Well there's some that say physical constants have the value that they have because we happen to live in a universe where that is the value. In other words, it could be that the values of constants c (speed of light), G (gravitational constant), h (Planck's constant), and so on are just random values. It just happens that you exist to ask the question with the values c, G, h, and so on being what they are.
A good parallel would be "Why are we the third planet?" Why couldn't there have been some extra planet in between Venus and Earth, and thus make us the forth planet/Venus not exist and Earth be the second planet? The answer is, there's nothing that "forced" Earth to be the third planet, it's just how things lined up. As we've studied exoplanets we've come to understand that being the "third" planet isn't related to being in the habitable zone. Some stars have their first planet within the habitable zone, some don't. Three just isn't some magical number that assures you'll land in the habitable zone of a star.
But the real answer to, "Why the constants are what they are" is, "We just don't know for sure". We're not at that point and while there are some ideas out there that try to explain it, none of them have been shown to be demonstrably correct. That's not to say they are incorrect, just that they're still at best an educated guess and we lack the ability to really be able to test some of them. One day that may change, but it could be that none of us are currently living in an era where humanity will be able to reach any conclusive answer on those questions. I'm okay with that, because I can only imagine how absolutely frustrated Newton was with being unable to explain Venus' orbit then having to die never knowing the answer.
However, I'll say this, even if the values of constants are randomly chosen at Big Bang for a universe, it still means that order comes from those selected values and that, that order is observable and can be modeled. Just because the Standard Model has gaps doesn't mean it lacks value. The periodic chart had gaps in its early days too, but it gave us insight into what we knew and where to look for the gaps that did exist. The Standard Model in it's current form came about mid-1970s and since then it's had amazing predictive power. Heck I distinctly remember when the first top quark was discovered in 1995 and that was massive because up till then it was just this particle that we assumed existed on paper. So it might be tempting to shout this is a train wreck because it lacks so much, but it is the model we have right now and the model we have has shown to be demonstrably correct. Trying to forward models that we just don't have the ability to test to anything within the domain of "fact" or "scientifically accurate" makes science no better than people who think the universe began by a cosmic unicorn fart. I think people get angry at that notion that "look here's a model that explains way much more! Forward it as fact and I can at least die knowing that I knew everything." We have to move at the pace we're currently at and any faster we might as well just stick a religion flag in it. So yeah, there's holes in our understanding of the Universe, but that doesn't mean what we have is a "train wreck" and it should not tempt us to adopt models that haven't been shown to be correct "string theory".
Does Amazon prime video and Netflix work on linux yet?
Yes both work on Linux. Outlook compat depends on what you need from it. I've used DavMail plus Thunderbird+Lighting to do pretty much everything I needed to get done from an Exchange 365 server. I've not been disappointed by Steam on Linux so there's that, but I'm not exactly "MUST HAVE AAA GAME!!" so my opinion may not count.
I think some of the gas from the grey breads in Linux has left and moved on to BSD ever since the reckoningd. Also with mobile basically smashing desktop, there's not much home (hey bro this is cool) interest in "Linux-the-desktop" either. So if you do hit up a corner of Linux you'll either get what grey beards are left fighting with young whipper snappers about "Unix-mentality-is-GOD!!" or you'll get a quiet place where the last activity was three months ago letting everyone know that a project that's not been updated in the last two years isn't dead.
Point being, don't expect any magical massive shift to promote Linux desktop. Most people are "meh" and use it and don't care, are too busy fighting the "enemyd", or they've just moved on out of Linux/desktop-all-together.
And (according to TFA) this one sometimes does that, too.
Yes that's correct. 48% of the time, so effectively a 50-50 shot. Which that's a big improvement over previous attempts.
But, in the (closely watched) experimental group, they were able to catch it and treat it in the patients where it occurred.
Right again, and this is the thing about this treatment. You have to have a trained team of bio-engineers close by for these types of things. Right now, there's two paths to treatment with any Cytokine Release Syndrome (CRS). One, shut it all down. That's a mixture of blunt action drugs such as anti-histamines and corticosteroids. This basically shuts the T-cells down and allows them to die. The problem with this approach is that you might shut everything down too soon and have only partially destroyed the cancer. Two, treat and hope for the best. Basically you keep letting the T-cells do their thing while giving drugs to prevent renal failure and any kind of edema. You keep doing this until you at some point shut it all down. The problem with this approach is that you risk severe damage to the kidneys, liver, heart, and brain.
It turned out to be transient. So nobody died.
Correct that no one died, but the end effects are hardly transient. Only 25% developed dangerous CRS and were treated for such. All patients developed beta-cell dysfunction and will require some form of insulin treatment for the next three years to the foreseeable future. 16% developed pancytopenia of some degree, they will need blood treatments to control their platelets, red blood cell count, and white blood cell count for an undetermined amount of time. There's also 48% that developed thrombocytopenia and 61% that developed neutropenia (there's some overlap between those two group that developed both FYI). The thing about all of that. Those are all blood diseases that we're able to treat to some extent or another. So yeah, way better than cancer.
immune cells settled down to just guarding against recurrence
Well the thing is we don't know that for sure. The T-cells that were injected are dead by now, but if the body picked up the ability to do what the injected T-cells did has yet to be seen. No one is really sure if the body "learns" from this or not. It's possible that the new antigen is remembered, but it's difficult to reproduce the exact cancer the T-cells were engineered for. So it could be that the T-cells did learn and is keeping the cancer at bay quietly or that the cancer was completely eradicated and there's no chance of it coming back. But we're not yet able to induce the body to artificially produce those antigens. We know that the antigens aren't in the bloodstream after six months, but that just might mean we're not watching when those antigens are released and killing cancer quietly. It'll take a lot more people and study before we can say for sure either way.
Previous developers of such therapies might want to look into them again.
They are and new methods for controlling the process are being developed. The idea is to develop a CAR-T that requires a prodrug for activation. The prodrug itself does nothing, but a specially crafted CAR-T could remain inactive until given the prodrug. Ideally, the prodrug would be one that we can control very well it's distribution in the blood stream. This would act as a sort of gas pedal for the T-cells and the amount of the prodrug would indicate how much throttle we are giving it. Additionally, future CAR-T would have a stop switch/kill switch as well. Again, these would be prodrugs that signal when T-cells need to slow down and when T-cells need to self destruct.
and their modified cells only attacked things, like leukemia cells, that they can easily reach and quickly clear out
The problem with targeting anything in the body is that y
There aren't genes patented because the therapy is developed on a per person basis. Last I checked, everyone had slightly different genes. What the drug company is selling is the process, not a drug.
The patients body making additional copies of the gene would be violating the patent and copyright of the drug maker.
That's not how any of that works. That's not even a correct statement about anything in medicine. That would be like saying a flu vaccine maker could sue you for your body's ability to mass reproduce an antigen. That's never been the case, no one thinks that should be the case, and thinking that one day that might be the case is just silly.
If cancer does not get you, the pharma will get you.
I figure the cost will be X in the developed world other than the US and 10X in the US because the FDA protects pharma profits (and it's own jobs) first.
That's a completely ridiculous statement. The cost is going to be astronomical because this therapy is developed on a "per person" basis. Additionally, there's not a really finely tuned way to control the altered T-cells, that's something they're still working on for the next generation of these types of drugs. So that said, these T-cells can attack cancer and healthy cells and which ones they do attack depends on what tissue they land on while in your blood stream. Long hospital stays are going to be a requirement of these kinds of treatments and a crack team of bio-engineers are going to have to be at the ready round clock for any sudden cytokine storm that might develop, since the chances of developing one is 50-50 with this drug. Again that goes back to doctor's not having a way to finely control the T-cells. There's so many variables to this treatment, you could literally pick up a 1000 page book on calculus and have nowhere near the number of variables involved in this treatment.
All of that put together is going to make these treatments costs insane. Is it worth it? Well that's not an objective question. Will it get cheaper? Of course, because we'll get better at this, but we're not going to get better at these kinds of treatments without first actually trying these kinds of treatments. Will it be cheaper in "insert some other first world nation"? Maybe, but that's less the nature of the FDA and more the nature of how crazy US healthcare is. Thinking that it's the FDA that protects profits is thinking way too small. The FDA has a part in it, but it's way smaller than you'd like to think. You want to find the people who have the most control in that, you needn't look any further than your local Congress-critter and the slew of lobbyist laws on the books. You want to be mad about prices for medicine, that's cool, but at least be mad at the right people for the right reasons. This process is an insanely brand new form of any kind of medicine that precedes it (and that's a serious understatement because this is literally a new era of medicine altogether. Literally people will look back at this as a pre/post gene therapy era) and the FDA has very little say in what ultimately is a more complex topic on price. Get mad about medicine that's been out for the last ten/fifteen years that still costs an arm and a leg because the law in the US allows them to make a monopoly on it.
