First, freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.
Second, all sides (liberals, conservatives, moderates) have trolls and jerks among them.
Third, if it's a forum run by a non-government source, the First Amendment doesn't apply. They don't have to let someone (or anyone for that matter) use their forum. Especially if they break the rules of the forum.
Fourth, there is a difference between open debate and toxic posting. I fully believe in open debate. You might not change my mind on a topic, but I welcome an honest and open debate. But some people don't want to debate. They want to shout down, or harass, or whatever. And unless you have a crack moderator staff, you can't always keep on top of this sort of thing, especially if it's a large/popular forum.
I speak from some experience on both sides of this. Some years ago, I was a moderator on an MMO forum for Dark Age of Camelot. It wasn't a forum run by the company that made DAOC, it was a fan forum. I ended up as a moderator (much to my surprise) for regularly giving helpful information and trying to be a good guy. While I was a moderator, we had to put people in various lengths of "time out" for being jerks, or abusing the forum rules, or spamming, or whatever.
Shockingly, the moderators weren't always the most popular people with the friends of the trolls.
On the other side of the fence, there was (possibly still is) a forum for a group called Christian Exodus. Among their stated goals is (as a last resort), the idea of moving enough followers to a specific U.S. state (South Carolina), to try and influence enough elections and legislators to make it a more Christian state. Actually, their absolute last resort was to have SC secede from the U.S.
I was banned from their forums because I would do things like remind them that the last time that SC seceded, it didn't go all that well, or remind them that there's more than one version of the Bible (they were very focused on returning to doing _exactly_ what the Bible said), and so on. I was enjoying myself, but I can't really say it came as a shock when I was banned from posting on their forum.
Imagine thousands of gallons of water rushing through a sewer drain. Mixed up in there is animal feces, decaying plant matter, and whatever else is swept up off the street.
Now, technically, that's more actual water than what is coming out of your kitchen sink tap. But I'm pretty sure that you'd rather drink the tap water than a random sampling of sewer drain water.
Quantity is not the same as quality.
Now, clearly, not every bit of news that Fox News puts out is terrible. It's not all sewer water quality. Frankly, I will take Fox News over damn near any celebrity news site (but that is because I largely hate celebrity news sites). But relying _solely_ on Fox News, or on any one news site.... it's not a good idea.
It's much better to get your news from a wide variety of sources, because then the biases from the various sources can potentially even out. Okay, sure, if they're all conservative sources or all liberal sources, the biases don't even out. No news site is going to be perfect. So let's stop pretending that Fox News is, okay?
News, all news, has biases. And all news, especially in the last dozen or so years, is far more interested in ratings than news. If news happens to bring in the ratings or the page views, so much the better. It brings to mind an occasion from some years ago, when (at the time) Israel was pounding Palestine like cheap veal. CNN was showing news stories about that. MSNBC was showing news stories about that.
But when I looked at what Fox News was showing, they had a "human interest" piece about a horse, stuck in the mud, in Texas. And as the top of the hour came along, they said "Here's the top stories" and of course, mentioned the Israel/Palestine news. And then went back to the horse.
Ratings, not news. That's all that's important to them.
Yeah, but most people don't have their Twitter handles tattooed on their foreheads. (Neither do I, it was just the most over-the-top thing I could think of.)
So, a visitor to the U.S. would still have to tell the government stooge their Twitter handle and password. The point being, if they just turned over a Twitter handle, how does the government stooge prove that it's that visitor's Twitter account? Clearly, if you know the password, that goes a long way towards proving that.
Except, what's keeping someone from just saying that they don't have a Twitter account? It's not nearly as ubiquitous as a Facebook account. And hell, I know people who don't have a Facebook account either.
It's a good thing that climate change is a load of bollocks according to the Trump administration. I'm sure a group of people as competent as the ones that are around Trump know what they're talking about. I mean, otherwise, we might have to be worried.
The City Council announces the opening of a new Dog Park at the corner of Earl and Somerset, near the Ralphâ(TM)s. They would like to remind everyone that dogs are not allowed in the Dog Park. People are not allowed in the Dog Park. It is possible you will see Hooded Figures in the Dog Park. Do not approach them. Do not approach the Dog Park. The fence is electrified and highly dangerous. Try not to look at the Dog Park, and especially do not look for any period of time at the Hooded Figures. The Dog Park will not harm you.
I would point out that a bunch of these Republican politicians are also pro-life up to the point where the kid is born, then they can't cut social services that might help the newborn fast enough.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that most, if not all, of those 97 companies are global. When one country does {stupid thing}, other countries tend to react to that by doing their own {differently stupid but related thing}. That makes it very hard to continue doing business effectively.
