The US has led the free world for 70+ years, and is taken for granted by its allies and even the neutrals - the US military protects them, so they can spend $ on butter not guns (and then out-compete US industries). The US taxpayer's checkbook funds their social spending so they can complain freely about what a shithole America is.
We're spending $billions on foreign aid...that we have to BORROW FROM CHINA. That's like taking out a mortgage so you can continue making donations to United Way.
I've always been an internationalist, moreso than most of my peers but even I recognize that while of course there is enlightened self-interest in foreign aid, we've built a culture of world-addiction to American sacrifice. We're done spending blood and treasure to try to drag some shathole country into the 20th century, to say nothing of the 21st. ISIS is a problem? Yep, maybe fix your own country instead of fleeing to a nicer place. You're overwhelmed with troublesome refugees? Maybe a coast guard or even some semblance of border security is YOUR problem, we're not taking any of them.
No, I would say instead that a few years of China will help the US enormously
In case anyone was wondering, shipping costs have NEARLY NOTHING to do with this.
The Ocean Freight industry - particularly Trans-Pacific East-Bound (ie China to US) has had long term overcapacity issues for a decade, Depending on who you're talking to, essentially for every $100 they make, the industry has been spending $105-$110 for more than a handful of years. It got to a point that last year, you could ship a truckload of cargo from Hong Kong to Brazil port to port for $50.
They're not quite that bad anymore but still, you can ship a truckload from China to Los Angeles cheaper than the cost of delivering that load from the port to a point in Metro Los Angeles.
It doesn't mean they're totally USELESS; no. For the majority of situations, they're more trouble than they're worth.
First, you have to be in exactly the right situation - there cannot be background noise or crosstalk - so essentially, a nearly SILENT room. How many of us spend a substantial amount of time in silence? I'm certainly not going to use a voice app on a bus, plane, or in public even if it was quiet, because anyone who does that is an obnoxious asshole.
Second, you have to know exactly the syntax the system is looking for. On my stupid car (BMX x5) it has voice activation but I'll be damned if I can ever remember what phrases it wants. "CALL HOME" (doesn't work, oh yeah, have to kick it to the phone menu) "PHONE" phone connected "CALL HOME" many results pick one. Sigh. Oh, and my wife's name is Dawn, so fuck me if I don't have to sort through every damn "DON" in my phone book, distracting me away from the road while I do that - what am I *saving* using a voice app, again?
Third, you have to inevitably put up with a substantial failure rate. If I try to use a voice app for the simplest thing, dictating a slowly, clearly spoken text, I have to expect to spend the next few moments re-reading, editing, and correcting the text. If I'm trying to use it to come up with harder info - like names, in the example above - it's just a crapton easier to dial the number myself.
And I'm a Minnesotan (a region reputed to have a relatively clear style of speaking). I can't imagine how hard it must be for people with less intellgible accents.
I'm a conservative, and you might be surprised but I'm all for your proposed basic income.*
*as long as it is what it purports to be: a basic, living amount of $. ALL OTHER BENEFIT PROGRAMS END. There is no need for AFDC if people are getting a basic income. No need for welfare, no need for social security, no need for food shelves, no need for homeless shelters, no need for subsidized medical care. No subsidized student loans. We can stop subsidized public transport. If people then starve, freeze, whatever - then they die. They had the money to avoid it, if they were stupid or wasted it, then they suffer the complete consequences of those choices.
It's far simpler, and I suspect economically positive for the country and taxpayers.
Of course, I know that's not what you meant. Because if you advocate a basic income - which purportedly would eliminate extreme economic hardship - WITHOUT in turn eliminating all the programs that are in place specifically to do the same thing? Then you're just looking for another free-money handout.
This is the sort of statement that illustrates your point... is nothing more than a political screed.
Michael Flynn served as the 18th Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, from July 22, 2012, to August 7, 2014.
It's really not astonishingly shocking that a new president would select a former head of the DIA as National Security adviser, PARTICULARLY when most of the upper-level Washington insiders that might be ahead of him for the job signed one or more "NEVER TRUMP" letters ahead of the election.
BTW, Flynn's a registered Democrat. That doesn't get reported much.
I simply disbelieve that you did the financial checking you claim.
Mr Obama set the new tone for politics when he told Republican senators who objected to his railroading legislation: "I won". Now Democrats get to see what that feels like, as well as a Presidency even *more* enabled with executive hubris and centralized power than Bush's 8 bad years of executive overreach.
