Slashdot Mirror

https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-...
"Walker explains "how a good night's shut-eye can make us cleverer, more attractive, slimmer, happier, healthier, and ward off cancer.""

I'm about a third of the way through the book so far and it is just amazing. I will never take sleep for granted again.

Essentially, our brains are overclocked for high performance of a certain kind during the day and almost everyone absolutely need eight or so hours of good sleep each and every night for the brain to recover and stay healthy. (There is a very tiny number -- much less than 1% -- of people with a genetic mutation that lets them get by on less sleep.)

As one example, during the day, new factual information is stored in the hippocampus and then when you go to sleep NREM sleep moves the data to other part of the brain for long term storage. So, if you don't sleep enough that night, you lose much of those memories. Sleeping more a day or two later will never bring those memories back.

As another example, I just read today about how glial cells shrink during sleep so fluid can bathe the adjacent neurons and then the glial cells can remove toxic waste products that can lead to Alzheimer's.

He explains how drowsy driving causes more accidents and worse ones than drunk driving.

He also talks about how caffeine blocks receptors in the brain for adenosine (which causes "sleep pressure"). While caffeine may make it possible for people to get by with less sleep for a time, such users will still miss out on all the other health-giving parts of sleep as above -- and more, including greater creativity like from dreams.

That said, I'd add, for some people, coffee beans are the only beans they consume and in general eating beans and the phytonutrients they contain is health promoting. So, for some people, the health benefits of drinking coffee bean juice may outweigh issues of caffeine. But, there are lots of other beans people can eat that don't have caffeine in them.
https://well.blogs.nytimes.com...

So, bravo for making a great choice and sticking with it through caffeine withdrawal and into a healthier life.

See also in general:
http://web.archive.org/web/201...
"Tragically, most people are totally unaware that they are only a few weeks of discipline away from being able to comfortably maintain healthful dietary habits -- and to keep away from the products that can result in the destruction of their health."

If humans lived long enough, they would all eventually develop cancer. This is because of inherent limits in the DNA repair mechanisms.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/1...

The study involved 383 people in six test kitchen facilities in the metro Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina and in rural Smithfield, North Carolina,

Is it really front-page news that people in red states don't know how to wash their hands?

Raleigh-Durham votes blue.

https://www.nytimes.com/electi....

But, hey, let me twist the facts to support your world view: they must have imported help from red counties!

Here's some more help: They don't live in California, so they're probably all cavemen, useless to expect civilized behaviour from them.

Personally, I don't much care for Durham, but Raleigh is a fantastic place to live - and not just in my opinion, it routinely places high on the lists of top places to live.

That's some echo chamber you live in.

Citing inside climate news is like citing the daily mail.

There's any number of sites that have the memo on them. I cited those two because they have the actual scan of the memo on them, not merely the text file, and added the New York Times article, as a mainstream media source, but if you don't like those, I can send you a few dozen other links to the file. Or you could just google it.

By the way, everything you're accusing Exxon of is actually what a group of environmentalists and plaintiff's lawyers decided to do,

I gave a citation and links to three different sources. Where is yours?

Ah, you don't have a citation, you're making that up. Right. That's a trick right out of Göbbels, that "the cleverest trick used in propaganda" is to accuse your enemies of what you yourself are doing.

with funding by various Rockefeller foundations (among others). The main people that would benefit from this case being successful would be the class action attorneys, who would stand to make hundreds of millions if not billions.

Have you fully thought about the fact that the fossil fuel industry is a trillion dollar industry? Mere "hundreds of millions" is less than penny ante to them.

Who is more likely to fund a campaign, an industry that has a trillion dollars at stake, or some random collection of lawyers who say wait, maybe if we believe the science, some time in the far distant future some laws might or might not get written that might or might not allow a new grounds for lawsuit? Oh, wait, we know the answer to that, because we already have the American Petroleum Institute memo laying out their campaign and asking for 2 million dollars in funding... for the first year.

Yes, that's right-- the API considered this so important that they could ask fossil fuel companies to contribute a whopping 0.0002% of their cash flow to deal with it.

Yes, in fact they were and they did, in the form of the American Petroleum Institute.

In a 1998 memo, they outlined their "action plan" for a campaign to cast doubt on climate science. Which they implemented pretty much as written.

(despite the fact that they had already-- in 1980-- identified climate warming due to carbon dioxide as a problem.)