GMOs are like Dick Cheney deciding he owns your house because his out of control dog shat on your lawn.
Correction, the companies that own "some" GMOs are like that. GMO's in themselves are not responsible for the company that made them's reckless behavior. GMOs in of themselves are a useful tool, how a company chooses to abuse them is a totally different topic.
Waste does not equal compost. Both might burn but there's a lot of impurity/potential hazard of dangerous gaseous release in the former and in the latter is a slightly more strict and "purified" form of the former. Coal has had the advantage of coalescing into seams by geological processes. One would need to account the processing and cost if we're going to go down this road of compost = coal,
which it doesn't because of quite a few reasons, density being one coal being almost thirty times more dense than compost. A second being that coal has had time to form nice convenient seams that we can mine without too much trouble.
First off, it won't take 300 million years. We can compost the waste and have your 'coal' ready in less than a year.
It's clear that you've never handled bituminous, lignite, or anthracite. Or you've never handled compost. Either way, it's very easy to tell that they aren't the same thing and burning them will show that they are totally different things in energy content too. But just holding coal in your hand is enough to tell it's got more to it.
Fun thing to try at home. Take a pound of compost and a pound of coal (you'll need to grind up the coal a bit). Light on fire and measure how long you can feel heat from either source (also note you'll need to coax the coal a bit to light). If you are are really savvy, you can also take measurements of how hot each source is over time.
If electricity is cheap enough you can generate 'oil-based' fuels out of air and water.
There's multiple ways to get there, none are easy. If we have a lot of excess energy then a straight conversion isn't all that hard, but we need a lot of excess energy. We could also get there if there's some massive breakthrough in the conversion process. At the moment, syngas isn't a very easy product to produce and from what we know we need syngas as the precursor to anything past syngas like ethanol. GMOs might be another way to get to that end. GMOs built to produce hydrocarbons at better than photosynthesis rates might get produced one day.
There's a ton of ifs and unknowns at the moment, so it's a shot in the dark kind of thing to thing to reach a concrete method for how we get there. However, no matter what we come up with, we definitely will need to change where we use hydrocarbon fuel. There's no method we could come up with that would satisfy all of our current HC fuel needs/wants. While pure electric might work for cars, jet planes (for example) just aren't going to become electric unless we have a massive revolution in materials/batteries.
An electric motor built to move a jet to take off speed would be massive, that's not also mentioning the size of the batteries that would be required to power the massive motor. Even if Lithium air batteries get invented you still run into the matter of how absolutely massive an electric motor to move something 200+ MPH that weighs 187k pounds at takeoff would be (sorry that's using 737 weight at takeoff currently, an airplane using an electric motor would be heavier if all other things stayed the same, but you could have fewer people, less cargo, carbon fiber, etc to change that as well, but I couldn't come up with a number for weight of electric jet that would be anywhere meaningful. Also I'm at work at the moment so trying to crunch numbers is proving to be difficult with the onslaught that is my job. However, there is a Reddit thread that talked about this.).
That said, is still very reasonable in my opinion if we have trains, cars, and boats electric and jets remain fuel based. If we can change the world to be like this where jets are the reason we keep producing fuels, we just might be able to produce enough syngas and ethanol from thin air to keep us all happy.
You have a very good comment because it's one of those, "there's a lot of variables involved" type questions that I always find so interesting.
Okay let's boil this down. Small guy versus giant news agency. What small guy did was publish some pieces and made the Internet equal of a political cartoon. That's free speech and bully for the small guy. Big news company comes in an begins their "CNN SMASH" all over the place and small guy breaks. I'm pretty sure this has been going on since printing press to some degree, and each era gets its own version of disgusted by it. So digs on CNN for being the bad guy, but at the same time, this guy got called and he just couldn't own up to what he published. Heck at least in days of yore the truly brave who eventually got called on their pieces owned it at the end of the day. Those that actually do political cartoons sign their name on it, so you know who owns it.
And that's my thing about trolls. It's one thing to have an opinion that runs counter to the popular option. You like Trump? Fine, so be it. You're a racist? Cool, glad to know you can at least admit it, even though I think you're scum. You like to pretend to be homophobic because you just like to get the LULZ by bucking the trend? Put a sock in it amateur.
F- CNN for what boils down to blackmail, but F- this "victim" for publishing BS he can't even stand beside. Do I think doxxing is okay? Nope, and CNN doxxing is bull, but even CNN being in the clear wrong about this doesn't make Mr. Reddit BS any more right. Until we get more legal clarification (LOOKING AT YOU CONGRESS AND YOUR INABILITY TO MODERNIZE LAWS) it's basically wild west rules when it comes online blackmailing. It's a gamble, maybe you'll make a point, maybe the point will get lost on you being a bully. CNN made a call and it was clearly the wrong one, but this dude, he gets no clean hands in the matter either.
As far as the other stuff. That's just people trying to make more of this story to fit a narrative that MSM is evil. I think they're mostly BS but I think the same about most of the people in the capital in DC. So while it's cool to think MSM is this soul sucking menace, I think the folks who can actually be soul sucking menaces are ranked a little higher on my list. CNN being anti-Trump is one soul sucking beast and that's just how it is, at least everyone I hope has the intelligence to mostly ignore them. GOP wanting to "reform" healthcare is a different kind of soul sucking beast that's a bit more real than the man in the TV and is less able to be ignored.
You want to do a GIF of the President punching a news network, cool, at least own up to your art. Oops, you got some baggage under your account you're not exactly proud of? Might want to reexamine your motives for putting that baggage there in the first place.
Also, I don't disagree with anything you said (except the CNN knowing that the Russia story is fake, I don't give them that much credit), especially your sig, voted third party myself, and I'm proud to own up to that.
Has anyone here ever received anything of value from a class action lawsuit?
Yeah, I'm a former VW dieselgate owner. The funds from the settlement paid off the car loan on the VW and the car I replaced the VW with (which was not a VW). Additionally, I had some funds left over from the settlement, so that went to credit cards.
Those cars were engineering train wrecks. Outside the main class action, there was a few more. There was a filter class action for those VWs. Basically the way they designed those custom, just for that car, filters was so overly complicated that they ultimately didn't actually do the job that they were supposed to do. There was also a heater core class action. They engineered the heater core to have this really tiny input for hot water coming from the engine (same for the output but you'll see why that really doesn't matter). Well because there was so little metal there, the pressure of hot water would eventually crack the metal and allow the heater core to leak.
There was a couple of more, but it's been a while. I didn't have tons of debt, I was almost done with student loans, some large medical things, and what not, but after all of those settlements, I had enough to reduce me down to just what I owe on my house now. So other than my house payment, I'm debt free thanks to VWs fuck up.
I'll say though, that I'm one of the rare ones for class actions actually helping. I don't like saying never, but it'll more than likely be longer than the number of years I have left on this Earth before I buy a VW again.
I would not attribute it to some technical limitation of the state. Technically speaking they are more than able and apt to enact such. What I would say is part of the problem that prevents such is a seeming gaming of politics by both the government itself and the public at large. It seems that both sides seem more interested in numbers of seats they currently occupy than of actual substance. That mindset is not just limited to those in DC but to the public in general. You hear thee murmurings with things like, "We have to repeal ObamaCare" and the reasonable people ask, "but with what?" "We have to get rid of Trump" and the reasonable people ask, "but with who?" The details get lost in the fervor to just get an agenda actually done, to get to the next milestone with no consideration for what to do once there, to undo what that team did and wax what your particular team will do sans a moment to think how do we actually do that. "We must push to this goal just down the way and once there we can then reconsider the trajectory." Actual healthcare that is long lasting is not something that can just be conjured from thin air once a political party is clear all obstacles of resistance. It must include ownership by the other team because their term is just around the corner. It must include interest for the success and responsibility for the maintenance by the public. The public needs to have a vested interest in whatever is passed otherwise, a new breed will just come an usurp the current standing party. With the party in name, hell bent on manipulating it to their own agenda.
There's a multitude of things that prevent what I would consider a wholesome approach to modifying the current state of affairs. However, I believe the more pressing one at the moment is the need to grandstand by both political and public members. "I am the victor, the mandate is mine." No the mandate is a mindshare of the citizens and it must be attuned to the will of the agenda. That means work to help bring the collective into focus on the issue at hand, not "we won, we're going to make healthcare great again."
You have basically assumed other people's income is yours to decide what to do with.
