I realize, my guess is she was reacting to the sound if anything. I was a near by strike, knocked a picture off the wall even. Loud as hell. Certainly scared me plenty. I think she was possibly in a kind of shock.
I have no doubt she would recovered on her own in time. It was however long enough for me to be come concerned about enough to try talking to her and then to get up and walk across the room to give her a little shake.
Clinton replied, "That is not what I've heard. Let me leave it at that."
Lets see Mrs. Clinton is not currently serving in privileged to information government role. These are conversations that would have taken place after she left office. So some how she is being fed information she can't or won't share with the rest of us. Yet we are supposed to trust her and vote for her. Screw that. She is the ultimate insider. People always accused the GOP of solving things in the back room while the old men smoke cigars. Maybe there is truth in that maybe not. What is clear is that HRC is very much a part of that old boys club, no matter what she has between her legs.
She can't be trusted, full stop. A vote for Hillary is a vote against your interests because the only interests Hillary has is in what is good for her.
I have seen my cat get so spooked from a thunder clap she literally got stuck frozen in the middle of the room. She did not respond to my verbalizing at all. I had to get up a shake her after a short while. After that she was fine.
Except a quick a Google shows A LOT of people seems to be worried about living near or under power lines, and are utterly convinced electric blankets cause migraines.
I don't buy it myself, I think a lot more people would have a lot more problems if it were really a thing. Maybe though in some extreem situations there could be some validity to it.
I am aware actually and it proves my point. Without special intervention in the market place by government OTA networks would air little such programing. If they had been airing enough Congress would not have stepped in.
Netflix on the other hand is producing a number of kids shows with no such intervention. Their motivations are different. They like any business seek to provide what their customers want (at least in aggregate). In the case of Netflix that is you the subscriber. With traditional networks that is the advertisers.
What defines success for Netflix is the bottom line, and what means sustainability is the size of the subscriber base and its trend on growth or decline. What makes an individual media property a success or failure in the context of Netflix is if it adds the value of Netflix in the they opinion of their subscribers. The who watches it and when specifics are less important than with traditional ad supported television.
NetFlix does not have the same success criteria. The networks need people to watch shows at a certain time, not dvr them fast forward etc, because they depend on the ad revenues.
That means the only measure of success is viewership at original air time for the most part and that the target demographic that the advertisers want tuned in.
Netflix on the other hand is all about obtaining and retaining subscribers. It does not matter to them when people watch their series or really even if they watch! They need their subscribers to feel they are getting value. That means for instance if Netflix produces a show that mostly appeals to 4 year olds, that is fine. Mom and Dad think $9 a month is a cheap way to keep the kids occupied while they make dinner. Advertisers would hate that though because kids that age don't spend money.
So at the end of the day if Netflix has the money to invest in content production and keep their bottom line in the black they are succeeding. So far all indications are that they do. Financial statements etc. The proof is out there.
There was no big public discussion on McCain's eligibility because Congress settled the question BEFORE the election. https://www.govtrack.us/congre...
This is in contrast to the question of Mr. Obama who insisted that he was eligible not just because he was born a US Citizen. It remains a question as to if that is adequate, given the above resolution named McCain specifically and mentioned military families. Obama claimed eligibility based on his being born within the United States. Being born within the United States being the narrowest interpretation of what the Constitution says on the matter. It got really bizarre when rather than being reasonable and just producing his birth certificate to prove he was born where he said he was; he stonewalled for years. He did this incidentally while supporting things like Real ID and various TSA rule making. Only in Obama's world ( and that of those who were prepared to do anything protect his presidency) is it unreasonable to let you board a plane for a domestic flight with a document that does not contain your middle initial, but its totally cool to vote, or be elected president for that matter, with no proof of eligibility of any kind.
Quite honestly I accept the interpretation that natural born us citizen means, that you were a citizen when you were born. If the framers wanted to write "citizen born within the United States" they would have. So I don't think the whole Obama controversy matters much because he would have been a citizen at birth either way. I DO WONDER why it took so long to produce a birth certificate, which had he simply done immediately would have made the conspiracy people go away. I sorta doubt the validity of that birth certificate at this point, it just does not matter because he should still be eligible for the office as I understand plain language and the Constitution.
