Just what would you call a phone with an x86 running Windows using a full sized monitor, keyboard, and mouse?
Useless.
Phone and tablet OSes are designed to do one thing at a time. Even if you plug in a real monitor and keyboard, you're going to have trouble dragging a table from your spreadsheet into a word processor on your phone.
I'm not saying that a phone will never have enough compute power to equal a usable desktop, I'm saying that the interface on the phone is not appropriate for desktop use, nor vice-versa. I thought we all learned that from Apple and the early Windows tablets.
So now you say, what about a computer that uses a phone-like UI when it's untethered, then switches to a desktop-like UI when it's near its base. Maybe. When the phone has enough power to run photoshop filters while I watch. Or to compile a decent sized codebase. I'd take a computer capable of doing real computing, small enough to fit in my pocket, and with a wireless connection to a 30 Hz, 30" monitor. The thing is that real compute power and long battery life are kind of opposite ends of the design spectrum.
You seem to make numbers up... but luckily real numbers exist.
He's not making up numbers. He's comparing the accumulated CO2 release over 4.5 billion years of earth's existence to 250 years of industrial activity. It's not made up (much), it's just completely irrelevant.
The "literally" is superfluous. He is using the word "literally", not as the opposite of "figurative", but as an intensifier. That is considered by many to be sloppy English, and should be avoided in both speech and writing... or suffer the wrath of the Grammar Nazis.
That's because a good Nazi uses "doch" as an intensifier, but English lacks any useful equivalent. All of our intensifiers are adverbs, and they emphasize the wrong thing. Consider "They really used thousands of computers." Doesn't convey the same meaning. I vote we bring back doch.
Yeah, the autist crowd just can't wrap their minds around the concept of "genuine".
So the judge has set the precedent that one has to be a practitioner of a "genuine" religion to merit constitutional protections. Does this mean you also have to be a "genuine" practitioner? If you go to church every Sunday, but don't really believe in the immaculate conception, or don't really believe that that the priest turns wine into human blood during communion, are you really practicing Christianity? Somewhere, there's a Federal judge who's confident that he can tell True Believers, and he's ready to make sure that only True Believers receive State protection.
I wonder how many televangelists will still qualify for tax-free status?
Because while car crash deaths are still a real big killer, the IS has made MASSIVE strides in reducing them
I know the Islamic State has been trying to look more like a legitimate government, but I didn't realize they'd gone so far as keeping traffic statistics. Any idea if this reduction is because people are too scared to drive, have had their cars commandeered or blown up?
Seems to be this is exactly what is happening here in the Hillary email scandal....anyone else pulling this same exact thing, would have been indicted already.....and likely convicted.
Exactly. It's why all of GWB's paintings have prison bars.
The laws were laws, and anyone, including the President, when they violate the law, got prosecuted --- and that did happen, to Nixon
Well, not really. Nixon resigned before he was impeached (ie, he avoided Senate trial), and Ford pardoned him so there never would be a criminal trial. Sure, Nixon lost his job, suffers some disgrace, but he was never prosecuted, let alone convicted. For serious crimes that almost certainly were committed and in which Nixon was almost certainly complicit.
How about the Keating Five, in 1989, who took money from S&L captain Keating to shut down a federal investigation of his bank? Keating got to go to jail for fraud, but those senators? One of them ran for President in 2008.
My point is, let's not pretend that politicians doing whatever the fuck they like, without consequence, is anything particularly new. If you're upset that Obama managed to push through the barely constitutional AHCA, you should be equally upset that Bush managed to push through the barely constitutional PATRIOT act.
If you think this is new, it's either because you've just started paying attention or because the brainwashing is just kicking in
This doesn't rely on 'special' input to any field or form. This depends entirely on the fact that the convenient web interface to SB6141 has no login and includes a one-step reset button with zero confirmation. If you can check the status of your modem, an attacker can get you to reset your modem by including the reset URL as an automatically-loaded img, script, or style link. There are probably other such easy-configuration modems out there, but SB6141 is extremely popular.
You want to get mad at coders, fine, but get mad at them for relevant flaws.
"Are you ok to oppress 50% of the population to make 1% happy? You really want to stand by that?"
