Slashdot Mirror

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

When 'Liking' a Brand Online Voids the Right to Sue — 16 April 2014

Might downloading a 50-cent coupon for Cheerios cost you legal rights?

General Mills, the maker of cereals like Cheerios and Chex as well as brands like Bisquick and Betty Crocker, has quietly added language to its website to alert consumers that they give up their right to sue the company if they download coupons, "join" it in online communities like Facebook, enter a company-sponsored sweepstakes or contest or interact with it in a variety of other ways.

Instead, anyone who has received anything that could be construed as a benefit and who then has a dispute with the company over its products will have to use informal negotiation via email or go through arbitration to seek relief, according to the new terms posted on its site.

It's not the first time we've been taxed unreasonably for touching a toe to the yellow brick road, Dorothy.

General Mills Kansas City flour plant likely behind E. coli outbreak — 1 June 2016

Flour produced at a General Mills Inc plant in Kansas City, Missouri, was probably the source of an E. coli outbreak that has sickened 38 people across 20 states, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday.

Ten people have been hospitalized in the outbreak, the CDC said.

Though for our own safety, we really have to stop meeting like this.

should be this Con Artist.

The SEC and CFTC need to investigate Trump et al.'s insider trading given the daily flow of his insane tweets, statements, and brainfarts.

Yours In Finance,
K. Trout

You most certainly enjoy many benefits of taxation; you just don't want to pony up your contribution.

This is a completely bogus and logically-flawed argument.

If the money is already confiscated from me against my will, I may as well partake of whatever they are spent on. This does not make my opposition to the confiscation in any way invalid or immoral.

But I do find it curious, how people openly arguing against the citizens' privacy can get as highly-moderated on Slashdot as the pro-taxers... FBI searching for a dead terrorist's accomplices? Booo, down with government overreach!! IRS on a fishing expedition through bitcoin transactions? Yeah, give us more!

https://www.nytimes.com/intera...

Reagan and Bush Sr. scaled the budget near 26bln. Clinton scaled it back down to about 21bln. G.W.Bush kept it at 22-23bln. Obama scaled it down to below 20bln, with 2013 seeing it at about 18bln, lowest since Kennedy. Trump's first year has it higher than Obama's average.

Your "logic" fails a basic understanding of shipping lanes and navy ship procedures, precautions and general practice. The equivalent analogy is 4 car accidents in a few months where each vehicle is navigated by multiple professionals where that is their sole job, in addition to computers and radar that sees for hundreds of miles in all directions. Furthermore, while under way (i.e. not in a harbor) the equivalent analogy is that the "roads" are hundreds if not thousands of miles wide and there are millions of miles of "road" and there are well under a million vehicles in total (not the 263,000,000 registered cars in the US) all of which are operated by professionals responsible for multi-million dollar vehicles.

So lets recount the errors in your analogy:
-Each ship has multiple professional "drivers" to guide the ship (not a single person with a few dozen hours of training like cars)
-Each naval ship has active radar that can see to the horizon to avoid other ships long before they even get close.
-Each naval ship has computer systems as well as humans that monitor their defensive "sphere" and track and alert to anything inside that sphere.
-There are fewer that 1,000,000 large ships in the Pacific, whereas there are 263x more cars in use in the US.
-The "roads" used by ships are hundreds of miles wide (shipping lanes).
-The "roads" used by ships cover 70% of the earths surface. Assuming less than 1M large ships, if we assume equal distribution, each ship has roughly 200 square miles to it'self. Even without equal distribution, ships on the high sea typically stay thousands of meters apart.

All of these factors that you ignored or are ignorant of lead to massively reduce the chances of an accidental T-bone collision to near zero chances (i.e. 0.0001% chance). If you review the list of historical accidental collisions, out of the 7 collisions from 1989-2015 (26 years) 3 accidental collisions involve submarines which are inherently invisible to ships and themselves struggle to avoid collision inside harbors where traffic is heavy and their maneuverability is limited. Nearly all of the remaining collisions were either with small vessels some of which did not even have a radio or during exercises (refueling/resupply/training) where the ships were intentionally in close proximity and sustained broadside contact (not a collision as we have recently seen). https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

Zero collisions involved T-bone collisions on the high seas. Now we have seen the John McCain, the Fitzgerald, the Lake Champlain all T-boned by other large ships in less than 3 months.

