That's what you want the ISP to do, sit in the middle and shake down any website you want to visit.
And if said ISP wants to behave in this manner, you as a customer with free will can elect to take your business elsewhere. Or complain to the BBB. Or start your own social media feed excoriating that ISP for nasty business practices. Or any number of other perfectly-viable options.
But you don't want to be bothered with that. You want the almighty Hand Of Government to reach into a private business and tell them what they can and cannot do instead of relying on market forces. Although you've no doubt failed to think about the consequences of giving government this power, such powers can and have been detrimental to the customer in the recent past. For example, a cellular provider in the US wanted to allow selected streaming media sites to not impact a customer's monthly data usage, effectively offering "free" streaming. They were sued because they "didn't treat all traffic equally." So a nice perk offered in good faith by a cellular provider with no strings attached was attacked over "Net Neutrality" and customers were harmed by a bill originally designed to protect customers.
But hey! You've got it all figured out, right? And anyone who disagrees with you is a paid shill, right? I mean, it's not like you could've overlooked something or that anyone else might have a good idea. You're the genius here and everyone else must obey you for The Common Good because they're either too stupid or because they're being paid off.
Now now...how dare you bring sensible logic into this emotional, self-centered, naive argument! Everyone knows that the work product of thousands of people is the inalienable free property of The People because reasons. And if you don't agree then you must be a greedy scumbag billionaire movie producer who eats live puppies for breakfast off solid gold plates in their million-square-foot megamansion heated by burning $100 bills and staffed by slaves who are starved and beaten daily.
Now I'll freely admit I pirate movies. I do this for a few reasons. First, I can frequently get access to the movies before I can actually buy them. Second, I get to preview the movie to see if it's worth keeping. Third, it comes DRM free so I can easily put it on my Plex server and watch it on any device I want without cumbersome restrictions. I make no excuses for saying this isn't copyright infringement because it is what it is. I don't attempt to justify it by saying it's somehow not infringement.
However, what I do if I decide to keep the move is I purchase it. I don't have to do this. I do it because I want to support entertainment companies producing content that I like. I understand that if I don't somehow pay for this entertainment, movie studios have no incentive to produce it. This whole "it isn't theft" argument is ultimately self-defeating because you'll kill off the flow of content. Nobody indie studio or director with a bunch of no-name actors and no real budget is going to reliably produce something equivalent to what a skilled director and actor with a $150 million budget could do. Granted, Hollywood has no shortage of high-budget, veteran-staffed box office bombs but on the whole a top-notch crew with a big budget will deliver more frequently than they miss. Try that with Kickstarter. It'll never happen.
I'm overjoyed to see a new company with a vibrant, dynamic CEO shaking up the stagnant car market the way Apple shook up the music industry. However, before things get completely out of hand, keep in mind Tesla shipped roughly 80,000 cars total last year. GM shipped 9.8 million cars in 2015 and even more in 2016.
This reminds me so much of the rabid speculation of the dot-com era. Netscape was valued at $10 billion in 1999. Today...Netscape who? PointCast, the "push" media of the future, once commanded $450 million. It was ultimately sold for $7 million just months before being shut down completely. AOL? Red Hat? Shall I go on? The investment road is littered with the corpses of speculative "next big thing" companies.
I sincerely hope Tesla does not fall prey to this same demise. I don't own a Tesla product but I expect to benefit from them pushing the sluggish Ford, GM, etc. to actually innovate for a change.
Yes, they stand on that mountain, but they are still building it!
All the more reason to question their overhead since this "mountain" was already climbed in 1969. You do realize there's almost nothing NASA is trying to do today that wasn't already done better, faster, and cheaper by the Apollo program, right?
I wonder if Americans will ever figure out that privatization is a con job by oligarchs to get your money for themselves under the guise of efficiency.
I dunno. Americans still haven't figured out government programs are a con job by politicians to get our money for themselves under the guise of efficacy. "Hey Taxpayer! You're too stupid to know what to do with your own money so we will take it from you and spend it in ways we think are best for you! Don't object! It's for your own good!"
You know, I seem to recall there might've been a different guy in the White House for the last eight years who oversaw the ridiculous F-35 program and did...well, nothing. Gosh, what was his name? O-something? But who cares, right? Since he was a Democrat he can do no wrong, and since Trump is a Republican he must be blamed for everything, including things he had nothing to do with.
And you don't think some other nations might have a problem with that?