Depends entirely on the weight of oppression being imposed on the 50% and the extent of relief being offered to the 1%. If you're honestly suggesting that 50% of North Carolina is significantly burdened by the fear that the female-costumed person in the next stall might, possibly have a penis, or that the male-costumed person might not...well, I'd say you have a pretty low opinion of NCians. On the other hand, the small number of trans people are now going to be compelled to enter rest rooms costumed as the wrong sex. No doubt, there will be incidents of well-meaning people stopping a "man" from entering the women's room, which seems like a pretty embarrassing situation. There will be people compelled to "out" themselves or wet themselves, which seems like a pretty gross burden. I can imagine places where a trans-woman walking into a "mens" room might even be subject to persecution and assault. (or do they bring this on themselves by "choosing a lifestyle.")
But you want to say that so many NCians carry a burning fear that they might unknowingly be shitting, unseen, next to someone of opposite anatomy, that this outweighs the burden of people being forced to enter a bathroom not aligned with their gender costume. If NCians are actually so disturbed, then I think PayPal has made the right call for the wrong reason. They should stay out of NC because the residents are fucking crazy.
No one is refusing to sell cupcakes to homosexuals, they're refusing to sell cupcakes to be used for a homosexual marriage celebration.
When a religious leader performs a wedding, it is part of the practice of his faith. It is literally a religious experience for him and for the participants. I can imagine a religion in which cupcakes hold great symbolic weight. A faith where the preparation and consumption of cupcakes symbolizes the eternal connection between baker and consumer, and acceptance of each others choices and existence. A faith where not only the preparation, but also the subsequent eating of cupcakes is, literally, a religious experience. Those bakers are under no compulsion to practice their cupcake religion on any random person who walks in the door.
I've not heard of this Cult of Cupcake, although it sounds a bit like Pastafarianism, which is a real faith that people honestly and devoutly follow. My impression has been that most of the "won't do that for a gay wedding" objections have come from more-or-less standard Christians, for whom (as near as I remember) cakes and cupcakes hold no particular religious symbolism.
If the bathroom you use does not matter (i.e. a unisex bathroom is fine), then what is the problem with using a same sex bathroom? It shouldn't matter.
It matters because society has taboos associated with waste excretion that get mixed up with sexual taboos. Legislating the use of toilets is an attempt to make the most people most comfortable. Consider a cis-gendered person and a trans-gendered person sharing a multi-user bathroom. In one case, the cis observes a person of the opposite gender calmly stroll into 'their' bathroom and go into a stall. In the other case, the cis observes a person of same gender calmly stroll into the bathroom and go into a stall, but when they peek over the wall, they notice this person has the wrong genitalia.
The question is: are most people going to be more comfortable letting a person dressed as a woman go into the men's room, or will they be more comfortable knowing that the 'chick' in the next stall has a penis? It's not fair to say that trans people just can't use any bathroom. It's not fair to say businesses have to have build two extra bathrooms to accommodate a small minority of trans people. It might be fair to ban gendered bathrooms, but that would be a major social upheaval.
Maybe you can view the NC Law as saying "we don't care how you're dressed or who you're attracted to, but it's really important to us that you pee standing up if you are anatomically capable of doing so," but, wow, that message seems pretty fucked up.
LGBT is interesting, But it's not a race of people; It is a new phenomenon, proving it artificial
Except it's not a new phenomenon. If it were a new phenomenon, then the Bible wouldn't say anything about 'lying with a man as with a woman.' The part that's new is people discussing sexuality openly and without judgement. The part that's new is religion losing power over enough people to consider ethics independently of ancient taboos.
I don't know anything about Iceland or its politics, but I love the language. I don't even know how many syllables are in that word and I'm dead certain my tongue would need a week of physical therapy if I tried to pronounce it. I'm pretty sure it has a sound like "ich"/"ish"/"ig" in it, although I'm not sure which letters would make it. They have "Framsoknarflokkurinn," which just the word looks like a band of vikings sharing a flagon of mead and a haunch of smoked meat. We have the "TEA party." Iceland rocks.
Go to your nearest mall or department store - you might want to go to a few. Watch the people when they enter. If given a choice, they will (almost invariably) opt to go to the right.
I wonder if you would get the same result in the UK or Australia.
But that's not the kind of 'random' at issue here. They're talking about the clock time when a person standing in a line triggers a sensor. For any sensor of human-sized objects moving at TSA-line speeds, I would expect sensor variability to be a large part of the "is the current millisecond even or odd" decision.
