If you fight it, then either somehow you've misunderstood the words and need a re-education OR the $Evil_Deity has you under control. (The Earth, Gods Creation, is still the Center of the Universe, right? RIGHT?? If not, back in you go and we'll try it again later.)

All science can do is tell you what's WRONG, hopefully in a way so that you can find something next time that's NOT-QUITE-SO-wrong. Then: "Iterate." See: Iterate.

Seriously -- I applaud the flat-Earth nutcase (I think he's one too) that launched himself in a rocket the other month. But he thinks something, and he's out actively trying to prove it. I don't understand why lunar eclipses don't help -- I think it's because they believe the Earth has to be sitting on something: the "Down" thing. They "get" gravity as down, but can't figure out that for something floating in space, down is always near the center. (But way down there isn't down, it's UP.) But he's at least trying. I don't see why he can't fly an unmanned rocket with a GoCam on it and collect it himself, or radio down the pics. What, are the Illuminati going to intercept and change the SD Card / Radio Signals / have Elvis's UFO fly by it and hang pictures in front of the camera to deceive him? He wants to see it with his own eyes, except how does that change the UFO picture problem? (Unless of course he finds an edge. THEN it's a different story.)

HE'S taking action. When's the last time you (or *I*) did something like that? Here's a weird thing you could try. (Or just finish watching the video.) But the the MiB could be sponsoring the video -- that's why science wants everything out in the open and repeatable.

And that's why Sci and Rel don't mix -- Miracles are by definition NOT repeatable but science wants them to be, to find the edges and exceptions. And that's just fine, pick you poison. I'm an atheist but believe they're independent -- you can believe both at the same time. But some people want you to pick one EXCLUSIVELY over the other.

I'm a bad example since I've done just that -- except I'm actually an agnostic, and I really just don't care about the religion side. If so, then God and I will eventually be having a quick little chat. (I imagine it'll be a QUICK one before being smited: "Oh, hi there God -- well, shit." If not, then I imagine we won't, it'll be more: " " I'm anxious to find out, but not enough so to hurry along the process. BTW: Watch Youjo Senki / The Saga of Tanya the Evil

So what science experiments have YOU tried to re-validate lately? AGW? Dropping and timing light and heavy objects? Birds fly by ONLY flapping their wings? Fridge light always on or goes out? ANYTHING?

Science isn't special -- DO some. Explain things. Or explain why you CAN'T explain them. I was looking for the Feynman quote about a freshman lecture, but insead, this one fits better: 12th one down. -- "Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt." It's NEVER settled, but the longer it goes the more " 'PLAININ' you got to do."

But I'm going to finish with the highest authority available, a quote from ANIME: "It's your fault for being unable to differentiate between religion and science." Trying to remember where that came from. Something about two little girls and a ?slug?, one is much more religious than the other -- hence the comment.

If it's true that Everything I need to know I learned in Kindergarten offering advice like 'Share everything' and 'Don't take things that aren't yours' is a bit like telling your kids to have fun, but be careful.

Paleontology could make a statement to the effect of: "We will find a fossil with such and such features".

Your argument regarding Economists is an "Appeal to Authority" fallacy and is being discarded as such. Economists are so notorious for making conflicting — even directly opposite — predictions, one US President has even asked, in exasperation, for a one-handed Economist.

Like that distinguished bunch, Climate Scientists too can explain anything, but are able to predict nothing.

I don't use "apps" but there are recommender websites that allow you to rate books, movies, TV shows, etc., and then suggest similar ones you would enjoy on the basis of your similarity to other users.

For video, I think Criticker is very good. You rate films and TV shows you've seen on a scale of 0 to 100, and it then predicts your rating of unseen media (and fairly accurately, I must say). It also allows you to write capsule reviews, and to read those left by others. I find these really helpful when trying to choose between similarly ranked films. You can also filter recommendations by genre, country, year, etc.

For books, everyone seems to use Goodreads. I think its recommendation system is terrible, though it does feature community reviews which are pretty decent.

I have a kindle e-reader and it links very nicely to GoodReads. It tracks the books I've read and my ratings. In addition it has a circle of friends option that lets you follow authors or friends and what they are reading. I find it easy to use and a great resource to find new reads. Many authors also use the service and it is kind of cool to see what Stephen King or George Martin is reader as well as the newest authors on Amazon that only publish in e-book format. Michael Anderle and the Kutherian Gambit series is my current line, there are at least 21 of those.
https://www.goodreads.com/
For Movies there is always Rotten Tomatoes, and IMDB.

Busy reading Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence , see https://www.goodreads.com/book... .

Well, the owners of more and more places are consolidating into ever larger conglomerates, so two companies that you think may be competing against each other may actually have the same parent company. This is especially true in the quick-service food industry where there are really only a few companies controlling quite a few brands. In this case, sharing data might be quite doable and not hurt them competitively. And you might end up having a "conglomerate ID" when you get a job at one of these companies.