No I assumed that government had vested interest in the well being of the populace. The means to which they achieve that end is little concern to me be it ObamaCare or whatever TrumpCare shapes up to become. However, it is clear that the current iteration of "wisdom" to befall us is one that is more calloused hearted than cautioned repair.
you have NO moral objection to violent threats to accomplish that which you won't do on your own.
On the contrary, I feel that people need to take keen interest in their health. We will not reach any point of better healthcare without a consensus of the public wishing to not only improve a system but themselves as well. The masses crying out, "please give us healthcare, fix our system" will bear empty gains if those selfsame masses do nothing within themselves. The government has the unique position to stoke a fire of change within the public, yet they wish only to bicker among themselves for temporal glory in the bask of media limelight. To them, it is not the cause, but the ephemeral win to which they hang their platform in whole upon. To simply undo an egregious wrong brought on by the "other team". What comes after their pyrrhic victory is but an afterthought.
Personally, I am all for letting ObamaCare die a horrible death, and letting the rotting corpse lay in the middle of the street.
I too would join you around the maypole for the death of failed legislation if it were to mean something that is an improvement upon where we stand. Sadly, what it has become can hardly be called improvement, and I see no resolve within those elected to kindle action that would move healthcare forward.
I can't imagine Congress is going to let this go on forever.
Well the cynic in me thinks that in order for it to stop, Congress would have to *act*. There's been a whole lot of *not acting* going on in Congress as of late, and I'm perplexed as to why an economic downturn would induce that to suddenly change. Considering the most recent AHCA version to come out of the Senate, it doesn't seem like they care if the citizens die, so economic hardship should be the least of their worries. Even if it's industry that's hurting, it's not GOP industry hurting.
This means that winning one electoral vote in California takes on hell of more votes than winning the same electoral vote in Wyoming or Kansas or Montana
That would be true if every state ran their system like ME and NE. However, the majority is first past the pole. Here's the states that you mentioned if they worked on a distributed EV system.
California: Clinton 34, Trump 18, Johnson 2, Stein 1 Wyoming: Trump 2, Clinton 1 Kansas: Trump 3, Clinton 2, Johnson 1 Montana: Trump 2, Clinton 1
There's nothing wrong with your statement in that it takes more heads to earn a single EV (total population divide by EVs in state), but first past the pole makes that a mute point. WY, KS, and MT are a total of 12 EV which is only 2.2% of the EC. CA is 55 EV which is only 10.2%. Three rural states aren't even a fifth the total power of CA. So while Clinton only commanded ~62% of the state, she gets 10.2% (55/538 EV) of the EC from only 2% (1/50 states) of the total number of states. Trump commanded 70%, 57%, and 57% in WY, KS, MT respectively and received 2.2% (12/538 EV) of the EC out of 6% (3/50 states) of the total number of states.
What I do think is interesting is that Johnson commanded 3.4%, 5.3%, 4.7%, and 5.6% in CA, WY, KS, and MT respectively and received 0 EV, even though that is 3.6% (496,603/13,835,311 votes) of all votes that were cast in those states. I mean not even an unfaithful elector. My two cents, and it is just that, is that we're all so hell bent on trying to fix something for a two party system, that we forget we could be more than a two party system.
I will agree that the limit of 435 members to the house is pretty brain dead. Additionally, while the 1911 Act set the new membership size, The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 set it in stone. Census data in 1920 showed that populations were growing faster in cities than in rural areas and this Act was a stop-gap (oops turned into forever) measure to come up with a new method for determining size of Congress and distribution of seats, the formula has change since then, just not the number of seats. Additionally, I won't go into the formulas but they are posted here for public review. Without boring you to tears, the formulas favor smaller over bigger. You can read this about other methods that have been used and a bit of history on how membership size has ran through the decades.
As far as number of seats go. There's pros and cons to both sides. A smaller Congress would be more apt to get things done and cost less (maybe, unless they gave themselves a raise pursuant to the 27th Amendment), but members would be less personable to their constituents. A larger Congress would most likely cost more and less (I know, hard to think about Congress doing even less) might get done. However, they would be able to get more personable with their constituents. I think larger would be better, but I also think Congress should rethink the way that they operate and going into my opinion on that end would just inflate this comment already bigger than it already is.
We don't base it on population because NY and CA would always win.
Oh well allow me to retort.
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
Article two, section one, clause two US Constitution
That puts a direct limit on the number of electors to never be more than the number of members of the House plus the number of Senators. So like OK as you specified, in OK they have five representatives and two senators. Thus, the state of OK gets seven electoral votes. You can technically have fewer, but never more.
So that brings up the question, why do you have five representatives? Glad you asked.
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.
Article one, section two, clause three US Constitution
As you might guess a lot of that has changed but do note the term of ten years. Know what happens every ten years? Yeah, that's right it's called a Census. Guess what it's function is?
The states are not just "artificial jurisdictional areas we call states". You grossly misrepresent their place in the pecking order.
You are grossly under informed about the topic at hand. Might I suggest this?
Simple: It's there to prevent tyranny of the majority so large population states, like California and New York, don't have an over weighted say vs smaller states like Oklahoma and Wyoming.
But using that logic, the Electoral college doesn't do that.
So the average value of electoral votes is 15. So let's say that there abouts is middle ground. Too low and we're talking small states, too high and we're talking large states. Now take the 2016 results. Change Michigan, Indiana, and Arazona. Poof election is changed. I didn't change any large states, didn't change any small states, yet the result is now different. If you're logic held true, that the EC somehow protects small states, that would not have happen. The small states never changed, but now their opinion isn't being represented because some middle of the road states changed.
The reason that does happen is because the number of EV a state gets is related to their size in population so larger states get more EV which means they have more say in the process than smaller states. And that matches up with where candidates spend their money. Safe states like CA for Democrats and TX for Republicans rarely, if ever see a candidate grace their borders. Small states next to never see a candidate because winning the state MT only gets you only 0.6% of the way to the goal. In fact winning every state with 10 or fewer EV nets you 37% of the EC but means you've carried 68% of all the states.
Los Angeles alone would overwhelm all of the votes of Oklahoma and Wyoming
You are literally comparing apples to oranges. Yes LA's population is bigger than those two states, but LA's population isn't 100% one party. Likewise OK and WY aren't 100% a single party either. I'm no proponent of direct vote, but you're totally off your rocker if you can't understand that a direct vote would act in aggregate. Additionally, Los Angles != California. There's a whole lot of the other team in CA who's votes get crushed by winner take all.
And that is the underlying issue here, is the winner take all system we have in place in the majority of states. ME and NE being wonderful examples of trying to come up with a way to more "fairly" distribute the vote given the EC system that we have.
The electoral college assures their views are represented.
It does no such thing. Again, I'm not advocating for direct elections, but I'll not sit here and not say something to someone trying to chalk some sort of attribute to a system that, that system does not posses.
The legality depends on what specific actions are being taken
No that would be the constitutionality of the action. The action can be Constitutional but within the domain of the Legislative versus the Executive, as an example. If you speak solely to the actionable items, you are asking, "Is this allowed in our land?" Legality looks at a broader range and depends on the context. Good example using what you said:
Passing what turns out to be a ban on guns is still a 2nd amendment violation, if it prevents or impedes a single citizen acquiring a firearm
Not exactly, citizens cannot purchase a mortar shell and it's launcher and one could argue the technicalities to how it's uses gun powder just like guns. There's a limited domain on what the 2A allows and depending on the context, you weigh the options of public good versus public being able to launch mortar shells. Now granted that's a really big jump from hand gun to mortar shells, but you can move the line around and find all kinds of different arguments pro/con and all different kinds of judgement. The point being that a lot of people like to think of law stating something like, "if it prevents or impedes a single citizen acquiring a firearm" but rarely is law so black and white. Laws could very well prevent people from buying some guns and run in what we may think as violations of 2A, but given the context of the ruling the Judges at the time may have found ample rationale at the time for such a thing. I mean, how do you think the Judicial squares today with Justices of olden time supporting slavery?
When possible the courts Must pick the interpretation of the intent of all laws or orders in a manner that the result is constitutional and/or legal, if it is possible for there to be a constitutional and legal intent of the law or order.
If only cases were so binary in nature. Also I should point out...
In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.
This is usually taken to be the thing that enables Judicial review. But I should point out, it's not spelled out there and you want to wax a bunch of lawyers in school into the right mood, you bring this up and cite Federalist 78. You really seem to be arguing something that's forever debatable but somewhere mixed in there, you feel the debate has already been settled, especially with...
The Courts are NOT there to second-guess decisions of the executive or elected officials.
The Judicial is the third branch of government and serves as a check for the other two. Just like the other two serve as a check to Judicial. So while you state an opinion that has existed since the founding of "just governments", it is also a point that's been debated for time immemorial. There isn't a more correct answer in this debate either. It's a matter of how one reads "separation of powers" and how far that word "check" goes.
