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Large-scale problems in Japan occur primarily due to unethical behavior. The Fukushima nuclear disaster is an example.

By contrast, large-scale problems in the United States occur due to either unethical behavior or incompetence. The latter cause is often due to affirmative action (AA).

The Los Alamos National Laboratory uses AA to give preferential treatment to Africans and Hispanics in employment. According to a report by NPR, a contractor (who was likely African or Hispanic) was unaware that "organic" and "inorganic" are not synonyms. He poured organic material into a drum of nuclear waste. Consequently, the drum exploded. Plutonium dust was emitted into the atmosphere.

If you eat vegetables from farms in New Mexico, you likely have consumed trace amounts of plutonium.

There is more information about this issue.

Large-scale problems in Japan occur primarily due to unethical behavior. The Fukushima nuclear disaster is an example.

By contrast, large-scale problems in the United States occur due to either unethical behavior or incompetence. The latter cause is often due to affirmative action (AA).

The Los Alamos National Laboratory uses AA to give preferential treatment to Africans and Hispanics in employment. According to a report by NPR, a contractor (who was likely African or Hispanic) was unaware that "organic" and "inorganic" are not synonyms. He poured organic material into a drum of nuclear waste. Consequently, the drum exploded. Plutonium dust was emitted into the atmosphere.

If you eat vegetables from farms in New Mexico, you likely have consumed trace amounts of plutonium.

There is more information about this issue.

Hmm... I wonder if allowing people to see doctors more frequently instead of worrying about bills would allow people to learn more about staying healthy...?

I wonder if this couple's health will suffer long term from trying to pay their medical bills.

San Francisco probably smells like Bangalore https://www.npr.org/2018/08/01...

You forgot their published and enforced policy that says that publish opinion on what the facts should be is more important than actual facts (which is why the prohibit primary sources).

A few things you need to learn...

Citizens United v FEC was to keep "the government from restricting independent expenditures for communications by nonprofit corporations, for-profit corporations, labor unions, and other associations". Not just corporations. But your selective choice of words speaks volumes...

President Obama topped the list of Saudi arms offers, more than any other Administration. Yet you conveniently left him out of your list, skipping from Trump to Bush - why?

California is suing the Federal Government about the border - specifically about their right to control their border, rather than the Federal Government. This is contrary to what you state.

The IRS apologized for targeting conservative groups, because it did. Yes, there were some non-conservative groups targeted, but they were overwhelmingly conservative.

Shall we continue?

Games that were deemed ethical even with extreme violence included a little-used DirectX title and a little-known GNU-based game. Both were RTS games. I just made that up. Sounded right.

Texas has been mucking with textbooks for awhile now. link

One of the biggest problems America has is the belief that we are right by definition. That is horribly dangerous and destructive, since it prevents you from even considering solutions that might come into existence outside of America, since they must be wrong. Further it tends to stifle change in general, because if you were already right then any change must be wrong.

At any rate, China has problems. I'm not going to minimize them, but I think we have our own.

The first and most obvious is around 90% of republicans approve of the current president. Seriously anytime you see 90% of any group think the guy in charge is doing a great job, then, well, your almost certainly not getting an opinion based on reality. In Donald Trump's case the guy has been implicated in two felonies, but he has a 90% approval rating with his base. That's pretty much a perfect example of my previous point. It is a large group that simply believes that they are right by definition, and no amount of noise (reality) is going to change their minds.

I was wondering about that also. This is the only thing that I could find that may be what the previous poster was talking about.
https://www.npr.org/sections/p...

The critics argue that Hamburg's partial ban â" which officials estimate will reduce traffic by about 6,000 cars per day, or one-fifth the usual number of cars on those streets â" will lower the readings at air quality monitoring stations in the ban zone, but will generate more emissions elsewhere because drivers will spend more time trying to circumvent the area.

https://www.npr.org/2016/05/16...
http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...
Eat Shit yourself fucktard. The level of how much you "like" something, has zero impact on its validity.

Apparently the female pill is something that women like because it reduces or eliminates unnecessary menstruation.

