As a European (from Finland, and a Hitchensian socialist and anti-theist), I've felt the policies of secretary of state Clinton on my daily life, and am convinced she's a warmonger.
Clinton believes in using American power to improve the world. Her main difference between Obama on this count is that she was less sceptical of what the US could accomplish. I'm honestly not sure who was right. Libya isn't doing great, but they could have been Syria.
Her Iraq war vote isn't really evidence of anything other than the fact that she was a politician who knew which way the winds were blowing.
I haven't gotten that vibe from Trump. If anything, he won't meddle in middle eastern conflicts trying to change governments, and seems in good terms with the greatest nuclear power after the USA. So in terms of nuclear war, or regional wars, I think we'll be better off.
Again, I'm saying this as someone who's not a US citizen, nor do I share the American culture or history in any way. I'm looking out for the interests of my family and me, and am glad Hillary isn't president.
Then I don't think you've been paying attention very closely.
1) Trump was initially for all of these conflicts he now claims to have opposed. 2) Trump's base is traditionally very assertive of American power, they're not as interested in a humanitarian motivated intervention (Libya), but they'll enthusiastically go after anyone who challenges American power (Iraq or Iran). 3) Trump has been talking tough on Iran and talking about scrapping the deal that eased relations and halted their Nuclear weapons program. 4) Trump has noticeably weakened NATO commitments, regional actors like Russia are a lot more likely to try pushing into Eastern Europe as they did in Ukraine on the chance the US won't assist. 5) Trump is notoriously this skinned and retaliatory, how will he react if it's China or Russia instead of SNL? 6) Trump is very unpredictable and sees international relations as zero-sum, that's an easy way to create a lot of easily escalated conflicts.
No, I think Palestine should have taken the Two State solution offered by Israel a few years ago, but refused and went on a rampage over it.
The problem is, you think that Palestine wants a two state solution, and they don't. It has been offered, repeatedly, and they keep refusing.
And I wonder why you don't mention the Palestinians "Illegally" launching rockets into Israel. Or the time that Israel pulled its settlements out of Gaza, only to have them turned into rocket launching sites. I'm talking functioning industry and farms being walked away from and turning back into desert because... Palestinians don't want anything the Jews had built.
Palestinians are functionally incapably of peace at this time.
How do you expect the Palestinians to be capable of peace while Israel is actively stealing land from ordinary Palestinians and giving it to Jewish Settlers?
Committing indefensible outrages against a population is an excellent way to turn that population to violence.
Israel is pursuing exactly the policy you'd expect they the leaders really wanted to kill the two-state solution with a bit of deniability.
Yes...yes he is. And his opponent wasn't a boring public servant. She's a traitor, a habitual liar, incompetent, self-serving, and saggy-boobs deep in pay-for-play.
Think on that. We elected an IDIOT because he's better than the alternative. If he gets our soldiers killed or sells us out, it'll be because he's dumb and incompetent, not because he's sleazy and malicious.
At least with him, there's a chance.
No you elected an idiot because you are an idiot.
Clinton had flaws, but none of the things you mentioned were among them (with the possible exception of your weirdly sexist comment about her breasts).
The problem is that 3D, when it's done well, is an enhancement to the experience, but not an essential part of it.
In the theatre they hand you a pair of 3D glasses when you come in, you sit down silently facing straight forward to watch the movie, and then you drop the glasses in the box on your way out. The 3D is worth while because it's really convenient to do.
But at home? You need to find the glasses when you want to watch 3D, then you need to move around to make sure the viewing angle is right, then you need to take the glasses on or off when you wander around to do something else, then at the end you need to find a place to store the glasses again.
The enhanced experience just isn't worth the hassle.
Wait for Trump to say something stupid that knocks a chunk of money off of a stock, wait a few hours for it to crash, buy low, and sell it after a week when the price rebounds. Once again, the ultra-wealthy with their high-frequency traders get richer, and normal people's retirement funds get poorer....
Unless that tweet turns into a punitive regulatory action, then you've just lost a chunk of your savings.
Assuming dumb mistakes on the part of professional investors is a very good way to lose money.
How could you possibly interpret his statement like that? He supported the exposure of corruption when it was exposing corruption *with an even hand*. Once the exposure was applied only to one side of a partisan contest, it became insupportable.
Why bother making such ridiculous strawman statements? It's obviously not what the OP thinks. I doubt it's even what you think. It won't convince more than a handful of readers. What was the point?
