Trump has no leverage?? He played his cards perfectly here - even looking at his "worst" tweets, he was basically calling Kim's bluff. This was literally a country that can't even provide electricity for it's citizens trying to act tough against the world's largest military power. He got China to back off from NK's support by trying to provoke the US. Only NK is that stupid, and perhaps Russia as well but they actually have some power to back up their words.
And most (Chinese) companies violating the sanctions quickly realize the US is a far, far, far more valuable trading partner than NK ever will be if they were called out on their actions.
It finally took someone to play hardball to solve the problem. Same thing will happen with Palestine.
Who cares? I drove a truck all through the gas price swings of the last ten years, and to anyone in the middle class it's still easily affordable. And the middle class is the target market for new vehicles.
Face it, people love big vehicles, for good reason, and the long-term trend towards trucks and large SUVs will continue unabated. It kind of reminds me of another issue we have in our city with urban sprawl. Nearly everyone when surveyed, says they'd like more dense downtown housing with walkable options. When it actually comes to their personal choice, nearly all vote with their dollars for suburban homes with a big back yard. People just want to force everyone else into how they think they should be, but we should face reality.
Temperatures are only rising "rapidly" on geological timescales. On the timescale of generations of even some of the longest living organisms on this planet (us), it is barely perceptible over an entire generation.
Highly inappropriate?? What the hell? Comey was a bureaucrat - and EMPLOYEE of Trump, who was elected to the exact job of being in charge of the executive branch. I think you Comey is a bit of a slimeball (as the book shows) and his use of the word 'loyalty' is a sign of just how things work within the government (for which Trump is an outsider).
Any good leader in an organization, anywhere, would fire an employee for not running things as his boss wished. Only to call it "non loyalty" is laughable, it's just plain insubordination. If you read even Comey's own words about the meeting, Trump sounds like any new manager meeting an employee, and Comey is instantly defensive and mistrustful. It is no wonder at all why he was fired. None of the senior bureaucrats liked Trump who was coming in to derail their gravy train they'd spent so long building.
Nonsense, it just implies you're putting profit incentives on the wrong outcome - you can have quality and safety outcomes be the most profitable ones. Don't throw the great system out because it's being used wrong in some places.
"it's not fun waiting 3-9 months for a MRI either" - in Canada, the supply of health care is distributed by a medical triage system, rather than who pays the most ("queue jumping" is actually illegal as part of the act). In any of the wait cases you have described, the only reason you would ever have to wait so long is that is was not deemed a medical emergency. If you need an MRI, cancer treatment, or bypass immediately, it will happen immediately.
Of course, no one likes to wait or believe their problems are the most important. But it's still the most fair way to ration health care services, which will always be limited in supply.
A good deal is in the eye of the beholder, and in many cases only applies to one side. You can change positions based on who's interest your representing. Have you ever started a new job in a different department at the same company, and found yourself defending things you used to argue against?
At the same time, I think I could argue the rate of change is not fast enough to cause major problems. Most plants in colder climates (I doubt plants even grow in Ellesmere it's so cold) completely die off every year only to completely grow a new generation each year. A one-year generational cycle allows for very fast adaptation. Heck, I've lived in a cold climate for the last 35 years, and the winters seem no less harsh. In the very least, the changes are barely perceptible.
How is this relatively slow year-to-year change combined with the fast adaptation rate of plants spell disaster? It may be some species that have longer generational cycles, like the fish here, but no doubt there's another fish waiting to take it's place. Polar bears have already shown to adapt well to less ice, contrary to the doomsday predictions of 20 years ago, which seemed logical at the time based on polar bear behaviour. Turns out, it can adapt to it's environment.
I think a common misunderstanding of the phrase "corporations are people" is that corporations have the same rights as people, when it's actually acknowledging that there is ultimately no separate intelligent entity known as a "corporation", it is essentially run by people and all the decision are made by real people. Thus things like free speech must extend to what a corporation says. A key but important distinction even if the misconception is a side effect of the decision.
And "liability" in the sense of LLCs refers to civil liability, I'm not sure where you get criminal liability from. If someone commits a crime, there is no corporate structure in the world they can have to remove their "liability". What is true is that within a corporate structure, evidence may be easier to destroy or hide and conviction is more difficult.
LLCs have done more good for us than bad. They have enabled massive investment that would have never happened had those legal protections not been in place. Knowing a number of lawyers who work in corporate law as well, it is not the shield from criminal activity you think it is.. judges won't hesitate for a second to pierce through that veil and convict directors, management, etc., whoever was involved in the malfeasance.
