This is stupid... I wonder if the car will let you drive home if a passenger is drunk?
Was wondering something similar - will it protect you from the open bottle of beer in the back seat on a hot day? Yeah, I know - "hot day" and "Sweden" don't really go together...
Or does it focus exclusively on the driver. And if the latter, how?
Make it a fine. If people want to use the recycling bin, fine them if they misuse it and use the funds to clean at the recycling depot.
So, if I really dislike one of my neighbors, it'll be worthwhile to dump my stuff in THEIR recycle bin? That's a great idea! Saves me the trouble of sorting my recyclables, and costs someone I dislike a lot of money at the same time!
Amazon's market power are overblown, despite the company capturing 52.4 percent of all online spending in the U.S. this year
Now say it again without laughing.
Hmm, a quick check shows that online retail amounts to less than 10% of all retail. Which means that Amazon may amount to as much as 5% of all retail. I fail to see the problem, what with Walmart still amounting to close to 7% of all retail sales by itself...
That's a myth, the reality is that peasants in ye olden dayes had enormous amounts of free time a majority of the year.
Never tried farming for a living, have you? No, it's not a matter of "work during planting season, goof off till harvest, work for a few weeks at harvest, goof off all winter, lather, rinse, repeat"....
Fiat money seems to be a problem for socialism and other regimes. With fiat money the government can print as much as it likes, running up inflation and driving the country into ruin. Some historians say this happened to the Romans once they started polluting their coins with base metals, and is probably what caused Germany to start WWII.
If you want to see the root causes of WW2, look no further than the Treaty that ended WW1. The indemnities that Germany had to pay impoverished the country to the point that "any man on a horse" that could get them out of that trap was welcomed with open arms....
Think about this. The French, Swiss, Italians, Spanish, and Portuguese all have industrialized, happy societies while belching out about 1/3 of the CO2 emissions per person of the US. Lowering CO2 emissions doesn't have to come with a dramatic lowering of the standard of living. It's mainly an engineering problem...
Lowering CO2 emissions has just been declared meaningless (or nearly so). If enough warming to melt arctic (and presumably antarctic) ice is "inevitable", then restricting CO2 emissions hardly matters.
As to the French, Swiss, Italians, Spanish and Portuguese, how well do they do the whole "industrialized, happy society" if they don't have imports from all those places that don't? Can't recall the last time I saw any industrial-type imports from any of those places, so seriously want to know just how independent their "industrialized, happy societies" are....
In my country of birth there were no tornadoes in the recorded history.
Just curious - how long is "recorded history" for that sort of thing where you were born? In the USA, "recorded history" for tornadoes in Kansas only goes back about 150 years, for instance....
Spanish police are saying that the CIA was involved in an assault in February where they took everyone in the North Korean embassy in Madrid prisoner, interrogated them for two hours, and then stole documents, computers, and two cars.
It's interesting that Spanish police are saying that, but have they presented any, well, evidence that what they're saying is true?
I notice that according to the BBC, Spanish police have not answered their queries for information....
IMHO, the lack of a formal complaint by the alleged victims of this assault suggest something other than "the EEEEVIL USA did bad things to us!!!", since the NK's would like nothing better than to make us look like the bad guys....
Because it's not a normal job. An informed public is elemental to a healthy democracy.
And a PROPERLY informed public is even more essential! People hearing about things that Top Men think are unimportant is something that needs to be squelched ASAP!
What, you actually believe that paper ballots are secure? Apparently you've never lived in a place where, now and then, a box full of ballots is replaced with another box full of ballots. With different votes....
Note that Trump's budget released yesterday calls for a cut in education funding.
Hmm, 12% of about $85B (Federal budget for education) cuts is about $$10.5B. Total spending on education at all levels is around $670B. SO, you're really worried about that 1.5% cut?
Especially given that Federal education dollars mostly fund the Department of Education, not, you know, actual education....