Wait, what? If you don't expose all corruption then don't expose any? All this hand-waving about even-handedness is just an end-run around the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever that WL had any evidence of corruption on Trumps part.
Besides, the media didn't treat the elections with an even hand, so why do you expect anyone else to?
Would Trump be in power without Wikileaks? Very unlikely.
Is a Trump administration more corrupt than a Clinton one would have been? Very likely.
How can this be? Exposing corruption from both sides is fighting corruption. But exposing corruption from only one side, particularly the less corrupt side, empowers the corrupt.
It's actually one of the favourite tactics of repressive governments, the corrupt regime gets dirt on the less corrupt opposition and uses it to discredit them. Putin used it in Russia to cripple the oligarchs who opposed him, and Hoover used it the US to fight the civil rights movement.
There was always a risk that Wikileaks could be unwittingly manipulated this way, the reason I'm so disgusted with Assange is he's been manipulated wittingly.
I won't bother going through the rest of your items, but almost every single one is either false or something that's been done by high profile member of the incoming administration.
If you want to throw Clinton in jail you're going to run into some serious issues of double standards.
You are, of course, correct, but still, he's showing leniency to a criminal and letting a hero continue to be on the hook.
Manning stood trial and served an unusually harsh punishment due to her transgender condition. And while her leaks were politically damaging (and did put the lives of sources in danger) she didn't impair the functioning of the security apparatus.
Snowden fled the country and took up residence with two rival powers. His leaks also exposed a lot of the NSA's surveillance apparatus and really set back their ability to gather legitimate intelligence (while of course exposing a lot of wrong-doing).
I'm personally ambiguous on both, they both exposed a lot of wrong-doing, but at the same time caused a lot of collateral damage. Either way I can understand why someone can be in favour of commuting Manning's sentence while continuing to pursue the capture of Snowden.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. If it was my estimation that the two political parties were more interested in what is best for America, rather than just winning their ideological war, this would hold more weight for me.
Snowdon seems the logical "other pardon". Not sure I'd like that to happen. Would prefer a trial where he would be allowed to make his case. Manning wasn't afforded that opportunity either.
Neither case is at the instigation of a foreign government. So the issues need to be gone through in an open court so the country can understand the issues. And legally decide whether a crime was committed, or these were justified acts done by patriots.
I wouldn't be shocked if Trump pardoned Snowden, it would make Russia look good by justifying their harbouring of Snowden and it's just the sort of PR splash/distraction that Trump loves.
Not sure about Assange though, Trump's lovefest with Wikileaks will come to a very quick end if they ever dump something that he wants hidden. In fact, aiding the election of someone who's campaigned on the vilification of the press may be one of the more short-sighted things that Assange has done.
The one issue with an edit button is I find it really common to edit a FB post within 5 minutes of making it. Either because I noticed a typo, I decided to change my wording or tone, or I forgot that enter == submit.
But afterwards when a lot of people have read and even replied to it... I think edits should be labelled. Otherwise you just end up confusing people who clearly remember "a" but are now seeing "b".
I mean, really? That's like asking "where's the profit motive in the military industry?" The politicians having handed out tens of billions of dollars to their friends based on plans to do something "green" (and some hefty donations). Do you have any idea how many billions of your money and mine Gore Inc gave to green companies who never released a product?
There are a multitude of ways for politicians to shuffle money to their friends, a climate change conspiracy is hardly necessary.
And even if true it does nothing to explain why the scientists are the ones actually pushing governments to do something.
Heck even think of Gore himself. He rode AWG, mostly, into the White House. As he left the White House, he was worth $700K; over the next three years he and David Blood made $218 million profit from their carbon credit trading company. In three years, he personally made $172 from carbon trading. You don't see a profit motive there? Really?
Besides, even if Al Gore's interest in AGW was as a way to make money for him and his friends, a point I'm far from prepared to concede. It would discredit government action on AGW much more than the science itself.
Same here. I would get about 1k for a 12k run if I ran faster than 10 minute miles. I tested the watch app today and it did no better. Also showed no Pokestops. As expected from Niantic, their software is barely functional at first and then once they get it working, crashes constantly. Pokemon Go on my Apple Watch 2 already crashed once and locked up my watch AND phone. I had to reboot both the phone and watch. Great job Niantic!
Yeah I've gotten bored of the app now but was playing up until a couple weeks ago and it's incredibly unstable, requiring a restart at least once every 20 minutes.