You say that as if we didn't have enough nuclear weapons already to wipe out nearly any nation on the planet without fear of counterattack. Why should we give a damn about what other nations think about a mass driver? If we wanted to be a serious threat to them it's not like they could do anything about it NOW so a mass driver wouldn't alter anything.
If you read the IPCC summary, it labels every prediction with how confident the IPCC is in it, so it sure isn't climate scientists.
You are, of course, assuming there's nothing political going on with the IPCC recommendations in the first place and all the conclusions are honestly driven by nothing more than altruistic desires for the betterment of the human race. Pardon me if I have slightly more skepticism about the UN's motives given their manifestly anti-Western, anti-capitalist, pro-globalist stance. Add to that the prevailing "I don't need to explain it to you because you're too stupid to understand" mantra and what seems "settled science" to you seems anything but for those of us who are actually have to sacrifice for whatever the UN IPCC decides we have to do to satisfy them.
I'm assuming nothing. I'm saying I've not seen any major studies whatsoever addressing the actual impact of the subject beyond "climate change BAD!' Climate has changed since the planet first developed an atmosphere to have climate. It will continue to change at its whim until we develop technology capable of utterly controlling it at our whim. Mankind has always adapted. We will adapt to this. The questions that remain are (a) are we capable of affecting the climate in any meaningful way in the first place and (b) is the cost of attempting to pin the climate to the 20th-century norm higher, lower, or equal to the cost of adapting? If the answer to (a) is "no" then it necessarily negates the second question since our only practical option is adaptation.
In science, the facts are not opinions. They are the experimental results.
Except what you're referring to is not even remotely equivalent to "experimental results." We do not have the capability to "experiment" on a global climate under controlled, observable, repeatable conditions. Instead we build computer models based on how we think the climate actually works, all of which are only as accurate as our understanding of climate -- and that understanding is woefully inadequate. Thus the models are gross simplifications of the actual climate, some of which start with the presupposition that climate change is due to man-made CO2 and work backwards from there to make the data and models fit. The results have been models that accurately predict the past but inaccurately represent the present, or if they accurately represent the present they do not match the past. Over time the models get "massaged" to make things fit, always with the assumption it all must be man-made CO2 at the core of it.
I have a built-in distrust for such procedures because there are no effective ways to challenge or prove them experimentally. Additionally, the core climate community has become largely homogeneous by self-selection, where dissenting voices are banished in order to achieve the desired consensus. Grant money is doled out or withheld depending upon whether the findings will support the agenda of the giver. When big business does this it's called astroturfing, being a shill, etc. and is not to be trusted. When government and "big science" does it it's called "consensus" and questioning it is blasphemy of the highest order. Publishing is similarly segregated with any dissenting voice being treated as a pariah.
Do I believe the climate is changing? Absolutely. It was changing before humans arrived, being both significantly warmer and colder than it is today. It is changing while we're here. It will continue to change despite our wishes because we lack the technology to effectively stop it on short timescales. It's the height of anthropocentric arrogance to think the planet's climate is going to sit still for us just because we happened to develop opposable thumbs at this point in Earth's history.
Do I believe human activity is contributing to climate change? At some level it must be as any activity by definition has some kind of impact. The question then becomes how much are we affecting it and, if we reverse course, will the anticipated benefits outweigh the social and economic upheaval such a reversal would cause? Keep in mind sometimes it is better to adapt to change rather than fight it. Some areas currently too cold for agriculture would become more suited to it while other currently-arable areas would become too hot or dry. Certainly it is disruptive -- any change is -- but is the net result positive, negative, or neutral? Nobody has answered that question. To my knowledge the question isn't even being studied on any reasonable scale. Everything's being thrown into the we-have-to-stop-the-climate-from-changing bandwagon, a fool's errand if there ever was one because climate will merely laugh at our puny efforts.
There used to be a time when scientists welcomed questions and opposing ideas and were eager to put their hypotheses to the test. Today...not so much. "There's too much at stake" they say, to entertain skeptics or those that question. Instead they're labeled as "deniers" and treated like knuckle-dragging inbred simpletons at best or traitors to humanity and murderers at worst. The "we have to do something!" crowd is the loudest, saying we can't wait to get firm data and must enact sweeping changes regardless of what it does to anyone. That the worst effects would be felt by prosperous Western nations while third-world and far East polluters would suffer less or not at all. As that fits the current "punish the West for all ills" popular mantra is more than a little suspect so I'm similarly not inclined to believe or support anyone pushing such "climate reform" that doesn't call for all who benefit equally to pay equally as well.