(news article here.)

Did you read the nefarious plan? Here's what the plan lists as "Victory will be achieved when":

-Average citizens "understand(recognize) uncertainties in climate science, recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the "conventional wisdom".
-Media "understands"(recognizes) uncertainties in climate science
-Media coverage reflects balance on climate science and recognition of the validity of viewpoints that challenge the current "conventional wisdom"
-Industry senior leadership understands uncertainties in climate science, making them stronger ambassadors to those who shape climate policy
-Those promoting the Kyoto treaty on the basis of extant science appear to be out of touch with reality

Climate models, not back in 1998, now 20 years later and more advanced still have error margins in the global energy imbalance that are GREATER than the actual imbalance driving climate change(that is directly from the IPCC so no dismissing this as fringe stuff). Given this, it would seem that recognising 'uncertainties' is not casting 'doubt' on climate science, but in stead correctly understanding. You seem to come from a world view that climate science is a binary math proof type of problem. It simply is not, our global climate is insanely complex, and knowing we produce CO2 and knowing that CO2 is warming the planet is compatible with also knowing we have large uncertainties around how much warming how much CO2 will end up causing, let alone the even greater uncertainties around what impact that uncertain warming will lead to as well.

Wow, what a crazy story. I'd never heard of Eagle before, thanks for sharing, I just pulled up wth wikipedia page on them.

Your view of the world is 'interesting'. You think 'Big Oil' is a thing, like a group that holds meetings and makes decisions.

Yes, in fact they were and they did, in the form of the American Petroleum Institute.

In a 1998 memo, they outlined their "action plan" for a campaign to cast doubt on climate science. Which they implemented pretty much as written.

(despite the fact that they had already-- in 1980-- identified climate warming due to carbon dioxide as a problem.)

(news article here.)

They weren't ignored. And indeed, a lot of jobs were recovered after the GFC losses. But they've been declining steadily since 1980, so that's unlikely to change much soon.

As for "having nothing to lose", we've already seen how e.g. Trump's steel tariffs can actually damage local manufacturing by dramatically raising their costs, so I very much doubt that's true. The decline in those jobs might be slowed a little, but at the cost of making other sectors less competitive - and workers in construction and auto manufacturing are major parts of Trump's base too. And that's before we get into the impact of retaliatory tariffs on completely different sectors like farming.

Maybe they'd be profitable if they didn't pay them $300-500K. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/1...

Did you know that the average wages for someone in non-supervisory jobs has gone down under Trump?

Source please.

Have you seen the price of gasoline?

Gas price chart over presidencies
Spoiler alert: gas prices fluctuate quite a bit, and have not historically been tied to a president.

Know anyone who works at the Harley-Davidson plant in Wisconsin (I do)?

What's your point here - there are unintended consequences?
Nevermind the economy keeps outpacing estimates, unemployment is keep getting lower and hitting historical marks, business are investing a ton of money, etc.... LOOK AT HARLEY-DAVIDSON EVERYONE.
I dont like CNN, which is why I'm using them.

Did you know that only 4% of US workers got a pay raise since the Republicans passed their tax bill 6 months ago?

Source please.
Just curious - has your paycheck increased at all since the tax plan? Mine did. My co-workers' did (large financial institution). Friends' did. Family's did. Anecdotal though, of course.

the biggest things Trump has done have been unpopular with real Americans

Definition needed, please.

Correct; in fact, the Supreme Court has explicitly stated that "the police did not have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm". Even in the case of a restraining order.

I wish people would read that again - the police do not have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm.

You are responsible for your own protection. Unfortunately, too many people wish to eliminate the ability to be responsible, via draconian (and most likely unconstitutional, given the decisions of DC v Heller and McDonald v Chicago) laws prohibiting ownership of firearms, concealed carry of firearms or knives, and most other weapons. The Government has NO DUTY to protect you, and that same Government will effectively BAN you from owning any tool to provide for self-defense.

How about making any crime with a deadly weapon - firearm, knife, baseball bat, etc. - punishable by life in prison? Use a deadly weapon, get locked up for life. And then open up the ability of citizens to actually provide for their own protection? Nah, we can't have that because of irrational fear of inanimate objects. Better to simply continue to prevent law-abiding citizens from defending themselves, and having officers arrive after the crime and sort out what happened...