Yes, almost all education spending (nearly 90%) is done at State and Local levels. And the higher level of spending (with local at the bottom, then State, then Federal) you get, the more likely that the dollars so spent are spent on bureaucrats, rather than, you know, teachers....
Do note that what this is about is people cheating to get their kids into prestigious schools (suitable for the upper crust only - the riff-raff need not apply). If they really want to throw money away buying their way into the "upper crust" schools, let them go to town! It's not like someone going to college on a football scholarship isn't already dragging the system down a bit every year....
The "hottest" isotopes are of the LEAST concern at this point -- the ones that remain are still dangerous.
Not terribly dangerous, really. Frankly, if you released a similar amount of mercury into the area, you'd find MUCH greater health issues...and mercury isn't radioactive at all....
Commodities should really drop to the marginal cost of the parts, in fact below the cost of production.
If commodity prices drop below cost of production, what incentive is there for anyone to produce the commodity?
As to TFA, if glasses can be done cheaper than the current market prices, sounds like there's an opportunity for someone. Like, say, the people who believe that glasses are being grossly overcharged for. So I recommend that y'all who believe this go into business making this stuff cheaper. Remember, you can halve the current prices and still make gobs and gobs of money (since they're talking about markups of 800% or so) - so get to it!
Two problems with universal basic income. The money has to come from some where, and the goods have to come from somewhere.
Hmm...
US Federal Government spending on social services (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Welfare, that sort of thing) amount to a bit over $2.5T. Tossing all that into a single pool, and dividing it 330M ways amounts to $7500 per year for every man, woman and child in the country. So a family of four would get $30K, a childless couple $15K.
And that's without ANY tax increases at all.
So, no, the money isn't the limiting factor, since a UBI would be coupled with a rather more progressive than current Income Tax, as well as a lowered need for Federal bureaucrats to determine eligibility.
Now, there could be a problem with making shit. But we're not talking an income tax that's so punitive that noone works at all. And since you won't lose your $30K (you, wife, two kids), working still pays for the extras that make life nicer. So, it may result in fewer full time jobs, but that's one of the better side effects....
Facebook is not obliged to host such content, or at the very least to make it easy to find.
No, but once they make it clear that they can easily get something off FB if enough people bitch about it, they're opening themselves up to lawsuits every time someone gets offended by something posted on FB.
The problem with FB is that it owns the competing social media networks, and that in itself is a reason to break it up.
Yep.
Won't work, of course.
Break it up, and people will end up on one or another of the components. If the people they care about tracking aren't on the same component, they'll switch components till they're all together.
That'll cascade till all the friends of friends of friends are together, and you'll have one company that dominates again.
Which you'll then break up, and the process will repeat itself....
Fifth amendment stuff should probably apply here, although I don't see what law they can possibly use to compel a witness in an investigation not related to any law which that witness may have broken.
Fifth Amendment protects against SELF Incrimination.
It should be noted that NOTHING said before a Grand Jury can be used to bring criminal charges against the speaker. So if you're called to a Grand Jury, and they ask you "Did YOU murder that family?", if you say "Yeah, it was me that did it" then you just got away with murder....
Approximately 32 million adults in the United States can't read, according to the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute of Literacy.
32M adults is less than 10% of the total population.
And the OECD may believe that half of adults can't read a book written at an eighth-grade level, but I'd like to see the basis for that result (IOW show me the details of the study). Hell, my father probably hasn't read a book in 30 years, but I have no doubt at all that he can read at an eighth-grade level, because I've read some of the tech manuals that he used to use at work....
If you're disseminating information that harms people, seriously harms them in some instances, where's the accountability?
And if you have government oversight of what's said in public (and yes, Facebook is a public forum), then you have to first get the First Amendment amended out of the Constitution. Good luck with that.
If you manage that, you have to get the new Public Censors to agree with you in every jot and tittle, or you're going to find yourself banned from saying things in public.