I'd blame Trump's ilk for that too. If you vilify a group (gays in the Orlando case) long enough some unhinged asshat will decide he's taking action for the greater good.
Somehow I don't think it was Trump vilifying gays (which he has not done, BTW) that pushed a Muslim shouting "Allah Akbar!" to gun down gays in Orlando. Perhaps you're unaware of the standard treatment Muslims visit upon gays in places where Islam is the dominant religion? And I don't think it was Trump that pushed a pair of Muslims to gun down their co-workers at a holiday party in San Bernadino. And so on and so forth.
But hey, go ahead and blame Trump for stubbing your toe in the dark last night, or for the flat tire you got last year, or for the bird shitting on your windshield right after you washed your car. He's obviously the root of all evil and must be blamed for anything and everything you don't like. You look like a goddamned uninformed fool for doing so, but please, by all means, exercise your right to broadcast that fact to the world. It does wonders for your argument.
I am suggesting that you are in denial that a problem even exists, despite the figures, and before you can improve things there you need to change you way of thinking.
No one is in denial that homicide is a problem. Where we differ is the severity of the problem in relation to the severity of the proposed solutions. For example, the most recent statistics show there were over 30,000 automobile deaths last year, far more than deaths due to violent use of a gun. Do you propose banning automobiles? There are nearly 4,000 deaths annually due to drowning in pools, more than violent homicides by firearm, yet I don't hear you calling for a ban on pools.
There is no such thing as a perfectly free yet perfectly safe society and a great deal of harm can be done trying to achieve such a thing. For example, while shootings such as these make gun usage seem uniformly bad, there are no newscasts highlighting positive use of firearms for self defense. Nobody gets any air time when a five-foot, 100lb woman doesn't get raped by a six-foot, 220lb thug because she successfully defended herself with a firearm. There are innumerable permutations on the latter, none of which get any attention. Ban firearms by law-abiding citizens and you guarantee a target-rich environment for criminals, none of which will give a damn about any gun ban laws because criminals do not obey the law.
If you could snap your fingers tomorrow and magically delete every gun in existence then I might agree with your stance. That is impossible and any rational, reasonable person should know that. So long as criminals can get their hands on a weapon do to harm upon me and my family, I absolutely demand the right to legally obtain and wield one of my own for defense.
If everyone had a gun I probably wouldn't be posting this right now.
Far more people have guns than you are probably aware. That's because the vast, huge, overwhelming majority of them are kept for defense instead of assault. There are over 300 million guns in private hands in the United States. If the owners of these decided to be a problem, trust me, you'd be dead by now. That you're not is prima facie evidence of the stupidity of your argument.
Fine. Let's assume for the sake of argument that guns are a fundamentally bad thing and need to be banned. There are over 300 million guns in the United States alone. Please tell me how you plan to get rid of them in such a way that disarms criminals equally as well as it disarms law-abiding citizens.
You can't, and that's the crux of the problem. Criminals, by definition, do not obey the law. Law-abiding people, by definition, do obey the law. Pass a law banning handguns and you guarantee 100% disarmament of law-abiding citizens whilst simultaneously stopping very few if any criminals from getting them. Congratulations! You just made violent gun crime easier for every thug, bank robber, rapist, murderer, and so on. We absolutely need more of that, right?
Every time there's a shooting, people like you come out of the woodwork screaming about how bad guns are and how they must be eliminated. As noted above, there are over 300 million guns in circulation in the United States. Today about 99.99997% of them were not used in a violent criminal way, yet you insist they are a dire threat to anything and everything. Your argument is both irrational and illogical.
Using that metric, everything and anything could "revolutionize the world" so the term becomes meaningless. Such hyperbole should be reserved for usage in things that are a bit more fleshed out and actual candidates for said revolutionizing.
I suppose it means that money is too free, and I suppose the market will correct that.
You meant it sarcastically but your second point is actually correct. People who invest in startups like this have a fiduciary duty to themselves or their firms to investigate what they're investing in. It's all "buyer beware" so I have no sympathy for those who lost money; you plays the game, you takes your chances. If you win -- with a Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. -- you win big. If you lose, you lose big. That's how it's supposed to work.
The net results of crap like this is investors (should) become more wary about what they invest in. They should vet companies before they invest and hold its executives to higher standards than this Nardone idiot was held. All of that is a Good Thing no matter what angle you look at this debacle from.
