I don't see how you can say the hardware will be too expensive -- the latest generation of consoles (Wii excluded) were essentially priced the same as a low-end PC, and that was a number of years ago already, and that was for an oldschool-style console. People bought PS3s, there's no reason to think any price point is too high -- and Valve's box, from what they're saying, will be more versatile than the PS3 was.
Water over 150 F will cause third degree burns. Most coffee is served ~160-165 F. Most coffee is held at ~170-175 F.
The McDonald's coffee in this case was held at 180-185 F.
The lady got burnt worse, and faster, than she would have today had she ordered from a Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts -- but she still would have gotten badly burnt if she tried to pull that stunt.
People DO know coffee is that hot, and DO buy coffee through drive-through windows. Every day! If they DIDN'T know about it, they would be in trouble, but they DO, so they simply take the simple precaution of *not spilling it on their fucking lap*!
The beach analogy works -- if you want to secure a cup of coffee in a car, even if it's in an oldschool soft styrofoam cup (which you may have never seen before -- modern styrofoam cups are much more rigid)? All you need to do is hold it *in your hand*. Not between your knees -- and certainly not between SWEATPANTS-CLAD knees. You know, sweatpants. Those things that provide *no traction at all on styrofoam*. That necessitates a great deal of pressure from the old coot's knees to keep the cup in place, which crushes the soft styrofoam cup as soon as she removes the lid -- and that's why she spilled on herself, and that's why she got burnt. Because she did a number of very stupid, very foolish things that *no sensible person ever would do*.
If I opened a beach, and someone cut their foot on a seashell because they were running barefoot, there's no way I should be held liable. Seashells are known by all reasonable people to exist on beaches, and precautions should be taken to not cut your feet on them. If a person fails to take reasonable responsibility for their own safety, others should not be responsible to take up the slack.
It's not like the coffee was hot and other coffee is not hot. All coffee is hot. That's one of the defining features of coffee. The coffee served by McDonald's was high, but only marginally higher than that you'll find being served ANYWHERE ELSE -- the hold temperature for coffee is typically 170 or 175 F (and would likely be 180 were this case to never have happened..)
McDonalds did not screw up. Their coffee was not, and is not, served at a higher temperature than the coffee from practically any other establishment. The hottest coffee I've ever been served was from a Starbucks (primarily the reason they no longer get my business).
That old lady screwed up.
Even an idiot knows that you can't hold a soft styrofoam cup between your knees and expect it to not deform when you remove the rigid top. Or, if you do, you've gotta be REALLY DAMN CAREFUL to squeeze your knees together *just hard enough* to hold it in place but NOT so hard as to deform and/or destroy the cup.
Did she win? Yeah. Sure. Was it her fault? Fuck yes it was. Was the coffee really hot? Fuck yes it was, it was hot enough to cause serious burns -- but it's COFFEE, and the expectation of all reasonable people upon being served coffee is that it is most likely too hot to drink when first poured into a cup and CARE MUST BE TAKEN IN ITS HANDLING TO PREVENT INJURY.
Old lady bought a dangerous object and took no care in its handling. That's just flat-out on her.
Look, wine snobs, you're all doing it wrong. Wine comes in a perfectly sized bottle with a neck sized perfectly for grasping in your hamfists. It comes with a cork stopper to replace, so that as you bob and weave your way across the room and back, your beverage doesn't slosh out -- and further, it's not carbonated, so all that sloshing doesn't result in a messy explosion.
The stuff is made to drink by the bottle, from the bottle. I just can't fathom how so many people fail to understand and appreciate this fact.
We have railguns. The Navy is developing them. Some time in the next decade, decade and a half, or thereabouts, they intend to have railguns for a (likely new, possibly retrofitted) class of ships. 64 GW railguns. GIGAWATTS! that's enough to send 35 delorians back in time, with every shot!
My point was that there are some answers, some solutions, which are *simply right*. Maybe that's to do nothing, even, but they are just.. exactly.. right. And, sometimes, a majority of people would disagree.
That doesn't mean it's not right. That means that a majority of people are wrong.
When you have something which is simply right, you can't compromise, you can't try and reach consensus. That would only dilute the right solution and make it wrong. Wanna invade Canada? Wanna strip-search 8 year old girls who try to fly on a plane? Wanna demand that people answer their location of origin and destination when stopped by police?
