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Of the two columns I looked forward to in each issue of Byte in the early 1980's, it was Circuit Cellar and Chaos Manor. I met Jerry Pournelle at BayCon 2006. He was on a panel to debate whether or not the Founding Fathers would support data encryption. Pournelle's believe they would even though the U.S. Constitution doesn't mention encryption, as they were using ciphers to write coded messages to avoid having their communications intercepted by the British government. I didn't start reading Pournelle's science fiction until last year.

Where exactly did you get those numbers and facts you're presenting? They don't seem to jibe with historical data I've found for US agriculture. In fact, they seem to be off by a full order of magnitude, as the transition appears to be fairly linear over 50 years, from 1910 to 1960.

http://www.livinghistoryfarm.o...
https://www.theatlantic.com/bu...

While this was regarding the DAPA, not DACA, the issues are very similar, and yes, Obama did usurp the power of congress by declaring that the INS can declare anyone in the United States to be here legally and grant them a work permit.

https://www.theatlantic.com/po...

Obama did far more than just not enforce a law with this program.

"Programming talent comes from intelligence...." So you're not a programmer then? Or just an untalented one? Women are systematically driven out of IT jobs. I have borne witness to this over the thirty years that I have been in IT. But rather than relate anecdotes, I direct you to your favorite Internet search engine. Even a casual search will return a multitude of results that show it is a widespread phenomenon:

https://www.theatlantic.com/c...
https://www.theguardian.com/c...
https://www.theguardian.com/c...
https://www.nytimes.com/c...
http://www.latimes.com/c...
And so on.
This is not the case in other high tech fields. I have a cousin that has bben a mathematician for ATT for many years. She has daughter that has been an acoustical engineer for the US Navy for more than ten years. My granddaughter just got her PhD in aeronautical engineering and is working for United Launch Alliance.
And so on.

one of a few

https://www.theatlantic.com/ma...

Three supporting views (I hope instructive and entertaining):

https://www.theatlantic.com/da...

http://www.independent.co.uk/v...

https://www.spectator.co.uk/20...

Sure. They're going to do that.

Well, they did that, so you're simply denying reality.

Meanwhile, your neighbour may have just bled to death.

Let's get this straight -- well-armed and resourced police have no duty to do anything, but he does.

Depending which state you're in, you might well have broken the law.

Nope. One pretty much has to have actually seen a felony, or assisted someone after the fact knowing that they'd committed a crime.

What's wrong with calling the police, heading over the valley, assessing the situation and providing aid?

Apparently the risk of death even though you may be heavily armed and virtually immune from prosecution. Oh, wait, you meant a civilian. Lack of training, no qualified immunity, and the aforementioned being shot by first responders, methinks

Oh no, might get hurt? Fucking cowardly piece of shit.

Internet tough guy. Try not to select such an obvious meme.

I care that both are doing this

Except Republicans flatly do not do this:

• Republicans do not use the IRS to suppress opposition
• Republicans do not use political correctness to suppress free speech in the workplace nor outside
• Republicans neither threaten nor use violence to suppress free speech

and will call out both until it stops.

There is no both here. it is solely the Democrats, who do this sort of thing. For the Greater Good[TM], of course...

The case at hand is not about dissent or opposition, but about felony rioting — and conspiracy to commit same. If smashing cars is illegal, it is normal — indeed, imperative — for police to find and prosecute the law-breakers, and they are doing it by the book.

You don't put people in jail over civil suits.

In the case of Davino Watson, ICE held him for three years for deportation despite the fact that he is a U.S. citizen. They also denied him access to a lawyer claiming that this was a civil matter, not a criminal one.

When agents finally learned the truth and released him, he sued. An appeals court just denied his meagre $82,500 judgement stating that the statute of limitations had expired WHILE HE WAS STILL IN CUSTODY.

What they did wasn't criminal.

They don't put many executives in jail for criminal acts. How many Sony executives went to jail for using root kits on their audio CDs? Answer:0

How many Wall Street bankers went to jail after causing the 2007 financial meltdown? Answer:35 Compare that with over 1000 bankers jailed after the savings & loan crisis.

The bottom line is that money buys justice in the United States.

And 60'ish % in taxes to pay for the unemployed and unemployable...

I live in Sweden and planning to move out as soon as possible..... Why the heck stay in a place that has nice weather for 2½ month's per year and drains you of your hard-earned money when the benefits you get for paying taxes is continuously being degraded.