Zero collisions in the prior 26 years involved massive commercial transport ships. The most recent two collisions have both been with massive transports which rammed into the naval vessels mid ship.

To sum it up for you: Zero of the 4 naval surface ship collisions in the last 26 YEARS have been with large commercial ships, zero of the collisions have been T-bone collisions and now suddenly we have had 3 in less than 3 months in a single region of the world. I guess to the America haters that is a coincidence. To those of us with a brain it is something else.

This scandal is reaching into upper management and threatens the entire German economy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

I thought most of Europe was operating from a VAT tax, and yet several EU countries are complaining that several tech companies are avoiding taxes?

Examples:
https://9to5mac.com/2017/07/04...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

It seems to me that even if you introduce a VAT tax, that the government can't resist other forms of taxation as well. A VAT tax just becomes a second tax, and the complaints continue. I would personally like to see a switch to a consumption-based VAT tax if all other forms of taxation could be eliminated, however, the that sort of thing probably will never happen.

If I moved to where my job is I'd need a 500% raise to afford a mortgage or the rent.

The high property values are a result of government imposed artificial scarcity. Relatively rich landowners are using the government to enforce high rents and property prices on people that are much less wealthy. Instead of taxing the rich more, maybe we should just reduce their unfair subsidies.

How Zoning Laws Exacerbate Inequality
Zoning as opportunity hoarding
How Anti-Growth Sentiment Thwarts Equality

There's a book on my reading list that I haven't read yet (pay attention, trolls), about the history of shipping containers: "Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate" by Rose George. The New York Times gave it a good review when it first came out, mentioning that the author traveled on a Maersk ship to research the book.

In related news, autonomous ships will soon become a reality. More targets for hackers.

  http://spectrum.ieee.org/transportation/marine/forget-autonomous-cars-autonomous-ships-are-almost-here

They are basically autonoumous right now. A half-a-mile long ship carrying a billion dollar worth of goods is typicall manned by three people, the captain, the engineer and the cook. An autonomous sailing ship could get rid of those people.

An autonomous sailing ship could get rid of ONE those people

There's a book on my reading list that I haven't read yet (pay attention, trolls), about the history of shipping containers: "Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate" by Rose George. The New York Times gave it a good review when it first came out, mentioning that the author traveled on a Maersk ship to research the book.

In related news, autonomous ships will soon become a reality. More targets for hackers.
  http://spectrum.ieee.org/transportation/marine/forget-autonomous-cars-autonomous-ships-are-almost-here

They are basically autonoumous right now. A half-a-mile long ship carrying a billion dollar worth of goods is typicall manned by three people, the captain, the engineer and the cook. An autonomous sailing ship could get rid of those people.

And nuclear power has been estimated to have saved 1.8 million lives, but it doesn't stop the anti-nuclear folks from complaining about the horrible subsidy of government-underwritten insurance (which hasn't actually cost us anything).

By the way, you want to take renewables-enthusiasts with a grain of salt.

There's a book on my reading list that I haven't read yet (pay attention, trolls), about the history of shipping containers: "Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate" by Rose George. The New York Times gave it a good review when it first came out, mentioning that the author traveled on a Maersk ship to research the book.

In related news, autonomous ships will soon become a reality. More targets for hackers.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/transportation/marine/forget-autonomous-cars-autonomous-ships-are-almost-here

When's the last time overall US population dropped again? Oh, right.

Way to ignore the argument, numbnuts. The US dropped below static replacement fertility in 1972. All population growth since then has been due to increasing lifespan (whoops, that's going away), and immigration.

Now what happens after you build a fortress wall (wasting tens of billions of dollars) and drop legal immigration to 50,000/yr? Oh yeah, a population drop! We're already at 0.7%/yr and falling, and we haven't even implemented Trump's immigration control dreams yet.

"Have you actually thought about the social and economic circumstances of depopulating midwestern cities and towns, or is that beyond your attention horizon, living in California as you are?"

Answer the question. Oh right, you can't.

The facts don't matter, especially not to the media.