There's only one single right answer to all those issues: No. Even if 99% of the population disagrees, the right answer is still no. You can't compromise. You can't plead and make concessions. There's only one right answer.
Direct democracy fucks up those sorts of things. Constantly. Continually. If you think knee-jerk reactionaryism is rampant in our government now, just gander over to public opinion polls. There's your direct democracy. Holy mother of shit god, THAT is knee-jerk reactionaryism -- damn the facts, full emotional appeal ahead! Let's all do something so we feel like we've done something and to hell with the consequences! We're all in agreement, consensus has been reached, WE'RE FUCKING BANNING GRAPEFRUIT!
Mercury and lead aren't nearly as dangerous as you have been led to believe.
Especially lead.
Don't go eating it, and it's not a bad idea to wash your hands after handling it, but there's no reason to wear a hazmat suit when handling it, and there's no reason to remove it from every possible thing you could ever touch or look at. If there's trace amounts of lead in artificial turf, or a lunch box, and the levels of lead detected are thousands or millions of times lower than what would be required to even raise concern if you somehow got EVERY LITTLE BIT of it into your blood.. calling it a problem and demanding its removal is probably an overreaction. While there's no "safe level" of lead, there's quite a threshold you have to cross before you reach "unsafe levels" of lead, and the crap is excreted from your body with time.
To answer your last question first: Yes, absolutely, and even more than that it certainly would be.
Consensus is not a good thing.
Go outside. Ask 1,000 people for directions to somewhere that they don't have a firm grasp exactly where is located. You'll get a bunch of answers. A few of them may be right, many of them will not be.
There's only one, or at most very few, right answers. There's innumerable wrong answers. Consensus would be mixing the right answers with the wrong answers. That leaves you with a wrong answer.
I imagine that an overwhelming majority of people would agree that Fred Phelps should shut up. That's already a consensus. They're also wrong. He shouldn't shut up. Some states have passed laws so that the ways in which he was exercising his free speech are prohibited, but he's still allowed that free speech -- just not at the time and in the place he'd prefer, because how he was doing things was getting him the most attention. Even if the majority decides and agrees to a thing, it still may be a violation of someone's rights.
Direct democracy is 3 wolves and 1 sheep voting on who gets eaten for dinner. Compromise is 3 wolves and 1 sheep agreeing to only eat half the sheep.
We've got a system that was designed to be democratic while also eternally preserving the rights of that sheep. It's not ideal, but compromise, consensus, direct democracy? Good fucking lord those ideas are so much worse
You're talking about sharing of wealth and redistribution of wealth and the evils of corporate greed. You may not be a Marxist but your post would resonate loudly with them.
The problem is not that wealth is concentrated. That was a main point in your post -- that wealth is too concentrated. My point is that that is not the problem, despite how angry it makes you (and, yes, me as well). The problem is the mechanisms which have allowed and aided in that concentration of wealth, the system itself which rewards the few for exploiting third-world serfs instead of employing first-world citizens (and thereby also enriching the 1% of the third-world), the system which richly rewards those who hand bits of money back and forth all day long to a greater degree than any amount of benefit that the money-exchanging will ever have on anyone who isn't part of the scheme.
My point is that you're focusing on the shallow problems that have no good solution, no solution that could possibly work out in the long-term, rather than the problems that have allowed such a state of affairs to come to be.
the protesters just are so dumb.. it really made me pretty sad. i know that's really probably what they were going for with the interviews, but they were nearly 100% what you would expect. the same old tired and stupid arguments being trotted out that nobody who actually ever thinks would ever believe, just the typical causehead mantras repeated without introspection.
Your language is just so fucking wrong here, and belies your Marxist leanings.
Totally serious. You need to fix that. Capitalism isn't the problem, communism isn't the answer.
The problem isn't that wealth is concentrated, but that it's concentrating. CEOs making obscene amounts of money feels wrong, yes. Get mad about it but don't speak about it. Try and focus on the real leeches of our economy -- look at the stock market and their automated trading programs. They claim it's good for the economy because it increases liquidity, but at this level all I see is a game of three-card monte. They keep shuffling the same old shit around, they make money for people and they lose money for people -- the buyers get the least money possible, and so do the sellers, and the difference all gets funneled into these financial institutions which do nothing but shuffle more money back and forth so they can siphon more out of everyone else's pockets.
