It's going to be Chinese robots versus US robots in a few decades, and it will literally be rage against the machine. Perhaps the time will come when Americans are ready to accept that automation is changing the world, not trade deficits. It is literally fighting a 20th century war with 19th century ideas while progress ignores the whole goddamned thing.
I bought my first iPhone in 2012 cash up front. Mind you, it was also my last iPhone. Ultimately I like the control that a decent and unlocked Android phone offers, as opposed to phones just so darned tied down that copying anything to the file system requires absurd lengths.
Walter Bagehot had a rather astute observation on the Electoral College, and while his bias was clearly towards the Westminster style of government, it's useful to read what he viewed as the Electoral College's failings when it was ultimately put into practice:
"The main function of the House of Commons is one which we know quite well, though our common constitutional speech does not recognise it. The House of Commons is an electoral chamber; it is the assembly which chooses our president. Washington and his fellow-politicians contrived an electoral college, to be composed (as was hoped) of the wisest people in the nation, which, after due deliberation, was to choose for President the wisest man in the nation. But that college is a sham; it has no independence and no life. No one knows, or cares to know, who its members are. They never discuss, and never deliberate. They were chosen to vote that Mr Lincoln be President, or that Mr Breckenridge be President; they do so vote, and they go home. But our House of Commons is a real choosing body; it elects the people it likes. And it dismisses whom it likes too. No matter that a few months since it was chosen to support Lord Aberdeen or Lord Palmerston; upon a sudden occasion it ousts the statesman to whom it at first adhered, and selects an opposite statesman whom it at first rejected. Doubtless in such cases there is tacit reference to probable public opinion; but certainly also there is much free will in the judgment of the Commons. The House only goes where it thinks in the end the nation will follow; but it takes its chance of the nation following or not following; it assumes the initiative, and acts upon its discretion or its caprice." - The English Constitution
I'm assuming this is more about backdoors in to hardware and online platforms. Even if you have end to end encryption, if they can sniff your data from your phone, then the fact that is encrypted over the wire doesn't mean very much.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. He may not have started out as a puppet, but that's what he became, and worst of all for him, like Assange, sooner or later his protectors will tire of him, or decide he's a useful bargaining chip, and happily hand him over.
The notion of paying elected officials largely evolved because political patronage often meant those elected members were little more than paid votes. The theory was that if you paid a lawmaker a good salary his primary debt of obligation would be to the voters. It certainly made things better (read how corrupt MPs could be in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries) but of course there's always more money to be made being a paid shill for some moneyed interest or another.
The only difference between a white nationalist and a white supremacist is that the latter is at least openly honest about his racism. Racism is a real thing, whether it makes you feel bad or not.
There's a reason California's housing and rental prices are high, while some other states' are so low. It's because people want to move to California, and out of those other states.
California is one of a small handful of states that put more money in Federal coffers than it takes out (Texas is the only red state in that category). It may make you feel a very big person to make fun of California, but more than likely it's true that wherever you live in the US, California could buy your state. Whatever it's problems, it is one of the major economic engines not just of the United States, but of the entire world.
Before you start mocking the size of your neighbor's penis, you should probably take a good hard long long in the mirror at your own.
And as resentful as ever, considering California is the fifth largest economy on the planet, while Michigan is number 37. Even Massachusetts beats Michigan.
Actuaries have no political goals. They have purely economic ones. They exist solely to make sure insurance companies aren't vulnerable to tangible and measurable risks. AGW presents multiple such risks, and since they are not childish and unable to accept hard facts, they can see greater incidents of strong storm fronts, flooding, sea level rise, wild fires, and they have but one job, to either decide what will or won't be covered by the insurance companies, or if it is to be covered, to make sure the money insurance companies charge for coverage accounts for the greater risks.
It's you that is in fantasy land. Grow up. The laws of nature are not designed to make you feel better or more comfortable. The universe doesn't care about your ideology one little bit. To the physical laws, you're just a pack of atoms, and your feelings mean absolutely nothing.
You don't understand the science at all. Increases in CO2 alters the chemistry of plant growth. It ultimately means that while plants may grow a lot faster, they're also storing a lot less carbohydrates, which means that they store a lot less nutrients. My understanding is there are already some preliminary data on the study of rice crops (which, of course, feed a few billion people), and no reason to think that other grain crops won't be similarly affected.
Pumping CO2 into the atmosphere in elevated amounts has a lot of consequences. That you're too infantile to accept that doesn't change reality. The universe does not function merely to make our economic systems work better.
Isn't tough that physics and chemistry dictate that there are consequences to increased carbon in the environment. I know, that's so rotten, so we should go out and shoot some scientists because they keep telling us there are consequences to our activities.