Likewise everyone else. Note that someone (a lot of someones) are going to be on the losing side of the "we must pre-approve everything said in public" reality people seem to be asking for. Unless you're the Public Censor, it's unlikely that you're going to be happy with the result (except on the days they're censoring the people you dislike, instead of censoring you)....
The Right of stupid people to say what they like? Yeah, I think that that fits. Note that once you've decided that stopping stupid people from saying whatever they like, it's pretty easy to expand the definition (gradually, mind you!) of "stupid people" till the government is restricting anything they don't want to hear in public.
And remember, you may agree with the gov at first, but sooner or later, their definition of "stupid people saying the wrong thing(s) in public" will include things YOU want to say in public....
No, I'm not anti-vax. I wish that measles had been available when *I* was an infant. Alas, I was four or five before it was developed, much less available to the general public, much less mandatory.
Nor am I pro-stupid-people. I am, however, rather fond of the First Amendment. And restricting speech I disagree with isn't one of the exceptions listed in the First....
So our strategy for an Earth-impacting asteroid should be: if it is rotating, blow it apart and watxch the pieces fly away; if it is not rotating, nudge its orbit with a series of small explosions.
Or, if it's not rotating, get it started rotating, then blow it apart.
Of course, a lot depends on how long before the hypothetical impact we detect the thing. If it's not going to hit for ten years, we've got a lot of options as to how to deal with it. Ten weeks? Not so much. Ten days? Have a world-wide "End of the World" party....
Interview the people who lived near Fukushima Daiichi and Chernobyl for a human perspective on nuclear power. Maybe concentrate on the survivors, as the dead tell no tales.
Hmm...survivors of Fukushima: everyone who was there, but for one guy who died last year. Okay, should be pretty easy to talk to the survivors, since pretty much everyone over eight is still doing fine.
Survivors of Chernobyl: that one is a bit harder, what with the Soviet Union not liking to admit errors. That said, two immediate deaths in the plant (well, nearly immediate - one guy took the best part of a month to die), plus a hundred-odd people with some level of radiation poisoning, of which 28 died within a few months, and another dozen or so within ten years.
In addition, there have been FIFTEEN (15) more childhood deaths have occurred than expected among the five million+ people in the areas affected by Chernobyl.
So, the two worst nuclear accidents in history have, so far, produced in the range of 60 deaths. For reference, there were 46000+ motor vehicle deaths in the USA the year of the Chernobyl incident. An average of about 130 per day.
So, for all that Chernobyl and Fukushima were the worst nuclear power disaster in the history of the world (to date, the only ones that produced any fatalities), they suffered fewer deaths than happened on the roads in the USA any random day in 1986. Or, in fact, any random day in any year since I was born.
An interesting bit of trivia: in the five years after Chernobyl, more people died on the roads of the USA than died in all the nuclear power accidents in history, even if you count the atom-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as "nuclear power accidents".
Of course, in the 20th century, more Americans died on the highways than died in WW1 & 2 combined (more than in all the wars we were involved in in the 20th century, in fact).
Yeppers. On the other hand, now the Vermont authorities know who to go to when they need information about their residents that the residents are reluctant to hand out....
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Was wondering something similar - will it protect you from the open bottle of beer in the back seat on a hot day? Yeah, I know - "hot day" and "Sweden" don't really go together...
Or does it focus exclusively on the driver. And if the latter, how?
So, if I really dislike one of my neighbors, it'll be worthwhile to dump my stuff in THEIR recycle bin? That's a great idea! Saves me the trouble of sorting my recyclables, and costs someone I dislike a lot of money at the same time!
Hmm, a quick check shows that online retail amounts to less than 10% of all retail. Which means that Amazon may amount to as much as 5% of all retail. I fail to see the problem, what with Walmart still amounting to close to 7% of all retail sales by itself...
Never tried farming for a living, have you? No, it's not a matter of "work during planting season, goof off till harvest, work for a few weeks at harvest, goof off all winter, lather, rinse, repeat"....