The problem is free trade, when much of that free trade is being conducted with nations who see the lack of tariffs on their exports as nothing but the first world nations admitting they're fucking suckers. Free trade with China is not free trade. It does nothing but force us to compete with them -- which is simply not possible, as they don't give a shit about destroying their environment, they don't give a shit about having a population of near-slave-status laborers. We're to compete with that? How -- aside from removing our own protections for workers and nature? How -- when corporations can move their goods and services freely from one nation to another, yet the workers are forbidden from doing the same? That isn't free. That's fucking rigged, that's a setup to benefit the corporate at the expense of the worker.
Complain about that. Don't complain about CEO salaries, because that isn't solvable. Don't complain about capitalism, because no other economic system works. Complain about the people who have rigged the system to benefit themselves to the detriment of everyone else -- not about a system that feels unfair. It feels unfair not because it is but because it's been fucking rigged.
Freddie and Fanny don't have anything to do with college loans. You're thinking of Sallie Mae. Fanny Mae is a different beast.
Freddie and Fanny were only involved in home loans. And, well, basically what happened was the government started letting banks package all kinds of loans together and resell them. And they started letting all kinds of banks act as investment banks. And they started requiring that banks made bad loans -- in the name of "social justice", of course!
So wtf happens? Of course the banks do as required and make loans to people who really shouldn't be getting those loans, the government said they have to. And of course they'll bundle up those bad loans and try to hide them in packages with mostly good loans. And of course those packaged loans will change hands 6 times, because every single bank has become involved in investments and securities.
It was the NY state lawmakers -- not me -- who brought Mills into this. They were the ones trying to use him to justify their little pet law.
I think if you actually read that shit you quotes you'll see that while he acknowledges that some things fall under the rule of law, that some conduct can or must be constrained by law, that there is much that CANNOT be regulated by law and instead can only rightfully be regulated by society. That we have a right -- or even an obligation -- to tell others that Some Jackass is a bad dude who will bring or cause harm.
More importantly, that those statements we would make against Some Jackass not an oppression of Some Jackass -- they are simply a right of ours because we are not oppressed, just as Some Jackass is not oppressed and is able to make himself that jackass with whom no one wishes to associate. His behavior is not ILLEGAL, as that would be oppressive, but neither are we required to pay any attention to or associate with Some Jackass, as that would also be oppressive.
Freedom to speak. Not a right to be heard.
If you think a single word that Mill said could be construed as supportive of the concept of outlawing uncomfortable speech, I'm just not sure what to do here. The entirety of your quotations are him dancing around the issue and clarifying that though some things are regulated by law that it is an oppression to regulate other undesirable things by law but it is also an oppression to forbid the individual from exercising their freedoms and rights to warn against and avoid those undesirable things. Not a word supportive of the law proposed by the NY state lawmakers.
I'm fairly positive that the whole split was due to negotiations with content rights holders and little else.
It's not Netflix's fault that you can't get a ton of good streaming content from them -- they'd love to be able to provide that, but the content rights holders do not want that to be provided (for any amount of money that would anyone would pay, not Netflix, not you nor I).
The old guard doesn't much care for nor understand streaming content. It makes them uncomfortable.
It's not that there isn't refining expertise left in America.
There is.
The problem is that it's expensive, because we have environmental regulations, because we have safety regulations to protect our workers -- China? I don't know if they technically do or not, but effectively they do not, and that means it's much, much cheaper to do all the dirty nasty dangerous refining over there and shit all over their environment. Because China likes money more than they like things living -- trees, grass, any individual Chinese person, etc etc.
The loud beep was probably just a warning to her that the driver may be transporting Mr. Rendell, and that at only 15mph over the speed limit he is probably upset
cyberbullying. root word: bullying. THE SAME SHIT HAS BEEN GOING ON FOREVER. except now you put "... on a computer!" and are granted a new patent I MEAN a new call to action to restrict the rights of citizens BECAUSE OF THE CHILDREN!
rights, mind you, that aren't meant to be restricted. these are not rights granted by the government. these are rights inherent to all people by virtue of their being people -- these are simply rights which the government has recognized the infringement of is inexcusable and tyrannical.
I like the part of the bill where it mentions "...USING ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION DIRECTED AT A CHILD UNDER THE AGE OF TWENTY-ONE YEARS,...".. "CAUSES MATERIAL HARM TO THE MENTAL OR EMOTIONAL HEALTH, SAFETY OR PROPERTY OF SUCH CHILD."