I definitely agree with your last sentence, but at the same time I believe a desire to own a gun is "rational" whereas a fear of guns is "irrational" (as are most phobias eg spiders).
What is interesting about this debate is that Canada, who many would assume is more open and accepting of immigrants, has the exact merit-based system so many in the US want. It's points based, and unless you have good education and lots of $$$, it's going to take you a long time to immigrate there.
The sad part is so many on the left in Canada would lambaste the US for their politics but don't understand their own immigration laws. DJT isn't more anti-immigration, it's levelling the playing field in many instances.
And you are correct, the racism argument is utterly wrong, but hey, everything is called racist nowadays. I would call those mud slingers the true 'deplorables' for trolling emotions on what needs to be a level headed conversation and debate.
I have to disagree there is no future in hydrocarbons. Though a poster below makes mention of rapidly falling costs in renewables, we are also seeing the same in hydrocarbons as competing energy sources and newer production methods come online. For anyone who knows industry well (and I will venture this does not include you or Rei in this thread), you would know there are simply a large number of applications where fuel is far more advantageous, even if they were to cost more. If we find an easy way to synthesize fuels, and emission technology improves at the speed it does, we may actually find there is no future in wind/solar.
How can anyone honestly believe this crap? There is always more valuable work to be done than resources available. More people advances our technology and civilization quicker.
The breach itself, though bad, I think could happen to a lot of companies even if the CIO is correctly funding and prioritizing security. With huge operations, it is really hard to know exactly what your risk exposure is and you don't know what you don't know about what holes are there.
The trading though - think about the buyers. He sold shares to dupes knowing that they would be worth less in a short time based on privileged knowledge he had because of his position. That's way more than incompetence, he's a downright douchebag and I'm glad it's illegal.
Whether or not your a Trump supporter, isn't a large number of firings exactly what's to be expected if he's "draining the swamp"?
These are all bureaucrats within the administration, not elected positions. The fear this brings you notwithstanding, hiring and firing here is the job your country elected him to do.
For the weather, looking out the window might help, but the the last six months here in Canada, looking out the window in the morning it's just dark and snow covered. We've had an unusually long cold winter, many days below -20C, and the odd day it will swing anywhere up to 0C. Turns out it's real convenient to just ask for this information.
As someone who has worked (a long time ago) with natural language processing, Alexa does a pretty good job of impressing me. I know the limitations and difficulties in the underlying technology, and Alexa is resoundingly good at figuring out exactly what I am trying to ask most of the time. Sometimes I'll stumble or forget what I was asking:
"Hey Alexa! What time is the next.. uh crap..ummm. Hockey game.. yeah Men's olympic hockey game. That Canada is playing in!" Doesn't always work, but with many similar sentences she'll respond with exactly what I was looking for.
Past that, a really good (and primary) use case I found for it is lighting control. To quickly dim or turn off lights across the room while watching TV, it's quicker to just ask Alexa.
You say all of this also assuming that organism's reactions to the environment stays constant. That is exactly what evolution is, and the change is happening slowly enough (you have to remember for many plants, each year is an entire generation so evolution can happen very quickly) plants can easily adapt. History has shown plant life adapts to those types of conditions easier than the ones we have now.
I think by using the internet since it's infancy (and understanding the technical realities of it), most of us have the benefit of already being very wary of anything read on the internet.
What *is* new is that it's true you can't trust "facts" presented by major media corporations anymore, if you ever could. One's only reasonable course for determining what is closest to the truth is to read the same story from multiple sources and opinions, and be as objective as you can in weighing the credibility of each source. Unfortunately this takes work, and reading opinions/sites you typically don't agree with, neither of which people are too keen to do.
I usually surprise people with key information on current events they didn't know, and these are smart people, they simply don't read as much news or opinions on a subject as I do. I guess the truth is whoever has first mover advantage on information and can craft facebook headlines to convey their opinion.
The worst part is reading many sources, opinions, and analysis is that it has turned me into a Trump supporter. But this is based on my careful analysis and (as much as possible) objective view of the decisions he makes...this has turned me into somewhat of a political pariah among the majority of my friends who typically only read Trump-rage headlines, or as noted above, only the first story from CNN.
Reading through the top modded comments in this thread, there are lots of posts like this from people who seem almost excited by the fact Trump will eventually be charged.