In 2015, the same CEO smugly announced a pledge of $300M to promote workplace diversity. You don't spend that kind of shareholder money on something so divorced from the bottom line unless you believe you're invincible. As the marketplace is showing Intel they aren't, and their competition--particularly the ones from Asia--never let things like "social justice" get in the way of winning.

Apple is going to have the same problem too. Tim Cook can talk all day about social issues, particularly gay ones, but apparently can't keep his eyes on the prize as CEO by balancing the entire Mac ecosystem with the iOS one. They haven't produced a genuine professional laptop in probably 2 years now, and now they're cementing their relationship with the "my laptop matches my bag" set by choosing ARM over more powerful CPUs and a 32-64GB of RAM spec for a $2500+ laptop.

Bottom line: "get woke, go broke." All your virtue-signaling a $1.50 won't buy you a latte at Starbucks and the fog of war doesn't care if your soldiers are perfectly sensitive to "women's rights" if they aren't as well-trained and armed as the other army.

Harry Potter is just one example of many that shows studios can harass fans with copyright law and experience almost no repercussions. Look at the link from 2001......did that stop people from being fans? They even sued one guy, took his idea, and made a movie from it. Was the movie popular? Yes, it was.

Studios don't care about this kind of negative publicity. Fans stay fans.

We'll see in a few years how Tesla does. But California's rules should help Tesla's solar panel and battery business.

The New York Times says California will require that all new homes have solar power, starting in 2020.

Also, a rate change that takes effect in 2019

will charge California customers based on the time of day they use electricity. So homeowners with energy-efficiency features — a battery in particular, allowing energy to be stored for when it is most efficiently used — will avoid higher costs.

"The Myth of the 'Southern Strategy'"

It's an easy story to believe, but this year two political scientists called it into question. In their book "The End of Southern Exceptionalism," Richard Johnston of the University of Pennsylvania and Byron Shafer of the University of Wisconsin argue that the shift in the South from Democratic to Republican was overwhelmingly a question not of race but of economic growth. In the postwar era, they note, the South transformed itself from a backward region to an engine of the national economy, giving rise to a sizable new wealthy suburban class. This class, not surprisingly, began to vote for the party that best represented its economic interests: the G.O.P. Working-class whites, however -- and here's the surprise -- even those in areas with large black populations, stayed loyal to the Democrats. (This was true until the 90s, when the nation as a whole turned rightward in Congressional voting.)

The two scholars support their claim with an extensive survey of election returns and voter surveys. To give just one example: in the 50s, among Southerners in the low-income tercile, 43 percent voted for Republican Presidential candidates, while in the high-income tercile, 53 percent voted Republican; by the 80s, those figures were 51 percent and 77 percent, respectively. Wealthy Southerners shifted rightward in droves but poorer ones didn't.

Why would immigrants be afraid of ICE? As an immigrant, you're supposed to carry your green card at all times.

Unless you were convicted of a misdemeanor charge 18 years ago or even just speaking Spanish.

> If you come to an official border crossing point, you will all remain together.

Incorrect.

=Smidge=

The key vote, 238 to 195, gave Mr. Reagan a third upset victory over the Democratic House majority on fiscal issues. The President won by virtue of the same coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats that brought him victory in May on the budget resolution and in June on the budget reconciliation bill.

You're right that the blame should not be placed solely on the president, but it doesn't seem as though the blame was swapped. This was a joint effort between the president and congress, with the president championing the cause.

The US have been experimenting on these sort of things for quite some time. They recently apologised for injecting Guatemalan detainees with STDs including syphilis https://www.nytimes.com/2010/1... One can only assume that this science has continued, but in a more clandestine manner.

To rebut the tyrant's advocate, I'll present the following:

No, family separation and minor detention is not required by law.

In practice, the children can be separated indefinitely (possibly permanently), since there is poor tracking of the parents and minors, with multiple poorly communicating government agencies involved. At least one case has had a mother deported separately from her son. Can you say with any certainty that a parent deported separately to Guatemala will be reunited with a child that was still detained by the US federal government within 20 days?

To pile injury upon injury, Border Patrol is making it difficult for asylum seekers to declare themselves in ports, turning them away from legal entry. (I'm not 100% on the intercept as a source, here is their story and description of the practice). As an unfliching proponent of adherence to the law, an honest appraisal of this behavior by the border control arms of the US government may induce discomfort or cognitive dissonance, if a capability for dissonance remains present.