And yes, they do say free speech is a privilege GRANTED BY THE FUCKING STATE -- and not an inborn, inalienable right. What bullshit. This is not the use of force to prevent the unjust use of force, these fucktwits have corrupted Mills for their own big-government nanny-state ends. This is simply the outright abuse of force and twisting of the very concept of our rights recognized, not granted, by the government. I'm sorry. Words do not hurt. You can call me what you want -- it only affects me as much as I allow it.
You want to deal with cyberbullying? Get some fucking parents with half a clue to raise their kids. Get some schools that aren't afraid to deal with troublesome students. And yes, they are. Little Jimmy, you see, is special needs, and only acts out because of his bullshit ADHD -- and his parents, gosh, any time the school punishes Jimmy they're down there causing a ruckus because they KNOW Jimmy didn't punch that poor boy and call him a fag! Jimmy wouldn't do that!
Kids: Ignore unkind words that bother you. If someone physically harms you, that's fucking assault and don't let the school fucking feed you any bullshit -- you were fucking assaulted, and if they don't want to deal with it get the fucking cops involved. No, it's not fair you keep getting picked on. Life's not fair. Don't do stupid shit like take nude photos of yourself -- they WILL be distributed, what the hell were you even thinking in the first place. The more you let the bullies know this shit bothers you, the more they will bother you.
This law? This law is bullshit. Flaming some 20 year old is not a crime. I don't give half a fuck. This very post could be argued to cause "... MATERIAL HARM TO THE MENTAL OR EMOTIONAL HEALTH, SAFETY OR PROPERTY OF SUCH CHILD". Fuck that. A child under 21? Since when were fucking children able to enter into binding legal contracts.
Fuck you, New York, fuck you and your liberal fucking totalitarian dreams and desires.
Oh, and the one citation of a court case I saw in that mess of shit? Was for a case involving cross burning. They used that to justify their crap. Y'see, the difference is, in that case, the burning of the crosses was intended to intimidate -- it was a threat. There are actually already laws regarding the making of threats of violence. Nope, let's not apply those, let's just throw the fucking philosophical foundation of our constitution in the shitter FOR THE CHILDREN!
In this case I don't think the strikes matter after you've over 18. The law is specifically for juveniles. The same behavior as an adult would get you locked up on child porn charges, strikes or not.
I dunno. 8 hours of community service is hard for me to call "too much". I think you get more than that for graffiti or littering.
It's pretty harmless, but some sort of penalty is fine. As you mention, there's ways these pictures can get out.. that causes OMG TEEN DRAMAAA, which is a headache that adults have to deal with, and it's something nobody wants to deal with because you just get two kids and have to ask both of them "WHY THE HELL WERE YOU SO STUPID!"
Did you miss the part where the penalties if you don't report it are very very minor?
Did you miss the part where currently those penalties involve registering as a sex offender because you're in possession of and/or distributing child pornography?
The hell dude. The hell. You don't even need to RTFA, you just need to have half a fucking brain. This is a good law.
In your opinion this was done with literally no reason? In your opinion, this was because he was POLITICALLY opposed to.. something?
Seems like reality might disagree. Seems like, in reality, this was a guy who had outright stated his goals were the killing of US citizens, the destruction of the US.
Seems like, in reality, this guy took up arms against the United States with intentions of bringing about its downfall.
So, in your opinion, the Civil War was an entirely unjust affair, then?
And so neither can we be any more at fault than any other participant in WWI -- that includes the Ottomans. Yeah. There was no Ottoman Empire after that. They done goofed. They were exactly as much at fault for that as we were -- because nobody should have been involved in WWI, and nobody involved in WWI was any more or less guilty of engaging in a stupid war than anyone else.
But heck, the middle east was on the decline even before the dissolution of the Ottomans.. that's sort of *why* it fell apart after WWI, but that certainly didn't help either.
tldr? The middle east is shit today because of, primarily, the actions of the middle east. the west didn't swoop in to help and make things better, but they never do, nor should it be expected (of *anyone*).
if you want to blame America or the west on the state of the middle east, i'm going to start blaming the Moors for the state of Spain. that makes exactly as much sense.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see how you can say the hardware will be too expensive -- the latest generation of consoles (Wii excluded) were essentially priced the same as a low-end PC, and that was a number of years ago already, and that was for an oldschool-style console. People bought PS3s, there's no reason to think any price point is too high -- and Valve's box, from what they're saying, will be more versatile than the PS3 was.