Now, are these companies uncaring about people in their own backyard? Well, technically, yes. But no more so than normal. They want to continue to make profits. If they could make lots of money by treating all employees like fluffy bunnies who just need a hug, they would. Especially if they would make less money by being uncaring.
But most companies do not shit on their employees without a reason. And most companies want employee morale to be good, as it increase productivity. If employees are worried about being stranded in another country because the country they work in is passing poorly thought out travel laws, it tends to affect employee morale negatively.
it's a terribly conceived, poorly written, and horribly implemented EO that doesn't actually make the U.S. safer, provides our enemies with the recruitment point they've been wanting for years, and conveniently leaves out countries in the Middle East where terrorists who have killed people on U.S. soil have come from. (They're also countries that Trump has business interests in, but I'm sure that's just an amazing coincidence.)
No, you dingbat. I was refuting the erroneous claim that white people are a minority in the U.S. Nothing more, nothing less.
Also, considering that white people colonized North America from Europe, what possible justification is there for calling it a Caucasian homeland? Other than "we took this land by force, so there!"? Because, you know, that shit can backfire on you.
Part of the problem is the continued belief that everyone should go to college. No, they shouldn't. We probably all know people who went to a college to get the degree that society promised would get them the good life.
Except that in most actual jobs, a degree in French Literature or History or, hell, a lot of the majors in the humanities doesn't help. I knew a guy with an English degree who worked at a retail job for a decade. (To be fair, I worked with him, and I have degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science.)
But colleges can't make money unless they push that idea that everyone should go to college. So they make it easy (except financially) for people to college. When I first went to college, the university I went to had the requirement that you had to have at least a 900 SAT score (this was back when the max SAT score was 1600.) At the time, the joke was you could get an 800 by signing your name on the test and walking away. So, getting a 900 was pretty easy.
But they get to college and.... half of them don't know what they want their major to be, or they think that they're going to be able to wave a Bachelor's in Anthropology on a street corner and get a job.
And then the ones that do go into STEM fields.... I had to take, as required non-major courses, several history courses, foreign language courses, for some reason a Psych class, and a few more in there. Okay, sure, the German courses have come in handy for swearing in a language my co-workers can't understand, but.....
Sure, it made me "well rounded" (and I actually did keep a couple of the textbooks from the history classes), but I could have gotten each degree at least a year quicker if it had focused on the major and not required all the extraneous crap.
Which, of course, would have meant less money for the university, and we can't have that, can we?
Right, burning down the current system to replace it with charter schools (which contrary to what DeVos says, do not do better) and Christian-based education is just a wonderful replacement.
It's kind of amazing how countries in the Middle East that aren't on the ban list are the ones that Trump has business interests in. It's almost like Trump is using the power of the Presidency to enrich himself.
No, wait, that's totally what he's doing. I won't be a bit surprised if the border wall construction contracts end up being 'no-bid' parceled out to friends and family of Trump.
Just who the hell are y'all going to blame for everything when Soros inevitably kicks the bucket? Do you already have someone lined up, or is there going to be another secret conservative meeting (where a recording is somehow taken and shared) about it?
Where did you get the idea that whites are a minority in the U.S.?
Census data (2010-2014 American Community Survey 5-Year Profiles) has whites (single race) as 73.76% of the population.*
Black/African American (single race) make up 12.54%. American Indian/Alaskan Native (single race) - 0.811%. Asian (single race) - 4.95% Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (single race) - 0.17%. Other (single race) - 4.77%. Two or more races - 3.00%.
And, as of that same data, broken down on a county level, there are only 192 counties (out of 3320 counties) where whites are "outnumbered" by the other listed groups.
No, whites are not a minority. Acting like they are, and that they are in danger of being treated the same way that white people have treated actual minorities only serves as a scare tactic intended to drive people to a white nationalist/white supremacist point of view.
Oh, I assumed so. I'm just listing what a couple different inflation calculators told me.
Although, I should point out, it actually gave it in 2015 dollars. I guess the overall inflation calculations aren't in for 2016 or their calculators just haven't updated yet.
"Ignore what these nominees have done, because just IMAGINE what Clinton would have done."
I don't know if you noticed, but Clinton didn't win, so we have to deal with what the actual President and the actual nominees for the Secretary positions have done and will do.