Breitbart is a proponent of this sort of behavior, and them promoting a line of propaganda to reinforce denial of the true consequences of their goals is unfortunately expected. Denial is a key component of atrocity. Holocaust denial is not an isolated phenomena, denial goes hand and hand with ethnic cleansing and genocidal movements in general. It may seem hyperbolic to discuss this particular issue using such terminology, but if you read through the warning signs and look to the dehumanizing rhetoric being used now, such as Trump saying these migrants are trying to "infest" us, you might understand why many, myself included, are starting to freak out.

Most of those are actually false (1,4,6) or at best distorted. This is not surprising as Breitbart is an awful source of any news and Steve Bannon basically helped dictate this immigration policy.

1. He's enforcing the most draconian option. They claim the kids are unaccompanied but by prosecuting the adults criminally instead of civilly -- they obviously have that right -- they can isolate both the parents and the kids. This is even happening to people trying to claim asylum at ports of entry.
2. Many do. The vast majority arrive with an adult. The trafickers posing as a family account for .61% of kids.
3. Many, if not all, of these children have been apart from their parents for more than 20 days. Even a cursory google shows this is heinously out of context.
4. This is just unmitigated bullshit. It's child abuse (per pediatricians AND psychiatrists) and nothing DHS says has been independently verified. Either way being separated from family and put in a detention center is certainly not GOOD treatment
5. People are generally not jailed for misdemeanors. Children certainly aren't seized and they get preference in their bail hearing if they are the sole caregiver.
6. This is just unmitigated bullshit. He kept families together.
7. Ignoring the fact that DHS has started turning people away from ports of entry, yes they are actively being turned away and sometimes seized. This is, once again, easily findable via basic google. Some actual sources WITH SOURCES!
https://www.texasmonthly.com/p...
https://www.npr.org/2018/06/19...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...

Even if you don't like NYT or NPR, there are other outlets that report it as well, even websites like Snopes and politifact. Basically that was a shit post for covering an awful practice and an even bigger shit post because it was so laughably bad and fake,.

Most of those are actually false (1,4,6) or at best distorted. This is not surprising as Breitbart is an awful source of any news and Steve Bannon basically helped dictate this immigration policy.

1. He's enforcing the most draconian option. They claim the kids are unaccompanied but by prosecuting the adults criminally instead of civilly -- they obviously have that right -- they can isolate both the parents and the kids. This is even happening to people trying to claim asylum at ports of entry.
2. Many do. The vast majority arrive with an adult. The trafickers posing as a family account for .61% of kids.
3. Many, if not all, of these children have been apart from their parents for more than 20 days. Even a cursory google shows this is heinously out of context.
4. This is just unmitigated bullshit. It's child abuse (per pediatricians AND psychiatrists) and nothing DHS says has been independently verified. Either way being separated from family and put in a detention center is certainly not GOOD treatment
5. People are generally not jailed for misdemeanors. Children certainly aren't seized and they get preference in their bail hearing if they are the sole caregiver.
6. This is just unmitigated bullshit. He kept families together.
7. Ignoring the fact that DHS has started turning people away from ports of entry, yes they are actively being turned away and sometimes seized. This is, once again, easily findable via basic google. Some actual sources WITH SOURCES!
https://www.texasmonthly.com/p...
https://www.npr.org/2018/06/19...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...

Even if you don't like NYT or NPR, there are other outlets that report it as well, even websites like Snopes and politifact. Basically that was a shit post for covering an awful practice and an even bigger shit post because it was so laughably bad and fake,.

Have you been following the news about the selective enrollment schools in New York? Asian groups are up in arms about attempts to diversify the schools by forcing them to set aside seats for certain groups.

Asian Groups See Bias in Plan to Diversify New York's Elite Schools

"The test is the most unbiased way to get into a school," said Peter Koo, a city councilman whose district includes Flushing, Queens, on Tuesday. "It doesn't require an interview. It doesn't require a resume. It doesn't even require connections. The mayor's son just graduated from Brooklyn Tech and got into Yale. Now he wants to stop this and build a barrier to Asian-Americans -- especially our children."

The schools, which admit students based on a single test, look starkly different from the school system overall. While black and Hispanic students represent nearly 70 percent of public school students, they make up just 10 percent of students at the specialized high schools, a vast underrepresentation that has long been considered an injustice and a symbol of the city's extreme school segregation.