If we would have a bit more sun during the winter to reduce the depression-rates... https://www.theatlantic.com/he...

Or having a good healthcare system for the amount of taxes we pay..
https://www.thelocal.se/201501...

Or being a cheap country to live in...
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of...

Housing-costs going up every year:
https://www.thelocal.se/201610...
https://www.globalpropertyguid... ... In the city where i live the queue time to get a rental apartment is around 15 years for the central part of the city... and 10 years in the suburbs....

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

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 solution is to stop centralizing things.

Big cities have higher productivity. NYC has 60% higher productivity than the American average. Centralization is good.

There is no shortage of space in SF. They just need to go vertical. The problem is that the people living there have a vested interest in keeping property prices high, and the people that want to live there but can't afford to don't get to vote.

How Zoning Laws Exacerbate Inequality.

...automation and job loss. Lack of a minimum wage for farming did not stop those plucky "automators" from reducing farm jobs by about 97% in a century flat. Nor were Luddite concerns related to 19th-century English minimum wage policies.

The automatiion/wage situation was really nailed to the wall by this fine journalism in The Atlantic five years back:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ma...

We are taken to hang-ten on the dividing line between automation and human-work in the case of Maddie Parlier, auto-parts worker who was next up for replacement. The nearly-empty auto-parts factory in which she works automates a job when the machine to do it falls in price below two years' salary. She makes $13/hour, or about $25K/year - and the machine that could replace her exists, but costs $100,000 so her job is "safe" - for a few years.

So this is really about your societal standards. "We don't work for less than $13 an hour" is no different conceptually from "We don't work full time before age 16" and "We don't let employers work people more than 16 hours at a time" and "We don't let our employers work people with no safety equipment" even though safety equipment costs money and therefore, mandating it costs jobs.

These societal rules of COURSE have prices: "forbidding child labour" caused 100% job loss for the affected kids, and serious financial hardship for their families, I'm sure there was a lot of smirking at the time about how much harm had been done by Good Intentions.

If you hate the minimum wage, consider reading "Utopia for Realists" by Rutger Bregman. One of the cases for Universal Basic Income is that the moral argument about minimum wage vanishes: with the minimum already taken care of, $1/hour for a job you enjoy might make perfect sense.

I was wondering what female engineers -- or females in other STEM beats -- think of the memo.

The question presumes, women have some sort of unique insight/opinion — simply due to their sex. People have lost their jobs for such ideas.

Important to understand:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ma...

We're going to fucking kill you.

Important to understand:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ma...

It's close to the proverbial yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater.

"Holmes wrote in Abrams that the marketplace of ideas offered the best solution for tamping down offensive speech: "The ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas -- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out."" - From The Atlantic.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ma...

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

http://www.npr.org/2017/06/16/...

and then there's Youtube. I could go on an on and on.

I could give two fucks what it ment in 1921. TODAY, the Antifa are a facist violent group of fucktards that should be labeled for what they are, a terrorist organization.

So who drove a car into a group of protestors, trying to murder them - someone from the Antifa, or someone from the Profa, erm alt-right?

They have rules

They do. But they are also the legislature (creating rules), judiciary (determining, whether a rule is broken), and executive (acting on such determination) at once. Whether their action is sincere, or simply seeking to avoid boycotts and/or DOSing, they are wrong.

I do hate Daily Stormer with passion — since 2014, when they dismissed all of Ukraine's figures as "Jews" — if GoDaddy was Ok with them before, there is no reason to kick them out now.

Certainly not with such haste... 24 hours to move a site? Ridiculous...

The massive outrage about this is curiously selective. The "alt-right" are blamed for the violence even though they held their gathering and were attacked by the counter-protesters, who've been viciously violent before. All of the reports about the car charging into a crowd mention "melees" and "skirmishes" already occurring prior to that in passing. Oh, that's because someone died? Well, there were politically-motivated attacks with a deadly weapon before — sheer luck, that asshole merely injured his victims.

Lastly, much as the Nazist symbols and racism annoy me, they clearly have no real following and thus pose little danger. Meanwhile, the symbols of Communists and other hate-groups (like Black Lives Matter) were also on display and those, despite being far deadlier, do not seem to outrage anyone...

https://www.theatlantic.com/ma...

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

http://www.npr.org/2017/06/16/...

and then there's Youtube. I could go on an on and on.

