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I don't think I communicated correctly. I don't know of anyone renting general access to their AI for it to perform various tasks like an AI MTurk. However, all the usual network services that people use every day are using prime time AIs to help with the service they perform for you. Google has AIs to decide what you're thinking of when you write search terms and what to show you when you visit Google News. Facebook has AIs to decide what advertising to show you. When you talk to a virtual assistant, there's AIs helping to try and get the assistant to do what you say, and helping to decide what advertisements your requests suggest would be best to throw your way when you're at a site with advertisers that pay for the AIs' suggestions. I feel confident that they're using AIs to help make catchpas that other AIs can't defeat. IBM bought the digital part of The Weather Channel so that they could use its data for selling weather predicting services of its AI. Here's an article telling how more than 100 web services are using Watson instances to power apps and other online business. Here's another article telling how Ross Intelligence is using a Watson to help lawyers act like they've read all the recent decisions. Eviebot and Cleverbot will chat with you. None of these are at the level of science fiction AIs, but they are providing actual value to their owners, and often to the customers of their owners.

Correct those numbers by racially profiling crime offenders and you'll see that there's no discrimination.
Now, if you had a statistic on innocent men shot by cops without resisting to authority you might have a claim there. Also, there is the point in that if you're a cop facing a black man on a suspicious action, you're more likely to get shot. https://www.washingtonpost.com...

One trusted worker can watch a lot of people. The US has a lot of people who can watch.
"5.1 million Americans have security clearances. That’s more than the entire population of Norway." (March 24, 2014)
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
"Who has security clearance? More than 4.3M people" (June 6, 2017 )
https://www.usatoday.com/story...
Nearly 5 Million People Have Government Security Clearances (07.23.12)
https://www.wired.com/2012/07/...

Verizon was fined for violating network nuetrality in 2012 when they blocked people from tethering, again in 2016 for supercookies, and they were throttling video just last year. This is a non-exhaustive list.

Each of these violations happened under different rules, which they thought they could get away with (and mostly did) because the former rules were so lax. Your claim that no "ISP has yet done anything differently" is ridiculous - what they have done is dropped any plans that they had for maintaining network neutrality, because those plans are now unnecessary. Now they go back to what they were doing before, only this time with no consequences.

You shouldn't care about school shootings either. There have been about 250 deaths in school shootings over 18 years (non-gang, non-suicide), or about 14 per year. Since there are approximately 51 million K-12 students in the U.S., a student's chances of being killed in a non-gang, non-suicide school shooting in any given year are about (51 million students) / (14 deaths/year) = 1 in 3.6 million.

You're more likely to be killed by a deer. About 120 Americans are killed by deer every year. (325.7 million Americans) / (120 deaths/year) = 1 in 2.7 million chance of being killed by a deer each year. Do you wring your hands over the possibility of being killed by a deer, and hold marches to demanding the deer population be controlled?

The U.S. causes of death statistics are readily available from the CDC website. For 2015, the leading causes of death for the 15-19 year old demographic were:

3,919 deaths - Accidents (mostly automobile accidents and drug overdoses)
2.061 deaths - Suicide
1,587 deaths - Homicide (mostly outside school, and gang related)
583 deaths - Malignant neoplasms (cancer)
306 deaths - Heart disease
195 deaths - Birth defects
72 deaths - Influenza (the flu)
63 deaths - Chronic lower respiratory diseases
61 deaths - Cerebrovascular diseases
52 deaths - Diabetes
41 deaths - Complications from pregnancy and childbirth

All of these represent a greater risk to students than the 14 deaths per year from school shootings.

Total BS, to get the plea deal he had to have agreed to something and that doesn't end with the sentencing unless Mueller promised him something he can't really deliver.

Isn't it curious the judge who accepted the plea deal happened to be a friend of Stzok, who was the one who interviewed Flynn and said he didn't feel Flynn lied, and that judge was removed/recusedfrom the case?

Looks like from the outside that Mueller and Contreras had some type of side deal that he used to make promises to Flynn but now he can't keep them, and Mueller is scared the next judge that hears the case might see through his extortion racket.

FWIW, it was the president of South Korea, Moon Jae-In who started the idea that Trump should get a Nobel. A reporter asked Moon if he wanted the Nobel and he said something like "No, I just want peace for the korean peoples, trump should get the nobel."