Which brings us to my currently favored (among those with the potential to get elected) candidate Mr. Cruz. Trump's attack on his eligibility is reasonably IMHO. While if I were a jurist making the call I would rule he is eligible, because he was a US Citizen when he was born; that does not mean the SCOTUS would reach the same conclusion. Trump is right he should seek a declaratory judgement, or similar congressional resolution on the matter lest it become a potential issue later.
here are plenty of applications where a 4-stroke engine simply wouldn't work because it would weigh too much (leaf blowers, chain saws, etc) or would be too bulky
Except you can go to your local Lowes or Home Depot and buy these things with 4 stroke engines right now. In general I agree though their two stroke counter parts are vastly superior. The are as powerful and weigh less or are more powerful; either way therefore more useful for their purpose. Its also the case the 2 stroke engines general tolerate being inverted and such because they only have to worry about keep a charge of aspirated fuel, not also pulling oil from a sump; and dry sump applications for 4 strokes are even more complex and expensive.
Personally the only way I will ever replace my 2 stroke trimmer plus and my chain saw with a 4 stroke is if I can't get a replacement 2 stroke model.
Yes in a lot of way it do exactly that. All the packages of cereal on the store shelves stayed the same size and so did the price but the content shrank. The price of fuel skyrocketed. All that talk of deflation and stagnation was bullshit. It only looked that way on the bottom line because there was sharp deflation in a particular asset class that happened to make up a large part of the economy. Worked out real well for you if you were looking to buy real-estate, not so well if you were and owner and pretty badly if you were a borrower, paying pre-crash interest rates.
I am not defending bitcoin but to suggest major currencies even the USD does not have these same problems is a popular fiction. I think its very possible the ONLY THING that makes the dollar less prone to these swings is the large number distinct asset classes traded or exchanged for it. Something like stability in terms of relative value is achieved not by confidence in the USD, or its backing, but by the fact that a major contraction real-estate demand might be offset by strong demand for commodities like grain or oil. So perhaps the total buying power of the house hold remains somewhat anchored even if the specific expenditures swing wildly. Real-estate is probably the largest portion of most peoples expenses or liability. Right now oil and grain are cheap, but rents are way up. We would be in another crisis right now if oil and grain were also up, its no less out-of-whack than the 2007-2010 period its just that we don't fell it as badly beacause real-estate is the bigger part of the pie.
So bitcoins real problem is there are not enough counter assets that trade it in it. if you could buy, drugs in addition to a house, oil, grain, car, computer, coffee, coffee maker, pork belly and pay your dentist. It would be as stability comparable to the major currencies.
It may not be as bad as opiates, but to say it's safe is a huge leap.
Okay maybe safe isn't the right word. I suspect it would be safer if measured out into known dosages of known strength and packaged, in a hygienic facility.
In any case I think its been shown to fall below the threshold of danger society otherwise considers acceptable. Alcohol for example has problems vary similar to opiates. Its efficacy declines and users become tolerant. Its highly habit forming in a significant part of the population. Its easy fairly easy to drink enough to depress respiration or interfere with reflexes that would prevent choking etc, if you are careless. Yet we allow people to buy it over the counter, and people use it to self medicate for pain and other problems all the time. It works too for awhile.
I have broken filling the dentist can't fix until Tuesday. On his recommendation I am holing a swallow of whiskey in my cheek right now, to numb it. Its way more effective than the Advil I used during the work day.
It offers incredible potential for modulation, far beyond what cannabis can do, and I for one welcome our Pharma Overlords to throw their resources at these problems.. provided that they don't botch things up like this, for fucks sake.
That's great in the meantime I wish we could get nice legal packaged THC/CBD products to market. Its clear of the centuries (maybe longer) of not exactly controlled application of these compounds on human test subjects they are pretty darn safe, and at least not chemically habit forming. They are also at least somewhat effective in many people with a wide variety of chronic pain conditions.
Meanwhile our various overloads continue pushing a condition where the widely available strong pain killers are opiate. Which are highly habit forming, tend to negative side effects for the liver and kidneys when over used and have a much much narrower therapeutic dose than THC/CBD. So we have all kinds of people over dosing on them all the gwad damn time, others becoming addicts and shifting to their street drug relatives when they can no longer get them and subsequently over dosing on those. In short the irrational resistance to cannabis is killing lots of people.
As a libertarian I am generally in support of letting people do what they want. Letting a doctor prescribe medical cannabis is a no brainier. I have some reservations about it being totally legal for recreational use although I lean in favor; at the vary least it should be fully decriminalized. Being caught with or even selling weed should be like getting a parking ticket.
I am not sure I am buying that one. With a traditional product certainly. The trouble is with media the variable costs per unit are near zero. So some of the traditional rules around the economics of selling get a little strange.
