Elections are a binary result, but the underlying data is not. To find a correlation, you do not compare a win/loss category to money spent - rather you would compare polling data (e.g. turnout, number of votes for/against). In every analysis I've seen, money does have an impact. Repeating myself, it is absurd to expect money alone to flip a super-gerrymandered Republican district. Money did make the race closer than it would have been.
You can't force the population to vote for a terrible candidate. Money won't flip a gerrymandered Republican congressional district. But there is no denying that corporate megabucks made a huge impact on both of those races.
If you are expecting me to defend Trump, you will be disappointed. Nevertheless, on the list of things I worry about him doing, bullying a ~$200 billion company is pretty far down my list. Did you notice that yesterday he flew bombers across the South China sea, just like Obama? Or that he has now sailed two warships past Chinese-claims in the same area, just like Obama? Did you notice that he has invaded parts of Syria? I'm not saying you haven't, but the choice to focus on CNN-Trump garbage is nonsense, and frankly I think calling them a "news network" at this point is a stretch. They do have some news content, but it's mostly a Fox-of-the-left network since the election.
Since the overturn of Citizens United, I'm really worried about corporations' well-being. AT&T only has a market cap of $222.95 billion, and little 'ol Time Warner is only worth $78.66 billion. How are they going to look out for their own interests in the same way that a real life citizen making $40k/year would?
And put it where? The pipe has to pass through countries aligned with either Russia, China, or with domestic saboteurs targeting pipelines. Refer to a map.
Oh, for the love of God - please fire up a map. The US navy has no bearing on this discussion. Any invasion would be air-based and super, super expensive - maybe even logistically impossible. China and Russia could quite easily bankrupt us by fighting a proxy war like Pakistan has done in Afghanistan. It would be super, super stupid to try and invade Kazakhstan.
Apparently, they are already using Azerbaijan. Since they rely on a precarious Georgia pipeline and a pipeline in Turkey apparently susceptible to attacks, this might not be ideal for the west to hang their hat on. And that's without pointing out that Russia has full control over the Caspian.
There's no ocean access to Kazakhstan. Again, look at a map. You have access to Russia, China, and a bunch of other "stans" by land. You only have the Caspian Sea by water. The West's best bet would be letting Azerbaijan take a cut and use their existing pipelines through Turkey and Georgia after transporting it over the Caspian Sea. But since Azerbaijan already produces oil, it's not clear that they would agree to this - and it would be a little odd if their pipelines had a lot of extra capacity. I'm not sure if there are any Caspian Sea shipyards capable of large tanker production, maintenance, and repair - that would be another obstacle.
You jest, but I switched to Eudora at some point in the 90s, which happily used my existing Pine folders. Then maybe 10 years later Gmail got IMAP and I dragged all of my Eudora mail into Gmail.
Even if they broke a US law, it is pretty meaningless without jurisdiction, isn't it? I guess if SciHub ever travels to the US, SciHub is in double-big-big trouble!
You can try to sell me on wasting my time picking through and sorting email, but it ain't happening. It stays in the inbox forever, and storage is dirt cheap. If I run out of Gmail space, I'll drag everything into a new archive using a IMAP client and start fresh. If I need to find something - anything - I can just search the huge pile. Need to fill out that apartment address from 5 moves ago on a lease application? No problem. Want to email aunt Martha and for some reason didn't put her email into your address book? No problem. Want to see that picture you sent mom of you and your brother with grandma? No problem. Hell, you can even read your Best Buy spam from 1996 if you are so inclined.
Ah, sure, mod me flamebait - but notice the only suggestions above for what a "decent" shoe is involve the words "handmade" and "leather". Classic snobbery.
Carrying 100+ lbs of luggage is not a small step. It's retarded, and will lead to back and joint injury. I suggest that if you decide to go this route, buy the luggage with wheels, carry it around, and then when you throw out your lower back you can revert to rolling it.
I'm all for taking the stairs.
P.S., in the old days we didn't carry the luggage - the porters put it on a cart. Now we have roller bags instead of porters, so we're still doing more exercise.
Because doing more work unnecessarily is for retards. I'm old, too, and I remember hauling old-fashioned suitcases around. There is a reason that roller bags took off.
We've had Presidents who tried to implement that, but no one wants Social Security to be modified in any way. Right now it's a dressed-up Ponzi scheme. I mean, there is a "trust fund", but the same government responsible for running the program also immediately loans itself and spends this money... so there is not a trust fund except in the form of IOUs. Contrast this with any number of pension funds which have investments in actual company stock or other tangible investments. We've had attempts at letting people invest their SS money in actual investments, but this was defeated. Simply making the Ponzi scheme even larger does not seem wise to me, so I think this is a dead end.