BTW, Moon has literally been preparing his entire adult life to make peace with the north. And the guy has like a 75+% approval rating in the ROK. Trump pulling out isn't going to stop Moon.

No, it isn't - what is the Libya Model? The Lybia model isn't surround yourself with female body guards, torture your citizens, and let your kids kill your country's citizens without restraint. Libya was hell on earth, the locals brought down the government and the US helped.

But that isn't what Bolton was referring to - Libya Model is to demand absolute, verified shutdown of nuclear development, no exceptions.

THAT is the Libyan Model any sane person would understand Bolton was talking about.

Bolton was referring to the need to build trust and verify any denuclearization efforts when he brought up Libya in a CBS interview last month. He didn’t imply, publicly at least, that the “Libya model” would include regime change in North Korea.

Source

It's in trumps style of negotiation. He's always going to go for the BEST deal that he can get, and this is not at all out of the ordinary for Trump.

Back when it was first announced, Scott adams almost immediately said "expect one of them, probably trump, to walk away at least once before any actual negotiations take place".

Fun to see these types of negotiating dynamics playing out on the world stage.

Did Adams also predict that Trump's newly chosen underling would "accidentally" scuttle the negotiations? (Causing Trump a loss of face in the process)

Trump isn't the one calling the shots here, the South Koreans arranged the summit they had zero expectation of succeeding because they didn't want Trump to start a war instead, and North Korea agreed to the summit because they wanted the photo op with the US President and all the flowery praise that Trump has been giving them the past few weeks (plus sanction relief if they could weasel it).

But Bolton wanted the summit to go away because North Korea is a country, and he likes invading countries. And so the summit that would never accomplish anything is at least temporarily dead and the really unlikely stupid war is slightly more likely and still just as stupid.

Was the KJU summit going to strip the US of it's ability to strike domestic targets?

As a reminder, it was the previous administration, who got his Nobel Peace Prize in advance of doing anything of any substance, because the members of the committee "just knew he'd do good things once in office, so why wait?", that used drone strikes to target and kill American citizens without benefit of trial.

"a declaration will therefore issue"

It's very clear in the order, if you read it.

I did read it. Here's an analysis from The Washington Post that says you are wrong:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

"Because no government official is above the law and because all government officials are presumed to follow the law once the judiciary has said what the law is,” she adds a bit later, “we must assume that the President and Scavino will remedy the blocking we have held to be unconstitutional.”

In other words: I’m not going to make Trump do this, but because I’ve determined that the blocks are unconstitutional, it is fully expected that Scavino will fix the problem.

What happens if the accounts aren’t unblocked? (At least one blocked user indicated that the block was still in place shortly after the decision was released.) It’s not clear, but the next step presumably would be a mandate to unblock them.

Nope :-(

Giant predatory worms invaded France, but scientists just noticed them:

What they lack in physical defenses, they make up in a cocktail of disgusting bodily juices. A colleague once tried to put a flatworm in his mouth, Justine recounted. The man still describes it as “one of the worst experiences of his life.”

Sounds like French food to me!

And also, German industry got a little help: https://www.adl.org/news/op-ed... https://www.washingtonpost.com... https://libcom.org/library/all... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-... http://www.jewishvirtuallibrar...

Just goes to show: a Jew will sell to both sides as long as there's money to be made.

Giant predatory worms invaded France, but scientists just noticed them:

What they lack in physical defenses, they make up in a cocktail of disgusting bodily juices. A colleague once tried to put a flatworm in his mouth, Justine recounted. The man still describes it as “one of the worst experiences of his life.”

You guys are the ones who elected a con-man who implied he was the devil at every rally and then literally told you he was a snake that would viciously devour you if you invited him in. And just as soon as he got in he put an "America: Going Out of Business" sign on the whitehouse lawn and started collecting every bribe that came his way.

But yeah, you guys are the smart ones.

So which one of these is you?

`It’s Easier to Fool People Than to Convince Them That They Have Been Fooled’

or

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
—LBJ

I don't know whether to believe the claim or not, unfortunately. It seems far-fetched for it to be true, but I don't have the resources to visit the jurisdictions in question and establish what their processes are myself.

Sure you do. You have a web-browser. You can see that no state has done so. Zero.

You know, unless you don't believe anything unless you see it for yourself. Which would be a serious problem. For you. Because I sincerely doubt you're going to attend every single polling precinct either.

I also thought it was far-fetched for a state government to pass a law forbidding people from cooperating with federal law enforcement.