If I were selling cars (hey its slashdot) its probably the case that I can get my unit cost of production down lower building 50,000 of them rather than 10. I can charge less for each. I might attempt a price discrimination strategy to try and take market from my competition. That is if I know selling cars in $Region requires lower prices because people have less spending money I might go as low as at cost, figuring it could lead to future sales. Its unlikely for anything more than a very short term period I'll go below cost. Its also true that my variable cost per unit remains significant. I am not going to build another 10,000 cars if I have to give them away below cost, I will lose a lot of money doing that.
On the the other hand. With digital media delivered online my variable costs are damn near zero, if I am otherwise operating on any kind of market leading scale. Physical media is also pretty near zero, at those scales. A truck load of DVDs probably costs a grand or so to produce. Now there are only so many customers in high income parts of the world to by the product which has huge fixed costs, making AAA movie is expensive. I have to cover those costs. It may not be possible to do so selling at $2. However once I have gotten everyone willing to pay $12 to do so and covered my costs than any additional sales I can make at $2 anywhere, third run streaming on Netflix, Eastern Bumbfuckistan on DVD, etc is purely additional profit because the variable costs are zero.
I would say don't hate the player, hate the game. Netfix would not be able to license a lot of content unless they agreed to do the geo-blocking.
Your beef should really be with the studios. You can argue that refusing to support Netflix (which I would say has probably done more to bring down the cost and increase the availability of content than anyone else) cuts a distribution outlet for the studios and production houses. That is true but you had better be willing to stick to your guns and not turn around and by their stuff from somebody else via some other channel.
The fact is of the available models I think the low flat fee all you can on demand model of Netflix is probably far and away the best value for the consumer, at least which still enables content creators to get paid in some way. Netflix gains nothing from geo-blocking themselves except the ability to license the content needed to make the service viable. Netflix would be better off not needing to do that. Probably the best way to encourage that is to choose Netflix over other distribution methods (cable, Theater, redbox, etc). If Netflix and like become the the primary way people get content the content industry will have less leverage to negotiate terms.
Outside of those individuals who are able to file 1040EZ or have a relatively simple 1040A situation; nobody knows how to file their taxes. The best even the professionals can do is make a good faith effort to follow the rules working with best available definitions that are often vague and subject to contest or dispute.
You then hope in the following order: 0) You don't get audited 1) Your answers to the auditors questions will convince them you were not trying to pull anything that you might be correct in your interpretation, best not waste anymore time with you. 2) You are wrong but the IRS does not think you were trying pull something, and will let you just pay up and make the thing go away. 3) The penalties are small 4) The prison sentence is short.
Chase down dissident's like never before with new Air Zedongs!
Tired of dissidents escaping around street corners while chasing them thru the crowed streets of Beijing? If only you had just a little more speed you could knab those bastards. Have you stooped to tie you shoes only to look up and see the dissident you've spent the entire afternoon tailing has run off. The Air Zedongs feature stylish Velcro straps that always remain securely fixed until you release them! Power no longer flows from the gun barrel but springs from the soul of your feet when you ware the all new Air Zedongs!
I think its a pretty strait forward mens rea question, did you know or should your reasonably have know you were materially contributing to the violation of human rights.
Others have asked should Ford be responsible if you buy a car and run someone over. No clearly not because Ford has no reason to think you want that car for anything besides driving it to work the grocery store and taking a family road trip once in a while. In most cases.
On the other hand if [walk] into the dealer the first thing you ask is "Show me something I can run over my ex-girlfriend with tonight" maybe someone ought to make a phone call, and not sell you a car just then.
Same thing with guns. The manufacture has no reason to think you want the weapon for anything other than shooting sports, or self defense. So that fines.
I would not expect the any liability to go to the fold providing materials for the construction of GitMo either. The US military has plenty of legitimate applications for wire fence, concrete, dry wall, coffee makers, etc. There was no reason to think as a contract building a prison it was going to be used as a torture facility.
Cisco on the other hand knows exactly China was going to use the gear for. They practically told them as much, from what I have read. There have been plenty of past cases where equipment was used that way.
Agreed, it does make sense to support people that under under siege by ISIS, ISIS is the enemy. We are also giving aide food aide to groups loyal to Asad who is still supposedly our enemy. That makes less sense.
Only if they think we will actually use those 20kt+ devices. If they think we might be to squeamish for that sorta thing and try to fight back with traditional chemical explosives and arms they suddenly have a huge advantage on the battle field. At least if their assessment of us proves accurate (I suspect it would).