A lack of economic diversity is hardly limited to socialist states. Whatever the ideology, the temptation to assume that a boom in any commodity will last forever is a feature of many different kinds of governments. And because economic diversification is very hard, requiring voters to accept some bitter pills, politicians of all stripes don't have the nerve to actually do anything significant to wean their jurisdictions off of that particular commodity or industry. They'll also play into the "monorail" sales pitch (a reference to probably the most instructive Simpsons episode ever made), entering a race to the bottom with other jurisdictions to attract industries, which almost inevitably means the taxpayer pays for the industry to come in, without generating the commiserate level of economic activity to justify the significant investment. Every time I see a politician with a hard hat on, I shiver in fear.
Norway basically nationalized its oil industry, but did so with some forethought and planning, creating a sovereign wealth fund with the intent of maximizing the benefit of oil revenues for Norwegians, rather than simply enriching oil companies and skimming royalties off the top. You can call that socialism if you like, but the fact is that Norway's sovereign wealth fund is now large enough to both pay for a fairly generous welfare state and sit there as a protection against what can be a fairly volatile international market.
What Venezuela did under the Chavistas is to use oil revenues to pay for its welfare state, but also to enrich the Chavistas and their generals, and try to buy influence with other Latin American countries (Venezuela basically underwrote the Cuban economy for years by selling oil to the country at what amounted to almost give-away prices). If Venezuela had duplicated the Norwegian model, it would actually have weathered the storm that came with the collapse of oil prices reasonably well. To be fair, it's not like previous right wing regimes were all that cautious, and certainly while Norway is a fairly advanced country firmly in the developed world, while Venezuela has much higher poverty rates, but still, looking at Venezuela is to see a socialist state that also basically functions as a kleptocracy, that managed to keep afloat when oil prices were very high, and the Chavistas gambled that that would always be the way.
To be even fairer, Venezuela was hardly the only petro-jurisdiction to squander the wealth. Up in my neck of the woods, Alberta had the Heritage Fund, with the idea that it would function like Norway's sovereign wealth fund, but has squandered much of it as well. North Dakota was similarly irresponsible.
Um, you do know the difference between carbon credits and a carbon tax, right? A carbon tax is a flat tax on emissions, usually measured in tons. There's no swapping or selling, it is simply that industries are taxed based on their emissions, with the idea that using the markets to moderate and change behaviors is more effective than creating new markets or setting up a regulatory regime.
Well your anecdotal claim has certainly convinced me. Have a copper bracelet, because you know, I know a guy who swears up and down it cured his arthritis.
How about a carbon tax to encourage alternatives by using free market economics. And really what does any of this have to do with global warming. Do you think the laws of physics cares about your preferred economic system?
Nuclear power is not renewable, leads to dangerous byproducts, and honestly if you're going to put that much money into more consistent power sources, geothermal, tidal, pumped systems, battery technology and the like are far better. If someone manages to develop cold fusion that's different, but this constant banging on about fusion gets tiresome. And no, deregulation is not the answer. I don't want a deregulated nuclear reactor within a thousand miles of me.
Good grief. The problem is mentally unstable people that parents, schools, and the judicial system seem to have no idea what to do with. A guy like this just doesn't suddenly get beat at a video game and at that moment start firing his gun at people. This is somebody who almost certainly has a long history of aggression issues. And honestly, what is the answer? Yes, the availability of guns in the US makes the likelihood of a gun as the weapon of choice go up, but the vehicle attacks that have happened all over the world demonstrate that someone sufficiently demented will find a way to kill and maim lots of people. Better mental health services is a start, but whether your country allows easy access to guns or doesn't (and some countries do and some countries don't), there's just a risk to being alive, that some nutcase is going to decide one day to go out killing, and, while statistically very unlikely, it is possible you may become a target.
The fact is that despite the wider trauma that goes along with a mass shooting (whether this kind of spree killer or gang violence), most murder victims knew their attacker. I find it akin to the kind of hysteria that goes along with, say, serial child rapists, very scary, but the fact is that the overwhelming majority of children subjected to sexual abuse are abused by a family member or a family friend or someone else close to them. In either case, something as mundane as a husband killing his wife or a child sexually abused by an uncle doesn't really make the news, and certainly not the national news, and yet those are the situations where violence is most prevalent. It's just that our monkey brains are actually rather poor at prioritizing risk. We'll freak out about the risks of terrorism or airplane crashes, when you're statistically far more likely to choke to death or slip in your bathtub, or really, to die of heart disease, but those aren't sexy enough stories to sell advertising.
You forgot 1.a Borrow lots of money from dumb venture capitalists, collect seven figure salary for the few years their still stupid enough to lend you money.
Slashdot Mirror
It's going to be Chinese robots versus US robots in a few decades, and it will literally be rage against the machine. Perhaps the time will come when Americans are ready to accept that automation is changing the world, not trade deficits. It is literally fighting a 20th century war with 19th century ideas while progress ignores the whole goddamned thing.