Water over 150 F will cause third degree burns. Most coffee is served ~160-165 F. Most coffee is held at ~170-175 F.
The McDonald's coffee in this case was held at 180-185 F.
The lady got burnt worse, and faster, than she would have today had she ordered from a Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts -- but she still would have gotten badly burnt if she tried to pull that stunt.
People DO know coffee is that hot, and DO buy coffee through drive-through windows. Every day! If they DIDN'T know about it, they would be in trouble, but they DO, so they simply take the simple precaution of *not spilling it on their fucking lap*!
The beach analogy works -- if you want to secure a cup of coffee in a car, even if it's in an oldschool soft styrofoam cup (which you may have never seen before -- modern styrofoam cups are much more rigid)? All you need to do is hold it *in your hand*. Not between your knees -- and certainly not between SWEATPANTS-CLAD knees. You know, sweatpants. Those things that provide *no traction at all on styrofoam*. That necessitates a great deal of pressure from the old coot's knees to keep the cup in place, which crushes the soft styrofoam cup as soon as she removes the lid -- and that's why she spilled on herself, and that's why she got burnt. Because she did a number of very stupid, very foolish things that *no sensible person ever would do*.
A more apt analogy would be a beach.
If I opened a beach, and someone cut their foot on a seashell because they were running barefoot, there's no way I should be held liable. Seashells are known by all reasonable people to exist on beaches, and precautions should be taken to not cut your feet on them. If a person fails to take reasonable responsibility for their own safety, others should not be responsible to take up the slack.
It's not like the coffee was hot and other coffee is not hot. All coffee is hot. That's one of the defining features of coffee. The coffee served by McDonald's was high, but only marginally higher than that you'll find being served ANYWHERE ELSE -- the hold temperature for coffee is typically 170 or 175 F (and would likely be 180 were this case to never have happened..)
McDonalds did not screw up. Their coffee was not, and is not, served at a higher temperature than the coffee from practically any other establishment. The hottest coffee I've ever been served was from a Starbucks (primarily the reason they no longer get my business).
That old lady screwed up.
Even an idiot knows that you can't hold a soft styrofoam cup between your knees and expect it to not deform when you remove the rigid top. Or, if you do, you've gotta be REALLY DAMN CAREFUL to squeeze your knees together *just hard enough* to hold it in place but NOT so hard as to deform and/or destroy the cup.
Did she win? Yeah. Sure. Was it her fault? Fuck yes it was. Was the coffee really hot? Fuck yes it was, it was hot enough to cause serious burns -- but it's COFFEE, and the expectation of all reasonable people upon being served coffee is that it is most likely too hot to drink when first poured into a cup and CARE MUST BE TAKEN IN ITS HANDLING TO PREVENT INJURY.
Old lady bought a dangerous object and took no care in its handling. That's just flat-out on her.
My liverspots for a mod point.
Look, wine snobs, you're all doing it wrong. Wine comes in a perfectly sized bottle with a neck sized perfectly for grasping in your hamfists. It comes with a cork stopper to replace, so that as you bob and weave your way across the room and back, your beverage doesn't slosh out -- and further, it's not carbonated, so all that sloshing doesn't result in a messy explosion.
The stuff is made to drink by the bottle, from the bottle. I just can't fathom how so many people fail to understand and appreciate this fact.
ton = ton. if it's metric it's tonne. done.
also your conversions, way off. it's 2.2lb = 1kg, not 1lb = 2.2kg. 500lb of high explosive is not 1100kg, it's 227kg -- pretty big difference.
We have railguns. The Navy is developing them. Some time in the next decade, decade and a half, or thereabouts, they intend to have railguns for a (likely new, possibly retrofitted) class of ships. 64 GW railguns. GIGAWATTS! that's enough to send 35 delorians back in time, with every shot!
My point was that there are some answers, some solutions, which are *simply right*. Maybe that's to do nothing, even, but they are just.. exactly.. right. And, sometimes, a majority of people would disagree.
That doesn't mean it's not right. That means that a majority of people are wrong.
When you have something which is simply right, you can't compromise, you can't try and reach consensus. That would only dilute the right solution and make it wrong. Wanna invade Canada? Wanna strip-search 8 year old girls who try to fly on a plane? Wanna demand that people answer their location of origin and destination when stopped by police?
There's only one single right answer to all those issues: No. Even if 99% of the population disagrees, the right answer is still no. You can't compromise. You can't plead and make concessions. There's only one right answer.