There can't "really" be a dispute between the president and the courts, since the Executive technically has the authority to proceed against their orders.
Again, that's a single school of thought about the position courts have in this country, which you shouldn't confuse for the only position that courts have in this country. There's nothing wrong with anything you just said other than your idea that it is the only way things can possible run, which is entirely untrue. Intent can be used in the manner that is befitting the court. That's why things like appeal and review exist. It's the acknowledgment that there is no one way to run the Judicial and that "jus
Why must the US give all away no matter the circumstance or reason
This being a bit anecdotal but US citizens seem to be a lot more adverse to price elevation than a lot of other countries I know of. Talk about raising the minimum wage and people flip out over the idea that their cheese in the grocery store might start costing $0.08 more. So employing an US worker means at some point cost will go up. Yes, there's an overall economic good being done, but for some reason people focus in on that cost going up part the most.
Or you sometimes get the person who understands all the above but then for spite says, "Well if you're going to MAGA then up the minimum wage, shouldn't kill H1Bs if you aren't also going to help everyone else out."
Again, grain of slat there. However, I don't expect this to be a long term thing. But that's just because I'm cynical as hell.
You both are arguing a matter of semantics that really doesn't matter in a court for this purpose. The show isn't using a shield protection so determining if it is journalism or not doesn't matter. (Which as an aside here, legally, it doesn't matter the format, how it is presented, or whatever else you wish to pick. Content is the method for determining journalism. Federal circuit court definition used is typically von Bulow v. von Bulow 1982, for a given state look up that state's statue if they have one. Long story short, if there was a reason that someone needed to determine if the show was journalism or not, which there is no reason to do so but forgetting that altogether, this show would most likely classify as a news source, even with the comedy and random crazy going on in it.)
That said it seems that the filing points out that they were given sources of an opposing view in the cease and desist letter. That's an on purpose thing because then the show cannot claim that they did not know of any opposing views. If the case is heard in a local courtroom like WV/SC, this is about as much burden as the court needs and the show would be found liable. In a federal circuit court, however, there's a greater chance to have the case thrown out. Typically the burden is a lot higher and crying that "they didn't use our sources" isn't going to cut it.
So it should be no surprise to anyone that the suit is being filed in WV by the plaintiff. However, I am sure the show will seek to have the case heard in federal court.
To quickly recap the claims and what I personally feel about them.
defamation - Basically based on where it is heard will determine the outcome.
False light invasion of privacy - No way on any ground. This guy actively works with political figureheads. You give up anything that protects you from false light when you do that.
Intentional infliction of emotional distress - IIED is one of those wild card things. It just depends on how they present the case and who hears it. The typical thing to remember is that the thing that causes the distress has to be heinous, like really overboard, beyond what one would expect in a normal situation. There's people who use "shock" value to get a point across and that's 1A domain. Then there are people who scream, get in your face to the point you can feel the breath coming out of their mouth as they scream, and put their body parts within centimeters of your body. That's not exactly protected speech in a general setting, but in say a rally with protesters and counter-protesters there would be a little more leeway. There is more, but it all depends on who's hearing your case and what they consider "heinous" to be in the given context.
No matter where it is heard, it's an uphill battle for the plaintiff for sure. I'm pretty sure that they're banking on HBO not sticking with Oliver long enough to get through the whole thing, and that might be the entire point. However, seeing how this is on everything now (TV news, Reddit, radio, newspaper, Slashdot), it's getting HBO a lot of what it actually wants, attention, which might just mean they'll stick it out thick or thin with Oliver. If that happens to be the case, in the long term, this coal guy has near zero chance of ever benefiting from this proceedings.
Even if he does win the legal case (which is a long shot given the things cited but you never can tell), it might net him after everything is said and done a few tens of thousand. In the meantime,
HBO is reaping sweet sweet publicity, which long term might translate into more cash then they'll ever have to pay out. WV won't provide the plaintiff a statutory provision for legal fee should they lose there and in federal court none of these are considered outside the American Rule, so each party pays their lawyers win/lose/or draw.
It's not about climate change or environmentalism, it really hasn't been for a long time...it's about socialist economic policy--redistribution of wealth. The leaders of the movement readily admit as much.
I really think you are missing a point on this. Let's start basic, winter wheat here in the US. You can apply this to coffee or chocolate, but why not something that most likely directly affects the US? Now over the last few decades the US yield of winter wheat has declined. It isn't that we aren't growing enough, it is that it's overall quality has decreased. Without getting too detailed, wheat grown needs a pretty stable environment especially early on. If that's not the case the amount of starch inside the kernels declines and thus produces a "less good" product. So to bring the numbers back up to a quality that people will want to bake with it, they have to take more plants and combine them in flour to bring the numbers back up. So while it might have take X square feet of wheat to produce Y pounds of quality flour, it is now taking X+n square feet to produce the same Y pounds of quality flour.
That n value isn't insanely large, but it does mean that the cost of growing and producing the exact same amount of end product increases. That in turn changes an economic market, without some economic policy, someone along the food chain here in the production of winter wheat gets hit, and typically that person is near or at the bottom where the growing happens. In the US we have such a policy that hands out government money (or as you might call it redistribution) to encourage keeping that quantity of flour being produced at Y pounds per X+n square feet. Over time, that value of n will increase if there is no policy that aims to combat why n is increasing. Thus if the government is handing out $M to keep flour at Y pounds per X+n square feet, the government will have to hand out $M+$h more dollars just to keep the rate the same. Thus you can see that there are two solutions to this problem. We could address n and why it is increasing, or we could address $h and how to keep it increasing, or we could address both (this later one though seems a bit more than I'd give our collective governments credit for solving).
There's not a more correct answer, it is a preference based off the question of "what do I have more control over?" Addressing n solves a longer term problem but fails to address the here and now, addressing $h solves the now but doesn't address the underlying issue. You could address either in some sort of ratio of address n 30% and address $h 70% and you'll get different results. The bigger thing to remember is, no one has any clear answer on how best to address it period. This isn't something we've collective done before. So economic policy is indeed one way to go about it, but it isn't anywhere near the only policy or what the entire question is about. You have policy makers that sit there and look at the problem in terms of $h and thus, it's no surprise that they are looking at solutions that address the terms that they started with. It's like asking, "why a banker addresses a heart transplant in terms of which doctor they can afford?" Those are the terms that they're most apt to focus in on and know how to enact policy based on their insight. Does that mean that climate change is all about money? No. It's just that the folks you all cited are all folks that work in that specific mindset, global economic policy.
That's why it is a bit disingenuous to assume that the entire thing is strictly about $h. There's still an n variable there and it plays a role in the equation as well. That a lot of talking heads only focus on $h doesn't mean that the n variable just disappears. And this is just a simplification of the overall topic in of itself. That $h looks a lot more appealing as a short term solution if P% of your nation's GDP relies on Y pounds of flour getting made or Y pounds of coffee or Y pounds of chocolate or Y pound
Imagine a modern console platform anybody could cut software for without all the fuckery. Spicy
Wasn't that supposed to be Ouya? I think the idea of having anyone cut software is great and all, but I don't think that model fits with consoles enough to be the sole model. I think that was Ouya's biggest fault, they just expected everyone to come to them. All of the really successful cut as you like games by indies usually go after PC first and let consoles come to them. Ouya thought that indies would want to target them because of licensing issues with the big three, but it doesn't seem like indies have massive problems with the big three's indie programs. Additionally, sans issues outright with licensing, I'm pretty sure indies look to get more eyes on their brand via the console more than anything else.
I'm all about championing Atari's rise from the ashes, but I'm three degrees past hyper-skeptical this will amount to anything that doesn't collapse shortly after take off. But I will say this, I'll be pleased as peaches if I'm insanely wrong about Atari.
That's so cute. Tobacco companies are actively investing billions into funding of e-cigs. They still maintain their public image because that's what good companies do, they hedge their bets. But if you think that big tobacco companies don't have twenty to thirty cents inside of each bottle of juice a person is buying, then they've done their job well.
This is 2016 mind you but you'll be amazed what they've been able to do in a little over a year's time. Just because they've not yet dominated the industry, doesn't mean they don't have the money to do so. I thought we all learned that lesson when MP3, iTunes, Pandora, whoever was suppose to revolutionize the music industry? Umpteen years later, RIAA still big as ever.
Slashdot Mirror
Underscores are not allowed in domain names.
That has not been the case and is not the case currently. RFC 2181 dictates differently and more specifically section 11 of said RFC.