I could give two fucks what it ment in 1921. TODAY, the Antifa are a facist violent group of fucktards that should be labeled for what they are, a terrorist organization.

A longer version: https://www.theatlantic.com/po...

A choice quote: "The author specifically objects to using what his memo calls discriminatory means to achieve greater gender diversity, then adds that he has concrete suggestions for changes at Google that would “increase women’s representation in tech and without resorting to discrimination.” In his telling, this could be achieved by making software engineering “more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration” and changes that would “allow those exhibiting cooperative behavior to thrive,” as well as offering more opportunities for employees to work part time. Whether one regards those suggestions as brilliant, rooted in pernicious gender stereotypes, or anywhere in between, they are clearly and explicitly suggestions to increase diversity in a manner the author regards as having a stronger chance of actually working than some of the tactics that he is critiquing. "

We all know this — the "free speech" Amendment only applies to government. You must not prosecuted for calling Trump "traitor" or a policemen — "an asshole".

Though the work to abolish the Amendment is in progress, it may take a while for us to become "more like Europe".

So, in order to control, what people say — and what politics they support — the statists have invented a new trick. Instead of pursuing the individuals, they would go after employers. See, the First Amendment may protect James Damore's speech, but it does not protect Google from charges of "creating hostile work-environment".

And just what constitutes such an environment? Whatever the government says it does (somehow "gender identity" is on the list already, for example)... Sure, sure, to actually win in court, the prosecutors/lawyers need to persuade a judge and the jury. But the process is daunting and very costly — and whereas the employer has to pay their own expenses, the "attackers" are paid by the taxpayers.

It is to protect themselves from such nonsense, that employers establish these "internal policies" and set up positions like "Vice President of Diversity" in the first place. These people sincerely believe in the justice of their causes, doing the government's job for it...

By inventing "protected categories" the government gets to decide, what Americans aren't allowed to say. At least, at work — where we spend about half of our waking time. And then come Social Justice Warriors, who would gleefully pursue you even for convictions privately held...

First Amendment? Yes, sure — you still have it, but best talk in your shower, where no one can hear it and get offended.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

Not a day goes by without a conservative whining about those mean old liberals. Conservatives on /. are not any different, they just down-mod anything they don't agree with or like as a mob.

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

https://www.theatlantic.com/na...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Now, if you're trying to suggest that Obama was treated far better by the right than Trump is being treated by the left, there's really no need to continue this conversation, as you are nothing more than a brainwashed idiot who's incapable of thought.

The more appropriate extinction event to compare with is the End-Permian Extinction. That was caused by essentially burning fossil fuels, because lava got in contact with much of the then-existing seams of coal.

Right now we are adding CO2 to the atmosphere at a faster pace than the volcanism did back then, and we are less likely to accidentally leave rich coal seams untouched.

Not even close buddy. Lol.

The world back then was mostly tropical before the traps started and the lava flows extended thousands upon thousands of kilometers. It burned through coal and forests at an almost Continental level. Scientists say not only did it warm over 14C but acid rain hit and killed as much plant and marine life as the temperate surge. While acid rain is prevalent in places like China today it is not nearly so bad it kills all plant life.

I would even argue (since this is slashdot a real scientist can please correct me if I am wrong), that the recent medieval warming period was hotter than today! Records show farms in Greenland by the Vikings and wineries in Scotland and oranges grown as far north as central China. Maybe not 8C warmer for sure, but yes warmer than today's weather by far.

The more appropriate extinction event to compare with is the End-Permian Extinction. That was caused by essentially burning fossil fuels, because lava got in contact with much of the then-existing seams of coal.

Right now we are adding CO2 to the atmosphere at a faster pace than the volcanism did back then, and we are less likely to accidentally leave rich coal seams untouched.

This article explains quite clearly what happened to end up with people like you:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ma...

Well for one, the Breitbart.com website has been scrubbed of all the Pizzagate articles due to the blowback form the gunman entering the restaurant, but there are still tweets from the late Andrew Breitbart himself accusing John Podesta of running a pedophilia ring which spawned htis whole mess. There's the ACORN BS.

Others off the top of mhttps://news.slashdot.org/story/17/08/07/2035221/first-evidence-that-social-bots-play-a-major-role-in-spreading-fake-news#y head: numerous birther "proof" articles, birth control pills make women unattractive, demonstrably false captions/reused images to allege violence at BLM rallies, etc. etc.