There are many fact checking websites which provide unbiased data regarding the truthfulness of our political leaders. Let's examine a few. Keep in mind that they are comparing 8 years of Obama's presidency to 100+ days of Trump.

A search of Snopes.com articles concerning Barack Obama (329) vs Donald Trump (865).

Politifact.com summary of Barack Obama vs Donald Trump. The two graphs are very informative.

FactCheck.org summary of Obama's Whoppers vs Trump's Whoppers.

While none of these sites gave Barack Obama a free ride, FactCheck.org declared Donald Trump the King of Whoppers. I think that Burger King has a trademark infringement case here.

If you dismiss these sites as biased, or blame the mainstream media for twisting the facts, then the problem is probably you. You have let the semantic web tailor an experience that feeds you all of the misinformation (alternative facts) that aligns with your world view. As such, changing your paradigm would be uncomfortable, so you double-down on all of the stories that have been proven false (Pizzagate, Seth Rich's murder, etc...). If these stories rile you up, then the objective is met. The whole point is to stir up the crazies.

As such, you need to continually verify that you are not being brainwashed by either the right or the left. You need to wait-out sensational stories until they are fully vetted. You need to focus on facts, not bluster on with opinions.

Man Behind Anti-Islam Video Gets Prison Term

The reason they got there was because they felt disenfranchised and oppressed in their own country PRIOR to all that mess.
I know I can totally ignore all their BS into their own irrelevance until they actually become a threat. However this did nothing other than harden their resolve, they will adapt and they even got TONS of free media coverage to boot.

God, you SJWs are really something you know that? I don't care about their resolve. And they DESERVE tons of media coverage because it's about time Americans knew what kind of poison we've got in our national veins.

You don't defeat Nazis by appeasing them. It has never worked. In fact, appeasing these kinds of fascist movements has only made the promise work. This kind of movement has to be killed in the crib. Excised.

Did you see the "3%" alt-right jackoff who tried to set off a bomb in Oklahoma City this week? Here's what he wrote in his texts to what turned out to be an FBI informant:

“I’m out for blood,” Mr. Varnell wrote in one text message to a confidential informant who cooperated with the authorities, according to the affidavit, which was written by an F.B.I. special agent. “When militias start getting formed I’m going after government officials when I have a team,” he wrote. The complaint did not name the informant.

In another text message, Mr. Varnell wrote: “I think I’m going to go with what the okc bomber used. Diesel and anhydrous ammonia.” He was referring to Timothy J. McVeigh, who was executed for the Oklahoma City bombing. Mr. McVeigh and a co-conspirator, Terry L. Nichols, built a giant fertilizer bomb using ammonium nitrate and racing fuel as their primary ingredients. Mr. Varnell later told the informant to get him ammonium nitrate, adding, “That’s all I need,”

He thought he was firing the detonator with his cell phone but the FBI was waiting for him.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

This was not a "lone wolf". This was a guy from the same group of jackoffs that was marching in Charlottesville. They want to kill. This is the kind of evil we're talking about here. You don't allow that kind of evil a platform. You don't give them the legitimacy of a URL.

There's a book on my reading list that I haven't read yet (pay attention, trolls), about the history of shipping containers: "Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate" by Rose George. The New York Times gave it a good review when it first came out, mentioning that the author traveled on a Maersk ship to research the book.

Yes, but this assumes the businesses that saved that $1 in wages aren't going to spend it on something else. Paying a higher minimum wage doesn't magically create additional money. You don't think businesses or rich people just hoard piles of money like dragons with gold do you?

Actually, that is exactly what they are doing:

Why Are Corporations Hoarding Trillions? Jan, 2016: "This strange vogue for corporate hoarding seems to have begun around the turn of the millennium. General Motors is perhaps the most extreme: It now holds nearly half its value in cash. Apple holds more than a third. These numbers are maddening on their face. If the companies spent their savings, rather than hoarding them, the economy would instantly grow, and we would most likely see more jobs with better pay. In the 1990s, when companies saved far less of their profits, they built new factories, bought new buildings. In part because of all that corporate spending, the 1990s were a period of low unemployment and high growth. Remarkably, the United States government was able to tax all that productive corporate behavior so much that it came close to paying off all its debts for the first time in 160 years."