No state has done that either. If you check out the facts, you can see what states are doing is requiring their employees to hold federal officers to standards of accountability and best practice, not just do things in a slipshod fashion prone to abuse.

It's much safer that way.

I also thought that it was far-fetched for a county/ state that had a votable-verifiable paper ballot that was electronically counted (but could be verified through a manual recount) to switch to an all-electronic system that removed voter verification and just about all auditing capabilities, but that is exactly what happened in my last state of residence (Maryland).

Oh other people could have told you that wasn't far-fetched at all, we were talking about it over a decade ago.

But actually, it didn't happen in the state of Maryland. You must be confused and thinking of some other place.

Or maybe you got caught up by auto-correct. It happens.

I know that I currently live in a state for which I had to get an "enhanced" driver's license in order for it to be used as a federal ID (something that is required in my work, as well as to board civil aircraft) because the ordinary driver's license did not meet the US governments citizenship or basic proof of identity needs.

Oh, others already know about Real ID/SecureID and it's processes too. There are multiple states with waivers on that, from Alaska to Maine, to well, that pretty much covers the east west, so um Arizona maybe?

I also know that my daughter, who was recently licensed to drive, was automatically registered to vote at the same time that she received her license. I do not know specifically which part of the driver's licensing process checked her citizenship (not necessary for a driver's license) before registering her to vote.

Your ignorance is a personal problem that you should address then. For one thing, you could have checked to see if she produced a birth certificate in order to get a driver's license.

I've seen enough stupidity to stop believing that just because something is far-fetched it isn't possible.

Have you seen enough people swearing to falsehoods to stop believing them just because your gut wants to go along with it?

That's something that may help you.

I am against disenfranchising voters. I am not necessarily willing to give up ensuring only authorized voters are voting, and then only voting once per election, in order to prevent all disenfranchising of any voter, however. I think both needs can be met. Perhaps we can do statistical testing (such as is used for quality control to establish whether a lot should be accepted or not based on sampling items in the lot) using randomly chosen voters, which can be tuned for both false acceptance and fa

He apparently has ended a 70 year war in Korea by mocking the fat, ugly imbecilic dictator on the other side over the internet.

If only! He did indeed have the opportunity to end the war fall into his lap like manna from heaven, yes, because North Korea's nuclear research complex was destroyed in a semi-natural disaster. Then with John "War Fetish" Bolton's help, the fat ugly imbecilic wannabe-dictator snatched crushing defeat from the jaws of free glorious victory by reminding North Korea what happened to Libya (and Gaddafi) along with demonstrating that the USA's word isn't worth jack shit, and now it's all going to fall through. So don't count your chickens before they hatch.

The economy is doing ell and employment is about the highest it's ever been. He's another Bill Clinton - horrible person, fine President.

The economy is doing well, yes, but as in the Reagan years, the massive and permanent wealth transfer to the 1% will come back to haunt future generations. He's cooked another goose that lays the golden eggs, and again the conservatives are saying "Mmm mmm tasty goose! Such a great decision!"

He will almost certainly go down in history as the worst US president ever on all fronts.

Yes, Pluto is still a planet.

In the USA some judges use sentencing software that analyses if a defendant would be likely to commit a crime again. This software turned out to be biased against black people. https://www.propublica.org/art...

Okay, that's pretty bad.

Women were less likely to be shown Google adds for high paying jobs, as the algorithm had perceived the existing bias (women less often have high paying jobs), and then concluded that showing these adds to women would result in fewer clicks. https://www.washingtonpost.com...

This is not an example of a human rights violation. In no way does this mean women aren't allowed to hold these jobs or apply for them, it just means they are less likely to have these positions advertised to them. Also, who the hell chooses a career based on an Internet advertisement? You should be blocking that shit, anyway. I wouldn't hire anyone -- man or woman -- who doesn't appreciate a good ad blocker.

An algorithm denied pregnant women medicare. "The scholar Danielle Keats Citron cites the example of Colorado, where coders placed more than 900 incorrect rules into its public benefits system in the mid-2000s, resulting in problems like pregnant women being denied Medicaid."
https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

As a public benefits recipient myself, I can pretty much guarantee that a lot of people were affected by this screw-up, not just pregnant women specifically. We really need a broader focus, rather than a focus on broads.

"Illinois ends risk prediction system that assigned hundreds of children a 100 percent chance of death or injury"https://www.theverge.com/2017/...