I am not a lawyer, but why do they need this part?: fully sublicensable (i.e. we can grant this right to others).
Imagine you're using your Rift to hold a virtual meeting with two or three friends. You've customized your avatar, maybe even by mapping a photo of yourself onto its head. In order for your friends to 'see' you, Oculus/Facebook has to redistribute your creation. They might want to use a 3rd party content delivery network to send textures or images. If you happen to sing a song during this meeting, then not only your avatar, but the whole performance is theoretically copyrightable. (and really, probably anything qualifies as a 'performance'). If you want to record a message, or be able to replay a session, they need to be allowed to store and distribute later.
So, they need some of this language just to do what you're signing up for. It is true that the language would also let them use segments in advertising literature. They might even archive and sell repeat performances. Kind of like Twitch.
I spent $20 on a 100' cat6 cable to run along the baseboard through three storeys. It's 30' too long and it's not as nice as cable buried in the walls, but it's definitely cheap and 1Gbps is definitely better than wireless.
The problem I have with things like TOS is they are friction fit without any positive locking. The cables are easy to pull out, by accident. For positive locking, the dimensions of human fingers are more important than the dimensions of the electrical contacts. Maybe an SD-like, receptacle-side lock would be ok, but it seems like that would still give you similar connector-density limitations.
"Do I deserve to be part of the 1% (household income $48K) solely on the basis of hereditary privilege?"
48k US is the bottom 54%. Top 1% is 400k.
He's talking about the global population, and asking why he deserves to be more wealthy than some random Chinese or Indian peasant, just for the accident of being born in the US.
Globalization will eventually diminish these international differences by shifting production to low-wage populations. This is great for the majority of the world, who get better jobs, higher standard of living, and more of the benefits of modern society. It's not so great for people, like essentially all Americans, who depend on the accidents of geography, history, and heredity for their elevated status.
Personally, I'm happy to accept the benefits of generations of my predecessors. Those benefits are all due to self-interested, sometimes even sociopathic, choices. I make most of my own choices out of self-interest, though I try to stay away from overtly sociopathic choices.
While we're busy removing human interests that aren't directly related to the subject matter from the conference, should we ban serving food and drinks as well?
Food is perfectly fine. Food and drink are pretty universally attractive, neither targeting nor demeaning any particular group.
Now, if you're thinking about serving only bananas and carrots carved to resemble penises, or drinks in glasses shaped like vaginas, you might find some of your audience alienated.
I don't understand people's obsession throwing money at an expensive adjustable desk.
Most people believe (even if not explicitly) that quality correlates with cost. An expensive solution has been more carefully researched and engineered; built of better materials; whatever. People also often believe they can use cost to coerce behavior ("If I pay $200/month for a gym membership, I'll have to go"). Problem + money = no problem.
When I looked at TFA's results, the thing that stands out most is that none of the standing/treadmill/cycle desks reduced sitting time by any more than 35 minutes. People would rather sit. Given a sit/stand desk, they sit. Given a standing desk with a tall chair, they sit. Furniture is not enough to change behavior (regardless of how expensive). You need a coach or some kind of game/reward system.
Congressional inaction is a valid prerogative of the body.
You say this as though it's the collective decision of 536 rational people. Not to consider the nominee is the decision of one, at most two, people: the chairs who set the agenda for the senate and the judiciary committee. This is different from a legislative process: the President can recruit any senator or representative to forward legislation.
Up to 1960, presidents could (and did) make recess appointments to the Supreme Court. That well has been especially poisoned lately by Obama's claim of recess appointments during very short recesses. Recess appointments still have to go through the confirmation process, they just get to be the judge during that process. This makes the recess appointment more a way to force the congress to act on a nominee than a way to bypass their advice and consent.
You do realize that "advise and consent" != "rubber stamp," right?
Just what kind of advice do you think McConnell is offering by refusing even to acknowledge a nominee? Why does he, or Chuck Grassley, get to speak for the entire senate?
If the nominee is not good, then advise and refuse consent: they're not exercising power by holding their hands over their ears and shouting, "La, la, la, I can't hear you!"
With the majority of money in the state of Tennessee locked in that single county, they basically sit there and dictate the state of affairs here in Tennessee.