I don't like Trump, but the Left's ceaseless whinging is going to cost them more elections if they don't learn to fucking shut up.
"lefties overcompensating in their horror of the Trump phenomenon" Except that it's been going on for at least the last 20 years.
Not that you're wrong, it's certainly gotten worse since Nov 9. But it's been a thing generally since the 90s, and canon in US colleges at least since the days I went to school (1986-1990).
I'll start to believe this hoo-ha about "fake news" being a SERIOUS effort to raise the standards of journalism when I see one reputable mainstream outlet reporting that 'hands up don't shoot' in Ferguson was ALSO 'fake news'.
Until then, it's just "my party lost" biased after-election whinging.
I've read about this role for the appendix for at least 5 years? At LEAST.
Here's an early article I found on the subject https://blogs.scientificameric... - and if SciAm had it in 2012, it had to be relatively established information, they're not anywhere near cutting-edge reportage.
Were early 3D TV sets too highly priced? - Yes, WAY overpriced for the perceived value to anyone but marketeers.
Were there too few 3D films and 3D TV stations available to watch (aka "The Content Problem")? - No, because nobody cared about the 'feature'
Did people hate wearing active/passive plastic 3D glasses in the living room? - I'm not sure many people even GOT to this point, but that was certainly the kiss of death.
Was the price of Blu-ray 3D films and Blu-ray 3D players set too high? - didn't even hit the radar by this point
Was there something wrong with the stereo 3D effect the industry tried to popularize? - yes, that nobody wanted it and the industry INSISTED IT WAS THE GREATEST THING EVER.
Did too many people suffer 3D viewing related "headaches," "dizzyness," "eyesight problems," and similar? - Again, didn't even tickle the needle - the so-called consumer had lost interest for several reasons before this step.
Was the then -- still quite new -- 1080p HD 2D television simply "good enough" for the average TV viewer? - Yes, and largely still is. 4k only sells when the upcharge is nearly insignificant.
Another related question: If things went so wrong with 3D TVs, what guarantee is there that the new 3D VR/AR trend won't collapse along similar lines as well? - None. I expect it will tank almost completely. cf: Internet of Things.
Oddly enough, consumers are starting to understand that they don't need shit simply because some website, magazine, or tv show says they do.
Data: there is a (in geologic terms) near instant pulse of CO2 and temperature apprx every 120k years. This goes back at LEAST the last 3 million years, arguably back 5+ million years.
Data: the last such pulse was about 120k years ago. So we're due.
Clearly, none of the previous pulses was caused by SUVs and nasty humans. If we observe a cycle happening dozens of times, but assert that THIS TIME it's somehow being driven a different mechanism, certainly the onus is on us to explain conclusively how & why the previous mechanism stopped and a new mechanism took over.
Data: The bulk of earth's history has been at ambient temperatures higher (sometimes much higher) than the Pleistocene and Holocene. If one was to predict a planetary 'norm' over history, we're certainly currently far below it.
Data: There have been countless FUD-alerts since the 1970s identifying the bane of the human species for any number of reasons, ALL of which have been proved either completely false or grossly overblown: peak oil, nuclear power, fresh water, DDT, overpopulation, food shortages, etc. The 'Cry Wolf' effect is a real thing. Things blamed on global warming: http://www.whatreallyhappened....
Data: the promulgators of AGW have been repeatedly 'caught' massaging data (hockey sticks), creating data ('interpolation' of missing stations), adjusting data (http://realclimatescience.com/2016/12/100-of-us-warming-is-due-to-noaa-data-tampering/), and when called to produce it, saying "the dog ate my homework" (https://climateaudit.org/2009/08/11/cru-responds/). Hell, they've flat-out lied about the "97% of climate scientists agree" line for years (http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425232/climate-change-no-its-not-97-percent-consensus-ian-tuttle). To be clear, AGW deniers have/at least as long/ a record of misleading, data manipulation, out of context interpretation, or outright lying. The "data" here is that reliable, objective interpretation of this information - much less policy formulation - is no longer reasonably possible.
Sorry, I had to add this: I've watched the games promotional video and...it looks pretty bad.
It would have been great when it came out, and I sympathize with the submitter's not-so-subtle effort to pimp their "fave game", but today? No, bare-naked hills, empty minimal-polygon buildings and clumsy models are so 2007....it may be great gameplay, but so was Atari Tank Battle: but nobody's playing that anymore either.