I don't know if Trump supporters are smart enough to do the same, but these rioters are certainly discrediting the cause they nominally claim to support.
Funny, I saw the protesters as doing exactly what they said they'd do all along: act like a bunch of spoiled babies who didn't get their way and are now throwing a tantrum. They don't rationalize. They don't listen. They don't engage cognitive thinking skills. They distill it down to "you don't agree with me, therefore you are a hateful, mean, stupid, intolerant, bigoted, racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic Hitler lover and I'm completely justified in doing whatever my emotions lead me to do and you can't criticize me because criticism is racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobic, etc."
It's the logical endpoint of the "there is no truth and right/wrong is an illusion" ideology.
If you want to play statistics, you could also say "billions of people did not protest Trump." Hey, sorry if you don't like it but that logic works both ways. You want to minimize the (obvious and improper) damage caused by rioting liberals, I'll be happy to minimize the (pathetically small and insignificant) number or protesters.
Funny how, if we're all a bunch of racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobic, xenophobic, neo-nazi, fascist, greedy, evil, violent, intolerant bastards like you say we are, we didn't riot, burn shit, threaten to blow up the White House, dress up like vaginas, scream, whine, cry, bitch, moan, and boycott everything when Obama was elected (twice!). I mean, it's not like we AGREED with Obama's policies in the slightest, certainly no more so than you agree with Trump. Yet somehow the only time you see this behavior is when liberals lose. Conservatives...not so much.
It reminds me of the argument that gun owners are some sort of threat to the general public. We've got more than 300 million guns and several trillion rounds of ammunition. Trust us, if we were a threat, you'd know it by now.
A guy who claims he knows more than all the generals.
Which, of course, explains why he's hired complete lap dogs like General "Mad Dog" Mattis. Mattis is well-known for his soft-spoken manner, desire to "go along to get along" and his political finesse. The troops hate him and his military record is a joke.
OK, there's only so much sarcasm I can spew before I choke. Point being, Trump is doing what any skilled executive does and that's surrounding himself with people who are damn good at what they do. Trump is shoring up his weak points by finding strong people. You may not like his picks but it's difficult to argue that each one of them aren't formidable in their own arena.
I don't think you're the least bit frightened of a bad President Trump. You're terrified he'll be a good President. You're scared he WON'T destroy civil liberties, round up gays, or wipe his ass with the Constitution. That'd be the ultimate terror attack on your ideology, wouldn't it? That his policies might be effective and actually good for the country, thus proving your ideas are, at best, not worthwhile.
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.
If Facebook Twitter, Reddit and other leftist dominated companies run all the communications mediums, how are those who disagree to compete in the arena of ideas?
There's not supposed to be competition in the arena of ideas, didn't you know that? It's supposed to be an infinite echo chamber where all the heads nod up and down at the same time in the same way and nobody ever says anything that challenges anyone's preconceived notions. Those that do must be exiled, ridiculed, and called racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, arachnophobic, hydrophobic, and anything else derogatory the echo chamber can come up with regardless of whether or not it actually applies. Such is the mentality of the left in political discourse.
This is nothing new with the left. Go back to the origins with Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, and so forth. Controlling thoughts and implementing groupthink has always been part and parcel of leftist ideology. It preys upon the typical desire to "fit in" and not be left out of a crowd. That's why every leftist government has always sought to ban certain types of speech -- either legally or extra-legally -- as part of its method for retaining power. The USSR did it to great effect for almost a century before it came crashing down. Today's "political correctness" is nothing more than the same ideology repackaged into something more aesthetically pleasing to the masses.
So basically you're saying what he did was fine because he did it against Trump and his "fifth column." So trashing free speech is fine with you so long as it's trashing free speech you don't like. The cognitive dissonance...it burns. Why do I get the feeling you'd be singing an entirely different tune if this was a conservative forum host that censored pro-Hillary or anti-Trump comments to align with conservative viewpoints?
There's a simple litmus test you must always apply when rendering judgement on things like this. If the positions were reversed would you still feel the same? If the answer is "no" then you're not being objective enough to have a valid opinion on the subject.
Slashdot Mirror
...do you need a droid that speaks the binary language of moisture vaporators (which is very similar to binary load lifters) to operate it?
That's what you want the ISP to do, sit in the middle and shake down any website you want to visit.