This is the American system. In Chinese or Iranian "democracy," the Party, priests, or some other elite carefully vets and approves candidates before they're put to public vote. Thus, public nominally has a choice, but it's a meaningless choice.
In American democracy, oligarchs, acting through their corporations or PACs, vet and approve candidates before they're put to public vote (yes, even in the primaries). Thus, public nominally has a choice, but it's a meaningless choice.
There is no competition with private enterprise, because private enterprise has decided it's not cost-efficient to operate in that area - but they don't want anyone else operating there either, including the government.
Today. It's not cost-effective to operate in an area today, but they'd like the option to roll out in that area if it does begin to look profitable. They know that it is nearly impossible to displace an incumbent provider, so the only way to preserve their option is to make sure that no one else (including government) installs a network. Courts and lobbyists are way cheaper than installing cable.
You claimed that the democratic party is fascist because "fascists criticized capitalism [...] due to its [..] indifference to the nation." Since labor is part of the capitalist system, your claim implies that a good, Democratic fascist would expect labor, like all other aspects of the community, to sacrifice its well-being for the state. A good fascist expects people to take crappy jobs out of national pride to benefit the state.
You claimed that the democratic party is fascist because "fascists criticized capitalism [...] due to its [...] individualism" This means a good Democratic Party fascist wants people to be cogs in the great machine of state, rather than educated, free/independent thinkers. School, in fascism, is for indoctrination not education. Now, you may differ on whether "science" amounts to secular indoctrination, but no one really thinks US schools are mass brain washing camps
You claimed that the Democratic party is fascist because "fascists criticized capitalism [...] due to its materialism, [and ] bourgeois decadence." Both NAFTA and the TPP were negotiated by Democrats. NAFTA, in particular, was ground-breaking at the time, representing a dramatic change from decades of import tariffs and policies intended to safeguard US businesses and US strategic capabilities. These agreements reduce the costs f production and allow delivery of more material goods at lower prices, encouraging materialism and decadence.. If you haven't heard Democrats promote free trade, then you haven't been listening.
Slashdot Mirror
Just what would you call a phone with an x86 running Windows using a full sized monitor, keyboard, and mouse?
Useless.
Phone and tablet OSes are designed to do one thing at a time. Even if you plug in a real monitor and keyboard, you're going to have trouble dragging a table from your spreadsheet into a word processor on your phone.
I'm not saying that a phone will never have enough compute power to equal a usable desktop, I'm saying that the interface on the phone is not appropriate for desktop use, nor vice-versa. I thought we all learned that from Apple and the early Windows tablets.
So now you say, what about a computer that uses a phone-like UI when it's untethered, then switches to a desktop-like UI when it's near its base. Maybe. When the phone has enough power to run photoshop filters while I watch. Or to compile a decent sized codebase. I'd take a computer capable of doing real computing, small enough to fit in my pocket, and with a wireless connection to a 30 Hz, 30" monitor. The thing is that real compute power and long battery life are kind of opposite ends of the design spectrum.
You seem to make numbers up... but luckily real numbers exist.
He's not making up numbers. He's comparing the accumulated CO2 release over 4.5 billion years of earth's existence to 250 years of industrial activity. It's not made up (much), it's just completely irrelevant.
The "literally" is superfluous. He is using the word "literally", not as the opposite of "figurative", but as an intensifier. That is considered by many to be sloppy English, and should be avoided in both speech and writing ... or suffer the wrath of the Grammar Nazis.
That's because a good Nazi uses "doch" as an intensifier, but English lacks any useful equivalent. All of our intensifiers are adverbs, and they emphasize the wrong thing. Consider "They really used thousands of computers." Doesn't convey the same meaning. I vote we bring back doch.
Yeah, the autist crowd just can't wrap their minds around the concept of "genuine".
So the judge has set the precedent that one has to be a practitioner of a "genuine" religion to merit constitutional protections. Does this mean you also have to be a "genuine" practitioner? If you go to church every Sunday, but don't really believe in the immaculate conception, or don't really believe that that the priest turns wine into human blood during communion, are you really practicing Christianity? Somewhere, there's a Federal judge who's confident that he can tell True Believers, and he's ready to make sure that only True Believers receive State protection.