Again, no human rights violated here. Sounds like some math was done wrong and spit out a scary number.

The list is endless.

It could really use some pruning and trimming. Stick to actual human rights violations, throwing all that other crap in there is artificially inflating the size of the problem and making me want to tune it out entirely.

Here are some examples:

- In the USA some judges use sentencing software that analyses if a defendant would be likely to commit a crime again. This software turned out to be biased against black people. https://www.propublica.org/art...

- Women were less likely to be shown Google adds for high paying jobs, as the algorithm had perceived the existing bias (women less often have high paying jobs), and then concluded that showing these adds to women would result in fewer clicks.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

- An algorithm denied pregnant women medicare. "The scholar Danielle Keats Citron cites the example of Colorado, where coders placed more than 900 incorrect rules into its public benefits system in the mid-2000s, resulting in problems like pregnant women being denied Medicaid." https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

- "Illinois ends risk prediction system that assigned hundreds of children a 100 percent chance of death or injury"
https://www.theverge.com/2017/...

The list is endless.

The general assumption is: 'algorithms use math and data, thus they must be neutral and scientific'. But it's not that simple. This site explains it: https://www.mathwashing.com/

"The real danger, then, is not machines that are more intelligent than we are usurping our role as captains of our destinies. The real danger is basically clueless machines being ceded authority far beyond their competence." - Daniel Denett

Using statics for the effectiveness of Amber Alerts from AmberAlerts.gov is a little like going to JimBeam.com and expecting them to tell you the less savory statistics on alcohol abuse and drunk driving. While it no doubt does some good, most impartial assessments of the Amber Alert system have shown it to be at best a miss-allocation of resources (often only effective in custodial disputes where the child isn't in danger) and at worse a thinly veiled attempt at security theater.

Slate
ResearchGate.net
Washington Post

https://slate.com/news-and-pol...

https://whyy.org/segments/blac...

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

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

https://www.independent.co.uk/...

https://www.bitchmedia.org/art...



and on and on and on, just from the first page of my links search. I'll leave finding the hundreds of stories about white people stopped in black "drug areas" as an exercise, it's not much harder to find as many as you want to know it's a problem too.

The problem is that car accidents are in general vastly under-reported by the media. Until the last couple years, the single most dangerous thing you did was to get into a car (surpassed only recently by drug overdoses). On average, about 1 in 102 people you know are fated to die in a car accident. Compare to the odds of some of the other things the media devotes a disproportionately high (or low) amount of coverage time:

Suicide: 1 in 91
Police killed on duty: 1 in 104 (1.1 million officers / (135 per year * 78 year lifespan normalization)
Homicide by gun: 1 in 285
Drowning: 1 in 1,086
Fire: 1 in 1,506
Choking: 1 in 3,138
Killed by police: 1 in 4,336 (325.7 million / (963 * 78 year lifespan)
Complications from pregnancy: 1 in 5,965 (325.7 million / (700 * 78 year normalization)
Terrorism in U.S.: 1 in 28,033 (325.7 million / (3277 * 78 year lifespan / 22 years sample))
Killed by deer: 1 in 34,797 (325.7 million / (120 * 78 year lifespan)
Gun accident: 1 in 8305
Lightning: 1 in 114,195
School shootings: 1 in 121,033 (325.7 million / (138 * 78 year lifespan normalization / 4 years sample))
Dog attack: 1 in 132,614
Plane crash: 1 in 205,552
Terrorism in U.S. excluding 9/11: 1 in 248,954
Shark attack: 1 in 3,690,101 (325.7 million / (43 * 78 year lifespan / 38 year sample)

If news reports were truly unbiased, you'd expect to see:

Roughly 3x as many reports about fatal car accidents than gun homicides.
5x as many reports of women dying from pregnancy than reports of terrorism fatalities (including 9/11, 77x without).
39x as many stories about people dying of choking on food, versus school shootings.
43x as many stories about fatal car accidents than police shootings.
91x as many reports about suicides than gun accidents.
Over 100x as many stories about people being killed by deer, than killed by sharks.

The truth is the media picks and chooses which stories they want to publicize, whether it be because of their unusual and provocative nature (e.g. Tesla crashes, plane crashes, school shootings, shark attacks), or to serve a political agenda.

Donald J. Trump as POTUS was one of the worst electoral mistakes in the history of the United States, one that this country will spend decades living down with the rest of the world.