Yet the question remains, why isn't c faster
Well there's some that say physical constants have the value that they have because we happen to live in a universe where that is the value. In other words, it could be that the values of constants c (speed of light), G (gravitational constant), h (Planck's constant), and so on are just random values. It just happens that you exist to ask the question with the values c, G, h, and so on being what they are.
A good parallel would be "Why are we the third planet?" Why couldn't there have been some extra planet in between Venus and Earth, and thus make us the forth planet/Venus not exist and Earth be the second planet? The answer is, there's nothing that "forced" Earth to be the third planet, it's just how things lined up. As we've studied exoplanets we've come to understand that being the "third" planet isn't related to being in the habitable zone. Some stars have their first planet within the habitable zone, some don't. Three just isn't some magical number that assures you'll land in the habitable zone of a star.
But the real answer to, "Why the constants are what they are" is, "We just don't know for sure". We're not at that point and while there are some ideas out there that try to explain it, none of them have been shown to be demonstrably correct. That's not to say they are incorrect, just that they're still at best an educated guess and we lack the ability to really be able to test some of them. One day that may change, but it could be that none of us are currently living in an era where humanity will be able to reach any conclusive answer on those questions. I'm okay with that, because I can only imagine how absolutely frustrated Newton was with being unable to explain Venus' orbit then having to die never knowing the answer.
However, I'll say this, even if the values of constants are randomly chosen at Big Bang for a universe, it still means that order comes from those selected values and that, that order is observable and can be modeled. Just because the Standard Model has gaps doesn't mean it lacks value. The periodic chart had gaps in its early days too, but it gave us insight into what we knew and where to look for the gaps that did exist. The Standard Model in it's current form came about mid-1970s and since then it's had amazing predictive power. Heck I distinctly remember when the first top quark was discovered in 1995 and that was massive because up till then it was just this particle that we assumed existed on paper. So it might be tempting to shout this is a train wreck because it lacks so much, but it is the model we have right now and the model we have has shown to be demonstrably correct. Trying to forward models that we just don't have the ability to test to anything within the domain of "fact" or "scientifically accurate" makes science no better than people who think the universe began by a cosmic unicorn fart. I think people get angry at that notion that "look here's a model that explains way much more! Forward it as fact and I can at least die knowing that I knew everything." We have to move at the pace we're currently at and any faster we might as well just stick a religion flag in it. So yeah, there's holes in our understanding of the Universe, but that doesn't mean what we have is a "train wreck" and it should not tempt us to adopt models that haven't been shown to be correct "string theory".
Does Amazon prime video and Netflix work on linux yet?
Yes both work on Linux. Outlook compat depends on what you need from it. I've used DavMail plus Thunderbird+Lighting to do pretty much everything I needed to get done from an Exchange 365 server. I've not been disappointed by Steam on Linux so there's that, but I'm not exactly "MUST HAVE AAA GAME!!" so my opinion may not count.
I think some of the gas from the grey breads in Linux has left and moved on to BSD ever since the reckoningd. Also with mobile basically smashing desktop, there's not much home (hey bro this is cool) interest in "Linux-the-desktop" either. So if you do hit up a corner of Linux you'll either get what grey beards are left fighting with young whipper snappers about "Unix-mentality-is-GOD!!" or you'll get a quiet place where the last activity was three months ago letting everyone know that a project that's not been updated in the last two years isn't dead.
Point being, don't expect any magical massive shift to promote Linux desktop. Most people are "meh" and use it and don't care, are too busy fighting the "enemyd", or they've just moved on out of Linux/desktop-all-together.
And (according to TFA) this one sometimes does that, too.
Yes that's correct. 48% of the time, so effectively a 50-50 shot. Which that's a big improvement over previous attempts.
But, in the (closely watched) experimental group, they were able to catch it and treat it in the patients where it occurred.
Right again, and this is the thing about this treatment. You have to have a trained team of bio-engineers close by for these types of things. Right now, there's two paths to treatment with any Cytokine Release Syndrome (CRS). One, shut it all down. That's a mixture of blunt action drugs such as anti-histamines and corticosteroids. This basically shuts the T-cells down and allows them to die. The problem with this approach is that you might shut everything down too soon and have only partially destroyed the cancer. Two, treat and hope for the best. Basically you keep letting the T-cells do their thing while giving drugs to prevent renal failure and any kind of edema. You keep doing this until you at some point shut it all down. The problem with this approach is that you risk severe damage to the kidneys, liver, heart, and brain.
It turned out to be transient. So nobody died.
Correct that no one died, but the end effects are hardly transient. Only 25% developed dangerous CRS and were treated for such. All patients developed beta-cell dysfunction and will require some form of insulin treatment for the next three years to the foreseeable future. 16% developed pancytopenia of some degree, they will need blood treatments to control their platelets, red blood cell count, and white blood cell count for an undetermined amount of time. There's also 48% that developed thrombocytopenia and 61% that developed neutropenia (there's some overlap between those two group that developed both FYI). The thing about all of that. Those are all blood diseases that we're able to treat to some extent or another. So yeah, way better than cancer.
immune cells settled down to just guarding against recurrence
Well the thing is we don't know that for sure. The T-cells that were injected are dead by now, but if the body picked up the ability to do what the injected T-cells did has yet to be seen. No one is really sure if the body "learns" from this or not. It's possible that the new antigen is remembered, but it's difficult to reproduce the exact cancer the T-cells were engineered for. So it could be that the T-cells did learn and is keeping the cancer at bay quietly or that the cancer was completely eradicated and there's no chance of it coming back. But we're not yet able to induce the body to artificially produce those antigens. We know that the antigens aren't in the bloodstream after six months, but that just might mean we're not watching when those antigens are released and killing cancer quietly. It'll take a lot more people and study before we can say for sure either way.
Previous developers of such therapies might want to look into them again.
They are and new methods for controlling the process are being developed. The idea is to develop a CAR-T that requires a prodrug for activation. The prodrug itself does nothing, but a specially crafted CAR-T could remain inactive until given the prodrug. Ideally, the prodrug would be one that we can control very well it's distribution in the blood stream. This would act as a sort of gas pedal for the T-cells and the amount of the prodrug would indicate how much throttle we are giving it. Additionally, future CAR-T would have a stop switch/kill switch as well. Again, these would be prodrugs that signal when T-cells need to slow down and when T-cells need to self destruct.
and their modified cells only attacked things, like leukemia cells, that they can easily reach and quickly clear out
The problem with targeting anything in the body is that y
The genes are patented by the drug company.
There aren't genes patented because the therapy is developed on a per person basis. Last I checked, everyone had slightly different genes. What the drug company is selling is the process, not a drug.
The patients body making additional copies of the gene would be violating the patent and copyright of the drug maker.
That's not how any of that works. That's not even a correct statement about anything in medicine. That would be like saying a flu vaccine maker could sue you for your body's ability to mass reproduce an antigen. That's never been the case, no one thinks that should be the case, and thinking that one day that might be the case is just silly.
If cancer does not get you, the pharma will get you.
I don't think your tinfoil is thick enough today.
I figure the cost will be X in the developed world other than the US and 10X in the US because the FDA protects pharma profits (and it's own jobs) first.
That's a completely ridiculous statement. The cost is going to be astronomical because this therapy is developed on a "per person" basis. Additionally, there's not a really finely tuned way to control the altered T-cells, that's something they're still working on for the next generation of these types of drugs. So that said, these T-cells can attack cancer and healthy cells and which ones they do attack depends on what tissue they land on while in your blood stream. Long hospital stays are going to be a requirement of these kinds of treatments and a crack team of bio-engineers are going to have to be at the ready round clock for any sudden cytokine storm that might develop, since the chances of developing one is 50-50 with this drug. Again that goes back to doctor's not having a way to finely control the T-cells. There's so many variables to this treatment, you could literally pick up a 1000 page book on calculus and have nowhere near the number of variables involved in this treatment.
All of that put together is going to make these treatments costs insane. Is it worth it? Well that's not an objective question. Will it get cheaper? Of course, because we'll get better at this, but we're not going to get better at these kinds of treatments without first actually trying these kinds of treatments. Will it be cheaper in "insert some other first world nation"? Maybe, but that's less the nature of the FDA and more the nature of how crazy US healthcare is. Thinking that it's the FDA that protects profits is thinking way too small. The FDA has a part in it, but it's way smaller than you'd like to think. You want to find the people who have the most control in that, you needn't look any further than your local Congress-critter and the slew of lobbyist laws on the books. You want to be mad about prices for medicine, that's cool, but at least be mad at the right people for the right reasons. This process is an insanely brand new form of any kind of medicine that precedes it (and that's a serious understatement because this is literally a new era of medicine altogether. Literally people will look back at this as a pre/post gene therapy era) and the FDA has very little say in what ultimately is a more complex topic on price. Get mad about medicine that's been out for the last ten/fifteen years that still costs an arm and a leg because the law in the US allows them to make a monopoly on it.