Opt out of the advertising, that kicks you out of the program, you'll still see all those "juicy" points, but you can't use them.

Most of those things you listed have also value only in its scarcity. If there was a massive oversupply of gold it wouldn't be worth what it is.

Diamonds are an excellent example of this:

• Diamonds are extremely expensive
• Gem-quality diamonds are actually fairly abundant. Large, perfect diamonds aren't as rare as their price would suggest

Diamonds are practically worthless to everybody but the few who control the stockpiles of unsold gems, and they have Jewelers by the throat, effectively controlling the entire supply.

In the end, the true value of an item isn't what you paid for it, but what you can sell it for. Have you ever tried to sell a diamond?

Problem is, Trump would gleefully applaud rescinding Obama's expansion of EO12333 only to replace it with a much more invasive Trump/Pompeo version.
And keep in mind Pompeo founded his own private security firm.
https://www.theatlantic.com/te...

Is that why Chris Mathews had a thrill run up his leg during the Obama inauguration? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Obama had the friendliest media coverage in the last 30 plus years. George W. Bush was treated so unfairly by the establishment media that it literally launched Fox news as one of the largest cable news outlets because people (especially conservatives) were so sick of the rampant left wing bias. By any meaningful statistic George W Bush and Trump have both been treated horribly by the press, and Obama had a continuous love fest with the exception of Fox News (who he tried to kick out of the WH news pool and lied to a fedeal judge so he could spy on their reporters like James Rosen). With the exception of Rush Limbaugh and a few other COMMENTATORS with relatively small audiences (not the national news outlets) Bill Clinton got very favorable coverage until he was caught sexually harassing an intern in the white house (and there he earned what he got). Hillary Clinton was caught during the campaign getting questions passed to her ahead of the debate from Donna Brazile of CNN, a clear violation of debate standards, and an unfair advantage for which Brazile was fired. http://www.washingtonexaminer....

http://www.washingtontimes.com...
https://www.theatlantic.com/po...
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion...

"President Trump handles criticism very differently than earlier presidents. For one, reporters who interview him say that he speaks a little too casually, and often is the leak, which does him no favors. The other is that he "hits back" when criticized, even over trivial things."

I agree that Trump hits back every time, no mater how trivial, but I think that is due in large part to what happened with George W. Bush. Bush chose to be classy and didn't "stoop to their level" with the openly hostile media and that ended up with him essentially being constantly pounded by the press who saw it as weakness. Bush was certainly not the best public speaker, but he was also not a blithering idiot, anyone who thinks he was is an idiot and ignorant of historical facts.

"Most kids who survived an American high school know that fighting back against a crowd that's teasing you will only make matters worse."

Apparently Trump learned the same lesson that I did in high school. If you have a crowd that is teasing you, single out the most obnoxious one and beat the piss out of him. I only had to do that one time and I never go teased again. I tried ignoring them for a year beforehand (like George Bush taking the high ground) and that was definitely not the solution.

"The President of the United States has been the nation's punching bag for a very long time; there's just nothing new about scathing presidential criticism."

By commentators and comedians maybe, but hard news people are supposed to be sticking to facts, and so far with Trump that is clearly not the case. They are actively participating in an attempt to steal the election from Trump because they personally hate the man, and if/when Trump is cleared of any wrong doing (which he almost certainly will, after 8 months of investigation, all the facts so far do not indicate any criminal activity), I hope Trump sues each and every news outlet who reported falsely on the Russia "scandal". If CNN and a few other major outlets go the way of Gawker, the shit heads running the other outlets will get their minions under control for fear of losing t

https://www.theatlantic.com/ 3 trackers: 2 advertising, 1 analytics. Scripts from 12 sources on the home page. Content: primarily politics, some culture, science, tech, business, a poem, some in-depth analysis. No sports (yay!). It's not a terrible website.

The magazine was always a favorite of mine. In addition to the above there was creative writing, a bit of philosophy, and the cultural insights were among the best. I hope the future brings more.

There were several years when the most common predicted effect of carbon warming was drought - endless drought, in every possible place, and there's nothing we can do about it! (Muahahahaha!). Articles like these have been typical:

https://www.theguardian.com/en...
https://www.theguardian.com/en...
https://www.theatlantic.com/sc...
http://news.mit.edu/2017/clima...
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/fl...
http://news.nationalgeographic...
http://www.slate.com/articles/...
http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut...
https://www.theguardian.com/wo...
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/0...
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/0...
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the...
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/0...