And the running speed limit is just bizarre, I can understand a limit of 20 kph if you don't want cyclists playing at unsafe speeds, but banning runners? They want people active, but not too much??
Or just leave it running in an area with crappy reception. For whatever reason they track distance walked SOLELY by GPS - if you GPS drift like crazy with the phone on a table, it counts as walking. You'd think they would use the accelerometers to ensure you were really moving, but - nope. They don't.
When I was playing I used it during my runs, about 10km per day.
But the game doesn't count distance once you pass 10kph, so most of my runs weren't counted.
Instead I got most of my distance by leaving my phone open at my desk and letting the GPS signal meander around the building.
Why would the Russians, who are close allies with Hillary since she sold them a chunk (20%) of the US uranium deposits for a simple donation to the Clinton Foundation
Youtube used to be famous for how much money it lost, now Google just fills it up with ads and it's crazily profitable.
And the thing with youtube is it doesn't really have a community, it's just a place for people to post videos they generally share elsewhere, and there's no good reason for people to keep sticking with youtube and all its ads other than the fact they're used to it and are willing to tolerate the ads.
I don't see why Twitter can't just start spamming ads until they're profitable, if their user base is like every other user base of a major service they'll grumble and stick around.
I say this as a non-user, so I acknowledge that I might be ignorant on the subject. But...
I never understood how/why Twitter (or really any messaging platform/app) is a business. I mean, tweeting does actually seem like a useful tool for certain communication needs, but I don't understand why it's handled through a single service. Why isn't the tweet simply a protocol, like email? People would then just build different clients/apps/platforms that utilize that protocol, just like we do with email.
It's an interesting idea but it has the same trouble as email, how do you stop abuse?
Do providers kick Tweet servers out of the network because they're too lax with spammers and harassers, or people have to subscribe to different networks, and you get a fragmented and hard to use medium?
Twitter's advantage is they're the only network, and so they have a strong motive to keep the community healthy (even if it involves banning popular users).
There might be a solution but I'm not sure what it is.
It's been clear to a number of us that Twitter's primary users are more on the social side of the spectrum, lean more to the left, are engaged more in arts and all that, but all of the news snippets over the past year or so seem to come out after the company articulated publicly that they are more or less an SJW platform, that they're going to selectively ban questionable comments under the guise of anti-racism, etc., etc.
Maybe I'm wrong but the timelines literally suggest that Twitter's failure was its political alignment rather than providing a neutral grounds for socializing.
So what do you do when a popular user starts sending their followers to harass other users and driving people away from the service?
Complete neutrality isn't an option, if you don't enforce rules then the community will be overtaken by its most hostile members, and then Twitter really will be in trouble.
Gab.ai is a twitter replacement that has started up recently and is collecting a lot of interest
From the alt-right, ordinary people aren't going to join.
Twitter seems to be taking sides with half of it's userbase, and driving the other half away.
Gab.ai's logo is an obvious reference to Pepe the frog who has been claimed by the alt-right as is associated with white nationalism. They are very clearly taking sides.
I've always felt that taking sides in customer arguments (against other customers) was a bad thing, but they're vigorously doing that so I'm sure there's some corporate benefit that I'm missing.
It's called protecting their users, not to mention their image since they don't want to become associated with the alt-right and racism.
Gab allows each user to filter out anything they don't want to see, either other users or specific words. This seems like it's the right solution, because it allows people to use the system without seeing things they find distasteful, while not infringing on other peoples' free speech. I can only imagine that people will put together recommended word lists in topics such as pornography, or vulgarity, or meanness, that others can download and install.
Twitter has filtering tools as well, the problem with harassment is that the harassees really want to harass, and it's really hard to effectively filter people who are dedicated to circumvent the anti-harassment tools.
So if you're concerned about twitter shutting down, check out Gab.ai as an alternate system.
Can Gab.ai find a sustainable model with an alt-right userbase? Sure.
But they're not going to be the next Twitter, they're not going to get mainstream celebrities and brands joining a service that's associated with the alt-right and was built around people who got kicked off Twitter.
There is "protecting nature" and "protecting nature." Did you know, every time you exhale, you increase the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is adding to global climate change and the decimation of the planet?
No. Because the carbon we exhale originally comes from plants and is already in the carbon cycle. If your breathing exhaled twice as much carbon it wouldn't add to carbon in the atmosphere because you'd need to compensate by taking in twice as much carbon from plants.