US companies are hoarding $2.5 trillion in cash overseas Sept, 2016: "American companies are holding $2.5 trillion abroad, an increase of nearly 20 percent over the past two years, according to the latest calculations from forecaster Capital Economics. The total is equivalent to nearly 14 percent of total U.S. gross domestic product."

Announcement: Moody's: US corporate cash pile, led by tech sector, to grow to $1.77 trillion by end of 2016: "New York, November 03, 2016 -- US non-financial companies rated by Moody's will increase their cash holdings to $1.77 trillion by the end of the year, from $1.68 trillion at the end of 2015, Moody's Investors Services says in a report."

Let's not forget about the real problem: leftist nutjob trying to rewrite history by tearing down confederate statue.

Don't Confuse History with Monuments:

There is a crucial difference between leaders like Washington and Jefferson, imperfect men who helped create the United States, Ms. Gordon-Reed said, and Confederate generals like Jackson and Lee, whose main historical significance is that they took up arms against it. The comparison, she added, also “misapprehends the moral problem with the Confederacy.”

“This is not about the personality of an individual and his or her flaws,” she said. “This is about men who organized a system of government to maintain a system of slavery and to destroy the American union.”

As for the idea of erasing history, it’s a possibility most scholars do not take lightly. But James Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association, said that Mr. Trump’s comments failed to recognize the difference between history and memory, which is always shifting.

When you alter monuments, “you’re not changing history,” he said. “You’re changing how we remember history.”

Some critics of Confederate monuments have called for them to be moved to museums, rather than destroyed, or even left in place and reinterpreted, to explain the context in which they were created. Mr. Grossman noted that most Confederate monuments were constructed in two periods: the 1890s, as Jim Crow was being established, and in the 1950s, during a period of mass Southern resistance to the civil rights movement.

“We would not want to whitewash our history by pretending that Jim Crow and disenfranchisement or massive resistance to the civil rights movement never happened,” he said. “That is the part of our history that these monuments testify to.”

“The amazing thing is that the president is doing more to endanger historical monuments than most of the protesters,” he said. “The alt-right is producing a world where there is more pressure to remove monuments, rather than less.”

Also, it seems like many of these Confederate statues glorify traitors and treason - not heritage.

This NY Times article, quotes Trump's tweet:

Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both. Thank you all! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Aug. 16, 2017

But I'm more inclined to believe that Trump is disbanding the councils to avoid being embarrassed by the publicity of the people on those councils quitting. On the other hand, they don't seem to be really doing anything productive anyway:

Moreover, the panels have not been seen to be particularly effective. After a few high profile events for the groups early in the Mr. Trump’s presidency, there have been few meetings since, and none more are planned.

“So far they haven’t done much,” Ms. Admati said. “They had a few meetings with a bunch of fanfare, but it was more symbolic than anything else.”

Perhaps their intended purpose was simply to make Trump look good and the councils haven't achieved that. Certainly people quitting them en-mass doesn't help that effort either.

This is, however, a clear warning of how unpopular views are readily suppressed. It's not clear to me what the best answer is.

There is no clear answer. But as a metric, We can compare The activities of the White Supremacists and Neo Nazis to other groups.

Bastille day celebration with a terrorist driving a truck through it. 84 people killed. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/0...

Man drives into crow of people in Israel, killing one http://www.timesofisrael.com/d...

Man tries to drive a car through a crowd in Belgium https://themuslimissue.wordpre...

How ramming cars into crowds became a major terror tactic (London attack) https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Another attack in Stockholm https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

Attack in Heidelberg http://www.nbcnews.com/news/wo... Isreal again. http://www.westernjournalism.c...

London again: http://www.dw.com/en/terrorist...

And that is just some of them.

So what we have here is a tactic used by terrorists. Pick a crowd, and play Bowling for Humans. Looks like the Bastille Day guy has the highest score so far. This is pretty obviously Terrorism, and the only people who support it is likewise terrorists and their supporters.

So we have a group of people who support supremacy of one race over another - That would be the Klan. They have a history of violence and murder.

We have Neo-Nazis. Another group of people that support the National Socialist movement and all that entails. These two groups dovetail rather nicely together.