Direct democracy fucks up those sorts of things. Constantly. Continually. If you think knee-jerk reactionaryism is rampant in our government now, just gander over to public opinion polls. There's your direct democracy. Holy mother of shit god, THAT is knee-jerk reactionaryism -- damn the facts, full emotional appeal ahead! Let's all do something so we feel like we've done something and to hell with the consequences! We're all in agreement, consensus has been reached, WE'RE FUCKING BANNING GRAPEFRUIT!
Mercury and lead aren't nearly as dangerous as you have been led to believe.
Especially lead.
Don't go eating it, and it's not a bad idea to wash your hands after handling it, but there's no reason to wear a hazmat suit when handling it, and there's no reason to remove it from every possible thing you could ever touch or look at. If there's trace amounts of lead in artificial turf, or a lunch box, and the levels of lead detected are thousands or millions of times lower than what would be required to even raise concern if you somehow got EVERY LITTLE BIT of it into your blood.. calling it a problem and demanding its removal is probably an overreaction. While there's no "safe level" of lead, there's quite a threshold you have to cross before you reach "unsafe levels" of lead, and the crap is excreted from your body with time.
Lead doesn't kill condors, either.
To answer your last question first: Yes, absolutely, and even more than that it certainly would be.
Consensus is not a good thing.
Go outside. Ask 1,000 people for directions to somewhere that they don't have a firm grasp exactly where is located. You'll get a bunch of answers. A few of them may be right, many of them will not be.
There's only one, or at most very few, right answers. There's innumerable wrong answers. Consensus would be mixing the right answers with the wrong answers. That leaves you with a wrong answer.
I imagine that an overwhelming majority of people would agree that Fred Phelps should shut up. That's already a consensus. They're also wrong. He shouldn't shut up. Some states have passed laws so that the ways in which he was exercising his free speech are prohibited, but he's still allowed that free speech -- just not at the time and in the place he'd prefer, because how he was doing things was getting him the most attention. Even if the majority decides and agrees to a thing, it still may be a violation of someone's rights.
Direct democracy is 3 wolves and 1 sheep voting on who gets eaten for dinner. Compromise is 3 wolves and 1 sheep agreeing to only eat half the sheep.
We've got a system that was designed to be democratic while also eternally preserving the rights of that sheep. It's not ideal, but compromise, consensus, direct democracy? Good fucking lord those ideas are so much worse
You're talking about sharing of wealth and redistribution of wealth and the evils of corporate greed. You may not be a Marxist but your post would resonate loudly with them.
The problem is not that wealth is concentrated. That was a main point in your post -- that wealth is too concentrated.
My point is that that is not the problem, despite how angry it makes you (and, yes, me as well). The problem is the mechanisms which have allowed and aided in that concentration of wealth, the system itself which rewards the few for exploiting third-world serfs instead of employing first-world citizens (and thereby also enriching the 1% of the third-world), the system which richly rewards those who hand bits of money back and forth all day long to a greater degree than any amount of benefit that the money-exchanging will ever have on anyone who isn't part of the scheme.
My point is that you're focusing on the shallow problems that have no good solution, no solution that could possibly work out in the long-term, rather than the problems that have allowed such a state of affairs to come to be.
The inequality is not the problem, but a symptom.
I heard that interview too.
the protesters just are so dumb.. it really made me pretty sad. i know that's really probably what they were going for with the interviews, but they were nearly 100% what you would expect. the same old tired and stupid arguments being trotted out that nobody who actually ever thinks would ever believe, just the typical causehead mantras repeated without introspection.
Your language is just so fucking wrong here, and belies your Marxist leanings.
Totally serious. You need to fix that. Capitalism isn't the problem, communism isn't the answer.
The problem isn't that wealth is concentrated, but that it's concentrating. CEOs making obscene amounts of money feels wrong, yes. Get mad about it but don't speak about it. Try and focus on the real leeches of our economy -- look at the stock market and their automated trading programs. They claim it's good for the economy because it increases liquidity, but at this level all I see is a game of three-card monte. They keep shuffling the same old shit around, they make money for people and they lose money for people -- the buyers get the least money possible, and so do the sellers, and the difference all gets funneled into these financial institutions which do nothing but shuffle more money back and forth so they can siphon more out of everyone else's pockets.