I've not known any woman who "likes the pill"- every woman I had a serious relationship would complain about the pill, how it made them gain weight, dropped their libido... etc, etc. I'm sure there are some out there because every woman is different and the pill impacts them slightly differently.

Women (most) don't take the pill because they like the effects- they take it because they don't want to get pregnant, or, because they have painful periods otherwise and so the side effects are just not as bad as having to deal with a painful period.

I'm not a heterosexual cis male, but if I were I would rather get a little snip with no lasting side effects than fuck with my hormone system. If I wanted offspring with my genes I could freeze some sperm before.
Of course it's possible that men turn out to like these changes to their hormone system. Apparently the female pill is something that women like because it reduces or eliminates unnecessary menstruation.

https://www.npr.org/2018/09/13...

https://www.fb.org/news/farm-b...

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

And now we have a 12 billion dollar fund of taxpayer money to pay for a small amount of farmers losses...which they're only losing because of this trade war bullshit. Try to spin it however you want, but this entire thing was Trump being a whiny little bitch and doing potentially severe damage to farmers in this country, and wasting more taxpayer dollars. It's not a good outcome, it's a fucking bad outcome because of stupid fucks like you. The remaining issue is Trump is still a fucking idiot, and sycophants like you still exist sucking his dick every chance you get.

For more background on the "chicken tax" and how it relates to the paucity of Japanese-made trucks in the US, see Planet Money podcast episode 632

Look at civil forfeiture, too.

Yeah, look at it!

I think it's been clear to a majority of us that it's absolutely an illegal abuse of power. Unfortunately, it takes time for things to work their way through the courts. Looks like civil forfeiture is going to get significantly neutered in the very near future. That's going to result in a lot of clawback from police departments, I'd be guessing. Going to keep the lawyers busy for years.

Quite literally: https://www.npr.org/2018/11/27...

You don't understand the difference between democracy and tyranny of the minority. Quite Literally.

Quite literally: https://www.npr.org/2018/11/27...

Refusing to cave in to the demands of a mob is not a threat to democracy.

It is more accurate to say the mob is the threat. The protesters should take their demands to the voters, rather than rioting in the streets.

Quite literally: https://www.npr.org/2018/11/27...

worth looking at:
http://ethics.npr.org/tag/anon...

Regardless, we've seen anonymous sources issue personal attacks in mainstream press reports. So the violation is there regardless.

It won't get better until people sharpen up their standards. And until that happens confidence in the press will continue to deteriorate. If the press wants their credibility to improve, then the impression of unethical behavior will have to be addressed. Simply denying everything and refusing to make any reasonable reforms is just doubling down on what is causing the problem.

There are several clauses relating to emoluments.

There are three. Two of them apply to the president, one barring him from receiving foreign emoluments, one barring him from receiving anything other than his salary from the federal government or the states. Regardless, Trump is in violation of none of them.

Federal District Judge Peter Messitte thinks there might be.

Further, even if a sitting President is found to be in violation, Congress will just grant an exception.

That seems much less likely than it did 15 days ago.

It's clear that Trump has no decency, but shouldn't some other republicans stand up? It seems they are quite happy to walk down the nature trail to hell (road to authoritarian rule).

And this is where the republican party has lost me for the rest of my life. Until the current crop is dead and gone, there's nothing that is going to bring me back.

The lack of spine and decency is appalling. If you can't put country over party, that's unforgivable in my book. And other than one or two republicans, the entire party is doing that.

What's mindblowing to me is that it's only for very, very short-term gain. Long-term, the republican party is dead demographically. Check out the op-ed from the former vice chair of the CA republican party: Why One Prominent California Republican Has Declared The GOP Dead In Her State. That's the first domino, and it won't take too many more to make the republican party nothing more than a disruptive minority.

The US already slipped below 50% of the babies being born white. There's no path forward for the republican party relying as they have on on toxic racism (and sexism) to secure their base. "There are very fine people on both sides" doesn't play well in the non-white demographics that are soon going to be a majority in the US. If the republicans can't purge and pivot in time for the next generation to see value in their platform, they are done. At the moment, they're making a lot more lifelong democrats than they are making lifelong republicans.