I bought my first iPhone in 2012 cash up front. Mind you, it was also my last iPhone. Ultimately I like the control that a decent and unlocked Android phone offers, as opposed to phones just so darned tied down that copying anything to the file system requires absurd lengths.
Walter Bagehot had a rather astute observation on the Electoral College, and while his bias was clearly towards the Westminster style of government, it's useful to read what he viewed as the Electoral College's failings when it was ultimately put into practice:
"The main function of the House of Commons is one which we
know quite well, though our common constitutional speech does not
recognise it. The House of Commons is an electoral chamber; it is
the assembly which chooses our president. Washington and his
fellow-politicians contrived an electoral college, to be composed (as
was hoped) of the wisest people in the nation, which, after due
deliberation, was to choose for President the wisest man in the
nation. But that college is a sham; it has no independence and no life.
No one knows, or cares to know, who its members are. They never
discuss, and never deliberate. They were chosen to vote that Mr
Lincoln be President, or that Mr Breckenridge be President; they do
so vote, and they go home. But our House of Commons is a real
choosing body; it elects the people it likes. And it dismisses whom it
likes too. No matter that a few months since it was chosen to support
Lord Aberdeen or Lord Palmerston; upon a sudden occasion it ousts
the statesman to whom it at first adhered, and selects an opposite
statesman whom it at first rejected. Doubtless in such cases there is
tacit reference to probable public opinion; but certainly also there is
much free will in the judgment of the Commons. The House only
goes where it thinks in the end the nation will follow; but it takes
its chance of the nation following or not following; it assumes the
initiative, and acts upon its discretion or its caprice."
- The English Constitution
I'm assuming this is more about backdoors in to hardware and online platforms. Even if you have end to end encryption, if they can sniff your data from your phone, then the fact that is encrypted over the wire doesn't mean very much.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. He may not have started out as a puppet, but that's what he became, and worst of all for him, like Assange, sooner or later his protectors will tire of him, or decide he's a useful bargaining chip, and happily hand him over.
The notion of paying elected officials largely evolved because political patronage often meant those elected members were little more than paid votes. The theory was that if you paid a lawmaker a good salary his primary debt of obligation would be to the voters. It certainly made things better (read how corrupt MPs could be in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries) but of course there's always more money to be made being a paid shill for some moneyed interest or another.
The only difference between a white nationalist and a white supremacist is that the latter is at least openly honest about his racism. Racism is a real thing, whether it makes you feel bad or not.
Has he ported it to Linux yet?
There's a reason California's housing and rental prices are high, while some other states' are so low. It's because people want to move to California, and out of those other states.
California is one of a small handful of states that put more money in Federal coffers than it takes out (Texas is the only red state in that category). It may make you feel a very big person to make fun of California, but more than likely it's true that wherever you live in the US, California could buy your state. Whatever it's problems, it is one of the major economic engines not just of the United States, but of the entire world.
Before you start mocking the size of your neighbor's penis, you should probably take a good hard long long in the mirror at your own.
And as resentful as ever, considering California is the fifth largest economy on the planet, while Michigan is number 37. Even Massachusetts beats Michigan.
Actuaries have no political goals. They have purely economic ones. They exist solely to make sure insurance companies aren't vulnerable to tangible and measurable risks. AGW presents multiple such risks, and since they are not childish and unable to accept hard facts, they can see greater incidents of strong storm fronts, flooding, sea level rise, wild fires, and they have but one job, to either decide what will or won't be covered by the insurance companies, or if it is to be covered, to make sure the money insurance companies charge for coverage accounts for the greater risks.
It's you that is in fantasy land. Grow up. The laws of nature are not designed to make you feel better or more comfortable. The universe doesn't care about your ideology one little bit. To the physical laws, you're just a pack of atoms, and your feelings mean absolutely nothing.
You don't understand the science at all. Increases in CO2 alters the chemistry of plant growth. It ultimately means that while plants may grow a lot faster, they're also storing a lot less carbohydrates, which means that they store a lot less nutrients. My understanding is there are already some preliminary data on the study of rice crops (which, of course, feed a few billion people), and no reason to think that other grain crops won't be similarly affected.
Pumping CO2 into the atmosphere in elevated amounts has a lot of consequences. That you're too infantile to accept that doesn't change reality. The universe does not function merely to make our economic systems work better.
If we keep puking CO2 into the atmosphere, CO2 levels will rise. This ain't rocket science.
Isn't tough that physics and chemistry dictate that there are consequences to increased carbon in the environment. I know, that's so rotten, so we should go out and shoot some scientists because they keep telling us there are consequences to our activities.