And this is the worst part. Fair enough that a few thousand rednecks ruined America, but they might also be responsible for ruining the Western Hemisphere, and handing geopolitical dominance to China and Russia. If you ever wondered how the mighty Rome fell, we are all in for a real time demonstration.

My point was P(pickup), not P(found). But you knew that.

If you really want to challenge my argument, instead of a strawman you should challenge me to provide citations of this (and similar) douchey behavior happening prior to the FCC's 2015 Open Internet Order. If you did that, I would list:

* Major ISPs throttling Netflix, et al.
* Verizon stating on-record that they would like to charge services for better access to their subscribers
* Madison River (ISP) blocking vonage
* Comcast (ISP) blocking P2P applications
* Telus (ISP) blocking access to a website critical of them
* Shaw (ISP) charging a 'QoS fee' to subscribers using competing VoIP solutions
* AT&T blocking VoIP apps on the iPhone
* AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon blocking Google Wallet
* Verizon blocking tethering apps
* AT&T charging extra if iPhone users want to use facetime, instead of AT&T's competing product

No one would put up with a power company that charged more for electricity to power appliances that weren't also bought from them. And yet, when a company that is a combination of ISP and content provider decides to trollishly increase the cost of competitive content streaming, somehow that's OK? SMH.

You ended with a point about opening up more spectrum & increasing service (which I take to mean that the former would cause the latter.) I can't personally speak to the matter of opening up more spectrum, because I don't know how much spectrum sits fallow. I would be surprised if much did.

The recent introduction of a $15/hr minimum wage has impacted employment negatively.

From the article:

"In particular, to avoid confusing establishments that were subject to the minimum with those that were not, the authors did not include large employers with locations both inside and outside of Seattle in their calculations. Skeptics argued that omission could explain the unusual results."

But at least Seattle didn't already do something crazy like pass a $15 per hour minimum wage law! Oh wait... yes they did.

Just so you know... that study is known to be flawed. You might want to update your views to include the latest and most complete information.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/02/05/raising-the-minimum-wage-doesnt-cost-jobs-multiple-studies-suggest/?utm_term=.c02f6259e293

Amazon has profited from the infrastructure that the Seattle taxpayers have provided for them over the years, including an education system that has provided the workers that have been the engine that has driven Amazon's wealth.

Your veracity and reasoning are suspect.

I myself experienced Western Washington's education system after attending public schools in another part of the country, and I can tell you that Washington's education is sub-par. The value provided by Seattle's infrastructure is not at all what you suggest.

This is the kind of selfish short-term thinking that will destroy this country.

Maybe. But you're overlooking the critical fact that Washington State government is responsible for making the homeless problem significantly worse with the Deinstitutionalization policies it implemented during the 1990's. Deinstitutionalization is the name given to the policy of moving severely mentally ill people out of large state institutions and then closing part or all of those institutions.

In particular,

• • The most compelling, wildly naïve economic case went something like this: We have a state mental hospital with a $100 million annual budget that houses 1,000 patients. Many of these patients don't need to be there. If we moved them into community settings, we free up the $100,000 average per-patient costs of this facility, which we can redirect to community mental health centers, housing assistance, and other services to help them.

    As Christopher Jencks noted in his elegant little volume "The Homeless," this argument is misguided in almost every way. Of course, state mental hospitals and other institutions included many patients who required few inpatient services. Yet the patients who spent their days playing cards didn’t draw upon many services beyond room, board, and medication, which they would still require (often at higher unit costs) in any other setting. Deinstitutionalizing low-cost patients doesn’t appreciably reduce the hospital’s $100 million budget. It wouldn’t reduce fixed costs of operating the facility. It doesn’t allow managers to lay off staff who spend much of their time working with the smaller subgroup of most-needy or most-disruptive patients.

Source: What happened to U.S. mental health care after deinstitutionalization?

In my opinion, Amazon can be reasonably forgiven for seeking to protect its fiduciary responsibilities in the face of a government who created the very problem that this tax is intended to resolve.

Cheers.

Almost any idea you can imagine has been tried, and nothing has worked.

Giving people homes worked pretty well in Utah:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

The only other (reasonable) cause for homelessness would be chronic unemployment. Seattle has 3.6% unemployment which is below the national average of 4.1% so that's not a reasonable cause for chronic homelessness.