And if said ISP wants to behave in this manner, you as a customer with free will can elect to take your business elsewhere. Or complain to the BBB. Or start your own social media feed excoriating that ISP for nasty business practices. Or any number of other perfectly-viable options.
But you don't want to be bothered with that. You want the almighty Hand Of Government to reach into a private business and tell them what they can and cannot do instead of relying on market forces. Although you've no doubt failed to think about the consequences of giving government this power, such powers can and have been detrimental to the customer in the recent past. For example, a cellular provider in the US wanted to allow selected streaming media sites to not impact a customer's monthly data usage, effectively offering "free" streaming. They were sued because they "didn't treat all traffic equally." So a nice perk offered in good faith by a cellular provider with no strings attached was attacked over "Net Neutrality" and customers were harmed by a bill originally designed to protect customers.
But hey! You've got it all figured out, right? And anyone who disagrees with you is a paid shill, right? I mean, it's not like you could've overlooked something or that anyone else might have a good idea. You're the genius here and everyone else must obey you for The Common Good because they're either too stupid or because they're being paid off.
Now now...how dare you bring sensible logic into this emotional, self-centered, naive argument! Everyone knows that the work product of thousands of people is the inalienable free property of The People because reasons. And if you don't agree then you must be a greedy scumbag billionaire movie producer who eats live puppies for breakfast off solid gold plates in their million-square-foot megamansion heated by burning $100 bills and staffed by slaves who are starved and beaten daily.
Now I'll freely admit I pirate movies. I do this for a few reasons. First, I can frequently get access to the movies before I can actually buy them. Second, I get to preview the movie to see if it's worth keeping. Third, it comes DRM free so I can easily put it on my Plex server and watch it on any device I want without cumbersome restrictions. I make no excuses for saying this isn't copyright infringement because it is what it is. I don't attempt to justify it by saying it's somehow not infringement.
However, what I do if I decide to keep the move is I purchase it. I don't have to do this. I do it because I want to support entertainment companies producing content that I like. I understand that if I don't somehow pay for this entertainment, movie studios have no incentive to produce it. This whole "it isn't theft" argument is ultimately self-defeating because you'll kill off the flow of content. Nobody indie studio or director with a bunch of no-name actors and no real budget is going to reliably produce something equivalent to what a skilled director and actor with a $150 million budget could do. Granted, Hollywood has no shortage of high-budget, veteran-staffed box office bombs but on the whole a top-notch crew with a big budget will deliver more frequently than they miss. Try that with Kickstarter. It'll never happen.
I'm overjoyed to see a new company with a vibrant, dynamic CEO shaking up the stagnant car market the way Apple shook up the music industry. However, before things get completely out of hand, keep in mind Tesla shipped roughly 80,000 cars total last year. GM shipped 9.8 million cars in 2015 and even more in 2016.
This reminds me so much of the rabid speculation of the dot-com era. Netscape was valued at $10 billion in 1999. Today...Netscape who? PointCast, the "push" media of the future, once commanded $450 million. It was ultimately sold for $7 million just months before being shut down completely. AOL? Red Hat? Shall I go on? The investment road is littered with the corpses of speculative "next big thing" companies.
I sincerely hope Tesla does not fall prey to this same demise. I don't own a Tesla product but I expect to benefit from them pushing the sluggish Ford, GM, etc. to actually innovate for a change.
Yes, they stand on that mountain, but they are still building it!
All the more reason to question their overhead since this "mountain" was already climbed in 1969. You do realize there's almost nothing NASA is trying to do today that wasn't already done better, faster, and cheaper by the Apollo program, right?
The SJW will scream "What a travesty! It shows total intolerance for alternative lifestyles!"
Then they will scream "His lifestyle denigrates women? Burn him alive! This was totally justified!"
The cognitive dissonance will be fascinating to watch.
I wonder if Americans will ever figure out that privatization is a con job by oligarchs to get your money for themselves under the guise of efficiency.
I dunno. Americans still haven't figured out government programs are a con job by politicians to get our money for themselves under the guise of efficacy. "Hey Taxpayer! You're too stupid to know what to do with your own money so we will take it from you and spend it in ways we think are best for you! Don't object! It's for your own good!"
This is why I'm a Libertarian.
Welcome to Trumponian politics.
You know, I seem to recall there might've been a different guy in the White House for the last eight years who oversaw the ridiculous F-35 program and did...well, nothing. Gosh, what was his name? O-something? But who cares, right? Since he was a Democrat he can do no wrong, and since Trump is a Republican he must be blamed for everything, including things he had nothing to do with.