The former is what Obama has just done, with an expectation that anyone who dares suggest it is stupid to do it that way will have people claiming that there is no other way to "protect nature". Thus the obvious goal of anyone who rejects the extremist method of "do nothing at all that might ever have accidental negative consequences that can be fixed" being attacked for wanting to "destroy nature". This makes the issue a political football instead of a reasoned response to scientific and technological concerns.
The scientific and technological concern is that it's extremely difficult to clean up oil spills and they are extremely harmful to the environment, particularly in the Arctic.
In this scenario the economic benefits don't outweigh the environmental costs (from both increased carbon and oil spills). The reason oil companies still want to drill is they're not liable for the full cost of the environmental damage in the event of an accident. We are.
This is the game that was played with waterboarding, as an example. Those who didn't approve of torture but didn't think waterboarding was torture were accused of approving of torture because "obviously" waterboarding IS torture and thus approving of waterboarding was approving of torture in general. It makes for wonderful rants and great political grandstanding, but sheds very little light on the issue.
Waterboarding is inflicting pain and extreme discomfort for the purpose of breaking the prisoner's will and extracting information. Of course it's torture. The US has executed war criminals for waterboarding on the grounds that it is torture.
Are there more brutal and bloody forms of torture? Sure.
The GOP has solved this. They took from Obama the power to pass budgets or appoint justices (particularly supreme count justices).
While the Republicans absolutely failed in their responsibility wrt giving the president's nominee a fair hearing, the idea that the president has the power to "pass budgets" that they somehow stole is just plain incorrect.
The congress has that responsibility, period. The House of Representatives, specifically, has the constitutional authority to initiate spending bills, and no one else.
It's common practise that the President proposes a budget, congress comes up with a counter-proposal, and they negotiate until they find something mutually agreeable.
The GOP's only offer involved defunding the President's signature bill, a policy he twice campaigned and won on.
Imagine what they would lose if they had to face the same regulation and oversight as everybody else in the Taxi industry.
Though the rest of the taxi industry is profitable, the fares are sufficient to pay for vehicles and wages, there's no fundamental reason Uber couldn't do the same.
I've been saying for years: Never give powers to your very favorite president in history that you wouldn't want to see in the hands of the president who horrifies you the most.
The GOP has solved this. They took from Obama the power to pass budgets or appoint justices (particularly supreme count justices). I'm sure they'll promptly restore those powers for Trump.
Similarly the NC GOP has nerfed the governors office now that it is about to change hands, and legislated themselves control of the state election board in every election year.
How anyone could vote for one of those NC legislators is beyond me, no one who would vote for a bill that blatantly anti-Democratic belongs anywhere near a government position.
Ah, yes. The new liberal mantra: If you didn't vote for Hillary, you're racist, misogynist, sexist, xenophobic...
Trust me, it's not new.
1. Take control of the language. 2. Redefine what your opponent does using inapplicable-yet-nasty-sounding terms. 3. Dismiss anyone who disagrees with your redefinition as part of the problem. 4. Use "new" language to cast your opponents as Hitler reborn.
Only problem is it didn't work this time. Liberals went full-bore mental on Trump and, as a result, he looked mild by comparison. Liberals and their water carriers looked like complete fucking idiots as a result. Trump's election has as much to do with their frothing zealotry as anything he might've said or done as a candidate. His election was quite simply a repudiation of all this ridiculous PC, safe-space, diaper-pin-wearing, everything-offends-me culture.
Trump won because Team Clinton assumed his obvious unsuitability would lead to a landslide.
Unfortunately Republican partisanship is so strong that they still coalesced around Trump. And by focusing on Trump's many issues Clinton didn't spend enough time talking policy or improving her own likeability, so all the media had to talk about was her various email issues and she didn't give her own base enough of a motive to turn out.
Slashdot Mirror
As a European (from Finland, and a Hitchensian socialist and anti-theist), I've felt the policies of secretary of state Clinton on my daily life, and am convinced she's a warmonger.
Clinton believes in using American power to improve the world. Her main difference between Obama on this count is that she was less sceptical of what the US could accomplish. I'm honestly not sure who was right. Libya isn't doing great, but they could have been Syria.
Her Iraq war vote isn't really evidence of anything other than the fact that she was a politician who knew which way the winds were blowing.
I haven't gotten that vibe from Trump. If anything, he won't meddle in middle eastern conflicts trying to change governments, and seems in good terms with the greatest nuclear power after the USA. So in terms of nuclear war, or regional wars, I think we'll be better off.