Then we have a member of the second group who runs his car through a crowd of people in Virginia.

It all fits. I don't negotiate with terrorists, nor do I wish to appease them. Appeasement doesn't work with Nazis, if we recall our history. And Blut und Boden puts the Neo's directly into Nazi ideology.

Which is why I put support for these people into the support of terrorism, support that it's practicioners desire to become mainstream. And if that happens, what are the odds that they extend anything remotely resembling free speech to others. Historically it has been exactly opposite.

Perhaps my detractors will mod this up to 5 to show their support for free speech that offends them.

This is, however, a clear warning of how unpopular views are readily suppressed. It's not clear to me what the best answer is.

There is no clear answer. But as a metric, We can compare The activities of the White Supremacists and Neo Nazis to other groups.

Bastille day celebration with a terrorist driving a truck through it. 84 people killed. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/0...

Man drives into crow of people in Israel, killing one http://www.timesofisrael.com/d...

Man tries to drive a car through a crowd in Belgium https://themuslimissue.wordpre...

How ramming cars into crowds became a major terror tactic (London attack) https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Another attack in Stockholm https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

Attack in Heidelberg http://www.nbcnews.com/news/wo... Isreal again. http://www.westernjournalism.c...

London again: http://www.dw.com/en/terrorist...

And that is just some of them.

So what we have here is a tactic used by terrorists. Pick a crowd, and play Bowling for Humans. Looks like the Bastille Day guy has the highest score so far. This is pretty obviously Terrorism, and the only people who support it is likewise terrorists and their supporters.

So we have a group of people who support supremacy of one race over another - That would be the Klan. They have a history of violence and murder.

We have Neo-Nazis. Another group of people that support the National Socialist movement and all that entails. These two groups dovetail rather nicely together.

Then we have a member of the second group who runs his car through a crowd of people in Virginia.

It all fits. I don't negotiate with terrorists, nor do I wish to appease them. Appeasement doesn't work with Nazis, if we recall our history. And Blut und Boden puts the Neo's directly into Nazi ideology.

Which is why I put support for these people into the support of terrorism, support that it's practicioners desire to become mainstream. And if that happens, what are the odds that they extend anything remotely resembling free speech to others. Historically it has been exactly opposite.

Perhaps my detractors will mod this up to 5 to show their support for free speech that offends them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12...

White supremest and other alt-right groups have killed far more people since 9/11 than any other group, including jihadists. Hell, the FBI just blocked another Oklahoma city bombing by a white supremest. BLM pales by comparison and for the most part, BLM has been peaceful and at its core, the group espouses peaceful demonstrations. The second deadliest terror attack in this country was carried out by white supremest in Oklahoma City. Then there are the 9 people killed in a Charleston church, or the six people killed at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin.

The cited count starts after 9/11 and stops before the Orlando massacre. Plus it ignores what's going on in Europe. If you cherry pick your date ranges like that you can make anything you like seem true. "White Supremacists kill more people than Muslim terrorists if you don't count a bunch of days and locations where Muslim terrorists have killed people."

My college had culture clubs for every culture except American or white European, because such clubs would be seen as racist.

Well, yeah. Because that's racist. If you don't understand why, you've really never embraced diversity. You might have gone to a diverse college, but you've wrapped yourself in a blanket of whiteness.

It's not racist to have Tongan, Samoan, and Latino clubs, but it's racist to try start an American club? Again, my fight is for equality, not superiority.

I can get the unhappiness of having to work with unqualified individuals - been there, and it's frustrating. But your racism and sexism comes out when the complaint is not on the person's skill-set, but on their race or gender. I find it hard to believe that you've never come across someone white and male hired to a position that they were utterly unqualified for. It happens all the time, in my experience.

In my experience, when an unqualified white man applies for the job, they don't make it past the interview (which is as it should be). When an unqualified minority applies for the job, that individual has to be so inept that there's no way to cry discrimination.

As for the deck being stacked against you, bullshit. If you are white, male, and make enough that you don't qualify for government assistance, you have it largely made.

I see you believe in the myth of white privilege. I grew up in a minority. I received threats based on skin color. I had friends that had to slip away in the middle of the night to save their lives.