My point was that, for the party of Reagan, it's a huge shift. Hell, up until a couple years ago, they wouldn't have rolled over as much as they have. Hell, earlier this month, McConnell did say that "the Russians are not our friends". But he's not actually interested in doing any investigating into the matter,
And that's the thing. Let's say that there was no Russian involvement in the election. That everything we've seen has been misinterpreted and at no point did the Russians try and influence the election.
Wouldn't you want to prove that? Wouldn't you want to investigate it so it doesn't cast that shadow over Trump's presidency?
Trump's doing a decent job of making himself look like a thundering idiot. Also, I'm not sure when it happened, but at least when I was a kid, the idea that "the Rooskies" might have interfered with a U.S. election would not be so casually dismissed by the party of Reagan.
Except that they're really not the party of Reagan any more, are they? I mean, I know why McConnell isn't rocking the boat. He got paid with his wife being offered a Cabinet position. And Ryan is too busy thinking of ways to shit on poor people to actually give a fuck (in that way, he is still part of the party of Reagan, because he's continuing with all that "welfare queen" folderol). But the rest of the party? Where's the indignation?
Oh right, they're too busy celebrating that they're going to be back in power to actually give a fuck about how they got there or the consequences. (You can also see that in the "repeal and replace" plan they have for the ACA.)
Who cares if he did something that he's claiming credit for? Uh, me. How about that. And I'm not the only one.
Also, I wonder if Trump realizes that claiming credit for all these things could bite him in the ass. I mean, what happens if the economy takes a down-turn after he takes office? He's claiming credit RIGHT NOW for the uptick in Christmas sales, jobs coming back, etc. That makes it really hard to not "be responsible for" the economy ticking down after he takes office.
Oh, who am I kidding, he'll do what every fucking politician does. Everything good is because of him, and everything bad is because of the previous guy. The problem is, Trump will actually toot that horn MORE than most politicians because he might actually believe his own press. He's already referring to himself in the third person, and the inauguration is still three weeks away.
Slashdot Mirror
First, freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.
Second, all sides (liberals, conservatives, moderates) have trolls and jerks among them.
Third, if it's a forum run by a non-government source, the First Amendment doesn't apply. They don't have to let someone (or anyone for that matter) use their forum. Especially if they break the rules of the forum.
Fourth, there is a difference between open debate and toxic posting. I fully believe in open debate. You might not change my mind on a topic, but I welcome an honest and open debate. But some people don't want to debate. They want to shout down, or harass, or whatever. And unless you have a crack moderator staff, you can't always keep on top of this sort of thing, especially if it's a large/popular forum.
I speak from some experience on both sides of this. Some years ago, I was a moderator on an MMO forum for Dark Age of Camelot. It wasn't a forum run by the company that made DAOC, it was a fan forum. I ended up as a moderator (much to my surprise) for regularly giving helpful information and trying to be a good guy. While I was a moderator, we had to put people in various lengths of "time out" for being jerks, or abusing the forum rules, or spamming, or whatever.
Shockingly, the moderators weren't always the most popular people with the friends of the trolls.
On the other side of the fence, there was (possibly still is) a forum for a group called Christian Exodus. Among their stated goals is (as a last resort), the idea of moving enough followers to a specific U.S. state (South Carolina), to try and influence enough elections and legislators to make it a more Christian state. Actually, their absolute last resort was to have SC secede from the U.S.
I was banned from their forums because I would do things like remind them that the last time that SC seceded, it didn't go all that well, or remind them that there's more than one version of the Bible (they were very focused on returning to doing _exactly_ what the Bible said), and so on. I was enjoying myself, but I can't really say it came as a shock when I was banned from posting on their forum.
Didn't you ever listen to that song by Loverboy?
Frog and mammoth DNA just won't splice.
Imagine thousands of gallons of water rushing through a sewer drain. Mixed up in there is animal feces, decaying plant matter, and whatever else is swept up off the street.
Now, technically, that's more actual water than what is coming out of your kitchen sink tap. But I'm pretty sure that you'd rather drink the tap water than a random sampling of sewer drain water.
Quantity is not the same as quality.
Now, clearly, not every bit of news that Fox News puts out is terrible. It's not all sewer water quality. Frankly, I will take Fox News over damn near any celebrity news site (but that is because I largely hate celebrity news sites). But relying _solely_ on Fox News, or on any one news site.... it's not a good idea.
It's much better to get your news from a wide variety of sources, because then the biases from the various sources can potentially even out. Okay, sure, if they're all conservative sources or all liberal sources, the biases don't even out. No news site is going to be perfect. So let's stop pretending that Fox News is, okay?