No. There's enough conglomerates who are actively fighting against each other and would strive their best to avoid telling their competitors that "employee X is a slacker". By the same token, in a lot of rural locations companies just have to put up with slacker workers because the alternative is to be absolutely understaffed.

The example of "just speed up an assembly line" doesn't work in real life in many circumstances. The fryer can only take so much food at once and enough people calling off once--because it's fly season or the like--will just hurt some companies over others pretty badly. Meanwhile, the whole idea that a lot of people would be unemployed looking for jobs? If it's as hopeless as stated, people would stop being "unemployed" because that classification nominally only applies to those actively seeking work. Once you know you're banned, you just stop looking.

Don't get me wrong. At least some of what was said is doable. The whole "employee asks you if you need help" every couple minutes would be beyond annoying. The general standard for customer satisfaction in most places isn't "trash isn't full" but at the limit "trash is full and employees are standing around doing nothing about it". Help buttons would be abused by customers and nothing about the Manna system addresses that. Lots of people aren't actually minimum wage workers and would balk at being ordered exactly what to do.

I'd say The Creature from Cleveland Depths is more prophetic even if the whole scheduling and constant in-the-ear speach isn't there. People are more engrossed in their phones than most are ever willing to listen blindly to a voice through a headset dictating what to do.

What the fuck good is government for [...]

The government can — and should:

• fight crime,
• defend the borders,
• enforce contracts.

Thanks for asking. Charity is not only implicitly omitted, we have Founding Fathers on record explicitly stating, it is not there:

“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”

— James Madison

if not ensuring that the cleverness of a few doesn't enable them to subjugate everyone else?

"Subjugation" is such a loaded term, its use is a sure sign of demagoguery...

There was a time when America prided itself in it's technological prowess. A time when we believed science had the potential to solve our problems and propel us into the future. It's sad that we've gone the other way, clutching superstition and paranoia, as a great thinker once predicted: https://www.goodreads.com/quot...
This has historically been a "pro tech" site, which be definition and education should include individuals educated in science... but alas, it's just more politicized, polarized arse holes too willing to jump on the reichwinger "blame libs for all evils" bs....
Your prizes:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...
https://worldtop20.org/2017-wo...
http://thehill.com/policy/inte...
And the cherry, the US, the Country FOUNDED on the principles of freedom, drops to 21....well done....
http://theweek.com/speedreads/...

Autism doesn't have anything to do with Psychology.

Say what?!

That's like saying cancer has nothing to do with medicine.

What the GP is alluding to is our disease model of mental health. If one is not "normal" then one must fit into some category.

Now with the fetish and pop psychology, everyone has to have something wrong with them to spend $$$$ on self help books - SHAM - and therapy.

In the olden days, your child would have just been called different or eccentric or maybe something worse. Now with the disease model, he has to be labeled. And what sucks about labels - even medical diagnosis - it can be just as damaging as any other name or label.

It also turns folks and their parents into victims.

And I learned that if you put 10 psychologists and psychiatrists in a room for a diagnosis, you'll get 15 different diagnoses. Meaning, your kid could have - probably has - been misdiagnosed. Autism is a kind of fad condition like ADHD and kids that show any sort of deviation from "normal" are slapped with one of those diagnoses.

The Time and Space of Uncle Albert by Russell Stannard explains this wonderfully to children. Targeted at 11-years, it may be challenging, but I loved it as a child.

So as a non-musician if I was trying to explain why a particular piece of music was brilliant would my first thoughts really be that the best thing I could do would be to attempt to sing or hum it to the unlucky victim? Similarly, as someone who is neither a physicist or educator should I really think that I might be the best person to explain Special Relativity and its consequences? Instead, might it not be a better approach to work through one or two existing high quality resources with them?

I'm sure there are others, but in terms of a recommendation I found the Cox and Forshaw book "Why Does E=mc^2 (And Why Should We Care?)" https://www.goodreads.com/book... good. I also think it could possibly be something that a bright 9 yr old might enjoy reading and understanding with their dad.

Fortunately our legal systems are good, but there's always an exception where justice is not carried out, and can be politically motivated. I can think of one particular case that happened in the state I lived in, where a famous novel where I am from called "nothing to do with justice", where a magistrate was jailed for a difference of opinion. Maybe go have a read of that and similar books.. politically motivated abuse of the legal system does happen. https://www.goodreads.com/book...

This is exactly what Paul Hawken advocates in his book, The Ecology of Commerce . The EU has been busy establishing a framework for manufacturer responsibility for the life-cycle of products. The company Interface Carpet has gone from selling carpet to selling a carpeting service. What they realised is that most people (aside from collectors and aesthetes) don't care about the product itself, but the services it renders.