I also think that there is some efficiency and value in having investment choices for retirement plans. For instance, at my company we are allowed to broadly choose where we want to put our 401k money. Some people like risk and so they can invest in individual equities or index funds. Some people like safety and so they can invest in bond funds. This lets a broad spectrum of people invest in the capital markets in a way that is healthy. Letting a few unelected people head up a gigantic multi-trillion dollar pension fund... that sounds quite dangerous. Lots of room for corruption, and it would seem to run counter to the free market principles of investing. With such a huge fund, it would also be trivial to almost accidentally nationalize major corporations - again, I'm not very comfortable with that.
That is why I would like to see a single society wide pension and not have private companies involved at all.
In the US, we do have that - Social Security. Ironically, only government employees can be exempted from it, and in fact people were screwed by the government in Detroit - fortunately private charities and the state bailed out the Detroit pensions with $800 million (Google "Grand Bargain"). But it's illustrative of how private vs. government is just an implementation detail and you need to fully fund any obligations regardless. If those former cops and firefighters in Detroit had lost their city pensions, they would not have had any Social Security to fall back on - crazy, huh?
Well, they don't carry name brands... you can't find the exact brands you listed - but you sure as shit can find Joe's Cola, Joe's Tortilla Chips, Joe's frozen dinners, Joe's electrolyte drink, etc. Go to the edges and you won't find name brand cheeses, meats, etc. It's actually bizarre to me that you claim you can't get the vast majority of junk food there - the whole store is mostly junk food. They have good prices on bulk nuts, but even most of those are coated in sugar coatings or loads of salt. I find their selection of actual healthy foods - fresh, frozen, or even canned fruits and vegetables and fresh meats - to be far weaker than even the crappiest of our mainstream grocery stores. When I want a 5lb block of chocolate for baking or interesting frozen dinners - now that's where they shine.
Slashdot Mirror
Elections are a binary result, but the underlying data is not. To find a correlation, you do not compare a win/loss category to money spent - rather you would compare polling data (e.g. turnout, number of votes for/against). In every analysis I've seen, money does have an impact. Repeating myself, it is absurd to expect money alone to flip a super-gerrymandered Republican district. Money did make the race closer than it would have been.
You can't force the population to vote for a terrible candidate. Money won't flip a gerrymandered Republican congressional district. But there is no denying that corporate megabucks made a huge impact on both of those races.
If you are expecting me to defend Trump, you will be disappointed. Nevertheless, on the list of things I worry about him doing, bullying a ~$200 billion company is pretty far down my list. Did you notice that yesterday he flew bombers across the South China sea, just like Obama? Or that he has now sailed two warships past Chinese-claims in the same area, just like Obama? Did you notice that he has invaded parts of Syria? I'm not saying you haven't, but the choice to focus on CNN-Trump garbage is nonsense, and frankly I think calling them a "news network" at this point is a stretch. They do have some news content, but it's mostly a Fox-of-the-left network since the election.
Since the overturn of Citizens United, I'm really worried about corporations' well-being. AT&T only has a market cap of $222.95 billion, and little 'ol Time Warner is only worth $78.66 billion. How are they going to look out for their own interests in the same way that a real life citizen making $40k/year would?
And put it where? The pipe has to pass through countries aligned with either Russia, China, or with domestic saboteurs targeting pipelines. Refer to a map.
Oh, for the love of God - please fire up a map. The US navy has no bearing on this discussion. Any invasion would be air-based and super, super expensive - maybe even logistically impossible. China and Russia could quite easily bankrupt us by fighting a proxy war like Pakistan has done in Afghanistan. It would be super, super stupid to try and invade Kazakhstan.
I bet they'd love a pipeline to the sea and American destroyers and a carrier sitting nearby to ensure their safety.
You still haven't looked at the map. It's a landlocked sea. No American carrier or destroyer will be paying a visit.
China is directly adjacent to Kazakhstan. They would quite obviously not be OK with American military presence on their border.
Robot elder care.
Apparently, they are already using Azerbaijan. Since they rely on a precarious Georgia pipeline and a pipeline in Turkey apparently susceptible to attacks, this might not be ideal for the west to hang their hat on. And that's without pointing out that Russia has full control over the Caspian.
There's no ocean access to Kazakhstan. Again, look at a map. You have access to Russia, China, and a bunch of other "stans" by land. You only have the Caspian Sea by water. The West's best bet would be letting Azerbaijan take a cut and use their existing pipelines through Turkey and Georgia after transporting it over the Caspian Sea. But since Azerbaijan already produces oil, it's not clear that they would agree to this - and it would be a little odd if their pipelines had a lot of extra capacity. I'm not sure if there are any Caspian Sea shipyards capable of large tanker production, maintenance, and repair - that would be another obstacle.