Smaller more target-able devices would also be potentially very useful against naval power. A lot of US force projection depends on aircraft carriers. If you could reliably target and destroy a carrier using a payload delivered by rocket, with a small enough device that on shore impacts direct, tsunami, and fallout were minimal, you could potentially massively degrade the USA's ability to fight in many areas of the world.
You might also be able to do that without turning the entire rest of the world against you. Having only targeted and destroyed a Man-of-War, which is pretty universally considered a legitimate target.
The term collateral damage when applied to nukes is kind of meaningless.
Not at all. In the context of "Total War" collateral damage would be harm done to to you or your allies. Destruction of an entire enemy city and nothing else would be zero collateral damage. You are attempting to destroy their will and ability to make war. You break the their means of production, you break their will to fight when they realize their homes and loved ones cannot be protected thru their military efforts. The destruction of non-combatants and infrastructure is valid and I would argue even moral warefare tactic if you yourself are in fact under mortal threat, maybe even if the threat you face falls well below that level.
There was for example little or no "collateral damage" when we bombed Japan, or for that matter Dresden.
Considering Syria today and the siege warfare taking place, I am not even so sure its all that great the UN and various groups are getting food aide in. If the public was starving so to would eventually the combatants (though probably only after mass non-com casualties because after all the solders will be the last not to eat they have guns after all). Short of starving I am not sure what it will take to get these various groups to give up the fight. By getting food in their we prolong the siege, and the bloodshed.
Maybe try and gently promote a cultural shift that would give the desired outcome
You mean like trying to get everyone to go to Church and not inviting the atheists who can't be at least closeted about it to the best parties. Us conservatives warned everyone this is where we would end up as a society if the culture wars were ceded. Here we are.
1) How the hell does that fall under the ATF's jurisdiction?
I am sure it isn't but when in recent memory has that stopped a federal agency from doing anything. People talk a lot about waste fraud and abuse. Then the big government advocates say how import $AGENCY'S mission is and how it can't meet its obligations as it is. I wonder how much waste there is in duplication of effort, equipment, and training. Wow all that before we even get started on the civil liberties, rule of law, and accountability issues. We should all be calling our representatives demanding Sequestration 2.0 get started immediate, its the anything that has worked.
2) Who dumps something they can sell as a (heating) fuel?
Lots of people when oil hits $32 dollars a barrel. You probably can't economically process that used grease enough that the EPA would let you burn it, at these prices. Naturally this discounts the overall environmental impacts of shipping cleaner fuel in from elsewhere and the associated production impacts. Hey its clearing at the point you burn it though, big brother knows best.
3) Does Seattle actually have that much of a problem with french fries that they need federal intervention?
Probably not but FEDs want to play with their tax payer funded toys.
4) Why can't you dump a biodegradable substance? Better bulldozed into an empty lot than rotting in a landfill for 150 years...
because society places a premium on girls. Boys and men are generally considered to be comparatively disposable. This has deep roots in survival instincts.
A tribe that suffers the loss of to many young women would be unable to propagate itself, efficiently. The harm from that could last generations. The loss of almost all the young males however could be more easily survived. Older males remain fertile longer than females, and one male can easily impregnate large numbers of women. Its pretty simple really.
Our instincts are what they are. We generally instinctively protect all of our children pretty enthusiastically. Giving into our more base desires to afford our female offspring a little extra safety is probably harmless. We have plenty of other instincts that don't fit the environment most of us live in to focus on fighting.
No letting your kids walk to school was never outlawed, but became risky because we have to many damned laws.
Certain people (SJW types who take jobs doing unproductive 'social work') decided to allowing an unsupervised child to work a few blocks to a park or school themselves might qualify as child endangerment.
Basically this new law stipulates that doing so cannot possible meet that definition. So no other part of our massively over-sized an invasive government can take your kids away because you thought it was perfectly reasonable for your 9 year old to walk directly to and from school.
in a world where a national military faces off against other nations with F-16s and stealth bombers.
Except that is by far not all we do. As I recall it did not work all that great in Iraq. We defeated the regular military with those tools but still need quite a lot of infantry with small arms to really 'win' the fight.
ISIS isn't being defeated by American air superiority. Actually that was not working at all until its was done in concert with men on the ground, granted those largely are not American troops yet, but its still men on the ground. If we had to fight a large scale war again we would need riflemen and those would have to come from our citizen ranks in large part.