Again, I'm saying this as someone who's not a US citizen, nor do I share the American culture or history in any way. I'm looking out for the interests of my family and me, and am glad Hillary isn't president.
Then I don't think you've been paying attention very closely.
1) Trump was initially for all of these conflicts he now claims to have opposed.
2) Trump's base is traditionally very assertive of American power, they're not as interested in a humanitarian motivated intervention (Libya), but they'll enthusiastically go after anyone who challenges American power (Iraq or Iran).
3) Trump has been talking tough on Iran and talking about scrapping the deal that eased relations and halted their Nuclear weapons program.
4) Trump has noticeably weakened NATO commitments, regional actors like Russia are a lot more likely to try pushing into Eastern Europe as they did in Ukraine on the chance the US won't assist.
5) Trump is notoriously this skinned and retaliatory, how will he react if it's China or Russia instead of SNL?
6) Trump is very unpredictable and sees international relations as zero-sum, that's an easy way to create a lot of easily escalated conflicts.
No, I think Palestine should have taken the Two State solution offered by Israel a few years ago, but refused and went on a rampage over it.
The problem is, you think that Palestine wants a two state solution, and they don't. It has been offered, repeatedly, and they keep refusing.
And I wonder why you don't mention the Palestinians "Illegally" launching rockets into Israel. Or the time that Israel pulled its settlements out of Gaza, only to have them turned into rocket launching sites. I'm talking functioning industry and farms being walked away from and turning back into desert because ... Palestinians don't want anything the Jews had built.
Palestinians are functionally incapably of peace at this time.
How do you expect the Palestinians to be capable of peace while Israel is actively stealing land from ordinary Palestinians and giving it to Jewish Settlers?
Committing indefensible outrages against a population is an excellent way to turn that population to violence.
Israel is pursuing exactly the policy you'd expect they the leaders really wanted to kill the two-state solution with a bit of deniability.
Yes...yes he is. And his opponent wasn't a boring public servant. She's a traitor, a habitual liar, incompetent, self-serving, and saggy-boobs deep in pay-for-play.
Think on that. We elected an IDIOT because he's better than the alternative. If he gets our soldiers killed or sells us out, it'll be because he's dumb and incompetent, not because he's sleazy and malicious.
At least with him, there's a chance.
No you elected an idiot because you are an idiot.
Clinton had flaws, but none of the things you mentioned were among them (with the possible exception of your weirdly sexist comment about her breasts).
The problem is that 3D, when it's done well, is an enhancement to the experience, but not an essential part of it.
In the theatre they hand you a pair of 3D glasses when you come in, you sit down silently facing straight forward to watch the movie, and then you drop the glasses in the box on your way out. The 3D is worth while because it's really convenient to do.
But at home? You need to find the glasses when you want to watch 3D, then you need to move around to make sure the viewing angle is right, then you need to take the glasses on or off when you wander around to do something else, then at the end you need to find a place to store the glasses again.
The enhanced experience just isn't worth the hassle.
Wait for Trump to say something stupid that knocks a chunk of money off of a stock, wait a few hours for it to crash, buy low, and sell it after a week when the price rebounds. Once again, the ultra-wealthy with their high-frequency traders get richer, and normal people's retirement funds get poorer....
Unless that tweet turns into a punitive regulatory action, then you've just lost a chunk of your savings.
Assuming dumb mistakes on the part of professional investors is a very good way to lose money.
How could you possibly interpret his statement like that? He supported the exposure of corruption when it was exposing corruption *with an even hand*. Once the exposure was applied only to one side of a partisan contest, it became insupportable.
Why bother making such ridiculous strawman statements? It's obviously not what the OP thinks. I doubt it's even what you think. It won't convince more than a handful of readers. What was the point?
Wait, what? If you don't expose all corruption then don't expose any? All this hand-waving about even-handedness is just an end-run around the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever that WL had any evidence of corruption on Trumps part.
Besides, the media didn't treat the elections with an even hand, so why do you expect anyone else to?
Would Trump be in power without Wikileaks? Very unlikely.
Is a Trump administration more corrupt than a Clinton one would have been? Very likely.
How can this be? Exposing corruption from both sides is fighting corruption. But exposing corruption from only one side, particularly the less corrupt side, empowers the corrupt.