I don't really get this (btw I'm not a US citizen). Is it just because you don't like the decisions he makes? Or is it because he doesn't act as bureaucratic as the typical candidate? The way I see it is he bullshits as much as any other politician, but I feel far more confident when Trump says something that he isn't straight up lying to our faces. He may change his opinion on matters, as is good when new information comes about. I know the media parrots this as lying or flipping, but I see it as what should happen if the person in charge isn't purely ideological about things.
To date there hasn't bee any evidence of anything unreasonable from Trump's family, although it's sure true Washington is full of slimy people on both sides. It also sure seems like the Democrats were using some federal departments not fully honestly.. so this point should be recognized and the Democrats rightly berated. The election result definitely surprised some people in the Democrats and now their dirty laundry is being aired. Both parties have people we're finding are not honest, so let's root them all out. Finding glee in this is simply because you hope your person gets elected next time around. Sore losers if you ask me - the party I strongly support didn't win our last election, but I can still keep things civil.
Don't bother, I've found that anything in these climate change threads that doesn't say we're facing immediate, unprecedented disaster and we need to hand over all our money right away gets modded as a troll.
There was a recent study showing nearly all the firearms used in major recent US mass shootings are available for purchase legally, in Canada. Perhaps it's the culture, not the guns.
Agreed. Russia is about 5% of the size of the US (economically).. they are nothing. If the Americans stick to their principles (free speech, etc), everything will be fine.
As someone pointed out above, this is less than 5% of their workforce. You've fallen for the union propaganda, which is to instill fear that any cuts will lead to the direst possible consequences.
Going by NASA's own data, sea level has grown a massive 29 centimeters in the last 150 years, and at a pretty steady clip. Let's assume this is accelerating, although the last 150 years have seen quite a massive amount of forest loss/burning and fossil fuel use. What exactly is the coming disaster here? I know people claiming NYC will be underwater and labelling those who disagree as deniers.
None of the climate change data points to anything close to unmanageable disaster. People can easily engineer solutions to deal with such slow change.
My favorite example of this was a recent article in a major Canadian paper.. it was an essay titled "Well, are you a bad feminist?", which was in response to an original letter from a prominent author titled "Am I a bad feminist?".
A good read if you want something to make you puke. Here's three young twentysomethings calling a woman who actually had to fight for real women's rights a bad feminist. These people have nothing left to fight for and are grasping at straws to maintain their victim status. Smart women (usually the true feminists) aren't having any of the bullshit.
Slashdot Mirror
Trump has no leverage?? He played his cards perfectly here - even looking at his "worst" tweets, he was basically calling Kim's bluff. This was literally a country that can't even provide electricity for it's citizens trying to act tough against the world's largest military power. He got China to back off from NK's support by trying to provoke the US. Only NK is that stupid, and perhaps Russia as well but they actually have some power to back up their words.
And most (Chinese) companies violating the sanctions quickly realize the US is a far, far, far more valuable trading partner than NK ever will be if they were called out on their actions.
It finally took someone to play hardball to solve the problem. Same thing will happen with Palestine.
Who cares? I drove a truck all through the gas price swings of the last ten years, and to anyone in the middle class it's still easily affordable. And the middle class is the target market for new vehicles.
Face it, people love big vehicles, for good reason, and the long-term trend towards trucks and large SUVs will continue unabated. It kind of reminds me of another issue we have in our city with urban sprawl. Nearly everyone when surveyed, says they'd like more dense downtown housing with walkable options. When it actually comes to their personal choice, nearly all vote with their dollars for suburban homes with a big back yard. People just want to force everyone else into how they think they should be, but we should face reality.
Temperatures are only rising "rapidly" on geological timescales. On the timescale of generations of even some of the longest living organisms on this planet (us), it is barely perceptible over an entire generation.
Highly inappropriate?? What the hell? Comey was a bureaucrat - and EMPLOYEE of Trump, who was elected to the exact job of being in charge of the executive branch. I think you Comey is a bit of a slimeball (as the book shows) and his use of the word 'loyalty' is a sign of just how things work within the government (for which Trump is an outsider).
Any good leader in an organization, anywhere, would fire an employee for not running things as his boss wished. Only to call it "non loyalty" is laughable, it's just plain insubordination. If you read even Comey's own words about the meeting, Trump sounds like any new manager meeting an employee, and Comey is instantly defensive and mistrustful. It is no wonder at all why he was fired. None of the senior bureaucrats liked Trump who was coming in to derail their gravy train they'd spent so long building.
Nonsense, it just implies you're putting profit incentives on the wrong outcome - you can have quality and safety outcomes be the most profitable ones. Don't throw the great system out because it's being used wrong in some places.