Slashdot Mirror
I realize, my guess is she was reacting to the sound if anything. I was a near by strike, knocked a picture off the wall even. Loud as hell. Certainly scared me plenty. I think she was possibly in a kind of shock.
I have no doubt she would recovered on her own in time. It was however long enough for me to be come concerned about enough to try talking to her and then to get up and walk across the room to give her a little shake.
Clinton replied, "That is not what I've heard. Let me leave it at that."
Lets see Mrs. Clinton is not currently serving in privileged to information government role. These are conversations that would have taken place after she left office. So some how she is being fed information she can't or won't share with the rest of us. Yet we are supposed to trust her and vote for her. Screw that. She is the ultimate insider. People always accused the GOP of solving things in the back room while the old men smoke cigars. Maybe there is truth in that maybe not. What is clear is that HRC is very much a part of that old boys club, no matter what she has between her legs.
She can't be trusted, full stop. A vote for Hillary is a vote against your interests because the only interests Hillary has is in what is good for her.
I have seen my cat get so spooked from a thunder clap she literally got stuck frozen in the middle of the room. She did not respond to my verbalizing at all. I had to get up a shake her after a short while. After that she was fine.
Except a quick a Google shows A LOT of people seems to be worried about living near or under power lines, and are utterly convinced electric blankets cause migraines.
I don't buy it myself, I think a lot more people would have a lot more problems if it were really a thing. Maybe though in some extreem situations there could be some validity to it.
I am aware actually and it proves my point. Without special intervention in the market place by government OTA networks would air little such programing. If they had been airing enough Congress would not have stepped in.
Netflix on the other hand is producing a number of kids shows with no such intervention. Their motivations are different. They like any business seek to provide what their customers want (at least in aggregate). In the case of Netflix that is you the subscriber. With traditional networks that is the advertisers.
What defines success for Netflix is the bottom line, and what means sustainability is the size of the subscriber base and its trend on growth or decline. What makes an individual media property a success or failure in the context of Netflix is if it adds the value of Netflix in the they opinion of their subscribers. The who watches it and when specifics are less important than with traditional ad supported television.
I was wondering if it maybe actually lends credence to people who claim they have allergies to various types of EM.
NetFlix does not have the same success criteria. The networks need people to watch shows at a certain time, not dvr them fast forward etc, because they depend on the ad revenues.
That means the only measure of success is viewership at original air time for the most part and that the target demographic that the advertisers want tuned in.
Netflix on the other hand is all about obtaining and retaining subscribers. It does not matter to them when people watch their series or really even if they watch! They need their subscribers to feel they are getting value. That means for instance if Netflix produces a show that mostly appeals to 4 year olds, that is fine. Mom and Dad think $9 a month is a cheap way to keep the kids occupied while they make dinner. Advertisers would hate that though because kids that age don't spend money.
So at the end of the day if Netflix has the money to invest in content production and keep their bottom line in the black they are succeeding. So far all indications are that they do. Financial statements etc. The proof is out there.
There was no big public discussion on McCain's eligibility because Congress settled the question BEFORE the election. https://www.govtrack.us/congre...
This is in contrast to the question of Mr. Obama who insisted that he was eligible not just because he was born a US Citizen. It remains a question as to if that is adequate, given the above resolution named McCain specifically and mentioned military families. Obama claimed eligibility based on his being born within the United States. Being born within the United States being the narrowest interpretation of what the Constitution says on the matter. It got really bizarre when rather than being reasonable and just producing his birth certificate to prove he was born where he said he was; he stonewalled for years. He did this incidentally while supporting things like Real ID and various TSA rule making. Only in Obama's world ( and that of those who were prepared to do anything protect his presidency) is it unreasonable to let you board a plane for a domestic flight with a document that does not contain your middle initial, but its totally cool to vote, or be elected president for that matter, with no proof of eligibility of any kind.
Quite honestly I accept the interpretation that natural born us citizen means, that you were a citizen when you were born. If the framers wanted to write "citizen born within the United States" they would have. So I don't think the whole Obama controversy matters much because he would have been a citizen at birth either way. I DO WONDER why it took so long to produce a birth certificate, which had he simply done immediately would have made the conspiracy people go away. I sorta doubt the validity of that birth certificate at this point, it just does not matter because he should still be eligible for the office as I understand plain language and the Constitution.