It's actually one of the favourite tactics of repressive governments, the corrupt regime gets dirt on the less corrupt opposition and uses it to discredit them. Putin used it in Russia to cripple the oligarchs who opposed him, and Hoover used it the US to fight the civil rights movement.
There was always a risk that Wikileaks could be unwittingly manipulated this way, the reason I'm so disgusted with Assange is he's been manipulated wittingly.
Lying under oath to Congress IS illegal, and she did it.
So did Trump's nominee for Secretary of State.
I won't bother going through the rest of your items, but almost every single one is either false or something that's been done by high profile member of the incoming administration.
If you want to throw Clinton in jail you're going to run into some serious issues of double standards.
You are, of course, correct, but still, he's showing leniency to a criminal and letting a hero continue to be on the hook.
Manning stood trial and served an unusually harsh punishment due to her transgender condition. And while her leaks were politically damaging (and did put the lives of sources in danger) she didn't impair the functioning of the security apparatus.
Snowden fled the country and took up residence with two rival powers. His leaks also exposed a lot of the NSA's surveillance apparatus and really set back their ability to gather legitimate intelligence (while of course exposing a lot of wrong-doing).
I'm personally ambiguous on both, they both exposed a lot of wrong-doing, but at the same time caused a lot of collateral damage. Either way I can understand why someone can be in favour of commuting Manning's sentence while continuing to pursue the capture of Snowden.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. If it was my estimation that the two political parties were more interested in what is best for America, rather than just winning their ideological war, this would hold more weight for me.
Snowdon seems the logical "other pardon". Not sure I'd like that to happen. Would prefer a trial where he would be allowed to make his case. Manning wasn't afforded that opportunity either.
Neither case is at the instigation of a foreign government. So the issues need to be gone through in an open court so the country can understand the issues. And legally decide whether a crime was committed, or these were justified acts done by patriots.
I wouldn't be shocked if Trump pardoned Snowden, it would make Russia look good by justifying their harbouring of Snowden and it's just the sort of PR splash/distraction that Trump loves.
Not sure about Assange though, Trump's lovefest with Wikileaks will come to a very quick end if they ever dump something that he wants hidden. In fact, aiding the election of someone who's campaigned on the vilification of the press may be one of the more short-sighted things that Assange has done.
The one issue with an edit button is I find it really common to edit a FB post within 5 minutes of making it. Either because I noticed a typo, I decided to change my wording or tone, or I forgot that enter == submit.
But afterwards when a lot of people have read and even replied to it... I think edits should be labelled. Otherwise you just end up confusing people who clearly remember "a" but are now seeing "b".
I mean, really? That's like asking "where's the profit motive in the military industry?" The politicians having handed out tens of billions of dollars to their friends based on plans to do something "green" (and some hefty donations). Do you have any idea how many billions of your money and mine Gore Inc gave to green companies who never released a product?
There are a multitude of ways for politicians to shuffle money to their friends, a climate change conspiracy is hardly necessary.
And even if true it does nothing to explain why the scientists are the ones actually pushing governments to do something.
Heck even think of Gore himself. He rode AWG, mostly, into the White House. As he left the White House, he was worth $700K; over the next three years he and David Blood made $218 million profit from their carbon credit trading company. In three years, he personally made $172 from carbon trading. You don't see a profit motive there? Really?
Which three years? Because I found an article on Al Gore getting a new worth of $200 million from a variety of sources, but only part of that came from his investment firm (presumably the thing you think did carbon credit trading?).
Besides, even if Al Gore's interest in AGW was as a way to make money for him and his friends, a point I'm far from prepared to concede. It would discredit government action on AGW much more than the science itself.
Same here. I would get about 1k for a 12k run if I ran faster than 10 minute miles. I tested the watch app today and it did no better. Also showed no Pokestops. As expected from Niantic, their software is barely functional at first and then once they get it working, crashes constantly. Pokemon Go on my Apple Watch 2 already crashed once and locked up my watch AND phone. I had to reboot both the phone and watch. Great job Niantic!
Yeah I've gotten bored of the app now but was playing up until a couple weeks ago and it's incredibly unstable, requiring a restart at least once every 20 minutes.
And the running speed limit is just bizarre, I can understand a limit of 20 kph if you don't want cyclists playing at unsafe speeds, but banning runners? They want people active, but not too much??
Or just leave it running in an area with crappy reception. For whatever reason they track distance walked SOLELY by GPS - if you GPS drift like crazy with the phone on a table, it counts as walking. You'd think they would use the accelerometers to ensure you were really moving, but - nope. They don't.