I wonder how many televangelists will still qualify for tax-free status?
Because while car crash deaths are still a real big killer, the IS has made MASSIVE strides in reducing them
I know the Islamic State has been trying to look more like a legitimate government, but I didn't realize they'd gone so far as keeping traffic statistics. Any idea if this reduction is because people are too scared to drive, have had their cars commandeered or blown up?
Seems to be this is exactly what is happening here in the Hillary email scandal....anyone else pulling this same exact thing, would have been indicted already.....and likely convicted.
Exactly. It's why all of GWB's paintings have prison bars.
The laws were laws, and anyone, including the President, when they violate the law, got prosecuted --- and that did happen, to Nixon
Well, not really. Nixon resigned before he was impeached (ie, he avoided Senate trial), and Ford pardoned him so there never would be a criminal trial. Sure, Nixon lost his job, suffers some disgrace, but he was never prosecuted, let alone convicted. For serious crimes that almost certainly were committed and in which Nixon was almost certainly complicit.
How about the Keating Five, in 1989, who took money from S&L captain Keating to shut down a federal investigation of his bank? Keating got to go to jail for fraud, but those senators? One of them ran for President in 2008.
My point is, let's not pretend that politicians doing whatever the fuck they like, without consequence, is anything particularly new. If you're upset that Obama managed to push through the barely constitutional AHCA, you should be equally upset that Bush managed to push through the barely constitutional PATRIOT act.
If you think this is new, it's either because you've just started paying attention or because the brainwashing is just kicking in
This doesn't rely on 'special' input to any field or form. This depends entirely on the fact that the convenient web interface to SB6141 has no login and includes a one-step reset button with zero confirmation. If you can check the status of your modem, an attacker can get you to reset your modem by including the reset URL as an automatically-loaded img, script, or style link. There are probably other such easy-configuration modems out there, but SB6141 is extremely popular.
You want to get mad at coders, fine, but get mad at them for relevant flaws.
"Are you ok to oppress 50% of the population to make 1% happy? You really want to stand by that?"
Depends entirely on the weight of oppression being imposed on the 50% and the extent of relief being offered to the 1%. If you're honestly suggesting that 50% of North Carolina is significantly burdened by the fear that the female-costumed person in the next stall might, possibly have a penis, or that the male-costumed person might not...well, I'd say you have a pretty low opinion of NCians. On the other hand, the small number of trans people are now going to be compelled to enter rest rooms costumed as the wrong sex. No doubt, there will be incidents of well-meaning people stopping a "man" from entering the women's room, which seems like a pretty embarrassing situation. There will be people compelled to "out" themselves or wet themselves, which seems like a pretty gross burden. I can imagine places where a trans-woman walking into a "mens" room might even be subject to persecution and assault. (or do they bring this on themselves by "choosing a lifestyle.")
But you want to say that so many NCians carry a burning fear that they might unknowingly be shitting, unseen, next to someone of opposite anatomy, that this outweighs the burden of people being forced to enter a bathroom not aligned with their gender costume. If NCians are actually so disturbed, then I think PayPal has made the right call for the wrong reason. They should stay out of NC because the residents are fucking crazy.
No one is refusing to sell cupcakes to homosexuals, they're refusing to sell cupcakes to be used for a homosexual marriage celebration.
When a religious leader performs a wedding, it is part of the practice of his faith. It is literally a religious experience for him and for the participants. I can imagine a religion in which cupcakes hold great symbolic weight. A faith where the preparation and consumption of cupcakes symbolizes the eternal connection between baker and consumer, and acceptance of each others choices and existence. A faith where not only the preparation, but also the subsequent eating of cupcakes is, literally, a religious experience. Those bakers are under no compulsion to practice their cupcake religion on any random person who walks in the door.
I've not heard of this Cult of Cupcake, although it sounds a bit like Pastafarianism, which is a real faith that people honestly and devoutly follow. My impression has been that most of the "won't do that for a gay wedding" objections have come from more-or-less standard Christians, for whom (as near as I remember) cakes and cupcakes hold no particular religious symbolism.
If the bathroom you use does not matter (i.e. a unisex bathroom is fine), then what is the problem with using a same sex bathroom? It shouldn't matter.