Mayor Bill de Blasio offered a two-pronged plan on Saturday to address this, first by setting aside 20 percent of the seats at each of the specialized schools for students from high-poverty schools -- which tend to have a high share of black and Hispanic students -- who score just below the cutoff score.

But his administration's ultimate goal, he said, is to eliminate the test entirely.

If you want to make people equal it's much easier to knock some down than it is to build the others up.

Asian americans, 6% of the population, are at 36% at Google.

Harvard faced the same "Asians have higher scores than any other race" problem, tried to address it with "personality" scores, got sued.

It is interesting to note that Asian-American SAT scores improved by 54 points since 2006, while for other races they dropped (for whites only modestly, by 6 points);
source

Nah. You need to pay more attention to the news.

Ivanka Trump Wins China Trademarks, Then Her Father Vows to Save ZTE
Trump helps sanctioned Chinese phone maker after China delivers a big loan to a Trump project

They're not keeping children in "concentration camps" on the southern border. Geeze, you people are self-parody.

They are absolutely keeping children in concentration camps.

First, maybe we should establish a definition of "concentration camp"" According to Merriam-Webster, a concentration camp is, "a camp where persons (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, or refugees) are detained or confined"

https://www.merriam-webster.co...

Next, we should establish that Trump is indeed keeping children in such places [note: I purposely only include foreign news sources for this, so you can't claim some local political bias]

https://news.sky.com/story/hun...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...

https://www.standard.co.uk/new...

And when did this new policy of indefinite detention of children start? May of 2018.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...

Further, since people who present at a port of entry requesting asylum have broken no US laws, the Trump Administration is separating children from parents who have done nothing wrong and holding them in concentration camps just to exert political pressure on his opponents.

https://www.vanityfair.com/new...

I read here and there about parasite therapy for Crohn's for many years. I keep expecting to hear it is being used but for various reasons still in trials.

Ummm, no sweetie. Race is a social construct which doesn't exist anyway.

t. Shaun King

Not for lack of trying. Remember, kids: no amount of actual left-wing violence will ever stop the pearl-clutching over potential right-wing violence.

Twitter to Test Doubling Tweet Length to 280 Characters

We are using length as an excuse? How about companies fire the fuckup and put someone competent in charge. What with record low unemployment and all, I'm pretty sure you will find better candidates to fill your positions!

And yet, our noble MSM is reporting only that the study was retracted, comparing it to 50-ish other studies that were similarly flawed.

Did you read the links? The NPR link says basically what you're saying here: the diet still has good evidence behind it, but they softened the language in the conclusion as a result of this. The Quartz article is more one-sided, but... are you really calling Quartz "MSM"?

Let's see... Here's the New York Times coverage. I'll quote:

That Huge Mediterranean Diet Study Was Flawed. But Was It Wrong?
A highly publicized trial in Spain found that the Mediterranean diet protects against heart disease. Now the original work has been retracted and re-analyzed, with the same result.

The next link from my search is USA Today, I'll quote:

He stressed this flaw only affected a small part of the trial (about 10 percent of participants) and that the conclusions remain the same: A Mediterranean diet can decrease risk of heart attacks and strokes by about 30 percent among those who are at high risk of developing cardiovascular disease.

So the answer to your exercise appears to be: Yes, the MSM are responsible journalists and the random news blog is not.

I wonder if Eric Schmidt left because of:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/0...

A .22 to the head at close range can also fail to penetrate the skull, and simply cause a minor concussion; it's less about what caliber, and more about the type of round.

This sounds like a perfect place to exile our wanna-be dictator to. I like it.

More Mueller handiwork:

Scientist Is Paid Millions by U.S. in Anthrax Suit

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department announced Friday that it would pay $4.6 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Steven J. Hatfill, a former Army biodefense researcher intensively investigated as a “person of interest” in the deadly anthrax letters of 2001.

The settlement, consisting of $2.825 million in cash and an annuity paying Dr. Hatfill $150,000 a year for 20 years, brings to an end a five-year legal battle that had recently threatened a reporter with large fines for declining to name sources she said she did not recall.

Dr. Hatfill, who worked at the Army’s laboratory at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md., in the late 1990s, was the subject of a flood of news media coverage beginning in mid-2002, after television cameras showed Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in biohazard suits searching his apartment near the Army base. He was later named a “person of interest” in the case by then Attorney General John Ashcroft, speaking on national television.