Let's just say that if you sell stock photos of dry lake beds, you're probably a millionaire by now.

https://cdn.theatlantic.com/as...
Well the 1% already pays more than any other group..

http://cdn1.globalissues.org/i...
Think the war-spending should be cut down a bit?

But why should the % be different between between someone that earns less than someone that earns more? Why should it be 30% for someone and 50% for someone else? I would say that is an unfair system..

I say let everyone pay the same % on their income independently of how much they earn.. Possibly let the first $10k be tax-free for everyone.

As far as US citizens working abroad, they do give you credit for any tax paid to a foreign government

That's only if the U.S. has a tax treaty with that country. If there is no treaty, you're double-taxed. And even with countries with tax treaties, the treaty doesn't cover everything. I (U.S. citizen) worked in Canada for a couple years. The tax treaty meant I just paid the higher income tax rate (Canadian), and applied those paid taxes as a credit to my U.S. income taxes. But the treaty didn't cover unearned income. My Canadian bank interest was double-taxed. If I'd owned any Canadian stock, the dividends would've been double-taxed. (U.S. stock was OK since the Canadian government isn't stupid enough to try to tax stuff you own outside of Canada if you're not living in Canada.)

Interesting aside, I had to rent a house in Washington state and commute across the border every day because I used to be a California resident. Californina's tax policies are as tenacious as the IRS'. I initially moved from California to British Columbia to work. But when I spoke with an international tax attorney, he pointed out that for the purposes of tax domicile, California only recognizes moves to other states. Because I moved straight to Canada, California still considered me a California citizen, and they would try to make me pay California income taxes on everything I earned in Canada. So I had to move to Washington and live there long enough to shed my California residency in the eyes of the California government. I talked with someone who ran into the same problem when they moved from California to the UK. California was trying to tax their UK income.

What makes you think that you can take the benefits of being a US citizen and not pay any taxes?

The U.S. and Eritrea are the only countries which tax based on citizenship. Most countries tax based on location. If you earned the money outside the country, they don't touch it. Others tax based on residency. If you earned the money while residing outside the country, they don't touch it. That's why Canadians working in the U.S. have to be careful about how much time they spend visiting Canada. Canada taxes based on residency, and if they spend more than a cumulative 182 days (half year) in Canada, the Canadian government reclassifies them as residing in Canada, and the money they earned in the U.S. becomes subject to the much higher Canadian taxes.

This can catch people holding dual U.S. citizenship hard if they're living outside the U.S. They can grow up all their lives in a foreign country blissfully unaware of this tax bomb, then they sell their house and the IRS demands a part of the profit.

https://www.theatlantic.com/na... He googled at work and they turned him in.

Further reading:

0] TL;DR - Photos - https://www.theatlantic.com/ph...

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

Major incidents in the US 1943, July 26, Los Angeles, California: A smog so sudden and severe that "Los Angeles residents believe the Japanese are attacking them with chemical warfare."

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

The smashing, violence, and beatings is overwhelmingly coming from the left. That's how it's been for many years.

I have to agree.

So you feel obligated to agree with a falsehood? Interesting. Why not challenge it? Why not consider how the FBI's report on right-wing violence was suppressed?

My personal theory is that many of the violent people have convinced themselves that their political enemies are in fact bad people and "fair game" for anything.

Yes, the right goes out of its way to declare that people on the left are, in fact, bad people, and see themselves as the martyred heroes for saving themselves from the dastardly villains. That was, in fact, the whole justification of Nazi aggression.

Ever so slightly interesting that you don't mention it.

But it's hardly unknown, it's even in this movie trailer.

It goes like this: It's okay to punch a Nazi; conservatives are all Nazis... and then comes the punching.

Actually, it's conservatives who go to tortuous lengths to declare that liberals are Nazis. It's terribly amusing, and rather pathetic. Not to mention the Muslim accusations, the Communist accusations, and more.

Of course, it turns out the people dumb enough to sell out to the Russians were Trumps, but we can't be paying attention to that.