...that once a game is released, it's on the short track to OLD NEWS.
Sure, some MMOs remain in the news, but this is more like the exception that proves the rule.
Today, with the (stupid) pre-Alpha, open Beta, soft-launch crap, the marketing engines are desperately front-loading their coverage. NOBODY promotes games that are out and released, there's little milk available in that cow (at least according to conventional wisdom).
If a game takes 6 months of patches for it to become "not suck" then it's too late, the only ones still giving it a go are the die-hards that will not stop beating a dead horse anyway. And, let's be honest: there are so many games out there with new cutting edge stuff being released, I can hardly fault the gaming public for not giving a hoot about some game from a couple of years ago that doesn't stink now.
There are TONS of games that fall into this category: single player games like Vampire the Masquerade, or MMOs like WW2OL. Games that released just a bit too underdone to be worth sticking with, but that eventually became terrific...too late for anyone to care.
At slashdot, we use a comment system from 1988 - no editing, COMPLETELY can't comprehend simple c&p from other applications - and we call it a feature, not a bug!
"This massive reversal of roles has me thinking that their outrage is less than genuine." You mean, like the DNC claiming Russia is evil (Democrats have been telling Republicans that the Russians aren't THAT bad for 70 years), or Democrats now taking the word of the CIA as gospel truth?
Slashdot Mirror
I've been asking the same thing for years.
https://realclimatescience.com...
Oh wait, those aren't the PARTICULAR lies we're talking about? I'm sorry, I didn't realize this was a faux-objective-but-actually-political-rant?
Except, it's a non-fungible choice.
The US has led the free world for 70+ years, and is taken for granted by its allies and even the neutrals - the US military protects them, so they can spend $ on butter not guns (and then out-compete US industries). The US taxpayer's checkbook funds their social spending so they can complain freely about what a shithole America is.
We're spending $billions on foreign aid...that we have to BORROW FROM CHINA. That's like taking out a mortgage so you can continue making donations to United Way.
I've always been an internationalist, moreso than most of my peers but even I recognize that while of course there is enlightened self-interest in foreign aid, we've built a culture of world-addiction to American sacrifice. We're done spending blood and treasure to try to drag some shathole country into the 20th century, to say nothing of the 21st. ISIS is a problem? Yep, maybe fix your own country instead of fleeing to a nicer place. You're overwhelmed with troublesome refugees? Maybe a coast guard or even some semblance of border security is YOUR problem, we're not taking any of them.
No, I would say instead that a few years of China will help the US enormously
In case anyone was wondering, shipping costs have NEARLY NOTHING to do with this.
The Ocean Freight industry - particularly Trans-Pacific East-Bound (ie China to US) has had long term overcapacity issues for a decade, Depending on who you're talking to, essentially for every $100 they make, the industry has been spending $105-$110 for more than a handful of years.
It got to a point that last year, you could ship a truckload of cargo from Hong Kong to Brazil port to port for $50.
https://www.flexport.com/blog/...
They're not quite that bad anymore but still, you can ship a truckload from China to Los Angeles cheaper than the cost of delivering that load from the port to a point in Metro Los Angeles.
There, I said it.
It doesn't mean they're totally USELESS; no. For the majority of situations, they're more trouble than they're worth.
First, you have to be in exactly the right situation - there cannot be background noise or crosstalk - so essentially, a nearly SILENT room. How many of us spend a substantial amount of time in silence? I'm certainly not going to use a voice app on a bus, plane, or in public even if it was quiet, because anyone who does that is an obnoxious asshole.
Second, you have to know exactly the syntax the system is looking for. On my stupid car (BMX x5) it has voice activation but I'll be damned if I can ever remember what phrases it wants. "CALL HOME" (doesn't work, oh yeah, have to kick it to the phone menu) "PHONE" phone connected "CALL HOME" many results pick one.
Sigh. Oh, and my wife's name is Dawn, so fuck me if I don't have to sort through every damn "DON" in my phone book, distracting me away from the road while I do that - what am I *saving* using a voice app, again?
Third, you have to inevitably put up with a substantial failure rate. If I try to use a voice app for the simplest thing, dictating a slowly, clearly spoken text, I have to expect to spend the next few moments re-reading, editing, and correcting the text. If I'm trying to use it to come up with harder info - like names, in the example above - it's just a crapton easier to dial the number myself.