In a news conference in August 2002, Dr. Hatfill tearfully denied that he had anything to do with the anthrax letters and said irresponsible news media coverage based on government leaks had destroyed his reputation.

Dr. Hatfill’s lawsuit, filed in 2003, accused F.B.I. agents and Justice Department officials involved in the criminal investigation of the anthrax mailings of leaking information about him to the news media in violation of the Privacy Act. In order to prove their case, his lawyers took depositions from key F.B.I. investigators, senior officials and a number of reporters who had covered the investigation.

...

How much money do you think Manafort is going to wind up collecting due to Mueller's incompetence?

You are lying. She sent classified emails, including TOP SECRET ones from other agencies.

Sending classified materials over an classified connection was illegal, and she knew it (she signed off on her NDA, employment contract, and training that said so).

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/0... https://www.msn.com/en-us/news...

You are lying. She sent classified emails, including TOP SECRET ones from other agencies.

Sending classified materials over an classified connection was illegal, and she knew it (she signed off on her NDA, employment contract, and training that said so).

Wrong way around. Thats like saying the pencil should be patented while the design you draw with it is not.

No, he defined "copy-pasted genetic sequences" as including the combination of the marine gene with a plant. The combination of the marine gene with the plant is the design, not the pencil. The patentability of genetically modified organisms was settled 30 years ago, if not even earlier when considering bacteria (1980) and conventionally bred crop plants (1930).

You shouldn't be able to patent the gene but if you do something and make a different product with it, such as a omega 3 grape, then that is what you patent

A grapeseed or canola plant that incorporates a marine gene to produce omega-3 fatty acids (EPA and DHA) is the different product, and is exactly what I said would be patentable.

Then I guess I misunderstood you, sorry about that, as you were.

Twisting arms is something Dirty Donald might be able to do against small building contractors, but it doesn't seem to be getting him (and more importantly: the US) any results on the world stage.

Oh really?

Yes, really.

The fundamental trade issue between the US and China on is _not_ tariffs.

Instead it's China's routine use of state interference (subsidies, dumping, wholesale IP theft, espionage targeted at overseas military projects, tarif barriers, non-tarif barriers, requirements to deposit IP and source code for those wishing to open a plant in China, installation of a Chinese "partner", etc.) to ensure that China grows firms that suck in global state-of-the-art knowhow, build a local logistics chain, and as a result are globally competitive. Followed by said firms wiping the floor with overseas competitors.

See e.g. here: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...

Of course it all depends on your negotiation objective. If your negotiation objective is to ensure a level playing field, then Dirty Donald's antics so far have failed miserably.

If your objective is to engage in some political window-dressing (like opening up the Chinese car market a little bit so that Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes, Toyota, Honda, Mitsubishi and, yes, Ford and GM too, can duke it out there) in order to sucker voters into misinterpreting the meaning of what the results achieved so far, then his antics are a thundering success of course.

So: 10/10 for political window dressing and 1/8 for actual achievement. Yup, Sounds like a certain real-estate dealer we all know.

Wrong way around. Thats like saying the pencil should be patented while the design you draw with it is not.

No, he defined "copy-pasted genetic sequences" as including the combination of the marine gene with a plant. The combination of the marine gene with the plant is the design, not the pencil. The patentability of genetically modified organisms was settled 30 years ago, if not even earlier when considering bacteria (1980) and conventionally bred crop plants (1930).

You shouldn't be able to patent the gene but if you do something and make a different product with it, such as a omega 3 grape, then that is what you patent

A grapeseed or canola plant that incorporates a marine gene to produce omega-3 fatty acids (EPA and DHA) is the different product, and is exactly what I said would be patentable.

How about the UK with ANPR [wikipedia.org] - not just the UK, there are a lot of placed, even here in Canada, with ANPR now but not like the UK has.

I would say that those efforts do not compare equally with Chinese systems in either scale or scope. In China the surveillance is both more pervasive and invasive of liberty than it is even in the UK or Canada.

How about the NSA tapping into every internet backbone in the world?

In China they not only tap the backbones, but they automatically censor content and block VPN and other encrypted connections too. There's no automatic government mandated censoring in the United States and VPN connections still work here. The NSA may be able to break some encrypted communications but probably not all of them and wholesale blocking is not yet a thing in the United States. Incidentally, this is why everyone should use HTTPS and VPN for everything. At the very least it would force the NSA to choose their targets and consider more carefully how they spend their limited decryption resources.