However, Seattle's unemployment rate had been in steady decline until recently when it flattened out. The recent introduction of a $15/hr minimum wage has impacted employment negatively.

So basically everything Seattle is doing to supposedly help the lower classes is having the opposite effect -- exactly as economists predicted. Yet they keep on shooting themselves in the foot regardless with idiotic things like this head tax. When will they learn you can't tax, regulate, or legislate your way to prosperity?

As multiple sources clarify, 47% do not pay the "Federal Income Tax" while 28% do not pay net federal taxes. The difference is mainly because the payroll (FICA) tax is an income tax but is not the Federal Income Tax. That is, the United States has multiple income taxes and the 47% comment is about one of them, making it very misleading. Additionally, there's a good number of households you'd expect to not pay taxes. About a third of those 28% are elderly people, for instance.

(These numbers are all from articles around the time of Romney's 47% remark. The precise numbers are likely similar but not identical today.)

The Courts have already ruled that DAPA, which was an identical program to DACA, but for adults, was unconstitutional - back in 2014.

The only reason any judge has upheld DACA is because of the magic of Trumplaw - the discovery that all laws are different if Trump is involved.

Just because us Democrats voted for this with only one vote against it in the Senate according to:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/12/06/in-1995-congress-reached-a-compromise-on-the-issue-of-jerusalem-trump-is-poised-to-end-it/

Doesn't make it right for Trump to do this. He is a racist Nazi for doing this.

Hubble imaged a plume several years ago, NASA has been confident that's it's happening but the new data suggests a previous probe actually flew through one of the plumes and no one realized it at the time.

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

Good. Another law regulating harmless activities between consenting adults bites the dust...

Gambling doesn't occur in a vacuum.

Studies: Casinos bring jobs, but also crime, bankruptcy, and even suicide

Japan Moves To Ease Aging Drivers Out of Their Cars

They'll do it better than in Georgia ...

Were they shouting "Save the unborn" and bombing abortion clinics, because that's what the religious zealots do here. Before that, they shouted "Die Ni**er" and bombed black churches and neighborhoods.

Never seen a Muslim do either of those.

** Lameness Filter is Lame.

What planet you been on? Cuz the color of your sky ain't blue.

Here are the 10 countries where homosexuality may be punished by death

Here are the 10 countries where homosexuality may be punishable by death:

Yemen: According to the 1994 penal code, married men can be sentenced to death by stoning for homosexual intercourse. Unmarried men face whipping or one year in prison. Women face up to seven years in prison.

Iran: In accordance with sharia law, homosexual intercourse between men can be punished by death, and men can be flogged for lesser acts such as kissing. Women may be flogged.

Mauritania: Muslim men engaging in homosexual sex can be stoned to death, according to a 1984 law, though none have been executed so far. Women face prison.

Nigeria: Federal law classifies homosexual behavior as a felony punishable by imprisonment, but several states have adopted sharia law and imposed a death penalty for men. A law signed in early January makes it illegal for gay people countrywide to hold a meeting or form clubs.

Qatar: Sharia law in Qatar applies only to Muslims, who can be put to death for extramarital sex, regardless of sexual orientation.

Saudi Arabia: Under the country’s interpretation of sharia law, a married man engaging in sodomy or any non-Muslim who commits sodomy with a Muslim can be stoned to death. All sex outside of marriage is illegal.

Afghanistan: The Afghan Penal Code does not refer to homosexual acts, but Article 130 of the Constitution allows recourse to be made to sharia law, which prohibits same-sex sexual activity in general. Afghanistan’s sharia law criminalizes same-sex sexual acts with a maximum of the death penalty. No known cases of death sentences have been meted out since the end of Taliban rule in 2001.

Somalia: The penal code stipulates prison, but in some southern regions, Islamic courts have imposed sharia law and the death penalty.

Sudan: Three-time offenders under the sodomy law can be put to death; first and second convictions result in flogging and imprisonment. Southern parts of the country have adopted more lenient laws.

United Arab Emirates: Lawyers in the country and other experts disagree on whether federal law prescribes the death penalty for consensual homosexual sex or only for rape. In a recent Amnesty International report, the organization said it was not aware of any death sentences for homosexual acts. All sexual acts outside of marriage are banned.

Notice anything in common among those countries?

You have the balls to answer? I'm guessing no.

You're a fool. A stupid fucking fool. Was elementary school the best decade of your life.

His "Trump" brand merchandise have always been explicitly clear where his job creation takes place. China and Mexico.