Report that Trumps people are diplomatically inept and unwilling to take a perfectly reasonable meeting with Russia or report the scandal of how they were meeting with Russia...

That's a bullshit spin. When he meets with Putin he does not follow established norms: no note-takers, no experts in the room with him. At best he brings a translator, but there have been times that he only relied on Putin's translator.

Even if you somehow still believe he's not Putin's asset, the point of having support staff at meetings with other heads of state is to protect against the other country being able to lie about the content of discussions and agreements. We saw Putin do exactly that after the Helsinki shit show:

Russia Says Agreements Were Discussed With Trump On Syria. The U.S. Is Silent

If the public were to get a system up and running that tracked Law Enforcement vehicles and distributed this information to anyone who wanted to see it in real time, they would pitch an absolute fit about it.

We have, and they did.

#thanksNSA https://www.npr.org/sections/t...

Sand is basically finely ground rock. That doesn't seem like an insurmountable technical problem by today's standards.

The problem is two-fold. Features and cost.

1) Not all sand is equal. Not noted here but covered in a recent Planet Money podcast is that the sand that is stolen often has characteristics that make it particularly popular for why it's being stolen. The stolen sand often has a color or texture that makes it wanted elsewhere. For example: much of the beach sand is uniformly the same shape (cubic) and size. This makes it ideal for construction, where a powdery, desert sand wouldn't work. While you can sieve crushed rock to any uniform size, sand is also hundreds of different kinds of "rock": calcium, silicon, and some of it with substructure that changes its characteristics further.

2) It's cheaper to steal (or "buy") than to make. From the podcast, one poorer neighborhood came out one morning to find that much of the public beach had been carted away in the night. Some sleuthing found that a nearby hotel development had a crappy beach, and taken off with it. While some science showed that the sand was "theirs", in many parts of the world with pretty beaches, courts and police are susceptible to bribery or threats. In the story, it leaned more on threats and soon the case waned and the locals had a beach of mud. For the price of a few trucks and a few thugs, the hotel owner got a brand new beach that dramatically increased the value of their property.

While technology COULD solve this problem, it really can only pull this off if you can get the cost to below that of hired force. That's what a lot of the tragedy of the commons come down to; if you can benefit by being a greater asshole and escape the consequences, then you win.

That's simple. The fundamental rule has always been that facts are universal, opinion is personal. Virtually every respectable media outlet has a version of that doctrine.

Like the "Fake But Accurate" President Bush reports, and all the recanted Kavanaugh accusations from more of the "respectable media" outlets? After all, modern media is much more critical of the current Administration, and much of the "respectable mainstream media" is more biased than Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.

Interesting Planet Money podcast about sand. Mostly about beach sand. https://www.npr.org/templates/...

Cut it down then compost it. Zero waste, large firebreaks, problem solved. If there's fuel near your structure, remove it. That simple, but people crave the pretty.

Alternate option, suck up the loss in square footage and build firePROOF, not merely resistant, structures. Reinforced concrete is wonderful stuff and dome structures can also be storm proof. Repeating unwise choices won't get different results.

This is how you solve the problem:

https://www.npr.org/2015/08/26...

Note the steel building next to the dome. No eaves to trap flammables and sparks bounce off. Not suited to protecting humans but fine for equipment.

No corporation can arrest you. No corporation can convict you. No corporation can sentence you to anything.
For-profit prisons have exactly one customer - the government! No one else can send someone to a prison.
For-profit bail? That's anti-prison, which is rather against your own argument there. Of course, they can only help you pay bail to... the government!

And no, no argi-corp has ever sued anyone for "their corn contaminating your crops". Never happened, despite your ignorant repetition of a common lie. Even if they did, they couldn't send you to jail. Not only because it'd be just a civil suit, there's also the fact that you can only be sent to jail by... the government!

For many of the "required field" questions I've seen, the question isn't really necessary. The doctor, and many busy people, work on the least amount of information required to get by, rather than the most comprehensive.

So I take it you are okay with this: https://www.npr.org/sections/h...

The date was a few years back, when we didn't torture doctors with demands to think about what they were doing.