We (read every resident of a Western democracy) have been living in the kind of a surveillance state for the last decade

But rarely like what goes on everyday in China, even for ordinary citizens. For example, the Chinese are now deploying AI connected cameras to automatically identify people and vehicles and cross reference with databases of all known residents on a more or less continuous basis. These cameras and other sensors feed a sophisticated network of servers, databases and police handheld devices to enable persistent and aggressive targeting of the ethnic Uighur minority in the western region of Xinjiang. These new efforts by China appear to be much more systematic and comprehensive than any comparable system here in the west and the Chinese are keen on improving the technology still further and deploying it throughout China. In the long run they plan to connect these systems with their emerging "social credit" system whereby every minor transgression, like jaywalking or failure to pay your utility bill on time, follows you around everywhere permanently and prevents you from doing ordinary things like riding the train, buying a plane ticket or even having a bank account in some cases and since having friends with poor "social credit" lowers your score too, your friends are incentivized to abandon you at the first sign of trouble. Tell me, when will they be rolling out these measures in the UK?

I don't recall making any mention of race, in fact I didn't even say anything about the past administration other than to simply present links of comments by your liberal gods that show the massive hypocrisy of your side. You all cheered and agreed with what they said then but now you're the ones that are horrifying and whining and you refuse to admit it. But why is it anytime someone says anything about the worst President to ever occupy the Oval office you immediately jump to race? How do you even know what my race is? Typical leftist playbook, don't address the facts, instead call names.

But seriously "ran America better"? Did the worst economic recovery in history show you that? Did the record number of people on food stamps show you that? Or maybe it was when the Obama administration altered the formula for determining the unemployment number to drop all of those who stopped looking, while today even according to the NYT since Trump's has reversed or halted many of Obama's policies we're at statistically 0 unemployment.

Oh and of course there's always the signature ACA legislation where if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor and how they admitted to having lied to stupid Americans to get it passed. And now of course we see that there really is no affordable in the ACA, but that rates are skyrocketing and it is taking the deficit with it.

Please list the accomplishments of which you speak. Considering he was in office for 8 years and Trump has only been in office 500 days I'm sure you can find many more instances of his successes than the current President.

And I won't even get started on foreign policy like Libya, Afghanistan, Iran, etc.

As I understand it, it was backlash from the discovery that the Obama campaign (among others) were able to access your data simply because a friend signed up that CAUSED the rule change that then made Cambridge Analytica doing the same thing to be against the rules. So the Obama campaign was allowed access under the 2012 rules, but then the rules were changed in 2015 due to public outcry, meaning that by 2016 Cambridge Analytica's identical use of the data was against the rules.

That's revisionist bullshit.

There was no backlash/outcry about the Obama campaign's use of Facebook data.

On the contrary, it was celebrated:

Data You Can Believe In

The Obama Campaign’s Digital Masterminds Cash In

Earlier this year, senior members of President Barack Obama’s campaign team took a trip to Las Vegas. Nevada holds a special place in Obama-wonk lore as the place where his monthslong strategy of defeating Hillary Clinton by slowly and surely amassing delegates emerged. But the operatives were not there in March for any political reason. They were there to make money — specifically to land what they hoped would be the first corporate client for their new advertising business, Analytics Media Group (A.M.G.). Its bland name obscures its relatively grand promise: to deliver to commercial advertisers some of the Obama campaign’s secret, technologically advanced formulas for reaching voters.

...

The "outrage" was manufactured by the same media that fawned over Obama's use of the same data - but only because the "wrong" guy won.

That actually is is a much bigger problem, and Google/Waymo and other researcher have concluded there is no safe way to implement a self driving car if humans have to supervise it and be able to take over in a split second (as per Tesla's fine print) when it does something wrong, such as try to kill you by driving into a concrete median:
Robot Cars Can’t Count on Us in an Emergency https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

Elon got it wrong, self driving is a separate problem and you can't get there incrementally by increasing the level of autonomy (think wanting to go to the moon - going farther and farther by car will never get you there):
People who paid Tesla $3,000 for full self-driving might be out of luck https://arstechnica.com/cars/2...