You're not likely to get arrested for doing the same things that get black people arrested, you're (presumably) not likely to have your resume thrown in the bin because of how your name is spelled or because you've got hints of a black experience in it, and you're not likely to have credit denied for houses and cars, or extra-padding added to the interest rate. You're not likely to be sexually harassed at work, walking down the street, shopping, and going to the park.

Actually I have had credit denied. I currently pay PMI on my mortgage. I make it abundantly clear at work that I'm happily married so I don't get much harassment other than the occasional "joke" about why I don't have more kids to be like the stereotypical Mormon (when I announced the birth of my second son, I got a lot of comments similar to "only 9 more to go!"). I would imagine sexual harassment is more of an issue for women than men in general.

To complain about the deck being stacked against you is most likely very large amounts of ignorance about exactly how high the deck is stacked for women and minorities. If you never experience diversity, I'm sure the world looks hard. If you want it to look easier, look through someone else's eyes. It's always going to look unfair to you if you don't understand how hard it is for others, and why we're doing this diversity thing in the first place. It's not about shitting on you - it's about trying to give other people a chance to have what you have.

Perhaps you failed to notice that the Justice Department is taking on colleges and universities for discriminating against whites?

Diversity is implemented by stealing opportunities from white men to give them to minorities. If minorities earn significantly less based on their minority, that has to be remedied. Equal pay for equal skills and work. I won't have my sons tout their mixed race heritage to get special treatment. They have a healthy pride of my heritage and my wife's. They speak both languages. We celebrate both cultures.

Predictably. Anyone waiting all weekend, and watching the brief/terse statement on Monday, could see that his heart was totally not into it. Especially considering his willingness to attack anything else that moves under the sun at the drop of a hat.

NY Times, Aug-15, 4:30 PM:

A Combative Trump Criticizes ‘Alt-Left’ Groups in Charlottesville

David Duke, Aug-15, 4:45 PM:

Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/897554574663442432

White supremest and other alt-right groups have killed far more people since 9/11 than any other group, including jihadists. Hell, the FBI just blocked another Oklahoma city bombing by a white supremest. BLM pales by comparison and for the most part, BLM has been peaceful and at its core, the group espouses peaceful demonstrations. The second deadliest terror attack in this country was carried out by white supremest in Oklahoma City. Then there are the 9 people killed in a Charleston church, or the six people killed at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin.

[...] Obama and the Democrats REFUSED TO NEGOTIATE A BUDGET for the past 8 years [...]

I guess you don't remember the budget that the Senate Democrats passed in 2013.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/us/politics/senate-passes-3-7-trillion-budget-its-first-in-4-years.html

It's all over the new. Dont see how you missed that. NYTime resume of the most recent ones.

NYS did exactly this with the Quad-C in Utica, NY and other projects in Albany. Nobody was surprised when bid-rigging was exposed a few years later.

The NYTimes has come out with several articles on the issue, I may be missing more of them though. Wanted to mention these, since they are somewhat divided, but do show support in some of them for not firing James, and they bring up interesting points.

Sundar Pichai should Resign

Thought Bullies or Right Move: A Divide Over James Damore Firing

Google Fires Engineer Who Wrote Memo Questioning Women in Tech

The Gender Gap in the Tech World

Contentious Memo Strikes Nerve Inside Google and Out

The Culture Wars Have Come to Silicon Valley

The NYTimes has come out with several articles on the issue, I may be missing more of them though. Wanted to mention these, since they are somewhat divided, but do show support in some of them for not firing James, and they bring up interesting points.

Sundar Pichai should Resign

Thought Bullies or Right Move: A Divide Over James Damore Firing

Google Fires Engineer Who Wrote Memo Questioning Women in Tech

The Gender Gap in the Tech World

Contentious Memo Strikes Nerve Inside Google and Out

The Culture Wars Have Come to Silicon Valley

The NYTimes has come out with several articles on the issue, I may be missing more of them though. Wanted to mention these, since they are somewhat divided, but do show support in some of them for not firing James, and they bring up interesting points.