Then again, apparently you are fine if you or a loved one is harmed because the Doctor was too busy to do anything but as little as possible. Too busy you know

Because they need to use as little information as possible. Jeezuz H K Ryste, Funny what you promote. Tell us what hospital you work for - I'd love to tell them what you support and if the least amount of information and charge ahead is their policy. Challenge accepted?

Having doctors muscle memory their way through a list of 50 radio buttons to say 'no' is more likely to cause a problem than having the buttons default to no, and make the doctor deliberately select the ones that are relevant

Medical mistakes apparently have outcomes that kill between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year https://www.npr.org/sections/h... Now of course the reason that range is so wide is that like any group that is responsible for killing people, they kinda want to keep it as quiet as possible.

Have any of you folks given some thought to the idea that what seems to be an insufferable imposition on these Doctors might just be a way to keep them from fucking up and killing people?

Then again I suppose that if a doctor kills you, on your tombstone you'll want written " At least the Doctor Wasn't Inconvenienced"

Trump wants Medicare for all too.

Uh, Trump doesn't pay attention to what he says. One day he says "why can't Medicare just cover everybody?" (ref:) A few months later, he says "Medicare for all would be a catastrophe and a disaster!" (ref:)

The actual truth is, he has spent zero time studying the question of health insurance, he has no plans or policies about health insurance, and he's not going to have any plans or policies about health insurance: it's a hard problem, and he just isn't interesting in doing anything that is hard. It simply isn't something he has any interest in.

The Democrats won't sit at the same table with him, so your only chance in hell at it happening is shot down.

"Medicare for all", of course, is a Bernie Sanders proposal (ref:)

This is likely related to data-gathering for the Chinese "Social Credit" system, and stopping kids play too much is the cover story. Check the relevant recent episode on NPR's "Planet Money". https://www.npr.org/sections/m...

When you are buying politicians.

https://www.npr.org/sections/m...

Steyer has done uniquely well with it, but if you think he is about clean energy or this proposal is think again

https://www.azcentral.com/stor...

It will force the early shutdown of APS's nuclear power plant and likely boost greenhouse gas emissions.

So Crashmarik how long have you been working for APS? And BTW APS owns the Corporation Commission since a majority of the sitting members campaigns were 90 to 95% financed by APS. I mean look who has the money in the current election for Corporation Commission. Hell APS even puts their people on local school boards to keep the schools from buying and installing their own solar.

When you are buying politicians.

https://www.npr.org/sections/m...

Steyer has done uniquely well with it, but if you think he is about clean energy or this proposal is think again

https://www.azcentral.com/stor...

It will force the early shutdown of APS's nuclear power plant and likely boost greenhouse gas emissions.
 

Ted Cruz: Evidence doesn't support global warming:
https://www.npr.org/2015/12/09...

GOP leaders view climate change as fake science:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

GOP-Climate change education is propaganda:
http://nymag.com/intelligencer...

Next lie, snoflake?

a well educated electorate doesn't necessarily vote the way you want them to.

Remember how before the printing press only the priesthood could read the bible? Internet is like that times 100.

This partitioning is being driven by progressive extremists, for the express purpose of destroying America.

I think that's taking it a bit far and probably attributing reasons to most of the people who fall into that group that don't exist. In reality, the explanation is much more banal: They're doing it because they think it will impress other people like them. It's as simple and stupid as that. It's not really different than conservative Christians that try to take tough moral stances against homosexuality so that they can show everyone how Christian and moral they are.

Naturally this attracts a lot of sleazy people who want to hide behind the facade of moral superiority. They don't really care about the message, or even disagree with it, but find that they can hide behind it. Just like not all of those conservative Christians are closeted homosexuals, you can bet that of the people trying to appear to be the most virtuous, some are banging other men in private gay clubs. Just like you have no trouble finding many of the men who claim to be feminists have been harassing women and doing all of things they decry in public.

I don't think the political correctness really matters. Even if you quit dancing around some issues, the solutions that the different political factions have are so incompatible as to be incapable of compromise. In the end it comes down to dogma and you won't get the conservative Christian to go along with gay marriage any more than you'll get the super-woke progressive to agree that inherent gender differences exist. The gun nut will never agree to any form of gun control and the socialist will never agree that their economic policy just doesn't work. Once you hit the central tenants of some faith, it doesn't really matter.