Thats... not true. The CIA actually bought a bunch of WMDs from Iraq, and there are plenty of reports of US soldiers getting sick or injured from being around them. Even if it wasn't true (which, it was. There was even a NY Times article on it) Saddam himself wanted the world to believe he did. I guess this is just revisionist history at its finest.

And he did the same last month
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...

don't talk to me about bailing out the Banks.

The US Government is either maliciously corrupt or COMPLETE FUCKING IDIOTS.

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/0...

Sweden bailed out their banks but ALSO gave them a set of ADAMANTIUM HANDCUFFS along with the bailout.

Finland DID NOT bail out their banks, and sure it SUCKED BADLY for a few years, but their financial system is BETTER AND STRONGER as a result.

Only USA threw billions of dollars into a blackhole and told the taxpayers "there is no other way".

In what universe does it make sense to tell THE NATIONAL FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS that NO MATTER how badly they DELIBERATELY FUCK EVERYTHING UP, there are LITERALLY zero negative repercussions.

Do you have any examples (specific quotations would be awesome but I think that might be asking too much) of bad science advice people have given with regards to Korea?

Well the scientists working with intelligence agencies have been wrong about the speed at which North Korean could develop nuclear weapons and delivery technology basically forever - from the most recent example:

" At the start of Donald Trump's presidency, American intelligence agencies told the new administration that while North Korea had built the bomb, there was still ample time - upward of four years - to slow or stop its development of a missile capable of hitting an American city with a nuclear warhead."

But this kind of terrible under-estimation goes back decades.

I defy anyone to claim that Kim Jong-un is harder to work with than the upper echelons of the Teamsters.

One last point - the very LAST person you want to bring to a nuclear disarmament party is a nuclear weapons expert, that just screams you are not truly serious about them getting rid of nuclear weapons and they would act accordingly.

Um your comparing Kim Jong-un to a labor union leader? Really? They don't have labor unions in north korea. If you don't do what the party wants, you go to prison, and likely your family too.

A nuclear weapons expert could explain what proposals would _really_ mean, making it less likely to have a bad proposal ratified. Not bringing one, just means you don't care about substance, and are just in this for a publicity stunt. Hell Trump may even know and expect that Kim-Jong-un is going to agree to some wonderful treaty to get sanctions lifted. It will likely be on the surface and they will keep going quietly in the background, just like they did before. A nuclear weapons expert could help you structure treaty terms to make it easier to detect fraud, much like the Iran deal did, that Trump blasted like an idiot. Hell they blasted Clinton for decades after the North went back on its words about the Agreed Framework.

Don't get me wrong I hope it works, but most likely the North isn't going to keep their word. There is far too much experience in the past to expect them to. Of course Trump might use the result to help him win reelection, and might even actively try to hide any intelligence to the contrary right along with his tax returns and all the rest. As long as the lie is discovered too late to matter. He doesn't care.

Even if I bought your crazy argument, it would make no sense not to have someone employed in that position, and for Trump not to have spent a lot of time getting up to speed on the details of the technology. Only a complete fucking idiot negotiates without some understanding of the actual practical details, lest they get totally screwed.

As far as I'm concerned Donald J. Trump is effectively an actual agent of the Russian government. Trump tries to destroy the west. His actions really only make sense if you assume that. You don't do your best to destroy the alliances you need in a nuclear armed world if you actually care about your country, but it is quite clear that Donald J. Trump does not do so.

Now his people just said their is a special place in hell for the leader of Canada. It is insane. Do we need a wall there too? Hell if this keeps up Canada may build one. Trump asked, "What do you have to lose?" Well you have your answers.

1. ) A nuclear war, once we have no allies to help us. If there is a threat bigger than North Korea/Russia and all the rest it is America Alone, or worse much of the world together against us. That is the path we are on.
2.) Our children's future, once the planet heats up and becomes too toxic. Thank you Scott Pruitt.
3.) Our children's future, once the bills become due.
4.) Truth itself. Seriously, what happened to a country we could be proud of. Can you see a new superman movie where superman proclaims that he is proud to defend truth, justice, and the American way? The current American way is lie, obscure, distract, use the system to protect your friends while also using it to hurt your enemies.

And? What facts do you have to show the election was not as stated in my link?

Rooster, you make it too easy.

https://www.rawstory.com/news/...

https://gizmodo.com/5825014/ho...

https://www.vanityfair.com/new...

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/1...

https://www.motherjones.com/me...

There. I've given you the truth. Do what you will.