And you don't think some other nations might have a problem with that?
You say that as if we didn't have enough nuclear weapons already to wipe out nearly any nation on the planet without fear of counterattack. Why should we give a damn about what other nations think about a mass driver? If we wanted to be a serious threat to them it's not like they could do anything about it NOW so a mass driver wouldn't alter anything.
If you read the IPCC summary, it labels every prediction with how confident the IPCC is in it, so it sure isn't climate scientists.
You are, of course, assuming there's nothing political going on with the IPCC recommendations in the first place and all the conclusions are honestly driven by nothing more than altruistic desires for the betterment of the human race. Pardon me if I have slightly more skepticism about the UN's motives given their manifestly anti-Western, anti-capitalist, pro-globalist stance. Add to that the prevailing "I don't need to explain it to you because you're too stupid to understand" mantra and what seems "settled science" to you seems anything but for those of us who are actually have to sacrifice for whatever the UN IPCC decides we have to do to satisfy them.
I'm assuming nothing. I'm saying I've not seen any major studies whatsoever addressing the actual impact of the subject beyond "climate change BAD!' Climate has changed since the planet first developed an atmosphere to have climate. It will continue to change at its whim until we develop technology capable of utterly controlling it at our whim. Mankind has always adapted. We will adapt to this. The questions that remain are (a) are we capable of affecting the climate in any meaningful way in the first place and (b) is the cost of attempting to pin the climate to the 20th-century norm higher, lower, or equal to the cost of adapting? If the answer to (a) is "no" then it necessarily negates the second question since our only practical option is adaptation.
In science, the facts are not opinions. They are the experimental results.
Except what you're referring to is not even remotely equivalent to "experimental results." We do not have the capability to "experiment" on a global climate under controlled, observable, repeatable conditions. Instead we build computer models based on how we think the climate actually works, all of which are only as accurate as our understanding of climate -- and that understanding is woefully inadequate. Thus the models are gross simplifications of the actual climate, some of which start with the presupposition that climate change is due to man-made CO2 and work backwards from there to make the data and models fit. The results have been models that accurately predict the past but inaccurately represent the present, or if they accurately represent the present they do not match the past. Over time the models get "massaged" to make things fit, always with the assumption it all must be man-made CO2 at the core of it.
I have a built-in distrust for such procedures because there are no effective ways to challenge or prove them experimentally. Additionally, the core climate community has become largely homogeneous by self-selection, where dissenting voices are banished in order to achieve the desired consensus. Grant money is doled out or withheld depending upon whether the findings will support the agenda of the giver. When big business does this it's called astroturfing, being a shill, etc. and is not to be trusted. When government and "big science" does it it's called "consensus" and questioning it is blasphemy of the highest order. Publishing is similarly segregated with any dissenting voice being treated as a pariah.
Do I believe the climate is changing? Absolutely. It was changing before humans arrived, being both significantly warmer and colder than it is today. It is changing while we're here. It will continue to change despite our wishes because we lack the technology to effectively stop it on short timescales. It's the height of anthropocentric arrogance to think the planet's climate is going to sit still for us just because we happened to develop opposable thumbs at this point in Earth's history.
Do I believe human activity is contributing to climate change? At some level it must be as any activity by definition has some kind of impact. The question then becomes how much are we affecting it and, if we reverse course, will the anticipated benefits outweigh the social and economic upheaval such a reversal would cause? Keep in mind sometimes it is better to adapt to change rather than fight it. Some areas currently too cold for agriculture would become more suited to it while other currently-arable areas would become too hot or dry. Certainly it is disruptive -- any change is -- but is the net result positive, negative, or neutral? Nobody has answered that question. To my knowledge the question isn't even being studied on any reasonable scale. Everything's being thrown into the we-have-to-stop-the-climate-from-changing bandwagon, a fool's errand if there ever was one because climate will merely laugh at our puny efforts.
There used to be a time when scientists welcomed questions and opposing ideas and were eager to put their hypotheses to the test. Today...not so much. "There's too much at stake" they say, to entertain skeptics or those that question. Instead they're labeled as "deniers" and treated like knuckle-dragging inbred simpletons at best or traitors to humanity and murderers at worst. The "we have to do something!" crowd is the loudest, saying we can't wait to get firm data and must enact sweeping changes regardless of what it does to anyone. That the worst effects would be felt by prosperous Western nations while third-world and far East polluters would suffer less or not at all. As that fits the current "punish the West for all ills" popular mantra is more than a little suspect so I'm similarly not inclined to believe or support anyone pushing such "climate reform" that doesn't call for all who benefit equally to pay equally as well.