The problem is free trade, when much of that free trade is being conducted with nations who see the lack of tariffs on their exports as nothing but the first world nations admitting they're fucking suckers. Free trade with China is not free trade. It does nothing but force us to compete with them -- which is simply not possible, as they don't give a shit about destroying their environment, they don't give a shit about having a population of near-slave-status laborers. We're to compete with that? How -- aside from removing our own protections for workers and nature? How -- when corporations can move their goods and services freely from one nation to another, yet the workers are forbidden from doing the same? That isn't free. That's fucking rigged, that's a setup to benefit the corporate at the expense of the worker.
Complain about that. Don't complain about CEO salaries, because that isn't solvable. Don't complain about capitalism, because no other economic system works. Complain about the people who have rigged the system to benefit themselves to the detriment of everyone else -- not about a system that feels unfair. It feels unfair not because it is but because it's been fucking rigged.
I... have nothing to add to this.
It's a shame you posted this as AC. People should read this. It's not everything, but it's pretty damn close.
Freddie and Fanny don't have anything to do with college loans. You're thinking of Sallie Mae. Fanny Mae is a different beast.
Freddie and Fanny were only involved in home loans.
And, well, basically what happened was the government started letting banks package all kinds of loans together and resell them. And they started letting all kinds of banks act as investment banks. And they started requiring that banks made bad loans -- in the name of "social justice", of course!
So wtf happens? Of course the banks do as required and make loans to people who really shouldn't be getting those loans, the government said they have to. And of course they'll bundle up those bad loans and try to hide them in packages with mostly good loans. And of course those packaged loans will change hands 6 times, because every single bank has become involved in investments and securities.
And then comes the disaster.
It was the NY state lawmakers -- not me -- who brought Mills into this. They were the ones trying to use him to justify their little pet law.
I think if you actually read that shit you quotes you'll see that while he acknowledges that some things fall under the rule of law, that some conduct can or must be constrained by law, that there is much that CANNOT be regulated by law and instead can only rightfully be regulated by society. That we have a right -- or even an obligation -- to tell others that Some Jackass is a bad dude who will bring or cause harm.
More importantly, that those statements we would make against Some Jackass not an oppression of Some Jackass -- they are simply a right of ours because we are not oppressed, just as Some Jackass is not oppressed and is able to make himself that jackass with whom no one wishes to associate. His behavior is not ILLEGAL, as that would be oppressive, but neither are we required to pay any attention to or associate with Some Jackass, as that would also be oppressive.
Freedom to speak. Not a right to be heard.
If you think a single word that Mill said could be construed as supportive of the concept of outlawing uncomfortable speech, I'm just not sure what to do here. The entirety of your quotations are him dancing around the issue and clarifying that though some things are regulated by law that it is an oppression to regulate other undesirable things by law but it is also an oppression to forbid the individual from exercising their freedoms and rights to warn against and avoid those undesirable things.
Not a word supportive of the law proposed by the NY state lawmakers.
I'm fairly positive that the whole split was due to negotiations with content rights holders and little else.
It's not Netflix's fault that you can't get a ton of good streaming content from them -- they'd love to be able to provide that, but the content rights holders do not want that to be provided (for any amount of money that would anyone would pay, not Netflix, not you nor I).
The old guard doesn't much care for nor understand streaming content. It makes them uncomfortable.
It's not that there isn't refining expertise left in America.
There is.
The problem is that it's expensive, because we have environmental regulations, because we have safety regulations to protect our workers -- China? I don't know if they technically do or not, but effectively they do not, and that means it's much, much cheaper to do all the dirty nasty dangerous refining over there and shit all over their environment. Because China likes money more than they like things living -- trees, grass, any individual Chinese person, etc etc.
The loud beep was probably just a warning to her that the driver may be transporting Mr. Rendell, and that at only 15mph over the speed limit he is probably upset
it's textbook knee-jerk reactionaryism.
cyberbullying. root word: bullying. THE SAME SHIT HAS BEEN GOING ON FOREVER. except now you put "... on a computer!" and are granted a new patent I MEAN a new call to action to restrict the rights of citizens BECAUSE OF THE CHILDREN!
rights, mind you, that aren't meant to be restricted. these are not rights granted by the government. these are rights inherent to all people by virtue of their being people -- these are simply rights which the government has recognized the infringement of is inexcusable and tyrannical.