Which brings us to my currently favored (among those with the potential to get elected) candidate Mr. Cruz. Trump's attack on his eligibility is reasonably IMHO. While if I were a jurist making the call I would rule he is eligible, because he was a US Citizen when he was born; that does not mean the SCOTUS would reach the same conclusion. Trump is right he should seek a declaratory judgement, or similar congressional resolution on the matter lest it become a potential issue later.
here are plenty of applications where a 4-stroke engine simply wouldn't work because it would weigh too much (leaf blowers, chain saws, etc) or would be too bulky
Except you can go to your local Lowes or Home Depot and buy these things with 4 stroke engines right now. In general I agree though their two stroke counter parts are vastly superior. The are as powerful and weigh less or are more powerful; either way therefore more useful for their purpose. Its also the case the 2 stroke engines general tolerate being inverted and such because they only have to worry about keep a charge of aspirated fuel, not also pulling oil from a sump; and dry sump applications for 4 strokes are even more complex and expensive.
Personally the only way I will ever replace my 2 stroke trimmer plus and my chain saw with a 4 stroke is if I can't get a replacement 2 stroke model.
Yes in a lot of way it do exactly that. All the packages of cereal on the store shelves stayed the same size and so did the price but the content shrank. The price of fuel skyrocketed. All that talk of deflation and stagnation was bullshit. It only looked that way on the bottom line because there was sharp deflation in a particular asset class that happened to make up a large part of the economy. Worked out real well for you if you were looking to buy real-estate, not so well if you were and owner and pretty badly if you were a borrower, paying pre-crash interest rates.
I am not defending bitcoin but to suggest major currencies even the USD does not have these same problems is a popular fiction. I think its very possible the ONLY THING that makes the dollar less prone to these swings is the large number distinct asset classes traded or exchanged for it. Something like stability in terms of relative value is achieved not by confidence in the USD, or its backing, but by the fact that a major contraction real-estate demand might be offset by strong demand for commodities like grain or oil. So perhaps the total buying power of the house hold remains somewhat anchored even if the specific expenditures swing wildly. Real-estate is probably the largest portion of most peoples expenses or liability. Right now oil and grain are cheap, but rents are way up. We would be in another crisis right now if oil and grain were also up, its no less out-of-whack than the 2007-2010 period its just that we don't fell it as badly beacause real-estate is the bigger part of the pie.
So bitcoins real problem is there are not enough counter assets that trade it in it. if you could buy, drugs in addition to a house, oil, grain, car, computer, coffee, coffee maker, pork belly and pay your dentist. It would be as stability comparable to the major currencies.
It may not be as bad as opiates, but to say it's safe is a huge leap.
Okay maybe safe isn't the right word. I suspect it would be safer if measured out into known dosages of known strength and packaged, in a hygienic facility.
In any case I think its been shown to fall below the threshold of danger society otherwise considers acceptable. Alcohol for example has problems vary similar to opiates. Its efficacy declines and users become tolerant. Its highly habit forming in a significant part of the population. Its easy fairly easy to drink enough to depress respiration or interfere with reflexes that would prevent choking etc, if you are careless. Yet we allow people to buy it over the counter, and people use it to self medicate for pain and other problems all the time. It works too for awhile.
I have broken filling the dentist can't fix until Tuesday. On his recommendation I am holing a swallow of whiskey in my cheek right now, to numb it. Its way more effective than the Advil I used during the work day.
It offers incredible potential for modulation, far beyond what cannabis can do, and I for one welcome our Pharma Overlords to throw their resources at these problems.. provided that they don't botch things up like this, for fucks sake.
That's great in the meantime I wish we could get nice legal packaged THC/CBD products to market. Its clear of the centuries (maybe longer) of not exactly controlled application of these compounds on human test subjects they are pretty darn safe, and at least not chemically habit forming. They are also at least somewhat effective in many people with a wide variety of chronic pain conditions.
Meanwhile our various overloads continue pushing a condition where the widely available strong pain killers are opiate. Which are highly habit forming, tend to negative side effects for the liver and kidneys when over used and have a much much narrower therapeutic dose than THC/CBD. So we have all kinds of people over dosing on them all the gwad damn time, others becoming addicts and shifting to their street drug relatives when they can no longer get them and subsequently over dosing on those. In short the irrational resistance to cannabis is killing lots of people.
As a libertarian I am generally in support of letting people do what they want. Letting a doctor prescribe medical cannabis is a no brainier. I have some reservations about it being totally legal for recreational use although I lean in favor; at the vary least it should be fully decriminalized. Being caught with or even selling weed should be like getting a parking ticket.
I am not sure I am buying that one. With a traditional product certainly. The trouble is with media the variable costs per unit are near zero. So some of the traditional rules around the economics of selling get a little strange.