I'd blame Trump's ilk for that too. If you vilify a group (gays in the Orlando case) long enough some unhinged asshat will decide he's taking action for the greater good.
Somehow I don't think it was Trump vilifying gays (which he has not done, BTW) that pushed a Muslim shouting "Allah Akbar!" to gun down gays in Orlando. Perhaps you're unaware of the standard treatment Muslims visit upon gays in places where Islam is the dominant religion? And I don't think it was Trump that pushed a pair of Muslims to gun down their co-workers at a holiday party in San Bernadino. And so on and so forth.
But hey, go ahead and blame Trump for stubbing your toe in the dark last night, or for the flat tire you got last year, or for the bird shitting on your windshield right after you washed your car. He's obviously the root of all evil and must be blamed for anything and everything you don't like. You look like a goddamned uninformed fool for doing so, but please, by all means, exercise your right to broadcast that fact to the world. It does wonders for your argument.
I am suggesting that you are in denial that a problem even exists, despite the figures, and before you can improve things there you need to change you way of thinking.
No one is in denial that homicide is a problem. Where we differ is the severity of the problem in relation to the severity of the proposed solutions. For example, the most recent statistics show there were over 30,000 automobile deaths last year, far more than deaths due to violent use of a gun. Do you propose banning automobiles? There are nearly 4,000 deaths annually due to drowning in pools, more than violent homicides by firearm, yet I don't hear you calling for a ban on pools.
There is no such thing as a perfectly free yet perfectly safe society and a great deal of harm can be done trying to achieve such a thing. For example, while shootings such as these make gun usage seem uniformly bad, there are no newscasts highlighting positive use of firearms for self defense. Nobody gets any air time when a five-foot, 100lb woman doesn't get raped by a six-foot, 220lb thug because she successfully defended herself with a firearm. There are innumerable permutations on the latter, none of which get any attention. Ban firearms by law-abiding citizens and you guarantee a target-rich environment for criminals, none of which will give a damn about any gun ban laws because criminals do not obey the law.
If you could snap your fingers tomorrow and magically delete every gun in existence then I might agree with your stance. That is impossible and any rational, reasonable person should know that. So long as criminals can get their hands on a weapon do to harm upon me and my family, I absolutely demand the right to legally obtain and wield one of my own for defense.
If everyone had a gun I probably wouldn't be posting this right now.
Far more people have guns than you are probably aware. That's because the vast, huge, overwhelming majority of them are kept for defense instead of assault. There are over 300 million guns in private hands in the United States. If the owners of these decided to be a problem, trust me, you'd be dead by now. That you're not is prima facie evidence of the stupidity of your argument.
Fine. Let's assume for the sake of argument that guns are a fundamentally bad thing and need to be banned. There are over 300 million guns in the United States alone. Please tell me how you plan to get rid of them in such a way that disarms criminals equally as well as it disarms law-abiding citizens.
You can't, and that's the crux of the problem. Criminals, by definition, do not obey the law. Law-abiding people, by definition, do obey the law. Pass a law banning handguns and you guarantee 100% disarmament of law-abiding citizens whilst simultaneously stopping very few if any criminals from getting them. Congratulations! You just made violent gun crime easier for every thug, bank robber, rapist, murderer, and so on. We absolutely need more of that, right?
Every time there's a shooting, people like you come out of the woodwork screaming about how bad guns are and how they must be eliminated. As noted above, there are over 300 million guns in circulation in the United States. Today about 99.99997% of them were not used in a violent criminal way, yet you insist they are a dire threat to anything and everything. Your argument is both irrational and illogical.
Using that metric, everything and anything could "revolutionize the world" so the term becomes meaningless. Such hyperbole should be reserved for usage in things that are a bit more fleshed out and actual candidates for said revolutionizing.
I suppose it means that money is too free, and I suppose the market will correct that.
You meant it sarcastically but your second point is actually correct. People who invest in startups like this have a fiduciary duty to themselves or their firms to investigate what they're investing in. It's all "buyer beware" so I have no sympathy for those who lost money; you plays the game, you takes your chances. If you win -- with a Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. -- you win big. If you lose, you lose big. That's how it's supposed to work.