When I was playing I used it during my runs, about 10km per day.
But the game doesn't count distance once you pass 10kph, so most of my runs weren't counted.
Instead I got most of my distance by leaving my phone open at my desk and letting the GPS signal meander around the building.
Why would the Russians, who are close allies with Hillary since she sold them a chunk (20%) of the US uranium deposits for a simple donation to the Clinton Foundation
The State Dept. was one of nine agencies who reviewed the deal. And Clinton wasn't even the State Department person who sat on the committee who reviewed it.
And the biggest donor didn't even have a financial stake in the company in question at the time he donated to the Clinton Foundation.
and the fake news sites (CNN, etc) are so relentless on spreading this rumor without any evidence.
Yes imagine, someone spreading rumours of corruption without evidence.
Exactly what does Snowden have to do with Wikileaks
The comment you replied to doesn't mention Wikileaks.
The article summary doesn't mention Wikileaks.
The article doesn't mention Wikileaks.
Why are you talking about Wikileaks?
which released the emails leaked to them by the DNC insider
Ahh, because you're trying to start a fight about Clinton and the DNC again.
Youtube used to be famous for how much money it lost, now Google just fills it up with ads and it's crazily profitable.
And the thing with youtube is it doesn't really have a community, it's just a place for people to post videos they generally share elsewhere, and there's no good reason for people to keep sticking with youtube and all its ads other than the fact they're used to it and are willing to tolerate the ads.
I don't see why Twitter can't just start spamming ads until they're profitable, if their user base is like every other user base of a major service they'll grumble and stick around.
I say this as a non-user, so I acknowledge that I might be ignorant on the subject. But...
I never understood how/why Twitter (or really any messaging platform/app) is a business. I mean, tweeting does actually seem like a useful tool for certain communication needs, but I don't understand why it's handled through a single service. Why isn't the tweet simply a protocol, like email? People would then just build different clients/apps/platforms that utilize that protocol, just like we do with email.
It's an interesting idea but it has the same trouble as email, how do you stop abuse?
Do providers kick Tweet servers out of the network because they're too lax with spammers and harassers, or people have to subscribe to different networks, and you get a fragmented and hard to use medium?
Twitter's advantage is they're the only network, and so they have a strong motive to keep the community healthy (even if it involves banning popular users).
There might be a solution but I'm not sure what it is.
It's been clear to a number of us that Twitter's primary users are more on the social side of the spectrum, lean more to the left, are engaged more in arts and all that, but all of the news snippets over the past year or so seem to come out after the company articulated publicly that they are more or less an SJW platform, that they're going to selectively ban questionable comments under the guise of anti-racism, etc., etc.
Maybe I'm wrong but the timelines literally suggest that Twitter's failure was its political alignment rather than providing a neutral grounds for socializing.
So what do you do when a popular user starts sending their followers to harass other users and driving people away from the service?
Complete neutrality isn't an option, if you don't enforce rules then the community will be overtaken by its most hostile members, and then Twitter really will be in trouble.
Gab.ai is a twitter replacement that has started up recently and is collecting a lot of interest
From the alt-right, ordinary people aren't going to join.
Twitter seems to be taking sides with half of it's userbase, and driving the other half away.
Gab.ai's logo is an obvious reference to Pepe the frog who has been claimed by the alt-right as is associated with white nationalism. They are very clearly taking sides.
I've always felt that taking sides in customer arguments (against other customers) was a bad thing, but they're vigorously doing that so I'm sure there's some corporate benefit that I'm missing.
It's called protecting their users, not to mention their image since they don't want to become associated with the alt-right and racism.
Gab allows each user to filter out anything they don't want to see, either other users or specific words. This seems like it's the right solution, because it allows people to use the system without seeing things they find distasteful, while not infringing on other peoples' free speech. I can only imagine that people will put together recommended word lists in topics such as pornography, or vulgarity, or meanness, that others can download and install.
Twitter has filtering tools as well, the problem with harassment is that the harassees really want to harass, and it's really hard to effectively filter people who are dedicated to circumvent the anti-harassment tools.
So if you're concerned about twitter shutting down, check out Gab.ai as an alternate system.
Can Gab.ai find a sustainable model with an alt-right userbase? Sure.
But they're not going to be the next Twitter, they're not going to get mainstream celebrities and brands joining a service that's associated with the alt-right and was built around people who got kicked off Twitter.