News, all news, has biases. And all news, especially in the last dozen or so years, is far more interested in ratings than news. If news happens to bring in the ratings or the page views, so much the better. It brings to mind an occasion from some years ago, when (at the time) Israel was pounding Palestine like cheap veal. CNN was showing news stories about that. MSNBC was showing news stories about that.
But when I looked at what Fox News was showing, they had a "human interest" piece about a horse, stuck in the mud, in Texas. And as the top of the hour came along, they said "Here's the top stories" and of course, mentioned the Israel/Palestine news. And then went back to the horse.
Ratings, not news. That's all that's important to them.
You left out "sites that have slideshows that really reload the entire page".
Yeah, but most people don't have their Twitter handles tattooed on their foreheads. (Neither do I, it was just the most over-the-top thing I could think of.)
So, a visitor to the U.S. would still have to tell the government stooge their Twitter handle and password. The point being, if they just turned over a Twitter handle, how does the government stooge prove that it's that visitor's Twitter account? Clearly, if you know the password, that goes a long way towards proving that.
Except, what's keeping someone from just saying that they don't have a Twitter account? It's not nearly as ubiquitous as a Facebook account. And hell, I know people who don't have a Facebook account either.
It's a good thing that climate change is a load of bollocks according to the Trump administration. I'm sure a group of people as competent as the ones that are around Trump know what they're talking about. I mean, otherwise, we might have to be worried.
(THIS IS SARCASM)
The City Council announces the opening of a new Dog Park at the corner of Earl and Somerset, near the Ralphâ(TM)s. They would like to remind everyone that dogs are not allowed in the Dog Park. People are not allowed in the Dog Park. It is possible you will see Hooded Figures in the Dog Park. Do not approach them. Do not approach the Dog Park. The fence is electrified and highly dangerous. Try not to look at the Dog Park, and especially do not look for any period of time at the Hooded Figures. The Dog Park will not harm you.
I would point out that a bunch of these Republican politicians are also pro-life up to the point where the kid is born, then they can't cut social services that might help the newborn fast enough.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that most, if not all, of those 97 companies are global. When one country does {stupid thing}, other countries tend to react to that by doing their own {differently stupid but related thing}. That makes it very hard to continue doing business effectively.
Now, are these companies uncaring about people in their own backyard? Well, technically, yes. But no more so than normal. They want to continue to make profits. If they could make lots of money by treating all employees like fluffy bunnies who just need a hug, they would. Especially if they would make less money by being uncaring.
But most companies do not shit on their employees without a reason. And most companies want employee morale to be good, as it increase productivity. If employees are worried about being stranded in another country because the country they work in is passing poorly thought out travel laws, it tends to affect employee morale negatively.
Or, and I'm just throwing this out there....
it's a terribly conceived, poorly written, and horribly implemented EO that doesn't actually make the U.S. safer, provides our enemies with the recruitment point they've been wanting for years, and conveniently leaves out countries in the Middle East where terrorists who have killed people on U.S. soil have come from. (They're also countries that Trump has business interests in, but I'm sure that's just an amazing coincidence.)
No, you dingbat. I was refuting the erroneous claim that white people are a minority in the U.S. Nothing more, nothing less.
Also, considering that white people colonized North America from Europe, what possible justification is there for calling it a Caucasian homeland? Other than "we took this land by force, so there!"? Because, you know, that shit can backfire on you.
Part of the problem is the continued belief that everyone should go to college. No, they shouldn't. We probably all know people who went to a college to get the degree that society promised would get them the good life.
Except that in most actual jobs, a degree in French Literature or History or, hell, a lot of the majors in the humanities doesn't help. I knew a guy with an English degree who worked at a retail job for a decade. (To be fair, I worked with him, and I have degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science.)
But colleges can't make money unless they push that idea that everyone should go to college. So they make it easy (except financially) for people to college. When I first went to college, the university I went to had the requirement that you had to have at least a 900 SAT score (this was back when the max SAT score was 1600.) At the time, the joke was you could get an 800 by signing your name on the test and walking away. So, getting a 900 was pretty easy.
But they get to college and.... half of them don't know what they want their major to be, or they think that they're going to be able to wave a Bachelor's in Anthropology on a street corner and get a job.
And then the ones that do go into STEM fields.... I had to take, as required non-major courses, several history courses, foreign language courses, for some reason a Psych class, and a few more in there. Okay, sure, the German courses have come in handy for swearing in a language my co-workers can't understand, but.....
Sure, it made me "well rounded" (and I actually did keep a couple of the textbooks from the history classes), but I could have gotten each degree at least a year quicker if it had focused on the major and not required all the extraneous crap.