I like the part of the bill where it mentions "...USING ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION DIRECTED AT A CHILD UNDER THE AGE OF TWENTY-ONE YEARS,..." .. "CAUSES MATERIAL HARM TO THE MENTAL OR EMOTIONAL HEALTH, SAFETY OR PROPERTY OF SUCH CHILD ."
And yes, they do say free speech is a privilege GRANTED BY THE FUCKING STATE -- and not an inborn, inalienable right.
What bullshit.
This is not the use of force to prevent the unjust use of force, these fucktwits have corrupted Mills for their own big-government nanny-state ends. This is simply the outright abuse of force and twisting of the very concept of our rights recognized, not granted, by the government. I'm sorry. Words do not hurt. You can call me what you want -- it only affects me as much as I allow it.
You want to deal with cyberbullying? Get some fucking parents with half a clue to raise their kids. Get some schools that aren't afraid to deal with troublesome students. And yes, they are. Little Jimmy, you see, is special needs, and only acts out because of his bullshit ADHD -- and his parents, gosh, any time the school punishes Jimmy they're down there causing a ruckus because they KNOW Jimmy didn't punch that poor boy and call him a fag! Jimmy wouldn't do that!
Kids: Ignore unkind words that bother you. If someone physically harms you, that's fucking assault and don't let the school fucking feed you any bullshit -- you were fucking assaulted, and if they don't want to deal with it get the fucking cops involved. No, it's not fair you keep getting picked on. Life's not fair. Don't do stupid shit like take nude photos of yourself -- they WILL be distributed, what the hell were you even thinking in the first place. The more you let the bullies know this shit bothers you, the more they will bother you.
This law? This law is bullshit. Flaming some 20 year old is not a crime. I don't give half a fuck. This very post could be argued to cause "... MATERIAL HARM TO THE MENTAL OR EMOTIONAL HEALTH, SAFETY OR PROPERTY OF SUCH CHILD". Fuck that. A child under 21? Since when were fucking children able to enter into binding legal contracts.
Fuck you, New York, fuck you and your liberal fucking totalitarian dreams and desires.
Oh, and the one citation of a court case I saw in that mess of shit? Was for a case involving cross burning. They used that to justify their crap. Y'see, the difference is, in that case, the burning of the crosses was intended to intimidate -- it was a threat. There are actually already laws regarding the making of threats of violence. Nope, let's not apply those, let's just throw the fucking philosophical foundation of our constitution in the shitter FOR THE CHILDREN!
In this case I don't think the strikes matter after you've over 18. The law is specifically for juveniles. The same behavior as an adult would get you locked up on child porn charges, strikes or not.
I dunno. 8 hours of community service is hard for me to call "too much". I think you get more than that for graffiti or littering.
It's pretty harmless, but some sort of penalty is fine. As you mention, there's ways these pictures can get out.. that causes OMG TEEN DRAMAAA, which is a headache that adults have to deal with, and it's something nobody wants to deal with because you just get two kids and have to ask both of them "WHY THE HELL WERE YOU SO STUPID!"
Did you miss the part where the penalties if you don't report it are very very minor?
Did you miss the part where currently those penalties involve registering as a sex offender because you're in possession of and/or distributing child pornography?
The hell dude. The hell. You don't even need to RTFA, you just need to have half a fucking brain. This is a good law.
So, huh.
In your opinion this was done with literally no reason?
In your opinion, this was because he was POLITICALLY opposed to.. something?
Seems like reality might disagree. Seems like, in reality, this was a guy who had outright stated his goals were the killing of US citizens, the destruction of the US.
Seems like, in reality, this guy took up arms against the United States with intentions of bringing about its downfall.
So, in your opinion, the Civil War was an entirely unjust affair, then?
And so neither can we be any more at fault than any other participant in WWI -- that includes the Ottomans. Yeah. There was no Ottoman Empire after that. They done goofed. They were exactly as much at fault for that as we were -- because nobody should have been involved in WWI, and nobody involved in WWI was any more or less guilty of engaging in a stupid war than anyone else.
But heck, the middle east was on the decline even before the dissolution of the Ottomans.. that's sort of *why* it fell apart after WWI, but that certainly didn't help either.
tldr? The middle east is shit today because of, primarily, the actions of the middle east. the west didn't swoop in to help and make things better, but they never do, nor should it be expected (of *anyone*).
if you want to blame America or the west on the state of the middle east, i'm going to start blaming the Moors for the state of Spain. that makes exactly as much sense.