In this case, does anyone that anti-Semitic ever listen to reason? Even if you let him run around screaming about the Jews on Twitter all day, is he ever going to listen to anyone who he doesn't already agree with, or does he just invent some reason to lump any disagreement as proof that the Jews are controlling everyone? I almost think that social media disconnects people from one and other to the point where it's not possible to solve this issue even if you have a single service that everyone gets to use no matter what. I think that requires actually sitting down with people and talking to them. Fortunately, there's good reason to be hopeful that something like that actually works.

The only good thing about this mess is that TX has reasonably strong protections against foreclosure of a primary residence. (Or maybe had, IDK about recent law changes.)

Not protections against foreclosure by the HOA...

"Since the 1987 Texas Supreme Court decision in Inwood North vs. Harris and the 1995 passage of Texas Property Code Chapter 204, Homeowners Associations (HOAs) have filed thousands of legal actions against homeowners in the Houston area, generally with threat of foreclosure, causing many to lose their homes and causing others financial hardship." http://hoadata.org/

"With the recession, foreclosure filings for delinquent HOA assessments in Texas have increased from about 1 percent of all home foreclosures to more than 10 percent currently, according to the industry." NPR 06/29/2010 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128078864

> Correct. Fortunately these diversity initiatives only exist in the mad ramblings of the far right, as admitted justification to further oppress people.

Tell that to Harvard, they're in court over that.

> Funny that the only mention I can find of this is on literal fake news sites. Not a single public record has any mention of this.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jun/15/harvard-sued-discrimination-against-asian-americans
https://www.npr.org/2018/06/15/620368377/harvard-accused-of-racial-balancing-lawsuit-says-asian-americans-treated-unfairl

If you want to call those "literal fake news sites," it's a free country ... :)

Guess I'd better use DuckDuckGo to dig up public records for this and an earlier lawsuit:

http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/SFFA-v.-Harvard-Complaint.pdf
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/14-981

> It's well known that conservatives only allow others that believe math and science and reading comprehension are all liberal conspiracies.

Most relevant to this, here's Linus' daughter, signing the post-meritocracy manifesto. So instead of building the best Linux for the benefit of everyone, we should worry more about politics.

Here's a liberal trying to decolonize science so we can get rid of the racism, in which they're saying things like "through black magic" people can send lightning to strike someone and then asking "can you explain that scientifically?" Is this part of that magical liberal bias in reality? :)

CNN has declared that "math is racist" (archive).

In general, a lot of this nonsense traces back to the ideas of critical theory. There are groups who think that every wrong in the world traces back to bad power structures which they need to deconstruct and recreate to achieve fairness. It should tell you something when they're currently trying to deconstruct things like science and meritocracy, though...

The irony is that none of that is necessary and it's actively harmful to the supposed goals. It's true that bad luck, oppression, disasters, etc. unfairly keep some people down or prop others up. The right way to fix that would be to help all disadvantaged people equally. Insofar as certain groups have been historically kept down as such, this would disproportionately help them and right things over time. Instead, it's more fashionable to decide that help must be on the basis of group membership, which instead creates new competition among groups and animosity.

That name was dreamt up to play on the fears of Republican voters, including the suggestion that it would have "death panels". A survey early last year showed 35% of respondents still didn't realize "Obamacare" was the same thing as the ACA. We need to make decisions rationally, not out of fear.

For instance, you're more likely to be killed by pollution (200,000 early deaths per year) than an undocumented immigrant (750 per year). However, our administration wants to spend money building a wall to protect you from the "dangerous" Mexicans, but doesn't mention anything about how many people die from pollution when announcing cuts to emissions standards.

(The 750 number is 456 arrests per year, plus an estimated correction factor due to cases not being solved.)

Seriously?

And you just had the balls to lecture about misusing fear as a political factor?

What about the massive and widespread identity theft perpetrated by illegal immigrants?

IRS: 1.2 Million Illegal Aliens Committed Identity Theft in FY 2017

Hell, you just tried to paper over a complex issue with a lot of aspects using a childish fear-based statistic.