And I'm a Minnesotan (a region reputed to have a relatively clear style of speaking). I can't imagine how hard it must be for people with less intellgible accents.
I'm a conservative, and you might be surprised but I'm all for your proposed basic income.*
*as long as it is what it purports to be: a basic, living amount of $. ALL OTHER BENEFIT PROGRAMS END. There is no need for AFDC if people are getting a basic income. No need for welfare, no need for social security, no need for food shelves, no need for homeless shelters, no need for subsidized medical care. No subsidized student loans. We can stop subsidized public transport.
If people then starve, freeze, whatever - then they die. They had the money to avoid it, if they were stupid or wasted it, then they suffer the complete consequences of those choices.
It's far simpler, and I suspect economically positive for the country and taxpayers.
Of course, I know that's not what you meant. Because if you advocate a basic income - which purportedly would eliminate extreme economic hardship - WITHOUT in turn eliminating all the programs that are in place specifically to do the same thing? Then you're just looking for another free-money handout.
Despite CNN's near-invitation to do so?
http://www.infowars.com/cnn-if...
News flash: NOT EVERYONE DESERVES OR IS ENTITLED TO COLLEGE.
What's next, reporting that "Mercedes drivers are more likely to be from the 1% than the lowest 60%"
...the point would be that this person be punished fully to the degree appropriate to the economic damage they wrought.
I like execution for any crime where the costs exceed $1 million, whether they're a hacker or Goldman Sachs.
"In August he was a nobody"
This is the sort of statement that illustrates your point ... is nothing more than a political screed.
Michael Flynn served as the 18th Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, from July 22, 2012, to August 7, 2014.
It's really not astonishingly shocking that a new president would select a former head of the DIA as National Security adviser, PARTICULARLY when most of the upper-level Washington insiders that might be ahead of him for the job signed one or more "NEVER TRUMP" letters ahead of the election.
BTW, Flynn's a registered Democrat. That doesn't get reported much.
I simply disbelieve that you did the financial checking you claim.
Mr Obama set the new tone for politics when he told Republican senators who objected to his railroading legislation: "I won".
Now Democrats get to see what that feels like, as well as a Presidency even *more* enabled with executive hubris and centralized power than Bush's 8 bad years of executive overreach.
I don't like Trump, but the Left's ceaseless whinging is going to cost them more elections if they don't learn to fucking shut up.
"lefties overcompensating in their horror of the Trump phenomenon"
Except that it's been going on for at least the last 20 years.
Not that you're wrong, it's certainly gotten worse since Nov 9. But it's been a thing generally since the 90s, and canon in US colleges at least since the days I went to school (1986-1990).
I can tell I'm getting sick without sensors, generally.
And it's a fuckton cheaper.
I'll start to believe this hoo-ha about "fake news" being a SERIOUS effort to raise the standards of journalism when I see one reputable mainstream outlet reporting that 'hands up don't shoot' in Ferguson was ALSO 'fake news'.
Until then, it's just "my party lost" biased after-election whinging.
I've read about this role for the appendix for at least 5 years? At LEAST.
Here's an early article I found on the subject https://blogs.scientificameric... - and if SciAm had it in 2012, it had to be relatively established information, they're not anywhere near cutting-edge reportage.
And here's a Discover magazine thing saying the same thing in 2008: http://discovermagazine.com/20...
...or, for a rather heavily-regulated industry, banks seem to behave in a rather cavalier fashion?
"Tideglusib"
I'm pretty sure I got an offer to buy WoW Gold ingame from someone with that name last night.
...if just once, money/power didn't win out on this one.
What's funny is that is PRECISELY what killed 3d movies, 50-60 years ago, and prevent them from becoming any big thing today.
Sure, people LIKE 3d, if they can have it conveniently. But 64% of American adults wear glasses.
Clearly what /. considers "funny" needs to be Made Great Again.
Were early 3D TV sets too highly priced?
- Yes, WAY overpriced for the perceived value to anyone but marketeers.
Were there too few 3D films and 3D TV stations available to watch (aka "The Content Problem")?
- No, because nobody cared about the 'feature'
Did people hate wearing active/passive plastic 3D glasses in the living room?
- I'm not sure many people even GOT to this point, but that was certainly the kiss of death.
Was the price of Blu-ray 3D films and Blu-ray 3D players set too high?
- didn't even hit the radar by this point
Was there something wrong with the stereo 3D effect the industry tried to popularize?