Don't be worried about the one they hit - be worried about it's angry, defensive twin.
I love me some good sarcasm, but seriously you need to look at a map and tell me where the Western countries would run a pipeline from Kazakhstan.
So more correctly, there's no great way to remove oil and bring it to the western world from Kazakhstan.
You jest, but I switched to Eudora at some point in the 90s, which happily used my existing Pine folders. Then maybe 10 years later Gmail got IMAP and I dragged all of my Eudora mail into Gmail.
You don't need anything fancy - even Thunderbird will do. Just create an offline folder and drag your IMAP stuff in.
Even if they broke a US law, it is pretty meaningless without jurisdiction, isn't it? I guess if SciHub ever travels to the US, SciHub is in double-big-big trouble!
You can try to sell me on wasting my time picking through and sorting email, but it ain't happening. It stays in the inbox forever, and storage is dirt cheap. If I run out of Gmail space, I'll drag everything into a new archive using a IMAP client and start fresh. If I need to find something - anything - I can just search the huge pile. Need to fill out that apartment address from 5 moves ago on a lease application? No problem. Want to email aunt Martha and for some reason didn't put her email into your address book? No problem. Want to see that picture you sent mom of you and your brother with grandma? No problem. Hell, you can even read your Best Buy spam from 1996 if you are so inclined.
Ah, sure, mod me flamebait - but notice the only suggestions above for what a "decent" shoe is involve the words "handmade" and "leather". Classic snobbery.
Because it's about something that will probably harm the hated-by-geeks sham "audiophile" service Tidal.
Anything expensive from Italy, I'd wager.
Carrying 100+ lbs of luggage is not a small step. It's retarded, and will lead to back and joint injury. I suggest that if you decide to go this route, buy the luggage with wheels, carry it around, and then when you throw out your lower back you can revert to rolling it.
I'm all for taking the stairs.
P.S., in the old days we didn't carry the luggage - the porters put it on a cart. Now we have roller bags instead of porters, so we're still doing more exercise.
Because doing more work unnecessarily is for retards. I'm old, too, and I remember hauling old-fashioned suitcases around. There is a reason that roller bags took off.
We've had Presidents who tried to implement that, but no one wants Social Security to be modified in any way. Right now it's a dressed-up Ponzi scheme. I mean, there is a "trust fund", but the same government responsible for running the program also immediately loans itself and spends this money... so there is not a trust fund except in the form of IOUs. Contrast this with any number of pension funds which have investments in actual company stock or other tangible investments. We've had attempts at letting people invest their SS money in actual investments, but this was defeated. Simply making the Ponzi scheme even larger does not seem wise to me, so I think this is a dead end.
I also think that there is some efficiency and value in having investment choices for retirement plans. For instance, at my company we are allowed to broadly choose where we want to put our 401k money. Some people like risk and so they can invest in individual equities or index funds. Some people like safety and so they can invest in bond funds. This lets a broad spectrum of people invest in the capital markets in a way that is healthy. Letting a few unelected people head up a gigantic multi-trillion dollar pension fund... that sounds quite dangerous. Lots of room for corruption, and it would seem to run counter to the free market principles of investing. With such a huge fund, it would also be trivial to almost accidentally nationalize major corporations - again, I'm not very comfortable with that.
That is why I would like to see a single society wide pension and not have private companies involved at all.
In the US, we do have that - Social Security. Ironically, only government employees can be exempted from it, and in fact people were screwed by the government in Detroit - fortunately private charities and the state bailed out the Detroit pensions with $800 million (Google "Grand Bargain"). But it's illustrative of how private vs. government is just an implementation detail and you need to fully fund any obligations regardless. If those former cops and firefighters in Detroit had lost their city pensions, they would not have had any Social Security to fall back on - crazy, huh?
Well, they don't carry name brands... you can't find the exact brands you listed - but you sure as shit can find Joe's Cola, Joe's Tortilla Chips, Joe's frozen dinners, Joe's electrolyte drink, etc. Go to the edges and you won't find name brand cheeses, meats, etc. It's actually bizarre to me that you claim you can't get the vast majority of junk food there - the whole store is mostly junk food. They have good prices on bulk nuts, but even most of those are coated in sugar coatings or loads of salt. I find their selection of actual healthy foods - fresh, frozen, or even canned fruits and vegetables and fresh meats - to be far weaker than even the crappiest of our mainstream grocery stores. When I want a 5lb block of chocolate for baking or interesting frozen dinners - now that's where they shine.