The net results of crap like this is investors (should) become more wary about what they invest in. They should vet companies before they invest and hold its executives to higher standards than this Nardone idiot was held. All of that is a Good Thing no matter what angle you look at this debacle from.
I don't know if Trump supporters are smart enough to do the same, but these rioters are certainly discrediting the cause they nominally claim to support.
Funny, I saw the protesters as doing exactly what they said they'd do all along: act like a bunch of spoiled babies who didn't get their way and are now throwing a tantrum. They don't rationalize. They don't listen. They don't engage cognitive thinking skills. They distill it down to "you don't agree with me, therefore you are a hateful, mean, stupid, intolerant, bigoted, racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic Hitler lover and I'm completely justified in doing whatever my emotions lead me to do and you can't criticize me because criticism is racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobic, etc."
It's the logical endpoint of the "there is no truth and right/wrong is an illusion" ideology.
If you want to play statistics, you could also say "billions of people did not protest Trump." Hey, sorry if you don't like it but that logic works both ways. You want to minimize the (obvious and improper) damage caused by rioting liberals, I'll be happy to minimize the (pathetically small and insignificant) number or protesters.
Funny how, if we're all a bunch of racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobic, xenophobic, neo-nazi, fascist, greedy, evil, violent, intolerant bastards like you say we are, we didn't riot, burn shit, threaten to blow up the White House, dress up like vaginas, scream, whine, cry, bitch, moan, and boycott everything when Obama was elected (twice!). I mean, it's not like we AGREED with Obama's policies in the slightest, certainly no more so than you agree with Trump. Yet somehow the only time you see this behavior is when liberals lose. Conservatives...not so much.
It reminds me of the argument that gun owners are some sort of threat to the general public. We've got more than 300 million guns and several trillion rounds of ammunition. Trust us, if we were a threat, you'd know it by now.
A guy who claims he knows more than all the generals.
Which, of course, explains why he's hired complete lap dogs like General "Mad Dog" Mattis. Mattis is well-known for his soft-spoken manner, desire to "go along to get along" and his political finesse. The troops hate him and his military record is a joke.
OK, there's only so much sarcasm I can spew before I choke. Point being, Trump is doing what any skilled executive does and that's surrounding himself with people who are damn good at what they do. Trump is shoring up his weak points by finding strong people. You may not like his picks but it's difficult to argue that each one of them aren't formidable in their own arena.
I don't think you're the least bit frightened of a bad President Trump. You're terrified he'll be a good President. You're scared he WON'T destroy civil liberties, round up gays, or wipe his ass with the Constitution. That'd be the ultimate terror attack on your ideology, wouldn't it? That his policies might be effective and actually good for the country, thus proving your ideas are, at best, not worthwhile.
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.
If Facebook Twitter, Reddit and other leftist dominated companies run all the communications mediums, how are those who disagree to compete in the arena of ideas?
There's not supposed to be competition in the arena of ideas, didn't you know that? It's supposed to be an infinite echo chamber where all the heads nod up and down at the same time in the same way and nobody ever says anything that challenges anyone's preconceived notions. Those that do must be exiled, ridiculed, and called racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, arachnophobic, hydrophobic, and anything else derogatory the echo chamber can come up with regardless of whether or not it actually applies. Such is the mentality of the left in political discourse.
This is nothing new with the left. Go back to the origins with Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, and so forth. Controlling thoughts and implementing groupthink has always been part and parcel of leftist ideology. It preys upon the typical desire to "fit in" and not be left out of a crowd. That's why every leftist government has always sought to ban certain types of speech -- either legally or extra-legally -- as part of its method for retaining power. The USSR did it to great effect for almost a century before it came crashing down. Today's "political correctness" is nothing more than the same ideology repackaged into something more aesthetically pleasing to the masses.
So he trolled the trolls.
So basically you're saying what he did was fine because he did it against Trump and his "fifth column." So trashing free speech is fine with you so long as it's trashing free speech you don't like. The cognitive dissonance...it burns. Why do I get the feeling you'd be singing an entirely different tune if this was a conservative forum host that censored pro-Hillary or anti-Trump comments to align with conservative viewpoints?
There's a simple litmus test you must always apply when rendering judgement on things like this. If the positions were reversed would you still feel the same? If the answer is "no" then you're not being objective enough to have a valid opinion on the subject.