I don't know how much Trump had to do with this.

I'm merely referring to this.. Your "people who are in a better position to know" are mentioned there as well.

Russians and Arabs (amongst many others) have attempted to influence the voters in the US for many decades.

Over the decades, many American politicians have sought such external influences. At the height of the cold war, Democrat Senator Ted Kennedy sought the help of the Russian government in his attempt to defeat Reagan in the 1984 campaign. In 2016, Hillary Clinton not only used illegal aliens in her campaign (foreign influence, by definition) but she also funneled millions of dollars through the law firm Perkins Coie to the American journalist outfit Fusion GPS that hired Christopher Steele (a British spy, thus foreign influence) who in turn bought dirt from Russian spies which was then placed in a document (now referred to as "the Steele Dossier") that was used to start the whole Trump-Russia meme.

This foreign influence in our elections may well be disgusting, but it's hardly new. Hell, in Democrat-run states the politicians are working overtime to allow illegal aliens to actually cast votes. AFAIK nobody has found any evidence that Trump was working to allow Russian citizens to cast actual votes in the USA. There's currently still no evidence that anything in that Steele Dossier is true or that there was any Trump-Putin collusion at all.

I figure you're shitposting, or drunk, but:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Maybe I should explain how money is fungible and having this money to pay for "other expenses" allows them to hire more police?

Nah, waste of time.

* There are several studies which show a correlation between increased execution and lower murder rate.

  Here's a chart of homicide rates.

  Here's a chart with executions by year.

* You can get the year by year murder rate and number of executions per year from the government. They used to be easily accessible but are much more difficult to find today for a number of reasons.

* If/when you get the numbers, you can get the correlation coefficient between the murder rate and execution numbers, to see how the murder rate varies with execution, with the Excel "correl" function. This yields Spearman's rho. From 1950 to about 2010 (I'm not on the computer with that data but I recall it was about 60 years worth of data), the correlation coefficient is -0.7. Excel also has a Pearson function to get Pearson's r. It also yields -0.7. The numbers range from 1 (they move in the same direction) to 0 (random movement relative to each other) to -1 (they move in perfectly opposite directions).

The reality is that the death penalty deters. If it doesn't, it's a huge coincidence. But most people accept that lesser punishments deter. So it doesn't make any sense that a harsher punishment would not deter.

There isn't even any evidence here that the goal of these ads was to influence voting, elections or politics. The ads were all over the place, basically promoting anything which might have gotten a response from someone, including lots of contradictory things like rallies for opposing candidates and causes. Examples from the article: "pushing arguments for and against immigration, LGBT issues and gun rights". It wasn't exactly just politics, either. For example, there were Pro-Beyoncé vs. Anti-Beyoncé ads as well. (Same article, but the longer version.)

They ads didn't stop with the election, meaning they obviously weren't just an attempt to influence votes.

This was an operation (lost in the noise of politics as usual) trying to stir up likes and shares, most likely with a spam/profit motive in the long run, not an ideological motive. Again, from the article: "They sought to hook American voters into clicking “Like” or following Russia-created Facebook profiles and pages, which published organic content, like status updates, videos and other posts, which would later appear in users’ News Feeds."

TFA didn't link to the WaPo story but rather a summary of it. Here's WaPo with a breakdown of the most popular ads: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/05/10/these-are-the-most-popular-russian-facebook-ads-from-each-month/
Lots of BLM, gun rights, and gay rights stuff, but nothing much about the election. Most aren't even incendiary, just piggybacking on slogans already out there. I suspect that you are right about the ad revenue.

If Pluto is a planet, aren't a large number of other bodies in the solar system also planets?

Fair point, the electric cars should all have flashing lights and a recording of "WARNING! This is a silent car, not a horse!" played at about 90dB

How about regular cars and trucks with fake engine noises:

Stomp on the gas in a new Ford Mustang or F-150 and you’ll hear a meaty, throaty rumble — the same style of roar that Americans have associated with auto power and performance for decades.

It’s a sham. The engine growl in some of America’s best-selling cars and trucks is actually a finely tuned bit of lip-syncing, boosted through special pipes or digitally faked altogether.

Iran is a give away to the Evangelicals. See here. He wins either way. He doesn't really care about the economic damage and a war would be good for his presidency (just like Iraq was, ultimately, good for the Bush presidency. Seriously, check his poll numbers during and after).