If I were selling cars (hey its slashdot) its probably the case that I can get my unit cost of production down lower building 50,000 of them rather than 10. I can charge less for each. I might attempt a price discrimination strategy to try and take market from my competition. That is if I know selling cars in $Region requires lower prices because people have less spending money I might go as low as at cost, figuring it could lead to future sales. Its unlikely for anything more than a very short term period I'll go below cost. Its also true that my variable cost per unit remains significant. I am not going to build another 10,000 cars if I have to give them away below cost, I will lose a lot of money doing that.
On the the other hand. With digital media delivered online my variable costs are damn near zero, if I am otherwise operating on any kind of market leading scale. Physical media is also pretty near zero, at those scales. A truck load of DVDs probably costs a grand or so to produce. Now there are only so many customers in high income parts of the world to by the product which has huge fixed costs, making AAA movie is expensive. I have to cover those costs. It may not be possible to do so selling at $2. However once I have gotten everyone willing to pay $12 to do so and covered my costs than any additional sales I can make at $2 anywhere, third run streaming on Netflix, Eastern Bumbfuckistan on DVD, etc is purely additional profit because the variable costs are zero.
I would say don't hate the player, hate the game. Netfix would not be able to license a lot of content unless they agreed to do the geo-blocking.
Your beef should really be with the studios. You can argue that refusing to support Netflix (which I would say has probably done more to bring down the cost and increase the availability of content than anyone else) cuts a distribution outlet for the studios and production houses. That is true but you had better be willing to stick to your guns and not turn around and by their stuff from somebody else via some other channel.
The fact is of the available models I think the low flat fee all you can on demand model of Netflix is probably far and away the best value for the consumer, at least which still enables content creators to get paid in some way. Netflix gains nothing from geo-blocking themselves except the ability to license the content needed to make the service viable. Netflix would be better off not needing to do that. Probably the best way to encourage that is to choose Netflix over other distribution methods (cable, Theater, redbox, etc). If Netflix and like become the the primary way people get content the content industry will have less leverage to negotiate terms.
Well in fairness to Turbo Timmy -
Outside of those individuals who are able to file 1040EZ or have a relatively simple 1040A situation; nobody knows how to file their taxes. The best even the professionals can do is make a good faith effort to follow the rules working with best available definitions that are often vague and subject to contest or dispute.
You then hope in the following order:
0) You don't get audited
1) Your answers to the auditors questions will convince them you were not trying to pull anything that you might be correct in your interpretation, best not waste anymore time with you.
2) You are wrong but the IRS does not think you were trying pull something, and will let you just pay up and make the thing go away.
3) The penalties are small
4) The prison sentence is short.
Our Tax code sucks.
Chase down dissident's like never before with new Air Zedongs!
Tired of dissidents escaping around street corners while chasing them thru the crowed streets of Beijing? If only you had just a little more speed you could knab those bastards. Have you stooped to tie you shoes only to look up and see the dissident you've spent the entire afternoon tailing has run off. The Air Zedongs feature stylish Velcro straps that always remain securely fixed until you release them! Power no longer flows from the gun barrel but springs from the soul of your feet when you ware the all new Air Zedongs!
I think its a pretty strait forward mens rea question, did you know or should your reasonably have know you were materially contributing to the violation of human rights.
Others have asked should Ford be responsible if you buy a car and run someone over. No clearly not because Ford has no reason to think you want that car for anything besides driving it to work the grocery store and taking a family road trip once in a while. In most cases.
On the other hand if [walk] into the dealer the first thing you ask is "Show me something I can run over my ex-girlfriend with tonight" maybe someone ought to make a phone call, and not sell you a car just then.
Same thing with guns. The manufacture has no reason to think you want the weapon for anything other than shooting sports, or self defense. So that fines.
I would not expect the any liability to go to the fold providing materials for the construction of GitMo either. The US military has plenty of legitimate applications for wire fence, concrete, dry wall, coffee makers, etc. There was no reason to think as a contract building a prison it was going to be used as a torture facility.
Cisco on the other hand knows exactly China was going to use the gear for. They practically told them as much, from what I have read. There have been plenty of past cases where equipment was used that way.
Agreed, it does make sense to support people that under under siege by ISIS, ISIS is the enemy. We are also giving aide food aide to groups loyal to Asad who is still supposedly our enemy. That makes less sense.
Only if they think we will actually use those 20kt+ devices. If they think we might be to squeamish for that sorta thing and try to fight back with traditional chemical explosives and arms they suddenly have a huge advantage on the battle field. At least if their assessment of us proves accurate (I suspect it would).