You played your NPC role well.

That name was dreamt up to play on the fears of Republican voters, including the suggestion that it would have "death panels". A survey early last year showed 35% of respondents still didn't realize "Obamacare" was the same thing as the ACA. We need to make decisions rationally, not out of fear.

For instance, you're more likely to be killed by pollution (200,000 early deaths per year) than an undocumented immigrant (750 per year). However, our administration wants to spend money building a wall to protect you from the "dangerous" Mexicans, but doesn't mention anything about how many people die from pollution when announcing cuts to emissions standards.

(The 750 number is 456 arrests per year, plus an estimated correction factor due to cases not being solved.)

I seem to say this a lot but Planet Money had an interesting overview of open offices

You should listen to the Planet Money episode 857 - The Postal Illuminati, the idea of the treaty was based on the idea that message flow would be roughly balanced. The part that isn't a good look is that postal flow has been imbalanced for a very long time, but until recently it was benefiting the USA.

Came here to post this :) Here's the link:
https://www.npr.org/sections/m...

TL;DR version - Yes there is a postal "illuminati." The treaty states that, when sending things via international mail, the sending country handles the cost to get the package to the country being delivered to, and the country being delivered to covers the cost of delivery from the point of entry to the final destination. As you can imagine, sending something from China on an enormous container ship to a port in Los Angeles is relatively cheap, especially when most of the manufacturing and shipping is done near sea ports. Shipping that thing from Los Angeles to Miami is pretty expensive. The cost of the last part is covered by the US post office.

Here is the link. From the planet money podcast.
 

MALONE: Five dollars and 69 cents total, including shipping. And Jayme turns to his shipping guy and says, wait; how much would it cost us just to ship this same mug across the street?

SMALDONE: He told me it's going to cost us about 6.30 to ship this item across the street.

Google search says that, at least as of 2016, yes, including Washington, DC and Boston. Reference which also covers some of the issues--though I'd note that it doesn't quite cover why pedestrians might feel endangered.

So: Where I grew up, it was legal when I was in preschool...and yes, yes some did try to run people over. I was almost run over myself, around when I was six. That was how I learned I knew how to fall safely well enough to manage a ~10ft steep drop through thick brush & walk away without even a bruise, because it was that, get hit by the fast-moving bike, or go into the busy street. The man on the bike did not bother stopping to see if I was okay...

It's typical of my own Mid-western accent (or maybe Great Lakes accent, if you buy into that being a distinct regional dialect).

If you'd like to know more about informal usage, this paragraph from wiktionary is relevant.

Use of so in the sense to the implied extent is discouraged in formal writing; spoken intonation which might render the usage clearer is not usually apparent to the reader, who might reasonably expect the extent to be made explicit. For example, the reader may expect He is so good to be followed by an explanation or consequence of how good he is. Devices such as use of underscoring and the exclamation mark may be used as a means of clarifying that the implicit usage is intended; capitalizing SO is also used. The derivative subsenses very and very much are similarly more apparent with spoken exaggerated intonation.

It is important to note that your issue is a fairly recent controversy around causal usage of "So". And I'd argue it is not a universally held one.

tarting sentences with "so" isn't a trend or a thing. However it may strike you, people aren't doing it any more frequently than they were 50 or 100 years ago. The only difference is that back then nobody had much of a problem with it.

For what it's worth, my usage of "So" was intentional to indicate a casualness and uncertainty. Feel free to re-read my post in a sarcastic tone. (if the "thanks Obama" meme wasn't clue enough)

Listen here: https://www.npr.org/podcasts/3... Oct 12, Another View. AV Round Table: VOTE! - skip ahead to 14:30.

But ... but ... that's OK, because they only want to "suppress" meanie "fascist" wascally wepubwicans.

President Obama is the first president to serve eight years and preside over American wars during every single day of his tenure.

Based on that exact number, yes. However, FDR surely has him beat, no?

Listen here:
https://www.npr.org/podcasts/3...

Oct 12, Another View.
AV Round Table: VOTE! - skip ahead to 14:30.