Here is a web page linking multiple articles arguing that the violence used to prevent Milo Yiannopolous from speaking at Berkeley was justified. "Violence helped ensure safety of students" is a real headline. There was also this quote: "...some white nationalists got their ***** beat." (Just like the Nazi thing above, only this time using "white nationalist". Someone who wanted to hear Milo speak --> white nationalist --> someone it's okay to send to the hospital.)

Here's a video of those white Nationalists's major work:

http://www.pbs.org/video/2365957904/

Do see how they're behaving and justifying themselves.

Even the removal of statues leads to threats of violence.

Some people can't even worship in peace.

Yet you show not the slightest concern about that.

Also, the media coverage may tend to embolden these people. The people who smash things, light things on fire, and send people to the hospital are described as "protesters". The people who wanted to hear Milo speak are described as "alt-Right extremists". I don't want to overstate the contribution of the media but I think it's a part.

The media coverage of the feigned victimization of right-wing speakers was indeed a part, people actually started to believe it was a real problem, or some sudden development, until it petered out, as comments by Milo that even the right-wing couldn't stomach came out, and he, the poster-child for the supposed martydom, became a persona non-grata. So it petered out.

Personally I think that the correct remedy for bad speech is counter-speech.

So not walking away? Not ignoring them? You don't say they're unacceptable, but why not correct?

But ok, enjoy my speech.

Violence isn't acceptable to prevent speech, even if you really disagree.

So is h

TV journalists, and whistle blowers. A similar issue came up last month with government contractor whistle blower Reality Winners, who failed to realize every page from a color laser printer has an id pattern watermark. They're difficult to see without a loop and blue/black light. The printers I've used the pattern was in yellow, lower left corner of the page.

https://www.theatlantic.com/te...
https://www.eff.org/pages/list...

Because the sure fire way to up your standard of living is under Socialism right?

I don't know that it's clear which is ultimately better; the modern form of socialism (which is capitalism with a strong safety net funded by heavy taxation), or something closer to pure capitalism (pure capitalism exists nowhere). My suspicion is that both approaches work, but which will work in a given country depends on the local culture.

Talk to a Fin, German, or Swede about their great economic mobility opportunities. (real people, not fabricated media reports).

That's stupid. If you want to know about such things, you don't seek out anecdotes, which may tell you very different things depending on whom you encounter, you look for data. Common measures of economic mobility put Swedes, to pick one country, far above Americans. Some more recent research questions those measures which focus only on single-generation changes and look at multi-generational mobility. By those measures, Swedes have roughly the same level of economic mobility as Americans. I don't see any data that indicates they have less mobility than Americans.

That said, I strongly suspect that a regional analysis of the US would yield a different result, because we know very well that mobility varies greatly across different regions of the country. https://www.theatlantic.com/bu.... Perhaps people in Salt Lake City (per that 2014 study, the city with highest upward mobility for moving into the middle class) or San Jose (the city with the highest upward mobility for moving into the top quintile) are significantly more upwardly mobile that people in Stockholm (or whatever Swedish city has the highest mobility). I haven't found any studies that apply the same measurement techniques to make comparison feasible (and even then such things are tricky). But, as a nation, the US is no more mobile than Sweden, and probably somewhat less, which means that extensive safety nets don't kill mobility, and their absence doesn't guarantee it.

Though I agree with the court, that recording anything one can legally observe should itself be legal, I do not understand, what the First Amendment has to do with this right. What is the connection between such recording — which can (and often is) done silently — and Free Speech?

If it is the plans to later publish the recordings, that place their preparation legal, then a lot of other activity may fall under the Amendment's protection — such as leaking state secrets or "entering federal property under false pretenses.

Also, are the First Amendment protections lost if the person recording never ends up publishing anything within "reasonable" time — can he then be charged under lesser local laws for things like "intimidation" or "refusing police orders"?

Meanwhile, the Second Amendment gets trampled every day — forget "assault" weapons, mere knives are illegal in many places and in New Jersey you can be arrested for possession of a slingshot "without explainable legal purpose"...

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

As the article points out... there is no "specifically" or "expressly" written into that amendment. That word was used in the Articles of Confederation, but were INTENTIONALLY left out of the Constitution. The article not only explaines that, but also goes into detail on why, and how, and what the author of that amendment thought about limiting the federal government:

When Representative Thomas Tucker of South Carolina moved to insert the word "expressly" into what became the Tenth Amendment, Madison (in an eyewitness account reprinted in The Complete Bill of Rights, edited by Neil Cogan) "[o]bjected to this amendment, because it was impossible to confine a government to the exercise of express powers, there must necessarily be admitted powers by implication, unless the constitution descended to recount every minutiae. He [Madison] remembered the word 'expressly' had been moved in the convention of Virginia, by the opponents to the ratification, and after full and fair discussion was given up by them, and the system allowed to retain its present form." Tucker's amendment was voted down.