Sundar Pichai should Resign

Thought Bullies or Right Move: A Divide Over James Damore Firing

Google Fires Engineer Who Wrote Memo Questioning Women in Tech

The Gender Gap in the Tech World

Contentious Memo Strikes Nerve Inside Google and Out

The Culture Wars Have Come to Silicon Valley

The NYTimes has come out with several articles on the issue, I may be missing more of them though. Wanted to mention these, since they are somewhat divided, but do show support in some of them for not firing James, and they bring up interesting points.

Sundar Pichai should Resign

Thought Bullies or Right Move: A Divide Over James Damore Firing

Google Fires Engineer Who Wrote Memo Questioning Women in Tech

The Gender Gap in the Tech World

Contentious Memo Strikes Nerve Inside Google and Out

The Culture Wars Have Come to Silicon Valley

The NYTimes has come out with several articles on the issue, I may be missing more of them though. Wanted to mention these, since they are somewhat divided, but do show support in some of them for not firing James, and they bring up interesting points.

Sundar Pichai should Resign

Thought Bullies or Right Move: A Divide Over James Damore Firing

Google Fires Engineer Who Wrote Memo Questioning Women in Tech

The Gender Gap in the Tech World

Contentious Memo Strikes Nerve Inside Google and Out

The Culture Wars Have Come to Silicon Valley

The NYTimes has come out with several articles on the issue, I may be missing more of them though. Wanted to mention these, since they are somewhat divided, but do show support in some of them for not firing James, and they bring up interesting points.

Sundar Pichai should Resign

Thought Bullies or Right Move: A Divide Over James Damore Firing

Google Fires Engineer Who Wrote Memo Questioning Women in Tech

The Gender Gap in the Tech World

Contentious Memo Strikes Nerve Inside Google and Out

The Culture Wars Have Come to Silicon Valley

You mean, the one where the Russians kept doing the same thing in 2016 that they've been doing for decades? That one?

No, the Russians had a much larger campaign to disrupt the election involving the internet and social media that wasn't possible in the past.

It is fun to see you throwing that sort of thing around with exactly zero attribution, of course.

Well I guess if you've been living under a rock, here are the emails tweeted out by Trump Jr: https://www.nytimes.com/intera...
And the relevant parts:

The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father. This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin.

If that's not solid evidence on collusion, I don't know what is.

Wow, it appears like we are really getting close to being able to answer the question: are we alone in the Universe?

I'm amazed that they were able to detect the "wobbles" using (relatively) inexpensive ground-based telescopes. Just a little bit of improvement and they'll be able to detect earth sized planets (although maybe 1.7x mass isn't too bad; I think the surface gravity might be just a little higher depending on the density).

Soon, a space based telescope (the James Web ST?) may, with these super-sensitive instruments, be able to take the next crucial step and determine the composition of their atmospheres. If they detect free oxygen or other products of biological (or even industrial!) by-products, we'll know that there's life elsewhere in the universe! Maybe we'll find out sooner this way than a similar positive result coming from a probe we send to Mars, Europa, Enceladus or Titan.

Of course, although I'm hoping that we'll see a biological signal, I really really doubt we'll see something that is the product of a technological civilization. Unfortunately, we still don't know the answer to Fermi's paradox. (I really wish the Chinese would take their new giant radio telescope and dedicate it to looking for signals). Until we hear from someone; we'll have to assume that maybe (intelligent) life in the Universe is rare.

I hope it's not because intelligent life usually kills itself off (like we seem to be doing: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

Full disclosure: in my partially misspent youth I worked on S.E.T.I. :)

Or not.

According the several studies, one of which is linked below the cost is not a factor, as the long term care for people who are healthy is, in fact, greater than those who engage in risky activity. It makes sense, possibly, in that they accrete so many health problems that their health becomes brittle and they fail sooner. Over time you will likely encounter similar health problems; cancer is nearly inevitable, as is heart disease, and arterial sclerosis. The question is how long can you suffer small problems? You second or third knee and hip replacements would not take place with the smoker as they have already become permanently immobile.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02...
Public Library of Science Medicine journal, Dutch researchers found that the health costs of thin and healthy people in adulthood are more expensive than those of either fat people or smokers.

What you're seeing there in the 20's/30's is the dust bowl that wreaked havoc on the central US during that time (high heat, vast drought). It is really interesting to see that. But it was a regional effect. Globally the story is different.