- yes, that nobody wanted it and the industry INSISTED IT WAS THE GREATEST THING EVER.
Did too many people suffer 3D viewing related "headaches," "dizzyness," "eyesight problems," and similar?
- Again, didn't even tickle the needle - the so-called consumer had lost interest for several reasons before this step.
Was the then -- still quite new -- 1080p HD 2D television simply "good enough" for the average TV viewer?
- Yes, and largely still is. 4k only sells when the upcharge is nearly insignificant.
Another related question: If things went so wrong with 3D TVs, what guarantee is there that the new 3D VR/AR trend won't collapse along similar lines as well?
- None. I expect it will tank almost completely. cf: Internet of Things.
Oddly enough, consumers are starting to understand that they don't need shit simply because some website, magazine, or tv show says they do.
Data: there is a (in geologic terms) near instant pulse of CO2 and temperature apprx every 120k years. This goes back at LEAST the last 3 million years, arguably back 5+ million years.
Data: the last such pulse was about 120k years ago. So we're due.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Clearly, none of the previous pulses was caused by SUVs and nasty humans. If we observe a cycle happening dozens of times, but assert that THIS TIME it's somehow being driven a different mechanism, certainly the onus is on us to explain conclusively how & why the previous mechanism stopped and a new mechanism took over.
Data: The bulk of earth's history has been at ambient temperatures higher (sometimes much higher) than the Pleistocene and Holocene. If one was to predict a planetary 'norm' over history, we're certainly currently far below it.
Data: There have been countless FUD-alerts since the 1970s identifying the bane of the human species for any number of reasons, ALL of which have been proved either completely false or grossly overblown: peak oil, nuclear power, fresh water, DDT, overpopulation, food shortages, etc. The 'Cry Wolf' effect is a real thing. Things blamed on global warming: http://www.whatreallyhappened....
Data: the promulgators of AGW have been repeatedly 'caught' massaging data (hockey sticks), creating data ('interpolation' of missing stations), adjusting data (http://realclimatescience.com/2016/12/100-of-us-warming-is-due-to-noaa-data-tampering/), and when called to produce it, saying "the dog ate my homework" (https://climateaudit.org/2009/08/11/cru-responds/). Hell, they've flat-out lied about the "97% of climate scientists agree" line for years (http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425232/climate-change-no-its-not-97-percent-consensus-ian-tuttle). /at least as long/ a record of misleading, data manipulation, out of context interpretation, or outright lying.
To be clear, AGW deniers have
The "data" here is that reliable, objective interpretation of this information - much less policy formulation - is no longer reasonably possible.
"It's a tool, not a fashion accessory" /welcome/ to the Apple ecosystem.
Then you, sir, are not
Sorry, I had to add this: I've watched the games promotional video and ...it looks pretty bad.
It would have been great when it came out, and I sympathize with the submitter's not-so-subtle effort to pimp their "fave game", but today? No, bare-naked hills, empty minimal-polygon buildings and clumsy models are so 2007....it may be great gameplay, but so was Atari Tank Battle: but nobody's playing that anymore either.
...that once a game is released, it's on the short track to OLD NEWS.
Sure, some MMOs remain in the news, but this is more like the exception that proves the rule.
Today, with the (stupid) pre-Alpha, open Beta, soft-launch crap, the marketing engines are desperately front-loading their coverage. NOBODY promotes games that are out and released, there's little milk available in that cow (at least according to conventional wisdom).
If a game takes 6 months of patches for it to become "not suck" then it's too late, the only ones still giving it a go are the die-hards that will not stop beating a dead horse anyway.
And, let's be honest: there are so many games out there with new cutting edge stuff being released, I can hardly fault the gaming public for not giving a hoot about some game from a couple of years ago that doesn't stink now.
There are TONS of games that fall into this category: single player games like Vampire the Masquerade, or MMOs like WW2OL. Games that released just a bit too underdone to be worth sticking with, but that eventually became terrific...too late for anyone to care.
Life's not fair.
At slashdot, we use a comment system from 1988 - no editing, COMPLETELY can't comprehend simple c&p from other applications - and we call it a feature, not a bug!
"This massive reversal of roles has me thinking that their outrage is less than genuine."
You mean, like the DNC claiming Russia is evil (Democrats have been telling Republicans that the Russians aren't THAT bad for 70 years), or Democrats now taking the word of the CIA as gospel truth?
That sort of role-reversal?