It matters because society has taboos associated with waste excretion that get mixed up with sexual taboos. Legislating the use of toilets is an attempt to make the most people most comfortable. Consider a cis-gendered person and a trans-gendered person sharing a multi-user bathroom. In one case, the cis observes a person of the opposite gender calmly stroll into 'their' bathroom and go into a stall. In the other case, the cis observes a person of same gender calmly stroll into the bathroom and go into a stall, but when they peek over the wall, they notice this person has the wrong genitalia.
The question is: are most people going to be more comfortable letting a person dressed as a woman go into the men's room, or will they be more comfortable knowing that the 'chick' in the next stall has a penis? It's not fair to say that trans people just can't use any bathroom. It's not fair to say businesses have to have build two extra bathrooms to accommodate a small minority of trans people. It might be fair to ban gendered bathrooms, but that would be a major social upheaval.
Maybe you can view the NC Law as saying "we don't care how you're dressed or who you're attracted to, but it's really important to us that you pee standing up if you are anatomically capable of doing so," but, wow, that message seems pretty fucked up.
LGBT is interesting, But it's not a race of people; It is a new phenomenon, proving it artificial
Except it's not a new phenomenon. If it were a new phenomenon, then the Bible wouldn't say anything about 'lying with a man as with a woman.' The part that's new is people discussing sexuality openly and without judgement. The part that's new is religion losing power over enough people to consider ethics independently of ancient taboos.
Framsoknarflokkurinn (Progress Party)
I don't know anything about Iceland or its politics, but I love the language. I don't even know how many syllables are in that word and I'm dead certain my tongue would need a week of physical therapy if I tried to pronounce it. I'm pretty sure it has a sound like "ich"/"ish"/"ig" in it, although I'm not sure which letters would make it. They have "Framsoknarflokkurinn," which just the word looks like a band of vikings sharing a flagon of mead and a haunch of smoked meat. We have the "TEA party." Iceland rocks.
Go to your nearest mall or department store - you might want to go to a few. Watch the people when they enter. If given a choice, they will (almost invariably) opt to go to the right.
I wonder if you would get the same result in the UK or Australia.
But that's not the kind of 'random' at issue here. They're talking about the clock time when a person standing in a line triggers a sensor. For any sensor of human-sized objects moving at TSA-line speeds, I would expect sensor variability to be a large part of the "is the current millisecond even or odd" decision.
I am not a lawyer, but why do they need this part?: fully sublicensable (i.e. we can grant this right to others).
Imagine you're using your Rift to hold a virtual meeting with two or three friends. You've customized your avatar, maybe even by mapping a photo of yourself onto its head. In order for your friends to 'see' you, Oculus/Facebook has to redistribute your creation. They might want to use a 3rd party content delivery network to send textures or images. If you happen to sing a song during this meeting, then not only your avatar, but the whole performance is theoretically copyrightable. (and really, probably anything qualifies as a 'performance'). If you want to record a message, or be able to replay a session, they need to be allowed to store and distribute later.
So, they need some of this language just to do what you're signing up for. It is true that the language would also let them use segments in advertising literature. They might even archive and sell repeat performances. Kind of like Twitch.
I spent $20 on a 100' cat6 cable to run along the baseboard through three storeys. It's 30' too long and it's not as nice as cable buried in the walls, but it's definitely cheap and 1Gbps is definitely better than wireless.
The problem I have with things like TOS is they are friction fit without any positive locking. The cables are easy to pull out, by accident. For positive locking, the dimensions of human fingers are more important than the dimensions of the electrical contacts. Maybe an SD-like, receptacle-side lock would be ok, but it seems like that would still give you similar connector-density limitations.
"Do I deserve to be part of the 1% (household income $48K) solely on the basis of hereditary privilege?"
48k US is the bottom 54%. Top 1% is 400k.
He's talking about the global population, and asking why he deserves to be more wealthy than some random Chinese or Indian peasant, just for the accident of being born in the US.
Globalization will eventually diminish these international differences by shifting production to low-wage populations. This is great for the majority of the world, who get better jobs, higher standard of living, and more of the benefits of modern society. It's not so great for people, like essentially all Americans, who depend on the accidents of geography, history, and heredity for their elevated status.
Personally, I'm happy to accept the benefits of generations of my predecessors. Those benefits are all due to self-interested, sometimes even sociopathic, choices. I make most of my own choices out of self-interest, though I try to stay away from overtly sociopathic choices.