GMOs are like Dick Cheney deciding he owns your house because his out of control dog shat on your lawn.
Correction, the companies that own "some" GMOs are like that. GMO's in themselves are not responsible for the company that made them's reckless behavior. GMOs in of themselves are a useful tool, how a company chooses to abuse them is a totally different topic.
Consider the effort it takes to get that pound of coal out of the ground.
Consider the effort it takes to get any random patch of garbage free of plastic strains or other non-organic matter.
Waste does not equal compost. Both might burn but there's a lot of impurity/potential hazard of dangerous gaseous release in the former and in the latter is a slightly more strict and "purified" form of the former. Coal has had the advantage of coalescing into seams by geological processes. One would need to account the processing and cost if we're going to go down this road of compost = coal,
which it doesn't because of quite a few reasons, density being one coal being almost thirty times more dense than compost. A second being that coal has had time to form nice convenient seams that we can mine without too much trouble.
First off, it won't take 300 million years. We can compost the waste and have your 'coal' ready in less than a year.
It's clear that you've never handled bituminous, lignite, or anthracite. Or you've never handled compost. Either way, it's very easy to tell that they aren't the same thing and burning them will show that they are totally different things in energy content too. But just holding coal in your hand is enough to tell it's got more to it.
Fun thing to try at home. Take a pound of compost and a pound of coal (you'll need to grind up the coal a bit). Light on fire and measure how long you can feel heat from either source (also note you'll need to coax the coal a bit to light). If you are are really savvy, you can also take measurements of how hot each source is over time.
If electricity is cheap enough you can generate 'oil-based' fuels out of air and water.
There's multiple ways to get there, none are easy. If we have a lot of excess energy then a straight conversion isn't all that hard, but we need a lot of excess energy. We could also get there if there's some massive breakthrough in the conversion process. At the moment, syngas isn't a very easy product to produce and from what we know we need syngas as the precursor to anything past syngas like ethanol. GMOs might be another way to get to that end. GMOs built to produce hydrocarbons at better than photosynthesis rates might get produced one day.
There's a ton of ifs and unknowns at the moment, so it's a shot in the dark kind of thing to thing to reach a concrete method for how we get there. However, no matter what we come up with, we definitely will need to change where we use hydrocarbon fuel. There's no method we could come up with that would satisfy all of our current HC fuel needs/wants. While pure electric might work for cars, jet planes (for example) just aren't going to become electric unless we have a massive revolution in materials/batteries.
An electric motor built to move a jet to take off speed would be massive, that's not also mentioning the size of the batteries that would be required to power the massive motor. Even if Lithium air batteries get invented you still run into the matter of how absolutely massive an electric motor to move something 200+ MPH that weighs 187k pounds at takeoff would be (sorry that's using 737 weight at takeoff currently, an airplane using an electric motor would be heavier if all other things stayed the same, but you could have fewer people, less cargo, carbon fiber, etc to change that as well, but I couldn't come up with a number for weight of electric jet that would be anywhere meaningful. Also I'm at work at the moment so trying to crunch numbers is proving to be difficult with the onslaught that is my job. However, there is a Reddit thread that talked about this.).
That said, is still very reasonable in my opinion if we have trains, cars, and boats electric and jets remain fuel based. If we can change the world to be like this where jets are the reason we keep producing fuels, we just might be able to produce enough syngas and ethanol from thin air to keep us all happy.
You have a very good comment because it's one of those, "there's a lot of variables involved" type questions that I always find so interesting.
Okay let's boil this down. Small guy versus giant news agency. What small guy did was publish some pieces and made the Internet equal of a political cartoon. That's free speech and bully for the small guy. Big news company comes in an begins their "CNN SMASH" all over the place and small guy breaks. I'm pretty sure this has been going on since printing press to some degree, and each era gets its own version of disgusted by it. So digs on CNN for being the bad guy, but at the same time, this guy got called and he just couldn't own up to what he published. Heck at least in days of yore the truly brave who eventually got called on their pieces owned it at the end of the day. Those that actually do political cartoons sign their name on it, so you know who owns it.
And that's my thing about trolls. It's one thing to have an opinion that runs counter to the popular option. You like Trump? Fine, so be it. You're a racist? Cool, glad to know you can at least admit it, even though I think you're scum. You like to pretend to be homophobic because you just like to get the LULZ by bucking the trend? Put a sock in it amateur.
F- CNN for what boils down to blackmail, but F- this "victim" for publishing BS he can't even stand beside. Do I think doxxing is okay? Nope, and CNN doxxing is bull, but even CNN being in the clear wrong about this doesn't make Mr. Reddit BS any more right. Until we get more legal clarification (LOOKING AT YOU CONGRESS AND YOUR INABILITY TO MODERNIZE LAWS) it's basically wild west rules when it comes online blackmailing. It's a gamble, maybe you'll make a point, maybe the point will get lost on you being a bully. CNN made a call and it was clearly the wrong one, but this dude, he gets no clean hands in the matter either.
As far as the other stuff. That's just people trying to make more of this story to fit a narrative that MSM is evil. I think they're mostly BS but I think the same about most of the people in the capital in DC. So while it's cool to think MSM is this soul sucking menace, I think the folks who can actually be soul sucking menaces are ranked a little higher on my list. CNN being anti-Trump is one soul sucking beast and that's just how it is, at least everyone I hope has the intelligence to mostly ignore them. GOP wanting to "reform" healthcare is a different kind of soul sucking beast that's a bit more real than the man in the TV and is less able to be ignored.
You want to do a GIF of the President punching a news network, cool, at least own up to your art. Oops, you got some baggage under your account you're not exactly proud of? Might want to reexamine your motives for putting that baggage there in the first place.
Also, I don't disagree with anything you said (except the CNN knowing that the Russia story is fake, I don't give them that much credit), especially your sig, voted third party myself, and I'm proud to own up to that.
Has anyone here ever received anything of value from a class action lawsuit?
Yeah, I'm a former VW dieselgate owner. The funds from the settlement paid off the car loan on the VW and the car I replaced the VW with (which was not a VW). Additionally, I had some funds left over from the settlement, so that went to credit cards.
Those cars were engineering train wrecks. Outside the main class action, there was a few more. There was a filter class action for those VWs. Basically the way they designed those custom, just for that car, filters was so overly complicated that they ultimately didn't actually do the job that they were supposed to do. There was also a heater core class action. They engineered the heater core to have this really tiny input for hot water coming from the engine (same for the output but you'll see why that really doesn't matter). Well because there was so little metal there, the pressure of hot water would eventually crack the metal and allow the heater core to leak.
There was a couple of more, but it's been a while. I didn't have tons of debt, I was almost done with student loans, some large medical things, and what not, but after all of those settlements, I had enough to reduce me down to just what I owe on my house now. So other than my house payment, I'm debt free thanks to VWs fuck up.
I'll say though, that I'm one of the rare ones for class actions actually helping. I don't like saying never, but it'll more than likely be longer than the number of years I have left on this Earth before I buy a VW again.
I would not attribute it to some technical limitation of the state. Technically speaking they are more than able and apt to enact such. What I would say is part of the problem that prevents such is a seeming gaming of politics by both the government itself and the public at large. It seems that both sides seem more interested in numbers of seats they currently occupy than of actual substance. That mindset is not just limited to those in DC but to the public in general. You hear thee murmurings with things like, "We have to repeal ObamaCare" and the reasonable people ask, "but with what?" "We have to get rid of Trump" and the reasonable people ask, "but with who?" The details get lost in the fervor to just get an agenda actually done, to get to the next milestone with no consideration for what to do once there, to undo what that team did and wax what your particular team will do sans a moment to think how do we actually do that. "We must push to this goal just down the way and once there we can then reconsider the trajectory." Actual healthcare that is long lasting is not something that can just be conjured from thin air once a political party is clear all obstacles of resistance. It must include ownership by the other team because their term is just around the corner. It must include interest for the success and responsibility for the maintenance by the public. The public needs to have a vested interest in whatever is passed otherwise, a new breed will just come an usurp the current standing party. With the party in name, hell bent on manipulating it to their own agenda.
There's a multitude of things that prevent what I would consider a wholesome approach to modifying the current state of affairs. However, I believe the more pressing one at the moment is the need to grandstand by both political and public members. "I am the victor, the mandate is mine." No the mandate is a mindshare of the citizens and it must be attuned to the will of the agenda. That means work to help bring the collective into focus on the issue at hand, not "we won, we're going to make healthcare great again."