If you want to see the root causes of WW2, look no further than the Treaty that ended WW1. The indemnities that Germany had to pay impoverished the country to the point that "any man on a horse" that could get them out of that trap was welcomed with open arms....
Lowering CO2 emissions has just been declared meaningless (or nearly so). If enough warming to melt arctic (and presumably antarctic) ice is "inevitable", then restricting CO2 emissions hardly matters.
As to the French, Swiss, Italians, Spanish and Portuguese, how well do they do the whole "industrialized, happy society" if they don't have imports from all those places that don't? Can't recall the last time I saw any industrial-type imports from any of those places, so seriously want to know just how independent their "industrialized, happy societies" are....
Just curious - how long is "recorded history" for that sort of thing where you were born? In the USA, "recorded history" for tornadoes in Kansas only goes back about 150 years, for instance....
It's interesting that Spanish police are saying that, but have they presented any, well, evidence that what they're saying is true?
I notice that according to the BBC, Spanish police have not answered their queries for information....
IMHO, the lack of a formal complaint by the alleged victims of this assault suggest something other than "the EEEEVIL USA did bad things to us!!!", since the NK's would like nothing better than to make us look like the bad guys....
And a PROPERLY informed public is even more essential! People hearing about things that Top Men think are unimportant is something that needs to be squelched ASAP!
What, you actually believe that paper ballots are secure? Apparently you've never lived in a place where, now and then, a box full of ballots is replaced with another box full of ballots. With different votes....
Unlikely. They'll be booked, released on bail, then when the trial comes, they will be fined heavily and not be given prison time.
Hmm, 12% of about $85B (Federal budget for education) cuts is about $$10.5B. Total spending on education at all levels is around $670B. SO, you're really worried about that 1.5% cut?
Especially given that Federal education dollars mostly fund the Department of Education, not, you know, actual education....
Yes, almost all education spending (nearly 90%) is done at State and Local levels. And the higher level of spending (with local at the bottom, then State, then Federal) you get, the more likely that the dollars so spent are spent on bureaucrats, rather than, you know, teachers....
Do note that what this is about is people cheating to get their kids into prestigious schools (suitable for the upper crust only - the riff-raff need not apply). If they really want to throw money away buying their way into the "upper crust" schools, let them go to town! It's not like someone going to college on a football scholarship isn't already dragging the system down a bit every year....
Not terribly dangerous, really. Frankly, if you released a similar amount of mercury into the area, you'd find MUCH greater health issues...and mercury isn't radioactive at all....
If commodity prices drop below cost of production, what incentive is there for anyone to produce the commodity?
As to TFA, if glasses can be done cheaper than the current market prices, sounds like there's an opportunity for someone. Like, say, the people who believe that glasses are being grossly overcharged for. So I recommend that y'all who believe this go into business making this stuff cheaper. Remember, you can halve the current prices and still make gobs and gobs of money (since they're talking about markups of 800% or so) - so get to it!
Hmm...
US Federal Government spending on social services (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Welfare, that sort of thing) amount to a bit over $2.5T. Tossing all that into a single pool, and dividing it 330M ways amounts to $7500 per year for every man, woman and child in the country. So a family of four would get $30K, a childless couple $15K.
And that's without ANY tax increases at all.
So, no, the money isn't the limiting factor, since a UBI would be coupled with a rather more progressive than current Income Tax, as well as a lowered need for Federal bureaucrats to determine eligibility.
Now, there could be a problem with making shit. But we're not talking an income tax that's so punitive that noone works at all. And since you won't lose your $30K (you, wife, two kids), working still pays for the extras that make life nicer. So, it may result in fewer full time jobs, but that's one of the better side effects....
Yep.
Won't work, of course.
Break it up, and people will end up on one or another of the components. If the people they care about tracking aren't on the same component, they'll switch components till they're all together.