You demonstrate the reason why Obama did this.
Protecting nature is stupid?
There is "protecting nature" and "protecting nature." Did you know, every time you exhale, you increase the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is adding to global climate change and the decimation of the planet?
No. Because the carbon we exhale originally comes from plants and is already in the carbon cycle. If your breathing exhaled twice as much carbon it wouldn't add to carbon in the atmosphere because you'd need to compensate by taking in twice as much carbon from plants.
The former is what Obama has just done, with an expectation that anyone who dares suggest it is stupid to do it that way will have people claiming that there is no other way to "protect nature". Thus the obvious goal of anyone who rejects the extremist method of "do nothing at all that might ever have accidental negative consequences that can be fixed" being attacked for wanting to "destroy nature". This makes the issue a political football instead of a reasoned response to scientific and technological concerns.
The scientific and technological concern is that it's extremely difficult to clean up oil spills and they are extremely harmful to the environment, particularly in the Arctic.
In this scenario the economic benefits don't outweigh the environmental costs (from both increased carbon and oil spills). The reason oil companies still want to drill is they're not liable for the full cost of the environmental damage in the event of an accident. We are.
This is the game that was played with waterboarding, as an example. Those who didn't approve of torture but didn't think waterboarding was torture were accused of approving of torture because "obviously" waterboarding IS torture and thus approving of waterboarding was approving of torture in general. It makes for wonderful rants and great political grandstanding, but sheds very little light on the issue.
Waterboarding is inflicting pain and extreme discomfort for the purpose of breaking the prisoner's will and extracting information. Of course it's torture. The US has executed war criminals for waterboarding on the grounds that it is torture.
Are there more brutal and bloody forms of torture? Sure.
But waterboarding is torture.
Trump will undo the stupidity.
Not so fast.
The act gives the President "the authority to withdraw lands from oil and gas leases.".
It doesn't give the President the authority to make withdrawn lands available again.
The GOP has solved this. They took from Obama the power to pass budgets or appoint justices (particularly supreme count justices).
While the Republicans absolutely failed in their responsibility wrt giving the president's nominee a fair hearing, the idea that the president has the power to "pass budgets" that they somehow stole is just plain incorrect.
The congress has that responsibility, period. The House of Representatives, specifically, has the constitutional authority to initiate spending bills, and no one else.
It's common practise that the President proposes a budget, congress comes up with a counter-proposal, and they negotiate until they find something mutually agreeable.
The GOP's only offer involved defunding the President's signature bill, a policy he twice campaigned and won on.
Imagine what they would lose if they had to face the same regulation and oversight as everybody else in the Taxi industry.
Though the rest of the taxi industry is profitable, the fares are sufficient to pay for vehicles and wages, there's no fundamental reason Uber couldn't do the same.
I've been saying for years: Never give powers to your very favorite president in history that you wouldn't want to see in the hands of the president who horrifies you the most.
The GOP has solved this. They took from Obama the power to pass budgets or appoint justices (particularly supreme count justices). I'm sure they'll promptly restore those powers for Trump.
Similarly the NC GOP has nerfed the governors office now that it is about to change hands, and legislated themselves control of the state election board in every election year.
How anyone could vote for one of those NC legislators is beyond me, no one who would vote for a bill that blatantly anti-Democratic belongs anywhere near a government position.
Ah, yes. The new liberal mantra: If you didn't vote for Hillary, you're racist, misogynist, sexist, xenophobic...
Trust me, it's not new.
1. Take control of the language.
2. Redefine what your opponent does using inapplicable-yet-nasty-sounding terms.
3. Dismiss anyone who disagrees with your redefinition as part of the problem.
4. Use "new" language to cast your opponents as Hitler reborn.
Only problem is it didn't work this time. Liberals went full-bore mental on Trump and, as a result, he looked mild by comparison. Liberals and their water carriers looked like complete fucking idiots as a result. Trump's election has as much to do with their frothing zealotry as anything he might've said or done as a candidate. His election was quite simply a repudiation of all this ridiculous PC, safe-space, diaper-pin-wearing, everything-offends-me culture.
Trump won because Team Clinton assumed his obvious unsuitability would lead to a landslide.
Unfortunately Republican partisanship is so strong that they still coalesced around Trump. And by focusing on Trump's many issues Clinton didn't spend enough time talking policy or improving her own likeability, so all the media had to talk about was her various email issues and she didn't give her own base enough of a motive to turn out.