You have basically assumed other people's income is yours to decide what to do with.
No I assumed that government had vested interest in the well being of the populace. The means to which they achieve that end is little concern to me be it ObamaCare or whatever TrumpCare shapes up to become. However, it is clear that the current iteration of "wisdom" to befall us is one that is more calloused hearted than cautioned repair.
you have NO moral objection to violent threats to accomplish that which you won't do on your own.
On the contrary, I feel that people need to take keen interest in their health. We will not reach any point of better healthcare without a consensus of the public wishing to not only improve a system but themselves as well. The masses crying out, "please give us healthcare, fix our system" will bear empty gains if those selfsame masses do nothing within themselves. The government has the unique position to stoke a fire of change within the public, yet they wish only to bicker among themselves for temporal glory in the bask of media limelight. To them, it is not the cause, but the ephemeral win to which they hang their platform in whole upon. To simply undo an egregious wrong brought on by the "other team". What comes after their pyrrhic victory is but an afterthought.
Personally, I am all for letting ObamaCare die a horrible death, and letting the rotting corpse lay in the middle of the street.
I too would join you around the maypole for the death of failed legislation if it were to mean something that is an improvement upon where we stand. Sadly, what it has become can hardly be called improvement, and I see no resolve within those elected to kindle action that would move healthcare forward.
I can't imagine Congress is going to let this go on forever.
Well the cynic in me thinks that in order for it to stop, Congress would have to *act*. There's been a whole lot of *not acting* going on in Congress as of late, and I'm perplexed as to why an economic downturn would induce that to suddenly change. Considering the most recent AHCA version to come out of the Senate, it doesn't seem like they care if the citizens die, so economic hardship should be the least of their worries. Even if it's industry that's hurting, it's not GOP industry hurting.
This means that winning one electoral vote in California takes on hell of more votes than winning the same electoral vote in Wyoming or Kansas or Montana
That would be true if every state ran their system like ME and NE. However, the majority is first past the pole. Here's the states that you mentioned if they worked on a distributed EV system.
California: Clinton 34, Trump 18, Johnson 2, Stein 1
Wyoming: Trump 2, Clinton 1
Kansas: Trump 3, Clinton 2, Johnson 1
Montana: Trump 2, Clinton 1
There's nothing wrong with your statement in that it takes more heads to earn a single EV (total population divide by EVs in state), but first past the pole makes that a mute point. WY, KS, and MT are a total of 12 EV which is only 2.2% of the EC. CA is 55 EV which is only 10.2%. Three rural states aren't even a fifth the total power of CA. So while Clinton only commanded ~62% of the state, she gets 10.2% (55/538 EV) of the EC from only 2% (1/50 states) of the total number of states. Trump commanded 70%, 57%, and 57% in WY, KS, MT respectively and received 2.2% (12/538 EV) of the EC out of 6% (3/50 states) of the total number of states.
What I do think is interesting is that Johnson commanded 3.4%, 5.3%, 4.7%, and 5.6% in CA, WY, KS, and MT respectively and received 0 EV, even though that is 3.6% (496,603/13,835,311 votes) of all votes that were cast in those states. I mean not even an unfaithful elector. My two cents, and it is just that, is that we're all so hell bent on trying to fix something for a two party system, that we forget we could be more than a two party system.
I will agree that the limit of 435 members to the house is pretty brain dead. Additionally, while the 1911 Act set the new membership size, The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 set it in stone. Census data in 1920 showed that populations were growing faster in cities than in rural areas and this Act was a stop-gap (oops turned into forever) measure to come up with a new method for determining size of Congress and distribution of seats, the formula has change since then, just not the number of seats. Additionally, I won't go into the formulas but they are posted here for public review. Without boring you to tears, the formulas favor smaller over bigger. You can read this about other methods that have been used and a bit of history on how membership size has ran through the decades.
As far as number of seats go. There's pros and cons to both sides. A smaller Congress would be more apt to get things done and cost less (maybe, unless they gave themselves a raise pursuant to the 27th Amendment), but members would be less personable to their constituents. A larger Congress would most likely cost more and less (I know, hard to think about Congress doing even less) might get done. However, they would be able to get more personable with their constituents. I think larger would be better, but I also think Congress should rethink the way that they operate and going into my opinion on that end would just inflate this comment already bigger than it already is.
Hope any of that drivel was helpful.
We don't base it on population because NY and CA would always win.
Oh well allow me to retort.
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
Article two, section one, clause two US Constitution
That puts a direct limit on the number of electors to never be more than the number of members of the House plus the number of Senators. So like OK as you specified, in OK they have five representatives and two senators. Thus, the state of OK gets seven electoral votes. You can technically have fewer, but never more.
So that brings up the question, why do you have five representatives? Glad you asked.
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.
Article one, section two, clause three US Constitution
As you might guess a lot of that has changed but do note the term of ten years. Know what happens every ten years? Yeah, that's right it's called a Census. Guess what it's function is?
The states are not just "artificial jurisdictional areas we call states". You grossly misrepresent their place in the pecking order.
You are grossly under informed about the topic at hand. Might I suggest this?
Simple: It's there to prevent tyranny of the majority so large population states, like California and New York, don't have an over weighted say vs smaller states like Oklahoma and Wyoming.
But using that logic, the Electoral college doesn't do that.
So the average value of electoral votes is 15. So let's say that there abouts is middle ground. Too low and we're talking small states, too high and we're talking large states. Now take the 2016 results. Change Michigan, Indiana, and Arazona. Poof election is changed. I didn't change any large states, didn't change any small states, yet the result is now different. If you're logic held true, that the EC somehow protects small states, that would not have happen. The small states never changed, but now their opinion isn't being represented because some middle of the road states changed.
The reason that does happen is because the number of EV a state gets is related to their size in population so larger states get more EV which means they have more say in the process than smaller states. And that matches up with where candidates spend their money. Safe states like CA for Democrats and TX for Republicans rarely, if ever see a candidate grace their borders. Small states next to never see a candidate because winning the state MT only gets you only 0.6% of the way to the goal. In fact winning every state with 10 or fewer EV nets you 37% of the EC but means you've carried 68% of all the states.
Los Angeles alone would overwhelm all of the votes of Oklahoma and Wyoming
You are literally comparing apples to oranges. Yes LA's population is bigger than those two states, but LA's population isn't 100% one party. Likewise OK and WY aren't 100% a single party either. I'm no proponent of direct vote, but you're totally off your rocker if you can't understand that a direct vote would act in aggregate. Additionally, Los Angles != California. There's a whole lot of the other team in CA who's votes get crushed by winner take all.
And that is the underlying issue here, is the winner take all system we have in place in the majority of states. ME and NE being wonderful examples of trying to come up with a way to more "fairly" distribute the vote given the EC system that we have.
The electoral college assures their views are represented.
It does no such thing. Again, I'm not advocating for direct elections, but I'll not sit here and not say something to someone trying to chalk some sort of attribute to a system that, that system does not posses.
The legality depends on what specific actions are being taken
No that would be the constitutionality of the action. The action can be Constitutional but within the domain of the Legislative versus the Executive, as an example. If you speak solely to the actionable items, you are asking, "Is this allowed in our land?" Legality looks at a broader range and depends on the context. Good example using what you said:
Passing what turns out to be a ban on guns is still a 2nd amendment violation, if it prevents or impedes a single citizen acquiring a firearm
Not exactly, citizens cannot purchase a mortar shell and it's launcher and one could argue the technicalities to how it's uses gun powder just like guns. There's a limited domain on what the 2A allows and depending on the context, you weigh the options of public good versus public being able to launch mortar shells. Now granted that's a really big jump from hand gun to mortar shells, but you can move the line around and find all kinds of different arguments pro/con and all different kinds of judgement. The point being that a lot of people like to think of law stating something like, "if it prevents or impedes a single citizen acquiring a firearm" but rarely is law so black and white. Laws could very well prevent people from buying some guns and run in what we may think as violations of 2A, but given the context of the ruling the Judges at the time may have found ample rationale at the time for such a thing. I mean, how do you think the Judicial squares today with Justices of olden time supporting slavery?
When possible the courts Must pick the interpretation of the intent of all laws or orders in a manner that the result is constitutional and/or legal, if it is possible for there to be a constitutional and legal intent of the law or order.
If only cases were so binary in nature. Also I should point out...
In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.
This is usually taken to be the thing that enables Judicial review. But I should point out, it's not spelled out there and you want to wax a bunch of lawyers in school into the right mood, you bring this up and cite Federalist 78. You really seem to be arguing something that's forever debatable but somewhere mixed in there, you feel the debate has already been settled, especially with...
The Courts are NOT there to second-guess decisions of the executive or elected officials.