But lets get to the even bigger picture here of what's really going on. Read the 10th again, and note the last 4 words: "or to the people." Some times when 10th'ers talk about the encroach of the federal government onto the states, what it is is they don't wan't the feds telling them they can't use tyranny of the majority to strip away peoples rights.... such as with same sex marriage. The Supreme Court didn't find a "new" right for people, but it reaffirmed that marriage to the person of your choice is a fundamental right, a right OF THE PEOPLE, and that states could not curtail those rights through tyranny of the majority.

States rights people are not fighting for people to have more rights, or even equal rights... they're fighting to let states be allowed to be tyrants.

....establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity....

And for your notion that "general welfare" and defence" are the only two things important, and for some inexplicable reason they're importance is manifest by where they fall in that line (3rd and 4th out of 5 things) outright ignores everything else in that line, and , well, i seriously cannot think of a rational reason for such a suggestion. You could just as easily say that "establish justice" and "insure domestic tranquility" are the only two that matter because they were written next to each other, and they fall at #1 and #2.... it's a stupid argument on it's face.

On a last note, maybe you should read you're 1828 definition of welfare again;

1. Exemption from misfortune, sickness, calamity or evil; the enjoyment of health and the common blessings of life; prosperity; happiness; applied to persons.

A UBI would actually be pretty much a requirement to fulfilling that definition, as well as guaranteed health care.

Given a choice I'm sure a pedophile would always try to have sex with a human child rather than a robot one. Because in the depths of their hearts they don't believe what they are doing is wrong.

I get that this material is just too scary for you to do research on, but you would be completely wrong:

Pedophiles often feel guilt and shame about their activities, say therapists. "People don't grow up and say, 'I want to be a pedophile,'" said the Rev. Stephen Rossetti, who runs a psychiatric hospital near Washington, D.C. "All the people I've ever talked to hate it."

Next time, grow a pair and do the research instead of hiding from readily available facts that you can get from google. There is a real debate going on as to whether child dolls can reduce the chance that pedophiles "would seek out child pornography or sex with real children". And the truth is, we don't know. We don't yet know whether it's a release, or just entrainment. And since existing pedophilia treatments "do not change the pedophileâ(TM)s basic sexual orientation toward children" the odds seem good that they won't be any worse than the other options. Certainly many of the customers believe that their access to a child sex doll helps prevent them from assaulting children, but that proves exactly nothing.

As for Crimea, it was the people who were living in Crimea

Crimeans didn't decide anything. In spite of overwhelming Russian propaganda, polls before Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea showed that Crimeans preferred to stay with Ukraine. First of all, Russia's referendum pantomime was done in breach of numerous international laws, norms, and treaties, and under Russian military occupation. Second, the referendum did not have a "status quo" option. Third, as the Kremlin's Human Rights Council confirmed that the Crimea "referendum" results were totally fabricated. Russia took away Crimeans' ability to determine their own fate.

the anti-Russia government that took power in Ukraine after the coup?

When a certain country attacks you, you tend to become anti- that country. But let's get the chronology straight - Russia started its Crimea invasion in early February 2014, while Yanukovych was still in office. One of the Russian officers coordinating the Crimea invasion, was Igor Girkin, who immediately went on to lead Russia's invasion of Ukraine's Donbas region. So your rationalization of Russia's Crimea invasion is absurd.

so anti-Russians it even tried to forbid the Russian language.

That's a flat out lie. A motion was proposed in the Rada to take away the privileged status of the Russian language, but Ukraine's acting president, Turchynov, said that he wold veto any such proposal, and that was the end of it. How dumb do you have to be to believe that a country could "forbid" a language that's spoken by the majority of that country?

can you explain to me why the US government immediately accepted the result of the coup instead of demanding the respect of democracy

As mentioned above, Yanukovych tried to subvert democracy in Ukraine - he would've turned Ukraine into a Russia-style dictatorship. The revolution ensured that democracy was not thwarted. After three months of Turchynov's provisional government, Poroshenko was elected in accordance with Ukrainian law.