"it's not fun waiting 3-9 months for a MRI either" - in Canada, the supply of health care is distributed by a medical triage system, rather than who pays the most ("queue jumping" is actually illegal as part of the act). In any of the wait cases you have described, the only reason you would ever have to wait so long is that is was not deemed a medical emergency. If you need an MRI, cancer treatment, or bypass immediately, it will happen immediately.
Of course, no one likes to wait or believe their problems are the most important. But it's still the most fair way to ration health care services, which will always be limited in supply.
A good deal is in the eye of the beholder, and in many cases only applies to one side. You can change positions based on who's interest your representing. Have you ever started a new job in a different department at the same company, and found yourself defending things you used to argue against?
At the same time, I think I could argue the rate of change is not fast enough to cause major problems. Most plants in colder climates (I doubt plants even grow in Ellesmere it's so cold) completely die off every year only to completely grow a new generation each year. A one-year generational cycle allows for very fast adaptation. Heck, I've lived in a cold climate for the last 35 years, and the winters seem no less harsh. In the very least, the changes are barely perceptible.
How is this relatively slow year-to-year change combined with the fast adaptation rate of plants spell disaster? It may be some species that have longer generational cycles, like the fish here, but no doubt there's another fish waiting to take it's place. Polar bears have already shown to adapt well to less ice, contrary to the doomsday predictions of 20 years ago, which seemed logical at the time based on polar bear behaviour. Turns out, it can adapt to it's environment.
I think a common misunderstanding of the phrase "corporations are people" is that corporations have the same rights as people, when it's actually acknowledging that there is ultimately no separate intelligent entity known as a "corporation", it is essentially run by people and all the decision are made by real people. Thus things like free speech must extend to what a corporation says. A key but important distinction even if the misconception is a side effect of the decision.
And "liability" in the sense of LLCs refers to civil liability, I'm not sure where you get criminal liability from. If someone commits a crime, there is no corporate structure in the world they can have to remove their "liability". What is true is that within a corporate structure, evidence may be easier to destroy or hide and conviction is more difficult.
LLCs have done more good for us than bad. They have enabled massive investment that would have never happened had those legal protections not been in place. Knowing a number of lawyers who work in corporate law as well, it is not the shield from criminal activity you think it is.. judges won't hesitate for a second to pierce through that veil and convict directors, management, etc., whoever was involved in the malfeasance.
I definitely agree with your last sentence, but at the same time I believe a desire to own a gun is "rational" whereas a fear of guns is "irrational" (as are most phobias eg spiders).
What is interesting about this debate is that Canada, who many would assume is more open and accepting of immigrants, has the exact merit-based system so many in the US want. It's points based, and unless you have good education and lots of $$$, it's going to take you a long time to immigrate there.
The sad part is so many on the left in Canada would lambaste the US for their politics but don't understand their own immigration laws. DJT isn't more anti-immigration, it's levelling the playing field in many instances.
And you are correct, the racism argument is utterly wrong, but hey, everything is called racist nowadays. I would call those mud slingers the true 'deplorables' for trolling emotions on what needs to be a level headed conversation and debate.
I have to disagree there is no future in hydrocarbons. Though a poster below makes mention of rapidly falling costs in renewables, we are also seeing the same in hydrocarbons as competing energy sources and newer production methods come online. For anyone who knows industry well (and I will venture this does not include you or Rei in this thread), you would know there are simply a large number of applications where fuel is far more advantageous, even if they were to cost more. If we find an easy way to synthesize fuels, and emission technology improves at the speed it does, we may actually find there is no future in wind/solar.
There simply isn't enough jobs out there
How can anyone honestly believe this crap? There is always more valuable work to be done than resources available. More people advances our technology and civilization quicker.
The breach itself, though bad, I think could happen to a lot of companies even if the CIO is correctly funding and prioritizing security. With huge operations, it is really hard to know exactly what your risk exposure is and you don't know what you don't know about what holes are there.
The trading though - think about the buyers. He sold shares to dupes knowing that they would be worth less in a short time based on privileged knowledge he had because of his position. That's way more than incompetence, he's a downright douchebag and I'm glad it's illegal.
Whether or not your a Trump supporter, isn't a large number of firings exactly what's to be expected if he's "draining the swamp"?
These are all bureaucrats within the administration, not elected positions. The fear this brings you notwithstanding, hiring and firing here is the job your country elected him to do.
For the weather, looking out the window might help, but the the last six months here in Canada, looking out the window in the morning it's just dark and snow covered. We've had an unusually long cold winter, many days below -20C, and the odd day it will swing anywhere up to 0C. Turns out it's real convenient to just ask for this information.