The Judicial is the third branch of government and serves as a check for the other two. Just like the other two serve as a check to Judicial. So while you state an opinion that has existed since the founding of "just governments", it is also a point that's been debated for time immemorial. There isn't a more correct answer in this debate either. It's a matter of how one reads "separation of powers" and how far that word "check" goes.
There can't "really" be a dispute between the president and the courts, since the Executive technically has the authority to proceed against their orders.
Again, that's a single school of thought about the position courts have in this country, which you shouldn't confuse for the only position that courts have in this country. There's nothing wrong with anything you just said other than your idea that it is the only way things can possible run, which is entirely untrue. Intent can be used in the manner that is befitting the court. That's why things like appeal and review exist. It's the acknowledgment that there is no one way to run the Judicial and that "jus
Why must the US give all away no matter the circumstance or reason
This being a bit anecdotal but US citizens seem to be a lot more adverse to price elevation than a lot of other countries I know of. Talk about raising the minimum wage and people flip out over the idea that their cheese in the grocery store might start costing $0.08 more. So employing an US worker means at some point cost will go up. Yes, there's an overall economic good being done, but for some reason people focus in on that cost going up part the most.
Or you sometimes get the person who understands all the above but then for spite says, "Well if you're going to MAGA then up the minimum wage, shouldn't kill H1Bs if you aren't also going to help everyone else out."
Again, grain of slat there. However, I don't expect this to be a long term thing. But that's just because I'm cynical as hell.
You both are arguing a matter of semantics that really doesn't matter in a court for this purpose. The show isn't using a shield protection so determining if it is journalism or not doesn't matter. (Which as an aside here, legally, it doesn't matter the format, how it is presented, or whatever else you wish to pick. Content is the method for determining journalism. Federal circuit court definition used is typically von Bulow v. von Bulow 1982, for a given state look up that state's statue if they have one. Long story short, if there was a reason that someone needed to determine if the show was journalism or not, which there is no reason to do so but forgetting that altogether, this show would most likely classify as a news source, even with the comedy and random crazy going on in it.)
That said it seems that the filing points out that they were given sources of an opposing view in the cease and desist letter. That's an on purpose thing because then the show cannot claim that they did not know of any opposing views. If the case is heard in a local courtroom like WV/SC, this is about as much burden as the court needs and the show would be found liable. In a federal circuit court, however, there's a greater chance to have the case thrown out. Typically the burden is a lot higher and crying that "they didn't use our sources" isn't going to cut it.
So it should be no surprise to anyone that the suit is being filed in WV by the plaintiff. However, I am sure the show will seek to have the case heard in federal court.
To quickly recap the claims and what I personally feel about them.
defamation - Basically based on where it is heard will determine the outcome.
False light invasion of privacy - No way on any ground. This guy actively works with political figureheads. You give up anything that protects you from false light when you do that.
Intentional infliction of emotional distress - IIED is one of those wild card things. It just depends on how they present the case and who hears it. The typical thing to remember is that the thing that causes the distress has to be heinous, like really overboard, beyond what one would expect in a normal situation. There's people who use "shock" value to get a point across and that's 1A domain. Then there are people who scream, get in your face to the point you can feel the breath coming out of their mouth as they scream, and put their body parts within centimeters of your body. That's not exactly protected speech in a general setting, but in say a rally with protesters and counter-protesters there would be a little more leeway. There is more, but it all depends on who's hearing your case and what they consider "heinous" to be in the given context.
No matter where it is heard, it's an uphill battle for the plaintiff for sure. I'm pretty sure that they're banking on HBO not sticking with Oliver long enough to get through the whole thing, and that might be the entire point. However, seeing how this is on everything now (TV news, Reddit, radio, newspaper, Slashdot), it's getting HBO a lot of what it actually wants, attention, which might just mean they'll stick it out thick or thin with Oliver. If that happens to be the case, in the long term, this coal guy has near zero chance of ever benefiting from this proceedings.
Even if he does win the legal case (which is a long shot given the things cited but you never can tell), it might net him after everything is said and done a few tens of thousand. In the meantime,
HBO is reaping sweet sweet publicity, which long term might translate into more cash then they'll ever have to pay out. WV won't provide the plaintiff a statutory provision for legal fee should they lose there and in federal court none of these are considered outside the American Rule, so each party pays their lawyers win/lose/or draw.
It's not about climate change or environmentalism, it really hasn't been for a long time...it's about socialist economic policy--redistribution of wealth. The leaders of the movement readily admit as much.
I really think you are missing a point on this. Let's start basic, winter wheat here in the US. You can apply this to coffee or chocolate, but why not something that most likely directly affects the US? Now over the last few decades the US yield of winter wheat has declined. It isn't that we aren't growing enough, it is that it's overall quality has decreased. Without getting too detailed, wheat grown needs a pretty stable environment especially early on. If that's not the case the amount of starch inside the kernels declines and thus produces a "less good" product. So to bring the numbers back up to a quality that people will want to bake with it, they have to take more plants and combine them in flour to bring the numbers back up. So while it might have take X square feet of wheat to produce Y pounds of quality flour, it is now taking X+n square feet to produce the same Y pounds of quality flour.
That n value isn't insanely large, but it does mean that the cost of growing and producing the exact same amount of end product increases. That in turn changes an economic market, without some economic policy, someone along the food chain here in the production of winter wheat gets hit, and typically that person is near or at the bottom where the growing happens. In the US we have such a policy that hands out government money (or as you might call it redistribution) to encourage keeping that quantity of flour being produced at Y pounds per X+n square feet. Over time, that value of n will increase if there is no policy that aims to combat why n is increasing. Thus if the government is handing out $M to keep flour at Y pounds per X+n square feet, the government will have to hand out $M+$h more dollars just to keep the rate the same. Thus you can see that there are two solutions to this problem. We could address n and why it is increasing, or we could address $h and how to keep it increasing, or we could address both (this later one though seems a bit more than I'd give our collective governments credit for solving).
There's not a more correct answer, it is a preference based off the question of "what do I have more control over?" Addressing n solves a longer term problem but fails to address the here and now, addressing $h solves the now but doesn't address the underlying issue. You could address either in some sort of ratio of address n 30% and address $h 70% and you'll get different results. The bigger thing to remember is, no one has any clear answer on how best to address it period. This isn't something we've collective done before. So economic policy is indeed one way to go about it, but it isn't anywhere near the only policy or what the entire question is about. You have policy makers that sit there and look at the problem in terms of $h and thus, it's no surprise that they are looking at solutions that address the terms that they started with. It's like asking, "why a banker addresses a heart transplant in terms of which doctor they can afford?" Those are the terms that they're most apt to focus in on and know how to enact policy based on their insight. Does that mean that climate change is all about money? No. It's just that the folks you all cited are all folks that work in that specific mindset, global economic policy.
That's why it is a bit disingenuous to assume that the entire thing is strictly about $h. There's still an n variable there and it plays a role in the equation as well. That a lot of talking heads only focus on $h doesn't mean that the n variable just disappears. And this is just a simplification of the overall topic in of itself. That $h looks a lot more appealing as a short term solution if P% of your nation's GDP relies on Y pounds of flour getting made or Y pounds of coffee or Y pounds of chocolate or Y pound
Imagine a modern console platform anybody could cut software for without all the fuckery. Spicy
Wasn't that supposed to be Ouya? I think the idea of having anyone cut software is great and all, but I don't think that model fits with consoles enough to be the sole model. I think that was Ouya's biggest fault, they just expected everyone to come to them. All of the really successful cut as you like games by indies usually go after PC first and let consoles come to them. Ouya thought that indies would want to target them because of licensing issues with the big three, but it doesn't seem like indies have massive problems with the big three's indie programs. Additionally, sans issues outright with licensing, I'm pretty sure indies look to get more eyes on their brand via the console more than anything else.
I'm all about championing Atari's rise from the ashes, but I'm three degrees past hyper-skeptical this will amount to anything that doesn't collapse shortly after take off. But I will say this, I'll be pleased as peaches if I'm insanely wrong about Atari.
They arent the same companies.
That's so cute. Tobacco companies are actively investing billions into funding of e-cigs. They still maintain their public image because that's what good companies do, they hedge their bets. But if you think that big tobacco companies don't have twenty to thirty cents inside of each bottle of juice a person is buying, then they've done their job well.
This is 2016 mind you but you'll be amazed what they've been able to do in a little over a year's time. Just because they've not yet dominated the industry, doesn't mean they don't have the money to do so. I thought we all learned that lesson when MP3, iTunes, Pandora, whoever was suppose to revolutionize the music industry? Umpteen years later, RIAA still big as ever.