While we're busy removing human interests that aren't directly related to the subject matter from the conference, should we ban serving food and drinks as well?
Food is perfectly fine. Food and drink are pretty universally attractive, neither targeting nor demeaning any particular group.
Now, if you're thinking about serving only bananas and carrots carved to resemble penises, or drinks in glasses shaped like vaginas, you might find some of your audience alienated.
I don't understand people's obsession throwing money at an expensive adjustable desk.
Most people believe (even if not explicitly) that quality correlates with cost. An expensive solution has been more carefully researched and engineered; built of better materials; whatever. People also often believe they can use cost to coerce behavior ("If I pay $200/month for a gym membership, I'll have to go"). Problem + money = no problem.
When I looked at TFA's results, the thing that stands out most is that none of the standing/treadmill/cycle desks reduced sitting time by any more than 35 minutes. People would rather sit. Given a sit/stand desk, they sit. Given a standing desk with a tall chair, they sit. Furniture is not enough to change behavior (regardless of how expensive). You need a coach or some kind of game/reward system.
Congressional inaction is a valid prerogative of the body.
You say this as though it's the collective decision of 536 rational people. Not to consider the nominee is the decision of one, at most two, people: the chairs who set the agenda for the senate and the judiciary committee. This is different from a legislative process: the President can recruit any senator or representative to forward legislation.
Up to 1960, presidents could (and did) make recess appointments to the Supreme Court. That well has been especially poisoned lately by Obama's claim of recess appointments during very short recesses. Recess appointments still have to go through the confirmation process, they just get to be the judge during that process. This makes the recess appointment more a way to force the congress to act on a nominee than a way to bypass their advice and consent.
You do realize that "advise and consent" != "rubber stamp," right?
Just what kind of advice do you think McConnell is offering by refusing even to acknowledge a nominee? Why does he, or Chuck Grassley, get to speak for the entire senate?
If the nominee is not good, then advise and refuse consent: they're not exercising power by holding their hands over their ears and shouting, "La, la, la, I can't hear you!"
With the majority of money in the state of Tennessee locked in that single county, they basically sit there and dictate the state of affairs here in Tennessee.
This is the American system. In Chinese or Iranian "democracy," the Party, priests, or some other elite carefully vets and approves candidates before they're put to public vote. Thus, public nominally has a choice, but it's a meaningless choice.
In American democracy, oligarchs, acting through their corporations or PACs, vet and approve candidates before they're put to public vote (yes, even in the primaries). Thus, public nominally has a choice, but it's a meaningless choice.
There is no competition with private enterprise, because private enterprise has decided it's not cost-efficient to operate in that area - but they don't want anyone else operating there either, including the government.
Today. It's not cost-effective to operate in an area today, but they'd like the option to roll out in that area if it does begin to look profitable. They know that it is nearly impossible to displace an incumbent provider, so the only way to preserve their option is to make sure that no one else (including government) installs a network. Courts and lobbyists are way cheaper than installing cable.
Let me walk you through it, slowly.
You claimed that the democratic party is fascist because "fascists criticized capitalism [...] due to its [..] indifference to the nation." Since labor is part of the capitalist system, your claim implies that a good, Democratic fascist would expect labor, like all other aspects of the community, to sacrifice its well-being for the state. A good fascist expects people to take crappy jobs out of national pride to benefit the state.
You claimed that the democratic party is fascist because "fascists criticized capitalism [...] due to its [...] individualism" This means a good Democratic Party fascist wants people to be cogs in the great machine of state, rather than educated, free/independent thinkers. School, in fascism, is for indoctrination not education. Now, you may differ on whether "science" amounts to secular indoctrination, but no one really thinks US schools are mass brain washing camps
You claimed that the Democratic party is fascist because "fascists criticized capitalism [...] due to its materialism, [and ] bourgeois decadence." Both NAFTA and the TPP were negotiated by Democrats. NAFTA, in particular, was ground-breaking at the time, representing a dramatic change from decades of import tariffs and policies intended to safeguard US businesses and US strategic capabilities. These agreements reduce the costs f production and allow delivery of more material goods at lower prices, encouraging materialism and decadence.. If you haven't heard Democrats promote free trade, then you haven't been listening.