As someone who has worked (a long time ago) with natural language processing, Alexa does a pretty good job of impressing me. I know the limitations and difficulties in the underlying technology, and Alexa is resoundingly good at figuring out exactly what I am trying to ask most of the time. Sometimes I'll stumble or forget what I was asking:
"Hey Alexa! What time is the next.. uh crap..ummm. Hockey game.. yeah Men's olympic hockey game. That Canada is playing in!" Doesn't always work, but with many similar sentences she'll respond with exactly what I was looking for.
Past that, a really good (and primary) use case I found for it is lighting control. To quickly dim or turn off lights across the room while watching TV, it's quicker to just ask Alexa.
You say all of this also assuming that organism's reactions to the environment stays constant. That is exactly what evolution is, and the change is happening slowly enough (you have to remember for many plants, each year is an entire generation so evolution can happen very quickly) plants can easily adapt. History has shown plant life adapts to those types of conditions easier than the ones we have now.
I think by using the internet since it's infancy (and understanding the technical realities of it), most of us have the benefit of already being very wary of anything read on the internet.
What *is* new is that it's true you can't trust "facts" presented by major media corporations anymore, if you ever could. One's only reasonable course for determining what is closest to the truth is to read the same story from multiple sources and opinions, and be as objective as you can in weighing the credibility of each source. Unfortunately this takes work, and reading opinions/sites you typically don't agree with, neither of which people are too keen to do.
I usually surprise people with key information on current events they didn't know, and these are smart people, they simply don't read as much news or opinions on a subject as I do. I guess the truth is whoever has first mover advantage on information and can craft facebook headlines to convey their opinion.
The worst part is reading many sources, opinions, and analysis is that it has turned me into a Trump supporter. But this is based on my careful analysis and (as much as possible) objective view of the decisions he makes...this has turned me into somewhat of a political pariah among the majority of my friends who typically only read Trump-rage headlines, or as noted above, only the first story from CNN.
Reading through the top modded comments in this thread, there are lots of posts like this from people who seem almost excited by the fact Trump will eventually be charged.
I don't really get this (btw I'm not a US citizen). Is it just because you don't like the decisions he makes? Or is it because he doesn't act as bureaucratic as the typical candidate? The way I see it is he bullshits as much as any other politician, but I feel far more confident when Trump says something that he isn't straight up lying to our faces. He may change his opinion on matters, as is good when new information comes about. I know the media parrots this as lying or flipping, but I see it as what should happen if the person in charge isn't purely ideological about things.
To date there hasn't bee any evidence of anything unreasonable from Trump's family, although it's sure true Washington is full of slimy people on both sides. It also sure seems like the Democrats were using some federal departments not fully honestly.. so this point should be recognized and the Democrats rightly berated. The election result definitely surprised some people in the Democrats and now their dirty laundry is being aired. Both parties have people we're finding are not honest, so let's root them all out. Finding glee in this is simply because you hope your person gets elected next time around. Sore losers if you ask me - the party I strongly support didn't win our last election, but I can still keep things civil.
Don't bother, I've found that anything in these climate change threads that doesn't say we're facing immediate, unprecedented disaster and we need to hand over all our money right away gets modded as a troll.
There was a recent study showing nearly all the firearms used in major recent US mass shootings are available for purchase legally, in Canada. Perhaps it's the culture, not the guns.
Agreed. Russia is about 5% of the size of the US (economically).. they are nothing. If the Americans stick to their principles (free speech, etc), everything will be fine.
As someone pointed out above, this is less than 5% of their workforce. You've fallen for the union propaganda, which is to instill fear that any cuts will lead to the direst possible consequences.
Going by NASA's own data, sea level has grown a massive 29 centimeters in the last 150 years, and at a pretty steady clip. Let's assume this is accelerating, although the last 150 years have seen quite a massive amount of forest loss/burning and fossil fuel use. What exactly is the coming disaster here? I know people claiming NYC will be underwater and labelling those who disagree as deniers.
None of the climate change data points to anything close to unmanageable disaster. People can easily engineer solutions to deal with such slow change.
My favorite example of this was a recent article in a major Canadian paper.. it was an essay titled "Well, are you a bad feminist?", which was in response to an original letter from a prominent author titled "Am I a bad feminist?".
A good read if you want something to make you puke. Here's three young twentysomethings calling a woman who actually had to fight for real women's rights a bad feminist. These people have nothing left to fight for and are grasping at straws to maintain their victim status. Smart women (usually the true feminists) aren't having any of the bullshit.