Which, of course, would have meant less money for the university, and we can't have that, can we?
Right, burning down the current system to replace it with charter schools (which contrary to what DeVos says, do not do better) and Christian-based education is just a wonderful replacement.
"Hey, how can we do what GitHub does, only stupider?"
It's kind of amazing how countries in the Middle East that aren't on the ban list are the ones that Trump has business interests in. It's almost like Trump is using the power of the Presidency to enrich himself.
No, wait, that's totally what he's doing. I won't be a bit surprised if the border wall construction contracts end up being 'no-bid' parceled out to friends and family of Trump.
So, I've been meaning to ask....
Just who the hell are y'all going to blame for everything when Soros inevitably kicks the bucket? Do you already have someone lined up, or is there going to be another secret conservative meeting (where a recording is somehow taken and shared) about it?
Where did you get the idea that whites are a minority in the U.S.?
Census data (2010-2014 American Community Survey 5-Year Profiles) has whites (single race) as 73.76% of the population.*
Black/African American (single race) make up 12.54%.
American Indian/Alaskan Native (single race) - 0.811%.
Asian (single race) - 4.95%
Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (single race) - 0.17%.
Other (single race) - 4.77%.
Two or more races - 3.00%.
And, as of that same data, broken down on a county level, there are only 192 counties (out of 3320 counties) where whites are "outnumbered" by the other listed groups.
No, whites are not a minority. Acting like they are, and that they are in danger of being treated the same way that white people have treated actual minorities only serves as a scare tactic intended to drive people to a white nationalist/white supremacist point of view.
* Figures include Puerto Rico.
Oh, I assumed so. I'm just listing what a couple different inflation calculators told me.
Although, I should point out, it actually gave it in 2015 dollars. I guess the overall inflation calculations aren't in for 2016 or their calculators just haven't updated yet.
Well, $500 billion in 2000 (depending on which site you use) is worth at least $688 billion today. Another site had it as much as $872 billion, FWIW.
It's very hard to read your post when you look like every other Anonymous Coward.
That's an interesting bit of deflection.
"Ignore what these nominees have done, because just IMAGINE what Clinton would have done."
I don't know if you noticed, but Clinton didn't win, so we have to deal with what the actual President and the actual nominees for the Secretary positions have done and will do.
For all his talk of "draining the swamp", Trump is instead topping it up. And hell, he's already made it harder for people to get mortgages. https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-01-20/trump-administration-overturns-obama-s-fha-mortgage-fee-cut
tell me the phone somehow has Twitter blocked entirely.
My point was that, for the party of Reagan, it's a huge shift. Hell, up until a couple years ago, they wouldn't have rolled over as much as they have. Hell, earlier this month, McConnell did say that "the Russians are not our friends". But he's not actually interested in doing any investigating into the matter,
And that's the thing. Let's say that there was no Russian involvement in the election. That everything we've seen has been misinterpreted and at no point did the Russians try and influence the election.
Wouldn't you want to prove that? Wouldn't you want to investigate it so it doesn't cast that shadow over Trump's presidency?
Trump's doing a decent job of making himself look like a thundering idiot. Also, I'm not sure when it happened, but at least when I was a kid, the idea that "the Rooskies" might have interfered with a U.S. election would not be so casually dismissed by the party of Reagan.
Except that they're really not the party of Reagan any more, are they? I mean, I know why McConnell isn't rocking the boat. He got paid with his wife being offered a Cabinet position. And Ryan is too busy thinking of ways to shit on poor people to actually give a fuck (in that way, he is still part of the party of Reagan, because he's continuing with all that "welfare queen" folderol). But the rest of the party? Where's the indignation?
Oh right, they're too busy celebrating that they're going to be back in power to actually give a fuck about how they got there or the consequences. (You can also see that in the "repeal and replace" plan they have for the ACA.)
Who cares if he did something that he's claiming credit for? Uh, me. How about that. And I'm not the only one.
Also, I wonder if Trump realizes that claiming credit for all these things could bite him in the ass. I mean, what happens if the economy takes a down-turn after he takes office? He's claiming credit RIGHT NOW for the uptick in Christmas sales, jobs coming back, etc. That makes it really hard to not "be responsible for" the economy ticking down after he takes office.
Oh, who am I kidding, he'll do what every fucking politician does. Everything good is because of him, and everything bad is because of the previous guy. The problem is, Trump will actually toot that horn MORE than most politicians because he might actually believe his own press. He's already referring to himself in the third person, and the inauguration is still three weeks away.