Considering the difference of military power, if one day Russia decided to invade Ukraine, it would be even easier for them than when the US invaded Iraq.

More Russian propaganda. Here's a translation of a Novaya Gazeta article, in which a Buryat (Russian Mongol) soldier openly talks about his tank unit invading Donbas. Since the article has been published, his mother has been complaining that the Russian military refuses to give him his military pension or to provide other services due to him as an injured soldier. Ukrainian POW Savchenko was traded to Russia for two Spetsnaz who were captured in Donbas. Just yesterday, a Russian soldier was captured in East Ukraine. You can download the Nemtsov Report, which Boris Nemtsov was compiling before the Kremlin's lackeys murdered him -

Mine is from June 13, 2017

If his power-grid analogy is correct, then trying to stop a mass extinction after it’s started would be a little like calling for a building’s preservation while it’s imploding.

“I think that if we keep things up long enough, we’ll get to a mass extinction, but we’re not in a mass extinction yet, and I think that’s an optimistic discovery because that means we actually have time to avoid Armageddon,” - Smithsonian paleontologist Doug Erwin - June 13, 2017

“People who claim we’re in the sixth mass extinction don’t understand enough about mass extinctions to understand the logical flaw in their argument. To a certain extent they’re claiming it as a way of frightening people into action"

“Many of those making facile comparisons between the current situation and past mass extinctions don’t have a clue about the difference in the nature of the data, [...] as scientists we have a responsibility to be accurate about such comparisons.”

- Smithsonian paleontologist Doug Erwin

https://www.theatlantic.com/sc...

You're right that the LRA is a huge deal, and you may be right that right-wing extremism is a real factor in the USA. (Even the left is getting violent these days.) Speaking of my own England though, our terror tends to be the Islamic variety.

Every time there's a violent incident in the west, we all wait to find the ideology behind it, and if it's Islam, it's labelled "terrorism" and if it's not, it's labelled "a nut job."

Go ahead and list for me the UK terrorist incidents which the oh-so-racist media have been denying.

The British media were falling over themselves to refer to the Finsburys incident as terrorism, precisely because non-Islamist terror is such a break form the norm here.

When it's a Christian attacking, you move to "as far as we know he wasn't motivated by his own religion."

You're assuming that because we're talking about a white British male, he must be Christian. As far as I can tell, we're not really sure what religion he held, if any. Britain being Britain, the odds are pretty good that he's non-religious.

Anyway, about the assumption you describe: pretty much, yes, because it generally isn't the case. Here in England, we really don't have a problem with Christianity-inspired violence.

Of course, jihadists aren't normally quiet about their motivations. We can be quite certain the Borough Market attackers were religiously inspired, as they were shouting about it at the time.

Do you take the same attitude of examining the details of their religion and saying it's not terrorism when it is an attack by a Muslim motivated by "a mad hatred of all Christians"?

I wasn't clear here, but I'm not denying that the Finsbury incident counts as terrorism. The fact that I referred to him as a nutter doesn't mean I'm denying that it's an act of terrorism -- of course it's terrorism. I'll gladly use 'nutter' to refer to the men who committed the Borough Market attack, too.

Anyway, sure -- not every terrorist act committed by a muslim has to pertain to Islamism.

That doesn't mean I'm a racist imperialist who's just making assumptions, though. Again, jihadists don't leave us to figure out their motivations; we're talking about people who go on the rampage screaming about how it's for their god.

That's another example of biased data taking-- so, apparently, wherever you live, attacks on Muslims aren't news, while attacks by Muslims are.

'Apparently'? What? You've not presented any relevant numbers here. Hypothesising an epidemic of anti-muslim violence isn't the same as demonstrating that one both exists, and is being systematically ignored by the mainstream media.

Left-leaning media like the Guardian and BBC are not shy to report anti-muslim violence. There's little lethal violence in that category, at least in the UK.

Meanwhile, all the false flag, false report, and literal violent bullshit has been coming out of the left.

Nope!

Nope!

Nope!

I will grant this did though.

But but muh conservatives! But but his tax returns!

And shadowy business dealings. He can't even keep his promises, note how he claimed he wasn't going to take money from foreigners staying at his hotels? oops

So we should enforce these laws differently depending on the color of the perpetrator's skin?

That isn't the only option. In Finland, traffic fines are based on income. One rich guy got a $103,000 speeding ticket.