That'll cascade till all the friends of friends of friends are together, and you'll have one company that dominates again.
Which you'll then break up, and the process will repeat itself....
Fifth Amendment protects against SELF Incrimination.
It should be noted that NOTHING said before a Grand Jury can be used to bring criminal charges against the speaker. So if you're called to a Grand Jury, and they ask you "Did YOU murder that family?", if you say "Yeah, it was me that did it" then you just got away with murder....
32M adults is less than 10% of the total population.
And the OECD may believe that half of adults can't read a book written at an eighth-grade level, but I'd like to see the basis for that result (IOW show me the details of the study). Hell, my father probably hasn't read a book in 30 years, but I have no doubt at all that he can read at an eighth-grade level, because I've read some of the tech manuals that he used to use at work....
And if you have government oversight of what's said in public (and yes, Facebook is a public forum), then you have to first get the First Amendment amended out of the Constitution. Good luck with that.
If you manage that, you have to get the new Public Censors to agree with you in every jot and tittle, or you're going to find yourself banned from saying things in public.
Likewise everyone else. Note that someone (a lot of someones) are going to be on the losing side of the "we must pre-approve everything said in public" reality people seem to be asking for. Unless you're the Public Censor, it's unlikely that you're going to be happy with the result (except on the days they're censoring the people you dislike, instead of censoring you)....
The Right of stupid people to say what they like? Yeah, I think that that fits. Note that once you've decided that stopping stupid people from saying whatever they like, it's pretty easy to expand the definition (gradually, mind you!) of "stupid people" till the government is restricting anything they don't want to hear in public.
And remember, you may agree with the gov at first, but sooner or later, their definition of "stupid people saying the wrong thing(s) in public" will include things YOU want to say in public....
No, I'm not anti-vax. I wish that measles had been available when *I* was an infant. Alas, I was four or five before it was developed, much less available to the general public, much less mandatory.
Nor am I pro-stupid-people. I am, however, rather fond of the First Amendment. And restricting speech I disagree with isn't one of the exceptions listed in the First....
Aisle. It's about the empty space between the left and right side of the assembly hall, not islands....
Or, if it's not rotating, get it started rotating, then blow it apart.
Of course, a lot depends on how long before the hypothetical impact we detect the thing. If it's not going to hit for ten years, we've got a lot of options as to how to deal with it. Ten weeks? Not so much. Ten days? Have a world-wide "End of the World" party....
Hmm...survivors of Fukushima: everyone who was there, but for one guy who died last year. Okay, should be pretty easy to talk to the survivors, since pretty much everyone over eight is still doing fine.
Survivors of Chernobyl: that one is a bit harder, what with the Soviet Union not liking to admit errors. That said, two immediate deaths in the plant (well, nearly immediate - one guy took the best part of a month to die), plus a hundred-odd people with some level of radiation poisoning, of which 28 died within a few months, and another dozen or so within ten years.
In addition, there have been FIFTEEN (15) more childhood deaths have occurred than expected among the five million+ people in the areas affected by Chernobyl.
So, the two worst nuclear accidents in history have, so far, produced in the range of 60 deaths. For reference, there were 46000+ motor vehicle deaths in the USA the year of the Chernobyl incident. An average of about 130 per day.
So, for all that Chernobyl and Fukushima were the worst nuclear power disaster in the history of the world (to date, the only ones that produced any fatalities), they suffered fewer deaths than happened on the roads in the USA any random day in 1986. Or, in fact, any random day in any year since I was born.
An interesting bit of trivia: in the five years after Chernobyl, more people died on the roads of the USA than died in all the nuclear power accidents in history, even if you count the atom-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as "nuclear power accidents".
Of course, in the 20th century, more Americans died on the highways than died in WW1 & 2 combined (more than in all the wars we were involved in in the 20th century, in fact).
Yeppers. On the other hand, now the Vermont authorities know who to go to when they need information about their residents that the residents are reluctant to hand out....