So, did we forget that a ton of people, including a LOT of Democrats, opposed this deal from the beginning? In case you've forgotten, here's a refresher.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY):

Admittedly, no one can tell with certainty which way Iran will go. It is true that Iran has a large number of people who want their government to decrease its isolation from the world and focus on economic advancement at home. But it is also true that this desire has been evident in Iran for thirty-five years, yet the Iranian leaders have held a tight and undiminished grip on Iran, successfully maintaining their brutal, theocratic dictatorship with little threat. Who’s to say this dictatorship will not prevail for another ten, twenty, or thirty years?

To me, the very real risk that Iran will not moderate and will, instead, use the agreement to pursue its nefarious goals is too great.

Therefore, I will vote to disapprove the agreement, not because I believe war is a viable or desirable option, nor to challenge the path of diplomacy. It is because I believe Iran will not change, and under this agreement it will be able to achieve its dual goals of eliminating sanctions while ultimately retaining its nuclear and non-nuclear power. Better to keep U.S. sanctions in place, strengthen them, enforce secondary sanctions on other nations, and pursue the hard-trodden path of diplomacy once more, difficult as it may be.

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) (via the Hill):

"The deal ultimately legitimizes Iran as a threshold nuclear state," Menendez, who stepped down as the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee earlier this year amid corruption charges, said on MSNBCs "The Rundown." "The deal doesnt end Irans nuclear program, it preserves it."

The New Jersey senator, a long-time critic of the negotiations, refuted President Obamas claim that the deal allows for 24/7 access to inspect any site believed to be violating the deal.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) (via Charleston Gazette-Mail):

Sen. Joe Manchin will vote to oppose the nuclear agreement with Iran, joining every other member of West Virginia’s congressional delegation in opposition.

Manchin announced his decision one week after Democrats secured the votes necessary to make sure the deal goes into effect, downplaying, somewhat, the significance of his announcement.

The deal, which gives Iran relief from international economic sanctions in return for limits on and inspections of the country’s nuclear program, is all but sure to be put into place, despite the objections of West Virginia’s representatives.

Now-former Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY), Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), and Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) all opposed the deal as well. Yet, not enough were able to cross the aisle with Republicans to override a veto threat by Obama over the resolution to reject the agreement. From the September 10, 2015 edition of The New York Times:

Senate Democrats delivered a major victory to President Obama when they blocked a Republican resolution to reject a six-nation nuclear accord with Iran on Thursday, ensuring the landmark deal will take effect without a veto showdown between Congress and the White House.

A procedural vote fell two short of the 60 needed to break a Democratic filibuster. It culminated hours of debate in

First, I am anti-coal. It is obvious that you are in favor of coal since you continue to troll and push for CHina to build 700+ new coal plants ( not much difference between Trump and you).
Secondly, this conversation started off on coal since Cement's main issue is the USE of coal to provide heat.
Third, you obviously do not understand the meaning of troll. You are running around following somebody posting after them with lies and hypocrisy. That makes you the troll, not me.
Fourth, it is IMPOSSIBLE for Coal to burn cleaner than Nat Gas. I have explained to you the chemistry of such and yet you continue to lie about such things and prove how incredibly stupid you are. FIrst off, if coal was 100 or even 85% hydrogenated, it would be OIL, not coal. It is coal because it is cross linked between chains giving it solidity. However, at the same time, it means that per each carbon, you have less than 2 Hs. In fact, the garbage that CHina pushes is pretty damn close to 1H per C, which is why your skies are so FUCKING POLLUTED. That is also why you put out a lot more CO2 than you admit to. OCO2 continues to show it and keeps quiet due to politics. But all you have to do is look at the maps to see how horrible CHina REALLY is. And I look forward to OCO3 hitting the sky in 2019; between OCO2/3, along with Japan's sats, I am hoping that the groups will finally just spill the facts.
Fifth, China's emissions AND COAL use continue to set RECORDS, but your continued building of coal plants will destroy any chance of remaining low.
And based on an analysis of global coal plans, the research finds that five countries — India, China, Turkey, Vietnam and Indonesia — are home to “nearly three quarters (73 percent) of the global coal-fired capacity that is currently under construction or planned.”
If your nation builds those 700 plants, well, your water for the future is in DEEP trouble.

Sadly, it is idiots like you that continue to think that they have the RIGHT to pollute, while others of us are WAY below you in emissions.