Really? I'd love to see that, because, just like this graph from teh American Institute of Physics pretty much all 20th century tempurature records have a big warming throughout the 203s and 30s, then switched to cooling through the 40s to mid 70s.

A related important point was well explained recently by NYT: extreme high temperature events are increasing in frequency.

https://www.nytimes.com/intera...

That is the claim, but the report the NY Times uses states the exact opposite. Look at that "leaked" report, and check page 287. The number of extreme high temperature days has not increased; it's the average lows that have increased. That raises the average, but if anything it points to a lessening of the extremes of tempurature. Lows aren't as low, and highs are slightly less high.

What you're seeing there in the 20's/30's is the dust bowl that wreaked havoc on the central US during that time (high heat, vast drought). It is really interesting to see that. But it was a regional effect. Globally the story is different.

A related important point was well explained recently by NYT: extreme high temperature events are increasing in frequency.

https://www.nytimes.com/intera...

We're getting less cold. Take a look at figure 6.3 on page 287, you'll see the max temperatures peaked in the 1920s and 1930s, and we're quite a bit lower than that now. What's changed is we're not getting as cold at night as we used to get; our low temperatures are higher - making the daily average higher. Kind of changes things, doesn't it?

The Dunning-Kruger effect is well known on /., and I call what you point out as the "Carson Corollary"[1]: someone actually is intelligent in a specific field, but they mistakenly believe this makes them intelligent in all fields.

Regardless of where they get their talking points, if they sound good and/or come from a "trusted" source someone suffering the Carson Corollary won't bother to do any research or give measured thought to contrary points or evidence, they presume their own knowledge of a subject is sufficient.

Exercise for the reader: Am *I* suffering from the Carson Corollary by making this post?

[1] Named for current US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, who by all accounts and records is a brilliant neurosurgeon but has made some statements that suggest he is not as brilliant in other fields while still feeling confident enough to publicly comment on them.

What changed 13 weeks ago that you suddenly turned the corner into dramatic weight loss?

I reduced my daily calories from 2,000 to 1,500 after reading an article about the weight study done on the Biggest Losers TV show.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weight-loss.html

And then there's the opposite.

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

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/04/business/rutenberg-lessons-in-free-speech-from-pussy-riot.html

"Social Justice" is no such thing.

The SJW positions are usually anathema to real Justice.

Case in Point...

"Judge Drops Rape Case Against U.S.C. Student, Citing Video Evidence"

"A student misconduct investigation involving Mr. Premjee within the university’s Title IX office remains active. If found responsible, Mr. Premjee, a junior studying business administration, could be expelled."

So Judge throws the case out, but the SJWs at the University are determined to keep persecuting the guy.

Fuck "Social Justice" and Fuck SJWs.

NYT Link: https://www.nytimes.com/reuter...

Research web site: http://batteryfreephone.cs.was...

Research paper: https://homes.cs.washington.ed...

Yes and yes! This line of questions is something I've wondered about too and ... I don't know what the right answer is. :)

On the one hand, memorizing gobs of factoids like I did in grade school seems like a waste. OTOH, without some set of hopefully-common knowledge, you can't really participate in society as well, much less avoiding repeating the mistakes of history. I found this article https://www.nytimes.com/intera... pretty fascinating, for example.

For me personally I seem to do best if I'm aware of stuff on some level and then I can go read up on it if I want to know more, but I don't know what the right level of exposure is needed to give people at least in their formal education. But if I could redo my grade school education, especially things like social studies and history, I think I would have benefited from (and enjoyed) more focus on lessons and learnings from history, principles, and themes and far less focus on being able to say what exact year something happened.

But on the flip side, knowing e.g. dates does matter some too - knowing that something happened right before the US Civil War can be relevant. Or knowing that it was as recent as the mid 1970's that women (at least in the US) had to have a man to co-sign for a bank loan can help in shaping perspective on certain types of progress.

The New York Times has added a correction to their article. At the end of the article, a paragraph now states

Correction: August 9, 2017
An article on Tuesday about a sweeping federal climate change report referred incorrectly to the availability of the report. While it was not widely publicized, the report was uploaded by the nonprofit Internet Archive in January; it was not first made public by The New York Times.