A lack of economic diversity is hardly limited to socialist states. Whatever the ideology, the temptation to assume that a boom in any commodity will last forever is a feature of many different kinds of governments. And because economic diversification is very hard, requiring voters to accept some bitter pills, politicians of all stripes don't have the nerve to actually do anything significant to wean their jurisdictions off of that particular commodity or industry. They'll also play into the "monorail" sales pitch (a reference to probably the most instructive Simpsons episode ever made), entering a race to the bottom with other jurisdictions to attract industries, which almost inevitably means the taxpayer pays for the industry to come in, without generating the commiserate level of economic activity to justify the significant investment. Every time I see a politician with a hard hat on, I shiver in fear.
Norway basically nationalized its oil industry, but did so with some forethought and planning, creating a sovereign wealth fund with the intent of maximizing the benefit of oil revenues for Norwegians, rather than simply enriching oil companies and skimming royalties off the top. You can call that socialism if you like, but the fact is that Norway's sovereign wealth fund is now large enough to both pay for a fairly generous welfare state and sit there as a protection against what can be a fairly volatile international market.
What Venezuela did under the Chavistas is to use oil revenues to pay for its welfare state, but also to enrich the Chavistas and their generals, and try to buy influence with other Latin American countries (Venezuela basically underwrote the Cuban economy for years by selling oil to the country at what amounted to almost give-away prices). If Venezuela had duplicated the Norwegian model, it would actually have weathered the storm that came with the collapse of oil prices reasonably well. To be fair, it's not like previous right wing regimes were all that cautious, and certainly while Norway is a fairly advanced country firmly in the developed world, while Venezuela has much higher poverty rates, but still, looking at Venezuela is to see a socialist state that also basically functions as a kleptocracy, that managed to keep afloat when oil prices were very high, and the Chavistas gambled that that would always be the way.
To be even fairer, Venezuela was hardly the only petro-jurisdiction to squander the wealth. Up in my neck of the woods, Alberta had the Heritage Fund, with the idea that it would function like Norway's sovereign wealth fund, but has squandered much of it as well. North Dakota was similarly irresponsible.
Um, you do know the difference between carbon credits and a carbon tax, right? A carbon tax is a flat tax on emissions, usually measured in tons. There's no swapping or selling, it is simply that industries are taxed based on their emissions, with the idea that using the markets to moderate and change behaviors is more effective than creating new markets or setting up a regulatory regime.
Well your anecdotal claim has certainly convinced me. Have a copper bracelet, because you know, I know a guy who swears up and down it cured his arthritis.
How about a carbon tax to encourage alternatives by using free market economics. And really what does any of this have to do with global warming. Do you think the laws of physics cares about your preferred economic system?
Nuclear power is not renewable, leads to dangerous byproducts, and honestly if you're going to put that much money into more consistent power sources, geothermal, tidal, pumped systems, battery technology and the like are far better. If someone manages to develop cold fusion that's different, but this constant banging on about fusion gets tiresome. And no, deregulation is not the answer. I don't want a deregulated nuclear reactor within a thousand miles of me.
Good grief. The problem is mentally unstable people that parents, schools, and the judicial system seem to have no idea what to do with. A guy like this just doesn't suddenly get beat at a video game and at that moment start firing his gun at people. This is somebody who almost certainly has a long history of aggression issues. And honestly, what is the answer? Yes, the availability of guns in the US makes the likelihood of a gun as the weapon of choice go up, but the vehicle attacks that have happened all over the world demonstrate that someone sufficiently demented will find a way to kill and maim lots of people. Better mental health services is a start, but whether your country allows easy access to guns or doesn't (and some countries do and some countries don't), there's just a risk to being alive, that some nutcase is going to decide one day to go out killing, and, while statistically very unlikely, it is possible you may become a target.
The fact is that despite the wider trauma that goes along with a mass shooting (whether this kind of spree killer or gang violence), most murder victims knew their attacker. I find it akin to the kind of hysteria that goes along with, say, serial child rapists, very scary, but the fact is that the overwhelming majority of children subjected to sexual abuse are abused by a family member or a family friend or someone else close to them. In either case, something as mundane as a husband killing his wife or a child sexually abused by an uncle doesn't really make the news, and certainly not the national news, and yet those are the situations where violence is most prevalent. It's just that our monkey brains are actually rather poor at prioritizing risk. We'll freak out about the risks of terrorism or airplane crashes, when you're statistically far more likely to choke to death or slip in your bathtub, or really, to die of heart disease, but those aren't sexy enough stories to sell advertising.
Do your parents know you're insane?
What deterrent? These guys are like the multi-level marketing guys. They get shut down, declare bankruptcy and recycle the scheme endlessly.
You forgot 1.a Borrow lots of money from dumb venture capitalists, collect seven figure salary for the few years their still stupid enough to lend you money.