Smaller more target-able devices would also be potentially very useful against naval power. A lot of US force projection depends on aircraft carriers. If you could reliably target and destroy a carrier using a payload delivered by rocket, with a small enough device that on shore impacts direct, tsunami, and fallout were minimal, you could potentially massively degrade the USA's ability to fight in many areas of the world.
You might also be able to do that without turning the entire rest of the world against you. Having only targeted and destroyed a Man-of-War, which is pretty universally considered a legitimate target.
The term collateral damage when applied to nukes is kind of meaningless.
Not at all. In the context of "Total War" collateral damage would be harm done to to you or your allies. Destruction of an entire enemy city and nothing else would be zero collateral damage. You are attempting to destroy their will and ability to make war. You break the their means of production, you break their will to fight when they realize their homes and loved ones cannot be protected thru their military efforts. The destruction of non-combatants and infrastructure is valid and I would argue even moral warefare tactic if you yourself are in fact under mortal threat, maybe even if the threat you face falls well below that level.
There was for example little or no "collateral damage" when we bombed Japan, or for that matter Dresden.
Considering Syria today and the siege warfare taking place, I am not even so sure its all that great the UN and various groups are getting food aide in. If the public was starving so to would eventually the combatants (though probably only after mass non-com casualties because after all the solders will be the last not to eat they have guns after all). Short of starving I am not sure what it will take to get these various groups to give up the fight. By getting food in their we prolong the siege, and the bloodshed.
Maybe try and gently promote a cultural shift that would give the desired outcome
You mean like trying to get everyone to go to Church and not inviting the atheists who can't be at least closeted about it to the best parties. Us conservatives warned everyone this is where we would end up as a society if the culture wars were ceded. Here we are.
1) How the hell does that fall under the ATF's jurisdiction?
I am sure it isn't but when in recent memory has that stopped a federal agency from doing anything. People talk a lot about waste fraud and abuse. Then the big government advocates say how import $AGENCY'S mission is and how it can't meet its obligations as it is. I wonder how much waste there is in duplication of effort, equipment, and training. Wow all that before we even get started on the civil liberties, rule of law, and accountability issues. We should all be calling our representatives demanding Sequestration 2.0 get started immediate, its the anything that has worked.
2) Who dumps something they can sell as a (heating) fuel?
Lots of people when oil hits $32 dollars a barrel. You probably can't economically process that used grease enough that the EPA would let you burn it, at these prices. Naturally this discounts the overall environmental impacts of shipping cleaner fuel in from elsewhere and the associated production impacts. Hey its clearing at the point you burn it though, big brother knows best.
3) Does Seattle actually have that much of a problem with french fries that they need federal intervention?
Probably not but FEDs want to play with their tax payer funded toys.
4) Why can't you dump a biodegradable substance? Better bulldozed into an empty lot than rotting in a landfill for 150 years...
See 2.
because society places a premium on girls. Boys and men are generally considered to be comparatively disposable. This has deep roots in survival instincts.
A tribe that suffers the loss of to many young women would be unable to propagate itself, efficiently. The harm from that could last generations. The loss of almost all the young males however could be more easily survived. Older males remain fertile longer than females, and one male can easily impregnate large numbers of women. Its pretty simple really.
Our instincts are what they are. We generally instinctively protect all of our children pretty enthusiastically. Giving into our more base desires to afford our female offspring a little extra safety is probably harmless. We have plenty of other instincts that don't fit the environment most of us live in to focus on fighting.
No letting your kids walk to school was never outlawed, but became risky because we have to many damned laws.
Certain people (SJW types who take jobs doing unproductive 'social work') decided to allowing an unsupervised child to work a few blocks to a park or school themselves might qualify as child endangerment.
Basically this new law stipulates that doing so cannot possible meet that definition. So no other part of our massively over-sized an invasive government can take your kids away because you thought it was perfectly reasonable for your 9 year old to walk directly to and from school.
in a world where a national military faces off against other nations with F-16s and stealth bombers.
Except that is by far not all we do. As I recall it did not work all that great in Iraq. We defeated the regular military with those tools but still need quite a lot of infantry with small arms to really 'win' the fight.
ISIS isn't being defeated by American air superiority. Actually that was not working at all until its was done in concert with men on the ground, granted those largely are not American troops yet, but its still men on the ground. If we had to fight a large scale war again we would need riflemen and those would have to come from our citizen ranks in large part.